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A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies

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There are two sides to every story and the fact that De Las Casas takes the side of the indigenous people as opposed to his native Spain is especially poignant. The writing style is repititive, old world and filled with the horrors of war but De Las Casas does this to especially hammer home his point. He gives examples, over and over, of the injustices carried out by Cortez and Pizarro throughout the Americas from Mexico to Peru, under the auspices of the flag and cross, all in the name of God and country. It is a first hand report on the atrocities that greed and glory created. It was a plea for his King to understand how his represenatives abroad and the encomienda had drifted far from the ideals originally intended and persued. The woodcuts reproduced from a 17th century version are especially telling of the cruelties imposed with graphic examples. There are groups of people being strung up and burned alive with their feet barely dangling above the flames. The violence was inhumane to the point where women hung themselves with their children attached and hung to their bodies rather than be a meal to the hungry dogs that assisted the Spaniards and had to be fed. The genocidal colonization became a perverted vision of evangelization that was nothing short of hell for the Indians. It is important to see the other side of colonization, as written by the "The Defender and Apostle of the Indians" to understand both sides of the story. Our education system is full of European versions of the conquest, this is the anti-European version by someone who lived the experience. Recommended for students of history that want a different perspective from the one we are most familiar with that glitters from behind a golden cross.

The debate below, I think, could have been lifted right from the sixteenth century. You might take a look at it before reading my review, which is intended as a corrective.

Bartolomé de Las Casas, born in 1474, came to Cuba with Diego Velázquez's expedition in 1511 as a soldier. In Cuba, he became an "encomendero", receiving Indian labor parcelled out to the conquistadors. The horrors of the conquest of the Caribbean sparked a religious conversion in him and he became a Dominican friar in 1515. Soon, he made his way to the Central American mainland, where he started missionary work among the Maya in Guatemala. Dubbed later "The Apostle to the Indians" for his work on their behalf, he was eventually appointed Bishop of Chiapas. An intimate friend of the Indians, fluent in their languages, Las Casas witnessed Spanish cruelties perpetrated against them between the very year of his arrival and some years before his death in Spain in 1566.

In 1552, Las Casas published his empassioned "Short Account" (actually written 13 years earlier), in which he laid bare Spanish cruelties in America. Though generally condemned as slander in Spain, the book rapidly became popular in the rest of Europe, where it served to fuel anti-Spanish hate. Spain's enemies used it to depict Spaniards as evil tyrants and to rationalize carving out their own empires in the Americas. New editions appeared repeatedly, even as late as 1898, during the Spanish-American War.

Few credible historians take the "Account" for gospel truth. Much of what Las Casas says is certainly true. And while the rest is exaggerated, it is not "propaganda". Whatever truth the narrative has, though, what I think many people miss when they read it is its importance in understanding the Spanish Black Legend.

The Black Legend is the perception of Spain as a uniquely cruel and bigoted nation in excess of reality. Spanish culture is boiled down to the Inquisition and the bullfight. Spain's authors are ignored. The Spanish did nothing in the Americas but kill millions of Indians. This is the legacy of the 16th century. The substance of many European attitudes toward Spain up to about 1950 can be traced right to Las Casas' "Account." Appearing at the time when England and the Netherlands were emerging as major powers, grappling with Spain, the imagery from the book was woven right into their national mythologies. Because of historical circumstance, other nations that committed atrocities far worse than Spain's -- France, Britain, the United States -- never had to undergo the same humiliating scrutiny, the same alienation. Las Casas's book, certainly agaist its author's will, helped shape this.

There are more reliable accounts of the "destruction of the West Indies", including some by Las Casas. The account's real value is the key it offers to understanding Western perceptions of Spain. Like so many anti-Spanish documents of its time, the book, in the end, can tell us as much about the fascinating figure of its author and the character of Spain's enemies as about the horrors of the conquest and the nation it vilifies.

Fifty years after Columbus found this world, a friar had witnessed himself and heard from others about the true nature of the conquest. Greed for gold and slaves under the name of Christianity and the Spanish soveriegn. If the Journal of Columbus begins the story, this could be its conclusion, (although he did write a longer History of the Indies after this brief one). Any romantic ideas about the conquest will be wiped out after reading this. Probably the most horrific view of the conquest, it summarizes the suffering of native victims at the hands of both Spaniard and German conquerers until that time. It fails to some extent by lumping men of conquest with those who showed criminal madness, although this was often true as well. And he makes no mention of how many of the deaths he tallys were due to disease and not direct butchery. In the history of the discovery this work tells the story of the losers, whose suffering and shameful deaths would otherwise have remained silent (even better in this regard than The Broken Spears). Contains engraved illustrations from a 17th century edition.

"A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies" is a powerful written protest against the Spanish treatment of the American Indians. Bartolome de las Casas, a Dominican friar, witnessed first-hand the colonization of the Americas by the Spaniards, and felt it his duty to document the atrocities. He dedicated "short account" to King Philip II, in the hope that once he was aware of the atrocities, he would put a stop to them, as any good kings would. Casas documents the "destruction of the indies" in what is today Haiti and the Domican Republic, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, and Peru. Among other things, Casas reports that the Spaniards, upon coming to the Indian villages, either tortured and killed them for the gold that they might be hiding, or forced them into slavery in gold mines. The "blackguards," as he calls them, would even kill pregnant women, the elderly, and children by either burning them alive, running them through with lances, or setting vicious dogs on them. Supposedly, the Indians welcomed the Spaniards and offered to serve them, and were rewarded with torture, murder, and slavery. Casas' account has a sense of urgency that things matters might still be reversed. Further, "Short Account" is arguably the first human rights report.

