In Honduras slaves were still kidnapped, and sold by ship-loads among the islands or in Nicaragua, so that in the vicinity of Trujillo, where formerly were native towns with from six hundred to three thousand houses, there were in 1547 not more than a hundred and eighty Indians left, the remainder having fled to the mountains to avoid capture. At Naco, which a few years before contained a population of ten thousand souls, there were, in 1536, only forty-five remaining. At a coast town named La Haga, nine leagues from Trujillo, and containing nine hundred houses, there was but one inhabitant left, all having been sold into bondage save the young daughter of the cacique, who had contrived to elude the slave-hunters.[XIV‑3]
Cruel as was the treatment of the natives in every part of the Spanish provinces, nowhere was oppression carried to such an extreme as in Guatemala. Here little distinction was made between the allies and the conquered races; even the faithful Tlascaltecs, who, after the conquest, had settled with the Mexican and Cholultec auxiliaries at Almolonga, being enslaved, overworked, and otherwise maltreated, until in 1547 there were barely a hundred survivors.[XIV‑4] The natives of Atitlan, who had never swerved in their allegiance to the Spaniards, were treated with equal severity. After sharing the hardships of their military campaigns, they were compelled to supply every year four or five hundred male and female slaves and every fifteen days a number of tributary laborers, many of whom perished from excessive toil and privation. They were required to furnish, besides, a large quantity of cloth, cacao,[XIV‑5] honey, and poultry; and so grievous were the burdens laid upon them that even the caciques were impoverished, and their wives compelled to serve as beasts of burden and tillers of the soil.
If such was the treatment to which the most faithful allies of the Spaniards were subjected, what fell cruelties may we not expect to find inflicted on those who, undeterred by defeat, rose again and again upon their oppressors? No words can depict the miseries of these hapless races. Wholesale slaughter, hanging, and burning, torturing, mutilating, and branding, followed the suppression of a revolt. Starvation, exhaustion, blows, fainting under intolerable burdens, groans of despair, and untimely death, were their lot in time of peace. During Alvarado's time the waste of life was wanton and most sickening. In the field starving auxiliaries were fed on human flesh, captives being butchered for food; children were killed and roasted; nay, even where there was no want of provisions, men were slain merely for the feet and hands, which were esteemed delicacies by the anthropophagous races. Nor were the marital relations of the natives any more considered than if they had been by nature the brutes which the Spaniards made of them in practice. Households were rendered desolate, wives being torn from husbands and daughters from parents, to be distributed among the soldiers and seamen, while the children were sent to work at the gold-washings, and there perished by thousands. Thus the work of depopulation progressed, and it is asserted by Las Casas that during the first fifteen or sixteen years of the conquest the destruction of Indians in Guatemala alone amounted to four or five million souls.[XIV‑6]
None of the conquerors of the New World, not even Pedrarias Dávila, were held in such dread as Pedro de Alvarado. When the news of his landing at Puerto de Caballos was noised abroad the natives abandoned their dwellings and fled to the forests. In a few days towns, villages, and farms were deserted, and it seemed as if the whole province of Guatemala had been depopulated by enchantment.[XIV‑7] The plantations were destroyed by cattle; the cattle were torn by wild beasts; and the sheep and lambs served as food for the blood-hounds, which had been trained to regard the Indians as their natural prey, but now found none to devour.
LAWS OF LITTLE AVAIL.
As early as 1525 intelligence of the terrible rapidity with which depopulation was progressing reached the emperor, and on the 17th of November he issued a cédula for the protection of the fast decreasing races.[XIV‑8] In [1519] he ordered the council of the Indies to draw up regulations for the government of the provinces, and that body issued a decree regarding the treatment of natives, which, although the protection of the interests of the throne may be a somewhat prominent consideration, exhibits sympathy and enjoins moderation toward the oppressed races.[XIV‑9] Other cédulas were issued at brief intervals,[XIV‑10] but that all were inoperative is shown from many incidents which have already been related.
Distant legislation was of no avail. The branding-iron still seared the captive's flesh, the pine-torch was still applied to the rich victim's feet, and the lash still fell on the toiler's uncovered back. The encomenderos, bent only on amassing wealth, worked their Indians until they were on the verge of death, and then cast them forth from their houses or left them where they fell dead in the streets, as food for prowling dogs and carrion birds, until the odor of corruption infected the settlements.[XIV‑11] Nor did the homes of the living escape destruction or their property violent seizure. Their dwellings were pulled down to supply building materials, and the produce and wares which they brought each day to exchange in their market at Santiago were taken from them by the servants of the Spaniards, or by soldiers, who repaid them only with blows or stabs.[XIV‑12]
Thus notwithstanding the ordinances enacted by the emperor for the protection of the natives, and in the face of a papal bull issued in 1531 by his holiness Paul III.,[XIV‑13] restoring to the Indians their liberty throughout the provinces, their numbers rapidly decreased and the condition of the survivors grew worse as fresh taskmasters arrived in the New World. Few even of the poorer and none of the wealthier class of Spaniards expected to find there an abiding-place. Spain's boldest and most reckless left her shores and voyaged westward with the placid satisfaction of ruffians released from law's control, and now free from the check of an effectual executive power regarded themselves as masters of the position.
BARTOLOMÉ DE LAS CASAS.
In 1542 Bartolomé de Las Casas placed in the hands of the emperor the manuscript of his well known work on the destruction of the Indies, and through the exertions mainly of that never-tiring missionary a royal junta composed of ecclesiastics and jurists was held during the previous year at Valladolid for the purpose of drawing up regulations for the better government of the provinces. The great apostle of the Indies pleaded his favorite cause with all the fire of his eloquence, urging that the natives of the New World were by the law of nature free, and giving utterance to the now somewhat trite maxim "God does not allow evil that good may come."