lumbus on his first voyage of discovery, was born in
Seville in 1474. While yet a student at the University of Salamanca he
became interested in the natives, through a young Indian whom he owned
as slave. He first visited the New World as one of the followers of
Columbus in 149-, returning after some years with Nicholas de Ovando,
the governor of the Indies. Here his sympathies were fully aroused, as
he witnessed the savage treatment of the simple natives and the
incessant butcheries and slavery in the mines, which were rapidly
depopulating the islands. In 1510 he took holy orders, being probably
the first priest ordained in the New World.

Las Casas at first was himself a slave-owner, willing to enrich
himself by the toil of the red men, though from the very beginning he
sympathized with their sufferings. But a sudden illumination came to
him as he was preparing to preach a sermon on the Feast of Pentecost,
in 1514, taking for his text the 34th chapter of Ecclesiasticus,
verses 18 to 22. He awoke to the iniquity of slavery, set free his own
Indians, and for forty years thereafter devoted himself heart and soul
to the interests of the red men. It was at times a bitter task and
made him many enemies among the invaders, who thought themselves
curtailed in their natural rights as the superior race. Happily for
his cause, Las Casas had powerful friends in Spain, chief among whom
was the Emperor Charles V. The good priest crossed the ocean a dozen
times to see that monarch on Indian affairs, following him even into
Germany and Austria. Finally in 1547, when past his seventieth year,
he settled down in Valladolid, in Spain, but still wrote and talked in
behalf of the oppressed race. While on an errand for them to Madrid in
1566, he died at the ripe age of ninety-two, with bodily faculties
unimpaired.

The earliest work of Las Casas, 'A Very Short Account of the Ruin of
the Indies,' written in 1542, first disclosed to Europe the cruelties
practiced beyond the sea. It was frequently reprinted, and made a
great impression. Other short treatises followed, equally powerful and
effective. They were collected in 1552 and translated into several
languages. His chief work however is a 'General History of the
Indies,' from 1492 to 1520, begun by him in 1527, unfinished in 1561.
He ordered that no portion should be printed until forty years after
his death, but it remained in manuscript for three hundred years,
being published at Madr