THREATENED DESTRUCTION OF THE INDIES.
1526-1543.
DECREASE OF INDIAN POPULATION AT THE ISTHMUS—AND IN
HONDURAS—TREATMENT OF SPANISH ALLIES IN GUATEMALA—TORTURE AND
BUTCHERY OF HOSTILE NATIVES—TERROR INSPIRED BY ALVARADO—EARLY
LEGISLATION—ITS NON-OBSERVANCE—THE NEW LAWS—THE AUDIENCIA OF
PANAMÁ ABOLISHED—THE AUDIENCIAS OF LOS REYES AND LOS CONFINES
ESTABLISHED—DISGUST CAUSED BY THE NEW CODE—THE FIRST VICEROY
OF PERU ARRIVES AT THE ISTHMUS—HE TAKES CHARGE OF TREASURE
ACQUIRED BY SLAVE LABOR—AND LIBERATES A NUMBER OF INDIANS.
[Sidenote: THE VEXED INDIAN QUESTION.]
The old Milanese chronicler, Girolamo Benzoni, mentions that during
a journey from Acla[XIV‑1] to Nombre de Dios about the year 1541, his
party entered some Indian huts to obtain a supply of provisions. The
inmates thinking they were about to be enslaved attacked them savagely
with hands and teeth, tearing their clothes, spitting in their faces,
uttering doleful cries, and exclaiming guacci! guacci! which Benzoni
translates as "the name of a quadruped that prowls by night in search
of prey."[XIV‑2] Being at length pacified by signs they brought forth
food, and one of them consenting to act as guide informed the travellers
that there were no other Indian habitations on their line of route, for
the Spaniards had either killed or made slaves of the entire population.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: SLAVERY AND DEATH.]
In Honduras slaves were still kidnapped, and sold by ship-loads among
the islands or in Nicaragua, so that in the vicinity of Trujillo, where
formerly were native towns with from six hundred to three thousand
houses, there were in 1547 not more than a hundred and eighty Indians
left, the remainder having fled to the mountains to avoid capture. At
Naco, which a few years before contained a population of ten thousand
souls, there were, in 1536, only forty-five remaining. At a coast town
named La Haga, nine leagues from Trujillo, and containing nine hundred
houses, there was but one inhabitant left, all having been sold into
bondage save the young daughter of the cacique, who had contrived to
elude the slave-hunters.[XIV‑3]
Cruel as was the treatment of the natives in every part of the Spanish
provinces, nowhere was oppression carried to such an extreme as in
Guatemala. Here little distinction was made between the allies and
the conquered races; even the faithful Tlascaltecs, who, after the
conquest, had settled with the Mexican and Cholultec auxiliaries at
Almolonga, being enslaved, overworked, and otherwise maltreated, until
in 1547 there were barely a hundred survivors.[XIV‑4] The natives of
Atitlan, who had never swerved in their allegiance to the Spaniards,
were treated with equal severity. After sharing the hardships of their
military campaigns, they were compelled to supply every year four or
five hundred male and female slaves and every fifteen days a number
of tributary laborers, many of whom perished from excessive toil and
privation. They were required to furnish, besides, a large quantity
of cloth, cacao,[XIV‑5] honey, and poultry; and so grievous were the
burdens laid upon them that even the caciques were impoverished, and
their wives compelled to serve as beasts of burden and tillers of the
soil.
If such was the treatment to which the most faithful allies of the
Spaniards were subjected, what fell cruelties may we not expect to
find inflicted on those who, undeterred by defeat, rose again and
again upon their oppressors? No words can depict the miseries of these
hapless races. Wholesale slaughter, hanging, and burning, torturing,
mutilating, and branding, followed the suppression of a revolt.
Starvation, exhaustion, blows, fainting under intolerable burdens,
groans of despair, and untimely death, were their lot in time of peace.
During Alvarado's time the waste of life was wanton and most sickening.
In the field starving auxiliaries were fed on human flesh, captives
being butchered for food; children were killed and roasted; nay, even
where there was no want of provisions, men were slain merely for the
feet and hands, which were esteemed delicacies by the anthropophagous
races. Nor were the marital relations of the natives any more considered
than if they had been by nature the brutes which the Spaniards made
of them in practice. Households were rendered desolate, wives being
torn from husbands and daughters from parents, to be distributed
among the soldiers and seamen, while the children were sent to work at
the gold-washings, and there perished by thousands. Thus the work of
depopulation progressed, and it is asserted by Las Casas that during
the first fifteen or sixteen years of the conquest the destruction
of Indians in Guatemala alone amounted to four or five million
souls.[XIV‑6]
None of the conquerors of the New World, not even Pedrarias Dávila,
were held in such dread as Pedro de Alvarado. When the news of his
landing at Puerto de Caballos was noised abroad the natives abandoned
their dwellings and fled to the forests. In a few days towns, villages,
and farms were deserted, and it seemed as if the whole province of
Guatemala had been depopulated by enchantment.[XIV‑7] The plantations
were destroyed by cattle; the cattle were torn by wild beasts; and the
sheep and lambs served as food for the blood-hounds, which had been
trained to regard the Indians as their natural prey, but now found none
to devour.
