A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies

Blurb

A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies is an account written by the Spanish Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas in 1542 about the mistreatment of the indigenous peoples of the Americas in colonial times and sent to then Prince Philip II of Spain.
He wrote it for Charles I of Spain. One of the stated purposes for writing the account is his fear of Spain coming under divine punishment and his concern for the souls of the Native peoples. The account is one of the first attempts by a Spanish writer of the colonial era to depict examples of unfair treatment that indigenous people endured in the early stages of the Spanish conquest of the Greater Antilles, particularly the island of Hispaniola. Las Casas's point of view can be described as being heavily against some of the Spanish methods of colonization, which, as he describes, inflicted a great loss on the indigenous occupants of the islands. He described extensive use of torture, murder, and mutilation against the Natives by the Spaniards.