Joe Martin ENG 231-2W1 28 August 2013 Bartolome de las Casas Short Response In Bartoleme de las Casass piece

The Very Brief Relation of the Devastation of the Indies, it seems as though his plea for fair treatment of Native Americans is genuine and relates to his faith. It may have been written to gain some power in politics and the church, but it does lay out Unlike other explorers of the day, de las Casas provides a point of view where the Europeans are, ironically, the savages. For example, Samuel de Champlains writings about the Iroquois paint a picture of a culture that takes pride in war and that tortures prisoners of other tribes. When asked to set fire to a prisoner, he writes, I pointed out to them that we did not commit such cruelties, but that we killed people outright (Baym 63). In The Very Brief Relation, de las Casas describes atrocities he personally witnessed, including hangings, rape, torture, enslavement, etc. The fact that his writings show a different opinion of the European and Spanish occupation of America shows, in a sense, that he is genuine about wanting to help Native Americans. Bartoleme de las Casas, at the time, was also a priest and trying to gain political power. This could possibly have been a motive in his writings and ideas as well. De las Casas changed his opinions about enslavement in the American colonies several times, first saying that it was wrong to enslave the Natives, but an alternative would be to enslave the Africans and bring them to the colonies. He soon revised this, saying all enslavement was unjust. His work influenced Pope Paul III to ban any other enslavement and Emperor Charles V to set laws which protected the Native population (Baym 39). Works Cited Baym, Nina, and Robert S. Levine. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Eighth ed. Vol. A. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2012. Print. The Norton Anthology of American Literature.