Bartolome De Las Casas Contribute To The Destruction Of The Indies?

What would one expect if they were in a situation where they first hand witnessed horrific brutality and inhuman actions done to others? A type of slavery that without a doubt every human would find disturbing and difficult to imagine. It is just such a man—Bartolomé de Las Casas— who has experienced these exact chilling effect perspectives. Bartolome de las cases was born in 1484, and grew up during the same time that the exploration of the New World began. It was during the finding of the new world and the voyages, that de Las Cases witness the injustices committed to the Native Americans. Increasingly troubled with the events, he began to explicate the actions that the Christians were committing, and sought in his religious faith a dedication …show more content…
Not only did de Las Casas become an activist and advocate for native rights but he also used his priesthood as a platform to preach against the injustices that were happening in the new world. In his work de Las Casas argues the negative impact that the Europeans had on the Indies. He begins his account by stating that on the island Hispaniola, “Christians entered and began the devastations…and wiped the land clean of inhabitants.” (68) A land that was once at peace, full of happy souls was now burned and brought to pieces. De las Casas continues and in detail talks about the acts that the Spanish committed; actions such as “slicing open the belly of a man with one stroke…hanging men and burning them alive…snatching babies from their mothers breast and taking them by their feet and dashing their heads against the rocks. The Spanish would enter into the villages and spare not children, or old people or pregnant women, or women with suckling babies,”(68) such graphic imagery was part of Bartolomé de Las Casas strategy to influence an touch the emotions of his readers. He wanted justice and sympathy to be felt, so that people would stand up for the wrongful actions done. Such treatment to the Indians made them realize that “those men must not have come down from the sky, or heaven.”(68) in other words de las casas is saying that there is no way these men are from God, they cannot not come from heaven because …show more content…
He informs his readers how in an island that was once filled with “two million or more souls the remaining were taken and sent to the mines or to other hard labour.”(69) Las casas is trying to get his readers to understand that as an Indian in the 16th century the spaniard would either murder you in an inhuman, aggressive way or if you lived, you were sent to work as a slave and still would be tortured. The poor Christians had no way peaceful way out. Las casas expresses how it is “a great pity and it breaks ones heart to see that coast of fertile, messed land, now deserted and bare of people”(69) this is an example of las casas using pathos to make his audience feel pitiful and grief about the fact that because of all the exploration, such beautiful lands were being destroyed. To express to the readers the amount of Indies that the Christians killed de las casas states that as a compass the spaniards would “take a course by the trail of Indians floating on the surface of the sea, thrown dead from a ship that went before.” (70) The situation that the Indies were in after surviving death by the Spanish was miserable. It is stated by de las casas that “it would break the heart of any man in whom any jot of mercy were remaining, to see children and old persons, men and women, naked and starving, and falling in a faint from hungry.”(70) In analysis de las casas is trying to show the