THE PERUVIAN INDIANS:
Their condition under Spanish colonial rule.
IN reviewing the deplorable results of Spanish domination in South
America, it may at once be conceded that the legislation which
originated from the councils of the kings of Castile was always, except
in matters connected with religion, remarkable for beneficence and
liberality in all that concerned the natives; and that, in the words
of Mr. Helps, "those humane and benevolent laws, which emanated from
time to time from the Home Government, rendered the sway of the Spanish
monarchs over the conquered nations as remarkable for mildness as any,
perhaps, that has ever been recorded in the pages of history."[160] It
may also be allowed that the Viceroys of Peru were generally earnest
and zealous statesmen, who conscientiously strove to enforce the
regulations which they from time to time received from the council of
the Indies.
But it was almost as impossible for the viceroys to exercise efficient
personal supervision over the government of so enormous a country,
while residing at Lima, as it would have been if they had remained at
the council-table in Seville; and their subordinates were, as a body,
untrustworthy, extortionate, rapacious, and often remorselessly cruel.
Thus the benign laws of the Spanish kings became a dead letter in
South America, and the natives groaned, for three centuries, under a
yoke which crashed them to the earth, and converted vast tracts of once
thickly populated country into uninhabited deserts.
Yet the humane intentions of the Spanish government, and the labours
of the Peruvian viceroys, were not wholly without results; and it is
partly due to them that a system of worse than African slavery was not
established in Peru, and that the native race has not long ago become
entirely extinct.
At the time of the Spanish conquest Pizarro was empowered, in 1529,
to grant "_encomiendas_," or estates, to his fellow-conquerors, the
inhabitants of which were bound to pay tribute to the holders of the
grants; and in 1536 these _encomiendas_ were extended to two lives.
The consequent exactions and cruelties were so intolerable that the
good Las Casas, and other friends of the Indians, at length induced
the Emperor Charles V. to enact the code so well known as the "New
Laws," in 1542; by which the _encomiendas_ were to pass immediately to
the Crown after the death of the actual holders; all officers under
government were prohibited from holding them; all men who had been
mixed up in the civil wars of the Pizarros and Almagros were to be
deprived at once; a fixed sum was to be settled as tribute to be paid
by the Indians; and all forced personal labour was absolutely forbidden.
The promulgation of these beneficent laws excited a howl of furious
execration from the conquerors,--the wolves who were thus to be dragged
away, when their fangs were actually fixed in the flesh of their
victims. Gonzalo Pizarro rose in rebellion in Peru, and defeated and
killed Blasco Nuñez de Vela, the viceroy who had arrived to enforce
these "New Laws;" while the more politic Belalcazar, at Popayan,
though professing obedience, contrived to evade the execution of his
orders, after a fashion which gave rise to the well-known saying--"_se
obedece, pero no se cumple_"--"he obeys, but does not fulfil." Their
unpopularity was so great that it was considered unsafe to persist
in the attempt to enforce them, and they were revoked in 1545. The
President Gasca re-distributed the "_encomiendas_" in 1550, and they
were granted for three lives in 1629. Gasca, who showed more regard for
his own safety and convenience than for the public service, arranged
that his settlement of the _encomiendas_ should not be promulgated
until he had sailed for Spain, and he suspended the law prohibiting the
forced personal service of the Indians. The latter enactment, however,
was boldly promulgated by the Judges of the Royal Audience in 1552, and
was, as might have been expected, immediately followed by a ferment
amongst the conquerors and a formidable rebellion. Finally the Marquis
of Cañete arrived in Peru, as viceroy, in 1554; and, by a mixture of
severity and prudent conciliation, trod out the last sparks of revolt
amongst the Spaniards.
