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.
[Illustration: LAS CASAS.]
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.
[Illustration: AUTOGRAPH OF LAS CASAS.]
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,—
[Illustration: TITLE OF FIRST TRACT.]
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]
[Illustration: TITLE OF THE FOURTH TRACT.
[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]
[Illustration: TITLE OF THE SEVENTH TRACT.
[From a copy in the Harvard College Library.—ED.]]
[Illustration: LAS CASAS’ INDORSEMENT ON THE MANUSCRIPT OF HIS
“HISTORIA”.
[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.
The number of versions of all or of part of the series of the 1552
tracts into other languages strikingly indicates the interest which
they created and the effect which they produced throughout Europe. None
of the nations showed more eagerness to make public these accusations
against the Spaniards by one of their own number, than the Flemings
and Dutch. The earliest of all the translations, and one of the rarest
of these publications, is the version of the first tract, with parts
of others, which appeared in the dialect of Brabant, in 1578,—the
precursor of a long series of such testimonies, used to incite the
Netherlanders against the Spanish rule.[1047] The French came next
with their _Tyrannies et cruautéz des Espagnols_, published at Antwerp
in 1579, in which the translator, Jacques de Miggrode, softened the
horrors of the story with a due regard for his Spanish neighbors.[1048]
A somewhat bolder venture was a new version, not from the originals,
but from the Dutch translation, and set out with all the horrors of De
Bry’s seventeen engravings, which was supplied to the French market
with an Amsterdam imprint in 1620. It is a distorted patchwork of parts
of the three of the 1552 tracts. In a brief preface, the translator
says that the part relating to the Indies is derived from the original,
printed at Seville by Sebastian Trugillo in 1552, the writer “being Las
Casas, who seems to be a holy man and a Catholic.” There were still
other French versions, printed both in France and in Holland. The
earliest English translation is a version signed by M. M. S., entitled
_The Spanish Colonie, or Briefe Chronicle of the Acts and Gestes of the
Spaniardes in the West Indies, called the Newe Worlde, for the Space
of XL. Yeeres_, issued in London in 1583.[1049] The best-known of the
English versions is _The Tears of the Indians_, “made English by J.
P.,” and printed in London in 1656.[1050] “J. P.” is John Phillips,
a nephew of John Milton. His little book, which contains a terse
translation of Las Casas’s “Cruelty,” etc., without his controversy
with Sepulveda, is dedicated to Oliver Cromwell. It is prefaced
by a glowing appeal “To all true Englishmen,” which rehearses the
proud position they hold in history for religion, liberty, and human
rights, and denounces the Spaniards as “a Proud, Deceitful, Cruel, and
Treacherous Nation, whose chiefest Aim hath been the Conquest of this
Land,” etc., closing with a call upon them to aid the Protector in the
threatened contest for the West Indies.
While Phillips places the number of the slaughtered Indians at twenty
millions, these are reckoned at forty millions by the editor of another
English version, based upon the French _Tyrannies et cruautéz_, which
was printed at London, in 1699, as _A Relation of the First Voyages
and Discoveries made by the Spaniards in America_.[1051] The earliest
German edition appeared, in 1597, as _Newe Welt: warhafftige Anzeigung
der Hispanier grewlichen ... Tyranney_.[1052] The Latin edition
appeared at Frankfort, in 1598, as _Narratio regionum Indicarvm per
Hispanos qvosdam deuastatarum verissima_.[1053] This Latin translation
has a brief introduction, mainly a quotation from Lipsius, commenting
on these atrocities. The version is spirited and faithful, covering
the narrative of Las Casas and his discussion with Sepulveda. The
engravings by De Bry are ghastly and revolting, and present all too
faithfully the shocking enormities related in the text. It is a
fearful parody of deception and truth which introduces a hooded friar
as holding a crucifix before the eyes of one under torment by fire or
mutilation. We can scarcely regret that the circumstances under which
the indiscriminate slaughter was waged but rarely allowed of this
desecration of a sacred symbol. The artist has overdrawn his subjects
in delineating heaps of richly wrought and chased vessels as brought by
the hounded victims to appease their tormentors.
To close this list of translations, it is only necessary to refer to
the sundry ways in which Las Casas was helped to create an influence in
Italy, the Italian text in these publications usually accompanying the
Spanish.[1054]
[Illustration]
EDITORIAL NOTE.
