A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies

Bartolomé de las Casas

Nov 2022 · Open Road Media

About this ebook

A Spanish friar documents the brutal treatment of Caribbean natives at the hands of colonial authorities in the sixteenth century.

After traveling to the New World, Dominican friar Bartolomé de Las Casas witnessed conquistadors wreak unimaginable horrors upon the Indigenous people of the Caribbean. He later dedicated his life to fighting for their protection. Following numerous failed attempts to reason with authorities in Spain, he chose to document everything he had seen over a span of fifty years and to give it to Spain’s Prince Philip II.

In A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, Las Casas catalogues the atrocities he observed the Spanish colonial authorities inflict upon the native people. He discusses the brutal torture, mass genocide, and enslavement. He passionately pleas for an end to this treatment and for the native peoples to be given basic human rights.

About the author

Bartolomé de las Casas (1484–1566), was a sixteenth-century Dominican priest, writer, and first resident Bishop of Chiapas. As a settler in the New World, he witnessed, and was driven to oppose, the torture and genocide of the Native Americans by the Spanish colonists and pushed for rights of Indigenous people.