Not only in America, but in Europe also, was he subjected to abuse and ridicule; but in Europe these were not universal. Public opinion was there divided. Those who had returned from the Western Indies, covered with renown and rolling in riches, who were celebrated in story, not only after the manner of knights-errant in romance, but in the very words, phrases, and language of romance—those who went forth from home, poor, needy, plebeian, and came back with untold wealth, to intermarry with the families of the highest grandees, to intermix their blood with the purest hidalgo, poured, forth their concentrated wrath upon his devoted head. But, on the other hand, courtiers all-powerful, prime ministers, and sovereigns received him with open arms, granted him prolonged audience, and commiserated his troubles, sympathizing deeply in his noble undertaking. In secret, however, they had often to regret their inability to render him the aid required for its success. With the clergy, and especially among the highest prelates, the confessors of royalty, the professors of the universities, the bishops, the archbishops, the primates, and cardinals, his return was greeted with the same satisfaction. From the lowly cloister to the imperial palace the same good wishes for him prevailed.
In the respectable classes of society at large, a singular reception awaited him. Although they venerate him as one among the best of mankind, they manifested their regard in the most opposite deportment. When he ascended the pulpit to discourse before the pious upon the unheard-of outrages, the fiendish wickedness, the appalling cruelties inflicted by Christians, and moreover, Christians who were their countrymen, upon simple, confiding, weak, inoffensive thousands and tens of thousands of Indians in the new world, the horror and abhorrence of congregations knew no bounds. Their fears of Divine vengeance falling upon themselves rose in the same proportion, until they stood aghast lest a national calamity should come upon them, like unto that which swept away of old the cities of the plain. On the other hand, that portion of the public which is light-minded, full of levity, and for ever in search of novelty, encountered him elsewhere, on the plaza, in the college court, on the prado, where he walked under the trees, or at a posada where he dined; and they paused to listen to his talk, for he talked much and too often on the same theme—the rapacity and brutality of the cavaliers to the helpless, the innocent, the ignorant, defenceless aborigines—the adopted children of the holy father at Rome, the accepted wards confided to the tender keeping of the good Queen Isabella of blessed memory, to christianize and to civilize. While the monk poured forth an eloquent statement of their wrongs, the when, the where, and on what occasion, he named no names, in charity to the bad men; but his hearers made the proper application, well knowing the persons from common report; those millionaires just returned, whose mushroom bloom of dunghill beauty, outshone the roseate lustre of the ancient Guzmans and Colonas.
The successful adventurers to the Indies of the West had already received the popular and insulting nickname of the Cachopins of Laredo; they were of the same breed with the Indian nabobs of England in afterdays, and of the shoddy in our own. While, therefore, the single-minded monk, in the fervor of his eloquence, in the overflowing zeal for his cause, narrated what these people had done to the natives, his audience were learning how these men had made their money; and the more facts and indignation exhibited by the speaker, the more highly were they amused, the more heartily did they shake with silent laughter. The monk saw the scenes in the most serious light; they saw them in the most ludicrous aspect; for they were quietly in their mind contrasting the world-wide extent between Cachopin pretensions and Cachopin merit. And these, thought they, these baseborn and brutish fellows, who are receiving patents of nobility by the score, who aspire to quarter their crests upon the aristocratic escutcheon possessed by grandees of the first class, emblazoned with heraldic bears, eagles, lions, elephants, and leopards, borne, centuries before, upon banners of that chivalry who fought for Christendom at the cave of Covodonga, and for the preeminence of Spanish honor, courage, and courtesy over France at the rough vale of Roncesvalles—these are the fellows who wish to blend those proud emblematic animals with their new coats of arms, the tobacco leaf, the tomata, the roasting ear of Indian corn, the sweet potato, perhaps, the appropriate devices for the conquerors clubbed with a title taken from a miserable fish-town, in the meanest, poverty-stricken, peddler-producing province in the realm. [Footnote 77]
[Footnote 77: The Cachopin figured in the comedies, farces, romances, and lively pastorals of that age.
In the beautiful pastoral of the Diana, by Jorgé Montemayor, in a scene between Fabio, the page, and Felismena, who is disguised as a boy, Fabio says:
"I promise you on the faith of a hidalgo, (which I am, for my father is a Cachopin of Laredo,) that my master has better terms."—See Book 2, p. 87; the edition of 1542.
Don Quixote met the travellers on the road, and of course described the beauty of his Dulcinea, and when asked who she was—
"Her lineage, race, ancestry," answered the Don, "is not of the old Roman Curtius, nor the modern Colonas, nor the Moncadas of Catalonia, the Guerras of Aragon, nor Gusmans of Castile, but of Tobosa de la Mancha."
