DISAPPOINTMENTS
"The best laid plans o' mice and men gang aft agley." So it was in this
case.
When the Jeronimite fathers arrived in Hispaniola they failed to do what
was expected of them. They did _something_, it is true; for they took
from those officers of the court, who were not living in the Indies, all
their Indian slaves and tried to give them to others who would treat
them kindly; but they did not set them free, neither did they bring the
judges to trial for their evil deeds.
The clerico was of course very indignant with them, and we may be sure
that he never gave them any peace, so that they must have learned to
dread the very sight of him. He preached constantly, in the pulpit and
on the streets, wherever he went, that the Indians must be free; and
when Zuaco came, the two brought charges against the judges, causing
them to be tried; but we do not know whether or not they were punished.
Probably not.
We must not be too hard upon the monks, however. It was no easy task
they had been asked to perform. What Las Casas wanted them to do, and
what the law required also, was to take away all the Indians from the
Spaniards and set them free. This meant to ruin the owners, since all
they had came through the forced labor of the natives. The monks were
not men of the determined character necessary for such an act, nor were
they endowed with the courage to face the storm it would have brought
about their ears. Few men are like the clerico, who was afraid of
nobody.
Just after Las Casas reached the Indies a man named Juan Bono, a
shipmaster, arrived there with a shipload of Indians, whom he had
kidnaped in the island of Trinidad. He himself told the clerico how it
was done.
He had gone to the island with sixty men and told the Indians that they
had come to live with them. The Indians received them kindly, brought
them food, and, as Bono said himself, treated them like brothers. Bono
told them that the white men would like a large house to live in, and
the Indians at once went to work to build it for them. When it was
nearly done, Bono invited all the natives to come and see it.
Some four hundred of them came, all unarmed and quite unsuspecting and
happy. When all were gathered in the house, the Spaniards surrounded it,
and Bono told the Indians that they must give themselves up or they
would be killed. Some of them tried to run away, some to resist, and in
a few minutes the swords of the Spaniards had filled the place with the
dead and dying. One hundred and eighty of them were put in chains and
taken to the ship. About a hundred shut themselves up in another house
and tried to defend themselves there, but the Spaniards set fire to it
and the natives were all burned alive.
This was the return Bono and his men made to the innocent, gentle
Indians, who had been so kind to them. No wonder the heart of the
clerico was on fire with indignation when he heard the story. He went at
once to the three fathers and told them the dreadful tale. They
listened, but did nothing,--as usual. Not one of the one hundred and
eighty kidnaped Indians was set free, and neither Bono nor any of the
judges who had sent him was punished.
One day a priest came to the Protector of the Indians to tell him how
the native laborers in the mines near San Domingo were abused. He said
he had seen them lying in the fields, sick from overwork, covered with
flies, and nobody cared enough to give them food or drink; but their
owners allowed them to lie there and die in this way. Las Casas took him
by the hand and led him to the fathers, to whom he repeated this story;
but they only tried to excuse the cruelty of the mine owners.
The heart of the clerico burned within him as he saw so much suffering
and misery about him and could not get the three commissioners to put a
stop to it. Something, he felt, must be done. The fathers had now been
in the islands six months and things were no better than they had been
before their coming; so he resolved to go again to Spain and seek a
remedy for this state of things. When the fathers heard what he intended
to do they were much alarmed, but as they could not stop him, they sent
one of their number to Spain also, to speak on their behalf.
For some time there had been on the island of Hispaniola a number of
Franciscans,--or "Gray Friars," as they were sometimes called because of
the color of their robes, just as the Dominicans were called "Black
Friars," because they wore black and white. Both orders were sworn to
poverty, and both did splendid missionary work in their day. The
Franciscans had not always been in sympathy with Las Casas, but seem now
to have been as anxious as he to have something done to set matters
right. Some of them were well known to the Grand Chancellor, and they
gave the clerico letters to that official, who was at once interested;
and as Las Casas came to see more of him, the two became great friends.
The Chancellor spoke to the King about the matter, and the King
commanded that he and Las Casas should consult together and find a
remedy for the evils of the Indies.
The plan that they proposed was this:
That colonists should be sent out at the expense of the King and be
cared for until they should be able to manage for themselves, when they
should begin to pay tribute to the crown. In order to supply laborers,
Las Casas suggested that each Spaniard should have permission to import
twelve negro slaves. This he did because the Indians died by hundreds
from the hard labor in the mines, while he had observed that the negroes
endured it much better. Afterward Las Casas confessed with sorrow that
he had done wrong in this, as it was no more right to hold the negroes
in slavery than to so treat the Indians.
The Bishop of Burgos, who was, you will remember, always bent on
opposing the clerico in everything he undertook, laughed at this plan.
He said he had been trying for years to get men to go out to the Indies
and could not find twenty that were willing to venture. However, Las
Casas was not stopped by this, and set to work at once to see what he
could do. A man named Berrio was appointed to go with him and assist
him; but this Berrio turned out to be anything but a help, refusing to
obey the clerico's orders, and finally leaving him, without permission.
Berrio got together about two hundred vagabonds, not at all the right
sort of people for colonists, and sent them to Seville, to be shipped
to the Indies. Las Casas was not informed of the matter, and as no one
had any instructions with regard to these colonists, they were sent out
with no supplies for their necessities. When Las Casas heard of it, he
insisted upon having provisions sent after them; but it was too late to
benefit many of them, for numbers had died of the hardships suffered,
and those who lived and stayed in the Indies proved a very bad addition
to the white population.
Meanwhile, the Grand Chancellor had died, and Bishop Fonseca was again
at the head of Indian affairs, much to the clerico's grief. Fonseca
refused to do anything at all for the colonists, and as Las Casas would
not allow them to go under such conditions of neglect, the plan fell
through. But no sooner was he defeated in one scheme than he immediately
began to devise another. There was no such thing as discouraging Las
Casas.