Dr. Robertson considers the indians to have been, at the time of the conquest by the Spaniards, less improved and more savage than the inhabitants of any part of the globe; but he afterwards limits this charge to the rudest tribes; a limitation which was very necessary, for the purpose of palliating what I cannot help believing to be a false accusation. He could not mean the tribe of the Muysca indians, who have left the fewest remains of their ingenuity, much less the Peruvians; and in Mexico, some of their cities were equal to the finest in Spain, according to the accounts given by Cortes, in his reports to the Emperor Charles V. These reports, and the yet existing monuments of labour and ingenuity, speak strongly in opposition to Robertson's statement.
Ulloa says, "one can hardly form an idea of them different from what one has of the brutes." Paul III. thought differently, when, by his celebrated bull, he declared them worthy of being considered as human beings. Ulloa might have said, with more truth, one can hardly form an idea of treatment more brutal than that which many of them receive. In the interior of Peru, as Ulloa speaks of the Peruvians, they were degraded by the mita, a scion of the law of repartirnientos, distribution of indians at the time of the conquest. By this law, the men were forced from their homes and their families to serve for a limited time an imperious master, who, if he approved of their labour, took care to advance them a little money or some equivalent above what their wages amounted to, and then obliged them to serve him until the debt was liquidated. By this time another debt was contracted; and thus it was that they became worse than slaves, except in the name. I have been on several estates in different parts of Peru and Quito where the annual stipend of an indian was no more than eighteen or twenty dollars; with which pittance he had probably to maintain a wife and family, besides paying his annual tribute of five or seven dollars and a half to the King. The result was generally this:—the father died indebted to his master, and his children were attached to the estate for the payment. I would now ask Don Antonio Ulloa, who are the brutes? The hut of one of these miserable indians consists of a few stones laid one upon another, without any cement or mortar, thatched over with some long grass or straw, which neither defends the unhappy inmates from the wind nor the rain; and such is the case on the paramos, or bleak mountains. One small room contains the whole family; their bed, a sheep skin or two, their covering, the few clothes which they wear during the day, for they have no others; their furniture, one or two earthen pots; and their food, a scanty provision of barley. Who that is possessed of Christian charity could witness this, and, instead of pitying their miserable condition, call them brutes? If of these Ulloa says, "nothing disturbs the tranquillity of their souls—equally insensible to disasters and to prosperity," his observation is just. Born under the lash of an imperious master, subject to the cruelty of an unfeeling mayordomo, they had no disasters to fear, because their condition could not possibly be rendered worse: with prosperity they had been totally unacquainted, it was a blessing which had fled the land they were born to tread, or rather it had been transferred to usurpers.
Ulloa continues, "though half naked, they are as contented as a monarch in his most splendid array." And does the Spaniard imagine, that these miserable men are destitute of corporal feeling as well as of intellectual sensibility? Does neither the bleak wind nor the cold rain make any impression on them? Can content be the companion of the half-naked, half-starved slave? It may be the gloom of despair that hangs on their countenances; but it is certainly not the smile of content. "Fear makes no impression on them, and respect as little." This rhapsody is taken from the mouth of some Spanish master, as a palliative of his own cruel conduct. "Their disposition is so singular, that there are no means of influencing them, nor of rousing them from that indifference, which is proof against all the endeavours of the wisest persons. No expedient which can induce them to abandon that gross ignorance, or lay aside that careless negligence which disconcert the prudent, and disappoint the care of such as are attentive to their welfare." If a man be so oppressed by a tyrannical and proud master, that he finds himself lower in his estimation than the cattle which he tends—so worn down with hunger, cold, and fatigue that he is only anxious for the approach of night or of the grave,—what can rouse him from that indifference or despondency which Señor Ulloa describes? Now this has been the state of the South American indian on the large farms, and in the obrages, manufactories. He dreads to finish his task early, fearful of an increase of labour; he dares not appear cheerful, because it might be called impudence by his overseer; he dares not be cleanly or well clothed, because the first condition would be considered a negligence of his duty to his master, or an attention to his own comforts, and the second the result of theft. Then, what, let me ask, is left, but misery in appearance, and wretchedness in reality? I well remember what the pious Dr. Rodrigues said to me at Quito:—"Not half the saints of the Romish Church, whose penitent lives placed them in the calendar and on our altars, suffered greater privations, in the hopes of enjoying everlasting glory, than one of these indians does through fear of offending a cruel master, or for the purpose of increasing his wealth." "How dear," added he, "has the religion of Christ cost these once happy innocent creatures, and at what an usurious price it has been sold to them by the proud pedlars who imported it. Oh! heaven," exclaimed he, "till when! till when! hasta quando! hasta quando!" Well too do I remember, when passing, with the Conde Ruis de Castilla, by the cloth manufactory of San Juan, near Riobamba, an old indian woman, who was tending a flock of sheep, and spinning with her distaff and spindle, her head uncovered, her grey locks waving wildly in the wind, and her nakedness not half concealed by an old coarse anaco, running to his excellency, and on her knees exclaiming, with sobs and tears, "bless your worship, I have seen seven viracochas who came to govern us, but my poor children are still as naked and as hungry as I was when I saw the first; but you will tell the King of this, and he will make me happy before I die; he will let us leave San Juan; oh! taita ya, taita ya—oh! my father, my father."
