De Las Casas argued to the Spanish King that his agents, the conquistadors, were brutalizing native peoples and that those actions were destroying the Spanish as well as the natives. In the next three excerpts students will investigate the Spanish presence in a specific Hispaniola kingdom, Magua. In the first excerpt students will look at the author’s general description of the actions of the Spanish on Hispaniola, home to the Taino Indians.
Using excerpts from A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies, published in 1552, students will explore in this lesson how Bartolome de Las Casas (1484–1566) argued for more humane treatment of Native Americans in the Spanish New World colonies. Key Concept 1.2 (IIB) (Spanish colonial economies marshaled Native American labor…).ELA-LITERACY.RI.11-12.6 (determine author’s point of view).ELA-LITERACY.RI.11-12.1 (cite evidence to analyze specifically and by inference).