THE most important distinctive lives of Las Casas are those of
Llorente, prefixed to his edition of Las Casas’ _Œuvres_; that which
Quintana (born, 1772; died, 1857) gives in his _Vidas de Españoles
célebres_, vol. iii., published at Madrid in 1833, and reprinted, with
Quintana’s _Obras_, in the _Biblioteca de autores Españoles_ in 1852;
and the _Vida y escritos de Las Casas_ of A. M. Fabié, published at
Madrid in 1879, in two volumes, with a large number of unpublished
documents, making vols. 70 and 71 of the _Documentos inéditos_
(_España_). The life which was constructed mainly by the son of Arthur
Helps out of _The Spanish Conquest in America_ by the father, is the
most considerable account in English. The larger work was written in a
spirit readily appreciative of the character of Las Casas, and he is
made such a centre of interest in it as easily to favor the excision of
parts of it to form the lesser book. This was hardly possible with the
broader connections established between Las Casas and his times which
accompany the portrayal of his career in the works of Prescott and H.
H. Bancroft. The great friend of the Indian is mainly, however, to be
drawn from his own writings.
Las Casas was by no means alone in his advocacy of the rights of the
natives, as Harrisse (_Bibl. Am. Vet. Add._, p. 119) has pointed out;
naming Julian Garces, Francis of Vittoria, Diego de Avendaño, Alonzo
de Noreña, and even Queen Isabel herself, as evinced by her will
(in Dormer, _Discursos varios_, p. 381). The fame of Las Casas was
steadfastly upheld by Remesal in his _Historia de Chyapa_, etc., 1619
(cf. Bancroft, _Central America_, ii. 339); and the great apostle found
a successor in his labors in Juan de Palafox y Mendoça, whose appeal
to the King, printed about 1650, and called _Virtudes del Indio, é
naturaleza y costumbres de los Indios de Nueva España_, has become very
rare. (Cf. Carter-Brown, vol. ii. no. 691.) Brasseur de Bourbourg, in
the fourth volume of his _Nations civilisées du Mexique_, set forth in
all their enormity the barbarities of the Spanish conquerors; but he
seeks to avoid all imputations of exaggeration by shunning the evidence
drawn from Las Casas.
The opponents of Las Casas—who became in due time the best-hated man in
the Spanish colonies—were neither few nor powerless, as the thwarting
of Las Casas’ plans constantly showed. The Fray Toribio Motolinia took
issue with Las Casas, and Ramirez, in his Life of Motolinia contained
in Icazbalceta’s _Coleccion_, undertakes to show (p. lvii) the
difference between them. Cf. B. Smith’s _Coleccion_, p. 67.
[Illustration]
The most conspicuous of his fellow-observers, who reached conclusions
constantly quite at variance with Las Casas, was Gonzalo Fernandez de
Oviedo y Valdes,—to give his full name, though Oviedo is the one by
which he is usually cited. Oviedo was but a few years younger than Las
Casas. He had seen Columbus’ triumph at Barcelona, and had come to
America with Pedrarias ten years after Las Casas, and spent thirty-four
of the next forty years in the New World, holding part of the time
the office of inspector of the gold-smeltings at Darien, and latterly
living at Hispaniola. He is thought to have begun his historical
studies as early as 1520, and he published his first book, usually
called the _Sumario_, in 1526, on his return from his second voyage.
It is a description of the West Indies and its natives. Returning to
Spain in 1530, he was after a while made the official chronicler of the
Indies, and in 1535 began the publication of his great _Historia de las
Indias_. On this chief labor Ticknor (_Spanish Literature_, ii. 33)
traces him at work certainly as late as 1548, and he may have added to
it down to 1555. He had the royal direction to demand of the various
governors whatever document and aid he might need as he went on.
Ticknor calls him the first authorized chronicler of the New World,—“an
office,” he adds, “which was at one time better paid than any other
similar office in the kingdom, and was held at different times by
Herrera, Tamayo, Solis, and other writers of distinction, and ceased
(he believed) with the creation of the Academy of History.” Oviedo was
a correspondent of Ramusio, and found the acquaintance helpful. He
knew Cortes, and exchanged letters with him. Ticknor, after speaking of
the scope of the _Historia_ as taxing the powers of Oviedo beyond their
strength, still accounts the work of great value as a vast repository
of facts, and not wholly without merit as a composition.
[Illustration: TITLE OF OVIEDO, 1526, REDUCED.]