"No expedient can induce them to lay aside their gross ignorance," says el Señor Ulloa. What expedients have been tried? No schools have been established for them; no persons employed to teach them, except an old man or a friar, who once a week teaches them their prayers; and I can safely aver, that thousands of indians employed by white people live and die in their service without ever seeing any other book than the missal on the altar, or their master's account book on his table.
But let us turn from this loathing sight, and look to indians where they are blessed with a greater portion of rational liberty, where they are considered more on a level with their white neighbours, and have more opportunities of evincing that they are not a disgrace to human nature, nor beneath the merited name of men.
The towns of Huacho and Eten, inhabited almost exclusively by indians, may serve to pourtray the character of these people when in society. I have already mentioned their employment at Huacho; to which may be added the manufacture of many articles of cotton at Eten, such as napkins, tablecloths, and counterpanes, some of which are remarkably fine, and ornamented with curious figures interwoven, somewhat like damask. I have seen their felt or frieze counterpanes sell for twenty or twenty five dollars each. They also make large floor mats of junco, a species of fine rush, and they manufacture hats. These are sufficient proofs, that when an indian reaps the benefit of his labour he is not averse from work.
Ulloa has also mistated the character of the American indian, in asserting, "that he will receive with the same indifference the office of an alcalde or judge, as that of a hangman." An indian alcalde is as proud of his vara, insignia of office, as any mayor of England is of his gown, and always takes care to carry it along with him, and to exact that respect which he considers due to him in his official capacity. When the Oidor Abendaño passed through the indian town of Sechura, in 1807, he had neglected to take the necessary passport from the Governador of Paita; the indian alcalde requested to see it; the Oidor informed him that he had not one; adding, that he was one of the ministers of the royal audience of Lima; and I, said the indian, am the minister of justice of Sechura, and here my vara is of more importance than your lordship's. I shall therefore insist on your returning to Paita for your passport, or else of sending some one for it: two of my bailiffs will wait on you, my lord, till it is procured, as well as for the purpose of preventing you from pursuing your journey without it.
The number of indians who receive holy orders, natives of the coast as well as the interior, is a convincing proof that they are not destitute of understanding, nor incapable of at least becoming literary characters, if not learned men. Some have also shone at the bar, in the audiences of Lima, Cusco, Chuquisaca, and Quito; among these was Manco Yupanqui, of Lima, protector-general of indians, whom I knew. He was a good Latin scholar, was well versed in the English and French languages, and considered the only good Greek scholar in the city. I knew also Don Jose Huapayo, Vice-rector of the college del Principe, a pasante of San Carlos, a young man of natural talents, which were well cultivated.
Extreme cowardice has also been attributed to the indians; but this imputation very indifferently accords with the tribes of Araucania, Darien, &c. During the present contest in South America the indians have sustained more than their share of fighting; and had the unfortunate Pumacagua of Cusco, or Pucatoro of Huamanga, been supplied with arms and ammunition, they would not have been subdued by Ramires and Maroto.