Of the New Kingdom of Granada

1. In the year 1539 many tyrants joined together and started from Venezuela, Santa Marta, and Cartagena for Peru: and others came back from the same Peru to explore those countries. Three hundred leagues inland behind Santa Marta and Cartagena, they found some very delightful and marvellous provinces, full of num­berless people, as mild and kind as the others, and very [pg 402] rich in gold, and in those precious stones called emeralds.

2.2. To these provinces they gave the name of the new kingdom of Granada; because those tyrants who first came to these countries were natives of the kingdom of Granada in Spain.

3.3. As many iniquitous and cruel men among those who gathered from all parts, were notorious butchers and shedders of human blood who were very inured to, and experienced in the great sins that we have said were committed in many parts of the Indies, it follows that their fiendish operations, and the circumstances and qualities that blackened and aggravated them, were such that they have surpassed very many, or indeed all, that the others and they themselves have committed elsewhere in the Indies.

4.4. Of the multitude they have committed in these three years, and continue without ceasing to commit, I will briefly relate a few. As a man who was robbing and murdering in the said kingdom would not allow a gover­nor to also rob and kill, the latter brought a suit against him, calling many witnesses to prove the slaughter, injustice, and massacres he had done, and is doing; this evidence was read, and is to be found in the Council of the Indies.

5.5. The witnesses in the said law-suit affirm that all the kingdom was quiet, and subject to the Spaniards; the Indians continually laboured to furnish them pro­visions, and to accumulate property for them; they brought them all the gold and precious emeralds they possessed or could obtain: the lords and inhabitants of the towns had been divided among the Spaniards, who lay claim to them as the means for obtaining their final object, which is gold. Having thus reduced everybody to the usual tyranny and slavery, the principal tyrant captain commanding them, captured the sovereign of [pg 403] all that country, without any cause or reason, and kept him for six or seven months, demanding gold and emer­alds of him.

6.6. The said king, who was called Bogota, being over­come by fear said that he would give a house of the gold they demanded, hoping to free himself from the hands of his tormenters: he sent some Indians to bring him the treasure, and several times they brought a large quantity of gold and stones: because he did not give the house of gold, the Spaniards declared that he should be killed, because he did not fulfil his promise.

7.7. The tyrant said that he should be tried by process of law, so they prosecuted him, accusing the said king of the country. The tyrant gave sentence, condemning him to tortures, if he did not give the house of gold.

8.8. They tortured him with the cord: they threw burning fat on his belly; they put his feet in irons fas­tened to a stake, tied his neck to another, while two men held his hands; and in this position they put fire to his feet.

9.9. Every now and then, the tyrant entered and told him, that they would kill him by inches with tortures if he did not give the gold. And thus they did, and killed this lord with tortures. While they were tor­menting him, God gave a sign of destestation of that cruelty, by causing all that town, where it was com­mitted to be burnt.

10.10. The other Spaniards imitated their good captain and, since they only know how to rend these people, they did the same; torturing the lord of the town or towns, that had been confided to them, with divers and fierce tortures while those lords and their people felt themselves safe, and were giving them all the gold and emeralds they could: the Spaniards tortured them only [pg 404] to extort more gold and jewels. And in this way they burnt and cut to pieces all the lords of that country.

11.11. Terror-stricken by the excessive cruelty prac­tised upon the Indians by one of those particular tyrants a great lord called Daytama fled, with many of his people from such inhumanity, and retreated to the mountains. This, if it did but avail, they conceive to be the remedy and refuge, and this is what the Spaniards call revolt and rebellion.

12.12. The principal tyrant captain hearing this, sent a force to that cruel man, whose ferocity and wickedness towards the peaceful and submissive Indians had driven them to the mountains; the latter went in pursuit of the natives, and because it sufficed not to hide in the bowels of the earth, they found a large number of people whom they killed, cutting to pieces more than five hundred men, women, and children, and sparing no one.

13.13. The witnesses also say that before his death, the same Prince Daytama had been to see that cruel man and had taken him four or five thousand crowns, but notwithstanding this, he committed the said slaughter.

14.14. Another time a great number of people having come to serve the Spaniards, and feeling themselves safe, serving with their humility and simplicity, the captain entered the town one night where the Indians were and commanded that all those Indians should be put to the sword while some of them were sleeping, and some supping and resting from the labours of the day.

15.15. He perpetrated this massacre because it seemed good to him to make himself feared by all the people of the country.

16.16. Another time the captain put all the Spaniards on oath, to lead at once as many lords and chiefs and common people as each had in his household service, to the square, where he had all their heads cut off, thus [pg 405] killing four or five hundred people. And the witnesses say that he thought in this way to pacify the country.

