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A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies by Bartolome de Las Casas.


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The book presents an eyewitness account of the events in the New World in the beginning of XVI century. This work is not a historical paper due to luck of hard evidence and the inconsistency of facts throughout the book. The book was rather written as a letter to the king of Spain. In it author wrote about his protest against the slaughtering of native people of America by Spaniards. He gave a lot of examples of the brutality of his countrymen in different kingdoms which were seen by him or were told him by others. In his descriptions of the events, author did not gave names of the Spaniard responsible for the massacre. He claimed that Spaniards had the right to conquest the America, and to bring it under the Spanish crown, and was obligated to convert native to Christianity, but in reality that did not happened, and author was outraged by that. He regarded natives as a friendly, peaceful, and hard working people, who just needed guidance in their spiritual life. Author deeply believed that king was ignorant about those bloody events in the New World, and he felt that it was his duty as a Christian to inform king and help those natives before it was too late.