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BRIEF LIST OF THE DESTRUCCCION OF THE WESTERN INDIES.

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CHAPTER ONE

FIRST Brochure

 

HISTORY OF THE SPANISH cruelties of the conquest of America, BRIEF RELATION OF THE DESTRUCTION OF THE INDIES WESTERN.

 

Exordium.

 

Discovering Indies in the year 1492: they began to be populated by Spanish Christians in 1493, so that for forty-nine years in that of 1542 as I write.

The first land in which our lived large and most happy was the Spanish island, whose circumference is six hundred leagues. There are other islands around very large I have seen them all, and people are so populated by natives, that there can be one that exceeds their population.

 

Sign the Earth is far from the Spanish island over 250 miles, has a coastline that goes from the known ten thousand leagues, and every day we discover more. The discovery is a hive of men, it seems that God has had thus their power to multiply the population.

 

The people of those countries are simple Vastis without iniquity, or fold, obedient and faithful to their natural lords and Christians whom they serve, patient, peaceful, quiet, not quarrelsome, not troublemakers, not quarrelsome, and spiteful, not hate or revenge.

 

Her complexion is delicate, tender, thin and weak so they can not undergo big jobs. Even the children of farmers are less robust than European princes children reared in luxury, and a gift, hence much less resist disease.

 

They are poor but happy with their poverty with no desire to own property and at the same time humble, free from pride, ambition and greed.

 

Their food is very scarce and very normal, comparable to what we are told of the holy hermits of the desert.

 

Their dress is usually a skin that covers the demand honesty, and at most, a cotton blanket yard and a half or two rectangular rods.

 

His bed is a mat, and at most one hanging network known in the Spanish Island under the name Hammock.

 

His understanding is alive, ready, and worry, for what the Indians are docile to receive any doctrine, able to understand; equipped Aptis morality and to receive our holy Catholic faith, and much more than any other nation in the world. When they start to learn something about our religion, have such a thirst for knowledge that become bothersome to their catechists, to such an extent that religious patients need to be taken to support their bodies. At last I heard from several Spanish words lay many times: The kindness of the Indians is such that if they know the true God, there will be more blessed people in the world.

 

The Spanish tried these friendly sheep, and forgetting to be men, and exerting the cruelty of wolves, tigers, lions and hungry. Forty years now, have done or do but persecute, oppress, destroy them and wipe them and knew how many ways and the new men who invented them. So the island is now only two hundred Spanish natural persons there, having been in the top three million.

 

The island of Cuba is as long as from Valladolid to Rome, and yet is almost entirely depopulated.

 

The island of San Juan de Puerto Rico and in Jamaica are very large, graceful and happy, but now are desolate.

 

The islands of the Spanish Lucayos neighboring towns and from Cuba to the north are over sixty with the Giants called. The least good of all land is better, more enjoyable and more fertile than the Garden of the King of Seville: the climate is the healthiest in the world, had in them more than five hundred thousand souls, now or one if you want. The Spanish wiped out the population, first kill, after trying to transplant their inhabitants to the Spanish, and almost deserted. Having reached a vessel for that purpose, tried to convert people to Christianity and found only eleven people: I saw them.

 

More than thirty other islands are in the San Juan region and no longer people on the ground itself. Among all composed over two thousand miles of land, uninhabited and deserted.

 

Earth-sign contained more than ten kingdoms, each greater than the whole of Spain, including the Crown of Aragon and all of Portugal. Its extension is as from Jerusalem to Seville because it extends over two thousand leagues. However, the cruelties of the Spanish have been so many heinous that have wiped out the population and left the country desert.

 

We can ensure that the Spanish have taken with their atrocious and inhumane conduct more than twelve million lives of men, women and children, but in my opinion spend fifteen.

 

Two ways have gotten these barbarians effects: first giving such inhumane and unjust wars, second after the conquest mistreating the natives, and killing the lords, the chiefs, and strong young men, oppressing others with the harder, harsher and more cruel slavery, intolerable even for beasts.

 

The only cause of this horrible carnage was the greed of the Spanish. These were proposed to have virtually no other God than gold, filled with riches in a few days at the expense of a humble and simple people, who tried to infinitely worse than the beasts, as I myself have seen, and even more contempt the manure of the streets, in proof of which not even cared for the souls of the Indians then gave rise to these unfortunates die in torment without being converted to the holy Christian faith.

 

Such an atrocity is all the more remarkable because the Spanish confess that the Indians have not ever done any harm to Christians, but rather they loved them as coming from the sky until they saw that multiplied the evils, theft, violence, humiliation, and the deaths of the natives.

 

Fray Bartolome de las Casas.

 

Translation of:

Alenadro Sandoval Valencia

alejandrosandovalv@hotmail.com

 

  

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