1The Americas were discovered in 1492, and the first Christian settlements established by the Spanish the following year. It is accordingly forty-nine years now since Spaniards began arriving in numbers in this part of the world.
2They came to these lands, which were teeming with people — the most densely populated on earth — as though they were a flock of sheep newly arrived from the fold.
3God made all the peoples of this area, many and varied as they are, as open and as innocent as can be imagined. The simplest people in the world — unassuming, long-suffering, unassertive, and submissive — they are without malice or guile.
4They are also among the poorest people on the face of the earth; they own next to nothing and have no urge to acquire material possessions. As a result, they are neither combative nor quarrelsome.
5Yet into this sheepfold, into this land of meek outcasts, there came some Spaniards who immediately behaved like ravening wild beasts, wolves, tigers, or lions that had been starved for many days.
6And Spaniards have behaved in no other way during the past forty years, down to the present time, for they are still acting like ravening beasts, killing, terrorizing, afflicting, torturing, and destroying the native peoples.
7The reason the Christians have murdered on such a vast scale and killed anyone and everyone in their way is purely and simply greed.
8Their insatiable greed and overweening ambition know no bounds; the land is rich and fertile, and the people are humble, patient, and easily subjugated.
9I implore Your Majesty to consider that these people were given by God and by nature the same freedom as any other nation or people, and are not to be enslaved under any pretext whatever.
10These are rational beings, made in the image and likeness of God, redeemed by the blood of Christ, and called to eternal salvation. They deserve justice, and they deserve it now.
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