This intermediary, of course, was Bartolomé de las Casas, so widely known as the Apostle of the Indies. There are many who fling themselves heart and soul into a cause of which they know nothing, and who, from the sheer impetus of good-hearted ignorance, cause infinite mischief. The case of Las Casas was different. 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. He was the son of a shipmate of Columbus, who had sailed with the great explorer in his first voyage, and who had accompanied Ovando when that knight sailed out from Spain to take up his Governorship of the Indies.
It was in Hispaniola, it appears, that Las Casas was ordained priest. In the first place he lived the ordinary life of the Spanish settler in the island. In common with everyone else, he accepted a repartimiento—that is to say, a supply of Indian labourers—and was undoubtedly on the road to riches when, little by little, the inhumanity of slave-owning became clear to him. To one of his enthusiastic temperament no half measures were possible. He gave up his Indians forthwith, allowed his estate to revert to Nature, and began his strenuous campaign, that had as its object the freedom of the native races.
By 1517 he had succeeded in attracting a wide attention to his efforts. Journeying to Spain, he persisted in his cause, and gave the high authorities of that country little peace until they lent an ear to the grievances of his dusky protégés. Las Casas was endowed to an unusual extent with both eloquence and fervour, and both these attributes he employed to the utmost of his powers in the service of the American aborigines. Thus he painted the sufferings and the terrible mortality of these unfortunate people with a fire and a force that left very few unmoved. Nevertheless, as was only to be expected, he met with considerable opposition from various quarters where the financial interests dependent on the New World outweighed all other considerations. In the end, rendered desperate by this opposition and by the active hostility which he encountered in these quarters, he determined to lead the way by the foundation of a model colony of his own in South America.
He obtained the cordial sanction of the Spanish King to this end. Nevertheless, when put into practice, the scheme failed utterly. The reasons for this were to be sought for in the poorness of the soil chosen and in the intrigues of the white settlers rather than in any fundamental fault of the plan itself. For all that, its failure came as a severe blow to Las Casas. After experiences such as these, the majority of men would probably have given up the attempt in despair. Las Casas, it is true, sought the refuge of a monastery for a while in order to recover his health and spirits, which had suffered from the shock. Once again in possession of these, he returned to the field, and, undaunted, continued to carry on his work.
This campaign of Las Casas is famous for a curious anomaly. That his work of mercy should have resulted in the introduction into the Continent of a greater number of dusky labourers than before appears on the face of it paradoxical. Yet so it was. For Las Casas, determined that the mortality among the Indians should cease, advocated the importation of African slaves into Central and South America. His idea was that the labours spread over so many more thousands of human bodies would prove by comparison bearable, and would thus end in fewer fatalities. It is certain enough that this introduction of the sturdy negro tended considerably to this end, and that many thousands of lives were prolonged, if nothing more, by this plan. For all that, it must be admitted that the venture was a daring one to emanate from the mind of a preacher who was fighting against the slave trade. But Las Casas, urged by his own experience, took a broad view, and none even of his contemporaries were able for one moment to impugn his motives.
Las Casas was as much a product of the period and place as were the wild and daring conquistadores themselves. The new Continent undoubtedly exerted a curious influence over its visitors from the Old World. It seemed to possess the knack of bringing out the virtues as well as the defects with an amazing and frequently disconcerting prodigality. Several of Las Casas' biographers have wondered at the reason why the Apostle of the Indies was never made a saint. Certainly hundreds of lesser heads have been kept warm by a halo which has never graced that of Las Casas.