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Against the dark backdrop of Spanish mistreatment of Native Americans during the Conquest, Bartolomé de Las Casas stood like a lighthouse. The fiery friar was the leading defender of the Indians against cruelty and abuses.

His father sailed on Columbus’s second voyage. Las Casas himself came to Hispaniola in 1502 as a priest, but he lived as most Spanish gentlemen, with land and Indian servants.

Several factors combined to change Las Casas’s life. In 1511 he heard the Dominicans’ preaching campaign against Spanish mistreatment of Indians. That same year he accompanied the Spanish expedition to Cuba and witnessed its cruelty toward the natives.

Then in 1514, Las Casas, age 40, turned around. He was preparing a sermon, searching the Scriptures for an appropriate text, when he chanced on this passage from the (apocryphal) Book of Sirach: “If one sacrifices from what has been wrongfully obtained, the offering is blemished; the gifts of the lawless are not acceptable” (34:18 RSV). The following Sunday, he announced from the pulpit that he was divesting himself of the natives entrusted to him (in effect, his slaves) and would now serve and defend the Indians.

For the next seven years, he spent most of his time traveling between Spain and America, seeking the crown’s help to protect Indians. After several years of agitation, Las Casas was granted by King Charles V a territory in present-day Venezuela. There, Las Casas could test his theory that the Indians would be better evangelized by persuasion than by force. But the project failed when the Indians rebelled against the settlement.

Las Casas went through a time of self-examination, finally entering the Dominican Order in 1522. He evangelized in Santo Domingo, Central America, and Mexico, where he was Bishop of Chiapas from 1544 to 1547. Often, he met stiff opposition from Spanish land owners and even fellow missionaries.

In an age that viewed Indians as little more than animals, Las Casas passionately preached the Indians’ dignity, sometimes overstating the case: “God created these simple people without evil and without guile.”

Las Casas wrote various books, including the famous General History of the Indies and his most controversial A Brief History of the Destruction of the Indies. He described in detail—many would say with exaggeration—the cruelty of Spaniards toward Indians. But his entries bear the horrifying and unmistakable touch of reality. Consider his description of an event in Mexico:

“Soon after [the 30,000 natives of Cholula had welcomed and offered to lodge the Spaniards,] the Spaniards agreed to carry out a massacre—or as they called it, ‘a punitive attack’—in order to sow terror and apprehension, and to make a display of their power.…

“The Spaniards had asked for five or six thousand Indians to carry their cargo. When all the chiefs had come, they and the burden bearers were herded into the patios of the houses.…

“When they were all placed close together, they were bound and tied. At the closed doorways, armed guards took turns to see that none escaped. Then, at a command, all the Spaniards drew their swords or pikes, and while their chiefs looked on, helpless, all those tame sheep were butchered, cut to pieces.

“At the end of two or three days some survivors came out from under the corpses, wounded but still alive, and they went, weeping, to the Spaniards, imploring mercy, which was denied.”

Such writings influenced Charles V in 1542–43 to approve The New Laws, which were designed to limit Spanish control and abuse of Indians. Unfortunately, they had little effect.

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