LAS CASES, BAIrroLomil DE, Bishop of Chiapa, in Mexico, surnamed the Apostle of The Indians, a celebrated evangelist and philanthropist, was of French descent, and was b. in Seville in 1474. He studied at Salamanca. In 1502 he accompanied Don Nicolas Ovando, who was sent out as governor, to St. Domingo. Eight years after his arrival there, he was ordained to the priesthood, and was subsequently appointed to a charge in Cuba. Here he began to signalize himself by his exertions in fiwor of the oppressed Indians. To oppose the law which divided them amongst the conquerors, he went to Spain, where. he prevailed on Cardinal Ximenes to send a commission of inquiry to the West Indies; but the proceedings of the commission by no means satisfying his zeal, he revisited Spain, to procure the adoption of stronger measures for the pro tection of the natives. Finally, to prevent the entire extirpation of the native race by the toils to which they were subjected, he proposed that the colonists should be com Tidied to employ negro slaves in the more severe labors of the mines and sugar planta tions; and the proposal was adopted: Las Cases has, on this account, been represented its the author of the slave-trade, although it has been proved to have existed long before this proposal was made. Las Ctsas afterwards attempted to carry out Castilian peas
suits as colonists to the West Indies, with the view of giving more complete effect to his schemes on behalf of the Indians; but failing in this, he retired to a Dominican convent in Hispaniola, He again visited Spain in 1539 out of benevolent regard to the native inhabitants of the West Indies, and published his Brevixsima Relation de la Destruccion •1e las Indicts, which was soon translated into the other languages of Europe. The rich of Cuzco was offered to him, but he preferred the poor one of Chiapa, in a wild and almost unexplored region. The colonists received him with no friendly feel lings, and as he went the length of refusing the sacraments to those who disregarded the new laws in favor of the Indians, he drew upon himself not-only the resentment of the but the disapprobation of the church, so that he was compelled to return to "Spain, where he ended his life in a convent in Madrid,- July, 1566, at the age •f 92. In the course of his ardent career, lie crossed the Atlantic sixteen times. A col lection of his works appeared in his lifetime (Seville, 1552), but his most important work was published after his death, the Historia General de las Indies.