Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 2 (of 8) / Spanish Explorations and Settlements in America from the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Century

by Unknown

CHAPTER V.

LAS CASAS, AND THE RELATIONS OF THE SPANIARDS TO THE INDIANS.

BY GEORGE EDWARD ELLIS,

Vice-President of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

WHEN the great apostle of the new faith, on his voyage from Asia to Europe, was shipwrecked on a Mediterranean island, “the barbarous people” showed him and his company “no little kindness.” On first acquaintance with their chief visitor they hastily judged him to be a murderer, whom, though he had escaped the sea, yet vengeance would not suffer to live. But afterward “they changed their minds, and said that he was a god.”[1012] The same extreme revulsion of feeling and judgment was wrought in the minds of the natives of this New World when the ocean-tossed voyagers from the old continent first landed on these shores, bringing the parted representatives of humanity on this globe into mutual acquaintance and intercourse. Only in this latter case the change of feeling and judgment was inverted. The simple natives of the fair western island regarded their mysterious visitors as superhuman beings; further knowledge of them proved them to be “murderers,” rapacious, cruel, and inhuman,—fit subjects for a dire vengeance.

In these softer times of ours the subject of the present chapter might well be passed silently, denied a revival, and left in the pitiful oblivion which covers so many of the distressing horrors of “man’s inhumanity to man.” But, happily for the writer and for the reader, the title of the chapter is a double one, and embraces two themes. The painful narrative to be rehearsed is to be relieved by a tribute of admiring and reverential homage to a saintly man of signal virtues and heroic services, one of the grandest and most august characters in the world’s history. Many of the obscure and a few of the dismal elements and incidents of long-passed times, in the rehearsal of them on fresh pages, are to a degree relieved by new light thrown upon them, by the detection and exposure of errors, and by readjustments of truth. Gladly would a writer on the subject before us avail himself of any such means to reduce or to qualify its repulsiveness. But advancing time, with the assertion of the higher instincts of humanity which have sharpened regrets and reproaches for all the enormities of the past, has not furnished any abatements for the faithful dealing with this subject other than that just presented.

It is a fact worthy of a pause for thought, that in no single instance since the discovery of our islands and continent by Europeans—to say nothing about the times before it—has any new race of men come to the knowledge of travellers, explorers, and visitors from the realms of so-called civilization, when the conditions were so fair and favorable in the first introduction and acquaintance between the parties as in that between Columbus and the natives of the sea-girt isle of Hispaniola. Not even in the sweetest idealizings of romance is there a more fascinating picture than that which he draws of those unsophisticated children of Nature, their gentleness, docility, and friendliness. They were not hideous or repulsive, as barbarians; they did not revolt the sight, like many of the African tribes, like Bushmen, Feejeans, or Hottentots; they presented no caricaturings of humanity, as giants or dwarfs, as Amazons or Esquimaux; their naked bodies were not mutilated, gashed, or painted; they uttered no yells or shrieks, with mad and threatening gestures. They were attractive in person, well formed, winning and gentle, and trustful; they were lithe and soft of skin, and their hospitality was spontaneous, generous, and genial. Tribes of more warlike and less gracious nature proved to exist on some of the islands, about the isthmus and the continental regions of the early invasion; but the first introduction and intercourse of the representatives of the parted continents set before the Europeans a race of their fellow-creatures with whom they might have lived and dealt in peace and love.

And what shall we say of the new-comers, the Spaniards,—the subjects of the proudest of monarchies, the representatives of the age of chivalry; gentlemen, nobles, disciples of the one Holy Catholic Church, and soldiers of the Cross of Christ? What sort of men were they, what was their errand, and what impress did they leave upon the scenes so fair before their coming, and upon those children of Nature whom they found so innocent and loving, and by whom they were at first gazed upon with awe and reverence as gods?

In only one score of the threescore years embraced in our present subject the Spaniards had sown desolation, havoc, and misery in and around their track. They had depopulated some of the best-peopled of the islands, and renewed them with victims deported from others. They had inflicted upon hundreds of thousands of the natives all the forms and agonies of fiendish cruelty, driving them to self-starvation and suicide as a way of mercy and release from an utterly wretched existence. They had come to be viewed by their victims as fiends of hate, malignity, and all dark and cruel desperation and mercilessness in passion. The hell which they denounced upon their victims was shorn of its worst terror by the assurance that these tormentors were not to be there.

Only what is needful for the truth of history is to be told here, while shocking details are to be passed by. And as the rehearsal is made to set forth in relief the nobleness, grandeur of soul, and heroism of a man whose nearly a century of years was spent in holy rebuke, protest, exposure, and attempted redress of this work of iniquity, a reader may avert his gaze from the narration of the iniquity and fix it upon the character and career of the “Apostle to the Indians.”

There was something phenomenal and monstrous, something so aimless, reckless, wanton, unprovoked, utterly ruinous even for themselves, in that course of riot and atrocity pursued by the Spaniards, which leads us—while palliation and excuse are out of the question—to seek some physical or moral explanation of it. This has generally been found in referring to the training of Spanish nature in inhumanity, cruelty, contempt of human life, and obduracy of feeling, through many centuries of ruthless warfare. It was in the very year of the discovery of America that the Spaniards, in the conquest of Granada, had finished their eight centuries of continuous war for wresting their proud country from the invading Moors. This war had made every Spaniard a fighter, and every infidel an enemy exempted from all tolerance and mercy. Treachery, defiance of pledges and treaties, brutalities, and all wild and reckless stratagems, had educated the champions of the Cross and faith in what were to them but the accomplishments of the soldier and the fidelity of the believer. Even in the immunities covenanted to the subject-Moors, of tolerance in their old home and creed, the ingenuities of their implacable foes found the means of new devices for oppression and outrage. The Holy Office of the Inquisition, with all its cavernous secrets and fiendish processes, dates also from the same period, and gave its fearful consecration to all the most direful passions.

With that training in inhumanity and cruelty which the Spanish adventurers brought to these shores, we must take into view that towering, overmastering rapacity and greed which were to glut themselves upon the spoils of mines, precious stones, and pearls. The rich soil, with the lightest tillage, would have yielded its splendid crops for man and beast. Flocks would have multiplied and found their own sustenance for the whole year without any storage in garner, barn, or granary. A rewarding commerce would have enriched merchants on either side of well-traversed ocean pathways. But not the slightest thought or recognition was given during the first half-century of the invasion to any such enterprise as is suggested by the terms colonization, the occupancy of soil for husbandry and domestication. Spanish pride, indolence, thriftlessness regarded every form of manual labor as a demeaning humiliation. There was no peasantry among the new-comers. The humblest of them in birth, rank, and means was a gentleman; his hands could not hold a spade or a rake, or guide the plough. The horse and the hound were the only beasts on his inventory of values. Sudden and vast enrichment by the treasures of gold wrung from the natives, first in their fragmentary ornaments, and then by compulsory toil from the mines which would yield it in heaps, were the lure and passion of the invaders. The natives, before they could reach any conception of the Divine Being of the Catholic creed, soon came to the understanding of the real object of their worship: as a cacique plainly set forth to a group of his trembling subjects, when, holding up a piece of gold, he said, “This is the Spaniards’ god.” A sordid passion, with its overmastery of all the sentiments of humanity, would inflame the nerves and intensify all the brutal propensities which are but masked in men of a low range of development even under the restraints of social and civil life. We must allow for the utter recklessness and frenzy of their full indulgence under the fervors of hot climes, in the loosening of all domestic and neighborly obligations, in the homelessness of exile and the mad freedom of adventure. Under the fretting discomforts and restraints of the ocean-passage hither, the imagination of these rapacious treasure-seekers fed itself on visions of wild license of arbitrary power over simple victims, and of heaps of treasure to be soon carried back to Spain to make a long revel in self-indulgence for the rest of life.

“Cruelties” was the comprehensive term under which Las Casas gathered all the enormities and barbarities, of which he was a witness for half a century, as perpetrated on the successive scenes invaded by his countrymen on the islands and the main of the New World. He had seen thousands of the natives crowded together, naked and helpless, for slaughter, like sheep in a park or meadow. He had seen them wasted at the extremities by torturing fires, till, after hours of agony, they turned their dying gaze, rather in amazed dread than in rage, upon their tormentors. Mutilations of hands, feet, ears, and noses surrounded him with ghastly spectacles of all the processes of death without disease. One may well leave all details to the imagination; and may do this all the more willingly that even the imagination will fail to fill and fashion the reality of the horror.

Previous to the successful ventures on the western ocean, the Portuguese had been resolutely pursuing the work of discovery by pushing their daring enterprise farther and farther down the coast of Africa, till they at last turned the Cape.[1013] The deportation of the natives and their sale as slaves at once became first an incidental reward, and then the leading aim of craving adventurers. It was but natural that the Spaniards should turn their success in other regions to the same account. Heathen lands and heathen people belonged by Papal donation to the soldiers of the Cross; they were the heritage of the Church. The plea of conversion answered equally for conquest and subjugation of the natives on their own soil, and for transporting them to the scenes and sharers of a pure and saving faith.

A brief summary of the acts and incidents in the first enslavement of the natives may here be set down. Columbus took with him to Spain, on his first return, nine natives. While on his second voyage he sent to Spain, in January, 1494, by a return vessel, a considerable number, described as Caribs, “from the Cannibal Islands,” for “slaves.” They were to be taught Castilian, to serve as interpreters for the work of “conversion” when restored to their native shores. Columbus pleads that it will benefit them by the saving of their souls, while the capture and enslaving of them will give the Spaniards consequence as evidence of power. Was this even a plausible excuse, and were the victims really cannibals? The sovereigns seemed to approve the act, but intimated that the “cannibals” might be converted at home, without the trouble of transportation. But Columbus enlarged and generalized sweepingly upon his scheme, afterward adding to it a secular advantage, suggesting that as many as possible of these cannibals should be caught for the sake of their souls, and then sold in Spain in payment for cargoes of live stock, provisions, and goods, which were much needed in the islands. The monarchs for a while suspended their decision of this matter. But the abominable traffic was steadily catching new agents and victims, and the slave-trade became a leading motive for advancing the rage for further discoveries. The Portuguese were driving the work eastward, while the Spaniards were keenly following it westward. In February, 1495, Columbus sent back four ships, whose chief lading was slaves. From that time began the horrors attending the crowding of human cargoes with scant food and water, with filth and disease, and the daily throwing over into the sea those who were privileged to die. Yet more victims were taken by Columbus when he was again in Spain in June, 1496, to circumvent his enemies. Being here again in 1498, he had no positive prohibition against continuing the traffic. A distinction was soon recognized, and allowed even by the humane and pious Isabella. Captives taken in war against the Spaniards might be brought to Spain and kept in slavery; but natives who had been seized for the purpose of enslaving them, she indignantly ordered should be restored to freedom. This wrong, as well as that of the repartimiento system, in the distribution of natives to Spanish masters as laborers, was slightly held in check by this lovable lady during her life. She died while Columbus was in Spain, Nov. 26, 1504. Columbus died at Valladolid, May 20, 1506. The ill that he had done lived after him, to qualify the splendor of his nobleness, grandeur, and constancy.

And here we may bring upon the scene that one, the only Spaniard who stands out luminously, in the heroism and glory of true sanctity, amid these gory scenes, himself a true soldier of Christ.

Bartholomew Las Casas was born at Seville in 1474. Llorente—a faithful biographer, and able editor and expositor of his writings, of whom farther on we are to say much more—asserts that the family was French in its origin, the true name being Casuas; which appears, indeed, as an alias on the titlepage of some of his writings published by the apostle in his lifetime.[1014]

Antoine Las Casas, the father of Bartholomew, was a soldier in the marine service of Spain. We find no reference to him as being either in sympathy or otherwise with the absorbing aim which ennobled the career of his son. He accompanied Columbus on his first western voyage in 1492, and returned with him to Spain in 1493.

During the absence of the father on this voyage the son, at the age of eighteen, was completing his studies at Salamanca. In May, 1498,[1015] at the age of about twenty-four, he went to the Indies with his father, in employment under Columbus, and returned to Cadiz, Nov. 25, 1500. In an address to the Emperor in 1542, Bartholomew reminded him that Columbus had given liberty to each of several of his fellow-voyagers to take to Spain a single native of the islands for personal service, and that a youth among those so transported had been intrusted to him. Perhaps under these favoring circumstances this was the occasion of first engaging the sympathies of Las Casas for the race to whose redemption he was to consecrate his life. Isabella, however, was highly indignant at this outrage upon the natives, and under pain of death to the culprits ordered the victims to be restored to their country. It would seem that they were all carried back in 1500 under the Commander Bobadilla, and among them the young Indian who had been in the service of Bartholomew. One loves to imagine that in some of the wide wanderings of the latter, amid the scenes of the New World, he may again have met with this first specimen of a heathen race who had been under intimate relations with himself, and who had undoubtedly been baptized.