In the estimates commonly made of Oviedo there is allowed him but scant
scholarship, little power of discrimination,—as shown in his giving at
times as much weight to hearsay evidence as to established testimony,—a
curious and shrewd insight, which sometimes, with his industry, leads
him to a better balance of authorities than might be expected from
his deficient judgment. His resources of material were uncommon; but
his use of them is generally tedious, with a tendency to wander from
his theme. Ternaux sees in him the prejudices of his times,—and these
were not certainly very friendly to the natives. Las Casas could no
more endure him than he could bear with the average _conquistador_.
The bishop charges the historian with constantly bearing false witness
against the Indians, and with lying on every page. Oviedo died at
Valladolid in 1557. (Cf. Prescott’s _Mexico_, ii. 283; Irving’s
_Columbus_, App. xxviii.; H. H. Bancroft, _Chroniclers_, p. 20, and
_Central America_, i. 309, 463-467.)
[Illustration: ARMS OF OVIEDO.
Reduced from the cut at the end of the edition of Oviedo, 1535.]
The bibliography of Oviedo deserves to be traced. His initial
publication, _De la natural hystoria de las Indias_, was printed
at Toledo in 1526,—not in 1525, as the Real Academia says in their
reprint, nor 1528, as Ticknor gives it. It is often cited as Oviedo’s
_Sumario_, since that is the first word of the secondary title.
(Cf. Sabin, _Dictionary_, vol. xiv. no. 57,987; Harrisse, _Notes on
Columbus_, p. 12; and _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, no. 139; Ternaux, no. 35;
Rich, 1832, no. 6, £12 12_s._; Carter-Brown, i. 89.) There are also
copies in the Library of Congress and Harvard College. The Spanish
text is included in Barcia’s _Historiadores primitivos_ and in Vedia’s
_Hist. prim. de Indias_, 1858, vol. i. It is in large part translated
into English in Eden’s _Decades of the New World_, 1555 (chap. 18), and
this version is condensed in Purchas’s _Pilgrimes_, iv. 5. There is an
Italian version in Ramusio’s _Viaggi_, iii. 44.
The publication of Oviedo’s great work, which is quite different from
the 1526 book, was begun at Seville, in 1535, under the title of
_Historia general de las Indias_. In this he gave the first nineteen
books, and ten chapters of book 20. At the end is a _carta missiva_, to
which the author usually attached his own signature, and that annexed
is taken (slightly reduced) from the copy in Harvard College Library.
(Cf. Sabin, vol. xiv. no. 57,988; Harrisse, _Bibl. Am. Vet._, no. 207;
Murphy, nos. 1886-87; Carter-Brown, i. 114, with fac-simile of title.)
Ramusio translated these nineteen books. In 1547, what purports to
be a summary, but is in fact a version, of Xeres by Jacques Gohory,
appeared in Paris as _L’histoire de la terre neuve du Péru en l’Inde
occidentale_. (Cf. _Bib. Am. Vet._, no. 264; Ternaux, no. 52; Sabin,
vol. xiv. no. 57,994.)
In 1547 a new edition of the Spanish, somewhat increased, appeared at
Salamanca as _Coronica de las Indias; la hystoria general de las Indias
agora nueuamente impressa, corregida, y emendada_. Sometimes it is
found in the same cover with the _Peru_ of Xeres, and then the title
varies a little. The book is rare and costly. Rich, in 1832 (no. 17),
priced it at £10 10_s._; it has been sold recently at the Sunderland
sale for £61, and in the library of an old admiral (1883, no. 340)
for £40; Quaritch has priced it at £63, and Maisonneuve (Leclerc, no.
432), at 1,000 francs. There is a copy in Harvard College Library. (Cf.
Sabin, vol. xiv. no. 57,989; Carter-Brown, i. 145; BIBL. AM. VET., no.
278; _Additions_, no. 163; and Murphy, no. 1885.)
[Illustration]
A full French translation of ten books, made by Jean Poleur, appeared
in Paris under the title of _Histoire naturelle et généralle des
Indes_, without the translator’s name in 1555, and with it in 1556.
(Cf. Sabin, vol. xiv. no. 57,992-93; Ternaux, no. 47; Carter-Brown,
i. 214; Beckford, iii. 342; Murphy, no. 1884; Leclerc, no. 434, 130
francs, and no. 2,888, 350 francs; Quaritch, no. 12,313, £7 10_s._)
There is a copy in Harvard College Library.
The twentieth book, _Libro xx de la segunda parte de la general
historia de las Indias_ appeared for the first time and separately at
Valladolid in 1557; the death of the author while his book was in press
prevented the continuance of its publication. (Cf. Rich, 1832, no. 34,
£6 6_s._; Sabin, vol. xiv. no. 57,991; Carter-Brown, i. 219.)
