According to de las Casa the Spanish conquistadors would dig large pits and fill them with sharp stakes. Then pregnant and confined women, children, old men, as many as they could capture, were thrown into the pits, and left there, often impaled on the stakes, until the pits were filled and everyone had died. In 1552, the Dominican friar Bartolome de las Casas published A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, an account of atrocities committed by landowners and officials during the colonization of New Spain, particularly in Hispaniola. His description of Spanish savagery was used by writers of Spain's rivals as a convenient basis for attacks on Spain which would later be referred to as The Black Legend. Las Casas was one of the first advocates for the indigenous people. Engravings appeared in Narratio regionum Indicarum per Hispanos quosdam deuastatarum verissima by Theodore de Bry in 1598. |