51 pages • 1 hour read
Bartolome de Las CasasA Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1552A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 3-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 3 Summary: “The Islands of Puerto Rico and Jamaica”
In this single-paragraph chapter Las Casas recounts that the Spanish landed on the islands of Puerto Rico and Jamaica in 1509. A footnote tells us that these were expeditions of Ponce de Leon to Puerto Rico and Juan de Esquivel to Jamaica. Here the Spanish committed similar atrocities to those in Hispaniola, reducing the population of 600,000 to fewer than 200.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Cuba”
The Spanish set foot on Cuba in 1511, committing similar atrocities to those previously detailed. A story of a native cacique (27), an Arawak term meaning tribal leader, is recounted. The cacique showed his people a basket of gold and told them that this was the God of the Europeans. This cacique was burned at the stake and refused upon his death to convert to Christianity, as he would have to share heaven with his persecutors. Las Casas observes, “This is just one example of the reputation and honor that our Lord and our Christian faith have earned as a result of the actions of those ‘Christians’ who have sailed to the Americas” (29).
Las Casas’s efforts to save natives were betrayed, and their persecution led many natives to kill themselves and their own children out of mercy. This is alongside the “more than seven thousand children [who] died of hunger” (30). Overall, “the whole of the island was devastated and depopulated” (30) due to massacre and enslavement in mines, and Cuba was transformed into “a barren wasteland” (30).
Chapter 5 Summary: “The Mainland”
In 1514 a Spanish governor—whom a footnote identifies as Pedro Arias de Ávila (aka Pedrarias Dávila)—arrived on the Mainland, meaning northern South America and southern Central America. Cruel even among the cruel, Dávila’s massacres “cut great swathes” through “some of the most fertile and densely populated areas that are to be found anywhere in the known world.” (31).
The region was rich with natural gold deposits, and the governor tortured natives to learn their whereabouts. He was personally responsible for the deaths of over 40,000 natives (32).
As Dávila was responsible for notifying the natives of the Spanish ordinance of forced conversion and the Spanish right to their land (the Requerimentio of 1513), he and his men read out the terms of the edict half a league from sleeping villages in the dead of night. This gave the natives no opportunity to convert and allowed the Spanish to more easily justify their slaughter. Dávila amassed a great fortune by searching the houses of the dead for gold. This practice became common among the colonizers, accounting for the death of over 800,000 people.
The Spanish tortured tribal leaders who had already willingly given up gold, and kidnapped and murdered 80 women from a tribe in hiding. When one tribal lord defeated a band of Spanish who stole from his tribe, the entire community was massacred.
Chapters 3-5 Analysis
These three chapters, documenting five years of progress in Spanish colonialism of the Americas, detail early developments in methods of massacre and enslavement that accompanied this conquest. These developments include Dávila’s practice of reading the Requerimentio to villages at night, a practice that was adopted by other colonists in and outside the region.
Common to each of these chapters, and to most chapters in the book, is Las Casas’s emphasis on the depopulation of the landscape and its barrenness due to the massacre and enslavement of the indigenous people. Also common between these chapters is Las Casas’s direct questioning of the Spanish colonizers’ Christian identity. This relates to Las Casas’s opinion, based on Ecclesiasticus 34: 21-2, that no Christian persecutes another child of God. His resulting argument is that far from being Christians, the Spanish colonizers are actually demons.
Las Casas travelled to Cuba in 1513 and there witnessed his first massacres. His chapter on Cuba includes some narratives that border on fabliaux, including the account of a native cacique showing his people a basket of gold and declaring this gold as the Spanish god. In addition to symbolizing the greed of the Spanish, this narrative also connects to the Old Testament story of the Jews’ worship of a golden calf, which caused God to punish the people of Judea for worshipping false idols. This narrative demonstrates the godless quality of the actions of the Spanish and emphasizes the morality of the natives, this time through allusion to a biblical story.
The following execution of this cacique, and his renunciation of Christianity because it is the religion of his persecutors, is another rhetorical technique employed by Las Casas. It is used to illustrate that the actions of the Spanish detract from the overall purpose of their presence in the New World, which Las Casas believed was not just to engage in trade with the natives but also to spread the gospel of the true religion.
