Chapter XXXVII: Book XXXVII: he says, “Y esto baste quanto a este breve libro

del numero treinta y siete, hasta que el tiempo nos avise de
otras cosas que en el se acrescientan”; from which I infer that
he kept each book, or each large division of his work, open for
additions, as long as he lived, and therefore that parts of it
_may_ have been written as late as 1557.

He tells us that he had the Emperor’s authority to demand, from the different governors of Spanish America, the documents he might need for his work;[906] and as his divisions of the subject are those which naturally arise from its geography, he appears to have gone judiciously about his task. But the materials he was to use were in too crude a state to be easily manageable, and the whole subject was too wide and various for his powers. He falls, therefore, into a loose, rambling style, instead of aiming at philosophical condensation; and, far from an abridgment, which his work ought to have been, he gives us chronicling, documentary accounts of an immense extent of newly discovered country, and of the extraordinary events that had been passing there,--sometimes too short and slight to be interesting, and sometimes too detailed for the reader’s patience. He was evidently a learned man, and maintained a correspondence with Ramusio, the Italian geographer, which could not fail to be useful to both parties.[907] And he was desirous to write in a good and eloquent style, in which he sometimes succeeded. He has, therefore, on the whole, produced a series of accounts of the natural condition, the aboriginal inhabitants, and the political affairs of the wide-spread Spanish possessions in America, as they stood in the middle of the sixteenth century, which is of great value as a vast repository of facts, and not wholly without merit as a composition.[908]

[906] “I have royal orders that the governors should send me
a relation of whatever I shall touch in the affairs of their
governments, for this History.” (Lib. XXXIII., Introd., MS.)
I apprehend, Oviedo was the first authorized Chronicler of
the New World, an office which was at one period better paid
than any other similar office in the kingdom, and was held, at
different times, by Herrera, Tamayo, Solís, and other writers
of distinction. It ceased, I believe, with the creation of the
Academy of History.

[907] “We owe much to those who give us notice of what we have
not seen or known ourselves; as I am now indebted to a remarkable
and learned man, of the illustrious Senate of Venice, called
Secretary Juan Bautista Ramusio, who, hearing that I was inclined
to the things of which I here treat, has, without knowing me
personally, sought me for his friend and communicated with me by
letters, sending me a new geography,” etc. Lib. XXXVIII., MS.

[908] As a specimen of his manner, I add the following account of
Almagro, one of the early adventurers in Peru, whom the Pizarros
put to death in Cuzco, after they had obtained uncontrolled
power there. “Therefore hear and read all the authors you may,
and compare, one by one, whatever they relate, that all men,
not kings, have freely given away, and you shall surely see how
there is none that can equal Almagro in this matter, and how none
can be compared to him; for kings, indeed, may give and know
how to give whatever pleaseth them, both cities and lands, and
lordships, and other great gifts; but that a man whom yesterday
we saw so poor, that all he possessed was a very small matter,
should have a spirit sufficient for what I have related,--I hold
it to be so great a thing, that I know not the like of it in our
own or any other time. For I myself saw, when his companion,
Pizarro, came from Spain, and brought with him that body of
three hundred men to Panamá, that, if Almagro had not received
them and shown them so much free hospitality with so generous a
spirit, few or none of them could have escaped alive; for the
land was filled with disease, and the means of living were so
dear, that a bushel of maize was worth two or three _pesos_, and
an _arroba_ of wine six or seven gold pieces. To all of them he
was a father, and a brother, and a true friend; for inasmuch as
it is pleasant and grateful to some men to make gain, and to
heap up and to gather together moneys and estates, even so much
and more pleasant was it to him to share with others and to give
away; so that the day when he gave nothing, he accounted it for
a day lost. And in his very face you might see the pleasure and
true delight he felt when he found occasion to help him who had
need. And since, after so long a fellowship and friendship as
there was between these two great leaders, from the days when
their companions were few and their means small, till they saw
themselves full of wealth and strength, there hath at last come
forth so much discord, scandal, and death, well must it appear
matter of wonder even to those who shall but hear of it, and
much more to us, who knew them in their low estate, and have no
less borne witness to their greatness and prosperity.” (General
y Natural Historia de las Indias, Lib. XLVII., MS.) Much of it
is, like the preceding passage, in the true, old, rambling,
moralizing, chronicling vein.

The other considerable work of Oviedo, the fruit of his old age, is devoted to fond recollections of his native country and of the distinguished men he had known there. He calls it “Las Quinquagenas,” and it consists of a series of dialogues, in which, with little method or order, he gives gossiping accounts of the principal families that figured in Spain during the times of Ferdinand and Isabella and Charles the Fifth, mingled with anecdotes and recollections, such as--not without a simple-hearted exhibition of his own vanity--the memory of his long and busy life could furnish. It appears from the Dialogue on Cardinal Ximenes, and elsewhere, that he was employed on it as early as 1545;[909] but the year 1550 occurs yet more frequently among the dates of its imaginary conversations,[910] and at the conclusion he very distinctly declares that it was finished on the 23d of May, 1556, when he was seventy-nine years old. He died in Valladolid, the next year.

