Spanish cleric and visitor to the island of Hispaniola, Bartolomé de las Casas is known for famously documenting the brutality inflicted by Spanish colonizers on the Native residents of the New World. In his unflinching work, The Very Brief Relation of the Devastation of the Indies, Las Casas details the brutal actions of the Spanish colonizers, whom he describes as "acting like ravening beasts, killing, terrorizing, afflicting, torturing, and destroying the native peoples." Las Casas disagreed with the Church's view of Natives as savages; however, as a man of faith, he neither turned from the Catholic church nor doubted its authority over the New World. Instead, through his writings and confrontations with the Church, he worked tirelessly to persuade his people of the irreparable social harm in their actions. To this day, Bartolomé de las Casas is hailed as an early champion of Native American rights and as a voice of conscience for the Spanish Catholic Church.