ERSSTY OF C 
 NT OF UNIVERSITY 
 
1 
 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 DEPARTMENT OF UNIVERSITY EXTENSIO 
 
 
GIFT OF 
 - o DEFT* 
 
THE LIFE OF LAS CASAS. 
 
GEORGE BELL & SONS, 
 LONDON : YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN 
 NEW YORK: 66, FIFTH AVENUE, AND 
 BOMBAY : 53, ESPLANADE ROAD 
 CAMBRIDGE : DEIGHTON, BELL & CO. 
 
^rlt 
 
 .ll.^ ..V ^"/i^^g^F^ =:-r. : 
 
THE LIFE OF 
 
 LAS CASAS 
 
 THE APOSTLE OF THE INDIES 
 
 BY 
 
 SIR ARTHUR HELPS K.C.B. 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE SPANISH CONQUEST IN AMERICA" 
 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL" ETC. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 GEORGE BELL AND SONS 
 1896 
 
First published 1 867. 
 
 Reprinted 1868, 1874, 1882, 1889. 
 
 Included in Holm s StandarflrlA brary, 1896. 
 
 /o - 
 
PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR. 
 
 HE life of Las Casas appears to me one 
 of the most interesting, indeed I may 
 say the most interesting, of all those that 
 I ha-ve ever studied ; and I think it is more than 
 thqj natural prejudice of a writer for his hero, 
 that rnclines me to look upon him as one of the x j 
 most ^remarkable personages that has ever ap- j 
 peare^d in history* It is well known that he has 
 ever been put in the foremost rank of philan 
 thropist.^; but he had other qualifications which 
 were a lso extraordinary. He was not a mere 
 philanthropist, possessed only with one idea. He 
 had ontjj of those large minds which take an in 
 terest in everything. \iAs an historian, a man of 
 letters, jji colonist, a missionary, a theologian, an 
 active riyler in the Church, j a man of business, 
 and an jobserver of natural_history and science, 
 
 372396 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 hejiolds a very high position amongst the notable 
 men of his own age. The ways, the customs, the 
 religion, the policy, the laws, of the new people 
 whom he saw, the new animals, the new trees, 
 the new herbs, were all observed and chronicled 
 by him. y ^ 
 
 In an age eminently superstitious, he was en 
 tirely devoid of superstition. At a period when 
 the most extravagant ideas as to the divine right s 
 of kings prevailed, he took occasion to reminx( 
 kings themselves to their faces, that they are o^Jy 
 permitted to govern for the good of the people ; 
 and dared to upbraid Philip the Second for his 
 neglect of Spanish and Indian affairs, through 
 busying himself with Flemish, English^ and 
 French policy. 
 
 At a period when brute force was univ rsa lly 
 appealed to in all matters, but more espe c i a lly i n 
 those that pertained to religion, he contentieq before 
 Juntas and Royal Councils that missionary enter 
 prise is a thing that should stand independent of 
 all military support ; that a missionary si i uld go 
 forth with his life in his hand, relying on ]y on 
 the protection that God will vouchsafe him, and 
 depending neither upon civil nor military assist- 
 
PREFACE. vii 
 
 ance. In fact his works would, even in the N 
 
 present day, form the best manual extant for 
 
 * . . 
 "missionaries. 
 
 | He had certainly great advantages: he lived 
 in most stirring times; he was associated^ with 
 ihe greatest personages of his day ; and he had 
 the privilege of taking part in the discovery and 
 colonization of a new world. 
 
 Eloquent, devoted, charitable, fervent, some 
 times too fervent, yet very skilful in managing 
 me\i, he will doubtless remind the reader of his 
 prototype, Saint Paul; and it was very fitting 
 thai be should have been called, as he was, 
 
 the * f jytilt i A L tbj T n ^ paJL 
 
 Notwithstanding our experience, largely con 
 firmed by history, of the ingenuity often mani 
 fested in neglecting to confer honour upon those 
 who most deserve it, one cannot help wondering 
 that the Romish Church never thought of en 
 rolling Las Casas as a saint, amongst such fellow- 
 labourers as Saint Charles of Borromeo, or Saint 
 Francis of Assisi. 
 
 His life is very interesting, if only from this 
 circumstance, that, perhaps more than any man 
 of his time, he rose to great heights of power and 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 influence, and then, to use a phrase of his own, 
 fell sheer down ff into terrible abysses." His 
 spirit, however, almost always rose indomitable : 
 and the " abysses " did not long retain him as 
 their captive. 
 