[Sidenote: LAWS OF LITTLE AVAIL.]
As early as 1525 intelligence of the terrible rapidity with which
depopulation was progressing reached the emperor, and on the 17th of
November he issued a cédula for the protection of the fast decreasing
races.[XIV‑8] In 1519 he ordered the council of the Indies to draw
up regulations for the government of the provinces, and that body
issued a decree regarding the treatment of natives, which, although
the protection of the interests of the throne may be a somewhat
prominent consideration, exhibits sympathy and enjoins moderation
toward the oppressed races.[XIV‑9] Other cédulas were issued at brief
intervals,[XIV‑10] but that all were inoperative is shown from many
incidents which have already been related.
Distant legislation was of no avail. The branding-iron still seared
the captive's flesh, the pine-torch was still applied to the rich
victim's feet, and the lash still fell on the toiler's uncovered back.
The encomenderos, bent only on amassing wealth, worked their Indians
until they were on the verge of death, and then cast them forth from
their houses or left them where they fell dead in the streets, as
food for prowling dogs and carrion birds, until the odor of corruption
infected the settlements.[XIV‑11] Nor did the homes of the living escape
destruction or their property violent seizure. Their dwellings were
pulled down to supply building materials, and the produce and wares
which they brought each day to exchange in their market at Santiago were
taken from them by the servants of the Spaniards, or by soldiers, who
repaid them only with blows or stabs.[XIV‑12]
Thus notwithstanding the ordinances enacted by the emperor for the
protection of the natives, and in the face of a papal bull issued in
1531 by his holiness Paul III.,[XIV‑13] restoring to the Indians their
liberty throughout the provinces, their numbers rapidly decreased and
the condition of the survivors grew worse as fresh taskmasters arrived
in the New World. Few even of the poorer and none of the wealthier class
of Spaniards expected to find there an abiding-place. Spain's boldest
and most reckless left her shores and voyaged westward with the placid
satisfaction of ruffians released from law's control, and now free from
the check of an effectual executive power regarded themselves as masters
of the position.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: BARTOLOMÉ DE LAS CASAS.]
In 1542 Bartolomé de Las Casas placed in the hands of the emperor the
manuscript of his well known work on the destruction of the Indies, and
through the exertions mainly of that never-tiring missionary a royal
junta composed of ecclesiastics and jurists was held during the previous
year at Valladolid for the purpose of drawing up regulations for the
better government of the provinces. The great apostle of the Indies
pleaded his favorite cause with all the fire of his eloquence, urging
that the natives of the New World were by the law of nature free, and
giving utterance to the now somewhat trite maxim "God does not allow
evil that good may come."
It is somewhat singular, to say the least, to hear such doctrine from
the lips of a Dominican,[XIV‑14] while yet the dark looming cloud of the
inquisition cast, as from the wings of a fallen angel, the dun spectre
of its huge eclipse athwart the hemispheres.
[Sidenote: THE NEW LAWS.]
The ordinances framed by the junta received the emperor's approval,
and after being somewhat amplified were published in Madrid in 1543,
and thenceforth known as the New Laws.[XIV‑15] The code contains a
large number of articles, many of them relating almost exclusively to
the enslavement and treatment of the natives. It was provided that all
Indian slaves should be set free, unless their owners could establish
a legal title to their possession.[XIV‑16] None were thenceforth to be
enslaved under any pretext.
Proprietors to whom the repartimientos had given an excessive number
must surrender a portion of them to the crown. On the death of
encomenderos[XIV‑17] the slaves were to revert to the crown. All
ecclesiastics and religious societies and all officers under the crown
must deliver up their bondsmen or bondswomen, not being allowed to
retain them even though resigning office. Inspectors were appointed
to watch over the interests of the natives, and were paid out of the
fines levied on transgressors. Slaves were not to be employed in the
pearl-fisheries against their will under penalty of death to the party
so employing them, nor when used as pack-animals was such a load to be
laid on their backs as might endanger their lives. Finally they were to
be converted to the Catholic faith, and it was ordered that two priests
should accompany all exploring parties, to instruct the Americans that
his Majesty the emperor regarded them as his free subjects, and that his
holiness the pope desired to bring them to a true knowledge of him the
spread of whose doctrines had in less than half a century been attended
with the depopulation of the fairest portions of the New World.
