Part 2 of Bartolome De Las Casas Account of the Destruction of the Indies, written in 1552

This is a continuation of the first part of our condensed version of Bartolome De Las Casas’s, ‘Destruction of the Indies’, written in 1552.

“… [T]he island of Hispaniola was the first to witness the arrival of Europeans and the first to suffer the wholesale slaughter of its people and the devastation and depopulation of the land…[The Natives] weapons…were flimsy and ineffective both in attack and in defence (and, indeed, war in the Americas is no more deadly…than many European children’s games) and, with their horses and swords and lances, the Spaniards easily fended them off…

On Hispaniola there were five main kingdoms, each very extensive and each with its own king…One of these kingdoms was called Magua…rich in alluvial gold…The king…was called Guarionex and he had as vassals several extremely powerful local leaders… In order to put a stop to the Spaniards’ incessant demand for gold, Guarionex suggested that he might better serve the King of Castile by putting a great area of his kingdom under cultivation, especially as his subjects had…little or no notion of how to mine for gold. Such a plan was feasible, as I can vouch, and the king would have been quite happy to see it put into effect…The wicked European commanders rewarded this good and great man by dishonoring him…the king…elected instead to abdicate and go into voluntary exile…Once the Europeans realized he had gone…they got up an army and attacked the local leaders under whose protection the king was sheltering. The carnage was terrible and, eventually, they tracked down the fugitive, took him prisoner, put him in chains and shackles and bundled him on to a ship bound for Castile…

Another of these original kingdoms…Known as Marien… was a rich region, larger than Portugal, although a good deal more fertile and far better suited to human habitation…with productive gold and copper mines. The king of this area was called Guacanagari…and he numbered among his vassals many men of high standing, several of whom I knew personally. This was the first place where the old Admiral who discovered the New World first landed and was received on that occasion by this Guacanagari, as were all his crew, with the greatest kindness and humanity imaginable. As Columbus himself told me, it was there that the Admiral’s own ship was lost and he and his men were as graciously treated and looked after as if they had been back home and were all part of the same close family. Guacanagari himself died up in them moutnains, broken and destitute, after he had fled to escape the massacres and the cruelty inflicted by the Spaniards, and all the other local leaders who owed allegiance to Guacanagari perished as a direct result of the despotism and slavery to which they were subjected…

The third of these kingdoms was the sovereign state of Maguana, another strikingly beautiful and fertile area and one which enjoyed the healthiest of climates. It is this area that nowadays produces the best sugar on the whole island. The king, Caonabo, who outdid all others in strength, majesty of bearing and court ceremonial, was captured by an underhand trick and taken from his own house. He was put on board one of the Spanish ships bound for Castile…He had three or four brothers…determined…when they got wind of their brother’s death, to attack the Europeans and take revenge upon them. But the Christians, several of whom were on horseback (and the horse is the deadliest weapon imaginable against these people), attacked instead, slaughtering them to such effect that they destroyed and depopulated a good half of the kingdom.

The fourth kingdom was known as Xaragua, and was really the heart and core of the whole island…Chief among them were the king, Behechio, and his sister, Anacaona, both of whom rendered great service to the Spanish Crown and gave every assistance to the European settlers, on occasion even saving their lives; after Behechio’s death, Anacaona ruled in his stead. Over three hundred local dignitaries were summoned to welcome the then governor of the island when he paid a visit to the kingdom with sixty horse and a further three hundred men on foot (the horsemen alone were sufficient in number to ravage not only the whole island but the mainland as well). The governor duped the unsuspecting leaders of this welcoming party into gathering in a building made of straw and then ordered his men to set fire to it and burn them alive. All the others were massacred, either burned through by lances or put to the sword. As a mark of respect and out of deference to her rank, Queen Anacaona was hanged…The governor even decreed that those who made their way to a small island some eight leagues distant in order to escape this bestial cruelty should be condemned to slavery because they had fled the carnage.

The fifth kingdom was known as Higuey and its queen, a lady already advanced in years, went by the name of Higuanama. They strung her up and I saw with my own eyes how the Spaniards burned countless local inhabitants alive or hacked them to pieces…enslaving those they took alive…All I can say is that I know it to be an incontrovertible fact and do here so swear before Almighty God, that the local peoples never gave the Spanish any cause whatever for the injury and injustice that was done to them in these campaigns…they were robbed and massacred, and even those who escaped death on this occasion found themselves condemned to a lifetime of captivity and slavery…Despite the enormous provocation, very few of the natives, I hazard, were guilty of…hatred and anger, or the thirst for revenge against those who committed such enormities upon them…I know beyond any shadow of a doubt that they had, from the very beginning, every right to wage war on the Europeans, while the Europeans never had just cause for waging war on the local peoples. The actions of the Europeans, throughout the New World, were without exception wicked and unjust…

After the fighting was over and all the men had been killed, the surviving natives — usually, that is, the young boys, the women, and the children — were shared out between the victors…The pretext under which the victims were parceled out in this way was that their new masters would then be in a position to teach them the truths of the Christian faith…And they discharged this duty by sending the men down the mines, where working conditions were appalling, to dig for gold, and putting the women to labour in the fields and on their master’s estates, to till the soil and raise the crops, properly a task only for the toughest and strongest of men. Both women and men were given only wild grasses to eat and other unnutritious foodstuffs. The mothers of young children promptly saw their milk dry up and their babies die; and, with the women and the men separated and never seeing each other, no new children were born. The men died down the mines from overwork and starvation, and the same was true of the women who perished out on the estates. The islanders, previously so numerous, began to die out as would any nation subjected to such appalling treatment…And this is not to mention the floggings, beatings, thrashings, punches, curses and countless other vexations and cruelties to which they were routinely subjected…”