We shall find farther on that the grievous charge was brought against Las Casas, when he had drawn upon himself bitter animosities, that he was the first to propose the transportation of negro slaves to the islands, in 1517. It is enough to say here, in anticipation, that Governor Ovando, in 1500, received permission to carry thither negro slaves “who had been born under Christian Powers.” The first so carried were born in Seville of parents brought from Africa, and obtained through the Portuguese traffickers.

On May 9, 1502, Las Casas embarked for the second time with Columbus, reaching San Domingo on June 29. In 1510 he was ordained priest by the first Bishop of Hispaniola, and was the first ecclesiastic ordained in the so-called Indies to say there his virgin Mass. This was regarded as a great occasion, and was attended by crowds; though a story is told, hardly credible, that there was then not a drop of wine to be obtained in the colony. The first Dominican monks, under their Bishop, Cordova, reached the islands in 1510. As we shall find, the Dominicans were from the first, and always, firm friends, approvers, and helpers of Las Casas in his hard conflict for asserting the rights of humanity for the outraged natives. The fact presents us with one of the strange anomalies in history,—that the founders and prime agents of the Inquisition in Europe should be the champions of the heathen in the New World.

The monks in sympathy with the ardent zeal of Las Casas began to preach vehemently against the atrocious wrongs which were inflicted upon the wretched natives, and he was sent as curate to a village in Cuba. The Franciscans, who had preceded the Dominicans, had since 1502 effected nothing in opposition to these wrongs. Utterly futile were the orders which came continually from the monarchs against overworking and oppressing the natives, as their delicate constitutions, unused to bodily toil, easily sank under its exactions. The injunctions against enslaving them were positive. Exception was made only in the case of the Caribs, as reputed cannibals, and the then increasing number of imported negro slaves, who were supposed to be better capable of hard endurance. Las Casas was a witness and a most keen and sensitive observer of the inflictions—lashings and other torturing atrocities—by which his fellow-countrymen, as if goaded by a demoniac spirit, treated these simple and quailing children of Nature, as if they were organized without sensitiveness of nerve, fibre, or understanding, requiring of them tasks utterly beyond their strength, bending them to the earth with crushing burdens, harnessing them to loads which they could not drag, and with fiendish sport and malice hacking off their hands and feet, and mutilating their bodies in ways which will not bear a description. It was when he accompanied the expedition under Velasquez for the occupation of Cuba, that he first drew the most jealous and antagonistic opposition and animosity upon himself, as standing between the natives and his own countrymen, who in their sordidness, rapacity, and cruelty seemed to have extinguished in themselves every instinct of humanity and every sentiment of religion. Here too was first brought into marked observation his wonderful power over the natives winning their confidence and attachment, as they were ever after docile under his advice, and learned to look to him as their true friend. We pause to contemplate this wonderful and most engaging character, as, after filling his eye and thought with the shocking scenes in which his countrymen—in name the disciples of Jesus and loyal members of his Church—perpetrated such enormities against beings in their own likeness, he began his incessant tracking of the ocean pathways in his voyages to lay his remonstrances and appeals before successive monarchs. Beginning this service in his earliest manhood, he was to labor in it with unabated zeal till his death, with unimpaired faculties, at the age of ninety-two. He calls himself “the Clerigo.” He was soon to win and worthily to bear the title of “Universal Protector of the Indians.” Truly was he a remarkable and conspicuous personage,—unique, as rather the anomaly than the product of his age and land, his race and fellowship. His character impresses us alike by its loveliness and its ruggedness, its tenderness and its vigor, its melting sympathy and its robust energies. His mental and moral endowments were of the strongest and the richest, and his spiritual insight and fervor well-nigh etherealized him. His gifts and abilities gave him a rich versatility in capacity and resource. He was immensely in advance of his age, so as to be actually in antagonism with it. He was free alike from its prejudices, its limitations, and many of its superstitions, as well as from its barbarities. He was single-hearted, courageous, fervent, and persistent, bold and daring as a venturesome voyager over new seas and mysterious depths of virgin wildernesses, missionary, scholar, theologian, acute logician, historian, curious observer of Nature, the peer of Saint Paul in wisdom and zeal. Charles V. coming to the throne at the age of sixteen, when Las Casas was about forty, was at once won to him by profound respect and strong attachment, as had been the case with Charles’s grandfather Ferdinand, whom Las Casas survived fifty years, while he outlived Columbus sixty years.

The Clerigo found his remonstrances and appeals to his own nominally Christian fellow-countrymen wholly ineffectual in restraining or even mitigating the oppressions and cruelties inflicted upon the wretched natives. There was something phenomenal, as has been said, in the license yielded to the ingenuity of Spanish barbarity. It combined all the devices of inquisitorial torturing with the indulgence of the bestial ferocities of the bullfight. At times it seemed as if the heartless oppressors were seeking only for a brutal mirth in inventing games in which their victims should writhe and yell as for their amusement. Then, as opportunity suggested or served, a scheme of the most cunning treachery and malice would turn an occasion of revelry or feasting, to which the natives had been invited or been beguiled by their tormentors, into a riot of fury and massacre. The utter aimlessness and recklessness of most of these horrid enormities impress the reader in these days as simply the indulgence of a wanton spirit in giving free license in human passions to those mocking employments of grinning devils in the old church paintings as they inflict retributions on the damned spirits in hell. The forked weapons, the raging flames, and the hideous demoniac delights exhibited in paintings, with which the eyes of the Spaniards were so familiar, found their all-too-faithful counterparts in the tropical zones and valleys of our virgin islands. The only pretences offered, not for justifying but for inflicting such wanton barbarities on the natives, were such as these,—that they refused to make known or to guide their oppressors to rich mines, or to work beyond their powers of endurance, or to bear intolerable burdens, or to furnish food which they had not to give. Touching and harrowing it is to read of many instances in which the simple diplomacy of the natives prompted them to neglect the little labor of husbandry required to supply their own wants, in order that the invaders might with themselves be brought to starvation. Whenever the Clerigo accompanied a body of Spaniards on the way to an Indian village, he always made an effort to keep the two people apart by night and by day, and he employed himself busily in baptizing infants and little children. He could never be too quick in this service, as these subjects of his zeal were the victims of the indiscriminate slaughter. The only consolation which this tender-hearted yet heroic missionary could find, as his share in the enterprise of his people, was in keeping the reckoning on his tablets of the number of those born under the common heathen doom whom he had snatched, by a holy drop, from the jaws of hell.

Baffled in all his nearly solitary endeavors to check the direful havoc and wreck of poor humanity on the scenes which were made so gory and hateful, Las Casas returned again to Spain in 1515, buoyed by resolve and hope that his dark revelations and bold remonstrances would draw forth something more effective from the sovereign. He was privileged by free and sympathizing interviews with Ferdinand at Placentia. But any hope of success here was soon crushed by the monarch’s death. Las Casas was intending to go at once to Flanders to plead with the new King, Charles I., afterward Emperor, but was delayed by sympathetic friends found in Cardinal Ximenes and Adrian, the Regents.

It may seem strange and unaccountable that Las Casas should have encountered near the Court of a benignant sovereign a most malignant opposition to all his endeavors from first to last in securing the simply humane objects of his mission. But in fact he was withstood as resolutely at home as abroad, and often by a more wily and calculating policy. He found enemies and effective thwarters of his influence and advice in the order of the Jeronymites. Of the grounds and methods of their harmful activity, as well as of some of the more ostensible and plausible of the motives and alleged reasons which made him personal enemies both in Spain and in the Indies, we must speak with some detail farther on. It may be well here to follow him summarily in his frequent alternation between his missionary fields and his homeward voyages, to ply his invigorated zeal with new and intenser earnestness from his fuller experiences of the woes and outrages which he sought to redress. With some, though insufficient, assurances of regal authority in support of his cause, he re-embarked for the Indies, Nov. 11, 1516, and reached Hispaniola in December, fortified with the personal title of the “Universal Protector of the Indians.” He sailed again for Spain, May 7, 1517. His plainness of speech had in the interval increased the animosity and the efforts to thwart him of the local authorities on the islands, and had even induced coldness and lack of aid among his Dominican friends. He had many public and private hearings in Spain, stirring up against himself various plottings and new enemies. In each of these homeward visits Las Casas of course brought with him revelations and specific details of new accumulations of iniquity against the natives; and with a better understanding of himself, and also of all the intrigues and interests warring against him, his honest soul assured him that he must at last win some triumph in his most righteous cause. So he heaped the charges and multiplied the disclosures which gave such vehemence and eloquence to his pleadings. Having during each of his home visits met some form of misrepresentation or falsehood, he would re-embark, furnished as he hoped with some new agency and authority against the evil-doers. But his enemies were as ingenious and as active as himself. Perhaps the same vessel or fleet which carried him to the islands, with orders intended to advance his influence, would bear fellow-passengers with documents or means to thwart all his reinforced mission. He left Spain again in 1520, only to cast himself on a new sea of troubles soon inducing him to return. His sixth voyage carried him this time to the mainland in Mexico, in 1537. He was in Spain once more in 1539. While waiting here for the return of the Emperor, he composed six of his many essays upon his one unchanging theme, all glowing with his righteous indignation, and proffering wise and plain advice to the monarch. Yet again he crossed the now familiar ocean to America, in 1544, it being his seventh western voyage, and returned for the seventh and last time to Spain in 1547. Here were fourteen sea-voyages, with their perils, privations, and lack of the common appliances and comforts shared in these days by the rudest mariners. These voyages were interspersed by countless trips and ventures amid the western islands and the main, involving twofold, and a larger variety of harassments and risks, with quakings, hurricanes, and reefs, exposures in open skiffs, and the privilege of making one’s own charts. But one year short of fifty in the count out of his lengthened life were spent by this man of noble ardor, of dauntless soul, and of loving heart in a cause which never brought to him the joy of an accomplished aim.

Las Casas shared, with a few other men of the most fervent and self-sacrificing religious zeal, an experience of the deepest inward conviction, following upon, not originally prompting to, the full consecration of his life to his devoutest aim. Though he had been ordained to the priesthood in 1510, he was afterward made to realize that he had not then been the subject of that profound experience known in the formulas of piety as true conversion. He dates this personal experience, carrying him to a deeper devotional consciousness than he had previously realized, to the influence over him of a faithful lay friend, Pedro de la Renteria, with whom he became intimate in 1514. To the devout conversation, advice, and example of this intimate companion he ascribed his better-informed apprehension of the radical influences which wrought out the whole system of wrong inflicted upon the natives. Las Casas himself, like all the other Spaniards, had a company of Indian servants, who were in effect slaves; and he put them to work, the benefit of which accrued to himself. A form of servitude which exceeded all the conditions of plantation slavery had been instituted by Columbus under the system of so-called repartimientos. It was founded on the assumption that the Spanish monarch had an absolute proprietary right over the natives, and could make disposals and allotments of their services to his Christian subjects, the numbers being proportioned to the rank, standing, and means of individuals, the meanest Spaniard being entitled to share in the distribution of these servitors. This allowance made over to men of the lowest grade of intelligence, character, and humanity, the absolute and irresponsible power over the life and death of the natives intrusted to the disposal of masters. Under it were perpetrated cruelties against which there were no availing remonstrances, and for which there was no redress. The domestic cattle of civilized men are to be envied above the human beings who were held under the system of repartimientos,—tasked, scourged, tormented, and hunted with bloodhounds, if they sank under toils and inflictions beyond their delicate constitutions, or sought refuge in flight.

The slavery which afterward existed in the British Colonies and in these United States had scarce a feature in common with that which originated with the Spanish invaders. Las Casas thinks that Ferdinand lived and died without having had anything like a full apprehension of the enormities of the system. This, however, was not because efforts were lacking to inform him of these enormities, or to engage his sovereign intervention to modify and restrain, if not positively to prohibit, them. As we shall see, the system was so rooted in the greed and rapacity of the first adventurers here, who were goaded by passion for power and wealth, that foreign authority was thwarted in every attempt to overrule it. The most favored advisers of Ferdinand endeavored at first to keep him in ignorance of the system, and then, as he obtained partial information about it, to lead him to believe that it was vitally indispensable to conversion, to colonization, and to remunerative trade. The Dominican missionaries had, as early as 1501, informed the monarch of the savage cruelties which the system imposed. All that they effected was to induce Ferdinand to refer the matter to a council of jurists and theologians. Some of these were even alleged to have personal interests in the system of repartimientos; but at any rate they were under the influence and sway of its most selfish supporters. As the result of their conference, they persuaded the monarch that the system was absolutely necessary,—as, first, the Spaniards themselves were incapable of bodily labor under a debilitating climate; and second, that the close and dependent relation under which the natives were thus brought to their masters could alone insure the possibility of their conversion to the true faith. Ferdinand was so far won over to the allowance of the wrong as to issue an ordinance in its favor; while he sought to limit, restrain, and qualify it by injunctions which, of course, were futile in their dictation, for operating at a distance, in islands where sordid personal interests were all on the side of a defiance of them.