* * * * *
Among the provisions of the new code were others almost as distasteful
to many of the Spaniards as were those relating to the enfranchisement
of the natives. The audiencia of Panamá was abolished and two new
tribunals were to be established, one at Los Reyes, which now first
began to bear the name of Lima, and was thenceforth the metropolis
of the South American continent; the other termed the audiencia de
los Confines, at Comayagua, with jurisdiction over Chiapas, Yucatan,
Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and the province of Tierra Firme, known
as Castilla del Oro. From the decision of these tribunals and from
those of the audiencias of Mexico and Santo Domingo, there was to be in
criminal cases no appeal. In civil suits the losing party might demand a
second trial, the benefit of which is not apparent, as no new evidence
was admitted, and the case was conducted by the oidores who rendered
the first judgment. If the amount exceeded ten thousand pesos de oro,
there lay right of appeal to the council of the Indies. Moreover, the
oidores[XIV‑18] were empowered to inquire into the administration of the
governor and other civil functionaries, and to suspend them from office,
their report being sent to the council of the Indies for final action.
Such were the main features of the new code which sought to strike
the fetters from a nation which was fast disappearing from the family
of man. Tidings of this remarkable piece of legislation soon spread
throughout the New World, and from Mexico to Los Reyes the entire
population was in a state of ferment bordering revolution. To deprive
the settlers of their slaves was to reduce them to beggary. Slaves
constituted the chief source of wealth throughout the provinces. Without
them the mines could not be worked, towns could not be built, lands
could not be tilled. The soldier urged his right of conquest, and many
a scarred veteran, worn with toil and hardship, threatened to defend
by the sword which had helped to win an empire for his sovereign the
estates now threatened by these vexatious regulations.
[Sidenote: VASCO NUÑEZ VELA.]
The colonists were soon to learn that the new laws were not to remain a
dead letter as had been the case with the royal ordinances. In January
1544 Vasco Nuñez Vela, the first viceroy of Peru, arrived at Nombre
de Dios, and finding there some Spaniards returning to their native
country with stores of wealth acquired by the sale of their Peruvian
slaves, ordered them to deliver up their treasure,[XIV‑19] and but for
some doubt as to the legality of such a proceeding would certainly have
confiscated it.
After crossing the Isthmus the viceroy liberated and sent back from
Panamá at the expense of their proprietors, several hundred Indians who
had been brought from Peru or were unjustly held in bondage. Bitter were
the remonstrances against these high-handed measures, but Vela merely
answered, "I come not to discuss the laws but to execute them." The
condition of the natives was not improved, however, by their liberation,
for we learn that numbers died on board ship from starvation and
ill-usage, while others, cast ashore unarmed on a desolate coast, fell
a prey to wild beasts or otherwise perished miserably.
A committee of the most noble and influential of the Spaniards waited
on the new viceroy to gain from him, if possible, some concessions. They
urged that, inasmuch as the Indians had been converted to Christianity,
it would be a great loss to the church to enfranchise them, and that
if enfranchised they would always be in danger of perishing from
starvation. They dared not return to their own tribes, for the caciques
inflicted the penalty of death on all who had become Christians. These
arguments served but to rouse the wrath of the viceroy, who dismissed
the deputation saying, "Were you under my jurisdiction I would hang you
every one." Thenceforth none dared oppose him further. Even the oidores
of the newly established audiencia of Los Reyes who had accompanied him
from Spain made no protest, and on his departure for Peru remained for
some time at Panamá before they could muster courage to follow.
In Tierra Firme and in the islands of the Spanish West Indies the new
laws were partially obeyed, although complaints were still frequent
of the ill-treatment of natives, of their being punished with stripes
if they dared to complain, and of the arrival in Panamá of cargoes of
slaves from Nicaragua. The priests were earnest in their protestations,
and their reports to the emperor abounded in lofty expressions of
concern for the cause of Christ and of humanity. The ecclesiastical and
secular interests were ever at variance. Should the alcaldes render any
decision that threatened to work adversely against the authority of the
church, they were excommunicated, and thus rendered incapable, in the
eyes of the people, of discharging the functions of their office. The
governor and the bishop were continually at war, the latter cloaking
under his pretended zeal for the conversion of the Indians, and the
former under the pretext of upholding the dignity of the crown, the real
purpose for which each was too often striving—that of gathering into
his coffers the gold of his Majesty's vassals.[XIV‑20]