EMIGRANTS.
While matters were at the low ebb described in the preceding chapter, the
appearance of a new and unexpected character on the scene brought Las
Casas some welcome assistance. Although his chief support had been his
good friend, the deceased Chancellor, the other Flemings in the royal
household were, on that account first of all, interested in him and the
cause he so ardently pleaded. Amongst these unpopular foreigners was
Monsieur de la Mure, who, being attracted to Las Casas by what he heard of
him, expressed a desire to several of his friends to make the clerigo’s
acquaintance. This wish was soon gratified, and the young courtier’s
interest in all that concerned the Indians and the proposed measures for
the reform of the colonies was quickly satisfied by Las Casas, who
furnished him with a full history of the business he had in hand. The
least impressionable of men could not listen to such an advocate unmoved,
and M. de la Mure, profoundly affected by what he heard, offered to help
his new friend by every means he could command. He was an ally worth
having, for, being a nephew of Monsieur de Laxao, sommeiller du corps to
the King, he was able to introduce Las Casas to his powerful uncle, who
stood in closer relation to the monarch than any other officer of the
court, for he slept in the royal bedchamber.
Monsieur de Laxao was as quickly won over to the good cause as his nephew
had been, so Las Casas, finding himself once more with powerful
supporters, renewed his efforts to press his business to a conclusion.
Some wholesome activity was displayed in dispatching various officials to
take the residencia, of the several governors of the islands, Rodrigo de
Figueroa being sent to Hispaniola, Doctor de la Gama to Puerto Rico and
Cuba, and Lope de Sosa to Darien, where he was also to succeed the actual
Governor, Pedro Arias de Avila. The Council, acting upon reports which
described the natives of Trinidad as cannibals, ordered that war should be
made upon them, but Las Casas denied this charge, and contrived that
Figueroa should be authorised to first investigate and report on this
matter before hostilities began; Figueroa’s report was entirely favourable
to the natives, amongst whom he found no cannibalism.
As the Dominicans in Hispaniola were ignorant of the progress of events at
court and the loss sustained by Las Casas through the death of the
Chancellor, they still conceived him to enjoy great influence. The
Prior, Pedro de Cordoba, wrote him a detailed description of some recent
atrocities perpetrated by the Spaniards in Trinidad where they had gone to
fish for pearls; manifesting also dissatisfaction with the conduct of the
Jeronymites. He therefore begged Las Casas to obtain from the King a
grant for the Franciscan and Dominican monks of one hundred leagues of
coast on the mainland about Cumaná, from which laymen should be excluded;
should one hundred leagues be thought excessive, then he begged for ten,
and failing this he would accept the small islands known as the Alonso
group, which lay some fifteen leagues from the coast. His intention was
to establish a place of refuge, or sanctuary, to which the persecuted
Indians might repair, sure of finding kind treatment, and, through
instruction, be converted to Christianity. The Prior declared that unless
some one of these concessions was made, he would have to recall all the
monks of his Order from those countries, where it was idle for them to
attempt to teach Christian doctrines, as long as the Indians saw those who
called themselves Christians acting in open violation of them. The
contents of this letter vexed and alarmed Las Casas not a little, for he
feared that if the Prior were driven to make good his threat of recalling
his monks, the Indians would be abandoned, without defence, to the
cruelties of the Spaniards and would soon be exterminated. His one hope of
support in his own plans lay in the Dominicans, without whose aid his
efforts were foredoomed to failure. He spoke to the Bishop and the members
of the Council, reading them the letter and addressing earnest appeals to
them to stop the iniquities which were devastating the entire coast. He
urged, with all the arguments of which he was master, that the one hundred
leagues asked for should be conceded. The Bishop of Burgos was unmoved,
both by the Prior’s harrowing description of the outrages committed on the
Indians and by the appeal of Las Casas, and he coolly answered that the
King would be badly advised to grant a hundred leagues of land to the
friars, without some return therefor; a reply which Las Casas observes was
unworthy of a successor of the Apostles. Poor as the Bishop was in
episcopal qualities, he was even less gifted with those which make a good
minister of colonial affairs, and the results of his thirty-five years of
control of Indian affairs were as unprofitable to the Spanish Crown as
they were disastrous to the Indians.
Las Casas did not hesitate to express his opinion to the Bishop with his
customary uncompromising frankness, but with no result, save probably that
of confirming his stubborn and hostile attitude.
Perceiving that no argument which did not promise lucrative returns would
avail to secure a grant of territory, the clerigo evolved a plan that
promised to secure the ends for which he and the Dominicans were striving
and, at the same time, would assure a profitable investment for the Crown.
