Chapter V (2)

The principal and most important work from the pen of Las Casas, on which his many subsequent writings are based and substantially developed, bears (in English) the following title: _A Relation of the First Voyages and Discoveries made by the Spaniards in America. With an Account of their Unparalleled Cruelties on the Indians, in the Destruction of above Forty Millions of People; together with the Propositions offered to the King of Spain to prevent the further Ruin of the West Indies. By Don Bartholomew de las Casas, Bishop of Chiapa, who was an Eye-witness of their Cruelties._ It was composed in Spanish, and finished at Valencia, Dec. 8, 1542, near the beginning of the reign of Philip II., to whom it is dedicated. This was about fifty years after the discovery of America; and during the greater part of the period Las Casas had lived as an observer of the scenes and events which he describes. He makes Hispaniola his starting-point, as the navigators usually first touched there. The reader will at once be struck by the exaggeration, the effect of a high-wrought and inflamed imagination, so evident in the words of the title, which set the number of the victims of Spanish cruelty at forty millions. Of this weakness of Las Casas in over-estimate and exaggeration of numbers, we shall have to take special notice by and by. It is enough to say here that his license in this direction is confined to this one point, and is by no means to be viewed as discrediting his integrity, fidelity, and accuracy in other parts of his testimony. He certainly had been deeply impressed with the density of the population in some of the islands, for he says: “It seems as if Providence had amassed together the greatest part of mankind in this region of the earth.” He tells us that his motives for writing and publishing his exposure of iniquities were,—the call made upon him by pious and Christian people thus to enlist the sympathies and efforts of the good to redress the wrong; and his sincere attachment to his King and Master, lest God should avenge the wrong on his kingdom. For this purpose he has followed the Court with his pleadings, and will not cease his remonstrances and appeals. At the time of completing his work savage cruelties were prevailing over all the parts of America which had been opened, slightly restrained for the time in Mexico, through the stern intervention of the King. An addition to his work in 1546 recognized many new ordinances and decrees made by his Majesty at Barcelona since 1542, and signed at Madrid in 1543. But nevertheless a new field for oppression and wickedness had been opened in Peru, with exasperations from civil war and rebellion among the natives; while the Spaniards on most frivolous pretexts defied the orders of the King, pretending to wait for his answers to their pleas in self-justification. The period was one in which the rapacity of the invaders was both inflamed and gratified by abundance of spoil, which sharpened the avarice of the earlier claimants, and drew to them fresh adventurers.

Las Casas gives a very winning description of the natives under his observation and in his ever-kindly and sympathetic relations with them. He says they are simple, humble, patient, guileless, submissive, weak, and effeminate; incapable of toil or labor, short-lived, succumbing to slight illnesses; as frugal and abstemious as hermits; inquisitive about the Catholic religion, and docile disciples. They were lambs who had encountered tigers, wolves, and lions. During the lifetime of Las Casas Cuba had been rendered desolate and a desert; then St. John and Jamaica; and in all thirty islands had come to the same fate. A system of deportation from one island to another had been devised to obtain new supplies of slaves. The Clerigo deliberately charges that in forty years the number of victims counted to fifty millions. Enslaving was but a protracted method of killing,—all in the greed for gold and pearls. The sight of a fragment of the precious metal in the hands of a native was the occasion for demanding more of him, as if he had hidden treasure, or for his guiding the Spaniards to some real or imagined mines. Las Casas follows his details and examples of iniquity through the islands in succession, then through the provinces of Nicaragua, New Spain, Guatemala, Pannco, Jalisco, Yucatan, St. Martha, Carthagena, the Pearl Coast, Trinidad, the River Yuya-pari, Venezuela, Florida, La Plata, and Peru,—being in all seventeen localities,—repeating the similar facts, hardly with variations. Against the Spaniards with their horses, lances, swords, and bloodhounds, the natives could oppose only their light spears and poisoned arrows. The victims would seek refuge in caves and mountain fastnesses, and if approached would kill themselves, as the easiest escape from wanton tortures. Las Casas says: “I one day saw four or five persons, of the highest rank, in Hispaniola, burned by a slow fire.” Occasionally, he tells us, a maddened Indian would kill a Spaniard, and then his death would be avenged by the massacre of a score or a hundred natives. Immediately upon the knowledge of the death of Isabella, in 1504, as if her humanity had been some restraint, the barbarous proceedings were greatly intensified. The Spaniards made the most reckless waste of the food of the natives. Las Casas says: “One Spaniard will consume in a day the food of three Indian families of ten persons each for a month.” He avows that when he wrote there were scarce two hundred natives left in St. John and Jamaica, where there had once been six hundred thousand. For reasons of caution or prudence—we can hardly say from fear, for never was there a more courageous champion—Las Casas suppresses the names of the greatest offenders. The following are specimens of his method: “Three merciless tyrants have invaded Florida, one after another, since 1510.” “A Spanish commander with a great number of soldiers entered Peru,” etc. “In the year 1514 a merciless governor, destitute of the least sentiment of pity or humanity, a cruel instrument of the wrath of God, pierced into the continent.” “The fore-mentioned governor,” etc. “The captain whose lot it was to travel into Guatemala did a world of mischief there.” “The first bishop that was sent into America imitated the conduct of the covetous governors in enslaving and spoiling.” “They call the countries they have got by their unjust and cruel wars their conquests.” “No tongue is capable of describing to the life all the horrid villanies perpetrated by these bloody-minded men. They seemed to be the declared enemies of mankind.” The more generous the presents in treasures which were made by some timid cacique to his spoilers, the more brutally was he dealt with, in the hope of extorting what he was suspected of having concealed. Las Casas stakes his veracity on the assertion: “I saw with my own eyes above six thousand children die in three or four months.”

