Arrival in Hispaniola
Born in Seville, Las Casas and his father, Pedro de las Casas, emigrated to the Caribbean in 1502. The elder Las Casas was a merchant who decided to accompany Nicolas de Ovando on an expedition to Hispaniola. This island was inhabited by a native population known as the Tainos. Relations between the Spanish and the Tainos had been tumultuous from the beginning. After crashing the Santa Maria onto a reef near Hispaniola, Columbus was forced to assemble a ramshackle fortification to shelter his sailors throughout the winter. The Santa Maria was disassembled and her timber was used to build the settlement know as La Navidad. Columbus made a brief return to Europe to announce his discoveries and allow his crew to recover; however, on returning to Hispaniola, he found La Navidad is ashes and his sailors killed. The Tainos later explained that the Spanish inhabitants of La Navidad had been cruel to them, and they were forced to retaliate. This tempestuous relationship was not destined to go away, but to proliferate across the Caribbean, eventually into mainland America, setting precedent for a strained relationship between invader and invaded. The familiar conflict of “cowboys and Indians” can trace its continental origins all the way back to north shore of Hispaniola.