Bartolomé de Las Casas

Bartolomé de Las Casas (1474-1566), Spanish missionary and historian, known as the Apostle of the Indians, who was the first to criticize the oppression of Native Americans by their European conquerors.

The son of a merchant who had accompanied Columbus on his second voyage, Las Casas was born in Seville in August 1474. After practicing law in Spain, he went (1502) to Hispaniola, in the West Indies, where he served as adviser to the colonial governor in Santo Domingo. In 1512 he became the first person in America to be ordained a priest. For his service in several expeditions, Las Casas was awarded an encomienda, a royal grant of land including Native American servants. Firsthand experience with the abuses of the system caused him to begin a crusade for the abolition of Native American slavery and the general improvement of Native American conditions. He gave up his own encomienda in 1514. In 1515 he appealed directly to King Ferdinand V of Spain on the Native Americans' behalf; a year later he returned to Hispaniola as their official protector.

From 1520 to 1521, Las Casas attempted, unsuccessfully, to establish a model Native American colony on the coast of Venezuela. He entered the Dominican order in 1522 and spent the next six years writing History of the Indies (1528; trans. 1970), a monumental account of the early Spanish colonies in America. In 1537 Las Casas was asked to pacify the warlike Native Americans in northern Guatemala. He won their confidence and converted them to Christianity. All of his efforts resulted in the enactment (1542) of the New Laws, which abolished the encomienda system and prohibited the enslavement of Native Americans.

In 1544 Las Casas was made bishop of Chiapas in southern Mexico; in 1547 he returned to Spain, where he continued to plead the cause of the Native Americans, especially in polemical writings that received wide distribution in Europe. Las Casas died in Madrid on July 31, 1566.