To reinforce his own statements the Clerigo quotes letters from high authorities. One is a protest which the Bishop of St. Martha wrote in 1541 to the King of Spain, saying that “the Spaniards live there like devils, rather than Christians, violating all the laws of God and man.” Another is from Mark de Xlicia, a Franciscan friar, to the King, the General of his Order, who came with the first Spaniards into Peru, testifying from his eyesight to all enormities, in mutilations, cutting off the noses, ears, and hands of the natives, burning and tortures, and keeping famished dogs to chase them.

Las Casas follows up his direful catalogue of horrors into the “New Kingdom of Grenada,” in 1536, which he says received its name from the native place of “the captain that first set his foot in it.” Those whom he took with him into Peru were “very profligate and extremely cruel men, without scruple or remorse, long accustomed to all sorts of wickedness.” The second “governor,” enraged that his predecessor had got the first share of the plunder, though enough was left for spoil, turned informer, and made an exposure of his atrocities in complaints to the Council of the Indies, in documents which “are yet to be seen.” The spoils were prodigious quantities of gold and precious stones, especially emeralds. The “governor” seized and imprisoned the cacique, or inca, Bogata, requiring him to send for and gather up all the gold within his reach; and after heaps of it had been brought, put him to horrid torture in order to extort more.

There were published at Madeira certain “Laws and Constitutions” made by the King at Barcelona, in 1542, under the influence of Las Casas, as the result of a council at Valladolid. Strict orders to put a stop to the iniquitous proceedings were circumvented by agents sent in the interest of the authors of the outrages. The Clerigo petitioned the King to constitute all the natives his free subjects, with no delegated lordship over them, and enjoined upon him “to take an oath on the Holy Gospels, for himself and his successors, to this effect, and to put it in his will, solemnly witnessed.” He insists that this is the only course to prevent the absolute extermination of the natives. He adds that the Spaniards in their covetousness combine to keep out priests and monks, not the slightest attempt being made to convert the natives, though the work would be easy, and they themselves crave it. “The Spaniards have no more regard to their salvation than if their souls and bodies died together, and were incapable of eternal rewards or punishments.” Yet he admits that it would hardly be reasonable to expect these efforts for conversion of the heathen from men who are themselves heathen, and so ignorant and brutish that they “do not know even the number of the commandments.” “As for your Majesty,” the Clerigo says, with a keen thrust, “the Indians think you are the most cruel and impious prince in the world, while they see the cruelty and impiety your subjects so insolently commit, and they verily believe your Majesty lives upon nothing but human flesh and blood.” He positively denies the imputations alleged to justify cruelty,—that the Indians indulged in abominable lusts against nature, and were cannibals. As for their idolatry, that is a sin against God, for Him, not for man, to punish. The monarchs, he insists, had been most artfully imposed upon in allowing the deportation of natives from the Lucay Islands to supply the havoc made in Hispaniola. The Clerigo goes into the most minute details, with specifications and reiterations of horrors, ascribing them to the delegated authority exercised by petty officers, under the higher ones successively intrusted with power. There is a holy fervor of eloquence in his remonstrances and appeals to his Majesty to keep the sole power in his own hands, as he reminds him that fearful retributive judgments from God may be visited upon his own kingdom. The Council of the Indies, he says, had desired him to write to the monarch about the exact nature of the right of the kings of Spain to the Indies; and he intimates that the zeal which he had shown in exposing iniquities under those whom the King had put in authority in the New World had been maliciously turned into a charge that he had questioned the royal title to those regions. As will appear, Las Casas, under the leadings of that intelligent search for the fundamentals of truth and righteousness which a quickened conscience had prompted, found his way to the principles of equity on this subject.

He had, therefore, previously sent to the King thirty well-defined and carefully stated “Propositions,” which he regards as so self-evident that he makes no attempt to argue or prove them. His enemies have in view to cover up their iniquities by misleading the King. Therefore, for conscience’ sake, and under a sense of obligation to God, he sets himself to a sacred task. Little foreseeing that his life and labor were to be protracted till he had nearly doubled his years, he says that, finding himself “growing old, being advanced to the fiftieth year of his age,” and “from a full acquaintance with America,” his testimony shall be true and clear.

His subtle enemies plead against him that the King has a right to establish himself in America by force of arms, however ruthless the process,—quoting the examples of Nimrod, Alexander, the old Romans, and the Turks. They allege also that the Spaniards have more prudence and wisdom than other peoples, and that their country is nearest to the Indies. He therefore announces his purpose to put himself directly before the King, and stand for his “Propositions,” which he sends in advance in writing, suggesting that if it be his Majesty’s pleasure, they be translated into Latin and published in that language, as well as in Spanish.

The “Propositions” may be stated in substance as follows; they were keenly studied and searched by those who were anxious to detect flaws or heresies in them:—

1. The Pope derives from Christ authority and power extending over all men, believers or infidels, in matters pertaining to salvation and eternal life. But these should be exercised differently over infidels and those who have had a chance to be believers.

2. This prerogative of the Pope puts him under a solemn obligation to propagate the Gospel, and to offer it to all infidels who will not oppose it.

