A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies
Bartolomé de las Casas 1552 CE
This short account describes Spanish violence against Indigenous peoples during the conquest of the Americas. Its reports move from Hispaniola to mainland regions, recording killings, forced labor, and the destruction of communities.
107 pages 2h 5m reading time
- One of the earliest and best-known protests against colonial cruelty, often seen as a founding text in the history of human rights.
- Argues that the Indigenous peoples of the Americas were full human beings with their own rights, not people Spain could rightly enslave or kill.
- Argues that the conquest was driven by greed for gold and power, and that this violence betrayed the Christian faith the Spanish said they were spreading.
- Its author first presented an early version to the Spanish king, and his campaign helped bring about the New Laws of 1542, which tried (with limited success) to end the enslavement of Indigenous peoples.
- Spain's rivals, such as the Dutch and English, translated and spread it to attack Spain, and it became a key source for the "Black Legend," a lasting picture of Spain as uniquely cruel.
Drawn from his own eyes
Las Casas had seen some of the killings himself, including a massacre of villagers in Cuba around 1513.
Printed without clear permission
He had it printed in Seville, apparently without the government approval that books about the Americas usually needed.
Gruesome pictures added later
A Flemish artist, Theodor de Bry, later made vivid engravings of the cruelty, and many later editions copied them.
Banned in Spanish Aragon
In 1660 the Inquisition, a powerful church court, banned the book in Aragon for harming Spain's reputation.
Translated from Spanish