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No furniture anywhere, nor utensils, nor relics, excepting bits of pottery, precisely such as is made now by the Moquis, various in color, red, white, grayish, and black, much of it painted inside as well as out, and all adorned with diamond patterns and other geometrical outlines. "I have seen Casas Grandes in other places," said Coronado, "but nothing like this.
The raids made upon the West Coast to obtain slaves began in the fifteenth century with the discovery of the West Indies, and it was to spare the natives of these islands, who were unused and unfitted for manual labor and who in consequence were cruelly treated by the Spaniards, that Las Casas, the Bishop of Chiapa, first imported slaves from West Africa.
Humanity turns with horror from such atrocities, and would fain discredit them; but they are circumstantially and still more minutely recorded by the venerable bishop Las Casas, who was resident in the island at the time, and conversant with the principal actors in this tragedy.
Before he took up his spiritual labours he had lived for years at the theatre of his future work, and understood the conditions of the colonial and native life. As a matter of fact, Las Casas' mission did not dawn upon him until he had enjoyed a very considerable practical experience in the industrial affairs of the New World. His connection with this latter did not begin with his own generation.
According to Las Casas, the native Cubans had a vague tradition of the formation of the earth, and of all created things; of the deluge, of the ark, the raven, and the dove. They knew the tradition of Noah also, according to the same high authority, but for our own part we do not believe that the aborigines had any knowledge of this Biblical story.
If the dictum of Las Casas, that the island at the century's beginning was "as populous as a beehive and as lovely as an orchard," was but a rhetorical figure, there is no gainsaying the fact that at the time of Ponce's landing it was thickly peopled, not only that part occupied by the Spaniards but the whole island, with a comparatively innocent, simple, and peaceably disposed native race.
Las Casas was not informed of the matter, and as no one had any instructions with regard to these colonists, they were sent out with no supplies for their necessities.
This precious manuscript was long in the possession of Columbus's friend Bartolome de las Casas, who borrowed it because he was writing a history of Columbus and wished to get all the information, possible in the navigator's own words. Las Casas was a monk who spent his life in befriending the Indians. When quite old, he ceased journeying to the New World and stayed at home writing history.
This unhappy woman, her hands tied behind her back with strong stalks of mavacure, was then dragged to the mission of Javita. She was there thrown into one of the caravanserais, called las Casas del Rey. It was the rainy season, and the night was profoundly dark.
Piedro Arias, for instance, spent six years at Castilla-du-Oro, at a cost to the Government of fifty-four thousand ducats, during which time he divided a million's worth of gold with his officers, at the expense of thousands of natives, whose lives were the flux of the metallic ore, while he paid only three thousand pesos for the king's fifth. Llorente: Oeuvres de Las Casas, Tom.
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