 Among his singular advantages must be men 
 tioned his great physical powers, and tenacity of 
 life. I do not remember that he ever mentions 
 being ill. He exceeded in his journey ings &* 
 renowned master and friend, Charles the Fifth, 
 and he lived fully as laborious a life as did that 
 monarch. it 
 
 When Charles, a youth of sixteen, camtT to 
 the throne, Las Casas was a man of about forty ; 
 of great power and influence. He soon won the 
 young king s attachment ; during the whole of 
 whose active life he \vorked vigorously witli him 
 at Indian affairs; and when, broken in health 
 and in spirit, Charles retired to San Yuste, Las 
 Casas was in full vigour, and had his way with 
 Philip the Second, not, however, without the aid 
 of the Imperial recluse. For almost the last 
 business which Charles attended to was one in 
 which the dying monarch gave his warm support 
 to his friend Las Casas. 
 
PREFACE. ix 
 
 With Charles s grandfather, Ferdinand the 
 Catholic, Las Casas had also worked at Indian 
 affairs; and, with his usual sincerity, had not 
 failed to inform that king of many truths which 
 concerned his soul and the welfare of his king 
 dom. 
 
 Columbus, Cardinal Ximenes, Cortes, Pizarro, 
 Vasco Nunez, Gattinara the great Flemish states 
 man, were all known to Las Casas : in fact, he saw 
 generations of notable men statesmen, monarchs, 
 inventors, discoverers, and conquerors rise, 
 flourish, and die; and he had continually to re 
 commence his arduous conflict with new states 
 men, new conquerors, and new kings. He sur 
 vived Ferdinand fifty years, Charles the Fifth 
 eight years, Columbus sixty years, Cortes nine 
 teen years, Ximenes forty-nine years, Pizarro 
 twenty-five years, and Gattinara thirty-seven 
 years. 
 
 He was twenty-eight years old when he com 
 menced his first voyage to the Indies; and he 
 was still in full vigour, not failing in sight, hearing, 
 or intellect, when, at ninety-two years of age, 
 he contended before Philip the Second s ministers 
 in favour of the Guatemalans having Courts of 
 
x PREFACE. 
 
 Justice of their own. Having left the pleasant 
 climate of Valladolid, doubtless excited by the 
 cause he was urging, and denying himself the 
 rest he required, he was unable to bear up against 
 that treacherous air of Madrid, of which the pro 
 verb justly says, " though it will not blow out a 
 candle, it will yet kill a man," and so, was cut 
 off, prematurely, as I always feel, in the ninety- 
 second year of his age. 
 
 His powers, like those of a great statesman of our 
 own time, decidedly improved as he grew older. 
 He became, I believe, a better writer, a more 
 eloquent speaker, and a much wider and more 
 tolerant thinker towards the end of his life. His 
 best treatise* (in my judgment) was written when 
 he was ninety years of age, and is even now, when 
 its topics have been worn somewhat threadbare, 
 a most interesting work. 
 
 To show that I have not exaggerated his 
 great natural powers as well as his learning, 
 I need only refer toihis celebrated controversy 
 with Sepulveda. This Sepulveda was then the 
 greatest scholar in Spain, and was backed, more- 
 
 * On Peru. 
 
PREFACE. xi 
 
 over, by other learned men ; but Las Casas was 
 quite a match for them all. In argument he was 
 decidedly superior. Texts, quotations, conclu 
 sions of Councils, opinions of fathers and school 
 men were showered down upon him. He met 
 them all with weapons readily produced from the 
 same armouries, and showed that he too had 
 not in vain studied his Saint Thomas Aquinas and 
 his Aristotle. His great opponent, Sepulveda, 
 in a private letter describing the controversy, 
 speaks of Las Casas as " most subtle, most 
 vigilant, and most fluent, compared with whom 
 the Ulysses of Homer was inert and stuttering." 
 Las Casas, at the time of the controversy, was 
 seventy-six years of age. 
 
 The reader of this introduction will perhaps 
 think that if Las Casas is such a man as I have 
 described, and his life is of such exceeding interest, 
 it is strange that, comparatively speaking, so little 
 has been heard about him. This, however, can 
 be easily explained. His life can only be fully 
 pourtrayed after reference to books, manuscripts, 
 and official documents of the greatest rarity, not 
 within the reach even of scholars, until recent 
 years. The government of Spain has of late 
 
xii PREFACE. 
 
 years thrown open to all students, in the most 
 unreserved manner, its literary treasures, and 
 afforded every facility for their study. In mo 
 dern times, too, the Americans have taken great 
 pains to investigate the early records of America, 
 and have always been remarkably generous, in 
 the use they have allowed to be made of the 
 documents which they have rescued and brought 
 together.* 
 
 There are few men to whom, up to the present 
 time, the words which Shakespeare makes Mark 
 Antony say of Caesar, would more apply than to 
 Las Casas : 
 
 " The evil that men do lives after them, 
 The good is oft interred with their bones. 
 
