Page:About Mexico - Past and Present.djvu/259

Rh Of the priests, none were more faithful friends to the natives than was the philanthropist Las Casas. While a young man residing in Cuba his attention had been called to their wrongs. His Dominican confessor had decided that his sins could not be forgiven while he owned Indians. With his eyes thus opened, Las Casas began to preach against his brother-slaveholders. He finally saw it to be his duty to go to Spain to plead the cause of the Indians with the king himself. It seems that while Charles V. was yet a boy his heart had been touched by the stories related to him by Las Casas, who had been to America with Columbus in 1494. Las Casas determined to use his influence with the king in behalf of the oppressed people of Cuba and other islands, who were melting away.

Las Casas became a priest in order to preach the gospel to the Indians and humanity to their oppressors. He had a friend in Cuba to whom he applied for money to enable him to carry out this noble aim. To his surprise, he found that the eyes of his friend, Reuteria, had also been opened, and that he was preparing at that very time to go to Spain on the same errand. After conferring together, however, it was decided that, since they were both so poor, Reuteria should mortgage his farm and Las Casas should sell his horse, and that all they both could raise should be spent by the latter in a trip to Spain. While there he gained new light on the avarice and tyranny of the Spanish colonists. The facts were so disheartening that he was afraid to speak all his mind to the all-powerful Cardinal Ximenes, with whom he consulted about the wrongs of the Indians. But one day he asked,

"With what justice can these things be done, whether the Indians are free or not?"