“As a young man I was drawn to the sea and to the Indies,” Las Casas might have written, if ever given to autobiography to which he was decidedly not given. Like so many before and since, the sea was a broad road to adventure and foreign lands. It sounds almost banal to describe those feelings in such shopworn terms, but, for young men, the promise of foreign adventure is heady stuff. When one adds in the promise of gold, and the opportunity presents itself to both sail to foreign lands and to get rich, the pull is powerful. So it proved to be for Las Casas.

We know little of Las Casas from about 1498 to 1502. His father returned from the Indies in 1498. He brought an Indian friend for Las Casas who then may have gone to study law at the University of Salamanca for a year or two. In 1499–1500 a rebellion of Moors erupted in the mountains around Granada and Las Casas may have gone with a troop of Sevillian militia to help quash that rebellion.

The Moors rose in rebellion out of disgust with the perfidy of the Christians under Cardinal Cisneros who spoke tolerance, but demanded conversion. The campaigns were brutal and effective. Ferdinand himself joined the fray in March, 1500, slaying all the inhabitants in some villages, claiming with an astonishing satisfaction that in Lanjerón “the occupants were baptized before perishing.” Did Las Casas witness the rebellion firsthand? Did he march with militia from Seville sent from Granada to suppress the Moorish rebels? Some of the evidence suggests so.