In the second chapter of his Historia Apologetica the following sentence occurs: “Three leagues to the west of the extremity of this plain is Puerto de Plata, and on a hill above and near by the town thus named there is a monastery of the Dominican Order, where the composition of this History was [pg 178] begun in the year 1527,—to be finished when and where the will of God may ordain.”[41]
In 1529, he lent his efforts to bringing to an end the long standing rebellion of the cacique Enrique whose forces, in the mountains of Baranco, the Spaniards had fought at intervals during fourteen years in vain. This chief had been educated in the Franciscan convent at Vera Paz and was a man of unusual intelligence and superior courage; he married a beautiful Indian girl of good lineage and, with the Indians under his rule, was assigned in repartimiento to a Spaniard named Valenzuela, who began by robbing him of a valuable mare and ended by taking from him his wife.
The cacique's protests were answered with a beating, and his complaints to the governor of St. Juan de la Maguana, one Pedro Vadillo, were disregarded.
This grievance led to an organised rebellion of the natives under Enrique, who assembled numerous forces. By constantly moving from place to place, he was able to elude the several Spanish expeditions sent against him. The course of these alternate hostilities and negotiations to obtain the submission of Enrique, and the dispersal of his people, are described at length in chapters 125 and 126 of the Historia General. Even the intervention of Fray Remigio, one of the Franciscans who had come from Picardy to Hispaniola, and who had been [pg 179] one of Enrique's teachers in the convent, failed induce the offended cacique to surrender. News of the continued success of the rebellion reached Spain, and in 1527, Don Sebastian de Fuenleal was sent out as President of the Audiencia and Bishop of Santo Domingo, with special instructions to subdue Enrique. His efforts proved as fruitless as the preceding attempts, and in 1528 the King wrote still more urgently that the campaign must be brought to a successful issue. The Bishop-President, being in sore perplexity to devise means for satisfying the royal commands, showed this embarrassing letter to Fray Bartholomew.
“My lord,” said Las Casas, “how many times has your lordship and this Audiencia tried to subdue this man to the King's service by waging war against him.”
“Many times,” answered the Bishop, “almost every year a force has been organised and so it will go on till he dies or submits.” “And how often,” asks Las Casas, “have you tried to win him by peaceful means?” “I don't know that there was but the one time,” answered Fuenleal. Fray Bartolomew then affirmed that he was confident that he could arrange a peace and, the Bishop-president having accepted his offer to act as ambassador to Enrique, he fulfilled his mission as much to the astonishment as to the satisfaction of everybody.
The Spanish historian Quintana rejects the account of these events which is given by Remesal and has ever since been accepted by historians as authentic, declaring it to be fabulous, and limiting [pg 180] the part Las Casas played in the affair of Enrique to a visit he paid him after peace was concluded. Remesal bases his narrative on documents which he declares he found in the archives of the Audiencia of Guatemala, and there seems no sufficient motive for doubting the veracity of the evidence. Las Casas, in describing what took place in the early part of the troubles with Enrique (1520), does not say positively that he took part in the first negotiations for peace, but he does clearly give it to be understood that the successful issue of the final efforts was owing to his intervention. A detailed account of the conclusion of the rebellion would, according to the system adopted in writing his History, find its rightful place in the fourth book, which is missing, though there is little room for doubt that it was written and may possibly still be discovered.
Concerning the journey which—according to Remesal—Las Casas made to Spain in 1530, very little is known, and Quintana is as sceptical about this voyage as about the part attributed to him by some biographers in Enrique's subjugation, though there seems as little reason in this instance to doubt the explicit statement of one whose good faith is as far above suspicion as his opportunities for knowing the facts were exceptional.
Torquemada represents Fray Juan Zumarraga, the first Bishop of Mexico, as visiting Spain in 1532, and as having previously written asking that the colonists should be prohibited from enslaving the Indians, and that during that time identical [pg 181] representations had been made to the government by the Bishop of Chiapa, Don Bartolomé de Las Casas, [42] which procured letters patent from the Empress-Regent signed in 1530, before the bishop of Mexico arrived. [43] The scepticism of Quintana seems hardly justified.
The occasion of the alleged journey was the recent discovery and conquest of Peru by Francisco Pizarro and Diego de Almagro. The fate of these millions of people, newly subjected to the Castilian crown could not have been a matter of indifference to Las Casas. They stood far higher in the scale of civilisation than the naked islanders, possessing as they did, as great an empire as the Mexicans, with religion, laws, and literature of a high order of development. While the entrance of Las Casas into a monastic order was, in one sense, a retirement from the world, he had chosen a community whose members were as devoted to the defence of the Indians as he himself was, and while he had, when still a secular priest, sustained a stout fight, unaided save by such friends as chance and his own efforts might here and there secure him, he could, after his profession, count upon the moral and active support of one of the most powerful religious organisations of the age. His retirement, therefore, proved to be a period of refreshment, during which he reinforced his powers for continuing his propaganda and, while losing nothing of his original [pg 182] enthusiasm and determination, he returned to the scene of his former activity with renewed courage and a great religious Order at his back.