The main goal of divine Providence in [allowing] the discovery of these tribes and lands . . . is . . . the conversion and well-being of souls, and to this goal everything temporal must necessarily be subordinated and directed.

Island of Hispaniola once so populous (having a population that I estimated to be more than three million), has now a population of barely two hundred persons.

The main goal of divine Providence in [allowing] the discovery of these tribes and lands . . . is . . . the conversion and well-being of souls, and to this goal everything temporal must necessarily be subordinated and directed.

The reason the Christians have murdered on such a vast scale and killed anyone and everyone in their way is purely and simply greed.

Later, a large band of Christians mounted an attack on this native lord, butchering him along with vast numbers of his people and taking all the survivors into slavery, where they duly perished, so that today not a trace remains of what was previously a community with dominion over an area of some thirty leagues.

What we committed in the Indies stands out among the most unpardonable offenses ever committed against God and mankind and this trade [in Indian slaves] as one of the most unjust, evil, and cruel among them.

I write ... in order to help ensure that the teeming millions in the New World, for whose sins Christ gave His life, do not continue to die in ignorance, but rather are brought to knowledge of God and thereby saved.