"And mine," said the traveller, "is of the Cachopins of Laredo.">[
The great object which Las Casas desired to attain was, in its magnitude, commensurate with the mighty convulsions produced in the minds of his own nationality. It was not to protect or defend a parish, or a diocese, or a state from oppression, but to save from destruction a continent, a hemisphere of the habitable globe; it was to snatch and to shield millions of the natives in the Indies of the West from slavery to the white race; for, enslaved, the feeble Indian was sure to sink under the burdens imposed, most of them perishing within two months, and none of them surviving two years. If they went down to the grave in their ignorance and infidelity, their souls might be without the pale of salvation in their unregenerate state; if they were civilized, believed in Christ, and were baptized, what glory would redound to God, what treasure laid up in heaven for those aiding in their conversion, what myriads of communicants added to the church! Natural commiseration for their hard lot in this world, spiritual considerations for their fate in the next, along with reward held out to those who alleviated their distress now and prepared them for eternal happiness hereafter, were the exalted motives that prompted Las Casas to undertake the herculean task.
With such sublime intentions, his ardor was strengthened to undergo every toil and privation the body can suffer, to endure every agony, every indignity the spirit can receive. The measures he adopted for success, the means he employed to sustain them, the instruments he made use of, constitute the materials for his life. These were numerous, varied, dissimilar, and seemingly discordant. One was the simple being, almost in a state of nature in the rudest hut, living upon roots, sheltered by a frail canopy of leaves, clothed with a rabbit-skin or a yard of cotton, or without any covering at all, and possessed of an intellect just dawning into consciousness of its faculties, so that the common, almost universal opinion was that he did not as yet belong to the human species, but was born to live, to be worked, and to die like beasts of the field. On the other hand, Las Casas invoked the assistance of the most illustrious of the age, the refined and intellectual in the most powerful state in Europe. He impressed his thoughts upon the august Cesar, seated upon his imperial throne, who claimed legitimate succession in the divine line from the celestial deity.
For fifty years was his time devoted to this cause, with varied hope of success and disaster; but before he lay down to die, much had been achieved, and with the encouragement that more could be accomplished in the future. The life of Las Casas is yet to be written. Those who have essayed it so far have only furnished a few facts, mixed with many errors. They have not attempted to combine the materials into general principles, and to analyze the incentives of those who were his enemies, or who were his friends, and thus reduce the conduct of all into a general consistency. Sympathizing with him in his exertions, they conclude that those who opposed him were all bad men, and those who encouraged him were all good men. But that is not the temper in which biography and history ought to be written. Facts or events are only one part of the work; the causes which preceded or influenced them should be investigated. Nothing should be left to ignorant conjecture, to idle inference or gratuitous suspicion. All the surroundings must be explained. In writing his biography some insight into the learning of that period and into the state of science at the time should be gained, especially in the departments of history, of moral philosophy, of the civil law, of the canon law, and international jurisprudence. Not even the lighter literature, including the popular poetry, the drama, and romances, can with safety escape observation. Above all, being at the era of the revival of learning, along with the first improvements in the art of printing, the changes made in modern languages are to be noted. In these transformations, the significance of many words and phrases was often doubtful. Sometimes they had to be taken according to their old meaning; sometimes again in the new. When astrology was banished, its theory was discarded; but at least two thirds of its terms were retained: when alchemy suffered the same fate, its vocabulary, as well as its crucibles, retorts, and alembics, were transferred to the chemical laboratory: when the practice of medicine was relinquished, physicians took possession of its expressions for comments, and wrote out their prescriptions in many of its hieroglyphics. These mutations were progressing when Columbus was sailing due west in search of a route to the east. Whether words were to be interpreted according to science, or according to suppositions which had prevailed before science, was often a difficult question to solve.
Illustrations would indicate how far research must go to understand the times and transitions taking place. It is needless to add, that nothing of the kind has been noted; nor, from appearances, will it ever be thought of. His writings have been glanced at to elucidate some point controverted, and then hastily thrown aside. What was learned, moreover, was in a confused mass of facts and dates, which were difficult to comprehend, and more difficult to reduce to a consistent form. The consequence has been that, instead of a knowledge of the learning and science at the period when he lived, to enlarge the circle of their literary reputations, they have embarrassed some historical subjects, and well will it be for them if they have not endangered their laurels. It would seem that many who have treated of Las Casas, or even touched upon his character, have fallen into some mistake, error, or curious blunder. Nor is their number confined to writers of an inferior order; it embraces some names renowned in Europe and America for justly merited historical excellence. They learned a few facts; they guessed the rest; and their guessing, like all loose conjectures in general, leads to false conclusions, with the consequent danger therefrom.
Las Casas commenced his History of the Indies in 1527. when he was in his fifty-third year; he concluded it in 1559, when he was in his eighty-fifth. He had in his possession some valuable documents obtained from Columbus; but beyond these he relied for the most part on his own knowledge of events, along with accredited rumors and reports in circulation. In his will he directs that the Historia shall not be made public for forty years after his decease. But reasons exist for the belief that it was read by Philip the Second, in the Escorial; and it is certain Antonio de Herrera availed himself of its information before the year 1600, when he completed his Description of the Indies of the West. The Historia by Las Casas still remains in manuscript in the Royal Academy of Madrid. Herrera, being the chief royal chronicler of the Indies, and chronicler for Castile, was ordered by the supreme council of the Indies to prepare his Description. It is presented in the form of annals, where events are recorded in the year in which they transpired. Consequently the breaks are incessant in the regular sequence, to conform to chronological arrangement. But historical effect was not designed; historical accuracy in the statement of facts being all that was demanded.