One of the major sources for the study on the interraction between whites and American Indians during the sixteenth century. -- Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association"

Bartolome de Las Casas championed the rights of the Indians of Mexico and Central America, disputing a widely held belief that they were beasts to be enslaved. In a dramatic debate in 1550 with Juan Gines de Sepulveda, Las Casas argued vehemently before a royal commission in Valladolid that the native inhabitants should be viewed as fellow human beings, artistically and mechanically adroit, and capable of learning when properly taught. In Defense of the Indians, Las Casas's classic treatise on the humanity of native peoples, had far-reaching implications for the policies adopted by both the...

The painful and violent testimony of cruelties incurred by the Spanish conquistadors in the new world, concisely depicted by Bartolome de Las Casas in his "Brevisima relacion de la destruycion de las Indias," is both a terrible accusation and a warning addressed at Prince Phillip of Spain. By accumulating descriptions of atrocities, slaughters and tortures, while emphasizing the deep contrast between the goodness of the natives and the evil spirit of the conquistadors, the dominic priest prophesizes apocalyptic consequences to fall upon Spain as results of the horrors perpetrated by the...

Bartolome de las Casass A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies stands as one of historys most damning narratives of Spanish colonization that was ever written. Las Casas chronicled gory details of Spanish mistreatment of the native American Indians, an abuse which led to entire communities being wiped out. This account eventually provoked the Spanish crown to enact laws intended to protect the Indians, and earned Bartolome de las Casas the title Defender of the Indians.