We are reaching the end of what we may call the “essential” life of Las Casas that earned him – without a doubt – the title of iconic figure of his generation. He lived to 1566 and his life from the end of the Great Debate of 1550 to then is filled – as his life always seemed “filled” – with many other activities. But they were all defined, more or less, by what he had done or lived to then in defense of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Let's briefly examine his activities to do justice to an immensely full life, and, as you will see, still then intensely engaged to make things right in his world even as he faced death.

He wrote with a passion, everywhere he went, it sometimes seemed, especially in the Indies, with a small army of followers carrying his papers and documents across the mountains and deserts of the viceroyalty of New Spain. His principal work, no doubt, was his Brief History of the Destruction of Indies. His multivolume History of the Indies, composed as he traveled and worked in the Indies and Spain, was a grand expression of the overall history of the region in the age of the Conquest. These writings are covered below in Writings and Biographies: “The Multiple Personalities of Bartolomé de las Casas, or a Tour of His Biographies and Biographers.”

Perhaps the earliest notice of Las Casas by scholars other than those from Spain and the colonies of the New World was with respect to his early recommendation to import some African slaves from Spain to relieve the killing demands on the Taíno Indians of Hispaniola. Las Casas has been pilloried ever since by his critics for advocating one form of slavery to relieve another.