In 1568 the viceroy Don Francisco de Toledo established the system
under which the native population of Peru was professedly ruled for
the two succeeding centuries. Toledo was a bigot, without pity, and
inexorably cruel. Justice or humanity had no weight with him if they
stood in the way of any policy which he deemed to be advisable, as
was shown in the judicial murder of the young Inca Tupac Amaru. But
he was a faithful servant of his sovereign, and resolutely determined
to enforce the edicts of the Council of the Indies; a statesman of
considerable ability and untiring industry. He was so prolific in
legislation that, on the subject of coca-cultivation alone, he issued
seventy ordinances; and future viceroys referred to his rules and
enactments as to a received and authoritative text-book. The viceroy
Marquis of Montes Claros, in 1615, declared that "all future rulers of
Peru were but disciples of Francisco de Toledo, that great master of
statesmanship."
By his _Libro de Tasas_, or Book of Rules, Toledo fixed the tribute to
be paid by the Indians, exempting all men under the age of eighteen,
or over that of fifty. The Indians were governed by native chiefs of
their own people, whose duty it was to collect the tribute, and pay it
in to the Spanish corregidor or governor of the province, as well as
to exercise subordinate magisterial functions. These chiefs, called
_Curacas_ in the time of the Incas, were ordered by Toledo to be named
_Caciques_, a word brought from the West Indian islands;[161] and under
them there were two other native officials--the _Pichca-pachacas_,
placed over 500 Indians, and the _Pachacas_ over 100. These offices
were inherited from father to son, and their possessors enjoyed several
privileges, such as the exemption from arrest, except for grave
offences, and they received a fixed salary. The native Caciques were
often men of considerable wealth; some of them were members of the
royal family of the Incas; they were free from the payment of tribute
and from personal service; and thus occupied positions of importance
amongst their countrymen.[162] They wore the same dress which
distinguished the nobles of the Inca's court, consisting of a tunic
called _uncu_, a rich mantle or cloak of black velvet called _yacolla_,
intended as mourning for the fall of their ancient rulers; and those of
the family of the Incas added a sort of coronet, whence a red fringe
of alpaca-wool descended as an emblem of nobility. This head-dress
was called _mascapaycha_. They had pictures of the Incas in their
houses, and encouraged the periodical festivals in memory of their
beloved sovereigns, when plays were enacted, and mournful music was
produced from the national instruments, drums, trumpets, clarions, and
_pututus_, or sea shells.[163] All these customs were left unchanged by
Toledo, and the system so far resembles that which now prevails in the
Dutch colony of Java.[164]
But, in addition to the tribute, the amount of which as established
by Toledo was not excessive, and which was rendered still less
objectionable to the Indians from being collected by their native
chiefs, there was the _mita_ or forced labour in mines, manufactories,
and farms,[165] which became the instrument of fearful oppression
and cruelty. Toledo enacted that a seventh part of the adult male
population of every village should be subject to the _mita_, and
ordered that the Caciques should send these _mitayos_, as they were
called, to the public squares of the nearest Spanish towns, where they
might be hired by those who required their services; and laws were
enacted to regulate the distance they might be taken from their homes,
and their payment.[166] It appears, however, that this seventh part
of the working men who were told off for forced labour was exclusive
of those employed in the mines, so that, even in theory, the _mita_
condemned a large fraction of the population to slavery.[167]
There was a class of Indians, numbering about 40,000 souls in the time
of Toledo (1570), called _Yanaconas_, who were scattered over Peru, and
forced to work on the lands of Spaniards, or as domestic servants.
They may have been descendants of captives in war, or of persons who
had been condemned to slavery in the time of the Incas, and thus
became the property of the conquerors; but in 1601 an enactment was
promulgated to ameliorate their condition, and fix the terms of their
service.[168]
In matters connected with religion the Spanish legislators allowed of
no temporizing policy. All signs of idolatry must disappear, and with
the new religion came additional exactions, in the shape of fees for
masses, burials, and christenings. Toledo enacted many laws for the
suppression of the old religion of the Incas: any Indian who married
an idolatrous woman was to receive one hundred stripes, "because that
is the punishment which they dislike most;" the people were prohibited
from using surnames taken from the names of birds, beasts, serpents,
or rivers, which was their ancient custom; and no Indian who had been
punished for idolatry, joining in infidel rites, or dancing the dance
called _arihua_, could be appointed to hold any public office.[169]
On the whole, however, the legislation of the Spanish kings, and the
reports of the viceroys of Peru, display an earnest desire to protect
the Indians from tyranny, and to render their condition tolerable.