17.17. The witnesses depose that one particular tyrant did great cruelty, killing, and cutting off the hands and noses of many men and women, and destroying many people.

18.18. Another time the captain sent the afore-named cruel man, with certain Spaniards to the province of Bogota, to make inquiry as to who had succeeded to that dominion since they had tortured the universal lord to death: he marched through many leagues of coun­try, capturing as many Indians as he could.

19.19. And because the people did not show him the lord who had succeeded, he cut off the hands of some and gave others to ferocious dogs, which tore them to pieces both men, and women; and in this way he killed, and destroyed many Indian men and women.

20.20. One day, near sunrise, he went to attack some lords, or captains and many Indians who felt tranquil and secure, because he had assured them and given them his word that they should receive no hurt or harm; con­fiding in this assurance they had come down from the mountains, where they were hidden, to dwell in this town on the plain; thus he captured a great many of these unsuspecting and confiding people, women and men, and making them put their hands flat on the ground he himself cut them off with a scimitar, saying that he punished them because they would not tell where the new lord, who had succeeded to that kingdom, was hidden.

21.21. Another time, because the Indians did not give a coffer full of gold that this cruel captain demanded, he sent people to make war on them, in which they killed numberless persons, and cut off the hands and noses of so many women and men that they could not be counted: they gave others to fierce dogs that tore them to pieces and ate them.

22.22. Another time, the Indians of a province of that kingdom, seeing that the Spaniards had burnt three or four principal lords, retreated in fear to a strong rock to defend themselves from enemies so devoid of hu­manity; and according to the witnesses, there may have been four or five thousand Indians on the rock.

23.23. The above-named captain sent a great and notori­ous tryant, who surpassed many of those who have charge of destroying those countries, with a certain number of Spaniards, to punish those Indians who had fled from such a great pestilence and butchery: and he declared they were in revolt, seeking to make it appear that they had done something wrong, for which the Spaniards must punish them and take vengeance: they themselves, however, merit any most cruel torture whatsoever, without mercy, because they are so deprived of mercy and compassion towards those innocent creatures.

24.24. The Spaniards went to the rock and forced their way up, the Indians being naked and without arms; then the Spaniards called the Indians with professions of peace, assuring them that no harm should be done them, if they did not fight; the Indians at once ceased, whereupon that most cruel man commanded the Span­iards, to seize all the strong positions of the rock, and when taken, to surround the Indians. These tigers and lions surrounded the tame lambs, and disembowelled and put to the sword so many, that they stopped to rest, so many had they cut to pieces.

25.25. When they had rested a little, the captain or­dered that they should kill and throw down from the rock, which was very high, all the survivors; and so they did. And the witnesses say, that they beheld such a mass of Indians thrown from the rock, that there might have been seven hundred men together, who were crushed to pieces where they fell.

26.26. To complete their great cruelty, they sought out all the Indians who had hidden in the thicket, and he commanded all to be put to the sword; and thus they killed them, and threw them down from the rock.

27.27. Nor would he rest satisfied with the cruel things that have been related, but wished to distinguish him­self still more and increase the horribleness of his sins, by commanding that all the Indians, men and women, save those he kept for his own service, who had been captured alive (because in these massacres each usually chooses a few men, women and children for his own use) should be put in a straw house to which he set fire: some forty or fifty were thus burnt alive, while others were thrown to fierce dogs that tore them to pieces and ate them.

28.28. Another time, this same tyrant captured many Indians in a certain town called Cota which he visited; he had fifteen or twenty lords and principal persons torn by dogs; and he cut off the hands of many men and women, tied them to cords and hung about seventy pairs of hands along a beam, so that the other Indians should see what had been done to these people; and he cut off the noses of many women and children.

29.29. Nobody could explain the actions, and cruelty of this man, God's enemy, because they are innumerable, nor have such deeds as he did in those countries and in the province of Guatemala, ever been witnessed or heard of since then: during many years he went about those countries doing these deeds, burning and destroying the inhabitants and their property.

30.30. The witnesses in the trial further say, that the cruelties and massacres perpetrated in the said new kingdom of Granada by the captain himself and, with his consent, by all those tyrants and destroyers of the human race who were with him, were such that they [pg 408] have wasted and exterminated all the country. And that unless His Majesty arrests the massacring done among the Indians to extort gold which, as they had already given all they had, they no longer possess, the destruction will shortly be complete, and no Indians of any sort will be left to sustain the country, which will be left depopulated and desolate.

31.31. It should be considered how great and furious has been the cruelty and pestilential tyranny of unhappy tyrants, in the space of two or three years, since the discovery of this kingdom which, as all who have been there, and the witnesses at the trial say, was as thickly populated as any in the world; they have desolated it with massacres, so devoid of mercy, of the fear of God and the King, that they say, not a single person will be left alive unless His Majesty shortly prevents these in­fernal operations. And so I believe it to be, for with my own eyes I have seen many, and large countries in those parts, which they have destroyed and completely depopulated within a brief period.

