Essay On Bartolome De Las Casas

People in the 16th Century.
In 1492, when Christopher Columbus reached the New World it brought huge wealth to the Spanish Monarch. The conquest that that followed reached out over central and southern America and brought large amounts of gold and silver with it. However, along with these rich lands that the Spanish took over the native inhabitants of the New World also lived. Instead of been able to welcome the Spanish conquistadors, their land was taken and soaked of its riches, along with their population significantly decreasing due to massacres that the Spanish forced on them. The remaining survivors were put into forced labour where they worked in the mines and on the land.
Bartolome de las Casas saw this at first hand when he travelled

numerous times across the Atlantic to view the destruction that the Spanish caused throughout central and southern America. He was a firm believer that the church maintained superiority as a social and religious institution, however he also had his own views on human justice. Las Casas was one of the first to suggest that the old medieval ways of entering a country and going to war with the natives had to come to an end and new ideals of social equality and peace should come to the forefront between different cultures as he suggests in his book, A Short account of the Destruction of the Indies.
The following paper will discuss the treatment that the Indians incurred from the Spanish while they carried out their military campaigns across central and southern America along with supporting Bartolome de las Casas claim that force and warfare was not a method of spreading Christianity among the native Indians and that a transition had to be made from medieval military campaigns to human justice and social equality between different cultures.

This is an important matter as Las Casas was one of the first people to turn against the methods of spreading the Christian religion throughout the 16th century. Although Bartolome de las Casas did not stop the treatment that occurred to the New World people, he did debate and raise the issue of forced labour, religious ideologies and ‘just war’ that led to this treatment of the natives, as a result of Spanish exploration in the 16th

century.
Bartolome de las Casas was one of the first activists for the rights of the native people of the New World. He witnessed the massacres and enslavement that occurred during his term as a Dominican priest in the so called New World. He accompanied several military expeditions on his travels, starting at Hispaniola and finishing up in the kingdom of Granada. He observed the cruel and inhumane acts that the Spanish committed as they destroyed native families and societies, while killing thousands that stood in their path. Las Casas was known as the ‘Defender and Apostle to the Indians’ for his protests against Spanish colonialization in the New World.
In his book ‘Bartolome de las Casas, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies’ he gives detailed descriptions of what he observed while he was in the Indies.

In Hispaniola where he first set foot he stated that the Spanish ‘forced their way into native settlements, slaughtering everyone they found there, including small children, old men, pregnant woman who had just given birth. They hacked them to pieces; slicing open their bellies with swords… cut an individual’s head from their body and on occasion running through a mother and her baby with a single thrust of their swords’ . This gives a good indication of the cruel ways in which they treated the natives. However the question must be answered, why did the Spanish treat the natives this way? Once the Spanish reached the Indies the first thing they had on their mind was to take over the lands in order to gain wealth and power from the native people as they believed they were superior to the indigenous beliefs of the Indians. The Spanish conquistadors were also ordered by Queen Isabella to spread the word of Christianity to the natives while taking over the lands, however this is where las Casas disagreed with the type of force that was used and suggested that ‘war is not a suitable means of spreading Christ’s glory and the truth of the gospel, but rather for making the Christian name hateful and detestable to those who suffer the disasters of war. So war against the Indians, which we call the Spanish conquistas is

evil and essentially anti- Christian. For that is not a reason why we may pursue them by war, nor have they ever, even in the past centuries, committed any crime against us that would call for war’ . Las Casas believed that the spread of Christianity should be a gradual and peaceful acceptance through religious ideals and preachment. He suggested that before all the bloodshed that happened, the natives were very receptive of Christianity and that they would have accepted it if they were gradually introduced to the religion. He tells of how the Spanish were welcomed to the New World with gifts of gold and food on their first encounters with the native people. This was a common practice throughout central and southern American communities as a symbol of generosity. However the natives were not repaid for their generous hospitality in the same way as shortly after the Spanish captured the leaders and nobility of the cities and tore through households robbing the natives of their prize possessions and finally killing them. Briffault 47.
Las casas tells of the destruction they caused when they reached Mexico City, which was the biggest city in Central America at the time and similar to the cities in Spain such as Seville. Montezuma the leader of the city came to greet them at the gates and welcomed them in. however that same day they Las Casas states they ‘seized the great king unawares by means of a trick and held him under armed guard of eighty soldiers, eventually putting him in the irons’ . Once he was seized las Casas describes a crude event that took place in one of the courtyards in the city. Fiestas were usually organised to entertain Montezuma and dances were a common seen in the squares. When the dances commences the nobles had no thought for their own security when the Spanish attacked them and ‘proceeded to slice open the lithe and naked bodies of the dancers and to spill their noble blood’ . This is a horrid image of how brutal and sly the Spanish were in their attacks as they caught the people and soldiers of the city off guard.
After seen all the termile that was caused in the Indies, Las Casas returned to Spain in the 1540’s to make a case against the treatment of the natives and that the force used to spread Christianity was illegitimate. He was calling for change in the encomienda system where the stronger people protected the weakest in exchange for a service. However in the case of the natives in the New World they were been killed instead of been protected. Las Casas makes his points clear in his book, ‘In Defence of the Indians’, where he criticises Juan Supulveda’s view that the Indians are inferior as people to the Spanish and the only way to spread Christianity is by using excessive force . Las Casas completing went against the beliefs that were stated in Supulveda’s book by using Christian doctrines to come up with an argument that force is not a legitimate way of converting the natives of Central and Southern America to Christianity. Las Casas claim was simple, Christianity was a religion that was bonded by peace, engagement and accepted by preachment to new converts. He suggested that the Native Americans have not interacted with Spanish people before nor have they heard about Christianity and by delivering the word of god through force, no society could become attracted to the religion. He referred back to the words of St. Anselm of Cantubury, ‘Concerning unbelievers who are outside, that is outside the Church, I should judge, as you thought, that they should be avoided by you, since they must be attracted, so that they may be gained for Christ through love and tenderness’ . His judgment was that by using force, the natives immediately viewed the Christian religion full of violence, greed and destruction, which would result in their conversion nearly impossible.