The Clerigo affirms that his own conscience was more startlingly aroused to a full sense of the wrongs and iniquities of the system of the repartimientos by his religious friend Renteria. He had previously, of course, so far as he was himself made the master or guardian in this relation of any number of the natives, brought his humanity and his ardor for justice into full exercise. But he was quickened by his friend to the duty of private and also of bold public protest against the system, and most plainly to offenders in proportion to the number of the victims which they enthralled and to the cruelty inflicted upon them. It was not his wont to allow any timidity or personal regards or temporizing calculations to compel his silence or to moderate his rebukes. His infirmity rather led him to excess in impatience and passion in his remonstrances. His bold and denunciatory preaching—though it appears that in this, and, as we shall note, on other occasions of speech and writing, he restrained himself from using the name of conspicuous offenders—caused an intense consternation and excitement. His clerical character barely saved him from personal violence. He found his hearers obdurate, and utterly beyond the sway of his protests and appeals. Again, therefore, he turned his face toward Spain, sustained by the fond assurance that he could so engage the King’s intervention by his disclosures and rehearsals, that the royal authority should at this time be effectually exerted against a giant iniquity. This was his homeward errand in 1515. That even his presence and speech had had some restraining influence in Cuba, is signified by the fact that after his withdrawal and during his absence all the wrongs and miseries of which the natives, wholly impotent to resist, were the victims, ran into wilder license. The Spaniards kept bloodhounds in training and in hunger, to scour the woods and thickets and wilderness depths for the despairing fugitives. Whole families of the natives took refuge in voluntary and preferred self-destruction.

Two Dominicans of like mind with Las Casas accompanied him on his errand. Pedro de Cordova, prelate of the Dominicans, was his stanch friend. The Clerigo reached Seville in the autumn of 1515, and at once addressed himself to Ferdinand. He found the monarch old and ailing. The most able and malignant opponent with whose support, enlisted upon the side of the wrong and of the wrongdoers, Las Casas had to contend, was the Bishop of Burgos, Fonseca, whose influence had sway in the Council for the Indies.[1016] After the King’s death, Jan. 23, 1516, Las Casas enjoyed the countenance, and had hope of the effectual aid, of the two Regents, previously mentioned, during the minority of Charles, the heir to the throne. The earnestness and persistency of the Clerigo so far availed as to obtain for him instructions to be carried to those in authority in the islands for qualifying the repartimiento system, and with penalties for the oppressions under it. Some Jeronymites were selected to accompany him on his return, as if to reinforce the objects of his mission, and to insure the efficacy of the title conferred upon him as the “Protector of the Indians.” The Jeronymites, however, had been corrupted by the cunning and intrigues of the wily and exasperated enemies of Las Casas, who effected in secrecy what they could not or dared not attempt publicly against the courageous Clerigo and his purposes backed by authority. Already alienated during the voyage, they reached San Domingo in December, 1516. Perhaps candor may induce the suggestion that while the Jeronymites, from motives of prudence, temporized and qualified their activity in their errand, Las Casas was heady and unforbearing in his uncompromising demand for instant redress of wrong. At any rate he was wholly foiled in the exercise of his delegated authority; and so, with a fire in his blood which allowed no peace to his spirit, he was again in Spain in July, 1517. Here he found Cardinal Ximenes, his friendly patron, near to death. He was, however, encouraged with the hope and promise of patronage from high quarters. For a season his cause presented a favorable aspect. He had become sadly assured that upon the Spaniards in the islands, whose hearts and consciences were smothered by their greed and inhumanity, no influence, not even that of ghostly terrorism, which was tried in the refusal of the sacraments, would be of the least avail. His only resource was to engage what force there might be in the piety and humanity of the Church at home, in the sense of justice among high civil dignitaries, and in such sympathetic aid as he might draw from his countrymen who had no interest in the mining or the commerce sustained by the impositions upon the natives. The young King had wise councillors, and they made with him some good plans for means of relieving the natives from severities in their tasks of labor, from cruel inflictions in working the mines, and from exorbitant taxes exacting of them produce and commodities enormously exceeding their possible resources, however willing they might be in yielding. It was at this time and under its emergency, that Las Casas unfortunately gave something more than his assent, even his countenance and advice, to a proposition the effect of which was to root in pure and free soil an enormity whose harvesting and increase were a sum of woes. He certainly did advise that each Spaniard, resident in Hispaniola, should be allowed to import a dozen negro slaves. He did this, as he afterward affirmed and confessed, under the lure of a deep mist and delusion. So painful was the remorse which he then experienced for his folly and error, that he avows that he would part with all he had in the world to redress it. He says that when he gave this advice he had not at all been aware of the outrages perpetrated by the Portuguese dealers in entrapping these wretched Africans. Besides this, he had been promised by the colonists that if they might be allowed to have negroes, whose constitutions were stronger for endurance, they would give up the feeble natives. We may therefore acquit Las Casas in his confessed sin of ignorance and willing compromise in an alternative of wrongs. But he is wholly guiltless of a charge which has been brought against him, founded upon this admitted error, of having been the first to propose and to secure the introduction of African slavery into the New World. As has already been said, the wrong had been perpetrated many years before Las Casas had any agency in it by deed or word. While the young King was still in Flanders negro slaves had been sent by his permission to Hispaniola. The number was limited to a thousand for each of the four principal islands. As there was a monopoly set up in the sale of these doleful victims, the price of them was speedily and greatly enhanced.[1017]

Las Casas devised and initiated a scheme for the emigration of laboring men from Spain. Thwarted in this purpose, he formed a plan for a colony where restrictions were to be enforced to guard against the worst abuses. Fifty Spaniards, intended to be carefully selected with regard to character and habits, and distinguished by a semi-clerical garb and mode of life, were his next device for introducing some more tolerable conditions of work and thrift in the islands. Ridicule was brought to bear, with all sorts of intrigues and tricks, to baffle this scheme. But the Clerigo persevered in meeting all the obstructions thrown in his way, and sailed for San Domingo in July, 1520. He established his little Utopian colony at Cumana; but misadventures befel it, and it came to a melancholy end. It seemed for a season as if the tried and patient Clerigo was at last driven to complete disheartenment. Wearied and exhausted, he took refuge in a Dominican convent in San Domingo, receiving the tonsure in 1522. Here he was in retirement for eight years, occupying himself in studying and writing, of which we have many results. During this interval the work of depopulation and devastation was ruinously advancing under Cortés, Alvarado, and Pizarro, in Mexico, Guatemala, and Peru. There is some uncertainty about an alleged presence of Las Casas at the Court in Spain in 1530. But he was in Mexico in 1531, in Nicaragua in 1534, and in Spain again in 1539, in behalf of a promising work undertaken in Tuzulutlan, from which all lay Spaniards were to be excluded. Having accomplished, as he hoped, the object of his visit, he would have returned at once to the American main; but was detained by the Council of the Indies as the person best able and most trustworthy to give them certain information which they desired. It was at this period that he wrote his remarkable work, The Destruction of the Indies. This bold and daring product of his pen and of the righteous indignation which had heretofore found expression from his eloquent and fervid speech, will soon be examined in detail. It may be said now that this work, afterward so widely circulated and translated into all the languages of Europe,—perhaps with some reductions from the original,—was not at first allowed to be published, but was submitted to the Emperor and his ministers. As the shocking revelations made in this book state in round numbers the victims of the Spaniards in different places, it is at once observable that there are over-statements and exaggerations. This, however, applies only to the numbers, not at all to the acts of barbarity and iniquity.[1018] The book was published twelve years after it was written, and was dedicated to Philip, the heir to the throne.

It may be as well here to complete the summary of the career of Las Casas. While detained by the Council he was engaged in the advice and oversight of a new code of laws for the government of the colonies and the colonists. Up to this time he had crossed the ocean to the islands or the main twelve times, and had journeyed to Germany four times to confer with the Emperor. He was offered the bishopric of Cusco, in Toledo, but was not thus to be withdrawn from his foreign mission. In order, however, to secure authority to enforce the new laws, he accepted the foreign bishopric of Chiapa, was consecrated at Seville in 1544, embarked on July 4, with forty-four monks, and arrived at Hispaniola. He bore the aversion and hate which his presence everywhere provoked, was faithful to the monastic habits, and though so abstemious as to deny himself meat, he kept the vigor of his body. He resolutely forbade absolution to be given to Spaniards holding slaves contrary to the provisions of the new laws. Resigning his bishopric, he returned to Spain for the last time in 1547,—engaging in his bold controversy with Sepulveda, to be soon rehearsed. He resided chiefly in the Dominican College at Valladolid. In 1564, in his ninetieth year, he wrote a work on Peru. On a visit to Madrid in the service of the Indians, after a short illness, he died in July, 1566, at the age of ninety-two, and was buried in the convent of “Our Lady of Atocha.”

The most resolute and effective opponents which Las Casas found at the Spanish Court were Oviedo and Sepulveda, representatives of two different classes of those who from different motives and by different methods stood between him and the King. Oviedo had held high offices under Government both in Spain and in various places in the New World. He wrote a history of the Indies, which Las Casas said was as full of lies almost as of pages. He also had large interests in the mines and in the enslaving of the natives. Sepulveda[1019] was distinguished as a scholar and an author. Las Casas charges that his pen and influence were engaged in the interest of parties who had committed some of the greatest ravages, and who had personal advantages at stake. Sepulveda in his opposition to the Clerigo makes two points or “Conclusions,”—1. That the Spaniards had a right to subjugate and require the submission of the Indians, because of their superior wisdom and prudence; and that, therefore, the Indians were bound to submit and acquiesce. 2. That in case of their refusal to do so they might justly be constrained by force of arms. It was the proceeding on these assumptions that, as Las Casas pleaded, had led to the entire depopulation of vast territories. With high professions of loyalty Sepulveda urged that his motive in writing was simply to justify the absolute title of the King of Spain to the Indies. In offering his book to the Royal Council he importunately solicited its publication; and as this was repeatedly refused, he engaged the urgency of his friends to bring it about. Las Casas, well knowing what mischief it would work, strongly opposed the publication. The Council, regarding the matter as purely theological, referred Sepulveda’s treatise for a thorough examination to the universities of Salamanca and Alcala. They pronounced it unsound in doctrine and unfit to be printed. Sepulveda then secretly sent it to Rome, and through his friend, the Bishop of Segovia, procured it to be printed. The Emperor prohibited its circulation in Spain, and caused the copies of it to be seized.

Las Casas resolved to refute this dangerous treatise, and Sepulveda was personally cited to a dispute, which was continued through five days. As a result, the King’s confessor, Dominic de Soto, an eminent divine, was asked to give a summary of the case. This he did in substance as follows:—

“The prime point is whether the Emperor may justly make war on the Indians before the Faith has been preached to them, and whether after being subdued by arms they will be in any condition to receive the light of the Gospel, more tractable, more docile to good impressions, and ready to give up their errors. The issue between the disputants was, that Sepulveda maintained that war was not only lawful and allowable, but necessary; while Las Casas insisted upon the direct contrary,—that war was wholly unjust, and offered invincible obstacles to conversion. Sepulveda presented four arguments on his side: 1. The enormous wickedness and criminality of the Indians, their idolatry, and their sins against nature. 2. Their ignorance and barbarity needed the mastery of the intelligent and polite Spaniards. 3. The work of conversion would be facilitated after subjugation. 4. That the Indians treat each other with great cruelty, and offer human sacrifices to false gods. Sepulveda fortifies these arguments by examples and authorities from Scripture, and by the views of doctors and canonists,—all proceeding upon the assumed exceeding wickedness of the Indians. In citing Deuteronomy xx. 10-16, he interprets ‘far-off cities’ as those of a different religion. Las Casas replies that it was not simply as idolaters that the seven nations in Canaan were to be destroyed,—as the same fate, on that score, might have been visited upon all the inhabitants of the earth, except Israel,—but as intruders upon the Promised Land. The early Christian emperors, beginning with Constantine, did not make their wars as against idolaters, but for political reasons. He cites the Fathers as giving testimony to the effect of a good example and against violent measures. The Indians under the light of Nature are sincere, but are blinded in offering sacrifices. They are not like the worst kind of barbarians, to be hunted as beasts; they have princes, cities, laws, and arts. It is wholly unjust, impolitic, and futile to wage war against them as simply barbarians. The Moors of Africa had been Christians in the time of Augustine, and had been perverted, and so might rightfully be reclaimed.”

The Royal Council, after listening to the dispute and the summary of its points, asked Las Casas to draw up a paper on the question whether they might lawfully enslave the Indians, or were bound to set free all who were reduced to bondage. He replied that the law of God does not justify war against any people for the sake of making them Christians; so the whole course of treatment of the Indians had been wrong from the start. The Indians were harmless; they had never had the knowledge or the proffer of Christianity: so they had never fallen away, like the Moors of Africa, Constantinople, and Jerusalem. No sovereign prince had authorized the Spaniards to make war. The Spaniards cannot pretend that their reason for making war was because of the cruelty of the Indians to each other. The slaughter of them was indiscriminate and universal. They were enslaved and branded with the King’s arms. The monarch never authorized these execrable artifices and shocking atrocities, a long catalogue of which is specified.