32.32. There are other large provinces, bordering the said new kingdom of Granada, called Popayan and Cali: also three, or four others that extend for more than five hundred leagues; the Spaniards have rendered them deso­late, and destroyed them like the others, unjustly rob­bing and torturing to death the numberless inhabitants of that most delightful country.

33.33. People coming now from there declare that it excites compassion to see so many large towns burnt and destroyed; towns where formerly there were a thousand or two thousand families, are reduced to hardly fifty, while others are entirely burned and abandoned.

34.34. In other places, from one to three hundred leagues of country are found completely deserted; large towns having been burnt and destroyed.

35.35. Great and cruel tyrants penetrated into New Granada from the direction of the province of Quito in the kingdom of Peru, and into Popayan and Cali from the direction of Cartagena and Uraba, while from Car­tagena, other ill-starred tyrants marched through to Quito; afterwards others, came from the direction of Rio de San Juan, which is on the South coast. All of these men united together and they have devastated and depopulated more than six hundred leagues of country, sending innumerable souls to hell. They are doing the same at the present day to the miserable survivors, although they are innocent.

36.36. And to prove the axiom I laid down in the beginning, namely that the tyranny, violence, and injus­tice of the Spaniards towards these gentle lambs, ac­companied by cruelty, inhumanity, and wickedness, most worthy of all fire and torture, which continue in the said provinces, go on increasing, I cite the following.

37.37. After the massacres and slaughter of the war, the people are condemned, as was said, to the horrible slavery described above. To one of the devils, two hundred Indians were given, to another, three. The devil commandant ordered a hundred Indians to be called before him and when they promptly came like so many lambs, he had the heads of thirty or forty cut off; and said to the others: “I will do the same to you, if you do not serve me well, and if you leave without my permission.”

38.38. Now in God's name consider, you, who read this, what sort of deeds are these, and whether they do not surpass every imaginable cruelty and injustice, and whether it squares well with such Christians as these to call them devils; and whether it could be worse to give the Indians into the charge of the devils of hell than to the Christians of the Indies. [pg 410]

39.39. I will also tell of another such operation; I do not know which is the more cruel, the more infernal, and nearer the ferocity of wild beasts, this one or that one just told.

40.40. It has already been said, that the Spaniards of the Indies have tamed and trained the strongest and most ferocious dogs to kill and tear the Indians to pieces.

41.41. Listen and see, all you who are true Christians and also you who are not, whether such deeds have ever been heard of in the world; to feed the said dogs they take many Indians in chains with them on their journeys, as though they were herds of swine; and they kill them, making public butchery of human flesh; and one says to the other; “lend me a quarter of one of these villeins to give to my dogs to eat, until I kill.” It is as though they were lending a quarter of pork or of mutton.

42.42. There are others, who go hunting with their dogs in the morning and when one is asked on his return for dinner how it has fared with him, he replies; “it has fared well with me, because I have left perhaps fifteen or twenty villeins killed by my dogs.”

43.43. All these and other diabolical things are being proved now in law-suits started by some tyrants against others. What can be filthier, fiercer, and more inhuman?

44.44. I will finish with this, till news comes of other deeds of more eminent wickedness, if any such there can be: or until, on our return there, we again behold them, as we continually have with our own eyes since forty-two years.

45.45. I protest before God on my conscience that, as I believe and hold certain, such are the perdition, harm, destruction, depopulation, slaughter, deaths, and great and horrible cruelties, and most foul ways of violence, injustice, robbery, and massacre, done among those people and in all those countries of the Indies, that with [pg 411] all I have described, and those upon which I have en­larged, I have not told nor enlarged upon, in quality and quantity, a ten thousandth part of what has been done and is being done to-day.

46.46. And that all Christians may have greater com­passion on those innocent nations, and that they may more sincerely lament their loss and doom, and blame and abominate the detestible avarice, ambition, and cruelty of the Spaniards, let them all hold this truth for certain, in addition to what I have affirmed above; namely, that from the time the Indies were discovered down to the present, nowhere did the Indians harm any Christians, before they had sustained harm, robbery, and treachery from them. Nay, they always esteemed them immortal, and come from Heaven; and as such they received them, until their deeds manifested their charac­ter and intentions.

47.47. It is well to add something else, that from the beginning till the present day the Spaniards have given no more thought to providing for the preaching of the faith of Jesus Christ to these people than if they were dogs or other animals: nay, they have persistently afflicted and persecuted the monks, to prevent them from preaching, because it seemed to them an impedi­ment to the acquisition of the gold and wealth they promised themselves in their greedy desires.