 At one inauspicious moment of his life he 
 advised a course which has ever since been the 
 one blot upon his well-earned fame, and too 
 
 * A short letter of Las Casas of Las Casas who had 
 very often not a maravedi in his pocket has sometimes 
 been bought by an enterprising American at a sum 
 amounting to more than ten thousand maravedis, and the 
 purchaser was but too glad if his purchase could be of any 
 use to an historian. 
 
PREFACE. xili 
 
 often has this advice been the only thing which, 
 when the name of Las Casas has been men 
 tioned, has occurred to men s minds respecting 
 him. He certainly did advise that negroes should 
 be brought to the New World. I think, how 
 ever, I have amply shown in the " Spanish 
 Conquest" that he was not the first to give this 
 advice, and that it had long before been largely 
 acted upon. It is also to be remembered, that 
 this advice, to introduce negroes, was but a very 
 small part of his general scheme. J2ad_JJiat 
 been carried into effect as a whole, it would have 
 afforded the most efficient protection for negroes, 
 Indians, and for all those who were to be subject 
 to the Spanish Colonial Empire. 
 
 However, Las Casas makes no such defence 
 for himself, but thus frankly owns his great error, 
 saying, in his history, " This advice, that licence 
 should be given to bring negro slaves to these 
 lands, the Clerigo Casas first gave, not consi 
 dering the injustice with which the Portuguese 
 take them and make them slaves; which advice, 
 after he had apprehended the nature of the 
 thing, he would not have given for all he had 
 in the world. For he always held that they 
 
xiv PREFACE. 
 
 had been made slaves unjustly, and tyranni 
 cally ; for the same reason holds good of them 
 as of the Indians."* 
 
 This one error must not be allowed to over 
 shadow the long and noble career of one, who 
 never, as far as I am aware, on any other occa 
 sion, yielded to worldly policy; who, for nearly 
 sixty years, held fast to a grand cause, never 
 growing weary of it ; and who confronted great 
 statesmen, potent churchmen, and mighty kings, 
 with perfect fearlessness, in defence of an injured, 
 a calumniated, and down-trodden race, a race 
 totally unable to protect themselves from the 
 advance of a pseudo-civilization which destroyed 
 as much as it civilized. 
 
 October, 1867. 
 
 * It is a curious fact in history, that this suggestion of 
 Las Casas tended, as far as it was adopted, to check the 
 importation of negroes into the New World. The licence 
 to import was restricted, for a term of eight years, to the 
 number of 4000, whereas the emperor had been requested 
 to allow the importation of negroes without any restriction 
 whatever. 
 
PREFACE. xv 
 
 The greater part of the subject-matter for this 
 life is to be found in my " Spanish Conquest in 
 America," but I am indebted to my son, Edmund 
 Arthur Helps, for having utilized and added to 
 it, with my assistance, in the preparation of the 
 present biographical narrative. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 HARACTER of Las Casas His Parentage 
 and Education He joins with Narvae* 
 in an Expedition to Cuba He is sum 
 moned to Xagua . . . 
 
 Page 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Conversion of Las Casas His Voyage to Spain 
 He goes to Court The Death of King Ferdinand 
 
 17 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Las Casas sees the Cardinal Ximenes He is appointed 
 to go out and inquire into the wrongs of the Indiana, 
 with the Jeronimite Fathers, and made " Protector 
 of the Indians" He returns to Spain 37 
 
 b 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Page 
 
 Las Casas is introduced to the Grand Chancellor, and 
 lays his Emigration Scheme before the King His 
 Plans are checked by the Death of the Chancellor 
 He holds a Controversy with the Bishop of Burgos . 55 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Las Casas brings forward his Plan for founding a 
 Colony After failing in gaining his point with the 
 Council of the Indies, he goes to Court, and succeeds 
 in obtaining full power to carry out his design . 92 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Las Casas tries to detain Ocampo s Expedition Hv, 
 complains to the Audiencia He is put in command 
 of an Expedition to the Terra-firma His followers 
 desert him on his arrival there .... 129 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Las Casas alone in the land He is received into the 
 Franciscan Monastery Fate of his Colony . . 144 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Las Casas becomes a Dominican Monk He devotes 
 himself to Literature ... .161 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 xix 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Page 
 
