Bartolomé de Las Casas was a Spanish Dominican friar, historian, and one of the earliest and most forceful critics of colonial violence in the Americas. Best known for A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, he documented the brutality inflicted on Indigenous communities and argued—radically for his time—that Native peoples possessed full humanity, reason, and rights.
If you are drawn to Las Casas for his moral urgency, eyewitness testimony, colonial-era history, and defense of oppressed peoples, the following authors offer rich companion reading. Some share his sympathy for Indigenous societies, others preserve invaluable records of Native cultures, and a few present the opposing arguments that shaped the debates of the 16th century.
Antonio de Montesinos was a Dominican friar whose 1511 sermon on Hispaniola became one of the most famous denunciations of Spanish cruelty in the early colonial world. Speaking directly to settlers, he condemned their exploitation of Indigenous people and asked by what right they held them in such misery.
Although he is remembered more for preaching than for a large written body of work, Montesinos is essential reading alongside Las Casas because his moral challenge helped awaken Las Casas’s own conscience. If you admire Las Casas’s fearless condemnation of empire, Montesinos represents the earlier prophetic voice that made such resistance possible.
Toribio de Benavente, better known as Motolinia, was a Franciscan missionary and chronicler of early colonial Mexico. His writings pay close attention to Indigenous customs, religious life, daily labor, and the immense social changes brought by Spanish rule.
In Historia de los Indios de la Nueva España, he records both ethnographic detail and missionary concerns, offering a vivid picture of New Spain in transition. Readers interested in Las Casas’s historical period will find Motolinia valuable for his ground-level observations, even though his outlook often differs from Las Casas’s more confrontational criticism of colonial abuses.
Bernardino de Sahagún was a Franciscan friar and pioneering ethnographer whose work remains one of the most important sources on pre-Columbian and early colonial Nahua life. Rather than relying only on European interpretation, he collaborated with Indigenous scholars, scribes, and informants to preserve language, customs, beliefs, and history.
His monumental Florentine Codex—also known as General History of the Things of New Spain—is unmatched in scope and detail. If Las Casas appeals to you for his concern with Indigenous humanity, Sahagún offers something equally valuable: a deeply documented record of Indigenous knowledge itself.
Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda was a Spanish humanist and political thinker whose arguments stood in direct opposition to Las Casas’s defense of Indigenous rights. Drawing on Aristotelian ideas and imperial logic, he claimed that war and domination could be justified against peoples he considered "inferior."
His best-known text, Democrates Secundus, or Concerning the Just Causes of the War Against the Indians, is deeply controversial but historically indispensable. Reading Sepúlveda alongside Las Casas reveals the intellectual battle at the heart of the Spanish Empire: whether conquest could ever be moral, lawful, or Christian.
Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca was an explorer whose extraordinary survival journey across what is now the southern United States and northern Mexico transformed him from imperial adventurer into a more reflective observer of Indigenous life. Unlike many conquest narratives, his account records dependence, vulnerability, and cultural encounter rather than simple domination.
In La Relación, he writes with immediacy about captivity, travel, healing practices, and relationships with Native communities. Readers who appreciate Las Casas’s growing moral awareness will likely respond to Cabeza de Vaca’s unusual empathy and the way firsthand experience unsettles colonial assumptions.
Garcilaso de la Vega, known as El Inca, was a mestizo historian whose writing uniquely bridges Spanish and Indigenous worlds. The son of a Spanish conquistador and an Inca noblewoman, he wrote with both personal investment and literary elegance about the civilization of his maternal ancestors.
His masterpiece, Comentarios Reales de los Incas, offers a learned and often affectionate account of Inca history, governance, customs, and memory. Like Las Casas, Garcilaso pushes back against dismissive European portrayals of Native peoples, but he does so through cultural reconstruction and historical dignity rather than polemical protest.
Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala was an Indigenous Andean writer and artist whose Nueva crónica y buen gobierno is one of the most powerful colonial-era indictments of Spanish misrule. Addressed to the king of Spain, the work combines prose, testimony, history, and hundreds of illustrations to expose exploitation, corruption, and the suffering of Indigenous communities.