3. The Pope is obliged to send capable ministers for this work.

4. Christian princes are his most proper and able helpers in it.

5. The Pope may exhort and even oblige Christian princes to this work, by authority and money, to remove obstructions and to send true workers.

6. The Pope and princes should act in accord and harmony.

7. The Pope may distribute infidel provinces among Christian princes for this work.

8. In this distribution should be had in view the instruction, conversion, and interests of the infidels themselves, not the increase of honors, titles, riches, and territories of the princes.

9. Any incidental advantage which princes may thus gain is allowable; but temporal ends should be wholly subordinate, the paramount objects being the extending of the Church, the propagation of the Faith, and the service of God.

10. The lawful native kings and rulers of infidel countries have a right to the obedience of their subjects, to make laws, etc., and ought not to be deprived, expelled, or violently dealt with.

11. To transgress this rule involves injustice and every form of wrong.

12. Neither these native rulers nor their subjects should be deprived of their lands for their idolatry, or any other sin.

13. No tribunal or judge in the world has a right to molest these infidels for idolatry or any other sins, however enormous, while still infidels, and before they have voluntarily received baptism, unless they directly oppose, refuse, and resist the publication of the Gospel.

14. Pope Alexander VI., under whom the discovery was made, was indispensably obliged to choose a Christian prince to whom to commit these solemn obligations of the Gospel.

15. Ferdinand and Isabella had especial claims and advantages for this intrustment by the Pope above all other Catholic princes, because they had with noble efforts driven out the infidels and Mohammedans from the land of their ancestors, and because they sent at their own charge Columbus, the great discoverer, whom they named the chief admiral.

16. As the Pope did right in this assignment, so he has power to revoke it, to transfer the country to some other prince, and to forbid, on pain of excommunication, any rival prince to send missionaries.

17. The kings of Castile and Leon have thus come lawfully to jurisdiction over the Indies.

18. This obliges the native kings of the Indies to submit to the jurisdiction of the kings of Spain.

19. Those native kings, having freely and voluntarily received the Faith and baptism, are bound (as they were not before) to acknowledge this sovereignty of the kings of Spain.

20. The kings of Spain are bound by the law of God to choose and send fit missionaries to exhort, convert, and do everything for this cause.

21. They have the same power and jurisdiction over these infidels before their conversion as the Pope has, and share his obligations to convert them.

22. The means for establishing the Faith in the Indies should be the same as those by which Christ introduced his religion into the world,—mild, peaceable, and charitable; humility; good examples of a holy and regular way of living, especially over such docile and easy subjects; and presents bestowed to win them.

23. Attempts by force of arms are impious, like those of Mahometans, Romans, Turks, and Moors: they are tyrannical, and unworthy of Christians, calling out blasphemies; and they have already made the Indians believe that our God is the most unmerciful and cruel of all Gods.

24. The Indians will naturally oppose the invasion of their country by a title of conquest, and so will resist the work of conversion.

25. The kings of Spain have from the first given and reiterated their orders against war and the ill-treatment of the Indians. If any officers have shown commissions and warrants for such practices, they have been forged or deceptive.

26. So all wars and conquests which have been made have been unjust and tyrannical, and in effect null; as is proved by proceedings on record in the Council against such tyrants and other culprits, who are amenable to judgment.

27. The kings of Spain are bound to reinforce and establish those Indian laws and customs which are good—and such are most of them—and to abolish the bad; thus upholding good manners and civil policy. The Gospel is the method for effecting this.

28. The Devil could not have done more mischief than the Spaniards have done in distributing and spoiling the countries, in their rapacity and tyranny; subjecting the natives to cruel tasks, treating them like beasts, and persecuting those especially who apply to the monks for instruction.

29. The distribution of the Indians among the Spaniards as slaves is wholly contrary to all the royal orders given by Isabella successively to Columbus, Bobadilla, and De Lares. Columbus gave three hundred Indians to Spaniards who had done the most service to the Crown, and took but one for his own use. The Queen ordered all except that one to be sent back. What would she have said to the present iniquities? The King is reminded that his frequent journeys and absences have prevented his fully informing himself of these facts.

30. From all these considerations it follows that all conquests, acquisitions, usurpations, and appropriations by officers and private persons have no legality, as contrary to the orders of the Spanish monarchs.

Here certainly is an admirable and cogent statement of the principles of equity and righteousness, as based upon natural laws and certified and fortified by the great verities and sanctions supposed to be held in reverence by professed Christians. Las Casas, in taking for his starting-point the Pope’s supreme and inclusive right over half the globe, just brought to the knowledge of civilized men, seems to make a monstrous assumption, only greater than that of the Spanish kings’ holding under and deriving dominion from him. But we may well pardon this assumption to so loyal a disciple of the Church, when we consider how nobly he held this Papal right as conditioned and limited, involving lofty duties, and balanced by an obligation to confer inestimable blessings. He had ever before him the contrast between fair scenes of luxurious Nature, ministering to the easy happiness of a gentle race of delicate and short-lived beings akin to himself, and the ruthless passions, lusts, and savagery of his own countrymen and fellow-Christians. We can well account for the opposition and thwarting of his efforts amid these scenes, but may need a further explanation of the resistance and ill-success which he encountered when pleading his cause before monarchs and great councillors at home, whose sympathies seem to have been generally on his side. He often stood wholly alone in scenes where these ravaging cruelties had full sweep,—alone in the humane sensitiveness with which he regarded them; alone in freedom from the mastering passions of greed and rapacity which excited them; and alone in realizing the appalling contrast between the spirit of blood and rapine which prompted them, and the spirit of that Gospel, the assumed championship of which at these ends of the earth was the blasphemous pretence of these murderers. Those ruthless tyrants, who here treated hundreds and thousands of the natives subject to them worse than even brutes from which useful service is expected, would not, of course, have the front to offer on the spot the pretence set up for them by their abetters at the Spanish Court,—that they were thus drawing the natives to them for their conversion; they laughed at the Clerigo when they did not openly thwart him.