[909] “En este que estamos de 1545.” Quinquagenas, MS., El
Cardinal Cisneros.

[910] As in the Dialogue on Juan de Silva, Conde de Cifuentes,
he says, “En este año en que estamos 1550”; and in the Dialogue
on Mendoza, Duke of Infantado, he uses the same words, as he
does again in that on Pedro Fernandez de Córdova. There is an
excellent note on Oviedo, in Vol. I. p. 112 of the American ed.
of “Ferdinand and Isabella,” by my friend Mr. Prescott, to whom I
am indebted for the manuscript of the Quinquagenas, as well as of
the Historia.

But both during his life and after his death, Oviedo had a formidable adversary, who, pursuing nearly the same course of inquiries respecting the New World, came almost constantly to conclusions quite opposite. This was no less a person than Bartolomé de las Casas, or Casaus, the apostle and defender of the American Indians,--a man who would have been remarkable in any age of the world, and who does not seem yet to have gathered in the full harvest of his honors. He was born in Seville, probably in 1474; and in 1502, having gone through a course of studies at Salamanca, embarked for the Indies, where his father, who had been there with Columbus nine years earlier, had already accumulated a decent fortune.

The attention of the young man was early drawn to the condition of the natives, from the circumstance, that one of them, given to his father by Columbus, had been attached to his own person as a slave, while he was still at the University; and he was not slow to learn, on his arrival in Hispaniola, that their gentle natures and slight frames had already been subjected, in the mines and in other forms of toil, to a servitude so harsh, that the original inhabitants of the island were beginning to waste away under the severity of their labors. From this moment he devoted his life to their emancipation. In 1510 he took holy orders, and continued as a priest, and for a short time as Bishop of Chiapa, nearly forty years, to teach, strengthen, and console the suffering flock committed to his charge. Six times, at least, he crossed the Atlantic, in order to persuade the government of Charles the Fifth to ameliorate their condition, and always with more or less success. At last, but not until 1547, when he was above seventy years old, he established himself at Valladolid, in Spain, where he passed the remainder of his serene old age, giving it freely to the great cause to which he had devoted the freshness of his youth. He died, while on a visit of business, at Madrid, in 1566, at the advanced age, as is commonly supposed, of ninety-two.[911]

[911] There is a valuable life of Las Casas in Quintana, “Vidas
de Españoles Célebres” (Madrid, 1833, 12mo, Tom. III. pp.
255-510). The seventh article in the Appendix, concerning the
connection of Las Casas with the slave-trade, will be read with
particular interest; because, by materials drawn from unpublished
documents of unquestionable authenticity, it makes it certain,
that, although at one time Las Casas favored what had been begun
earlier,--the transportation of negroes to the West Indies, in
order to relieve the Indians,--as other good men in his time
favored it, he did so under the impression, that, according to
the law of nations, the negroes thus brought to America were both
rightful captives taken by the Portuguese in war and rightful
slaves. But afterwards he changed his mind on the subject. He
declared “the captivity of the negroes to be as unjust as that of
the Indians,”--“ser tan injusto el cautiverio de los negros como
el de los Indios,”--and even expressed a fear, that, though he
had fallen into the error of favoring the importation of black
slaves into America from ignorance and good-will, he might, after
all, fail to stand excused for it before the Divine Justice.
Quintana, Tom. III. p. 471.

Among the principal opponents of his benevolence were Sepúlveda,--one of the leading men of letters and casuists of the time in Spain,--and Oviedo, who, from his connection with the mines and his share in the government of different parts of the newly discovered countries, had an interest directly opposite to the one Las Casas defended. These two persons, with large means and a wide influence to sustain them, intrigued, wrote, and toiled against him, in every way in their power. But his was not a spirit to be daunted by opposition or deluded by sophistry and intrigue; and when, in 1519, in a discussion with Sepúlveda concerning the Indians, held in the presence of the young and proud Emperor Charles the Fifth, Las Casas said, “It is quite certain, that, speaking with all the respect and reverence due to so great a sovereign, I would not, save in the way of duty and obedience as a subject, go from the place where I now stand to the opposite corner of this room, to serve your Majesty, unless I believed I should at the same time serve God,”[912]--when he said this, he uttered a sentiment that really governed his life and constituted the basis of the great power he exercised. His works are pervaded by it. The earliest of them, called “A very Short Account of the Ruin of the Indies,” was written in 1542,[913] and dedicated to the prince, afterwards Philip the Second;--a tract in which, no doubt, the sufferings and wrongs of the Indians are much overstated by the indignant zeal of its author, but still one whose expositions are founded in truth, and by their fervor awakened all Europe to a sense of the injustice they set forth. Other short treatises followed, written with similar spirit and power, especially those in reply to Sepúlveda; but none was so often reprinted, either at home or abroad, as the first,[914] and none ever produced so deep and solemn an effect on the world. They were all collected and published in 1552; and, besides being translated into other languages at the time, an edition in Spanish, and a French version of the whole, with two more treatises than were contained in the first collection, appeared at Paris in 1822, prepared by Llorente.

