Listening to letter seven, I immediately recognize in myself and in my culture how I disregard the spiritual presence of Satan and his demons. I tend to not recognize these as factual beings but as Uncle Screwtape says “I explain this to just some sort of force” , I do not recognize each attempt to draw me away from my walk with my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We so easily accept that there is a God and His Son but we do not want to acknowledge those who could be caught up in a spiritual battle, doctors are quick to prescribe medications, dig up the past and advise on your own fortitude to press on. We see in the medical realm this belief in the supernatural forces is not accepted but is so quickly described as delusions of the mind. The current culture tends to make comics about the Devil and see Christians as weak pacifists or extremists who are shooting up an abortion clinics. I have read recently about the Spanish explorers who occupied the lands of Mexico and Central America , coming as Christians , they exchanged gifts with the local tribes, enslaved them and had them work tirelessly mining for gold and silver. This was all done as they proclaimed to be a Christian people, they forcibly tried to convert these native people, some adopted this religion. The population went from 3 million to 200 after the Europeans arrived some died from smallpox and other from the work that they were not accustomed to do. These atrocities were documented in a letter by a missionary to the King and eventually these people were allowed to be released back to their lands. I see here the extreme attitude of forcing one’s religion on another and how this looks, absence of love and driven by greed and wealth, what a Christian representative! I also see this missionaries ability to not remain passive while he saw a people being destroyed. He describes these people in being happy with the little they have and not wanting more, I see how corrupted religion can become when it is absent from the love of Jesus Christ.Below is that letter to the King of Spain:
Introduction
- Who: Bartolome de las Casas, a Catholic priest and colonist in the Spanish West Indies
- What: Excerpt from A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies
- When and Where: 1542, presented to Charles V, King of Spain
- Why: To denounce Spanish cruelty toward native populations in the West Indies
A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies
Bartolome de las Casas
[PREFACE]
The Americas were discovered in 1492, and the first Christian settlements established by the Spanish the following year. It is accordingly forty-nine years now since Spaniards began arriving in numbers in this part of the world….
God made all the peoples of this area, many and varied as they are, as open and as innocent as can be imagined. The simplest people in the world–unassuming, long-suffering, unassertive, and submissive–they are without malice or guile, and are utterly faithful and obedient both to their own native lords and to the Spaniards in whose service they now find themselves. Never quarrelsome or belligerent or boisterous, they harbour no grudges and do not seek to settle old scores; indeed, the notions of revenge, rancour, and hatred are quite foreign to them. At the same time, they are among the least robust of human beings: their delicate constitutions make them unable to withstand hard work or suffering and render them liable to succumb to almost any illness, no matter how mild. Even the common people are no tougher than princes or than other Europeans born with a silver spoon in their mouths and who spend their lives shielded from the rigours of the outside world. They are also among the poorest people on the face of the earth; they own next to nothing and have no urge to acquire material possessions. As a result they are neither ambitious nor greedy, and are totally uninterested in worldly power. Their diet is every bit as poor and as monotonous, in quantity and in kind, as that enjoyed by the Desert Fathers. Most of them go naked, save for a loincloth to cover their modesty; at best they may wrap themselves in a piece of cotton material a yard or two square. Most sleep on matting, although a few possess a kind of hanging net, known in the language of Hispaniola as a hammock. They are innocent and pure in mind and have a lively intelligence, all of which makes them particularly receptive to learning and understanding the truths of our Catholic faith and to being instructed in virtue; indeed, God has invested them with fewer impediments in this regard than any other people on earth. Once they begin to learn of the Christian faith they become so keen to know more, to receive the Sacraments, and to worship God, that the missionaries who instruct them do truly have to be men of exceptional patience and forbearance; and over the years I have time and again met Spanish laymen who have been so struck by the natural goodness that shines through these people that they frequently can be heard to exclaim: ‘these would be the most blessed people on earth if only they were given the chance to convert to Christianity.’
It was upon these gentle lambs, imbued by the Creator with all the qualities we have mentioned, that from the very first day they clapped eyes on them the Spanish fell like ravening wolves upon the fold, or like tigers and savage lions who have not eaten meat for days. The pattern established at the outset has remained unchanged 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. We shall in due course describe some of the many ingenious methods of torture they have invented and refined for this purpose, but one can get some idea of the effectiveness of their methods from the figures alone. When the Spanish first journeyed there, the indigenous population of the island of Hispaniola stood at some three million; today only two hundred survive. The island of Cuba, which extends for a distance almost as great as that separating Valladolid from Rome, is now to all intents and purposes uninhabited; and two other large, beautiful and fertile islands, Puerto Rico and Jamaica, have been similarly devastated. Not a living soul remains today on any of the islands of the Bahamas, which lie to the north of Hispaniola and Cuba, even though every single one of the sixty or so islands in the group, as well as those known as the Isles of Giants and others in the area, both large and small, is more fertile and more beautiful than the Royal Gardens in Seville and the climate is as healthy as anywhere on earth. The native population, which once numbered some five hundred thousand, was wiped out by forcible expatriation to the island of Hispaniola, a policy adopted by the Spaniards in an endeavour to make up losses among the indigenous population of that island. One God-fearing individual was moved to mount an expedition to seek out those who had escaped the Spanish trawl and were still living in the Bahamas and to save their souls by converting them to Christianity, but, by the end of a search lasting three whole years, they had found only the eleven survivors I saw with my own eyes. A further thirty or so islands in the region of Puerto Rico are also now uninhabited and left to go to rack and ruin as a direct result of the same practices. All these islands, which together must run to over two thousand leagues, are now abandoned and desolate.