 Las Casas in the Dominican Monastery His Studies 
 He proposes to conquer the " Land of War" with 
 the aid of his monks ..... 178 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Las Casas succeeds in converting by peaceable means 
 the " Land of War" He is sent to Spain, and 
 detained there by the Council of the Indies . . 199 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 Las Casas writes on Indian affairs He is made Bishop 
 <5f Chiapa His troubles with his flock He resigns 
 the bishopric His Controversy with Sepulveda . 232 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Las Casas appeals to Philip II. through Carranza He 
 writes a Treatise on Peru His Death Review of 
 his Life ....... . 277 
 
THE LIFE OF LAS CASAS. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Character of Las Casas His Parentage and Education 
 Rejoins with Narvaez in an Expedition to Cuba He is sum" 
 moned to Xagua. 
 
 lARTHOLOMEW de Las Casas was 
 the son of Antonio de Las Casas, one 
 of Columbus s shipmates in his first 
 voyage. Bartholomew was born at Seville in 
 1474, His father became rich, and sent him as 
 a student to Salamanca, where he remained till 
 he was eighteen, and took a licentiate s degree. 
 We then hear nothing of importance concerning 
 him till 1498, when he accompanied his father in 
 an expedition under Columbus to the West 
 Indies, returning to Cadiz with the expedition in 
 1500. 
 
 In 1502 he accompanied Nicholas de Ovando, a 
 distinguished knight of Alacantara, who was going 
 B 
 
2 CHARACTER OF LAS CASAS. 
 
 out to Hispaniola as governor of the Indies, 
 was afterwards ordained priest,* and now, at the 
 age of thirty-six, eight years after his arrival in 
 the Indies, began to make his appearance on 
 the stage of history. He was a very notable 
 person, of that force of character and general 
 ability, that he would have excelled in any 
 career. Indeed, he did fulfil three or four vo 
 cations, being an eager man of business, a la 
 borious and accurate historian, a great reformer, 
 a great philanthropist, and a vigorous ecclesiastic. 
 The utmost that friends or enemies, I imagine, 
 could with the slightest truth allege against him, 
 was an over-fervent temperament. If we had 
 to arrange the faculties of great men, we should 
 generally, according to our easy-working fancies, 
 combine two characters to make our men of. 
 And, in this case, we should not be sorry, if it 
 might have been so, to have had a little of the 
 wary nature of such a man as King Ferdinand 
 the Second intermixed with the nobler elements 
 of Las Casas. Considering, however, what great 
 things Las Casas strove after, and how much he 
 
 * He sang the first "new mass" in the Indies, from which 
 it appears that lie was the first priest ordained there. 
 
THE OCCUPATION OF CUBA. 3 
 
 accomplished, it is ungracious to dwell more than 
 is needful upon any defect or superfluity of his 
 character. If it can be proved that he was on any 
 occasion too impetuous in word or deed, it was in 
 a cause that might have driven any man charged 
 with it beyond all bounds of prudence in the ex 
 pression of his indignation. His nature had the 
 merit of being as constant as it was ardent. He 
 was eloquent, acute, truthful, bold, self-sacri 
 ficing, pious. We need not do more in praise 
 of such a character than show it in action. 
 
 In the whole course of West Indian coloniza 
 tion, a wise and humane forethought never could 
 have been more wanted than at this period. 
 Hispaniola was rapidly becoming depopulated of A critical 
 Indians, and on the mode of renewing the the* West 
 
 i i 1111 Indies. 
 
 population, we may almost say, depended the 
 future destinies of slavery. 
 
 In the year 1511 the Admiral Don Diego 
 Columbus, Ovando s successor as governor of 
 Hispaniola, undertook the subjection of Cuba. 
 He chose for his Captain, Diego Velazquez, one 
 of the original conquerors, a man of wealth, 
 whose possessions in Hispaniola were in that part 
 of the island nearest to Cuba. 
 
4 THE OCCUPATION OF CUBA. 
 
 Las rasas The earliest mention made of Las Casas in con 
 
 joins Velaz 
 quez in an nection with West Indian history, is his being 
 
 expedition 
 
 topacificate summoned by Diego Velazquez, to proceed to 
 
 Cuba. 
 
 Cuba, where he arrived at the same time as 
 Pamphilo de Narvaez, who had been selected 
 by Velazquez as his lieutenant to join with Las 
 Casas in the population and pacification for 
 such were the terms in vogue of the island of 
 Cuba. 
 