The Clerigo then warms into an earnest dissertation on natural and Christian equity. He quotes some beautiful sentences from the will of Isabella, enjoining her own humanity on her husband and daughter. He makes a strong point of the fact that Isabella first, and then a council of divines and lawyers at Burgos, and Charles himself in 1523, had declared that all the inhabitants of the New World had been born free. Only Las Casas’ earnestness, his pure and persistent purpose, relieve of weariness his reiteration of the same truths and appeals to the King. He insists over and over again that the delegating of any portion of the King’s own personal authority to any Spaniard resident in the New World, or even to the Council of the Indies, opens the door to every form and degree of abuse, and that he must strictly reserve all jurisdiction and control to himself.

In a second treatise, which Las Casas addressed to Charles V., he states at length the practical measures needful for arresting the wrongs and disasters consequent upon the enslaving of the Indians. Of the twenty methods specified, the most important is that the King should not part with the least portion of his sovereign prerogative. He meets the objection artfully raised by Sepulveda, that if the King thus retains all authority to himself he may lose the vast domain to his crown, and that the Spaniards will be forced to return to Europe and give up the work of Gospel conversion.

Las Casas wrote six memorials or argumentative treatises addressed to the sovereigns on the one same theme. The sameness of the information and appeals in them is varied only by the increasing boldness of the writer in exposing iniquities, and by the warmer earnestness of his demand for the royal interposition. His sixth treatise is a most bold and searching exposition of the limits of the royal power over newly discovered territory, and within the kingdoms and over the natural rights of the natives. A copy of this paper was obtained by a German ambassador in Spain, and published at Spire, in Latin, in 1571. It is evident that for a considerable period after the composition—and, so to speak, the publication—of these successive protests and appeals of the Clerigo, only a very limited circulation was gained by them. Artful efforts were made, first to suppress them, and then to confine the knowledge of the facts contained in them to as narrow a range as possible. His enemies availed themselves of their utmost ingenuity and cunning to nullify his influence. Sometimes he was ridiculed as a crazy enthusiast,—a visionary monomaniac upon an exaggerated delusion of his own fancy. Again, he would be gravely and threateningly denounced as an enemy to Church and State, because he imperilled the vast interests of Spain in her colonies.

The principal and most important work from the pen of Las Casas, on which his many subsequent writings are based and substantially developed, bears (in English) the following title: A Relation of the First Voyages and Discoveries made by the Spaniards in America. With an Account of their Unparalleled Cruelties on the Indians, in the Destruction of above Forty Millions of People; together with the Propositions offered to the King of Spain to prevent the further Ruin of the West Indies. By Don Bartholomew de las Casas, Bishop of Chiapa, who was an Eye-witness of their Cruelties. It was composed in Spanish, and finished at Valencia, Dec. 8, 1542, near the beginning of the reign of Philip II., to whom it is dedicated. This was about fifty years after the discovery of America; and during the greater part of the period Las Casas had lived as an observer of the scenes and events which he describes. He makes Hispaniola his starting-point, as the navigators usually first touched there. The reader will at once be struck by the exaggeration, the effect of a high-wrought and inflamed imagination, so evident in the words of the title, which set the number of the victims of Spanish cruelty at forty millions. Of this weakness of Las Casas in over-estimate and exaggeration of numbers, we shall have to take special notice by and by. It is enough to say here that his license in this direction is confined to this one point, and is by no means to be viewed as discrediting his integrity, fidelity, and accuracy in other parts of his testimony. He certainly had been deeply impressed with the density of the population in some of the islands, for he says: “It seems as if Providence had amassed together the greatest part of mankind in this region of the earth.” He tells us that his motives for writing and publishing his exposure of iniquities were,—the call made upon him by pious and Christian people thus to enlist the sympathies and efforts of the good to redress the wrong; and his sincere attachment to his King and Master, lest God should avenge the wrong on his kingdom. For this purpose he has followed the Court with his pleadings, and will not cease his remonstrances and appeals. At the time of completing his work savage cruelties were prevailing over all the parts of America which had been opened, slightly restrained for the time in Mexico, through the stern intervention of the King. An addition to his work in 1546 recognized many new ordinances and decrees made by his Majesty at Barcelona since 1542, and signed at Madrid in 1543. But nevertheless a new field for oppression and wickedness had been opened in Peru, with exasperations from civil war and rebellion among the natives; while the Spaniards on most frivolous pretexts defied the orders of the King, pretending to wait for his answers to their pleas in self-justification. The period was one in which the rapacity of the invaders was both inflamed and gratified by abundance of spoil, which sharpened the avarice of the earlier claimants, and drew to them fresh adventurers.

Las Casas gives a very winning description of the natives under his observation and in his ever-kindly and sympathetic relations with them. He says they are simple, humble, patient, guileless, submissive, weak, and effeminate; incapable of toil or labor, short-lived, succumbing to slight illnesses; as frugal and abstemious as hermits; inquisitive about the Catholic religion, and docile disciples. They were lambs who had encountered tigers, wolves, and lions. During the lifetime of Las Casas Cuba had been rendered desolate and a desert; then St. John and Jamaica; and in all thirty islands had come to the same fate. A system of deportation from one island to another had been devised to obtain new supplies of slaves. The Clerigo deliberately charges that in forty years the number of victims counted to fifty millions. Enslaving was but a protracted method of killing,—all in the greed for gold and pearls. The sight of a fragment of the precious metal in the hands of a native was the occasion for demanding more of him, as if he had hidden treasure, or for his guiding the Spaniards to some real or imagined mines. Las Casas follows his details and examples of iniquity through the islands in succession, then through the provinces of Nicaragua, New Spain, Guatemala, Pannco, Jalisco, Yucatan, St. Martha, Carthagena, the Pearl Coast, Trinidad, the River Yuya-pari, Venezuela, Florida, La Plata, and Peru,—being in all seventeen localities,—repeating the similar facts, hardly with variations. Against the Spaniards with their horses, lances, swords, and bloodhounds, the natives could oppose only their light spears and poisoned arrows. The victims would seek refuge in caves and mountain fastnesses, and if approached would kill themselves, as the easiest escape from wanton tortures. Las Casas says: “I one day saw four or five persons, of the highest rank, in Hispaniola, burned by a slow fire.” Occasionally, he tells us, a maddened Indian would kill a Spaniard, and then his death would be avenged by the massacre of a score or a hundred natives. Immediately upon the knowledge of the death of Isabella, in 1504, as if her humanity had been some restraint, the barbarous proceedings were greatly intensified. The Spaniards made the most reckless waste of the food of the natives. Las Casas says: “One Spaniard will consume in a day the food of three Indian families of ten persons each for a month.” He avows that when he wrote there were scarce two hundred natives left in St. John and Jamaica, where there had once been six hundred thousand. For reasons of caution or prudence—we can hardly say from fear, for never was there a more courageous champion—Las Casas suppresses the names of the greatest offenders. The following are specimens of his method: “Three merciless tyrants have invaded Florida, one after another, since 1510.” “A Spanish commander with a great number of soldiers entered Peru,” etc. “In the year 1514 a merciless governor, destitute of the least sentiment of pity or humanity, a cruel instrument of the wrath of God, pierced into the continent.” “The fore-mentioned governor,” etc. “The captain whose lot it was to travel into Guatemala did a world of mischief there.” “The first bishop that was sent into America imitated the conduct of the covetous governors in enslaving and spoiling.” “They call the countries they have got by their unjust and cruel wars their conquests.” “No tongue is capable of describing to the life all the horrid villanies perpetrated by these bloody-minded men. They seemed to be the declared enemies of mankind.” The more generous the presents in treasures which were made by some timid cacique to his spoilers, the more brutally was he dealt with, in the hope of extorting what he was suspected of having concealed. Las Casas stakes his veracity on the assertion: “I saw with my own eyes above six thousand children die in three or four months.”

To reinforce his own statements the Clerigo quotes letters from high authorities. One is a protest which the Bishop of St. Martha wrote in 1541 to the King of Spain, saying that “the Spaniards live there like devils, rather than Christians, violating all the laws of God and man.” Another is from Mark de Xlicia, a Franciscan friar, to the King, the General of his Order, who came with the first Spaniards into Peru, testifying from his eyesight to all enormities, in mutilations, cutting off the noses, ears, and hands of the natives, burning and tortures, and keeping famished dogs to chase them.

Las Casas follows up his direful catalogue of horrors into the “New Kingdom of Grenada,” in 1536, which he says received its name from the native place of “the captain that first set his foot in it.” Those whom he took with him into Peru were “very profligate and extremely cruel men, without scruple or remorse, long accustomed to all sorts of wickedness.” The second “governor,” enraged that his predecessor had got the first share of the plunder, though enough was left for spoil, turned informer, and made an exposure of his atrocities in complaints to the Council of the Indies, in documents which “are yet to be seen.” The spoils were prodigious quantities of gold and precious stones, especially emeralds. The “governor” seized and imprisoned the cacique, or inca, Bogata, requiring him to send for and gather up all the gold within his reach; and after heaps of it had been brought, put him to horrid torture in order to extort more.

There were published at Madeira certain “Laws and Constitutions” made by the King at Barcelona, in 1542, under the influence of Las Casas, as the result of a council at Valladolid. Strict orders to put a stop to the iniquitous proceedings were circumvented by agents sent in the interest of the authors of the outrages. The Clerigo petitioned the King to constitute all the natives his free subjects, with no delegated lordship over them, and enjoined upon him “to take an oath on the Holy Gospels, for himself and his successors, to this effect, and to put it in his will, solemnly witnessed.” He insists that this is the only course to prevent the absolute extermination of the natives. He adds that the Spaniards in their covetousness combine to keep out priests and monks, not the slightest attempt being made to convert the natives, though the work would be easy, and they themselves crave it. “The Spaniards have no more regard to their salvation than if their souls and bodies died together, and were incapable of eternal rewards or punishments.” Yet he admits that it would hardly be reasonable to expect these efforts for conversion of the heathen from men who are themselves heathen, and so ignorant and brutish that they “do not know even the number of the commandments.” “As for your Majesty,” the Clerigo says, with a keen thrust, “the Indians think you are the most cruel and impious prince in the world, while they see the cruelty and impiety your subjects so insolently commit, and they verily believe your Majesty lives upon nothing but human flesh and blood.” He positively denies the imputations alleged to justify cruelty,—that the Indians indulged in abominable lusts against nature, and were cannibals. As for their idolatry, that is a sin against God, for Him, not for man, to punish. The monarchs, he insists, had been most artfully imposed upon in allowing the deportation of natives from the Lucay Islands to supply the havoc made in Hispaniola. The Clerigo goes into the most minute details, with specifications and reiterations of horrors, ascribing them to the delegated authority exercised by petty officers, under the higher ones successively intrusted with power. There is a holy fervor of eloquence in his remonstrances and appeals to his Majesty to keep the sole power in his own hands, as he reminds him that fearful retributive judgments from God may be visited upon his own kingdom. The Council of the Indies, he says, had desired him to write to the monarch about the exact nature of the right of the kings of Spain to the Indies; and he intimates that the zeal which he had shown in exposing iniquities under those whom the King had put in authority in the New World had been maliciously turned into a charge that he had questioned the royal title to those regions. As will appear, Las Casas, under the leadings of that intelligent search for the fundamentals of truth and righteousness which a quickened conscience had prompted, found his way to the principles of equity on this subject.

He had, therefore, previously sent to the King thirty well-defined and carefully stated “Propositions,” which he regards as so self-evident that he makes no attempt to argue or prove them. His enemies have in view to cover up their iniquities by misleading the King. Therefore, for conscience’ sake, and under a sense of obligation to God, he sets himself to a sacred task. Little foreseeing that his life and labor were to be protracted till he had nearly doubled his years, he says that, finding himself “growing old, being advanced to the fiftieth year of his age,” and “from a full acquaintance with America,” his testimony shall be true and clear.

His subtle enemies plead against him that the King has a right to establish himself in America by force of arms, however ruthless the process,—quoting the examples of Nimrod, Alexander, the old Romans, and the Turks. They allege also that the Spaniards have more prudence and wisdom than other peoples, and that their country is nearest to the Indies. He therefore announces his purpose to put himself directly before the King, and stand for his “Propositions,” which he sends in advance in writing, suggesting that if it be his Majesty’s pleasure, they be translated into Latin and published in that language, as well as in Spanish.

The “Propositions” may be stated in substance as follows; they were keenly studied and searched by those who were anxious to detect flaws or heresies in them:—

1. The Pope derives from Christ authority and power extending over all men, believers or infidels, in matters pertaining to salvation and eternal life. But these should be exercised differently over infidels and those who have had a chance to be believers.

2. This prerogative of the Pope puts him under a solemn obligation to propagate the Gospel, and to offer it to all infidels who will not oppose it.