In 1615 the Marquis of Montes Claros impressed on his successor the
importance of obliging all classes of Spaniards to treat the Indians
well, and of chastising oppression with rigour. In 1681 the Count
of Castellar states that one of the points most dwelt upon in the
instructions given to the viceroys, and in repeated royal enactments,
was the humane treatment of the Indians; and he declares that he
always sought to enforce these orders from the day that he landed in
Peru; and words to the same effect are to be found in the reports of
most of the other viceroys.[170]
But side by side with these evidences of the good intentions of the
Government, is the testimony of the viceroys that their efforts to
comply with these beneficent orders, and enforce these humane laws,
were fruitless, and rendered of no effect by the unworthiness of their
subordinates; and almost all complain of the rapid depopulation of the
country. In 1620 the Prince of Esquilache reported that "the arm of the
viceroy was not powerful against the negligence and maladministration
of the corregidors;" in 1681 the Count of Castellar said that he had
to correct and punish the excesses both of the corregidors and the
curas; in 1697 the Duke of La Palata speaks of the depopulation of the
villages and towns, caused by the forcible detention of the Indians to
work at the mines, in cloth and cotton workshops, and in farms; and
another viceroy attributes the rapid depopulation of the country to the
same causes, and also to drink, and urges a closer supervision of the
conduct of the corregidors and curas.
I have, in a former work, given a brief account of the treatment of
the Indians, and of the way in which the laws intended for their
defence were evaded; from the evidence of the brothers Ulloa, who were
commissioned to make a special and secret report on the subject to the
King of Spain in 1740.[171] I have since collected abundant testimony
to the same effect, printed and in manuscript, both at Madrid and in
Peru; but I have only space for a few brief notes, which must serve to
illustrate this part of the subject.
The mines of Potosi were supplied with labourers from the nearest
provinces, by enforcing a _mita_ of a seventh of the adult male
population. In 1573 this _mita_ consisted of 11,199 Indians, in
1620 of 4249, and in 1678 of 1674,[172] a decrease which marks the
rapid depopulation of the country; and, at the latter date, when
the authorities at Potosi failed to receive a sufficient number of
labourers by the ordinary _mita_, they kidnapped people in their homes,
and on the roads, and carried them off to forced labour in the mines.
The law was that the _mitayos_ should be paid for coming and going, and
that they should not be forced to work at night; but these laws were
habitually set at nought, and Potosi became an exhausting drain to the
surrounding country.[173]
The mines of Huancavelica, which supplied the quicksilver necessary
for extracting the silver of Potosi from its ores,[174] also desolated
the ten adjoining provinces. In 1645 the _mita_ or seventh part of the
adult male population amounted to 620, and in 1678 to only 354 Indians.
The _mita_ was a service which was abhorred and dreaded by the people,
and mothers maimed the arms and legs of their children to deliver them
from this slavery. Don Juan de Padilla relates that, in 1657, when he
was at Santa Lucia, in the province of Lucanas, he saw the women of
the village go out to assist each other in sowing their fields, and,
at the end of their labour, they returned hand in hand, singing a most
melancholy song, and lamenting the cruel fate of their husbands and
brothers, who were slaving in the mines of Huancavelica, while they
were obliged to work in the fields like men. They declared that when
a man was once taken for the _mita_ his wife seldom or never saw him
again, unless she went herself to the place of his torments.[175]
The oppression of the owners of _obrajes_ or manufactories of coarse
woollen and cotton cloths, in enforcing the _mitas_, was as crushing
as that of the miners. These people employed men, called _guatacos_,
to hunt the Indians, and drive them into the _obrajes_. If they could
not find the particular men for whom they were in search, they took
their children, wives, and nearest neighbours, robbed them of all they
possessed, and frequently violated the women and young girls.[176] The
masters, in the _obrajes_, then forced their victims to get deeply in
debt to them, and thus obtained an excuse for keeping them in perpetual
slavery. In many _obrajes_ there were Indians who had not been outside
the walls for forty years and upwards. The law was that the natives
should be free from tribute and personal service until they attained
the age of eighteen; but it was the general practice to drag children
from their homes at the ages of six or eight, force them to work hard
at twisting woollen and cotton threads, and flog them cruelly.[177]
Thus the work of depopulation went on until, in 1622, many
_encomiendas_ which originally contained a thousand adult male Indians,
and yielded eight thousand dollars of tribute, were reduced to a
hundred; yet these unfortunate survivors were forced to continue the
payment of the original tribute, or to render personal service instead.
