Bartholomew Ortiz was at last, on his earnest entreaty, relieved of his
duties as alcalde mayor in the fall of 1542, and for some time the
insular government was again without a head. But in August, 1543, since
nothing had been heard from or of de Soto for three years, the crown
assumed that he was dead and that his office was vacant. It therefore
appointed Juan de Avila to be not alcalde mayor but governor; permitting
the title of Adelantado of Florida to fall into desuetude. The new
governor was a young lawyer, whose chief recommendation was that he was
a member of the de Avila family, a relative of Lady Isabel de Soto and
of her father, the formidable Pedrarias d'Avila. He seems to have been
doubtful of his own ability to administer the office successfully, and
therefore reluctant to assume its duties. However, he finally came to
Cuba, arriving at Santiago at the beginning of February, 1544, nearly
six months after his appointment. He was, of course, regularly appointed
and commissioned by the crown, with the full powers of governor, and for
those reasons he was received at Santiago with grateful rejoicings. The
people of that city and indeed of all Cuba had become tired of having an
absentee governor and an alcalde mayor in his place.
Juan de Avila's first official act of importance was to make the usual
examination of his predecessor's affairs. This was a slight task,
because of the short time in which de Soto had actually administered the
governorship, and nothing wrong appears to have been found. The affairs
of all other officials were likewise in good order. He then turned his
attention to the question of the Indians; after which, the deluge.
The royal government had for the time acquiesced in the ruthless policy
of de Soto. At least it had not vetoed nor opposed it. But now it had
reconsidered the matter, and had resumed its former and better policy,
of treating the natives justly and kindly, and giving them their
freedom. Perhaps it was moved to do this partly through horror at what
Pedrarias d'Avila had done at Darien, in all but exterminating an entire
race, and was minded to make atonement by requiring the young kinsman of
that "Timour of the Indies" to do the opposite in Cuba. At any rate
orders were sent to Cuba that there should be no more enslavement of the
natives in gold mining. In fact, they were not to be employed in mining
at all. Now as mining was practically the only work in which the Indians
were engaged, the effect of that order, if enforced, would have been
very marked. It would have stopped gold mining, and would have left the
natives in idleness. In fact, it was not enforced. The governor received
it, and transmitted it to the various local officials for promulgation
and enforcement; and they ignored it. Presently the governor wanted to
know why the order had not been obeyed, and was curtly told that it
would have been disastrous to the industries and interests of the
island. This he reported to the crown, asking for further directions.
The reply was a reminder that the new Bishop, Sarmiento, was Protector
of the Indians, and that the governor and he should cooperate for their
welfare and for the enforcement of the decrees in their behalf. But the
people were no readier to listen to the bishop than to the governor;
particularly since that ecclesiastic was himself a slave-holder. Indeed,
the municipal council of Santiago formally protested against his
appointment as Protector of the Indians and refused to recognize his
authority. There were some actual conflicts with force and arms between
the two factions, in which the followers of the local government appear
to have triumphed over the fewer adherents of the Bishop, and from which
no profit nor advantage of any kind accrued to the unhappy objects of
the strife.
When these things were reported to the King and his advisers, there was
much indignation, and new and peremptory orders were sent to the
governor, that involuntary service by the Indians was immediately to be
abolished, and that the natives were to be free to work for whom they
pleased, or not to work at all. Moreover, they were to be treated in all
respects as well as the Spaniards themselves. This radical decree seems
to have impressed the governor and bishop as going a little too far, and
an appeal was made by common consent to the Council for the Indies, in
Spain. That body was divided in opinion, but the majority of it inclined
to a modification of the order, to which the King agreed. The governor
and the bishop were directed to act together for the welfare of the
natives, with a view to granting them ultimately entire liberty and
equal rights. There was to be no more slavery. All the Indian slaves who
had been brought to Cuba from other islands or from the mainland were to
be released and returned to their homes. To hold such slaves, or to
engage in the slave trade, was made a grave penal offense. The native
Cubans who were held under the repartimiento system were not immediately
to be released, but they were not to be transferred from one master to
another, and upon the death of their master they were not to be
bequeathed as chattels to his heirs, but were to be released. Moreover,
if any of the proprietors were proved to be cruel to their native
workmen, or neglectful of their interests, the natives were to be
released from their authority and set at liberty. In all cases, the
natives were to receive fair wages for their labor, and were not to be
compelled to do any kind of work for which they were not suited or to
which they objected. Finally, it was forbidden for the governor, the
bishop, or any other functionary of state or church to hold native Cuban
Indians in bondage, though negro slavery was apparently still
permitted.
