Father Luis Cancer and Father Ladrada were both with Las Casas in Spain. One of the first things Las Casas did, with the approval of the Prince, was to organize a missionary expedition to Florida, with Father Luis Cancer at the head of it. There this faithful friend and devoted missionary soon after met his death at the hands of the Indians.

While in Chiapa the Bishop had written a little book of instructions to his clergy. Formal objection to its teachings was laid before the Council of the Indies, and its author was summoned to come before that body and explain himself. This he did to their entire satisfaction, though not to that of his enemies, who engaged the most famous theologian and lawyer in Spain, Juan Gines Sepulveda, to dispute the position of Las Casas and answer his arguments. Sepulveda had written a treatise upholding the conquest of the New World by war. The Council of the Indies would not allow this book to be published, but Las Casas had asked them to allow it to be submitted to the universities of Salamanca and Alcala for their opinion. This opinion proved to be against it.

Las Casas now undertook to answer Sepulveda’s arguments and defend the freedom of his Indians. The war of words waxed fast and furious, and the controversy attracted so much attention that the Emperor ordered the India Council to assemble at Valladolid, to decide whether a war of conquest might justly be carried on against the Indians. The Emperor himself presided, and Las Casas and Sepulveda argued the question before them all. It appears to have been a drawn battle; but at length the Council decided in favor of Sepulveda. The Emperor and the officials of the government, however, must have been of another opinion, for Sepulveda’s book was suppressed. At the time of this controversy Las Casas was seventy-six years old.

Soon after this Las Casas resigned his bishopric and the Emperor granted him a pension. He made his home in the Dominican college of St. Gregory, at Valladolid, where his old friend Father Ladrada was with him.

And now, after having labored for the Indians for so many years, crossing and recrossing the ocean, traveling over hundreds of miles of wild country on foot, like St. Paul, “in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by his own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea,” he might be seen, day after day and night after night, sitting at his desk, writing letters, memorials, and pamphlets in defense of his beloved Indians. He kept up a constant correspondence with all parts of the New World, and when he heard of any new outrage on the part of the Spaniards against the natives, he at once brought it to the attention of Prince Philip, now regent of the kingdom.

At the end of the year 1551 a number of Dominicans and Franciscans having been induced through his appeals to go out to the Indies, Las Casas went to Seville to see them off. For some reason they were delayed there for ten months, and during that time he was kept busy editing a number of his works, keeping two printing-presses going all the time.

Las Casas must have had a wonderful constitution. His hard life in a tropical country had neither weakened his body nor impaired his mind. All his time from the day of his return to Spain to the time of his death was spent in defense of the Indians; and through his untiring efforts their condition was much improved in Mexico and elsewhere.

Laws had already been passed which allowed the encomiendas, as the grants of land and Indians in Spanish America were called, to be held in a family only during two lifetimes. They then reverted to the crown. Thus the Indians were being gradually emancipated. There were also officers appointed to protect the interests of the crown in the reversion, so that it was no longer possible to repeat the horrors of Hispaniola.

When Las Casas heard that the proposal had been made to allow the holders of encomiendas to get possession of them in perpetuity, he went at once to the King and succeeded in preventing it. As Fiske says:

“It is worth remembering that pretty much the only praiseworthy
thing Philip ever did was done under Las Casas’ influence.”

The activity of Las Casas was marvelous. His longest work was his “History of the Indies.” At the age of ninety he wrote a “Memorial on Peru,” said to be one of his best, and two years later, in 1566, he went to Madrid to speak in person for the Indians of Guatemala. He had heard through the Dominicans that that province had been deprived of its governing body, so that the Indians had no chance of justice, having to go to Mexico if they wished to make any appeal. He was successful in this mission, and the Audiencia was restored to Guatemala.

This was the last work of Las Casas. In July of that year, while still in Madrid, he was taken ill and died after a short illness, at the age of ninety-two.

As he lay dying, his brethren, the Dominicans, kneeling about the bed and reciting the prayers for the dying, he begged them to persevere in their defense of the Indians, and asked them to join him in prayer that he might be forgiven any remissness on his part in the fulfillment of his mission. He was beginning to tell them how he came to enter upon this work when his spirit departed.

Thousands of people attended the funeral of Las Casas. He was buried in Madrid, in the convent chapel of “Our Lady of Atocha.”

In early American history there is no one who stands on a level with this remarkable man. Many bitter enemies he had, it is true; such a man, fearless, outspoken, able, never to be silenced when he was convinced of the righteousness of his cause, was bound to have. Never during the many years of his long life, did the Indians lack a friend to plead in their behalf. Amid the cupidity, cruelty, and injustice of the Spaniards in the New World his character shines like a star in the darkness of night. We can’t do better in closing than to quote the words in which Fiske speaks of him:

“In contemplating such a life as that of Las Casas, all words of eulogy seem weak and frivolous. The historian can only bow in reverent awe before a figure which is, in some respects, the most beautiful and sublime in the annals of Christianity since the Apostolic age. When now and then in the course of the centuries God’s providence brings such a life into the world, the memory of it must be cherished by mankind as one of its most precious and sacred possessions. For the thoughts, the words, the deeds, of such a man there is no death. The sphere of their influence goes on widening forever. They bud, they blossom, they bear fruit, from age to age.”