Las Casas had many powerful and embittered opponents, and by the use of various means and artifices they were able to put impediments in his way, to qualify and avert what would seem to be the natural effects of his ardent appeals and shocking disclosures, and to keep him through his protracted life in what looked like a hopeless struggle against giant iniquities. Nor is it necessary that we go deeper than the obvious surface of the story to find the reasons for the opposition and discomfiture which he encountered. It may be that all those who opposed him or who would not co-operate with him were not personally interested in the iniquities which he exposed and sought to redress. Something may need to be said by and by concerning alleged faults of temper, over-ardor of zeal and overstatement, and wild exaggeration attributed to this bold apostle of righteousness. But that the substance of all his charges, and the specifications of inhumanity, cruelty, and atrocity which he set forth in detail, and with hardly enough diversity to vary his narrative, is faithful to the soberest truth, cannot be questioned. He spoke and wrote of what he had seen and known. He had looked upon sights of shocking and enormous iniquity and barbarity, over every scene which he had visited in his unresting travel. His sleep by night had been broken by the piteous shrieks of the wretched victims of slow tortures.

Much help may be derived by a reader towards a fuller appreciation of the character and life-work of Las Casas from the biography of him and the translation and editing of his principal writings by his ardent admirer, Llorente.[1020] This writer refers to a previous abridged translation of the works of Las Casas, published in Paris in 1642. His own edition in French, in 1822, is more full, though somewhat condensed and reconstructed. He remarks justly upon the prolixity of Las Casas, his long periods, his repetitions, his pedantic quotations from Scripture and the Latin authors, as the results of his peripatetic training. His translator and editor credits to the magnanimity and nobleness of nature of Las Casas the omission of the names of great offenders in connection with the terrible wrongs done by them. This reserve of Las Casas has been already referred to. But Llorente, in seventeen critical notes, answering to the same number of divisions in the _Relation_ of Las Casas, supplies the names of the leading criminals; and he also gives in a necrology the shocking or tragic elements and the dates of the death of these “men of blood.” He adds to the “Remedies” which Las Casas had suggested to Charles V. the whole additional series of measures proposed up to 1572. Llorente says that, admitting that the starting-point in the Thirty Propositions of Las Casas,—namely, the assumption of the Papal prerogative as to new-discovered territory,—was in his day “incontestable,” it is now recognized as a falsity. He furnishes an essay of his own upon the right and wrong of the claim; and he adds to that of Las Casas a treatise on the limits of the sovereign power of the King. Paw first, and then Raynal and Robertson, had brought the charge against Las Casas of having first introduced African slavery into the New World. As we have seen, the charge was false. Gregoire, bishop of Blois, read an _Apologie_ before the Institute of France in 1801, in vindication of the Clerigo. This _Apologie_ is given at length by Llorente. He adds, from manuscripts in the Royal Library of Paris, two inedited treatises of Las Casas, written in 1555-1564,—one against a project for perpetuating the _commanderies_ in the New World; the other on the necessity of restoring the crown of Peru to the Inca Titus.[1021]

Llorente says it is not strange that the apostle Las Casas, like other great and noble men, met with enemies and detractors. Some assailed him through prejudice, others merely from levity, and without reflection. Four principal reproaches have been brought against him:—

1. He is charged with gross exaggeration in his writings, as by the Spanish writers Camporicanes, Nuix, and Muñoz, and of course by those interested in excusing the work of conquest and devastation, who cannot justify themselves without impeaching Las Casas as an impostor. His sufficient vindication from this charge may be found in a mass of legal documents in the Archives, in the Records of the Council for the Indies, and in Government processes against wrongdoers. Herrera, who had seen these documents, says: “Las Casas was worthy of all confidence, and in no particular has failed to present the truth.” Torquemada, having personally sought for evidence in America, says the same. Las Casas, when challenged on this point, boldly affirmed: “There were once more natives in Hispaniola than in all Spain,” and that Cuba, Jamaica, and forty other islands, with parts of Terra Firma, had all been wrecked and made desolate. He insists over and over again that his estimates are within the truth.

2. Another charge was of imprudence in his ill-considered proceedings with the Indians. Allowance is to be made on the score of his zeal, his extreme ardor and vehemence,—an offset to the apathy and hard-heartedness of those around him. He was in a position in which he could do nothing for the Indians if he kept silence. He witnessed the reckless and defiant disobedience of the positive instructions of the King by his own high officers.

3. The third charge was of _inconsistency_ in condemning the enslaving of Indians, and favoring that of negroes. This has already been disposed of.

4. The final charge was that he was consumed by ambition. Only a single writer had the effrontery to ascribe to Las Casas the desperate purpose of seizing upon the sovereignty of a thousand leagues of territory. The whole foundation of the charge was his attempt to plant a particular colony in the province of Cumana, near St. Martha, on Terra Firma. So far from claiming sovereignty for himself, he even denied the right of the King to bestow such sovereignty.