These regulations, put forward by the King and the Council for the
Indies, were actually more far-reaching than the order of the crown
which had been disputed, though they would not take effect so abruptly.
The governor received them, and himself had them publicly proclaimed
throughout the island; with prodigious effect. The whole island rose
against them. Municipal councils and others officials, as well as
planters and gold miners, protested against them, and pleaded for at
least postponement of their enforcement until they could have an
opportunity to appeal to the crown and to the Council for the Indies
against them. To this plea for delay, De Avila acceded; to his own
subsequent undoing, as we shall presently see. His own brother, Alfonso
de Avila, turned against him, and went to Spain as the chief spokesman
of the opponents of the new rules.
While the question of the Indians was thus held in suspension, De Avila
turned his attention to other matters, largely matrimonial and domestic.
On coming to Cuba, a young bachelor, he made his home in the house of
the wealthy widow of Pedro de Paz. This lady, who had otherwise been
much married, and who was by birth a member of the formidable Guzman
family, whose name she now bore, was past fifty years old, or about
twice the age of the young governor. Indeed, she had sons and daughters
of about De Avila's age. It was therefore assumed to be quite
permissible for the governor to live in her house. The arrangement
proved in the end, however, to be disastrous. It was probably the lady's
intention from the beginning to take the young man for her husband--her
fourth or fifth. At any rate, his domestic association with her, while
it could not compromise her reputation, did so compromise his that he
could get none of the eligible young women of Cuba to marry him,
although he sought the hands of several of them. So after a time,
despairing of any other bride, and doubtless much impressed by the
wealth of his mature hostess, he married her; and thereafter was her
slave.
[Illustration: SAN LAZARO WATCH TOWER, HAVANA
Built 1536]
For the remainder of the ill-starred administration the lady was the
real governor. A large part of her fortune was in Indian slaves, or in
enterprises dependent upon their labor. Therefore it was she who was
foremost in opposing the enforcement of the decrees for their
emancipation. It was owing to her influence that De Avila acquiesced in
their suspension. Then, when the matter was being appealed, it was she
who constrained De Avila to leave Santiago for a tour of the island,
ostensibly for inspection, but in reality to get away from Santiago,
where the social atmosphere was not agreeable, and to settle in some
more advantageous place.
That new place was found at Havana. Since the burning of it by French
buccaneers that city had been rebuilt in a much more attractive style
than Santiago, and society there was more hospitable to the governor's
wife. A plausible excuse for settling there was, moreover, readily
found. It was necessary, for the protection of the place against another
French attack, that the valiant governor should remain there in person.
For the furtherance of this purpose, he procured the free granting to
him of a choice tract of land, and also the free gift of materials for
building him a fine mansion. Whether the citizens of Havana gave the
materials willingly, for the sake of having the governor of the island
living among them, or under some sort of compulsion, may not certainly
be declared. Two traditions have been extant. One was, that they gave
the materials under compulsion, and that for that reason the governor's
mansion was called the "House of Fear." The other was, that they gave
them willingly, even eagerly, because of actual dread of another French
descent; thinking that if the governor himself lived there, he would
take all possible measures for the defence of the place; and that it was
for that reason that it was called the "House of Fear."
After completing the house and living there for some time, however, De
Avila deemed it politic to return to Santiago. His absence from the
latter place had given rise to great dissatisfaction there and
throughout all the eastern part of the island, where of course the
majority of the population, of wealth and of political and other
influence were still to be found. Indeed, protests had been lodged with
the crown against what was described as the governor's abandonment of
the lawful seat of government of the island. Suspicions of his
unworthiness had already strongly arisen at court, and orders were sent
for the Supreme Court of Hispaniola, which still had jurisdiction in
Cuba, to investigate his conduct. The report was unfavorable, and in
consequence the crown summarily appointed Antonio Chaves to succeed him
as governor; directing Chaves to conduct a searching inquest into De
Avila's administration without regard to the report already made by the
agent of the supreme court of Hispaniola.
