Editorial note — BOOK VIII

[Note 3: The Brevissima Relacion de la Destruycion de las Indias, of Fray B. de las Casas, contains the most crushing indictment of Spanish colonial government ever penned. When every allowance has been made for the apostolic, or even the fanatical zeal, with which Las Casas defended his protégés and denounced their tormentors, the case against the Spanish colonists remains one of the blackest known to history. Just what the native population of Haiti and Cuba originally numbered is hardly ascertainable; twelve millions is doubtless an excessive estimate; but within twenty-five years of the discovery of America, the islanders were reduced to 14,000. Between 1507 and 1513 their numbers fell from 14,000 to 4000, and by 1750 not one remained. Consult Fabié, Vida y Escritos de Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas (Madrid, 1879); MacNutt, Bartholomew de las Casas, his Life, his Apostolate, and his Writings, New York, 1910.]