Analysis: In Defense of the Indians

Date: 1550

Author: Las Casas, Bartolomé de

Genre: address

Summary Overview

Written within the first sixty years of the conquest of the Americas, Bartolomé de Las Casas’s In Defense of the Indians was one of the first works in which a person from a colonizing nation argued for the rights of the indigenous peoples of the region that was being conquered. In the encomienda system in place during Las Casas’s time, indigenous peoples were viewed as part of the property that a Spaniard held and could exploit. The landowner’s only responsibility, at times ignored, was to provide a priest for the conversion of the natives. Las Casas himself was an encomiendero (encomienda owner), but he was also a Catholic priest, and his beliefs shaped his attitude toward the indigenous peoples of the Americas. In Defense of the Indians was composed as part of his debate with theologian and philosopher Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda on whether the indigenous peoples should be forced to convert to Christianity or allowed to convert of their own free will and ultimately concerns the humanity of the natives and their exploitation by the encomienderos.

Document Analysis

On April 16, 1550, Charles V of Spain issued a decree to stop all further colonial conquests until jurists and theologians could deliberate about the about the ethical nature of Spanish colonization. To facilitate this discussion, a debate was held beginning in August of that year in Valladolid. Las Casas and Sepúlveda were tasked with helping the assembled scholars deliberate the nature of the rights and identities of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Both debaters were already well known in Spanish royal, academic, and theological circles. By the time he reached Valladolid, Las Casas had been expressing his views on the maltreatment of the indigenous peoples of the Americas by the Spanish government and church for several decades. Sepúlveda’s views were also well known by 1550, as he had articulated them in Democrates alter de justis belli causis apud Indios (A second Democritus: On the just causes of the war with the Indians) in 1547. In this work, Sepúlveda uses Aristotelian logic to argue that the natives are not rational and thus cannot be converted by typical missionary tactics. He argues that a number of definitions of barbarism characterize the native peoples of the Americas. First, Sepúlveda uses circular logic to suggest that the native peoples are barbarians because they do not display certain characteristics of Spanish civilization, and as such, the Spanish have a responsibility to spread their civilization to the native peoples. Then, Sepúlveda moves on to the differences between indigenous religion and Spanish Christianity. Finally, he takes differences between native and Spanish intellectual expression as evidence of barbarism on the part of the natives. Any of these marks of barbarism, to Sepúlveda, is enough to justify the conquest and forced conversion of the native peoples, whom he describes as barely human. Thus, warfare is the means by which the native peoples should be brought to civilization and Christianity.

When writing or speaking on the topic of the indigenous peoples, Las Casas and Sepúlveda generally approached their arguments based on the academic disciplines of which they were a part—theology and political philosophy, respectively. Within Sepúlveda’s view, conversion to Christianity was conflated with submission to the authority of the church and the Spanish colonial government. Further, he believed that Christianization and forced labor were not mutually exclusive. Las Casas, as a Dominican priest, believed that the natives’ souls were the first concern of the colonial enterprise. However, in Las Casas’s In Defense of the Indians, he pursues the argument on Sepúlveda’s terms. Rather than rehashing his theological arguments for the rights of the native peoples—which had been reinforced by both the Spanish crown and the pope—Las Casas ventures into philosophy to show the fallacy of Sepúlveda’s arguments on their own terms. Formulating his arguments in favor of the humanity, logic, and rationality of the natives based on his experiences with them in the New World, Las Cases uses political philosophy, logic, and history to argue against Sepúlveda’s justification for making war against the natives. He reveals that the true intent of those supporting Sepúlveda’s argument is not to bring the natives to Christianity but rather to take their lands and goods and to enslave them, forcing them to labor for Spanish masters in encomiendas. Las Casas attempts to dismantle the basic assumptions of Sepúlveda’s arguments, examining his presuppositions and illuminating their flaws.

Las Casas’s argument, like Sepúlveda’s, focuses on the idea of barbarism, juxtaposed with the civilized way of life the Spanish assumed they exemplified. But while Sepúlveda uses the alleged barbarism of the native peoples as justification for their conquest, forced conversion, and enslavement, Las Casas uses the idea of barbarism to turn Sepúlveda’s very argument on its head. He begins by examining the historical understanding of barbarism. In the Roman Empire, European peoples such as the Franks, Vandals, and Visigoths were seen to embody a nomadic, tribal way of life foreign to those living in the cities of the empire; thus, they were considered barbarians. Such was the popular perception of the native peoples of the Americas among many in Spain, and Sepúlveda used this perception to his advantage. Las Casas refutes this by pointing out that many of the native societies of Central and South America were characterized by “important kingdoms, large numbers of people who live settled lives in a society, great cities, kings, judges and laws, persons who engage in commerce, buying, selling, lending, and the other contracts of the law of nations”—features that the Spanish jurists and theologians at Valladolid would have considered key elements of civilization. With this evidence, Las Casas questions the characterization of the native peoples of the Americas as barbarians.