The sequel was the greatest public scandal that had thus far marred the
history of Cuba. It was at the beginning of October, 1545, that Antonio
Chaves was commissioned to be governor of Cuba, and it was at the
beginning of June in the following year that he arrived at Santiago and
entered upon the duties of his office. The first task was to investigate
his predecessor, and this he performed with a thoroughness which seemed
ferocious and which certainly suggests either some personal hatred of De
Avila or a natural desire to be cruel and ruthless. He charged De Avila
with having committed malfeasance of office for the furtherance of his
wife's interests; with having engaged in commercial and industrial
enterprises himself, to the detriment of public interests; with having
established monopolies for enriching himself or his wife; with having
both given and accepted bribes; with having intimidated local officials
and the people; and with having, largely at the instance of his wife,
neglected to enforce the order of the King for the emancipation of the
natives.
It is quite probable that De Avila was guilty of most of these charges,
particularly of those in which his wife was concerned. Certain it is
that Antonio Chaves set about trying to prove them with a strenuous zeal
which had never before been displayed. One of his first acts was to
seize and search the governor's house; not merely in its public or
semi-public offices but in its most private parts. The wardrobe of the
governor's wife was ransacked, the furniture examined, the walls and
floors sounded and even broken in quest of concealed treasure. To some
of these proceedings the governor, or ex-governor, and his wife, too,
attempted to offer physical resistance, but they were overpowered and
bound while the search went on. Their servants, or slaves, were
questioned and even, it is said, threatened with torture if they did
not tell all they knew. Under such compulsion they told of bars of gold
hidden underneath the floor of a country house; which were found.
Chaves went so far as to order De Avila to be chained fast to a post in
the market place, where fugitive slaves had formerly been chained, and
the former governor was actually subjected to this indignity, though he
had not yet been convicted and sentenced by a court of justice. But this
was carrying prosecution too far. It was regarded as not prosecution but
persecution. There was a reaction of popular sentiment in favor of De
Avila, and he was assisted to escape from his bonds and to find
sanctuary in the Franciscan monastery. After a time he undertook to get
away, to Spain, but was quickly detected and recaptured by Chaves. After
some further controversy, Chaves discreetly agreed that De Avila might
go to Spain, to defend himself if he could before the Council for the
Indies; doubtless expecting that such defence would be in vain because
of De Avila's offences against that Council's decrees.
So De Avila departed for Spain, with his advocates and his accusers on
the same ship. Most fortunately for him, his wife also went, carrying
with her an ample store of gold and gems which had escaped the search
and confiscation of Chaves. Her conduct in this emergency indicates that
she had a sincere devotion to her young husband, in addition, of course,
to a desire to protect her own material fortune. Certain it is that she
constituted herself his chief and most effective champion, freely
expending in his behalf the gold which she had taken to Spain. She
testified that all the property which he was accused of having
unlawfully acquired was in fact hers and not his, possessed by her
before she was married to him, and that if he had in any sense acquired
it, it was solely through having married her; and there was no law
against a governor's marrying a rich wife.
Her argument prevailed. The litigation in Spain lasted for several
years, during part of which time De Avila was in prison. But in the end
he was released; the heavy fines which had been levied against him were
remitted; and the sentence of perpetual banishment from Cuba was
revoked. Thereupon the devoted couple returned in triumph to Cuba, with
a great retinue of servants, and reestablished themselves at Santiago.
They held aloof from political affairs, and gave their attention to an
exceedingly profitable commerce between Cuba and other West India
Islands and Spain; which happy state of affairs lasted until De Avila's
death, a dozen years later. He left behind him the reputation of being
one of the worst of Cuban governors, not so much because of any inherent
viciousness as because of his weakness of character and his complete
subservience to the often sordid and sometimes unscrupulous doings of
his wife.
