Las Casas: "The Apostle of the Indies"

								

to know what sort of a boy he was. We are curious about his home, his
school, his parents, his friends, and all the various influences that
helped to make him the man he was. Such knowledge gives us a better
understanding of his after life, and a fuller sympathy with his aims and
achievements.
Although I have headed this chapter "Bartolomé the Youth," we know
comparatively little of Las Casas until he was about twenty-eight years
old. In later life we find him impetuous, loving, tireless in energy,
with a fiery temper that blazed out in quick wrath against all injustice
and cruelty toward the weak and helpless, possessing a brilliant mind
and great talents, never giving up striving against the wrong, and never
knowing when he was beaten. These qualities he must have possessed in
some measure as a boy, but, unfortunately, no historian has opened up
for us those early pages.
Bartolomé was born in the city of Seville, Spain, in the year 1474. We
are not told the day of the month. Of his mother we know nothing, but
his father was Pedro de Casaus. He was of French descent, but the family
had lived in Spain for over two hundred years, and because of valuable
aid given to one of the Spanish kings in the wars against the Moors,
they had been ennobled, and after a time the name lost its French
spelling and took the Spanish form, Las Casas.
Bartolomé certainly lived in very interesting times. When he was between
eighteen and nineteen years of age Columbus came to Seville on his
return from his first voyage, which resulted in the discovery of the
West India Islands. He brought with him many strange and wonderful
things,--birds of brilliant color, such as had never been seen before,
gold and pearls, and, most wonderful of all, six Indians. We can imagine
the crowds of people who must have followed that little procession as it
passed through the streets of the city, pushing and crowding one another
to get a sight of the great Admiral and the men who had sailed with him
over unknown waters, and especially of the painted red men, who were, I
am sure, quite as curious on their part, and probably badly frightened
besides.
It is difficult for us to understand now how much courage it took in
those times to put to sea in frail little caravels, which were all the
adventurer had, and go sailing over the waste of waters, not knowing
what was ahead of him, or if he would ever find land on the other side.
The rude maps of that day still showed a great Sea of Darkness. Dragons
and all sorts of frightful sea-monsters were pictured in the unexplored
parts of the ocean, and the popular idea was that if the daring mariner
should sail too far over the slope of the round globe, he might be drawn
by force of gravitation into a fiery gulf and never come back to his
friends again. So the men that thus ventured were heroes in the eyes of
the people. Never had such a voyage been heard of as the great Admiral