Indians
To the estates (haciendas) of their royal Highnesses 500
Baltasar de Castro, the factor 200
Miguel Diaz, the chief constable 200
Juan Ceron, the mayor 150
Diego Morales, bachelor-at-law 150
Amador de Lares 150
Louis Soto Mayor 100
Miguel Diaz, Daux-factor 100
the (municipal) council 100
the hospitals 100
Bishop Manso 100
Sebastian de la Gama 90
Gil de Malpartida 70
Juan Bono (a merchant) 70
Juan Velasquez 70
Antonio Rivadeneyra 60
Gracian Cansino 60
Louis Aqueyo 60
the apothecary 60
Francisco Cereceda 50
40 other individuals 40 each 1,600
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4,040
Distributed in 1509 1,060
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Total 5,100
These numbers included women and children old enough to perform some kind of labor. They were employed in the mines, or in the rivers rather (for it was alluvium gold only that the island offered to the greed of the so-called conquerors); they were employed on the plantations as beasts of burden, and in every conceivable capacity under taskmasters who, in spite of Ferdinand's revocation of the order to reduce them to slavery (September, 1514), had acted on his first dispositions and believed themselves to have the royal warrant to work them to death.
The king's more lenient dispositions came too late. They were powerless to check the abuses that were being committed under his own previous ordinances. The Indians disappeared with fearful rapidity. Licentiate Sancho Velasquez, who had made the second distribution, wrote to the king April 27, 1515: " … Excepting your Highnesses' Indians and those of the crown officers, there are not 4,000 left." On August 8th of the same year the officers themselves wrote: " … The last smeltings have produced little gold. Many Indians have died from disease caused by the hurricane as well as from want of food…."
To readjust the proportion of Indians according to the position or other claims of each individual, new distributions were resorted to. In these, some favored individuals obtained all they wanted at the expense of others, and as the number of distributable Indians grew less and less, reclamations, discontent, strife and rebellion broke out among the oppressors, who thus wreaked upon each other's heads the criminal treatment of the natives of which they were all alike guilty.
Such had been the course of events in la Española. The same causes had the same effects here. Herrera relates that when Miguel de Pasamente, the royal treasurer, arrived in the former island, in 1508, it contained 60,000 aboriginal inhabitants. Six years later, when a new distribution had become necessary, there were but 14,000 left—the others had been freed by the hand of death or were leading a wandering life in the mountains and forests of their island. In this island the process was not so rapid, but none the less effective.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 20: The king's favorites in the metropolis, anxious to enrich themselves by these means, obtained grants of Indians and sent their stewards to administer them. Thus, in la Española, Conehillos, the secretary, had 1,100 Indians; Bishop Fonseca, 800; Hernando de la Vega, 200, and many others, "The Indians thus disposed of were, as a rule, the worst treated," says Las Casas.]