To the Memory of the Long-Suffering Christopher Columbus:

Many years ago, I recall your grand arrival in Seville, where the achievements of your daring first voyage were paraded through our streets (De Las Casas 35). The splendor of Indians in exotic dress with their exotic faces, the fabulous birds, and the jewel-encrusted ornaments dazzled all of us, especially myself. You inspired my own brave journey to the New World several years later, and for that I am grateful. Yet my gratitude did not survive long on the shores of Hispaniola, nor did your standing in the eyes of this man, your countrymen, or God Almighty. While Our Lord may have granted to you the mercy you sought on your deathbed, it was never offered to the thousands of Indians who begged for it at the hands of your charges. Your tears came too late, and only for yourself. The assistance you begged from Our Majesties served only to evidence further your failures and selfishness. And while I might live with the regret of my past actions, the slow adjustment of my own moral compass, I write now with moral clarity and selfless determination for the interests of Our God and the Spanish kingdom.

What became of the “great victory” that “crowned” your first voyage (Columbus 32)? Indeed, the finest moment of your life was the first instant you spotted the New World, before men under your leadership could shatter to pieces what you aptly described as the closest approximation of a worldly Heaven (Columbus 33). One need only contrast your eloquent description of the island’s beauty with the despair that followed. Claiming the islands in the name of Our Great Monarchs and Our God is our loyal, Christian duty, but claiming the lives of those within them is not. Every natural wonder of the New World soon became a path to greed and death: fruit-bearing “trees of a thousand kinds” became endless fields of enslaved Indian harvesters; “lofty mountains” became gold-hoarding fortresses into which Indian miners tunneled, never to return; and crystalline waters became vast tombs of pearl divers, the luckiest of whom were devoured quickly by man-eating beasts of the sea (Columbus 33; De Las Casas 39). These God-given wonders of our world—at your callus hands—were perverted into sources of earthly wealth at any cost. Where were your tears then?

In truth, your tears fell only for yourself and the disorder that followed from your lack of faithful leadership. When you found no great king or city in the New World, you nominated yourself and wept when your subjects flouted your authority (Columbus 32). After being slighted, you asked of Our Monarchs: “the restitution of my honor, the reparation of my losses, and the punishment of him who did this” (34). These were not the requests of a humble servant of God and King, not the selfless queries of a man who for whom, regarding wealth, “all hope of that was dead” (35). They were the demands of a disgraced hero who longed for a bygone era filled with parades in Seville, the adulation of men both royal and common, and the satisfaction of inspiring fellow Spaniards to lead great lives, as you once inspired me. When you returned to Spain in chains in 1500, it was the first voyage in which you began to feel the weight of your discovery. Thousands before you—and many thousands after—took a similarly dreadful voyage, yet without the benefit of knowing their destination, understanding the reason for their bondage, having the luxury of pleading their case before a king, or living long enough to mutter that there is “not a hair on my body that is not gray” (34). Old age is a burden of the privileged few.

Indeed, the long life you enjoyed far exceeded, even in its periodic misery, that offered to any of the inhabitants of Hispaniola. How did you serve our King and Queen and influence the role of politics when you permitted the rape of Indian women in front of their husbands (De Las Casas 37)? What selfless, civilizing effect did your discovery have when your soldiers slaughtered feeble men and pregnant women like sheep in the slaughterhouse (De Las Casas 37)? These actions are not the excesses of the Spanish kingdom, but the specific failure of your leadership. In so many other lands, our kingdom’s hand has driven away barbarity and introduced the honorable rule of Spanish nobility. There is tragic irony that in 1492, the same year we finally recaptured Granada from Muslim control—the final military victory after centuries of reconquest—you set sail westward for the first time, on your way to christen the New World with the blood of Indians. For hundreds of years before, we exported our noble virtues southward along the Atlantic coast to the peoples of Africa (Kicza 229). Even as we engaged in the lamentable practice of their enslavement, we retained our moral dignity, allowing black Africans in Spain to purchase their freedom, live among us in Spanish society, and marry Spanish women (Kicza 232). Colonization in the New World has grown exponentially the weight of our sins and multiplied the worst of all our evils ten-fold. Indian and African slaves alike have no real chance for freedom, and only a precious few have a chance for survival. The sweet taste of sugar that has spoiled our palettes drives this horrid industry, which exploits our gluttony, greed, and cruelty (Kicza 232). We have not brought civilization to the New World but have instead brought barbarity back into Spanish culture. Our weak and woeful response to this collective moral failing, repartimiento, is a thin veil capable of concealment to only the dullest of minds. It is slavery by another name and is particularly cruel for the old or infirm, who cannot serve their master’s appetite for avarice and are discarded accordingly (De Las Casas 39).