That there was any gain for Cuba in the substitution of Antonio Chaves
for Juan de Avila is scarcely, however, to be maintained. On the
contrary, there was probably some loss. It was a substitution of King
Stork for King Log. De Avila had been weak and passive. Chaves was
strong and aggressive; as his campaign against his predecessor
demonstrated. In point of morals there was probably little to choose
between them. So far as enforcement of the laws concerning the natives
was concerned, Chaves was worse than De Avila. For De Avila personally
wished to enforce them, but was dissuaded from so doing by the influence
of his wife and the almost unanimous demands of the officials and
people. Chaves, on the other hand, appears to have been personally
opposed to all emancipation laws, and inclined to subject the natives to
ruthless slavery. Although he had savagely attacked De Avila for
acquiescing in the suspension or postponement of the royal decrees,
Chaves himself went even further in the same direction. He declined to
enforce the laws, protested against them, and petitioned for their
repeal on the ground that they would be ruinous to the material welfare
of the island. The rule against employment of natives in the mines was
especially obnoxious to him, and he advised the crown that unless it
were repealed, together with all other such measures, the island would
soon be "possessed of the devil."
Seeing that Chaves was now doing the very thing that he had condemned
his predecessor for doing, the King was disgusted with him, and sent him
the sharpest kind of a reprimand, reminding him of his gross
inconsistency and bidding him to enforce the law without further ado.
Chaves pretended to obey. In fact, he promptly replied that he was
obeying. But he obeyed only in pretence. He did not scruple to
declare--in Cuba--that he was opposed to giving the natives their
freedom. He did not consider them fit for it. Why? Because they were not
Christians, and if set free they would not become Christians, and
therefore would infallibly be damned eternally. Therefore to save their
souls from hell fire, their bodies must be enslaved, so that they could
find salvation through being physically compelled to conform with the
external practices of Christianity. Particularly necessary was it, he
argued, for this system of spiritual salvation through corporeal bondage
to prevail in the provinces of Trinidad, Sancti Spiritus and Puerto del
Principe, because they had no agricultural interests but were dependent
upon mining, and if they could not compel the Indians to work in the
mines, they would be ruined.
This logic, more ingenious than ingenuous, did not favorably impress the
King, nor was he better pleased with Chaves's proposal that the Indians
should be made free in name only, and that while traffic in them as
chattels should be forbidden, they should in fact remain in involuntary
domestic servitude. Another sharp reprimand was accordingly sent to
Chaves, with an intimation that something worse might follow; to which
warning the governor was blind and deaf. Accordingly, the blow soon
fell.
We have hitherto heard much of Lopez Hurtado, the crabbed, surly and
cantankerous old royal treasurer, with his impregnable honesty. It was
quite impossible that he should countenance even passively such conduct
as that of Chaves. So at the end of 1548 he sent to the King an
appalling indictment of the governor, charging him with all manner of
public crimes and private vices. He declared that Chaves was enriching
himself at the expense of the people, and that he was neglecting public
business for private enterprises, that he was permitting his
subordinates to practice extortion and oppression, that he was
ill-treating and persecuting honest men, and that he was corrupting the
women of the island; all of which was probably true.
The King acted promptly. Chaves had been appointed governor in October,
1545, for a term of four years, at a salary of a thousand ducats a year.
He had now, at the end of 1548, been in office three years and more;
though he claimed that his term ran for four years from June, 1546, when
he actually took office. However, there was no tenure of office law to
keep him in his place beyond the royal pleasure; certainly not to
protect him from removal for cause. So the supreme court of Hispaniola
was directed to investigate him, and Gonzalo Perez de Angulo was
appointed governor in his stead. The court of Hispaniola sent Geronimo
de Aguayo to Cuba to make a private investigation of the governor's
doings; Hurtado agreeing to pay the expenses out of his own pocket.
Aguayo came to Santiago in April, 1549, while Chaves was absent at
Havana, planning to remove the seat of government to that city. Three
months were spent in the investigation, and then Aguayo reported to the
court a docket of about three hundred charges against Chaves, some of
which were serious enough but many of which were altogether trifling.
The court decided to take no action upon them, but to hold them for the
new governor, Angulo, to use as the basis of the investigation which
he, according to law and precedent, would at once make into his
predecessor's administration.
Gonzalo de Angulo had been appointed at the beginning of September,
1548, but did not at once come to the West Indies. He reached Hispaniola
in the summer of 1549, shortly after Aguayo had made his report, and he
remained there for some time, considering the report and conferring with
the members of the supreme court. Finally, at the beginning of November,
he proceeded to Santiago and assumed the governorship. He entered upon
the investigation, using Aguayo's three hundred charges as the basis of
it, despite the protest of Chaves that Aguayo had been a prejudiced
investigator, moved by political and even pecuniary considerations and
intent not upon discovering the truth but merely upon defaming him
(Chaves) to the fullest possible extent.