3. The Pope is obliged to send capable ministers for this work.

4. Christian princes are his most proper and able helpers in it.

5. The Pope may exhort and even oblige Christian princes to this work, by authority and money, to remove obstructions and to send true workers.

6. The Pope and princes should act in accord and harmony.

7. The Pope may distribute infidel provinces among Christian princes for this work.

8. In this distribution should be had in view the instruction, conversion, and interests of the infidels themselves, not the increase of honors, titles, riches, and territories of the princes.

9. Any incidental advantage which princes may thus gain is allowable; but temporal ends should be wholly subordinate, the paramount objects being the extending of the Church, the propagation of the Faith, and the service of God.

10. The lawful native kings and rulers of infidel countries have a right to the obedience of their subjects, to make laws, etc., and ought not to be deprived, expelled, or violently dealt with.

11. To transgress this rule involves injustice and every form of wrong.

12. Neither these native rulers nor their subjects should be deprived of their lands for their idolatry, or any other sin.

13. No tribunal or judge in the world has a right to molest these infidels for idolatry or any other sins, however enormous, while still infidels, and before they have voluntarily received baptism, unless they directly oppose, refuse, and resist the publication of the Gospel.

14. Pope Alexander VI., under whom the discovery was made, was indispensably obliged to choose a Christian prince to whom to commit these solemn obligations of the Gospel.

15. Ferdinand and Isabella had especial claims and advantages for this intrustment by the Pope above all other Catholic princes, because they had with noble efforts driven out the infidels and Mohammedans from the land of their ancestors, and because they sent at their own charge Columbus, the great discoverer, whom they named the chief admiral.

16. As the Pope did right in this assignment, so he has power to revoke it, to transfer the country to some other prince, and to forbid, on pain of excommunication, any rival prince to send missionaries.

17. The kings of Castile and Leon have thus come lawfully to jurisdiction over the Indies.

18. This obliges the native kings of the Indies to submit to the jurisdiction of the kings of Spain.

19. Those native kings, having freely and voluntarily received the Faith and baptism, are bound (as they were not before) to acknowledge this sovereignty of the kings of Spain.

20. The kings of Spain are bound by the law of God to choose and send fit missionaries to exhort, convert, and do everything for this cause.

21. They have the same power and jurisdiction over these infidels before their conversion as the Pope has, and share his obligations to convert them.

22. The means for establishing the Faith in the Indies should be the same as those by which Christ introduced his religion into the world,—mild, peaceable, and charitable; humility; good examples of a holy and regular way of living, especially over such docile and easy subjects; and presents bestowed to win them.

23. Attempts by force of arms are impious, like those of Mahometans, Romans, Turks, and Moors: they are tyrannical, and unworthy of Christians, calling out blasphemies; and they have already made the Indians believe that our God is the most unmerciful and cruel of all Gods.

24. The Indians will naturally oppose the invasion of their country by a title of conquest, and so will resist the work of conversion.

25. The kings of Spain have from the first given and reiterated their orders against war and the ill-treatment of the Indians. If any officers have shown commissions and warrants for such practices, they have been forged or deceptive.

26. So all wars and conquests which have been made have been unjust and tyrannical, and in effect null; as is proved by proceedings on record in the Council against such tyrants and other culprits, who are amenable to judgment.

27. The kings of Spain are bound to reinforce and establish those Indian laws and customs which are good—and such are most of them—and to abolish the bad; thus upholding good manners and civil policy. The Gospel is the method for effecting this.

28. The Devil could not have done more mischief than the Spaniards have done in distributing and spoiling the countries, in their rapacity and tyranny; subjecting the natives to cruel tasks, treating them like beasts, and persecuting those especially who apply to the monks for instruction.

29. The distribution of the Indians among the Spaniards as slaves is wholly contrary to all the royal orders given by Isabella successively to Columbus, Bobadilla, and De Lares. Columbus gave three hundred Indians to Spaniards who had done the most service to the Crown, and took but one for his own use. The Queen ordered all except that one to be sent back. What would she have said to the present iniquities? The King is reminded that his frequent journeys and absences have prevented his fully informing himself of these facts.

30. From all these considerations it follows that all conquests, acquisitions, usurpations, and appropriations by officers and private persons have no legality, as contrary to the orders of the Spanish monarchs.

Here certainly is an admirable and cogent statement of the principles of equity and righteousness, as based upon natural laws and certified and fortified by the great verities and sanctions supposed to be held in reverence by professed Christians. Las Casas, in taking for his starting-point the Pope’s supreme and inclusive right over half the globe, just brought to the knowledge of civilized men, seems to make a monstrous assumption, only greater than that of the Spanish kings’ holding under and deriving dominion from him. But we may well pardon this assumption to so loyal a disciple of the Church, when we consider how nobly he held this Papal right as conditioned and limited, involving lofty duties, and balanced by an obligation to confer inestimable blessings. He had ever before him the contrast between fair scenes of luxurious Nature, ministering to the easy happiness of a gentle race of delicate and short-lived beings akin to himself, and the ruthless passions, lusts, and savagery of his own countrymen and fellow-Christians. We can well account for the opposition and thwarting of his efforts amid these scenes, but may need a further explanation of the resistance and ill-success which he encountered when pleading his cause before monarchs and great councillors at home, whose sympathies seem to have been generally on his side. He often stood wholly alone in scenes where these ravaging cruelties had full sweep,—alone in the humane sensitiveness with which he regarded them; alone in freedom from the mastering passions of greed and rapacity which excited them; and alone in realizing the appalling contrast between the spirit of blood and rapine which prompted them, and the spirit of that Gospel, the assumed championship of which at these ends of the earth was the blasphemous pretence of these murderers. Those ruthless tyrants, who here treated hundreds and thousands of the natives subject to them worse than even brutes from which useful service is expected, would not, of course, have the front to offer on the spot the pretence set up for them by their abetters at the Spanish Court,—that they were thus drawing the natives to them for their conversion; they laughed at the Clerigo when they did not openly thwart him.

Las Casas had many powerful and embittered opponents, and by the use of various means and artifices they were able to put impediments in his way, to qualify and avert what would seem to be the natural effects of his ardent appeals and shocking disclosures, and to keep him through his protracted life in what looked like a hopeless struggle against giant iniquities. Nor is it necessary that we go deeper than the obvious surface of the story to find the reasons for the opposition and discomfiture which he encountered. It may be that all those who opposed him or who would not co-operate with him were not personally interested in the iniquities which he exposed and sought to redress. Something may need to be said by and by concerning alleged faults of temper, over-ardor of zeal and overstatement, and wild exaggeration attributed to this bold apostle of righteousness. But that the substance of all his charges, and the specifications of inhumanity, cruelty, and atrocity which he set forth in detail, and with hardly enough diversity to vary his narrative, is faithful to the soberest truth, cannot be questioned. He spoke and wrote of what he had seen and known. He had looked upon sights of shocking and enormous iniquity and barbarity, over every scene which he had visited in his unresting travel. His sleep by night had been broken by the piteous shrieks of the wretched victims of slow tortures.

Much help may be derived by a reader towards a fuller appreciation of the character and life-work of Las Casas from the biography of him and the translation and editing of his principal writings by his ardent admirer, Llorente.[1020] This writer refers to a previous abridged translation of the works of Las Casas, published in Paris in 1642. His own edition in French, in 1822, is more full, though somewhat condensed and reconstructed. He remarks justly upon the prolixity of Las Casas, his long periods, his repetitions, his pedantic quotations from Scripture and the Latin authors, as the results of his peripatetic training. His translator and editor credits to the magnanimity and nobleness of nature of Las Casas the omission of the names of great offenders in connection with the terrible wrongs done by them. This reserve of Las Casas has been already referred to. But Llorente, in seventeen critical notes, answering to the same number of divisions in the Relation of Las Casas, supplies the names of the leading criminals; and he also gives in a necrology the shocking or tragic elements and the dates of the death of these “men of blood.” He adds to the “Remedies” which Las Casas had suggested to Charles V. the whole additional series of measures proposed up to 1572. Llorente says that, admitting that the starting-point in the Thirty Propositions of Las Casas,—namely, the assumption of the Papal prerogative as to new-discovered territory,—was in his day “incontestable,” it is now recognized as a falsity. He furnishes an essay of his own upon the right and wrong of the claim; and he adds to that of Las Casas a treatise on the limits of the sovereign power of the King. Paw first, and then Raynal and Robertson, had brought the charge against Las Casas of having first introduced African slavery into the New World. As we have seen, the charge was false. Gregoire, bishop of Blois, read an Apologie before the Institute of France in 1801, in vindication of the Clerigo. This Apologie is given at length by Llorente. He adds, from manuscripts in the Royal Library of Paris, two inedited treatises of Las Casas, written in 1555-1564,—one against a project for perpetuating the commanderies in the New World; the other on the necessity of restoring the crown of Peru to the Inca Titus.[1021]

Llorente says it is not strange that the apostle Las Casas, like other great and noble men, met with enemies and detractors. Some assailed him through prejudice, others merely from levity, and without reflection. Four principal reproaches have been brought against him:—

1. He is charged with gross exaggeration in his writings, as by the Spanish writers Camporicanes, Nuix, and Muñoz, and of course by those interested in excusing the work of conquest and devastation, who cannot justify themselves without impeaching Las Casas as an impostor. His sufficient vindication from this charge may be found in a mass of legal documents in the Archives, in the Records of the Council for the Indies, and in Government processes against wrongdoers. Herrera, who had seen these documents, says: “Las Casas was worthy of all confidence, and in no particular has failed to present the truth.” Torquemada, having personally sought for evidence in America, says the same. Las Casas, when challenged on this point, boldly affirmed: “There were once more natives in Hispaniola than in all Spain,” and that Cuba, Jamaica, and forty other islands, with parts of Terra Firma, had all been wrecked and made desolate. He insists over and over again that his estimates are within the truth.

2. Another charge was of imprudence in his ill-considered proceedings with the Indians. Allowance is to be made on the score of his zeal, his extreme ardor and vehemence,—an offset to the apathy and hard-heartedness of those around him. He was in a position in which he could do nothing for the Indians if he kept silence. He witnessed the reckless and defiant disobedience of the positive instructions of the King by his own high officers.

3. The third charge was of inconsistency in condemning the enslaving of Indians, and favoring that of negroes. This has already been disposed of.

4. The final charge was that he was consumed by ambition. Only a single writer had the effrontery to ascribe to Las Casas the desperate purpose of seizing upon the sovereignty of a thousand leagues of territory. The whole foundation of the charge was his attempt to plant a particular colony in the province of Cumana, near St. Martha, on Terra Firma. So far from claiming sovereignty for himself, he even denied the right of the King to bestow such sovereignty.

He was, says Llorente, blameless; there is no stain upon his great virtues. Indeed, not only Spain, but all nations, owe him a debt for his opposition to despotism, and for his setting limits to royal power in the age of Charles V. and the Inquisition.

Then follows Llorente’s translation into French of Las Casas’ Memoir on the Cruelties practised on the Indians, with the Dedicatory Letter addressed to Philip II., 1552. The Spaniards at Hispaniola and elsewhere forgot that they were men, and treated the innocent creatures around them for forty-two years as if they were famished wolves, tigers, and lions. So that in Hispaniola, where once were three millions, there remained not more than two hundred. Cuba, Porto Rico, and Jamaica had been wholly depopulated. On more than sixty Lucayan islands, on the smallest of which were once five hundred thousand natives, Las Casas says, “my own eyes” have seen but eleven.

These appalling enumerations of the victims of Spanish cruelty during half a century from the first coming of the invaders to the islands and main of America, are set before the reader in the figures and estimates of Las Casas. Of course the instant judgment of the reader will be that there is obvious and gross exaggeration in them. It remains to this day a debated and wholly undecided question among archæologists, historians, and explorers best able to deal with it, as to the number of natives on island and continent when America was opened to knowledge. There are no facts within our use for any other mode of dealing with the question than by estimates, conjectures, and inferences. A reasonable view is that the southern islands were far more thickly peopled than the main, vast regions of which, when first penetrated by the whites, were found to be perfect solitudes. The general tendency now with those who have pursued any thorough investigations relating to the above question, is greatly to reduce the number of the aborigines below the guesses and the once-accepted estimates. Nor does it concern us much to attempt any argument as to the obvious over-estimates made by Las Casas, or to decide whether they came from his imagination or fervor of spirit, or whether, as showing himself incredible in these rash and wild enumerations, he brings his veracity and trustworthiness under grave doubts in other matters.