He was, says Llorente, blameless; there is no stain upon his great virtues. Indeed, not only Spain, but all nations, owe him a debt for his opposition to despotism, and for his setting limits to royal power in the age of Charles V. and the Inquisition.

Then follows Llorente’s translation into French of Las Casas’ Memoir on the _Cruelties practised on the Indians_, with the Dedicatory Letter addressed to Philip II., 1552. The Spaniards at Hispaniola and elsewhere forgot that they were men, and treated the innocent creatures around them for forty-two years as if they were famished wolves, tigers, and lions. So that in Hispaniola, where once were three millions, there remained not more than two hundred. Cuba, Porto Rico, and Jamaica had been wholly depopulated. On more than sixty Lucayan islands, on the smallest of which were once five hundred thousand natives, Las Casas says, “my own eyes” have seen but eleven.

These appalling enumerations of the victims of Spanish cruelty during half a century from the first coming of the invaders to the islands and main of America, are set before the reader in the figures and estimates of Las Casas. Of course the instant judgment of the reader will be that there is obvious and gross exaggeration in them. It remains to this day a debated and wholly undecided question among archæologists, historians, and explorers best able to deal with it, as to the number of natives on island and continent when America was opened to knowledge. There are no facts within our use for any other mode of dealing with the question than by estimates, conjectures, and inferences. A reasonable view is that the southern islands were far more thickly peopled than the main, vast regions of which, when first penetrated by the whites, were found to be perfect solitudes. The general tendency now with those who have pursued any thorough investigations relating to the above question, is greatly to reduce the number of the aborigines below the guesses and the once-accepted estimates. Nor does it concern us much to attempt any argument as to the obvious over-estimates made by Las Casas, or to decide whether they came from his imagination or fervor of spirit, or whether, as showing himself incredible in these rash and wild enumerations, he brings his veracity and trustworthiness under grave doubts in other matters.

Las Casas says that near the Island of San Juan are thirty others without a single Indian. More than two thousand leagues of territory are wholly deserted. On the continent ten kingdoms, “each larger than Spain,” with Aragon and Portugal, are an immense solitude, human life being annihilated there. He estimates the number of men, women, and children who have been slaughtered at more than fifteen millions. Generally they were tormented, no effort having been made to convert them. In vain did the natives, helpless with their feeble weapons, hide their women and children in the mountains. When, maddened by desperation, they killed a single Spaniard, vengeance was taken by the score. The Clerigo, as if following the strictest process of arithmetic, gives the number of victims in each of many places, only with variations and aggravations. He asserts that in Cuba, in three or four months, he had seen more than seven thousand children perish of famine, their parents having been driven off to the mines. He adds that the worst of the cruelties in Hispaniola did not take place till after the death of Isabella, and that efforts were made to conceal from her such as did occur, as she continued to demand right and mercy. She had done her utmost to suppress the system of _repartimientos_, by which the natives were distributed as slaves to masters.

An inference helpful to an approximate estimate of the numbers and extent of the depopulation of the first series of islands seized on by the Spaniards, might be drawn from the vast numbers of natives deported from other groups of islands to replace the waste and to restore laborers. Geographers have somewhat arbitrarily distinguished the West Indies into three main groupings of islands,—the Lucayan, or Bahamas, of fourteen large and a vast number of small islands, extending, from opposite the coast of Florida, some seven hundred and fifty miles oceanward; the Greater Antilles, embracing Cuba, San Domingo, Porto Rico, Jamaica, etc., running, from opposite the Gulf of Mexico, from farther westward than the other groups; and the Lesser Antilles, or Carribean, or Windward Islands. The last-named, from their repute of cannibalism, were from the first coming of the Spaniards regarded as fair subjects for spoil, violence, and devastation. After ruin had done its work in the Greater Antilles, recourse was had to the Lucayan Islands. By the foulest and meanest stratagems for enticing away the natives of these fair scenes, they were deported in vast numbers to Cuba and elsewhere as slaves. It was estimated that in five years Ovando had beguiled and carried off forty thousand natives of the Lucayan Islands to Hispaniola.

The amiable and highly honored historian, Mr. Prescott, says in general, of the numerical estimates of Las Casas, that “the good Bishop’s arithmetic came more from his heart than his head.”[1022]

From the fullest examination which I have been able to make, by the comparison of authorities and incidental facts, while I should most frankly admit that Las Casas gave even a wild indulgence to his dismay and his indignation in his figures, I should conclude that he had positive knowledge, from actual eyesight and observation, of every form and shape, as well as instance and aggregation, of the cruelties and enormities which aroused his lifelong efforts. Besides the means and methods used to discredit the statements and to thwart the appeals of Las Casas at the Court, a very insidious attempt for vindicating, palliating, and even justifying the acts of violence and cruelty which he alleged against the Spaniards in the islands and on the main, was in the charge that their victims were horribly addicted to cannibalism and the offering of human sacrifices. The number estimated of the latter as slaughtered, especially on great royal occasions, is appalling, and the rites described are hideous. It seems impossible for us now, from so many dubious and conflicting authorities, to reach any trustworthy knowledge on this subject. For instance, in Anahuac, Mexico, the annual number of human sacrifices, as stated by different writers, varies from twenty to fifty thousand. Sepulveda in his contest with Las Casas was bound to make the most of this dismal story, and said that no one of the authorities estimated the number of the victims at less than twenty thousand. Las Casas replied that this was the estimate of brigands, who wished thus to win tolerance for their own slaughterings, and that the actual number of annual victims did not exceed twenty.[1023] It was a hard recourse for Christians to seek palliation for their cruelties in noting or exaggerating the superstitious and hideous rites of heathens!