There was an _encomienda_ in Huanuco where the Indians had paid more
than one hundred thousand dollars over and above what was legally due,
during fifty years.[178]
It may well be asked of what use were the humane and beneficent laws
enacted by the kings of Spain if this was the way in which they were
universally evaded by corregidors, curas, and Spanish settlers of all
ranks? The caciques sorrowfully watched the gradual extinction of their
people, perhaps secretly hoped for an opportunity of revenge, but were
without power to prevent the cruel oppression which they deplored,
though they did not neglect, from time to time, to protest against the
lawless exactions and cruelties of the Spaniards.[179]
But the Indians did not endure their fate without occasional attempts
at resistance. On one occasion the people on the western shore of lake
Titicaca rose against the _mita_ of Potosi, and retreated amongst
the beds of rushes on the shores of the lake, which, in some places,
are nine leagues long and one broad. In the midst of these rushes
there was an island, whence secret lanes were cut through the tangled
mass, which the fugitives navigated in their balsas. Secure in their
retreat, they continued to make inroads on the Spanish towns near the
lake, until at last, in 1632, the viceroy Count of Chinchon ordered
his nephew, Don Rodrigo de Castro, to chastise them. Five of their
leaders were captured and hung at Zepita, and their heads were stuck
on the bridge over the Desaguadero. This only exasperated the Indians,
who elected a brave and enterprising leader named Pedro Laime, and,
suddenly attacking the bridge over the Desaguadero, they carried off
the heads of their former chiefs. The Spaniards marched along the shore
and waded to some islets, while the Indians hovered round them in
their balsas, and prevented them from advancing further. At length the
Spanish troops were embarked in twenty balsas, and came in sight of the
hostile squadron commanded by Laime. The Indians went in and out of
the lanes of rushes only known to themselves, baffled their oppressors,
and cut off several of the Spanish balsas. A party of cavalry advancing
into the swampy ground was suddenly surrounded and cut to pieces, the
Indians only losing three men.[180]
Thus the fugitive Indians retained their liberty for many years in
these inaccessible fastnesses of lake Titicaca, and the Augustine friar
Calancha confesses that "the rebellion was caused by the injustice and
tyranny of the Spaniards, who forced the Indians to work without pay,
and seized on their goods."
This was not a solitary instance of rebellion, though, on the whole,
the Indians endured their cruel fate with meekness and long suffering.
Yet they are not a mean-spirited people, and at length they showed
their oppressors that it was possible to press the yoke down too hard
even for their powers of endurance.
