The Bishop of Burgos, who was, you will remember, always bent on opposing the clerico in everything he undertook, laughed at this plan. He said he had been trying for years to get men to go out to the Indies and could not find twenty that were willing to venture. However, Las Casas was not stopped by this, and set to work at once to see what he could do. A man named Berrio was appointed to go with him and assist him; but this Berrio turned out to be anything but a help, refusing to obey the clerico's orders, and finally leaving him, without permission.
Berrio got together about two hundred vagabonds, not at all the right sort of people for colonists, and sent them to Seville, to be shipped to the Indies. Las Casas was not informed of the matter, and as no one had any instructions with regard to these colonists, they were sent out with no supplies for their necessities. When Las Casas heard of it, he insisted upon having provisions sent after them; but it was too late to benefit many of them, for numbers had died of the hardships suffered, and those who lived and stayed in the Indies proved a very bad addition to the white population.
Meanwhile, the Grand Chancellor had died, and Bishop Fonseca was again at the head of Indian affairs, much to the clerico's grief. Fonseca refused to do anything at all for the colonists, and as Las Casas would not allow them to go under such conditions of neglect, the plan fell through. But no sooner was he defeated in one scheme than he immediately began to devise another. There was no such thing as discouraging Las Casas.
CHAPTER VI
THE KNIGHTS OF THE GOLDEN SPUR
There had been for some time both Franciscan monks and Dominican fathers on the mainland of South America, working among the natives. Pedro de Cordova, the head of the Dominicans in the Indies, wrote to Las Casas at about this time, asking him to get the King to grant a certain territory on the mainland, where no white men except the Dominicans and Franciscans should be allowed to go; or, if he could not get it on the mainland, to try to secure some small nearby islands, saying that if the King would not do this it would be necessary to recall all the brethren of the Dominican order, as it was of no use for them to preach to the Indians when they saw all about them the Christians behaving as they did. Now when the clerico had spoken to Fonseca about this, the reply had been that there was no money in it for the King, so that Las Casas saw that if he was to get the grant, he must find a way to make it profitable to the King and his ministers.
The Good Book says that "the love of money is the root of all evil," and certainly Las Casas was inclined to believe this as he thought of what wickedness it had led the Spaniards into in the New World. No wonder the Indians thought that gold was the white man's god. The clerico tells us of a certain Indian chief, who had fled before the Spaniards from Hispaniola to Cuba, and who, hearing that the Christians were coming there also, called his people together and told them that the reason why the Spaniards treated them so cruelly was because they had a god whom they greatly loved and adored, and it was to make them also love and serve him that they killed and enslaved them. He had a basket of jewels and gold near him. Holding it up, he said that this was the god of the Christians and called upon his people to dance before this god and worship him, and perhaps he would not allow the Spaniards to harm them.
Poor old chief! Driven from one hiding place to another, he was taken at last; and because he had tried to escape his oppressors and defend his people, he was condemned to be burned alive. When he was tied to the stake a Franciscan priest came up to him and told him that, although there was but little time, yet if he would believe the Christian faith and be baptized he would be saved. He then told him as much as he could of God and of His Son Jesus Christ, our Lord, and, having finished, asked him if he would believe and go to Heaven, where he would be happy evermore, saying that if he did not he would go to Hell. The chief thought for a moment and then asked if the Christians went to Heaven. The priest replied that those that were good did. The chief at once answered that in that case he did not wish to go to Heaven, where he would have these cruel people again; he would go to Hell.