Las Casas says that near the Island of San Juan are thirty others without a single Indian. More than two thousand leagues of territory are wholly deserted. On the continent ten kingdoms, “each larger than Spain,” with Aragon and Portugal, are an immense solitude, human life being annihilated there. He estimates the number of men, women, and children who have been slaughtered at more than fifteen millions. Generally they were tormented, no effort having been made to convert them. In vain did the natives, helpless with their feeble weapons, hide their women and children in the mountains. When, maddened by desperation, they killed a single Spaniard, vengeance was taken by the score. The Clerigo, as if following the strictest process of arithmetic, gives the number of victims in each of many places, only with variations and aggravations. He asserts that in Cuba, in three or four months, he had seen more than seven thousand children perish of famine, their parents having been driven off to the mines. He adds that the worst of the cruelties in Hispaniola did not take place till after the death of Isabella, and that efforts were made to conceal from her such as did occur, as she continued to demand right and mercy. She had done her utmost to suppress the system of repartimientos, by which the natives were distributed as slaves to masters.

An inference helpful to an approximate estimate of the numbers and extent of the depopulation of the first series of islands seized on by the Spaniards, might be drawn from the vast numbers of natives deported from other groups of islands to replace the waste and to restore laborers. Geographers have somewhat arbitrarily distinguished the West Indies into three main groupings of islands,—the Lucayan, or Bahamas, of fourteen large and a vast number of small islands, extending, from opposite the coast of Florida, some seven hundred and fifty miles oceanward; the Greater Antilles, embracing Cuba, San Domingo, Porto Rico, Jamaica, etc., running, from opposite the Gulf of Mexico, from farther westward than the other groups; and the Lesser Antilles, or Carribean, or Windward Islands. The last-named, from their repute of cannibalism, were from the first coming of the Spaniards regarded as fair subjects for spoil, violence, and devastation. After ruin had done its work in the Greater Antilles, recourse was had to the Lucayan Islands. By the foulest and meanest stratagems for enticing away the natives of these fair scenes, they were deported in vast numbers to Cuba and elsewhere as slaves. It was estimated that in five years Ovando had beguiled and carried off forty thousand natives of the Lucayan Islands to Hispaniola.

The amiable and highly honored historian, Mr. Prescott, says in general, of the numerical estimates of Las Casas, that “the good Bishop’s arithmetic came more from his heart than his head.”[1022]

From the fullest examination which I have been able to make, by the comparison of authorities and incidental facts, while I should most frankly admit that Las Casas gave even a wild indulgence to his dismay and his indignation in his figures, I should conclude that he had positive knowledge, from actual eyesight and observation, of every form and shape, as well as instance and aggregation, of the cruelties and enormities which aroused his lifelong efforts. Besides the means and methods used to discredit the statements and to thwart the appeals of Las Casas at the Court, a very insidious attempt for vindicating, palliating, and even justifying the acts of violence and cruelty which he alleged against the Spaniards in the islands and on the main, was in the charge that their victims were horribly addicted to cannibalism and the offering of human sacrifices. The number estimated of the latter as slaughtered, especially on great royal occasions, is appalling, and the rites described are hideous. It seems impossible for us now, from so many dubious and conflicting authorities, to reach any trustworthy knowledge on this subject. For instance, in Anahuac, Mexico, the annual number of human sacrifices, as stated by different writers, varies from twenty to fifty thousand. Sepulveda in his contest with Las Casas was bound to make the most of this dismal story, and said that no one of the authorities estimated the number of the victims at less than twenty thousand. Las Casas replied that this was the estimate of brigands, who wished thus to win tolerance for their own slaughterings, and that the actual number of annual victims did not exceed twenty.[1023] It was a hard recourse for Christians to seek palliation for their cruelties in noting or exaggerating the superstitious and hideous rites of heathens!

It is certain, however, that this plea of cannibalism was most effectively used, from the first vague reports which Columbus took back to Spain of its prevalence, at least in the Carribean Islands, to overcome the earliest humane protests against the slaughter of the natives and their deportation for slaves. In the all-too hideous engravings presented in the volumes in all the tongues of Europe exposing the cruelties of the Spanish invaders, are found revolting delineations of the Indian shambles, where portions of human bodies, subjected to a fiendish butchery, are exposed for sale. Las Casas nowhere denies positively the existence of this shocking barbarism. One might well infer, however, from his pages that he was at least incredulous as to its prevalence; and to him it would only have heightened his constraining sense of the solemn duty of professed Christians to bring the power of the missionary, rather than the maddened violence of destruction, to bear upon the poor victims of so awful a sin. Nor does the evidence within our reach suffice to prove the prevalence, to the astounding extent alleged by the opponents of Las Casas, of monstrous and bestial crimes against nature practised among the natives. Perhaps a parallel between the general morality respectively existing in the license and vices of the invaders and the children of Nature as presented to us by Columbus, as well as by Las Casas, would not leave matter for boasting to the Europeans. Mr. Prescott enters into an elaborate examination of a subject of frequent discussion by American historians and archæologists,—who have adopted different conclusions upon it,—as to whether venereal diseases had prevalence among the peoples of the New World before it was opened to the intercourse of foreigners. I have not noticed in anything written by Las Casas that he brings any charge on this score against his countrymen. Quite recent exhumations made by our archæologists have seemingly set the question at rest, by revealing in the bones of our prehistoric races the evidences of the prevalence of such diseases.

Sufficient means, in hints and incidental statements, have been furnished in the preceding pages from which the reader may draw his own estimate, as appreciative and judicious as he may be able to make it, of the character of Las Casas as a man and as a missionary of Christ. A labored analysis or an indiscriminating eulogium of that character is wholly uncalled for, and would be a work of supererogation. His heart and mind, his soul and body, his life, with all of opportunity which it offered, were consecrated; his foibles and faults were of the most trivial sort, never leading to injury for others, and scarcely working any harm for himself.

It is a well-proved and a gladdening truth, that one who stands for the championship of any single principle involving the rights of humanity will be led by a kindled vision or a gleam of advanced wisdom to commit himself to the assumption of some great, comprehensive, illuminating verity covering a far wider field than that which he personally occupies. Thus Las Casas’ assertion of the common rights of humanity for the heathen natives expanded into a bold denial of the fundamental claims of ecclesiasticism. It was the hope and aim of his opponents and enemies to drive him to a committal of himself to some position which might be charged with at least constructive heresy, through some implication or inference from the basis of his pleadings that he brought under question the authority of the Papacy. Fonseca and Sepulveda were both bent upon forcing him into that perilous attitude towards the supreme ecclesiastical power. To appreciate fully how nearly Las Casas was thought to trespass on the verge of a heresy which might even have cost him his life, but would certainly have nullified his personal influence, we must recognize the full force of the one overmastering assumption, under which the Pope and the Spanish sovereigns claimed for themselves supreme dominion over territory and people in the New World. As a new world, or a disclosure on the earth’s surface of vast realms before unknown to dwellers on the old continents, its discovery would carry with it the right of absolute ownership and of rule over all its inhabitants. It was, of course, to be “conquered” and held in subjection. The earth, created by God, had been made the kingdom of Jesus Christ, who assigned it to the charge and administration of his vicegerent, the Pope. All the continents and islands of the earth which were not Christendom were heathendom. It mattered not what state of civilization or barbarism, or what form or substance of religion, might be found in any new-discovered country. The Papal claim was to be asserted there, if with any need of explanation, for courtesy’s sake, certainly without any apology or vindication. Could Las Casas be inveigled into any denial or hesitating allowance of this assumption? He was on his guard, but he stood manfully for the condition, the supreme obligation, which alone could give warrant to it. The papal and the royal claims were sound and good; they were indeed absolute. But the tenure of possession and authority in heathendom, if it were to be claimed through the Gospel and the Church, looked quite beyond the control of territory and the lordship over heathen natives, princes, and people,—it was simply to prompt the work and to facilitate, while it positively enjoined the duty of, conversion,—the bringing of heathen natives through baptism and instruction into the fold of Christ. Fonseca and Sepulveda were baffled by the Clerigo as he calmly and firmly told the monarchs that their prerogative, though lawful in itself, was fettered by this obligation. In asserting this just condition, Las Casas effectually disabled his opponents.

The following are the closing sentences of the Reply of Las Casas to Sepulveda:—

“The damages and the loss which have befallen the Crown of Castile and Leon will be visited also upon the whole of Spain, because the tyranny wrought by these desolations, murders, and slaughters is so monstrous that the blind may see it, the deaf may hear it, the dumb may rehearse it, and the wise judge and condemn it after our very short life. I invoke all the hierarchies and choirs of angels, all the saints of the Celestial Court, all the inhabitants of the globe, and chiefly all those who may live after me, for witnesses that I free my conscience of all that has transpired; and that I have fully exposed to his Majesty all these woes; and that if he leaves to Spaniards the tyranny and government of the Indies, all of them will be destroyed and without inhabitants,—as we see that Hispaniola now is, and the other islands and parts of the continent for more than three thousand leagues, without occupants. For these reasons God will punish Spain and all her people with an inevitable severity. So may it be!”

It is grateful to be assured of the fact that during the years of his last retirement in Spain, till the close of his life at so venerable an age, Las Casas enjoyed a pension sufficient for his comfortable subsistence. Allowing only a pittance of it for his own frugal support, he devoted it mostly to works of charity. His pen and voice and time were still given to asserting and defending the rights of the natives, not only as human beings, but as free of all mastery by others. Though his noble zeal had made him enemies, and he had appeared to have failed in his heroic protests and appeals, he had the gratification of knowing before his death that restraining measures, sterner edicts, more faithful and humane officials, and in general a more wise and righteous policy, had abated the rage of cruelty in the New World. But still the sad reflection came to qualify even this satisfaction, that the Spaniards were brought to realize the rights of humanity by learning that their cruelty had wrought to their own serious loss in depopulating the most fertile regions and fastening upon them the hate of the remnants of the people. The reader of the most recent histories, even of the years of the first quarter of this century, relating to the Spanish missions in the pueblos of Mexico and California, will note how some of the features of the old repartimiento system, first introduced among the Greater Antilles, survived in the farm-lands and among the peons and converts of the missionaries.

[CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.]

THE subject of this chapter is so nearly exclusively concerned with the personal history, the agency, and the missionary work of Las Casas, both in the New World and at the Court of Spain, that we are rather to welcome than to regret the fact that he is almost our sole authority for the statements and incidents with which we have had to deal.

LAS CASAS.

Giving due allowance to what has already been sufficiently recognized as his intensity of spirit, his wildness of imagination, and his enormous overstatement in his enumeration of the victims of Spanish cruelty, he must be regarded as the best authority we could have for the use which he serves to us.[1024] Free as he was from all selfish and sinister motives, even the daring assurance with which he speaks out before the monarch and his councillors, and prints on his titlepages the round numbers of these victims, prompts us to give full credit to his testimony on other matters, even if we substitute thousands in place of millions. As to the forms and aggravations of the cruel methods in which the Spaniards dealt with the natives, the recklessness and ingenuity of the work of depopulation,—which was as naturally the consequence of the enslaving of the Indians as of their indiscriminate slaughter,—Las Casas’ revelations seem to have passed unchallenged by even his most virulent enemies.

Sepulveda may be received by us as the representative alike in spirit and in argument of the opposition to Las Casas. He was an acute and able disputant, and would readily have availed himself of any weak points in the positions of the apostle. It is observable that, instead of assailing even the vehement and exaggerated charges alleged by Las Casas against the Spanish marauders for their cruelty, he rather spends his force upon the maintenance of the abstract rights of Christian champions over the heathen and their territory. The Papal and the Royal prerogatives were, in his view, of such supreme and sweeping account in the controversy, as to cover all the incidental consequences of establishing them. He seemed to argue that heathens and heathenism invited and justified conquest by any method, however ruthless; that the rights of the Papacy and of Christian monarchs would be perilled by allowing any regards of sentiment or humanity to stand in the way of their assertion; and that even the sacred duty of conversion was to be deferred till war and tyranny had obtained the absolute mastery over the natives.

The eight years spent by Las Casas in retirement in the Dominican convent at San Domingo were used by him in study and meditation. His writings prove, in their references and quotations from the classics, as well as from Scripture, that his range was wide, and that his mind was invigorated by this training.

AUTOGRAPH OF LAS CASAS.

In 1552-1553, at Seville, Las Casas printed a series of nine tracts, which are the principal source of our information in relation to his allegations against the Spanish oppressors of the Indians. It is only necessary to refer the reader to the bibliographies[1025] for the full titles of these tracts, of which we simply quote enough for their identification, while we cite them in the order in which they seem to have been composed, following in this the extensive Note which Field has given in his Indian Bibliography:—

1. Breuissima relacion de la destruycion de las Indias ... año 1552; 50 unnumbered leaves.

The series of tracts is usually cited by this title, which is that of the first tract,[1026] for there is no general printed designation of the collection. Four folios appended to this, but always reckoned as a distinct tract, are called,—

TITLE OF FIRST TRACT.

