Bartolomé de las Casas was a contemporary of Christopher Columbus and the first priest to be ordained in the Americas. Initially a slaveowner, de las Casas eventually became a vehement critic of the Spanish conquerors and tireless champion of indigenous people. Concerning relations between Europeans and Native Americans, he observed, “One fact in all this is widely known and beyond dispute, for even the tyrannical murderers themselves acknowledge the truth of it: the indigenous peoples never did the Europeans any harm whatever; on the contrary, they believed them to have descended from the heavens, at least until they or their fellow citizens had tasted, at the hands of these oppressors, a diet of robbery, murder, violence, and all other manner of trials and tribulations.”