These realities have left in me a divided mind. While a loyal Spanish subject, I cannot challenge those Indians who take up arms against their masters (De Las Casas 37). I fear that they understand us not as wayward Spaniards, adrift from our faith, but as the true embodiment of Christian virtue. The Spanish soldiers that sought vengeance on these helpless, desperate communities remove potential Christian souls from this earth, both with the swing of their sword and with the memory etched on the minds of those that survive it. You announced to the King and Queen that, “The lands which here obey Your Highnesses are more extensive and richer than all other Christian lands” (Columbus 34). Perhaps they were, at some point, but they are no longer. Just like your past glories, that fanciful idea lives on as memory only. It is pure imagination that cannot be reclaimed. Only ignorance could rescue the vision you retained of those condemned lands.

The same mania that overwhelmed Spanish colonists—who saw it fit, in Our Majesties’ names, to hurl infants onto boulders and roast slowly the bodies of Indian leaders— also flooded your mind with false notions of humility, evident in your desperate pleas for Our Highnesses’ support: “I came to Your Highnesses with true devotion and with ready zeal, and I do not lie.” The man who must preface his claims with “true,” or pronounce boldly and succinctly that he does not lie, is a man who knows he has lost all credibility. Did Our Lord not say, “Let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil” (King James Version, Matt. 5:37)? For my part, I need not adorn my speech with desperate and repetitive remarks on truthfulness. The desperation in my accounts comes forth from the ravaged bodies and souls of Indians, repetition form the frequency with which violence has been enacted upon them.

Still, there are those that challenge my assertions, both my earnestness and the claims’ veracity. I concede that my cause has not always been steadfastly in favor of justice and decency to Indians or, for that matter, all men (De Las Casas 35). Only my time in the New World could allow me to understand fully the depth of human wickedness and the necessary bounds that must be placed on man’s activities. Conscience is an insufficient barrier. The civilizing influence of Spanish society seemed to evaporate in the warm, wet air of the New World. Yet I refuse any argument that my history or my challenge to your historical misinformation of a legacy is anything short of the truth. If even a fraction of the atrocities I described occurred under your watch, it is sufficient evidence to undermine the entirety of your campaign in the New World.

My critique does not carry as far as the Spanish throne (De Las Casas 36). Rather, it is an attempt to ensure that the grace of God is carried forth from this kingdom with the profound sentiment befitting of Our Majesties. Anything less runs counter to a long and glorious Spanish history and threatens the certainty of the future before us. As for the personal suffering you endured, the importance of that matter closed with your final breath on Earth. If the King and Queen see it fit to restore your honor as you so desired, they will be forced to rescind the history of your life to that first glimpse of land eyed by your sailors, that lush green mass rising above the water that was their salvation and, for the Indians looking out on upon the approaching ship, damnation.

—Bartolome de Las Casas, 1553

Works Cited

“Bartolome de Las Casas: 1474-1566.” Norton Anthology of American Literature. Eds. Franklin, Wayne, Philip F. Gura, and Arnold Krupat, eds. Seventh ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007. 35. Print.

Columbus, Christopher. “From Letter to Ferdinand and Isabella Regarding the Fourth Voyage.” Norton Anthology of American Literature. Eds. Franklin, Wayne, Philip F. Gura, and Arnold Krupat, eds. Seventh ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007. 33-35. Print.

Columbus, Christopher. “From Letter to Luis de Santangel Regarding the First Voyage.” Norton Anthology of American Literature. Eds. Franklin, Wayne, Philip F. Gura, and Arnold Krupat, eds. Seventh ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007. 32-33. Print.

De Las Casas, Bartolome. “From The Very Brief Relation of the Devastation of the Indies.” Norton Anthology of American Literature. Eds. Franklin, Wayne, Philip F. Gura, and Arnold Krupat, eds. Seventh ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007. 36-39. Print.

Kicza, John E. “Patterns in Early Spanish Overseas Expansion.” William and Mary Quarterly 49.2 (1992): 229-253. JSTOR. Web. 13 Nov. 2013.

“Matthew 5:37 (King James Version).” BibleGateway.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Nov. 2013. <http://www.biblegateway.com/>.