The tribute, the _mita_, the exactions of the curas, and the
_alcabala_, or excise duties,[181] were all patiently borne;
but another method of extortion, the "_repartimiento_," or
"_reparto_,"[182] at length exhausted the patience of the over-tasked
Indians. The _reparto_ was a system, ostensibly for distributing
European goods to the Indians, which was converted into a means of
wholesale robbery by the Spanish corregidors, and finally led to a
general rebellion. An Indian chieftain thus describes the _reparto_
system:--"Abandoning their souls for their avarice, the corregidors
have the assurance to distribute (_repartir_) by force, and against
all reason, baize and cloths worth two rials for one dollar, and in
the same proportion with knives, needles, dice, pins, cards, trumpets,
rings, and pewter mirrors, which are all quite useless to the Indians;
besides velvets and silks, which the poor people cannot use; for they
are obliged to dress in the coarsest clothes, to sleep on beds of
rags, and feed on roots; while the corregidors and their dependants
commit the most unjust extortions and outrages. They even exceed the
legal quantity of _repartos_ assigned to their respective provinces;
for example, that of Tinta was ordered to be 112,500 dollars, and the
corregidor made it 500,000 dollars, as was proved by his books and
papers."[183] General del Valle, who commanded the troops employed to
put down Tupac Amaru's rebellion, complained that the avarice of the
corregidors, in recovering their claims on the Indians for _repartos_,
was such that they refused him the aid of their people in pacifying the
country. Their obstinacy and avarice, he declared, had reached to such
a point that, if they were informed that the rebels had reached the
very suburbs of their towns, they would rather see the defeat of the
king's troops than send away a single Indian who might owe them a yard
of cloth.[184]
This unblushing dishonesty and extortion, which was winked at by the
Royal Audience at Lima, the highest court of judicial appeal, drove
the Indian population to a state of desperation, which only required a
spark to set it in a blaze. The humane laws, and the elaborate system
of legislation for the Indians, had, after 200 years of hopeless
inefficiency, ended in this. The careful enactments to limit the amount
of tribute, to prevent the Indians from suffering by forced personal
service, the laws of ecclesiastical councils to protect them from the
exactions of the curas, the benevolent intentions evinced in declaring
all Indians to be minors in the eye of the law, the "_residencias_,"
or arrangements for examining the conduct of every official at the
close of his term of office; all these provisions, which have justly
called forth the praise of Mr. Helps, Mr. Merivale,[185] and other
modern writers, had become dead letters, absolutely and hopelessly,
towards the end of the last century. The laws remained the same,
but they were habitually set aside by those whose duty it was to
administer them. The tribute fixed for villages when they contained a
thousand men was continued the same when the population had decreased
to a hundred;[186] the _mita_ was enforced so mercilessly that whole
districts were left without a single adult male inhabitant;[187] the
curas extorted exorbitant fees from their victims, in spite of the
law;[188] and the judges, who were sent to take the "_residencias_,"
received bribes to overlook all offences, and usually handed over the
complaints which were submitted to them to the officials who were
complained of in exchange for a sum of money, the price of their
silence.[189] These evils were long borne patiently; but when the
shameless enormities of the _Repartos_ were superadded, the poor
remnant of the descendants of the subjects of the Incas at length rose
as one man against their oppressors.
There were not wanting, amongst the Spaniards in Peru, as well as
amongst the native Caciques, many good and humane men who raised their
voices against the lawless cruelty of the majority of the officials,
and earnestly warned the Government of the inevitable consequences.
Don Ventura Santalices, the Governor of La Paz, devoted his time and
fortune to the cause of the oppressed Indians, and was appointed to
a seat in the Council of the Indies, but he was poisoned on his
arrival in Spain: the energetic remonstrances of Blas Tupac Amaru, a
descendant of the Incas, caused him also to be summoned to Spain, where
he obtained promises of many concessions, but he was assassinated at
sea, during the return voyage: and the names of other bold and fearless
defenders of the Indians deserve to be recorded, such as Don Manuel
Arroyo, Don Ignacio Castro, Don Agustin de Gurruchategui, Bishop of
Cuzco, and Don Francisco Campos, Bishop of La Paz.
