How did Bartolomé de Las Casas characterize the indigenous people of Hispaniola?
Bartolomé de Las Casas, a Dominican friar from Spain, was an early European settler of the West Indies. He devoted much of his life to de- scribing the culture of native peoples and chron- icling the many abuses they suffered at the hands of their colonizers. This excerpt is from a letter he addressed to Spain’s Prince Philip.
God has created all these numberless people to be quite the simplest, without malice or duplicity, most obedient, most faithful to their natural Lords, and to the Christians, whom they serve; the most humble, most patient, most peaceful and calm, without strife nor tumults; not wrangling, nor queru- lous, as free from uproar, hate and desire of revenge as any in the world. . . . Among these gentle sheep, gifted by their Maker with the above qualities, the Spaniards entered as soon as they knew them, like wolves, tigers and lions which had been starving for many days, and since forty years they have done nothing else; nor do they afflict, torment, and destroy them with strange and new, and divers kinds of cruelty, never before seen, nor heard of, nor read of. . . .
The Christians, with their horses and swords and lances, began to slaughter and practice strange cruelty among them. They penetrated into the country and spared nei- ther children nor the aged, nor pregnant women, nor those in child labour, all of whom they ran through the body and lacerated, as though they were assaulting so many lambs herded in their sheepfold. They made bets as to who would slit a man in two, or cut off his head at one blow: or they opened up his bow- els. They tore the babes from their mothers’ breast by the feet, and dashed their heads
against the rocks. Others they seized by the shoulders and threw into the rivers, laughing and joking, and when they fell into the water they exclaimed: “boil body of so and so!” They spitted the bodies of other babes, to- gether with their mothers and all who were before them, on their swords.
They made a gallows just high enough for the feet to nearly touch the ground, and by thirteens, in honor and reverence of our Redeemer and the twelve Apostles, they put wood underneath and, with fire, they burned the Indians alive.
They wrapped the bodies of others entirely in dry straw, binding them in it and setting fire to it; and so they burned them. They cut off the hands of all they wished to take alive, made them carry them fastened on to them, and said: “Go and carry letters”: that is; take the news to those who have fled to the mountains.
They generally killed the lords and no- bles in the following way. They made wooden gridirons of stakes, bound them upon them, and made a slow fire beneath; thus the vic- tims gave up the spirit by degrees, emitting cries of despair in their torture.
UNDERSTAND, ANALYZE, & EVALUATE
1. How did Bartolomé de Las Casas char- acterize the indigenous people of Hispaniola? How do you think they would have responded to this description?
2. What metaphor did Las Casas use to describe the native peoples and where does this metaphor come from?
3. What role did Las Casas expect the Spaniards to play on Hispaniola? What did they do instead?