That's not to say that Casas was perfect, at least by modern standards. In his view, one of the worst aspects of the wholesale slaughter of the Indians was that they would go straight to Hell, since they never heard the gospel or received the sacraments. Moreover, he never questioned the right of the Spanish to be there, or of Pope Alexander VI to grant sovereignty of the Americas to Spain and Portugal. So the fact that the book became central to the "black legend" was in spite of Casas' beliefs, not because of them. In fact, at one point he refers to Protestant German merchants who go to the Americas as heretics, so he certainly never would have countenanced Protestant Anglo-Dutch propaganda against Spain. Nor is it his intent to portray Spaniards as uniquely cruel, as black legend propaganda did; Casas simply saw the Conquistadors who killed and enslaved the Indians, rather than converting them, as sinners. Finally, as other reviewers have noted, Casas advocated replacing Indian slaves with black slaves. He eventually realized his mistake, but it was too late. In addition, Casas definitely takes the "noble savage" angle in portraying the Indians, which is now discredited.

Of course, not everything in it can be taken as literally true. For instance, Casas claims that in Mexico City, the conquistadors herded the natives into a temple and burned it. That would have been difficult, since the temple was made of stone and so could not have been set on fire. In addition, the number of dead he gives- 15 million- is impossible to verify. We don't know the pre-conquest population of the Americas with certainty, nor the number dead as a result of Spanish atrocities. But in that the Spaniards killed and plundered is not disputable, so Casas' account is more right than it is wrong.

Whatever Casas' flaws were, however, he was the only one in Catholic Spain to raise a loud protest against the treatment of the Indians. He stood above the men of his time, and contributed, willingly or not, to modern ideas such as liberation theology and human rights theory. Interestingly, he was one of the first to explicitly say that political power comes from the consent of the governed, and that those who are oppressed by some foreign monarch claiming jurisdiction over them have every right to rebel. So in conclusion, this is a must read for those wishing to learn about renaissance, early American, ecclesiastical, and political history. It should be required reading in schools.

Thanks in no small part to historians such as Howard Zinn, the words and images recorded by Bartolome de Las Casas are becoming more and more well-known to the general public.

This short book is the ideal synopsis of Las Casas' work and attitudes. He writes with an almost palpable trembling while recording atrocity after atrocity visited upon the natives in America by the Spanish conquistadores. The translation is excellent and flows easily, making Las Casas' words all the more insistent and urgent.

Most importantly, this book offers the reader a different understanding of the role Columbus and his successors played in the "New World." Even if readers do not agree with the conclusions drawn by Las Casas and succeeding social historians, the "Short Account" nonetheless provides a much needed perspective on the interaction between the Spanish and the natives--an interaction that has been insipidly named the "Columbian exchange" but in reality was only the prelude to massive genocidal fury.

The "Short Account," written in the white heat of passion and anger, can devolve occassionally into pejoratives and ad hominems, but as the American abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison once said to critics: "I am aware that some object to the severity of my language, but is there not cause for severity?"

Anyone with interest in American, European colonial, or native history should familiarize themselves with Las Casas; the "Short Account" is the best introduction available.

This is a firsthand account of the New World shortly after Columbus. The author arrived in the Americas in 1502, participated in the conquest of Cuba, and eventually took holy orders as a Dominican priest. He wrote this work in 1542 after his return to Spain, dedicated it to Philip II, and published it a decade later.

De las Casas, a fierce critic of colonialism, describes cruelty and wickedness visited on natives, and warns it will ultimately corrupt Europeans. Allowing for the authors distinct point of view, this is a rare and valuable glimpse into early colonialism in the Americas that in many respects anticipates 19C anti-slavery treatises.

Also recommended: Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca's `Relacion' (a chronicle of a remarkable journey in the Southwest 1528-36) and The Jesuit Relations (a journal of French - Native interaction 1610-1791).

Interesting from a historical perspective, Fray de las Casas gives us the first look at the "uniquely cruel" Spanish stereotype that has been dubbed by historians as "The Black Legend." We can still see evidence of said legend in modern literature and movies. The book is the source of the oft-quoted figure of 20 million Native-Americans killed by conquistadors, including 3 million on Hispaniola (modern day Haiti and Dominican Republic) alone. Most modern historians agree that the island could have only supported a small fraction of that population. Extremely interesting book from the perspective of studying the history of public relations. This book was extensively used by the Dutch during their struggle for independence from Spain, being published in both Holland and England as a rallying point against, as one subtitle of the book put it "the Bloudy and Popish nation of the Spaniards."

I bought this book and I was so interested in it. Once I started comparing it to a copy I had online I saw so many typographical errors (fifty instead of fifteen, palce instead of place) in the first few pages. I do recommend this book but by another publisher.

If you ever had any doubt about the destruction and slavery that Spain and the Catholic Church wreaked upon the indigenous people of the America's, then this book will set you straight. Spain and the Catholic Church set out to give the world Christianity, in return they took back gold and silver. With no respect to humanity they slaughtered tribes by the thousands. This is an account written by a person that witnessed the destruction and tried to change it. A must read but not for persons with a weak stomach. Jack Dyer(researcher)

I ordered this book thinking it would be a usable version of the work of Fray Bartolome de las Casas. I intended to quote it in a book I am writing.

But, no, it is totally useless for my purposes because it consists of an archaic English translation, unintelligible many times, and very poorly done. Since I am a Spanish speaker, I was able to compare this version with the Spanish version online, and was sorely disappointed. Moreover, there are no explicatory notes at the beginning to tell the reader where this version comes from, who the translator was, and when it was translated.

This is the first time I am disappointed with a book I order from Amazon.