In Defense of the Indians

I haven't posted about it, but for this summer semester I am taking Corrections and American History to 1877. For my History class, our first reading assignment was something that I had never read before, written by a guy that I had never heard of before. That being said, I was INCREDIBLY impressed by this writing and just had to share it.
Everyone, Bartolome de Las Casas left his native Spain in 1502 for the New World-and was way ahead of his time. He possessed an idea that was for the most part of it extremely unpopular at the time: that Native Americans are intelligent human beings just like Europeans and deserve dignity and respect!  
Not only that, he also did something else that I LOVED-asserted that his people, the Spanish, were treating the Native Americans the same way that they themselves had once been treated by Rome! We Europeans most certainly DID treat the Native Americans the same way that Rome treated us-it wasn't that long ago that we were seen as mindless savages ourselves. As a matter of fact, it could almost be said that we have very much become what Rome saw us as-ask any Native American!
I strongly advise everyone to read "In Defense of the Indians" by Bartolome de Las Casas. The whole time that I was reading this, I was like "You're telling me that this was written in the sixteenth century?! And this guy wants other Europeans to see Native Americans as intelligent civilized people?"
We've come a very, very, long way with equal treatments for Native Americans-and still have a VERY long way to go. Of course, the Native Americans I know are Shawnee, Delaware, Algonquian, Cherokee, etc. and are very different from the ones de Las Casas would have known in Cuba-but they are also similar in how they have all had to overcome so much.
The overall point is, it's voices like this that help me hope for humanity-including in rights for those with autism (which de Las Casas almost certainly had!) If a Spanish guy in the sixteenth century could dare to assert that Native Americans are humans with feelings, we can also stand up today for those who are different as well.