A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies

What a great book! What I love most was the historical details of the Spanish reaching the Americas and reading the first hand account on the interaction with the indigenous people. I’ve read books from many Spanish Conquistadores and the one name that popped up the most in those books was Bartolome de las Casas.This was the reason why I was curious to learn more about him. I also lived in the city that was dedicated under his name San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas ( Mexico) but didn’t really know the history. I highly recommend this book.

The father speaks of European will consume in a single day normally supports three native households of ten persons each for a whole month. . . " "It's not nonsense." With one chicken my mother would feed 12 children and adults. With a can of beans the same. 7 cups of rice, same. A poor person the first thing they learn is to ration food. Most likely he was speaking of rich spoiled people who ate a spoon of food and would then throw the rest to the dogs. The people in those days would have been shy and childlike even many of the adults. Today in poor places you still see these type of people. In order to understand those people you have to put yourself in that time. Drop yourself in China, Africa and see how you would act around those strangers. Mostlikely you will act shy and dosil. Bartolome was there, he understood the people of his world in Europe comparing to poor natives, he is just referencing the waist of food. It is a wonderful book that brakes hearts when you end up realizing, that all that death was all for greed of the gold for the Kings, Queens and most of all the Church.

This book was a quick, though not easy read. I highly recommend it. Here is an excerpt: They forced their way into native settlements, slaughtering everyone they found there, including small children, old men, pregnant women, and even women who had just give birth. They hacked them to pieces, slicing open their bellies with their swords as though they were so many sheep herded into a pen. They even laid wagers on whether they could manage to slice a man in two at a stroke, or cut an individual's head from his body, or disembowel him with a single blow of their axes. They grabbed suckling infants by the feet and, ripping them from their mothers' breast, dashed them headlong against the rocks. Others, laughing and joking all the while, threw them over their shoulders into a river, shouting: `Wriggle, you little perisher.' They slaughtered anyone and everyone in their path, on occasion running through a mother and her baby with a single thrust of their swords. They spared no one, erecting especially wide gibbets on which they could string their victims up with their feet just off the ground and then burn them alive thirteen at a time, in honor of our Savior and the twelve Apostles, or tie dry straw to their bodies and set fire to it. Some they chose to keep alive and simply cut their wrists, leaving their hands dangling, saying to them: `Take this letter' -meaning that their sorry condition would act as a warning to those hiding in the hills. The way they normally dealt with the native leaders and nobles was to tie them to a kind of griddle consisting of sticks resting on pitchforks driven into the ground and then grill them over a slow fire, with the result that they howled in agony and despair as they died a lingering death. It once happened that I myself witnessed their grilling of four or five local leaders in this fashion (and I believe they had set up two or three other pairs of grills alongside so that they might process other victims at the same time) when the poor creatures' howled in agony and despair as they died a lingering death. It once happened that I myself witnessed their grilling of four or five local leaders in this fashion (and I believe they had set up two or three other pairs of grills alongside so that they might process other victims at the same time) when the poor creatures' howls came between the Spanish commander and his sleep. He gave orders that the prisoners were to be throttled, but the man in charge of the execution detail, who was more bloodthirsty than the average common hangman (I know his identity and even met some relatives of his in Seville,), was loath to cut short his private entertainment by throttling them and so he personally went round ramming wooded bungs into their mouths to stop them making such a racket and deliberately stoked the fir so that they would take just as long to die as he himself chose. I saw all these things for myself and many others besides. And, since all those who could do so took to the hills and mountains in order to escape the clutches of these merciless and inhuman butchers, these mortal enemies of human kind trained hunting dogs to track them down - wild dogs who would savage a native to death as soon as look at him, tearing him to shreds and devouring his flesh as though he were a pig. These dog wrought havoc among the natives and were responsible for much carnage. And when, as happened on the odd occasion, the locals did kill a Europeans, as, given the enormity of the crimes committed against them, they were in all justice fully entitled to, the Spanish came to an unofficial agreement among themselves that for every European killed one hundred natives would be executed."

This is a report (or pleading) written to the King of Spain by a priest who witnessed genocide committed in the name of the King. Keep this in mind and don't read it like you would a travelogue or history. This addition (kindle in my case) include modern commentary and notes to clarify some aspects. De Las Casas's father sailed with Columbus on his second voyage and De Las Casas followed not long after. He had influential friends and enemies in both the the church and the political/administrative structure. Today you might call him an "insider". The account names no no names but even in the 21st century most readers will recognize Cortez and Pizarro. He did not name those he accused due to political considerations but contemporary recipients of the report, including the king, would have known who he was talking about and might even know some of the individuals personally. The population figures appear to me to be exaggerated but this is after all an advocacy document. I think you can read his figures simply as "shocking beyond a normal person's ability to comprehend. It helps to keep in mid that at the time a major city such as Seville might have had a population of 100,000 or so. Regardless of exact figures, modern sources seem to agree that the native population of the caribbean became extinct within a life time. De Las Casas makes no mention of disease even though it is recognized even in this century that contact with previously isolated peoples is lethal for them. One modern military historian has opoined that Cortez would have failed had not 75% of the population of Mexico City dies of disease by the time of the final confrontation. De Las Casas cites the high death toll among the Native-Americans enslaved by the conquistadores and attributed to starvation and overwork. I suspect a great deal of the toll was from disease and considering the medical knowledge (close to zero) of of the typical European of the day its not surprising that De Las Casas did not recognize it as such.

Quick delivery, perfect condition of the item.

This was a very hard book to read. The horrors inflicted on the New World were even worse than we imagine. Had to read this over a long period of time. An important historical record.

Essential reading for new world history. You will not find this in the classroom.

It arrived on time and in mint condition. I bought this having read American Holocaust, by David E Stannard. Both, in my opinion are MUST READS. They shed a light on the kind of man Christopher Columbus really was; a religious fanatic, child- sex slave trader, indians being fed to dogs and burning indians alive at the stake; that's just the tip of the iceberg. Buy Bartolome's account and American Holocaust, one is the companion to the other. Some books have the power to alter your world view and these two greats have it in them to do just that.

great book