[912] Quintana, Españoles Célebres, Tom. III. p. 321.

[913] Quintana (p. 413, note) doubts _when_ this famous treatise
was written; but Las Casas himself says, in the opening of his
“Brevísima Relacion,” that it was written in 1542.

[914] This important tract continued long to be printed
separately, both at home and abroad. I use a copy of it in double
columns, Spanish and Italian, Venice, 1643, 12mo; but, like the
rest, the Brevísima Relacion may be consulted in an edition of
the Works of Las Casas by Llorente, which appeared at Paris in
1822, in 2 vols. 8vo, in the original Spanish, almost at the
same time with his translation of them into French. It should be
noticed, perhaps, that Llorente’s version is not always strict,
and that the two new treatises he imputes to Las Casas, as well
as the one on the Authority of Kings, are not absolutely proved
to be his.

The translation referred to above appeared, in fact, the same
year, and at the end of it an “Apologie de Las Casas,” by
Grégoire, with letters of Funes and Mier, and notes of Llorente
to sustain it,--all to defend Las Casas on the subject of the
slave-trade; but Quintana, as we have seen, has gone to the
original documents, and leaves no doubt, both that Las Casas once
favored it, and that he altered his mind afterwards.

The great work of Las Casas, however, still remains inedited,--a General History of the Indies from 1492 to 1520, begun by him in 1527 and finished in 1561, but of which he ordered that no portion should be published within forty years of his death. Like his other works, it shows marks of haste and carelessness, and is written in a rambling style; but its value, notwithstanding his too fervent zeal for the Indians, is great. He had been personally acquainted with many of the early discoverers and conquerors, and, at one time, possessed the papers of Columbus, and a large mass of other important documents, which are now lost. He says he had known Cortés “when he was so low and humble, that he besought favor from the meanest servant of Diego Velasquez”; and he knew him afterwards, he tells us, when, in his pride of place at the court of the Emperor, he ventured to jest about the pretty corsair’s part he had played in the affairs of Montezuma.[915] He knew, too, Gomara and Oviedo, and gives at large his reasons for differing from them. In short, his book, divided into three parts, is a great repository, to which Herrera, and through him all the historians of the Indies since, have resorted for materials; and without which the history of the earliest period of the Spanish settlements in America cannot, even now, be properly written.[916]

[915] “Todo esto me dixo el mismo Cortés con otras cosas cerca
dello, despues de Marques, en la villa de Monçon, estando alli
celebrando cortes el Emperador, año de mil y quinientos y
quarenta y dos, riendo y mofando con estas formales palabras,
a la mi fé andubé por alli como un gentil cosario.” (Historia
General de las Indias, Lib. III. c. 115, MS.) It may be worth
noting, that 1542, the year when Cortés made this scandalous
speech, was the year in which Las Casas wrote his Brevísima
Relacion.

[916] For a notice of all the works of Las Casas, see Quintana,
Vidas, Tom. III. pp. 507-510.

But it is not necessary to go farther into an examination of the old accounts of the discovery and conquest of Spanish America, though there are many more which, like those we have already considered, are partly books of travel through countries full of wonders, partly chronicles of adventures as strange as those of romance; frequently running into idle and loose details, but as frequently fresh, picturesque, and manly in their tone and coloring, and almost always curious from the facts they record and the glimpses they give of manners and character. Among those that might be added are the stories by Vaca of his shipwreck and ten years’ captivity in Florida, from 1527 to 1537, and his subsequent government for three years of the Rio de la Plata;[917] the short account of the conquest of Peru written by Francisco de Xerez,[918] and the ampler one, of the same wild achievements, which Augustin de Çarate began on the spot, and was prevented by an officer of Gonzalo de Pizarro from finishing till after his return home.[919] But they may all be passed over, as of less consequence than those we have noticed, which are quite sufficient to give an idea, both of the nature of their class and the course it followed,--a class much resembling the old chronicles, but yet one that announces the approach of those more regular forms of history for which it furnishes abundant materials.

[917] The two works of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, namely, his
“Naufragios” and his “Comentarios y Sucesos de su Gobierno en el
Rio de la Plata,” were first printed in 1555, and are to be found
in Barcia, Historiadores Primitivos, Tom. I.

[918] The work of Francisco de Xerez, “Conquista de Peru,”
written by order of Francisco Pizarro, was first published in
1547, and is to be found in Ramusio, (Venezia, ed. Giunti, folio,
Tom. III.,) and in Barcia’s collection (Tom. III.). It ends with
some poor verses in defence of himself.

[919] “Historia del Descubrimiento y Conquista del Peru,” first
printed in 1555, and several times since. It is in Barcia, Tom.
III., and was translated into Italian by Ulloa. Çarate was sent
out by Charles V. to examine into the state of the revenues of
Peru, and brings down his accounts as late as the overthrow of
Gonzalo Pizarro. See an excellent notice of Çarate at the end of
Mr. Prescott’s last chapter on the Conquest of Peru.

END OF VOL. I.