It is certain, however, that this plea of cannibalism was most effectively used, from the first vague reports which Columbus took back to Spain of its prevalence, at least in the Carribean Islands, to overcome the earliest humane protests against the slaughter of the natives and their deportation for slaves. In the all-too hideous engravings presented in the volumes in all the tongues of Europe exposing the cruelties of the Spanish invaders, are found revolting delineations of the Indian shambles, where portions of human bodies, subjected to a fiendish butchery, are exposed for sale. Las Casas nowhere denies positively the existence of this shocking barbarism. One might well infer, however, from his pages that he was at least incredulous as to its prevalence; and to him it would only have heightened his constraining sense of the solemn duty of professed Christians to bring the power of the missionary, rather than the maddened violence of destruction, to bear upon the poor victims of so awful a sin. Nor does the evidence within our reach suffice to prove the prevalence, to the astounding extent alleged by the opponents of Las Casas, of monstrous and bestial crimes against nature practised among the natives. Perhaps a parallel between the general morality respectively existing in the license and vices of the invaders and the children of Nature as presented to us by Columbus, as well as by Las Casas, would not leave matter for boasting to the Europeans. Mr. Prescott enters into an elaborate examination of a subject of frequent discussion by American historians and archæologists,—who have adopted different conclusions upon it,—as to whether venereal diseases had prevalence among the peoples of the New World before it was opened to the intercourse of foreigners. I have not noticed in anything written by Las Casas that he brings any charge on this score against his countrymen. Quite recent exhumations made by our archæologists have seemingly set the question at rest, by revealing in the bones of our prehistoric races the evidences of the prevalence of such diseases.

Sufficient means, in hints and incidental statements, have been furnished in the preceding pages from which the reader may draw his own estimate, as appreciative and judicious as he may be able to make it, of the character of Las Casas as a man and as a missionary of Christ. A labored analysis or an indiscriminating eulogium of that character is wholly uncalled for, and would be a work of supererogation. His heart and mind, his soul and body, his life, with all of opportunity which it offered, were consecrated; his foibles and faults were of the most trivial sort, never leading to injury for others, and scarcely working any harm for himself.

It is a well-proved and a gladdening truth, that one who stands for the championship of any single principle involving the rights of humanity will be led by a kindled vision or a gleam of advanced wisdom to commit himself to the assumption of some great, comprehensive, illuminating verity covering a far wider field than that which he personally occupies. Thus Las Casas’ assertion of the common rights of humanity for the heathen natives expanded into a bold denial of the fundamental claims of ecclesiasticism. It was the hope and aim of his opponents and enemies to drive him to a committal of himself to some position which might be charged with at least constructive heresy, through some implication or inference from the basis of his pleadings that he brought under question the authority of the Papacy. Fonseca and Sepulveda were both bent upon forcing him into that perilous attitude towards the supreme ecclesiastical power. To appreciate fully how nearly Las Casas was thought to trespass on the verge of a heresy which might even have cost him his life, but would certainly have nullified his personal influence, we must recognize the full force of the one overmastering assumption, under which the Pope and the Spanish sovereigns claimed for themselves supreme dominion over territory and people in the New World. As a new world, or a disclosure on the earth’s surface of vast realms before unknown to dwellers on the old continents, its discovery would carry with it the right of absolute ownership and of rule over all its inhabitants. It was, of course, to be “conquered” and held in subjection. The earth, created by God, had been made the kingdom of Jesus Christ, who assigned it to the charge and administration of his vicegerent, the Pope. All the continents and islands of the earth which were not Christendom were heathendom. It mattered not what state of civilization or barbarism, or what form or substance of religion, might be found in any new-discovered country. The Papal claim was to be asserted there, if with any need of explanation, for courtesy’s sake, certainly without any apology or vindication. Could Las Casas be inveigled into any denial or hesitating allowance of this assumption? He was on his guard, but he stood manfully for the condition, the supreme obligation, which alone could give warrant to it. The papal and the royal claims were sound and good; they were indeed absolute. But the tenure of possession and authority in heathendom, if it were to be claimed through the Gospel and the Church, looked quite beyond the control of territory and the lordship over heathen natives, princes, and people,—it was simply to prompt the work and to facilitate, while it positively enjoined the duty of, conversion,—the bringing of heathen natives through baptism and instruction into the fold of Christ. Fonseca and Sepulveda were baffled by the Clerigo as he calmly and firmly told the monarchs that their prerogative, though lawful in itself, was fettered by this obligation. In asserting this just condition, Las Casas effectually disabled his opponents.

