LAS CASAS’ INDORSEMENT ON THE MANUSCRIPT OF HIS “HISTORIA”.
[This is slightly reduced from the fac-simile given in vol. iii. of the 1875 (Madrid) edition of the Historia.—Ed.]
The most labored of Las Casas’ books was his Historia de las Indias,—the original manuscript of which is still preserved, according to Helps, in the library of the Academy of History at Madrid.[1041] Las Casas began this work while in his convent in 1527,[1042] and seems to have worked upon it, without finishing it, up to 1561. It has all the fervor and vigor of his nature; and so far as it is the result of his own observation, its character is unimpeachable. It is in large part, as Helps has remarked, autobiographic; but it does not bring the story down later than 1520. Its style is characteristically rambling and awkward, and more or less confused with extraneous learning, the result of his convent studies, and interjected with his usual bursts of a somewhat tiresome indignation. Outside of his own knowledge he had large resources in documents, of which we have no present knowledge. He seems to have had a prescience of the feelings in his countrymen which would long keep the manuscript from the printing-office, for he left instructions at his death that no one should use it for forty years. The injunction did not prevent Herrera having access to it; and when this latter historian published his book in 1601, the world got a large part of Las Casas’ work,—much of it copied by Herrera verbatim,—but extracted in such a way that Las Casas could have none of his proper effect in ameliorating the condition of the Indians and exposing the cruelty of their oppression. In this way Las Casas remained too long eclipsed, as Irving says, by his copyist. Notwithstanding the publication of the book was prohibited, various manuscript copies got abroad, and every reputable historian of the Spanish rule has made use of Las Casas’ labors.[1043] Finally, the Royal Academy of History at Madrid undertook the revision of the manuscript; but that body was deterred from putting their revision on the press by the sentiments, which Spanish scholars had always felt, adverse to making public so intense an arraignment of their countrymen.[1044] At last, however, in 1875-1876, the Academy finally printed it in five volumes.[1045] The Historia was of course not included, nor were two of the tracts of the issues of 1552 (nos. 4 and 8) embraced, in the edition of Las Casas’ Obras which Llorente issued in Paris in 1822 in the original Spanish, and also in the same year in a French translation, Œuvres de Las Casas.[1046] This work is dedicated “Au modèle des virtues héréditaires, A. M. le Comte de las Casas.” Sufficient recognition has been made in the preceding narrative of this work of Llorente. As a Spaniard by birth, and a scholar well read in the historical literature of his own country, as one trained and exercised in the priestly office, though he had become more or less of a heretic, and as a most ardent admirer of the virtues and the heroic services of the great Apostle to the Indians, he had the attainments, qualifications, and motives for discharging with ability and fidelity the biographical and editorial task which he undertook. It is evident from his pages that he devoted conscientious labor in investigation, and a purpose of strict impartiality to its discharge. He is not an undiscriminating eulogist of Las Casas, but he penetrates with a true sympathetic admiration to the noble unselfishness and the sublime constancy of this sole champion of righteousness against powerful forces of iniquity.
The number of versions of all or of part of the series of the 1552 tracts into other languages strikingly indicates the interest which they created and the effect which they produced throughout Europe. None of the nations showed more eagerness to make public these accusations against the Spaniards by one of their own number, than the Flemings and Dutch. The earliest of all the translations, and one of the rarest of these publications, is the version of the first tract, with parts of others, which appeared in the dialect of Brabant, in 1578,—the precursor of a long series of such testimonies, used to incite the Netherlanders against the Spanish rule.[1047] The French came next with their Tyrannies et cruautéz des Espagnols, published at Antwerp in 1579, in which the translator, Jacques de Miggrode, softened the horrors of the story with a due regard for his Spanish neighbors.[1048] A somewhat bolder venture was a new version, not from the originals, but from the Dutch translation, and set out with all the horrors of De Bry’s seventeen engravings, which was supplied to the French market with an Amsterdam imprint in 1620. It is a distorted patchwork of parts of the three of the 1552 tracts. In a brief preface, the translator says that the part relating to the Indies is derived from the original, printed at Seville by Sebastian Trugillo in 1552, the writer “being Las Casas, who seems to be a holy man and a Catholic.” There were still other French versions, printed both in France and in Holland. The earliest English translation is a version signed by M. M. S., entitled The Spanish Colonie, or Briefe Chronicle of the Acts and Gestes of the Spaniardes in the West Indies, called the Newe Worlde, for the Space of XL. Yeeres, issued in London in 1583.[1049] The best-known of the English versions is The Tears of the Indians, “made English by J. P.,” and printed in London in 1656.[1050] “J. P.” is John Phillips, a nephew of John Milton. His little book, which contains a terse translation of Las Casas’s “Cruelty,” etc., without his controversy with Sepulveda, is dedicated to Oliver Cromwell. It is prefaced by a glowing appeal “To all true Englishmen,” which rehearses the proud position they hold in history for religion, liberty, and human rights, and denounces the Spaniards as “a Proud, Deceitful, Cruel, and Treacherous Nation, whose chiefest Aim hath been the Conquest of this Land,” etc., closing with a call upon them to aid the Protector in the threatened contest for the West Indies.
While Phillips places the number of the slaughtered Indians at twenty millions, these are reckoned at forty millions by the editor of another English version, based upon the French Tyrannies et cruautéz, which was printed at London, in 1699, as A Relation of the First Voyages and Discoveries made by the Spaniards in America.[1051] The earliest German edition appeared, in 1597, as Newe Welt: warhafftige Anzeigung der Hispanier grewlichen ... Tyranney.[1052] The Latin edition appeared at Frankfort, in 1598, as Narratio regionum Indicarvm per Hispanos qvosdam deuastatarum verissima.[1053] This Latin translation has a brief introduction, mainly a quotation from Lipsius, commenting on these atrocities. The version is spirited and faithful, covering the narrative of Las Casas and his discussion with Sepulveda. The engravings by De Bry are ghastly and revolting, and present all too faithfully the shocking enormities related in the text. It is a fearful parody of deception and truth which introduces a hooded friar as holding a crucifix before the eyes of one under torment by fire or mutilation. We can scarcely regret that the circumstances under which the indiscriminate slaughter was waged but rarely allowed of this desecration of a sacred symbol. The artist has overdrawn his subjects in delineating heaps of richly wrought and chased vessels as brought by the hounded victims to appease their tormentors.
To close this list of translations, it is only necessary to refer to the sundry ways in which Las Casas was helped to create an influence in Italy, the Italian text in these publications usually accompanying the Spanish.[1054]
