"A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies" is an account written by the Spanish Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas in 1542 (published in 1552) about the mistreatment of and atrocities committed against the indigenous peoples of the Americas in colonial times and sent to then Prince Philip II of Spain.
Bartolomé de las Casas (1484 – 1566) was a 16th-century Spanish colonist who acted as a historian and social reformer before becoming a Dominican friar. He was appointed as the first resident Bishop of Chiapas, and the first officially appointed "Protector of the Indians".
His extensive writings, the most famous being "A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies" and "Historia de Las Indias", chronicle the first decades of colonization of the West Indies. He described the atrocities committed by the colonizers against the indigenous peoples.