Reading Guide for Bartolome de las Casas

Introduction
What, according to de las Casas after his conversion, was "the first injustice committed in the Indies"?

Describe de las Casas' conversion.

What title did the Spanish government give to de las Casas?

What did the government give de las Casas permission to do?

How did he purpose to correct the problem of Native American abuse?

Why, according to de las Casas, did this effort fail?

What law[s] regarding the natives did Pope Paul III and Charles V pass?

What did Charles V later do about that law?

How did the publishing of The Very Brief Relation backfire?
Why do you think the editors use the word "ironically" to describe the use of The Very Brief Relation the English and the Dutch?

What is the "Black Legend"?

Devastation of the Indies

Several times in de las Casas's narrative, de las Casas refers to the natives as animals, in particular an animal which can be understood as a religious metaphor: What is the animal with religious connotations that de las Casas sometimes compares the natives to?

Compare the consumption food by Christian's compared to Natives?  Do you think de las Casas is exaggerating?

What happened to the wife of the native "ruler"?

What was de las Casas's judgment about the ability of the Natives to defend themselves?
What did they do with the hands?

Why did they hang them up by thirteen?
What did the captain order when the natives disturb his sleep?

What did the constable do about the captain's sleeping problem?

Why didn't ships need compass or chart to find their way to the island?
Why would the pearl divers sometimes fail to surface?

What, according to de las Casas, did the Christian mauraders ignore or forget in their depredations of the native population?

How much for an Indian [Going, going, gone!!]?