The reason the Christians have murdered on such a vast scale and
killed anyone and everyone in their way is purely and simply greed...
Their insatiable greed and overweening ambition know no bounds; the
land is fertile and rich, the inhabitants simple, forbearing and submissive.
The Spaniards have shown not the slightest consideration for these
people, treating them (and I speak from first-hand experience, having
been there from the outset) not as brute animals - indeed, I would
to God they had done and had shown them the consideration they afford
their animals - so much as piles of dung in the middle of the road.
They have had as little concern for their souls as for their bodies,
all the millions that perished having gone to their deaths with no
knowledge of God and without the benefit of the Sacraments. One fact
in all this is widely known and beyond dispute, for even the tyrannical
murderers themselves acknowledge the truth of it: the indigenous
peoples never did the Europeans any harm whatever; on the contrary,
they believed them to have descended from the heavens, at least until
they or their fellow citizens had tasted, at the hands of these oppressors,
a diet of robbery, murder, violence, and all other manner of trials
and tribulations.
-- Bartolome de Las Casas,
-- A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, 1542
Related:
The pattern established at the outset has remained to this day and
the Spaniards still do nothing save tear the natives to shreds, murder
them and inflict upon them untold misery, suffering and distress,
tormenting, harrying and persecuting them mercilessly....