The following are the closing sentences of the Reply of Las Casas to Sepulveda:—

“The damages and the loss which have befallen the Crown of Castile and Leon will be visited also upon the whole of Spain, because the tyranny wrought by these desolations, murders, and slaughters is so monstrous that the blind may see it, the deaf may hear it, the dumb may rehearse it, and the wise judge and condemn it after our very short life. I invoke all the hierarchies and choirs of angels, all the saints of the Celestial Court, all the inhabitants of the globe, and chiefly all those who may live after me, for witnesses that I free my conscience of all that has transpired; and that I have fully exposed to his Majesty all these woes; and that if he leaves to Spaniards the tyranny and government of the Indies, all of them will be destroyed and without inhabitants,—as we see that Hispaniola now is, and the other islands and parts of the continent for more than three thousand leagues, without occupants. For these reasons God will punish Spain and all her people with an inevitable severity. So may it be!”

It is grateful to be assured of the fact that during the years of his last retirement in Spain, till the close of his life at so venerable an age, Las Casas enjoyed a pension sufficient for his comfortable subsistence. Allowing only a pittance of it for his own frugal support, he devoted it mostly to works of charity. His pen and voice and time were still given to asserting and defending the rights of the natives, not only as human beings, but as free of all mastery by others. Though his noble zeal had made him enemies, and he had appeared to have failed in his heroic protests and appeals, he had the gratification of knowing before his death that restraining measures, sterner edicts, more faithful and humane officials, and in general a more wise and righteous policy, had abated the rage of cruelty in the New World. But still the sad reflection came to qualify even this satisfaction, that the Spaniards were brought to realize the rights of humanity by learning that their cruelty had wrought to their own serious loss in depopulating the most fertile regions and fastening upon them the hate of the remnants of the people. The reader of the most recent histories, even of the years of the first quarter of this century, relating to the Spanish missions in the pueblos of Mexico and California, will note how some of the features of the old _repartimiento_ system, first introduced among the Greater Antilles, survived in the farm-lands and among the peons and converts of the missionaries.

CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.

THE subject of this chapter is so nearly exclusively concerned with the personal history, the agency, and the missionary work of Las Casas, both in the New World and at the Court of Spain, that we are rather to welcome than to regret the fact that he is almost our sole authority for the statements and incidents with which we have had to deal.

Giving due allowance to what has already been sufficiently recognized as his intensity of spirit, his wildness of imagination, and his enormous overstatement in his enumeration of the victims of Spanish cruelty, he must be regarded as the best authority we could have for the use which he serves to us.[1024] Free as he was from all selfish and sinister motives, even the daring assurance with which he speaks out before the monarch and his councillors, and prints on his titlepages the round numbers of these victims, prompts us to give full credit to his testimony on other matters, even if we substitute thousands in place of millions. As to the forms and aggravations of the cruel methods in which the Spaniards dealt with the natives, the recklessness and ingenuity of the work of depopulation,—which was as naturally the consequence of the enslaving of the Indians as of their indiscriminate slaughter,—Las Casas’ revelations seem to have passed unchallenged by even his most virulent enemies.

Sepulveda may be received by us as the representative alike in spirit and in argument of the opposition to Las Casas. He was an acute and able disputant, and would readily have availed himself of any weak points in the positions of the apostle. It is observable that, instead of assailing even the vehement and exaggerated charges alleged by Las Casas against the Spanish marauders for their cruelty, he rather spends his force upon the maintenance of the abstract rights of Christian champions over the heathen and their territory. The Papal and the Royal prerogatives were, in his view, of such supreme and sweeping account in the controversy, as to cover all the incidental consequences of establishing them. He seemed to argue that heathens and heathenism invited and justified conquest by any method, however ruthless; that the rights of the Papacy and of Christian monarchs would be perilled by allowing any regards of sentiment or humanity to stand in the way of their assertion; and that even the sacred duty of conversion was to be deferred till war and tyranny had obtained the absolute mastery over the natives.

* * * * *

The eight years spent by Las Casas in retirement in the Dominican convent at San Domingo were used by him in study and meditation. His writings prove, in their references and quotations from the classics, as well as from Scripture, that his range was wide, and that his mind was invigorated by this training.

In 1552-1553, at Seville, Las Casas printed a series of nine tracts, which are the principal source of our information in relation to his allegations against the Spanish oppressors of the Indians. It is only necessary to refer the reader to the bibliographies[1025] for the full titles of these tracts, of which we simply quote enough for their identification, while we cite them in the order in which they seem to have been composed, following in this the extensive Note which Field has given in his _Indian Bibliography_:—

1. _Breuissima relacion de la destruycion de las Indias ... año 1552_; 50 unnumbered leaves.

The series of tracts is usually cited by this title, which is that of the first tract,[1026] for there is no general printed designation of the collection. Four folios appended to this, but always reckoned as a distinct tract, are called,—

2. _Lo que se sigue es vn pedaço de vna carta_, etc. It records the observations of a Spanish traveller upon the enormities practised on the natives.[1027]

3. _Entre los remedios ... para reformaciō de las Indias_; 1552; 53 unnumbered leaves. It gives the eighth of the proposed remedies, assigning twenty reasons against the enslaving of the natives.[1028]

4. _Aqui se cōtienē vnos auisos y reglas para los confessores_, etc; 1552; 16 unnumbered leaves. It gives the rules for the confessors of his bishopric of Chiapa to deny the offices of the Church to such as held _repartimientos_.[1029]

5. _Aqui se contiene vna disputa ... entre el obispo ... y el doctor Gines de Sepulveda_; 1552; 61 unnumbered leaves. This strong enunciation of Las Casas’ convictions grew out of his controversy with Sepulveda.[1030] It contains, first, a summary by Domingo de Soto of the differences between the two disputants; second, the arguments of Sepulveda; and third, the replies of Las Casas,—twelve in all.