But their remonstrances bore no fruit, and, in 1780, the Corregidor of
Chayanta having exacted three _repartos_ in one year, an Indian chief,
named Tomas Catari, set the example of revolt; thousands flocked to
his standard, and to those of his brothers Damaso and Nicolas; in a
few months the whole of Upper Peru (the modern Bolivia) was in revolt,
and an army of Indians under Julian Apasa, a baker of Hayohayo near
Sicasica, besieged La Paz.[190] At the same time there was an uneasy
feeling at Cuzco and throughout Peru, and whispers of a conspiracy
amongst the Indians. Don Pedro Sahuaraura, the Cacique of Oropesa, near
Cuzco, reported that one Ildefonso del Castillo had solicited him to
join the conspiracy; suspicion was thrown on several other influential
Indians; and in June 1780 this Castillo, Bernardo Tambohuacto, the
Cacique of Pissac, and six others, were put to death at Cuzco.[191] In
the following November the Cacique José Gabriel Condorcanqui, better
known as Tupac Amaru, raised the standard of revolt, and the last
desperate struggle for liberty was commenced by the descendant of the
Incas.[192]
"It would be difficult," says Dean Funes, "to find in the history of
revolutions one more justifiable and less fortunate than that of
Tupac Amaru. America had, in those days, become the theatre of the
most wide-spread tyranny; but the Indians of Peru were those on whose
necks the yoke weighed heaviest. _Mitas_ and _repartos_ were, in Peru,
the deadly plagues of Spanish invention, which devoured the human
race."[193]
I am enabled to give a more correct and circumstantial account of the
great rising of the Peruvian Indians in the end of the last century
than has yet appeared in Europe; although, as this interesting subject
is a digression from the main purpose of the present work, I shall be
obliged to compress my narrative within the narrow limits of one or
two chapters.[194] In this brief sketch of the state of the Peruvian
Indians under Spanish rule, I have endeavoured to establish the fact
that Tupac Amaru's rebellion was justified because the oppression
of his people had become intolerable, and because all law was set
at defiance by the Spanish officials. He protested, not against the
tyranny of the laws, but against the infringement of laws, and the
oppressive acts done in spite of the laws, by those whose duty it was
to administer them.
In writing on this subject one is apt to be carried away by indignation
against the Spanish rulers in South America; yet, if we look round at
the systems of colonization pursued by other European nations, it will
be found difficult to say who has a right to cast the first stone.
The Spanish colonies, however, cannot properly be compared with those
modern English settlements, to which thousands of the labouring classes
have emigrated, and either annihilated the natives, or fenced them off
by a system of reserves and isolation. No European labouring class was
introduced into South America; the Indians still continued to be the
cultivators, the shepherds, and the artizans; and the Spaniards were
merely the dominant race. This state of things is more allied to the
conditions which now exist in British India or Dutch Java, and there is
thus no analogy between the South American settlements and any British
colony in the proper acceptation of the word.
Yet to Spain the credit is due, in spite of numerous shortcomings,
and notwithstanding the oppression of her subordinates, of having
endeavoured to establish the wisest, the most humane, and the only
successful system of treating natives of an inferior race. It is
certain that such a race must either continue to form the mass of the
population, amalgamate with their conquerors, or be annihilated. The
two former of these three alternatives were adopted in Peru, partly
from natural causes, but partly also owing to the incessant exertions
of the earlier Spanish viceroys, and of the "Defenders of the Indians;"
and this result was achieved in spite of the oppression and cruelty of
their subordinates. The Indians have continued to form the labouring
class of Peru; amalgamation has taken place, to a very large extent,
with Europeans; and the native race has thus been preserved from
extinction.[195] In the English colonies, on the other hand, owing
to the influx of settlers of the labouring class, the aborigines
have either been exterminated, or, through a system of isolation,
are rapidly and inevitably advancing on the melancholy road to final
annihilation.
But it was the intention of the Spanish system to do more for the
aboriginal race than merely to preserve it from extinction. By
adopting a system of tutelage, as regarded the Indians, the Spanish
Government endeavoured to defend them, in legal matters, from the
superior intelligence of a more civilized race; and Mr. Helps points
out that it is hardly possible to carry legislation further, in favour
of any people, than by considering them as minors in the eye of the
law, in order to protect them from being imposed upon in their dealings
with their conquerors.[196] The opposite plan, which has been adopted
in some of the English colonies, of making native tribes equal to
Europeans in the eye of the law, is a mere mockery, and cannot by any
possibility exist in reality.[197]
It may then be readily allowed that the intentions of the Spanish
Government towards the Indians were humane and just; that their
legislation was invariably marked by tenderness and concern for the
subject race; and that their policy, had it been carried into effect,
was far more wise and generous than that by which modern nations
have generally been influenced in dealing with the aborigines of
their colonies. But I think I have clearly shown that, through the
unworthiness of their subordinates, this policy was only very partially
enforced; that the cruelty and oppression of the colonial officials at
length became insufferable; and that no cause could be more just than
that in which Tupac Amaru, the last of the Incas, at length drew his
sword.