 One of the first expeditions of Narvaez was un 
 successful: it was in the province of Bayamo. 
 He himself was nearly killed, and would never 
 have escaped, but for the terror which his horse, 
 an animal not hitherto seen by these Indians, 
 inspired. These Indians, however, who had fled 
 at the approach of the Spaniards, returned to beg 
 pardon, and to be received into subjection. This 
 appears astonishing, but may be easily explained. 
 The territories into which they fled were occupied 
 by other Indians, who had food enough for them 
 selves only ; and, therefore, after a brief sojourn, 
 the unhappy fugitives, becoming most unwelcome 
 guests, were tempted to return to their own 
 country ; for the Spaniards, though terrible visit 
 ors in other respects, did not at once create a 
 
THE OCCUPATION OF CUBA. 5 
 
 famine in those parts which they occupied, by 
 reason of the comparative smallness of their num 
 bers. 
 
 By these means the province where the Spa 
 niards first landed, called Maici, and the adjacent 
 one of Bayamo, were brought into complete sub- 
 jection; and the inhabitants were then divided 
 into repartimientos* and apportioned by Velaz 
 quez amongst his followers. After this Velazquez, 
 who was about to be married, went to receive his 
 bride, leaving his nephew, Juan de Grivalva, as 
 his lieutenant (for Narvaez had not yet returned), 
 and Las Casas as an adviser to the lieutenant. 
 On the return of Narvaez, orders from Velazquez 
 reached the place where Narvaez and Las Casas 
 were stationed, directing them to make an expe- Expedition 
 
 ,. . . , n ^ /.i ofLasCasas 
 
 dition into the country of Camaguey, for the pur- and Nar- 
 
 V3.PZ 1 51 S 
 
 puse of " assuring " it, to use their phrase. The or 1514. 
 
 * A repartimiento was a deed that ran thus : " To you 
 (such a one) is given an encomienda (or commandery) of so 
 many Indians with such a Cacique, and you are to teach 
 them the things of our Holy Catholic- Faith." With respect 
 to the implied condition of teaching the Indians the " Holy 
 Catholic Faith," it was no more attended to from first to 
 last than any formal clause in a deed which is supposed by 
 the parties concerned to be a mere formality. 
 
6 THE OCCUPATION OF CUBA. 
 
 narrative of this expedition, which is given in fuU 
 detail by Las Casas, an eye-witness and principa, 
 actor in the scene he describes, is very instructive. 
 
 And here I must say for Las Casas, that I 
 have not the slightest doubt of the truth of any 
 statement which he thus vouches for. He mani 
 fests throughout his writings, in various little 
 things, his accuracy and truthfulness. For in 
 stance, he is careful to point out the exact pro 
 nunciation of the Indian names, and shows a fair 
 appreciation of those persons he is most bitterly 
 opposed to. 
 
 Before they reached the province of Camaguey 
 they came to a place called Cueyba. This was 
 the very spot where Ojeda one of the explorers 
 who followed Columbus when shipwrecked, had 
 left an image of the Virgin. Ojeda had been 
 received with great kindness by the Indians in 
 that vicinity, and the image which he left was 
 now held in the highest reverence by the natives, 
 who had built a church, adorning it inside with 
 ornamental work made of cotton, and had set up 
 an altar for the image. Moreover, they had com 
 posed couplets in honour of the Virgin, which 
 they sang to sweet melodies, and accompanied 
 
THE OCCUPATION OF CUBjL 7 
 
 with dancing. This image was also held in espe 
 cial reverence by the Spaniards, and Las Casas 
 being anxious on that account to obtain it in ex 
 change for another image which he had brought 
 with him, entered into treaty with the Cacique 
 for that purpose. The Indian chief, however, 
 was so alarmed at these overtures, that he fled by 
 night, taking the beloved image with him. Las 
 Casas, when he heard of this, was greatly discon 
 certed, fearing lest the neighbouring population 
 should take up arms on behalf of their image. 
 He managed, however, to quiet them, assuring 
 them, that he would not only let them keep their 
 own image, but that he would bestow upon them, 
 the one which he had brought with him. 
 
 Such gentle means as these were invariably 
 pursued by Las Casas with the greatest effect ; 
 and it is evident from this story how very easy 
 the conversion of the Indians would have been by 
 mild means, instead of which it was made the pre 
 text with some, and the real justification with 
 others, for the greatest inhumanities. 
 <TThe commands of Las Casas met with so much Las Casas 
 
 ^ reverenced 
 
 reverence from these simple people, that when by the 
 
 . natives of 
 
 he sent by a messenger any bit of paper inserted at Cuba. 
 
8 THE OCCUPATION OF CUBA. 
 
 the end of a stick, and the messenger declared that 
 the paper bore such and such orders, they were 
 implicitly obeyed. The Indians had in general 
 the greatest respect and wonder for the commu 
 nication among the Spaniards by letter, for it ap 
 peared to them quite a miracle, how the infor 
 mation of what had been done in one place was 
 made known in another by means of these mys 
 terious pieces of paper. 
 