2. Lo que se sigue es vn pedaço de vna carta, etc. It records the observations of a Spanish traveller upon the enormities practised on the natives.[1027]

3. Entre los remedios ... para reformaciō de las Indias; 1552; 53 unnumbered leaves. It gives the eighth of the proposed remedies, assigning twenty reasons against the enslaving of the natives.[1028]

4. Aqui se cōtienē vnos auisos y reglas para los confessores, etc; 1552; 16 unnumbered leaves. It gives the rules for the confessors of his bishopric of Chiapa to deny the offices of the Church to such as held repartimientos.[1029]

5. Aqui se contiene vna disputa ... entre el obispo ... y el doctor Gines de Sepulveda; 1552; 61 unnumbered leaves. This strong enunciation of Las Casas’ convictions grew out of his controversy with Sepulveda.[1030] It contains, first, a summary by Domingo de Soto of the differences between the two disputants; second, the arguments of Sepulveda; and third, the replies of Las Casas,—twelve in all.

6. Este es vn tratado ... sobre la materia de los Yndios, que se han hecho en ellas esclauos; 1552; 36 unnumbered leaves. This contains reasons and judicial authorities on the question of the restitution of the natives to freedom.[1031]

7. Aqui se cōtienē treynta proposiciones ...; 1552; 10 leaves. These are the Propositions, mentioned on a preceding page, as Las Casas’ reply to those who objected to the rigor of his rules for his confessors.[1032]

8. Principia quedā ex quibus procedendum, etc; 1552; 10 leaves. This gives the principles on which he conducts his defence of the rights of the natives.[1033]

9. Tratado cōprobatorio del imperio soberano, etc.; 80 unnumbered leaves. The title-date is 1552, but that in the colophon is 1553. The purpose is “to prove the sovereign empire and universal dominion by which the kings of Castile and Leon hold the West Indies.”[1034]

Complete sets of these tracts have become very rare, though it is not uncommon to find, in current catalogues, single copies of some of those less scarce.[1035]

TITLE OF THE FOURTH TRACT.

[From the copy in Harvard College Library.—Ed.]

In 1571, five years after Las Casas’ death, what is sometimes called a tenth part was printed at Frankfort, under the title of Explicatio questionis utrum Reges vel Principes jure aliquo.... Cives ac subditos a regia corona alienare? This further showing of the arguments of Las Casas is even rarer than its predecessors.[1036] Its authorship, without much reason, has been sometimes denied.[1037] It is translated, however, in Llorente’s edition, as is also a letter of Las Casas which he wrote in 1555 to the Archbishop of Toledo, protesting against the contemplated sale of Encomiendas in perpetuity, which, being communicated to the King, led to the prohibition of the plan.

In 1854 Henry Stevens printed, in a style corresponding to that of the tracts of 1552, a series of six papers from original manuscripts in his possession, interesting as contributions to the history of Las Casas and his work;[1038] and there is also a letter of Las Casas in the volume a few years since printed by the Spanish Government as Cartas de Indias. There is an enumeration of thirteen other treatises, noted as still in manuscript, which is to be found in Sabin’s Dictionary or in his separate Works of Las Casas; but Mr. Field is inclined for one reason or another to reduce the number to five, in addition to the two which were published by Llorente.[1039] There are also two manuscripts recorded in the Carter-Brown Catalogue.[1040]

TITLE OF THE SEVENTH TRACT.

[From a copy in the Harvard College Library.—Ed.]

LAS CASAS’ INDORSEMENT ON THE MANUSCRIPT OF HIS “HISTORIA”.

[This is slightly reduced from the fac-simile given in vol. iii. of the 1875 (Madrid) edition of the Historia.—Ed.]

The most labored of Las Casas’ books was his Historia de las Indias,—the original manuscript of which is still preserved, according to Helps, in the library of the Academy of History at Madrid.[1041] Las Casas began this work while in his convent in 1527,[1042] and seems to have worked upon it, without finishing it, up to 1561. It has all the fervor and vigor of his nature; and so far as it is the result of his own observation, its character is unimpeachable. It is in large part, as Helps has remarked, autobiographic; but it does not bring the story down later than 1520. Its style is characteristically rambling and awkward, and more or less confused with extraneous learning, the result of his convent studies, and interjected with his usual bursts of a somewhat tiresome indignation. Outside of his own knowledge he had large resources in documents, of which we have no present knowledge. He seems to have had a prescience of the feelings in his countrymen which would long keep the manuscript from the printing-office, for he left instructions at his death that no one should use it for forty years. The injunction did not prevent Herrera having access to it; and when this latter historian published his book in 1601, the world got a large part of Las Casas’ work,—much of it copied by Herrera verbatim,—but extracted in such a way that Las Casas could have none of his proper effect in ameliorating the condition of the Indians and exposing the cruelty of their oppression. In this way Las Casas remained too long eclipsed, as Irving says, by his copyist. Notwithstanding the publication of the book was prohibited, various manuscript copies got abroad, and every reputable historian of the Spanish rule has made use of Las Casas’ labors.[1043] Finally, the Royal Academy of History at Madrid undertook the revision of the manuscript; but that body was deterred from putting their revision on the press by the sentiments, which Spanish scholars had always felt, adverse to making public so intense an arraignment of their countrymen.[1044] At last, however, in 1875-1876, the Academy finally printed it in five volumes.[1045] The Historia was of course not included, nor were two of the tracts of the issues of 1552 (nos. 4 and 8) embraced, in the edition of Las Casas’ Obras which Llorente issued in Paris in 1822 in the original Spanish, and also in the same year in a French translation, Œuvres de Las Casas.[1046] This work is dedicated “Au modèle des virtues héréditaires, A. M. le Comte de las Casas.” Sufficient recognition has been made in the preceding narrative of this work of Llorente. As a Spaniard by birth, and a scholar well read in the historical literature of his own country, as one trained and exercised in the priestly office, though he had become more or less of a heretic, and as a most ardent admirer of the virtues and the heroic services of the great Apostle to the Indians, he had the attainments, qualifications, and motives for discharging with ability and fidelity the biographical and editorial task which he undertook. It is evident from his pages that he devoted conscientious labor in investigation, and a purpose of strict impartiality to its discharge. He is not an undiscriminating eulogist of Las Casas, but he penetrates with a true sympathetic admiration to the noble unselfishness and the sublime constancy of this sole champion of righteousness against powerful forces of iniquity.

The number of versions of all or of part of the series of the 1552 tracts into other languages strikingly indicates the interest which they created and the effect which they produced throughout Europe. None of the nations showed more eagerness to make public these accusations against the Spaniards by one of their own number, than the Flemings and Dutch. The earliest of all the translations, and one of the rarest of these publications, is the version of the first tract, with parts of others, which appeared in the dialect of Brabant, in 1578,—the precursor of a long series of such testimonies, used to incite the Netherlanders against the Spanish rule.[1047] The French came next with their Tyrannies et cruautéz des Espagnols, published at Antwerp in 1579, in which the translator, Jacques de Miggrode, softened the horrors of the story with a due regard for his Spanish neighbors.[1048] A somewhat bolder venture was a new version, not from the originals, but from the Dutch translation, and set out with all the horrors of De Bry’s seventeen engravings, which was supplied to the French market with an Amsterdam imprint in 1620. It is a distorted patchwork of parts of the three of the 1552 tracts. In a brief preface, the translator says that the part relating to the Indies is derived from the original, printed at Seville by Sebastian Trugillo in 1552, the writer “being Las Casas, who seems to be a holy man and a Catholic.” There were still other French versions, printed both in France and in Holland. The earliest English translation is a version signed by M. M. S., entitled The Spanish Colonie, or Briefe Chronicle of the Acts and Gestes of the Spaniardes in the West Indies, called the Newe Worlde, for the Space of XL. Yeeres, issued in London in 1583.[1049] The best-known of the English versions is The Tears of the Indians, “made English by J. P.,” and printed in London in 1656.[1050] “J. P.” is John Phillips, a nephew of John Milton. His little book, which contains a terse translation of Las Casas’s “Cruelty,” etc., without his controversy with Sepulveda, is dedicated to Oliver Cromwell. It is prefaced by a glowing appeal “To all true Englishmen,” which rehearses the proud position they hold in history for religion, liberty, and human rights, and denounces the Spaniards as “a Proud, Deceitful, Cruel, and Treacherous Nation, whose chiefest Aim hath been the Conquest of this Land,” etc., closing with a call upon them to aid the Protector in the threatened contest for the West Indies.

While Phillips places the number of the slaughtered Indians at twenty millions, these are reckoned at forty millions by the editor of another English version, based upon the French Tyrannies et cruautéz, which was printed at London, in 1699, as A Relation of the First Voyages and Discoveries made by the Spaniards in America.[1051] The earliest German edition appeared, in 1597, as Newe Welt: warhafftige Anzeigung der Hispanier grewlichen ... Tyranney.[1052] The Latin edition appeared at Frankfort, in 1598, as Narratio regionum Indicarvm per Hispanos qvosdam deuastatarum verissima.[1053] This Latin translation has a brief introduction, mainly a quotation from Lipsius, commenting on these atrocities. The version is spirited and faithful, covering the narrative of Las Casas and his discussion with Sepulveda. The engravings by De Bry are ghastly and revolting, and present all too faithfully the shocking enormities related in the text. It is a fearful parody of deception and truth which introduces a hooded friar as holding a crucifix before the eyes of one under torment by fire or mutilation. We can scarcely regret that the circumstances under which the indiscriminate slaughter was waged but rarely allowed of this desecration of a sacred symbol. The artist has overdrawn his subjects in delineating heaps of richly wrought and chased vessels as brought by the hounded victims to appease their tormentors.

To close this list of translations, it is only necessary to refer to the sundry ways in which Las Casas was helped to create an influence in Italy, the Italian text in these publications usually accompanying the Spanish.[1054]

[EDITORIAL NOTE.]

THE most important distinctive lives of Las Casas are those of Llorente, prefixed to his edition of Las Casas’ Œuvres; that which Quintana (born, 1772; died, 1857) gives in his Vidas de Españoles célebres, vol. iii., published at Madrid in 1833, and reprinted, with Quintana’s Obras, in the Biblioteca de autores Españoles in 1852; and the Vida y escritos de Las Casas of A. M. Fabié, published at Madrid in 1879, in two volumes, with a large number of unpublished documents, making vols. 70 and 71 of the Documentos inéditos (España). The life which was constructed mainly by the son of Arthur Helps out of The Spanish Conquest in America by the father, is the most considerable account in English. The larger work was written in a spirit readily appreciative of the character of Las Casas, and he is made such a centre of interest in it as easily to favor the excision of parts of it to form the lesser book. This was hardly possible with the broader connections established between Las Casas and his times which accompany the portrayal of his career in the works of Prescott and H. H. Bancroft. The great friend of the Indian is mainly, however, to be drawn from his own writings.

Las Casas was by no means alone in his advocacy of the rights of the natives, as Harrisse (Bibl. Am. Vet. Add., p. 119) has pointed out; naming Julian Garces, Francis of Vittoria, Diego de Avendaño, Alonzo de Noreña, and even Queen Isabel herself, as evinced by her will (in Dormer, Discursos varios, p. 381). The fame of Las Casas was steadfastly upheld by Remesal in his Historia de Chyapa, etc., 1619 (cf. Bancroft, Central America, ii. 339); and the great apostle found a successor in his labors in Juan de Palafox y Mendoça, whose appeal to the King, printed about 1650, and called Virtudes del Indio, é naturaleza y costumbres de los Indios de Nueva España, has become very rare. (Cf. Carter-Brown, vol. ii. no. 691.) Brasseur de Bourbourg, in the fourth volume of his Nations civilisées du Mexique, set forth in all their enormity the barbarities of the Spanish conquerors; but he seeks to avoid all imputations of exaggeration by shunning the evidence drawn from Las Casas.

The opponents of Las Casas—who became in due time the best-hated man in the Spanish colonies—were neither few nor powerless, as the thwarting of Las Casas’ plans constantly showed. The Fray Toribio Motolinia took issue with Las Casas, and Ramirez, in his Life of Motolinia contained in Icazbalceta’s Coleccion, undertakes to show (p. lvii) the difference between them. Cf. B. Smith’s Coleccion, p. 67.

The most conspicuous of his fellow-observers, who reached conclusions constantly quite at variance with Las Casas, was Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes,—to give his full name, though Oviedo is the one by which he is usually cited. Oviedo was but a few years younger than Las Casas. He had seen Columbus’ triumph at Barcelona, and had come to America with Pedrarias ten years after Las Casas, and spent thirty-four of the next forty years in the New World, holding part of the time the office of inspector of the gold-smeltings at Darien, and latterly living at Hispaniola. He is thought to have begun his historical studies as early as 1520, and he published his first book, usually called the Sumario, in 1526, on his return from his second voyage. It is a description of the West Indies and its natives. Returning to Spain in 1530, he was after a while made the official chronicler of the Indies, and in 1535 began the publication of his great Historia de las Indias. On this chief labor Ticknor (Spanish Literature, ii. 33) traces him at work certainly as late as 1548, and he may have added to it down to 1555. He had the royal direction to demand of the various governors whatever document and aid he might need as he went on. Ticknor calls him the first authorized chronicler of the New World,—“an office,” he adds, “which was at one time better paid than any other similar office in the kingdom, and was held at different times by Herrera, Tamayo, Solis, and other writers of distinction, and ceased (he believed) with the creation of the Academy of History.” Oviedo was a correspondent of Ramusio, and found the acquaintance helpful. He knew Cortes, and exchanged letters with him. Ticknor, after speaking of the scope of the Historia as taxing the powers of Oviedo beyond their strength, still accounts the work of great value as a vast repository of facts, and not wholly without merit as a composition.

