Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas

• Las Casas, Bartolomé de: a very short biographic overview from Encyclopaedia.com.

• Bartolomé de Las Casas, "Of the Island of Hispaniola" (1542) - Extract: “ God has created all these numberless people to be quite the simplest, without malice or duplicity, most obedient, most faithful to their natural Lords, and to the Christians, whom they serve; the most humble, most patient, most peaceful and calm, without strife nor tumults; not wrangling, nor querulous, as free from uproar, hate and desire of revenge as any in the world. . . . Among these gentle sheep, gifted by their Maker with the above qualities, the Spaniards entered as soon as soon as they knew them, like wolves, tiger and lions which had been starving for many days, and since forty years they have done nothing else; nor do they afflict, torment, and destroy them with strange and new, and divers kinds of cruelty, never before seen, nor heard of, nor read of….”

• Bartolome De Las Casas (1484-1566): “…Las Casas came to the Indies early, he knew Columbus and was the editor of the Admiral's journal. He knew conditions in the Americas first hand….”

• Bartolome de las Casas Defends the Rights of Native Peoples (1484-1566): “A historian, a theologian, Bartolome de Las Casas spent a large portion of his life fighting for the rights of native peoples of the New World….”

• Bartolome de Las Casas, Missionary, Priest, Defender of the Oppressed, 17 July 1566: “In 1502 he went to Cuba, and for his military services there was given an Encomienda, an estate that included the services of the Indians living on it. In about 1513 he was ordained priest (probably the first ordination in the Americas), and in 1514 he renounced all claim on his Indian serfs.”

• Fray Bartolomé de las Casas (1484-1566): Texts in Spanish

• The Tale of Bartolome de las Casas, by Bob Corbett, 19 June, 1995: “…Las Casas did not campaign against slavery itself. His primary battle was to encourage, and demand, the practice of conversion and control of the Amerindians by peaceful means, not violence, war and cruelty. He had uncanny success in persuading the Kings of Spain, but their humanizing laws were constantly ignored in the colonies….”

• Atrocities of the Spanish Conquistadors in the West Indies, c. 1513: "This account is from Bartolome de Las Casas. He was a missionary and conquistador. He took part in the conquest of Cuba…."

• Bartolomé de Las Casas and his Defence of the Indians: from the Tairona Heritage Studies Center

Father Raymond Breton

• Father Raymond Breton: a biographic entry from The Catholic Encyclopaedia

• Carib-Spanish Dictionary, based on the original by Father Breton: a sample is shown at this site; click on their link to download the entire file to your hard drive. 

• “El caribe insular del siglo XVII”, Tratado sobre la lengua y la cultura de los Callínago: Traducción al español del Dictionnaire caraïbe-français (1665) de Raymond Breton Duna Troiani (CELIA-CNRS) 

Colonial Missions

• The Missions in Trinidad: A detailed historical overview of the establishment and operation of Amerindian missions by the Catholic Church throughout Trinidad’s colonial history, prepared by Paria Publishing Company.

• The History of the Massacre of Two Jesuit Missionaries in the Island of St. Vincent, 24th January, 1654. By D. Gualbert van der Plas, O.S.B., D.D.

Contemporary Missions

• Team Expansion Online--Update from Venezuela, by Chris and Eric Barry: “Our Chacaito congregation supports a missionary to the Warao Indian tribe with 10 percent of our offerings….We also took a 2-hour drive and a 30-minute hike into the Venezuelan interior to visit the indigenous Warao Indian tribe. It was saddening. The men were laid out drunk on the floors of their grass huts. There are no walls on the grass huts, the only furniture are hammocks and perhaps a table made with sticks. The men had been drinking going on 30 days straight. They sell tropical birds to people in Carupano and use the cash to buy liquor. They were oblivious to us - sprawled out in their own urine. The women were cooking in a nearby hut….” 

• Wycliffe Bible Translators and the Carib Translation Project: - Extract: "The Carib language is spoken by 150,000 people living in Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, and Nicaragua. Although they received the translated New Testament some years back, it has only been recently that the number of Carib Christians has taken off. The small church has burgeoned, and Christians are calling for the entire translated Bible, literacy classes, reading materials, and a Carib hymnbook!…"