columbus day

the treatment of the indians at the hands of the spanish conquistadors, much of it done in "the name of god," is one of the great horrors of history --- i don't think the english and french ever came close to the depravity of sixteenth-century spanish america --- bartolomé de las casas (1474-1566), a dominican friar, was a voice in the wilderness with the book he published in 1552:

A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies Or, a faithful NARRATIVE OF THE Horrid and Unexampled Massacres, Butcheries, and all manner of Cruelties, that Hell and Malice could invent, committed by the Popish Spanish Party on the inhabitants of West-India, TOGETHER With the Devastations of several Kingdoms in America by Fire and Sword, for the space of Forty and Two Years, from the time of its first Discovery by them.