The fate of the remaining parts of the manuscript was for a while
uncertain. Rich, in 1832, said that books xxi. to xxviii., which were
in the printer’s hands at Oviedo’s death, were not recovered, while
he knew of manuscript copies of books xxix. to xlviii. in several
collections. Irving says he found a copy of the unprinted parts in
the Colombina Library at Seville. Harrisse _(Notes on Columbus_ and
_Bibl. Am. Vet._, no. 207) says the manuscript was scattered, but was
brought together again after some vicissitudes. Another statement
places it in the Casa de la Contratacion after Oviedo’s death; whence
it was transferred to the Convent of Monserrat. Meanwhile sundry
manuscript copies were taken. (Cf. _Notes on Columbus_, p. 17.) In
1775 the publication of it was ordered by Government; but it was not
till 1851-1855 that the Real Academia de la Historia at Madrid issued
the fifty books, complete in four volumes folio, under the editing of
José Amador de los Rios, who added to the publication several maps, a
bibliography, and the best Life of Oviedo yet written. (Cf. Sabin, vol.
xiv. no. 57,990; the set is worth about $20. See further, Brunet, iv.
299; Ternaux, no. 46; Panzer, vii. 124; Stevens, _Nuggets_, ii. 2,067.)
Ternaux had already, in 1840, published in French, as a _Histoire de
Nicaragua_ (in his second series, vol. iii.) thirteen chapters of book
xlii.
There was an Italian traveller in the Spanish provinces between 1541
and 1556 who, while he thought that Las Casas mistook his vocation in
attempting to administer a colony, bears evidence to the atrocities
which Las Casas so persistently magnified. This wanderer was a
Milanese, Girolamo Benzoni, who at the early age of twenty-two had
started on his American travels. He did not altogether succeed in
ingratiating himself with the Spaniards whom he encountered, and
perhaps his discontent colored somewhat his views. He was not much
of a scholar, yielded not a little to credulity, and picked up mere
gossip indeed, but of a kind which gives us much light as to the
conditions both of the Europeans and natives. (Cf. Field, _Indian
Bibliography_, no. 117; Bancroft, _Central America_, ii. 232; Admiral
Smith’s Introduction to the Hakluyt Society edition.) After his return
he prepared and published—prefixing his own likeness, as shown here
in fac-simile—the results of his observations in his _Historia del
Mondo Nuovo_, which was issued at Venice in 1565. It became a popular
book, and spread through Europe not only in the original Italian, but
in French and Latin versions. In Spanish it never became current; for
though it so greatly concerns that people, no one of them ventured to
give it the help of a translation into their vernacular; and as be had
not said much in praise of their American career, it is not altogether
strange.
The bibliography of the book merits explanation. It is treated at
length in Sabin’s _Dictionary_, vol. ii. no. 4,791, and in the _Studi
biog. e bibliog. della Società Geografica Italiana_, i. 293 (1882).
The original Italian edition, _La Historia del Mondo Nuovo, laqual
tratta dell’ Isole & Mari nuovamente ritrovati, & delle nuove Citta
da lui proprio vedute, per acqua & per terra in quattordeci anni_,
was published at Venice in 1565. There are copies in Harvard College,
Cornell University, and the Carter-Brown libraries. Cf. Rich (1832),
no. 43—£1 1_s._ 0_d._; Leclerc (1878), no. 59—120 francs; A. R. Smith
(1874), £2 2_s._ 0_d._; Brinley, no. 10; Carter-Brown, i. 253; Huth, i.
132; Field, _Indian Bibliography_, no. 117; Sparks, no. 240; Stevens
(1870), no. 171. A second Italian edition—_Nuovamente ristampata... con
la giunta d’alcune cose notabile dell’Isole di Canaria_—was issued at
Venice in 1572. Cf. Rich (1832), no. 49, £1 1_s._ 0_d._; Carter-Brown,
i. 289; Stevens, no. 172; Muller (1877), no. 285; Sunderland, no.
1,213; H. C. Murphy, no. 2,838; Huth, i. 132; J. J. Cooke, nos. 219,
220.
