"From 'The Very Brief Relation of the Devestation in the Indies'"

This post is comprised of my notes and thoughts on The Very Brief Relation of the Devastation in the Indies,  by Bartolomé de Las Casas.  There are subheadings within the text for "Hispaniola" and "The Coast of Pearls, Paria, and the Island of Trinidad" for the two sections from the book that are included in the anthology.  The notes are from the excerpts given in the 7th edition of The Norton Anthology of American Literature Volume A.

Text Notes:

From "Hispaniola"

• In this excerpt, Casas relays what he asserts to be a mere portion of all that he has seen.
• Casas states that Christians began by subjugating women and children and by taking them for ill-use as well as by taking food which was earned by the labor/toil of Indians for themselves.
•  In this, he attacks the vast amount that Christians eat as compared to his Indian counterpart.
• These acts lead to the hiding of food, women, and children as well as the flight of some Indians into the mountains.
• Christians proceeded to other acts next, Casas asserts.  The next step is that Christians attack Indians until they got to the village nobles, who they also misuse.
• The Christians are described by Casas as behaving with "temerity and shamelessness" (37).
• Casa also states that these actions lead the Indians to want to expel the Christians from their lands.
•  Though they desired to throw the Christians out, Casas writes that the Indian weapons are ineffective against the Christians because they are "very weak and of little service in offense and still less in defense" and that it is for this reason that "the wars of Indians against each other are little more than games played by children" (37).
• See the thoughts section below for what I think is the purpose of this statement by Casas.
•  Casas next gives the reader a myriad of examples of the Christian "massacres and strange cruelties" (37).  These cruelties include the following:
• hacking them to pieces
• betting on various violent modes of death
• killing babies
• burning them alive in groups of thirteen to represent Jesus and his apostates
• burning people alive wrapped in straw
• cutting off people's hands and stringing them around their necks
• roasting people (particularly nobles) alive on grids of rods and forked sticks
• this particular method is given in much detail and with a specific example that Casas claims to have seen personally, thus lending authority to the whole list. 

From "The Coast of Pearls, Paria, and the Island of Trinidad

•  This excerpt deals directly with the human trafficking of Indians as slaves and brifly describes the capture, shipment, and enslavement of the Indians.
• Spaniards take Native American captives and bring them to Hispaniola and San Juan.
• On the passage, they throw the dead overboard; those who die do so primarily from starvation and dehydration.
•  Once the Indians are put ashore, theya re sorted "like sheep" and separated from families, then distributed among the Spaniards.
• Those Spaniards who receive old or sickly slaves actively assert that they are displeased by the age/illness, and thus illustrate "the divine concepts of love for our fellow man as laid down by the prophets," Casas asserts (39).
• The passage ends on a specific example of the pearl diving slaves.  This group, Casas expresses, has the most "infernal and desperate" jobs in the world (39).
• Divers must hold their breath for minutes at a time.
• Marine life -and sharks in particular - attack, kill, and/or eat them.
•  They suffer problems associated with being constantly in and under water and cold.
• Mistreatment of them is overlooked because they are so good at the diving and it brings such profit.

My Thoughts:

In the first excerpt from the book, I think it is both interesting and important that Casas only refers to those performing the atrocities as "Christians" rather than Spaniards.  In the second excerpt he calls the people Spaniards.  Because of this distinction, I wonder if there is a particular reason for it. I, however, cannot fathom what that reason is, given such a small excerpt from the work.  Perhaps it is that the people that Casas discusses in "Hispaniola" are not only Spaniards, but other Europeans as well, while those discussed in "The Coast of Pearls, Paria, and the Island of Trinidad" and solely Spaniards.  More research would need to be done to determine whether there were more than just Spaniards committing the cruelties and atrocities discussed in the first excerpt.

The second thing I think about the first excerpt's use of "Christian" is that there is an extremely unsubtle moral/religious persuasion going on there.  Perhaps because Casas himself developed the moral misgivings about slavery through religion, he believes that others shall also develop the misgivings if presented with the evidence and the use of the term "Christian" over and over again.  There is also a fun (ok, not fun in the usual sense, but interesting, to say the least) little juxtaposition of the common connotation of "Christian" for a reader and the acts being committed in the text.

As for the part when Casas states that "wars of Indians against each other are little more than games played by children" (37), I think that this is done with extreme purpose.  By likening the Native Americans to children, there is an extra level of horror added to the idea of European settlers battling them.  While it might seem today that Casas is demeaning the prowess of the native people, I believe that it is done intentionally as an additional bit of moral persuasion for his contemporary readers.

I think that the second excerpt is gutsy for Casas to have written.  Now, this isn't because it's some expose of an atrocity that people didn't know about, but because he specifically calls out that there are Spanish judges who allow the pearl diving to continue despite the inhumane mistreatment of the slaves because they were so good at swimming and gathering pearls, which undoubtedly made for great wealth for some.