6. _Este es vn tratado ... sobre la materia de los Yndios, que se han hecho en ellas esclauos_; 1552; 36 unnumbered leaves. This contains reasons and judicial authorities on the question of the restitution of the natives to freedom.[1031]

7. _Aqui se cōtienē treynta proposiciones ..._; 1552; 10 leaves. These are the Propositions, mentioned on a preceding page, as Las Casas’ reply to those who objected to the rigor of his rules for his confessors.[1032]

8. _Principia quedā ex quibus procedendum_, etc; 1552; 10 leaves. This gives the principles on which he conducts his defence of the rights of the natives.[1033]

9. _Tratado cōprobatorio del imperio soberano_, etc.; 80 unnumbered leaves. The title-date is 1552, but that in the colophon is 1553. The purpose is “to prove the sovereign empire and universal dominion by which the kings of Castile and Leon hold the West Indies.”[1034]

Complete sets of these tracts have become very rare, though it is not uncommon to find, in current catalogues, single copies of some of those less scarce.[1035]

[From the copy in Harvard College Library.—ED.]]

In 1571, five years after Las Casas’ death, what is sometimes called a tenth part was printed at Frankfort, under the title of _Explicatio questionis utrum Reges vel Principes jure aliquo.... Cives ac subditos a regia corona alienare?_ This further showing of the arguments of Las Casas is even rarer than its predecessors.[1036] Its authorship, without much reason, has been sometimes denied.[1037] It is translated, however, in Llorente’s edition, as is also a letter of Las Casas which he wrote in 1555 to the Archbishop of Toledo, protesting against the contemplated sale of _Encomiendas_ in perpetuity, which, being communicated to the King, led to the prohibition of the plan.

In 1854 Henry Stevens printed, in a style corresponding to that of the tracts of 1552, a series of six papers from original manuscripts in his possession, interesting as contributions to the history of Las Casas and his work;[1038] and there is also a letter of Las Casas in the volume a few years since printed by the Spanish Government as _Cartas de Indias_. There is an enumeration of thirteen other treatises, noted as still in manuscript, which is to be found in Sabin’s _Dictionary_ or in his separate _Works of Las Casas_; but Mr. Field is inclined for one reason or another to reduce the number to five, in addition to the two which were published by Llorente.[1039] There are also two manuscripts recorded in the _Carter-Brown Catalogue_.[1040]

[From a copy in the Harvard College Library.—ED.]]

[This is slightly reduced from the fac-simile given in vol. iii. of the 1875 (Madrid) edition of the _Historia_.—ED.]]

The most labored of Las Casas’ books was his _Historia de las Indias_,—the original manuscript of which is still preserved, according to Helps, in the library of the Academy of History at Madrid.[1041] Las Casas began this work while in his convent in 1527,[1042] and seems to have worked upon it, without finishing it, up to 1561. It has all the fervor and vigor of his nature; and so far as it is the result of his own observation, its character is unimpeachable. It is in large part, as Helps has remarked, autobiographic; but it does not bring the story down later than 1520. Its style is characteristically rambling and awkward, and more or less confused with extraneous learning, the result of his convent studies, and interjected with his usual bursts of a somewhat tiresome indignation. Outside of his own knowledge he had large resources in documents, of which we have no present knowledge. He seems to have had a prescience of the feelings in his countrymen which would long keep the manuscript from the printing-office, for he left instructions at his death that no one should use it for forty years. The injunction did not prevent Herrera having access to it; and when this latter historian published his book in 1601, the world got a large part of Las Casas’ work,—much of it copied by Herrera _verbatim_,—but extracted in such a way that Las Casas could have none of his proper effect in ameliorating the condition of the Indians and exposing the cruelty of their oppression. In this way Las Casas remained too long eclipsed, as Irving says, by his copyist. Notwithstanding the publication of the book was prohibited, various manuscript copies got abroad, and every reputable historian of the Spanish rule has made use of Las Casas’ labors.[1043] Finally, the Royal Academy of History at Madrid undertook the revision of the manuscript; but that body was deterred from putting their revision on the press by the sentiments, which Spanish scholars had always felt, adverse to making public so intense an arraignment of their countrymen.[1044] At last, however, in 1875-1876, the Academy finally printed it in five volumes.[1045] The _Historia_ was of course not included, nor were two of the tracts of the issues of 1552 (nos. 4 and 8) embraced, in the edition of Las Casas’ _Obras_ which Llorente issued in Paris in 1822 in the original Spanish, and also in the same year in a French translation, _Œuvres de Las Casas_.[1046] This work is dedicated “Au modèle des virtues héréditaires, A. M. le Comte de las Casas.” Sufficient recognition has been made in the preceding narrative of this work of Llorente. As a Spaniard by birth, and a scholar well read in the historical literature of his own country, as one trained and exercised in the priestly office, though he had become more or less of a heretic, and as a most ardent admirer of the virtues and the heroic services of the great Apostle to the Indians, he had the attainments, qualifications, and motives for discharging with ability and fidelity the biographical and editorial task which he undertook. It is evident from his pages that he devoted conscientious labor in investigation, and a purpose of strict impartiality to its discharge. He is not an undiscriminating eulogist of Las Casas, but he penetrates with a true sympathetic admiration to the noble unselfishness and the sublime constancy of this sole champion of righteousness against powerful forces of iniquity.