The first Latin edition _Novæ Novi Orbis Historiæ_, translated by Urban
Chauveton (who added an account of the French expedition to Florida),
was published at Geneva in 1578; followed by a second in 1581; a
third in 1586, with Lery’s book on Brazil added; others in 1590 (no
place); 1598 and 1600 (Geneva); (Coloniæ Allobrogum), 1612, with three
other tracts; and at Hamburg in 1648. Besides these the Latin version
appeared in De Bry, parts iv., v., and vi., printed at Frankfort in
1592, 1593, 1594, 1595, and at Oppenheim in 1617. Cf. Carter-Brown, i.
318, 338, 365; ii. 123, 629; Stevens, _Nuggets_, 2,300; _Bibl. Hist._,
no. 173-174; Muller (1872), nos. 78, 79; (1877), 287; Sunderland, no.
1,214; Cooke, nos. 218, 222; Pinart, no. 97; Huth, i. 132; Field, p.
119. There are copies of the 1578 edition in the Boston Public and
Harvard College libraries.
The French editions were issued at Geneva in 1579 and 1589. The notes
are different from those of the Latin editions; and there are no notes
to book iii., as in the Latin. Cf. Carter-Brown, i. 326; Cooke, no.
221; Court, no. 32.
There are two German versions. The first was by Nicholas Höniger, and
was printed at Basle, in 1579, as _Der Newenn Weldt_. It was reissued,
with tracts of Peter Martyr and others, in 1582. The version of Abel
Scherdigers was issued at Helmstadt in 1590, 1591, again at Frankfort
in 1595, and at Wittenberg in 1606. There were in addition some
later imprints, besides those included in De Bry and in Saeghman’s
_Voyagien_. Cf. Rich, no. 61; Carter-Brown, i. 344, 388, ii. 44, 917;
Muller (1872), nos. 80, 1880, (1877), 286.
The first Dutch edition appeared at Haarlem in 1610; there was an
abridged issue at Amsterdam in 1663. Cf. Tiele, nos. 276, 277; Muller
(1872), nos. 81, 82; Carter-Brown, ii. 97.
Purchas gave an abstract in English; but there was no complete English
version till Admiral Smith’s was published by the Hakluyt Society in
1857. This has fac-similes of the cuts of the 1572 edition; and De Bry
also followed the early cuts.
[Illustration]
In 1542 and 1543 Las Casas largely influenced the royal decrees
relating to the treatment of the Indians, which were signed by the
monarch, Nov. 20, 1542, and June 4, 1543, and printed at Alcala in
1543 as _Leyes y Ordenanças_. This book stands as the earliest printed
ordinances for the New World, and is rare. Rich in 1832 (no. 13)
priced it at £21. (Cf. _Bib. Am. Vet._, no. 247; Carter-Brown, vol. i.
no. 130; Sabin, vol. x. p. 320.) There were later editions at Madrid
in 1585,[1055] and at Valladolid in 1603. Henry Stevens, in 1878,
issued a fac-simile edition made by Harris after a vellum copy in the
Grenville Collection, accompanied by a translation, with an historical
and bibliographical introduction.
The earliest compilation of general laws for the Indies, entitled
_Provisiones, cedulas, instrucciones de su Magestad_, was printed
in Mexico in 1563. This is also very rare; Rich priced it in 1832
at £16 16_s._ It was the work of Vasco de Puga, and Helps calls it
“the earliest summary of Spanish colonial law.” The Carter-Brown copy
(_Catalogue_, i. 242) was sent to England for Mr. Helps’s use, there
being no copy in that country, so far as known.
The next collection was _Provisiones, cédulas_, etc., arranged by
Diego de Encinas, and was printed at Madrid in 1596. The work early
became scarce, and Rich priced it at £5 5_s._ in 1832 (no. 81). It is
in Harvard College and the Carter-Brown Library (_Catalogue_, vol. i.
no. 502). The bibliography of the general laws, particularly of later
collections, is sketched in Bancroft’s _Central America_, i. 285, and
_Mexico_, iii. 550; and in chap. xxvii. of this same volume the reader
will find an examination of the administration and judicial system
of the Spaniards in the New World;[1056] and he must go chiefly to
Bancroft (_Central America_, i. 255, 257, 261, 285; _Mexico_, ii. 130,
516, 563, etc.) and Helps (_Spanish Conquest and Life of Las Casas_)
for aid in tracing the sources of the subject of the legal protection
sought to be afforded to the natives, and the attempted regulation of
the slavery which they endured. Helps carefully defines the meaning and
working of the _encomienda_ system, which gave in effect a property
value to the subjection of the natives to the Conquerors. Cf. _Spanish
Conquest_ (Am. ed.), iii. 113, 128, 157, 212.