TITLE OF OVIEDO, 1526, REDUCED.

In the estimates commonly made of Oviedo there is allowed him but scant scholarship, little power of discrimination,—as shown in his giving at times as much weight to hearsay evidence as to established testimony,—a curious and shrewd insight, which sometimes, with his industry, leads him to a better balance of authorities than might be expected from his deficient judgment. His resources of material were uncommon; but his use of them is generally tedious, with a tendency to wander from his theme. Ternaux sees in him the prejudices of his times,—and these were not certainly very friendly to the natives. Las Casas could no more endure him than he could bear with the average conquistador. The bishop charges the historian with constantly bearing false witness against the Indians, and with lying on every page. Oviedo died at Valladolid in 1557. (Cf. Prescott’s Mexico, ii. 283; Irving’s Columbus, App. xxviii.; H. H. Bancroft, Chroniclers, p. 20, and Central America, i. 309, 463-467.)

ARMS OF OVIEDO.

Reduced from the cut at the end of the edition of Oviedo, 1535.

The bibliography of Oviedo deserves to be traced. His initial publication, De la natural hystoria de las Indias, was printed at Toledo in 1526,—not in 1525, as the Real Academia says in their reprint, nor 1528, as Ticknor gives it. It is often cited as Oviedo’s Sumario, since that is the first word of the secondary title. (Cf. Sabin, Dictionary, vol. xiv. no. 57,987; Harrisse, Notes on Columbus, p. 12; and Bibl. Amer. Vet., no. 139; Ternaux, no. 35; Rich, 1832, no. 6, £12 12s.; Carter-Brown, i. 89.) There are also copies in the Library of Congress and Harvard College. The Spanish text is included in Barcia’s Historiadores primitivos and in Vedia’s Hist. prim. de Indias, 1858, vol. i. It is in large part translated into English in Eden’s Decades of the New World, 1555 (chap. 18), and this version is condensed in Purchas’s Pilgrimes, iv. 5. There is an Italian version in Ramusio’s Viaggi, iii. 44.

The publication of Oviedo’s great work, which is quite different from the 1526 book, was begun at Seville, in 1535, under the title of Historia general de las Indias. In this he gave the first nineteen books, and ten chapters of book 20. At the end is a carta missiva, to which the author usually attached his own signature, and that annexed is taken (slightly reduced) from the copy in Harvard College Library. (Cf. Sabin, vol. xiv. no. 57,988; Harrisse, Bibl. Am. Vet., no. 207; Murphy, nos. 1886-87; Carter-Brown, i. 114, with fac-simile of title.) Ramusio translated these nineteen books. In 1547, what purports to be a summary, but is in fact a version, of Xeres by Jacques Gohory, appeared in Paris as L’histoire de la terre neuve du Péru en l’Inde occidentale. (Cf. Bib. Am. Vet., no. 264; Ternaux, no. 52; Sabin, vol. xiv. no. 57,994.)

In 1547 a new edition of the Spanish, somewhat increased, appeared at Salamanca as Coronica de las Indias; la hystoria general de las Indias agora nueuamente impressa, corregida, y emendada. Sometimes it is found in the same cover with the Peru of Xeres, and then the title varies a little. The book is rare and costly. Rich, in 1832 (no. 17), priced it at £10 10s.; it has been sold recently at the Sunderland sale for £61, and in the library of an old admiral (1883, no. 340) for £40; Quaritch has priced it at £63, and Maisonneuve (Leclerc, no. 432), at 1,000 francs. There is a copy in Harvard College Library. (Cf. Sabin, vol. xiv. no. 57,989; Carter-Brown, i. 145; Bibl. Am. Vet., no. 278; Additions, no. 163; and Murphy, no. 1885.)

A full French translation of ten books, made by Jean Poleur, appeared in Paris under the title of Histoire naturelle et généralle des Indes, without the translator’s name in 1555, and with it in 1556. (Cf. Sabin, vol. xiv. no. 57,992-93; Ternaux, no. 47; Carter-Brown, i. 214; Beckford, iii. 342; Murphy, no. 1884; Leclerc, no. 434, 130 francs, and no. 2,888, 350 francs; Quaritch, no. 12,313, £7 10s.) There is a copy in Harvard College Library.

The twentieth book, Libro xx de la segunda parte de la general historia de las Indias appeared for the first time and separately at Valladolid in 1557; the death of the author while his book was in press prevented the continuance of its publication. (Cf. Rich, 1832, no. 34, £6 6s.; Sabin, vol. xiv. no. 57,991; Carter-Brown, i. 219.)

The fate of the remaining parts of the manuscript was for a while uncertain. Rich, in 1832, said that books xxi. to xxviii., which were in the printer’s hands at Oviedo’s death, were not recovered, while he knew of manuscript copies of books xxix. to xlviii. in several collections. Irving says he found a copy of the unprinted parts in the Colombina Library at Seville. Harrisse (Notes on Columbus and Bibl. Am. Vet., no. 207) says the manuscript was scattered, but was brought together again after some vicissitudes. Another statement places it in the Casa de la Contratacion after Oviedo’s death; whence it was transferred to the Convent of Monserrat. Meanwhile sundry manuscript copies were taken. (Cf. Notes on Columbus, p. 17.) In 1775 the publication of it was ordered by Government; but it was not till 1851-1855 that the Real Academia de la Historia at Madrid issued the fifty books, complete in four volumes folio, under the editing of José Amador de los Rios, who added to the publication several maps, a bibliography, and the best Life of Oviedo yet written. (Cf. Sabin, vol. xiv. no. 57,990; the set is worth about $20. See further, Brunet, iv. 299; Ternaux, no. 46; Panzer, vii. 124; Stevens, Nuggets, ii. 2,067.) Ternaux had already, in 1840, published in French, as a Histoire de Nicaragua (in his second series, vol. iii.) thirteen chapters of book xlii.

There was an Italian traveller in the Spanish provinces between 1541 and 1556 who, while he thought that Las Casas mistook his vocation in attempting to administer a colony, bears evidence to the atrocities which Las Casas so persistently magnified. This wanderer was a Milanese, Girolamo Benzoni, who at the early age of twenty-two had started on his American travels. He did not altogether succeed in ingratiating himself with the Spaniards whom he encountered, and perhaps his discontent colored somewhat his views. He was not much of a scholar, yielded not a little to credulity, and picked up mere gossip indeed, but of a kind which gives us much light as to the conditions both of the Europeans and natives. (Cf. Field, Indian Bibliography, no. 117; Bancroft, Central America, ii. 232; Admiral Smith’s Introduction to the Hakluyt Society edition.) After his return he prepared and published—prefixing his own likeness, as shown here in fac-simile—the results of his observations in his Historia del Mondo Nuovo, which was issued at Venice in 1565. It became a popular book, and spread through Europe not only in the original Italian, but in French and Latin versions. In Spanish it never became current; for though it so greatly concerns that people, no one of them ventured to give it the help of a translation into their vernacular; and as be had not said much in praise of their American career, it is not altogether strange.

The bibliography of the book merits explanation. It is treated at length in Sabin’s Dictionary, vol. ii. no. 4,791, and in the Studi biog. e bibliog. della Società Geografica Italiana, i. 293 (1882). The original Italian edition, La Historia del Mondo Nuovo, laqual tratta dell’ Isole & Mari nuovamente ritrovati, & delle nuove Citta da lui proprio vedute, per acqua & per terra in quattordeci anni, was published at Venice in 1565. There are copies in Harvard College, Cornell University, and the Carter-Brown libraries. Cf. Rich (1832), no. 43—£1 1s. 0d.; Leclerc (1878), no. 59—120 francs; A. R. Smith (1874), £2 2s. 0d.; Brinley, no. 10; Carter-Brown, i. 253; Huth, i. 132; Field, Indian Bibliography, no. 117; Sparks, no. 240; Stevens (1870), no. 171. A second Italian edition—Nuovamente ristampata... con la giunta d’alcune cose notabile dell’Isole di Canaria—was issued at Venice in 1572. Cf. Rich (1832), no. 49, £1 1s. 0d.; Carter-Brown, i. 289; Stevens, no. 172; Muller (1877), no. 285; Sunderland, no. 1,213; H. C. Murphy, no. 2,838; Huth, i. 132; J. J. Cooke, nos. 219, 220.

The first Latin edition Novæ Novi Orbis Historiæ, translated by Urban Chauveton (who added an account of the French expedition to Florida), was published at Geneva in 1578; followed by a second in 1581; a third in 1586, with Lery’s book on Brazil added; others in 1590 (no place); 1598 and 1600 (Geneva); (Coloniæ Allobrogum), 1612, with three other tracts; and at Hamburg in 1648. Besides these the Latin version appeared in De Bry, parts iv., v., and vi., printed at Frankfort in 1592, 1593, 1594, 1595, and at Oppenheim in 1617. Cf. Carter-Brown, i. 318, 338, 365; ii. 123, 629; Stevens, Nuggets, 2,300; Bibl. Hist., no. 173-174; Muller (1872), nos. 78, 79; (1877), 287; Sunderland, no. 1,214; Cooke, nos. 218, 222; Pinart, no. 97; Huth, i. 132; Field, p. 119. There are copies of the 1578 edition in the Boston Public and Harvard College libraries.

The French editions were issued at Geneva in 1579 and 1589. The notes are different from those of the Latin editions; and there are no notes to book iii., as in the Latin. Cf. Carter-Brown, i. 326; Cooke, no. 221; Court, no. 32.

There are two German versions. The first was by Nicholas Höniger, and was printed at Basle, in 1579, as Der Newenn Weldt. It was reissued, with tracts of Peter Martyr and others, in 1582. The version of Abel Scherdigers was issued at Helmstadt in 1590, 1591, again at Frankfort in 1595, and at Wittenberg in 1606. There were in addition some later imprints, besides those included in De Bry and in Saeghman’s Voyagien. Cf. Rich, no. 61; Carter-Brown, i. 344, 388, ii. 44, 917; Muller (1872), nos. 80, 1880, (1877), 286.

The first Dutch edition appeared at Haarlem in 1610; there was an abridged issue at Amsterdam in 1663. Cf. Tiele, nos. 276, 277; Muller (1872), nos. 81, 82; Carter-Brown, ii. 97.

Purchas gave an abstract in English; but there was no complete English version till Admiral Smith’s was published by the Hakluyt Society in 1857. This has fac-similes of the cuts of the 1572 edition; and De Bry also followed the early cuts.

In 1542 and 1543 Las Casas largely influenced the royal decrees relating to the treatment of the Indians, which were signed by the monarch, Nov. 20, 1542, and June 4, 1543, and printed at Alcala in 1543 as Leyes y Ordenanças. This book stands as the earliest printed ordinances for the New World, and is rare. Rich in 1832 (no. 13) priced it at £21. (Cf. Bib. Am. Vet., no. 247; Carter-Brown, vol. i. no. 130; Sabin, vol. x. p. 320.) There were later editions at Madrid in 1585,[1055] and at Valladolid in 1603. Henry Stevens, in 1878, issued a fac-simile edition made by Harris after a vellum copy in the Grenville Collection, accompanied by a translation, with an historical and bibliographical introduction.

The earliest compilation of general laws for the Indies, entitled Provisiones, cedulas, instrucciones de su Magestad, was printed in Mexico in 1563. This is also very rare; Rich priced it in 1832 at £16 16s. It was the work of Vasco de Puga, and Helps calls it “the earliest summary of Spanish colonial law.” The Carter-Brown copy (Catalogue, i. 242) was sent to England for Mr. Helps’s use, there being no copy in that country, so far as known.

The next collection was Provisiones, cédulas, etc., arranged by Diego de Encinas, and was printed at Madrid in 1596. The work early became scarce, and Rich priced it at £5 5s. in 1832 (no. 81). It is in Harvard College and the Carter-Brown Library (Catalogue, vol. i. no. 502). The bibliography of the general laws, particularly of later collections, is sketched in Bancroft’s Central America, i. 285, and Mexico, iii. 550; and in chap. xxvii. of this same volume the reader will find an examination of the administration and judicial system of the Spaniards in the New World;[1056] and he must go chiefly to Bancroft (Central America, i. 255, 257, 261, 285; Mexico, ii. 130, 516, 563, etc.) and Helps (Spanish Conquest and Life of Las Casas) for aid in tracing the sources of the subject of the legal protection sought to be afforded to the natives, and the attempted regulation of the slavery which they endured. Helps carefully defines the meaning and working of the encomienda system, which gave in effect a property value to the subjection of the natives to the Conquerors. Cf. Spanish Conquest (Am. ed.), iii. 113, 128, 157, 212.

---