The Individual Vs. Change in Bartolome De Las Casas' The Very Brief Relation of the Devastation of the Indies

Bartolomé De Las Casas' The Very Brief Relation of the Devastation of the Indies describes many horrific actions carried out by Spanish Christians against Indians living on the island of Hispaniola in the mid-16^th Century. The reported conduct of these Christians struck me as highly abnormal and extremely uncharacteristic of those who follow the Christian faith. In his account, De Las Casas explains how Christian Spaniards rob, beat, thieve, and murder Indian men, women, and children simply because the Indians do not have enough spare food to give in order to satisfy the enormous appetites of the Christians. And when the Indians begin hiding food from the Christians in hopes of being able to save enough to feed themselves and their families, the Christians turn violent and behave "with such temerity and shamelessness that the most powerful ruler of the islands had to see his own wife raped by a Christian officer" (De Las Casas, 39). As if thievery and rape aren't enough, the Christians begin murdering Indians indiscriminately, sparing "neither the children nor the aged nor pregnant women nor women in childbed...cutting them to pieces as if dealing with sheep in the slaughter house" (39). De Las Casas even describes a scene in which Christians are tossing infant babies into the river to drown, screaming, "Boil there, you offspring of the devil!" (39).

Men who have read and claim to live by the word of God should never think of committing such injustices against any living beings, and a captain not only allowing but joining his countrymen in raping and slaughtering humans is an unimaginable failure of order and decency. When these Christians came home and looked their wives in the eye, did they see the faces of all the women and children they had raped and murdered?-or just a pretty smile?