The result of the new governor's inquest was that at the beginning of
July, 1550, Chaves was arrested and sent as a prisoner to Spain, for
trial there upon a multitude of accusations. These were partly grave and
partly--mostly--frivolous. In the former category was the charge that
Chaves had refused or at least failed to enforce royal decrees for the
enfranchisement of the natives. That was a very serious matter,
apparently, and there was no question that it was true. Indeed, Chaves
admitted it. But, he said, some of these decrees had been suspended,
there had been pleas for the suspension of others, officials had failed
to proclaim some, and the Hispaniola court had interfered with others;
so that the whole business was in a hopeless tangle and he really could
not determine what he ought to do. This argument impressed the Spanish
authorities, and they consequently dismissed that and other like charges
against him.
But when it came to other charges, they could not be got rid of so
easily. Thus, he had refused to pay an apothecary for a dose of
medicine. He had called Hurtado's nephew a Jew! He had called certain
citizens "conspirators" because they were forming some sort of a secret
organization. He had arrested a priest for acting disrespectfully toward
him. These were indeed serious matters; particularly when the irate
Hurtado produced voluminous affidavits, from parents, physicians,
clergy, and whom not, to prove that his nephew like himself was a good
Christian. So for these things Chaves was thrown into prison, and even,
it is said, bound with heavy fetters, until he should pay the fines
which were imposed upon him.
It must be recorded in Chaves's favor that he was unable to pay these
fines. Indeed, he seems not to have had means sufficient to employ a
lawyer to defend him, wherefore he was compelled to conduct his own
case; which he was quite competent to do, being a licentiate of the bar.
There was, then, of course no thought of his being able to influence the
course of justice by the use of money, as De Avila was supposed to have
done. Whether he was actually so poor, or whether his fortune had been
so invested in Cuba that he was unable at once to realize upon it, does
not appear. In charity we may accept the former theory, as the more
creditable to him. At any rate, after two years of litigation and
imprisonment, he secured a final reduction of the fines levied against
him to a little more than 100,000 maravedi, which he was required to pay
within a year. This trifling amount he contrived to raise and so
regained his freedom; going thereafter back to Cuba to settle up his
personal affairs there, and thence to Peru, to engage no more in Cuban
politics.
Apart from his prosecution of Chaves, the first act of Gonzalo de Angulo
on assuming the governorship was to attempt a radical solution of the
Indian problem. This he did by proclaiming the full and universal
emancipation of all natives, however and by whomsoever held. Seeing how
strenuously and vociferously similar action had been resisted only a few
years before, as sure to be ruinous to the island, it is worthy of
remark that this provoked no remonstrances and caused no economic
disturbance. The explanation is simple. The former proposals for
emancipation included slaves who had been brought to Cuba from other
lands, while this one applied only to natives. Now the latter, through
disease, fighting, and other causes, had been steadily decreasing in
numbers, until they were now practically a negligible quantity. They
probably numbered not more than twenty-five hundred in the entire
island. It really mattered little, from an industrial point of view,
whether they were enslaved or free. They were in fact set free, in good
faith, and then practically disappeared. They did not relapse into
primitive barbarism, but they lived in squalor, most of them, and
gradually died out.
Not all of them, however, suffered such a fate. Some settled on lands
near if not actually among the Spanish colonists, adopted the ways of
civilization, and prospered. They acquired freehold of land and houses,
kept herds of cattle, built ships and engaged in commerce. Some of them
intermarried with Spanish families, and the offspring of such unions
often rose to honorable rank in society and the state.
The question of slavery was not by any means disposed of by this
emancipation of the native Indians. There was a much larger number of
slaves in the island who had been brought thither from other countries,
including both insular and continental Indians and African negroes.
Governor Angulo was directed to order their emancipation and
repatriation at the same time with the others. But he withheld the
decree. These foreign slaves were far more numerous than the natives and
were consequently more important to industry and commerce. They had not
been simply "assigned" to owners, like the Cuban Indians, but had been
purchased outright for cash, like any other merchandise, and were
legally as much the property of their owners as land, houses or cattle.
In view of this circumstance, Angulo declined to proclaim their
emancipation.