adult men; for generally, they leave none alive in the wars, except
the young men and the women, whom they oppress with the hardest,
most horrible, and roughest servitude, to which either man or beast,
can ever be put. To these two ways of infernal tyranny, all the
many and divers other ways, which are numberless, of exterminating
these people, are reduced, resolved, or sub-ordered according to
kind.
16. The reason why the Christians have killed and destroyed such
infinite numbers of souls, is solely because they have made gold
their ultimate aim, seeking to load themselves with riches in the
shortest time and to mount by high steps, disproportioned to their
condition: namely by their insatiable avarice and ambition, the
greatest, that could be on the earth. These lands, being so happy
and so rich, and the people so humble, so patient, and so easily
subjugated, they have had no more respect, nor consideration nor
have they taken more account of them (I speak with truth of what I
have seen during all the aforementioned time) than,--I will not say
of animals, for would to God they had considered and treated them as
animals,--but as even less than the dung in the streets.
17. In this way have they cared for their lives--and for their souls: and
therefore, all the millions above mentioned have died without faith,
and without sacraments. And it is a publicly known truth, admitted,
and confessed by all, even by the tyrants and homicides themselves,
that the Indians throughout the Indies never did any harm to the
Christians: they even esteemed them as coming from heaven, until
they and their neighbours had suffered the same many evils, thefts,
deaths, violence and visitations at their hands.

Of Hispaniola

In the island of Hispaniola--which was the first, as we have said, to
be invaded by the Christians--the immense massacres and destruction
of these people began. It was the first to be destroyed and made
into a desert. The Christians began by taking the women and
children, to use and to abuse them, and to eat of the substance of
their toil and labour, instead of contenting themselves with what
the Indians gave them spontaneously, according to the means of each.
Such stores are always