A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies

In 1539 adventurers in Peru went inland and found New Granada, “extraordinarily rich both in gold and in those precious stones known as emeralds” (116). It is called New Granada because the first Spaniard to land there, Jiménes de Quesada, hailed from Granada.

A report to the Council of the Indies detailed the atrocity here. Spanish colonialism began in the encomienda style. The Spanish then captured the region’s king and ransomed him for a house full of gold and precious stones. When the people could not completely fill the house, the Spanish tortured the king to death. The entire town burned down during this torture, a sign of abomination from God (117).

Lords across the region were killed in the same fashion. Those who escaped into the mountains were pursued and killed. In efforts to terrorize communities into submission or gain knowledge of the whereabouts of leaders in hiding, many villagers were publicly murdered, mutilated, or thrown to wild dogs. The Spanish stormed a mountain to which the villagers had retreated, massacred them, and threw them off the rocks. According to Las Casas, “Witnesses claim that the sky was quite darkened with the sheer numbers of falling bodies” (121). All in all, New Granada was so devastated that if these massacres were not stopped quick, there would soon be “no native people left to work the land” (122). The nearby provinces of Popayán and Cali were destroyed in similar fashions (123). Recounting these atrocities, Las Casas asks the reader if they think these natives would have been better off living in hell rather than under Spanish control. He pays special attention to how the people were sold as live dog food: “Is it possible to imagine anything more dreadful, more brutal, or more inhuman?” (125).

Las Casas solemnly states he watched such atrocities unfold for 42 years, and at no point did the natives deserve such action. He also laments that because the Spanish have not been proselytizing, “the peoples of the New World are as ignorant of God as they were a hundred years ago” (126).

The Conclusion asserts Las Casas was persuaded to write the work by the grace of God and the concern of the Spanish court. It aims to ensure that the “teeming millions” of the New World “for whose sins Christ gave His life, do not continue to die in ignorance” (127). Las Casas believes that these atrocities will be stopped if they come to the attention of the Charles V, “as one wedded to the concept of justice and avid to see it prevail” (128). The New World was bestowed by God on Spain and Charles V, and his actions of reform here will be taken “for the greater glory of the Holy Catholic Church and for the salvation of his own royal soul” (128).

After the above was written, a set of New Laws (the New Laws of Burgos) were enacted. The New Laws were made in collaboration with many learned and moral experts and did indeed work against the depravity of atrocity in the New World. However, Spanish colonizers, seeing that their way of life was now illegal, did not cease their depraved actions. Instead, they behaved as “true outlaws, recognizing no limit whatever to their actions and inflicting a tyrannical misery on the people” (129). This was particularly true in Peru.

Las Casas deems infighting among the colonizers and their death at each other’s hands as just deserts from God. Many Spanish, now disallowed from murdering natives on sight, killed them slowly though hard labor, and “[t]o date, the Crown has not shown itself strong enough to put a stop to these injustices” (129). Such acts do not just damage the Spanish interest; they are dishonorable to the king and to God.