 One of the chief cares of the Clerigo (the title 
 by which Las Casas describes himself) was, when 
 ever they halted in any Indian town or village, 
 to assign separate quarters to the Indians and 
 the Spaniards. By this means he prevented 
 many disorders and much cruelty. But his prin 
 cipal business was to assemble the children in 
 order to baptize them ; and, as he observes, there 
 were many that God bestowed his sacred baptism 
 upon in good time ; for none, or scarcely any, of 
 all those children remained alive a few months 
 afterwards. 
 
 In the course of this journey of pacification, 
 the Spaniards approached a large town of the 
 Indians called Caonao, where an immense num 
 ber of the natives had congregated together, 
 
THE OCCUPATION OF CUBA. 9 
 
 chiefly to see the horses which the Spaniards 
 brought with them. In the morning of the day 
 on which the Spaniards under Narvaez and Las 
 Casas, amounting to about a hundred men, arrived 
 at Caonao, they stopped to breakfast in the dry 
 bed of a stream where there were many stones 
 suitable for grindstones ; and they all took the 
 opportunity of sharpening their swords. From 
 thence a wide and arid plain led them to Caonao. 
 They would have suffered terribly from thirst, 
 but that some Indians kindly brought them water 
 on the road. At last they reached Caonao at the 
 time of vespers. Here they halted. The chief 
 population of this Indian town and the vicinity 
 was assembled together in one spot, sitting on 
 the ground, and gazing, no doubt with wonder, 
 at the horses of the Spaniards. Apart, in a 
 large hut, were five hundred of the natives, who, 
 being more timid than the others, were con 
 tent to prepare victuals for their visitors, but 
 declined any nearer approaches. The Spaniards 
 had with them about a thousand of their own 
 Indian attendants. The Clerigo was preparing 
 for the division of the rations amongst the men, 
 when suddenly a Spaniard, prompted, as was 
 
10 THE OCCUPATION OF CUBA. 
 
 thought, by the Devil, drew his sword : the 
 rest drew theirs ; and immediately they all began 
 to hack and hew the poor Indians, who were sit 
 ting quietly near them, and offering no more re 
 sistance than so many sheep. At the precise 
 moment when the massacre began, the Clerigo 
 was in the apartment where the Spaniards were 
 to sleep for the night. He had five Spaniards 
 with him: some Indians who had brought the 
 baggage were lying on the ground, sunk in fa 
 tigue. The five Spaniards hearing the blows of 
 the swords of their comrades without, immediately 
 fell upon the Indians who had brought the bag 
 gage. Las Casas, however, was enabled to pre 
 vent that slaughter, and the five Spaniards rushed 
 out to join their comrades. The Clerigo went 
 also, and, to his grief and horror, saw heaps of 
 dead bodies already strewed about, <e like sheaves 
 of corn," waiting to be gathered up. " What 
 think you these Spaniards have been doing ?" ex 
 claimed Narvaez to Las Casas; and Las Casas 
 replied, " I commend both you and them to the 
 Devil."* The Clerigo did not stop, however, to 
 
 * " Que os ofresco a vos y a ellos el Diablo." LAS 
 CASAS, Hist, de las Indias, MS. lib iii. cap. 29. 
 
THE OCCUPATION OF CUBA. 13 
 
 Dandy words with the Commander, but rushed 
 hither and thither, endeavouring to prevent the 
 indiscriminate slaughter which was going on, of 
 men, women, and children. Then he entered the 
 great hut, where he found that many Indians had 
 already been slaughtered, but some had escaped 
 by the pillars and the woodwork, and were up 
 aloft. To them he exclaimed, " Fear not, there 
 shall be no more slaughter no more ; " upon 
 which, one of them, a young man of five-and- 
 twenty, trusting to these words, came down. 
 But, as Las Casas justly says, the Clerigo could 
 not be in all places at once, and, as it happened, 
 he left this hut directly, indeed, before the poor 
 young man got down, upon which a Spaniard 
 drew a short sword, and ran the Indian through 
 the body. Las Casas was back in time to afford 
 the last rites of the Church to the dying youth. 
 To see the fearful wounds that were made, it 
 seemed, the historian says, as if the Devil had 
 guided the men that day to those stones in the dry 
 bed of the river. 
 
