During this final stage of his life; while still very active at court he continued adding to his impressive list of written works, an essential part of his advocacy on behalf of the Indians. [1]  He resumed labor on his monumental Historia de las Indias, something he worked on until the end of his life; he also published in 1552 what is perhaps the most widely read and known of his works, the Brevíssma Relación de la Destruición de las Indias.[2]  Enjoying remarkable freedom to criticize the crown and its policies, even though alienated from and the object of hostility of many his countrymen, he was never silenced.[3]  There were some Spaniards in America who had wanted him retired to a monastery, and some had even expressed regret that Las Casas had not been lost by shipwreck on his way to Chiapa.  Even so, the crown continued to hear his advice, and he enjoyed a reputation for honesty and as one having influence at Court.[4]

His dedication, experience and knowledge of the New World, and his contacts were unparalleled.  And at the age of eighty he would need them all in the last great battle of his career against the Peruvian Indian holders who wanted to buy Indians in perpetuity from the crown for eight million gold ducats.  The debt-ridden Spanish crown of Philip II saw the offer as too good to refuse. Las Casas and other pro-Indian comrades successfully countered that the Indian holders did not have the money and any offer they made would be countered with a better one.[5]  Philip II, believing there were still hidden Inca treasures to be found to pay the counter offer agreed to the scheme.  Yet, the whole affair of the offer and counter-offer came to nothing because the royal commission sent to investigate ended-up in such a state of corruption and fraud that the king halted it.[6]

Inferring Las Casas’ thinking about this plan from his last two great written works, Los Tesoros del Perú and Tratado de las Doce Dudas, one is able to understand the suppositions of his position. He begins this writing by demonstrating that the Inca is the true owner of the “treasures” in the tombs of the past Incas, and he ends with proposing free independent Indian kingdoms under their native rulers, linked into a commonwealth attached to the Spanish Crown.[7]  Once again he is focused on his life’s effort, protecting the rights of the indigenous, the common thread of his diverse writings.

Fighting for the indigenous to the very end of his long and fruitful life, he died in Madrid at the Dominican convent of Nuestra Señora de Atocha, at the age of eighty-two, in July of 1566.  Born at the end of the fifteenth century he lived two-thirds of the sixteenth. The Spain on which he closed his aged eyes was a different country from that on which he had first opened them; the colonial development in America, the Reformation in Germany, the rise of England – all these and a hundred events of minor but far-reaching importance had changed the face of the world.[8]  Bartolomé de las Casas had outlived his contemporaries; he had enjoyed the confidence and respect of sovereigns: Ferdinand of Aragon, Charles V and Philip II, all of whom received his fearless admonitions.  He addressed bishops, cardinals and popes, meeting personally with Julius II early in his life, corresponding with others, most notable Paul III,  (who promulgated the famous Sublimus Deus).   Near the very end of his life, he sent a letter to the new Pope Pius V, begging him to condemn conquest as a means of conversion.   Finally, in his last words, he professed that he had kept faith, during fifty years of untiring labor, with the charge that God had laid upon him to plead for the restoration of the Indians to their original lands, liberty and freedom.[9]

Notes