Writing to Philip II of Spain to alert him of the terrible...

Writing to Philip II of Spain to alert him of the terrible atrocities he had witnessed in Cuba and other Spanish colonies in  the  New  World,  the  Dominican  friar  Bartolomé  de  Las  Casas  (1484-1576) describes:excesses which, if no move is made to stop them, will be committed time and again, and which (given that the indigenous peoples of the region are naturally so gentle, so peace-loving, so humble and so docile) are of themselves iniquitous, tyrannical, contrary to natural, canon, and civil law, and are deemed wicked and are condemned and proscribed by all such legal codes. (Griffin 2004: 6)