 When inquiry was made as to who had been The mas- 
 the author of this massacre, no one replied. This Caonao 
 
 causeless. 
 
 shows how causeless the massacre was, for if there 
 
12 THE OCCUPATION OF CUBA. 
 
 had been any good reason for it, the Spaniard 
 who first drew his sword would have justified 
 himself, and perhaps claimed merit for the 
 action. It may have been panic in this one 
 man ; it may have been momentary madness, for 
 such things are taken much less into account than 
 is requisite ; but, whatever the cause, the whole 
 transaction shows the conduct of the Spaniards 
 towards the Indians in a most unfavourable 
 light. 
 War, when The maxim, that the evil consequences of war 
 
 most fatal 
 
 in its con- depend, not so much upon the nature of the 
 
 sequences. 
 
 victory, or the rage of the combatants, or the 
 cause of the quarrel, as upon the contempt, jus 
 tifiable or not, which the victorious side has for 
 the vanquished, seems to me applicable through 
 out history. The wars between nations that 
 respect one another may have most sanguinary 
 and cruel results, but not so injurious <to humanity 
 as when Spartan conquers Helot, Mahomedan 
 conquers Christian, Spaniard conquers Moor or 
 Indian ; or as, in general, when one nation with 
 much civilization, or much bigotry, conquers an 
 other nation of little civilization, or of another 
 creed. The Romans may in some instances have 
 
THE OCCUPATION OF CUBA. 
 
 13 
 
 offered a splendid exception to this rule ; but in 
 the general history of the world it holds good. 
 
 On the news of this massacre at Caonao,* all The Indians 
 
 fly to the 
 
 the inhabitants of the province deserted their "Garden 
 
 of the 
 
 towns, flying for refuge to the innumerable islets Queen." 
 on that coast, called the " Garden of the Queen." 
 The Spaniards, leaving the Indian town of Cao- 
 nao, which they had desolated in the manner 
 related above, formed a camp in the vicinity, or 
 rather ordered the Indians to form it for them, 
 for each Spaniard had at least eight or ten native 
 attendants. Amongst those of Las Casas was an 
 old Indian of much repute in the island, called 
 Camacho, who had accompanied the Clerigo vo 
 luntarily, to be under his protection. One day, 
 while the Spaniards were at this camp, a young 
 Indian, sent as a spy from the former inhabitants 
 of Caonao, came into tne camp, and making his 
 way directly to the Clerigo s tent, addressed Ca 
 macho, begging to be taken into the Clerigo s 
 service, and requesting that he might be allowed 
 
 * " No quedd piante ni mamante." LAS CASAS. A pro 
 verbial expression " There remained neither the child that 
 sucks nor the one that chirrups." 
 
14 THE OCCUPATION OF CUBA. 
 
 to bring his younger brother also. Camacho in 
 formed Las Casas of this, who was delighted with 
 the news, as it gave an opportunity of communi 
 cating with those Indians who had fled. Accord 
 ingly he received the Indian very kindly, made 
 him some trifling presents, and besought him to 
 bring back his countrymen to their homes, and to 
 assure them that they should not be further 
 molested. The young man, to whom Camacho 
 gave the name of Adrianico, took his leave, pro 
 mising to bring his brother and the rest of the 
 Indians. Some days passed away, and Las Casas 
 began to think that Adrianico would not be able 
 to perform his promise, when one evening he made 
 his appearance with his brother and a hundred 
 and eighty Indian men and women. Children are 
 not mentioned, and I conjecture these Indians 
 would not run the risk of bringing them within 
 the power of the Spaniards. 
 
 It was a melancholy sight to see the little band 
 of fugitives, with their small bundles of household 
 things on their shoulders, and their strings of 
 People of beads as presents for the Clerigo and the Spa- 
 return, niards, returning, perforce, for want of food 
 and perhaps too with some of that inextinguish- 
 
THE OCCUPATION OF CUBA. 15 
 
 able fondness for home which endears so large a 
 part of the world to its inhabitants to the spot 
 where they had but lately seen such cruelties per 
 petrated on their friends and relations. The Cle- 
 rigo was delighted to see them, but very sad too, 
 when he considered their gentleness, their humi 
 lity, their poverty, and their sufferings. Pam- 
 philo de Narvaez united with Las Casas in doing 
 all he could to assure these poor people of their 
 safety ; and they were dismissed to their empty 
 homes. This example of good treatment reassured 
 the Indians of that vicinity, who in consequence 
 returned to their houses. 
 
