Bartolomé de las Casas

Bartolomé de las Casas (1484–1566) was a Spanish Dominican friar and the first great defender of the native peoples of the Americas. He went to Hispaniola in 1502, held Indians in encomienda himself, and in 1514 renounced them after a conversion of conscience. For the next fifty years he campaigned at court and in the Indies against the enslavement and killing of the Indians, becoming Bishop of Chiapas, debating Sepúlveda at Valladolid in 1550, and publishing A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1552). His History of the Indies, written over decades, remained unpublished until 1875. Older sources give his birth year as 1474.