Bartolome De Las Casas Seems Like A Cool Dude

Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies details how the Spaniards first came to the new world and ended up destroying nearly all the native populations of the Caribbean and Mexico. Because of the author’s involvement in the subject, he is a credible source for these events. This document, Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies fits into the historical period well. Key information that can be learned from this primary source is, about how many Native Americans died at the hands of the Spaniards, descriptions of Spaniard and Native American characteristics, and details of wars and their aftermaths.

Bartolome De Las Casas was a 16th century Spanish priest, made famous for his advocacy of the rights of Native Americans. Las Casas lived from 1484 to July 17th, 1556. He is the Author of Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies (published in 1552), which provides a dramatic account of the genocide brought forth by the Conquistadors in the Caribbean, Central America and Mexico. Las Casas witnessed many of the events described, and some others where written from eye witness accounts.

Las Casas is a credible source of information to this topic. As mentioned above, Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies was made from his own experiences and those of eye witnesses. You would think that being a Spanish Priest, Las Casas might be quite biased in this document, favoring his country and church. It couldn’t be more the opposite. Las Casas makes it very clear time and time again who was carrying out the atrocities: the Spanish and Christians. For example, Las Casas states, “And Spaniards have behaved in no other way during the past forty years, down to the present time, for they are still acting like ravening beasts, killing, terrorizing, afflicting, torturing, and destroying the native peoples, doing all this with the strangest and most varied new methods of cruelty, never seen or heard of before, and to such a degree that this island of Hispaniola once so populous (having a population that I estimated to be more than three million), has now a population of barely two hundred persons.” He also mentions, “Their reason for killing and destroying such an infinite number of souls is that the Christians have an ultimate aim, with is to acquire goldвЂ¦Ð²Ð‚Ñœ

In an age of imperialism and