Next, Las Casas discusses Sepúlveda’s assertion of barbarism on the part of the natives and his philosophical argument that barbarism is a reason to make war against them and force their conversion and labor. Sepúlveda, basing his arguments on his understanding of the philosophies of Greek philosopher Aristotle and Roman theologian Saint Augustine, believed the native peoples to be barbarians because of their lack of written language, private property, and other markers of Western civilization; their acts of cannibalism and human sacrifice; and their perceived lack of intelligence and basic inferiority. Based on Aristotle’s writings, Sepúlveda thought that the indigenous peoples of the Americas were naturally inferior and thus predisposed to be slaves; likewise, his interpretation of the philosophy of Saint Augustine supported the forced conversion of the natives through conquest.

In the context of his larger argument in favor of the rights and humanity of the native peoples, Las Casas uses the concept of barbarism in three ways. First, he focuses his analysis on the Spanish themselves. The Spanish saw themselves as being at the apex of civilization, and thus, like the Romans, they viewed other cultures as somewhat barbaric. Las Casas uses his own knowledge of Roman history to show that the Spanish themselves were once considered barbarians, citing in particular the writings of Roman historian Trogus Pompey; thus, according to Sepúlveda’s argument, the Romans were completely justified when they invaded the Iberian Peninsula in 219 BCE. Based on the idea that the Romans conquered Spain and brought it into civilization, he then poses the following rhetorical questions: “Does [Sepúlveda] think that the war of the Romans against the Spanish was justified in order to free them from barbarism? . . . Did the Spanish wage an unjust war when they vigorously defended themselves against them?” According to Sepúlveda’s definition of barbarism, the war of conquest that Rome fought against Spain was just, and the Spanish resistance to Roman conquest was not justified, two points with which many in Spain would have disagreed.

Next, Las Casas demonstrates the brutality of the encomienda system, which had been the central theme of his writings ever since it became clear that the Leyes de Burgos were not having the intended effect on the system. Again using Sepúlveda’s tactics against him, Las Casas presents a historical and philosophical demonstration of the brutality of the encomienda system and describes a hypothetical imposition of the system on the Spanish themselves. Superimposing the encomienda system on the Roman conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, Las Casas rhetorically asks, “Do you think that the Romans . . . could with secure right divide all of you among themselves, handing over so many head of both males and females as allotments to individuals?” Again, knowing full well that the image of the Spanish being divided among Roman landowners and forced into slave labor would be shocking to the jurists and theologians assembled, Las Casas uses Sepúlveda’s rhetorical position to discredit his argument. By doing so, he shows that the Spanish have demonstrated their own barbarism in their treatment of the natives. The Spanish have acted “like thieves, cut-throats, and cruel plunderers,” which has only served to “drive the gentlest of people headlong into despair.”

Finally, Las Casas uses the example of the peaceful conversion of the Iberian Peninsula to Christianity by the mission of Saint James as a counterexample to Sepúlveda’s proposed course of action. He asks directly, “Sepúlveda, would you have permitted Saint James to evangelize your own people of Córdoba in that way?”—that is, in the violent way in which Spain was attempting to convert the people of the Americas. By presenting this juxtaposition, Las Casas implies that using logic and demonstrating a peaceful, Christian way of life is a much more effective and civilized way to convert people to Christianity, and he bases this perspective on his own personal experience in the New World. Las Casas demonstrates that the native peoples of the Americas do not fit Sepúlveda’s definition of barbarism and argues that they are both intelligent and frequently willing to accept Christianity once they have been introduced to it. The natives, he notes, possess one of the key components necessary for civilization: the ability to reason. They are not animals, as some in Spain had argued, destined to perform slave labor and able to be converted to Christianity only through conquest and violence. To Las Casas, the brutality of Spanish warfare, another topic in which he was quite well versed, only served to dissuade people from accepting what he held to be the true religion.

In his three-pronged attack on Sepúlveda’s rhetorical position, Las Casas uses political philosophy to reinforce the religious arguments he had been making for nearly forty years. After dismantling Sepúlveda’s case, Las Casas returns to the arguments of his earlier writings to argue that even if Sepúlveda’s arguments were philosophically sound, the religious justifications for the right of indigenous peoples to live peacefully and come to Christianity of their own volition are paramount. By Las Casas’s formulation, if Aristotle argued that barbarism was a reasonable excuse to make war against and enslave populations such as the natives of the Americas, then Aristotle himself was to be rejected in favor of Christ. The imperative to spread Christianity in the peaceful manner outlined in the Bible, Las Casas argues, outweighs any philosophical considerations and should guide Spain’s actions toward the native peoples of the regions Spain had colonized.

Bibliography

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