A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~38,100 words · 181 passages
Cite this work
- APABartolome de las Casas. (n.d.). A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/bartolome-de-las-casas/a-brief-account-of-the-destruction-of-the-indies
- MLABartolome de las Casas. A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/bartolome-de-las-casas/a-brief-account-of-the-destruction-of-the-indies.
- ChicagoBartolome de las Casas. A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/bartolome-de-las-casas/a-brief-account-of-the-destruction-of-the-indies.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The denunciation Las Casas wrote in 1542 and published in 1552 of what the Spaniards were doing to the Indians of America.
Context and history
It is a memorial addressed to prince Philip, written by a friar who had himself held an encomienda before changing his life, and it goes island by island and province by province recounting massacres with names, numbers and methods. The numbers are almost certainly exaggerated, and historians have argued about them for centuries; what has never been refuted is the facts. The text had two opposite effects: in Spain it helped get the New Laws passed, and abroad, translated at once into Dutch, English and French with atrocious engravings, it served the monarchy's enemies in building what was later called the black legend. It is worth reading with both of these in mind: it is propaganda and it is testimony, and it stops being neither by being the other.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
Now this infinite multitude of Men are by the Creation of God innocently simple, altogether void of and averse to all manner of Craft, Subtlety and Malice, and most Obedient and Loyal Subjects to their Native Sovereigns; and behave themselves very patiently, sumissively and quietly towards the _Spaniards_, to whom they are subservient and subject; so that finally they live without the least thirst after revenge, laying aside all litigiousness, Commotion and hatred. This is a most tender and effeminate people, and so imbecile and unequal-balanced temper, that they are altogether incapable of hard labour, and in few years, by one Distemper or other soon expire, so that the very issue of Lords and Princes, who among us live with great affluence, and fard deliciously, are not more effminate and tender than the Children of their Husbandmen or Labourers: This Nation is very Necessitous and Indigent, Masters of very slender Possessions, and consequently, neither Haughty, nor Ambitious. They are parsimonious in their Diet, as the Holy Fathers were in their frugal life in the Desert, known by the name of _Eremites_. They go naked, having no other Covering but what conceals their Pudends from publick sight. An hairy Plad, or loose Coat, about an Ell, or a coarse woven Cloth at most Two Ells long serves them for the warmest Winter Garment. They lye on a coarse Rug or Matt, and those that have the most plentiful Estate or Fortunes, the better sort, use Net-work, knotted at the four corners in lieu of Beds, which the Inhabitants of the Island of _Hispaniola_, in their own proper Idiom, term _Hammacks_. The Men are pregnant and docible. The natives tractable, and capable of Morality or Goodness, very apt to receive the instill'd principles of Catholick Religion; nor are they averse to Civility and good Manners, being not so much discompos'd by variety of Obstructions, as the rest of Mankind;