48.48. And to-day there is not in all the Indies more knowledge of God among these people, as to whether He is of wood, or in heaven or on earth, than there was a hundred years ago, except in new Spain, where monks have gone and which is but a very little corner of the Indies. And so all have perished and are perishing, without faith and without Sacraments.

1. I was induced to write this work I, Fray Bartolomeus de las Casas, or Casaus, friar of St. Dominic, who by God's [pg 412] mercy do go about this Court of Spain, trying to drive the hell out of the Indies, and to bring about that all those numberless multitudes of souls, redeemed with the blood of Jesus Christ, shall not hopelessly perish forever; moved also by the compassion I feel for my fatherland, Castile, that God may not destroy it for such great sins, committed against His faith and honour and against fellow creatures. A few persons of quality who reside at this Court and are jealous of God's honour and compassionate towards the afflictions and calamities of others, urged me to this work although it was my own intention which my continual occupations had never allowed me to put into effect.

2.2. I brought it to a close at Valencia the 8th of De­cember 1542, when all the violence was more terrible, and the oppression, tyranny, massacres, robberies, de­structions, slaughter, depopulation, anguish, and calam­ity aforesaid, are actually at their height in all the regions where the Christians of the Indies are; although in some places they are fiercer, and more abominable than in others.

3.3. Mexico and its neighbourhood are a little less badly off; there, at least, such things dare not be done publicly, because there is somewhat more justice than elsewhere, although very little, for they still kill the people with infernal burdens.

4.4. I have great hope, for the Emperor and King of Spain our Lord Don Carlos, Fifth of this name is get­ting to understand the wickedness and treachery that, contrary to the will of God, and of himself, is and has been done to those people and in those countries; hereto­fore the truth has been studiously hidden from him, that it is his duty to extirpate so many evils and bring succour to that new world, given him by God, as to one who is a lover and observer of justice, whose glorious, [pg 413] and happy life and Imperial state may God Almighty long prosper, to the relief of all his universal Church, and for the final salvation of his own Royal soul. Amen.

1. Since the above was written, some laws and edicts have been published by His Majesty, who was then in the town of Barcelona, in the month of November 1542 and in the town of Madrid the following year; these con­tain such provisions as now seem suitable to bring about the cessation of the great wickedness and sin committed against God and our fellow creatures, to the total ruin and destruction of that world.

2.2. After many conferences and debates amongst conscientious and learned authorities, who were assem­bled in the town of Valladolid, His Majesty made the said laws; acting finally on the decision and opinion of the greater part of all those who gave their votes in writing, and who drew nearer to the law of Jesus Christ, as true Christians. They were likewise free from the corruption and foulness of the treasures stolen from the Indies that soiled the hands, and still more the souls of many in authority who, in their blindness, had com­mitted unscrupulous destruction.

3.3. When these laws were published, the agents of the tyrants, then at Court, made many copies of them; they displeased all these men who considered that they shut the doors to their participation in what was robbed and taken by tyranny: and they sent the copies to divers parts of the Indies.

4.4. None of those who there had charge of robbing the Indians, and of finishing their destruction by their tyranny, had ever observed any order, but such disorder as might have been made by Lucifer; when they saw the copies, before the arrival of the new judges who were to execute them, it is said and believed that they had been [pg 414] warned of what was coming by those in Spain, who have till now encouraged their sins and violence. They were so agitated, that when the good judges who were to carry out the laws arrived, they resolved to set aside shame and obedience to the King, just as they had al­ready lost all love and fear of God.

5.5. They thus determined to let themselves be called traitors, for they are cruel and unbridled tyrants, par­ticularly in the kingdoms of Peru, where at present, in this year of 1546, such horrible, frightful, and execrable deeds are committed, as have never been done, either in the Indies or in the world; not only do such things happen among the Indians whom they have already all or nearly all killed, but among themselves. In the absence of the King's justice to punish them, God's justice has come from heaven to bring dissension amongst them and to make one to be the executioner of the other.

6.6. Shielded by the rebellion of these tyrants, those in all the other regions, would not obey the laws and, under pretext of appealing against them, have also re­volted; they resent having to abdicate the dignities and power they have usurped, and to losing the Indians whom they hold in perpetual slavery.

7.7. Where they have ceased to kill quickly by the sword, they kill slowly by personal servitude and other unjust and intolerable vexations. And till now the King has not succeeded in preventing them because all, small and great, go there to pilfer, some more, some less, some publicly and openly, others secretly and under disguise; and with the pretext that they are serving the king, they dishonour God, and rob and destroy the King.

The present work was printed in the most noble, and faithful town of Seville, at the house of Sebastian Truxillo book-printer. To our Lady of Grace.

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