In spite of the Bishop’s continued opposition, Las Casas pushed forward
his plan for colonising, and though the Chancellor’s death was a great
loss to him, he nevertheless found in Cardinal Adrian of Utrecht and other
Flemings, every possible assistance. He was named royal chaplain in order
to give him additional prestige before the public, and letters were sent
throughout the kingdom to the principal civil and ecclesiastical
authorities, ordering some and inviting others to aid him by every means
in their power to collect the desired emigrants. The officials of India
House in Seville were instructed to receive and attend to those intending
to emigrate under Las Casas, when they arrived in Seville; they were
likewise directed to prepare the necessary ships to transport them to
America. It was necessary that Las Casas should be accompanied on his
recruiting tour through the country by some trustworthy man to help him in
enrolling his emigrants, and, as fate would have it, his choice fell most
unfortunately upon one Berrio, an Italian, a circumstance which Las Casas
afterwards observed was, in itself, sufficient to explain his treachery.
Berrio was to act as herald, publishing in the different cities, with
sound of trumpet, the object of Las Casas’s visit, the high powers he held
from the King, and the favourable conditions he offered. To give his
assistant more dignity in the eyes of the people Las Casas procured for
him the designation of Captain in the royal service, with a salary of four
hundred and five maravedis per day.
Berrio sold himself to the Bishop of Burgos before the recruiting
expedition even began, and his signed instructions, which he had engaged
to obey, were fraudulently altered by the latter so as to free him from
all control. Thus provided, he soon detached himself from his rightful
superior and went to Andalusia, where he assembled on his own account two
hundred men, vagabonds, loafers, and tapsters, of whom few were labourers
and none fit for colonists. These unpromising recruits were gathered in
Seville, where the officials of India House were at a loss to know what to
do with them; they finally sailed, but, as the colonial authorities had
received no notice concerning them, they landed, destitute and worthless,
in Hispaniola, where their arrival was unwelcome. Many of them died and
the others scattered in various parts. It fell to Las Casas to interest
himself in their behalf and to relieve their miseries, but the meal and
wine he obtained for them arrived in Hispaniola too late, as the intended
beneficiaries were either dead or widely dispersed.
It appears, according to Las Casas’s own account, that emigrants were
attracted to his scheme, not so much by the liberal conditions, or because
their circumstances were not prosperous, but by their desire to escape
onerous feudal conditions still prevailing in Spain. It was chiefly,
therefore, from amongst the dwellers on great estates that his emigrants
were recruited, for many such said they desired to leave their children
free in a free country under the King’s protection. The great nobles were
ill-pleased at this desertion of their feudatories, and Las Casas soon
found himself at loggerheads with the Constable of Castile, whose
villagers at Berlanga were inscribing themselves in great numbers; the
Constable ordered him to quit his estates. On an estate called Rello,
belonging to the Count of Coruna, out of thirty householders twenty-nine
put down their names as emigrants. As may be supposed the number of the
clerigo’s enemies in high quarters was increased by this state of things,
though his success in recruiting emigrants enabled him to triumph over the
Bishop, who had foretold that he would never get together the necessary
people. He was able to say on his return to Zaragoza that not only three
thousand but ten thousand people would willingly go if the Bishop would
provide the means.
Cardinal Adrian listened sympathetically to the report of what had been
done and addressed to Las Casas the observation in Latin, Vere vos
tribuitis aliud regnum regi.
The King and his Court left the kingdom of Aragon at this time to visit
the principality of Cataluña, making his formal entry into Barcelona on
the fifteenth of February, 1519. The Jeronymite fathers had arranged for
the sale of the royal haciendas in Hispaniola, and Las Casas, ever on the
alert to secure advantages for his colonists, presented a petition asking
that they should be maintained for one year at the royal expense. The
vexation of the Bishop of Burgos augmented visibly at this fresh claim for
assistance, and he roundly declared such a concession would cost the Crown
more than an armada of twenty thousand men, which provoked the pertinent
retort from Las Casas: “Does it appear to your lordship that after you
have killed off the Indians, I should now lead Christians to death? Well,
I shall not.” As the Bishop, according to Las Casas, was no fool, he hoped
that he understood this plain answer.
Without the assistance which he was convinced was indispensable to the
success of his undertaking, Las Casas refused to move, though every effort
was made to start him off; an attempt was even made to secure another
leader for the undertaking, but the news of this design was not slow in
reaching him, and he promptly published far and wide, in the district
where his recruits were waiting his orders to start, that they should on
no account accept the leadership of another, who would only conduct them
to failure and starvation in the colonies.
Events of great importance were occurring at this time which absorbed the
attention of the King and his counsellors to the exclusion of American
affairs. By the death of his grandfather, the Emperor Maximilian, the
succession was open, though both Francis I. of France and Henry VIII. of
England aspired to the imperial dignity. The royal interest therefore
centred in Germany and the coming election, and Las Casas and his Indian
schemes were put to one side.