If Las Casas moves you because he turns moral outrage into historical witness, Guaman Poma offers a similarly urgent voice from within the colonized world itself. His work is especially compelling for readers who want Indigenous critique, not only European advocacy.
Francisco de Vitoria was a theologian and legal philosopher whose writings helped shape early debates about international law, sovereignty, and the rights of non-European peoples. He did not reject empire outright, but he challenged simplistic claims that Spain had unlimited authority over the peoples of the Americas.
In Relectio de Indis, Vitoria examines whether Indigenous communities possessed legitimate political order, property rights, and legal standing. Readers interested in the intellectual and legal dimensions of Las Casas’s concerns will find Vitoria an essential, more analytical counterpart.
Diego Durán was a Dominican friar whose fascination with Indigenous Mexican traditions led him to produce some of the most detailed chronicles of Aztec religion, ceremony, and history. His work reflects missionary aims, but it also preserves enormous amounts of cultural knowledge that might otherwise have been lost.
In Historia de las Indias de Nueva España e Islas de Tierra Firme, Durán records festivals, deities, political structures, and oral traditions with remarkable specificity. Readers who value Las Casas for taking Indigenous societies seriously will appreciate Durán’s careful documentation, even where his interpretation remains shaped by Christianity.
Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés was one of the earliest major chroniclers of the Spanish Americas. His writing ranges across natural history, geography, colonial institutions, warfare, and Indigenous peoples, creating a broad and often vivid portrait of the New World as seen through imperial eyes.
His vast Historia general y natural de las Indias is especially useful for readers who want context for Las Casas: the plants, animals, landscapes, and colonial systems surrounding the moral crises Las Casas denounced. Oviedo is less compassionate than Las Casas, but his descriptive detail makes him an important companion source.
Peter Martyr d'Anghiera was an Italian humanist at the Spanish court who became one of Europe’s earliest interpreters of the discoveries in the Americas. Though he did not travel there himself, he gathered reports from explorers, officials, and witnesses, shaping how Europeans first understood the so-called New World.
In De Orbe Novo, he captures both wonder and anxiety: strange landscapes, unfamiliar customs, imperial ambition, and the moral uncertainty of first contact. Readers of Las Casas may appreciate seeing how the earliest narratives framed the Americas before criticism of conquest became impossible to ignore.
Bernal Díaz del Castillo was a soldier in the conquest of Mexico who later wrote one of the most famous firsthand narratives of that campaign. His style is plainspoken, energetic, and intensely concrete, filled with scenes of battle, negotiation, fear, greed, and astonishment.
The True History of the Conquest of New Spain offers a participant’s account of events Las Casas viewed with moral horror. That contrast is precisely what makes Díaz worth reading here: he reveals how conquistadors understood themselves, while also preserving invaluable details about Indigenous cities, diplomacy, and resistance.
Jean de Léry was a French traveler and Protestant writer whose account of Brazil stands out for its curiosity, sensitivity, and careful attention to lived experience. Rather than treating Indigenous people merely as symbols or curiosities, he describes food, language, warfare, ritual, and everyday social life with unusual attentiveness.
His History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil remains a remarkable early ethnographic narrative. Readers who admire Las Casas for recognizing the humanity of non-European peoples will find in Léry a similarly observant writer who resists easy cultural contempt.
Olaudah Equiano lived in a later century and a different historical setting, but he belongs on this list because he transforms firsthand testimony into a moral argument against dehumanization. Enslaved as a child and later freed, he became one of the most influential voices in the abolition movement.
In The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, he combines autobiography, witness, and political persuasion to expose the cruelty of the Atlantic slave system. Readers who respond to Las Casas’s insistence that suffering must be recorded and confronted will find Equiano equally powerful.
Thomas More may seem like a less obvious match, but he is relevant for readers interested in the larger moral and political questions raised by Las Casas. In Utopia, More imagines an alternative society in order to criticize greed, injustice, punishment, and the failures of European governance.
He does not write about Indigenous America in the way Las Casas does, yet both authors ask a similar underlying question: what does a just society look like, and how should power be restrained by ethics? If what you value in Las Casas is not only history but moral critique, More is a rewarding companion.
