ns was juxtaposed with the brutal Spaniards:
[The Indians] were without fraud, without subtilty or malice, ... most faithful and obedient. Toward the Spaniards whom they serve, patient, meek and peaceful, ... without any hatred or desire of revenge; ... most delicate and tender.... Came the Spaniards like most cruel Tygres, Wolves, and Lions, enrag'd with a sharp and tedious hunger; for these forty years past, minding nothing else but the slaughter of these unfortunate wretches, whom with divers kinds of torments ... they have so cruelly and inhumanely butchered (de las Casas "Black" 2).
The "Black Legend" was created from such stark contrasts, with stereotyping and exaggeration in both the innocence of the Indians and the pure evil of the Spanish. This account by de las Casas was translated and spread through Europe, giving Spain's European enemies and Catholicism's Protestant enemies propagandistic and political ammunition in arguing against Spain's powerful position in the New World. The government of Spain argued that the account was false and, at best, exaggerated, but the "Legend" had been created. As a result, de las Casas "was faced with abandonment, betrayal, and rationalization on the part of historic protagonists he knew personally" (Roy 236). In other words, he was once aligned with the men who now condemned him.
Roy also notes that de las Casas might have at times exaggerated the innocence of the Indians, but part of his success in reforming t
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