 The Spaniards pursued their purpose of pacifi- 
 cating Cuba, now taking to their vessels and 
 coasting along the northern shore, and now tra 
 versing the interior of the country. When they 
 came to the province of Havana, they found that 
 the Indians, having heard of the massacre at 
 Caonao and other such proceedings, had all fled ; 
 upon which Las Casas sent messengers to the i jas Casas 
 different Caciques, the messengers bearing mys- caciques to 
 terious pieces of paper inserted at the end of O f safety. 
 sticks, which had before been found so efficacious, 
 and assuring these Caciques of safety and protec- 
 
16 THE OCCUPATION OF CUBA. 
 
 tion. The result was, that eighteen or nineteen 
 of these Caciques came and placed themselves in 
 the power of the Spaniards ; and it is an asto 
 nishing instance of the barbarity and folly of the 
 Spanish captain Narvaez, that he put them in 
 chains, and expressed an intention of burning 
 them alive. Probably he thought that the pro 
 vince by this means, losing all its chiefs at one 
 blow, would become hopeless and obedient. The 
 Clerigo in the strongest manner protested against 
 this monstrous treachery, to which he would have 
 been so unwilling a party ; and partly by en 
 treaties, partly by threats, succeeded in procuring 
 the release of all these Caciques except one, the 
 most powerful, who was carried to Velazquez, 
 but was afterwards set at liberty. 
 
 This seems a strange method of assuring and 
 pacificating the Indians; but their want of re 
 sources, and the absence of any experience of such 
 war as they had now to encounter, if they made 
 any resistance, caused them easily to succumb. 
 The island of Cuba was now considered to be 
 pacificated, and .Pamphilo de Narvaez and Las 
 Casas were ordered to join Velazquez at Xagua. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Conversion of Las Casas His Voyage to Spain He 
 goes to Court The Death of King Ferdinand. 
 
 AS CASAS, as the reader will here 
 after see, had many troubles and sor 
 rows to bear ; but at this particular 
 period he was blessed with that which is always 
 one of the greatest blessings, but which, like 
 hospitality in a partially civilized country, seems 
 to have flourished more, as being more needed, 
 in rude, hard times. In a word, he had a real 
 friend. This friend s name was Pedro de la 
 Renteria. Their friendship was most intimate, had a 
 and had subsisted for many years. De Ren 
 teria, as often happens in friendship, presented 
 a curious contrast to Las Casas. He was a man 
 who might well have been a monk a devout, 
 contemplative person, given much to solitude and 
 c 
 
 Las Casas 
 had a 
 friend. 
 
18 CONVERSION OF LAS CAS AS. 
 
 prayer ; and Las Casas mentions a trait in his 
 character which exactly coincides with the rest of 
 it, namely, that he was a most liberal man ; but that 
 his liberality seemed rather to flow from habit and 
 a carelessness about worldly goods than from a 
 deliberate judgment exercised in matters of bene 
 volence. This good man s occupations, however, 
 were entirely secular, and he was employed by 
 Diego Velazquez as Alcalde. 
 
 When the island was considered to be settled 
 and the Governor began to give repartimientos, 
 knowing the friendship that existed between Las 
 Casas and Eenteria, he gave them a large village in 
 common, and Indians in repartimiento.* This land 
 of theirs was about a league from Xagua, on the 
 river Arimao ; and there they lived, the Clerigo 
 
 * " Didle (a Pedro de Renteria) Indies de repartimiento 
 juntamente con el Padre, dando a ambos un buen Pueblo 
 y grande, con los cuales el Padre comenzo a entender en 
 hacer grangerias y en echar parte de ellos en las minas, 
 teniendo harto mas cuidado de ellas que de dar doctrina a 
 los Indies, habiendo de ser como lo era principalmente 
 aquel su oficio ; pero en aquella materia tan ciego estaba 
 por aquel tiempo el buen Padre como los Seglares todos 
 que tenia por hijos." LAS CASAS, Hist, de las Indias, MS., 
 lib. iii. cap. 32. 
 
CONVERSION OF LAS CASAS. 19 
 
 having the greater part of the management of the 
 
 joint affairs, as being much the more lively and Las Casaa 
 
 the busier man. Indeed, he confesses that he money- 
 making 
 was as much engaged as others in sending his man. 
 
 Indians to the mines and making as large a profit 
 of their labour as possible. At the same time, 
 however, he was kind to them personally, and 
 provided carefully for their sustenance; but, to 
 use his own words, " he took no more heed than 
 the other Spaniards to bethink himself that his 
 Indians were unbelievers, and of the duty that 
 there was on his part to give them instruction, 
 and to bring them to the bosom of the Church of 
 Christ."* 
 
 As there was but one other clerigo in the 
 whole island, and no friar, it was necessary for 
 Las Casas occasionally to say mass and to preach. 
 It happened that he had to do so on " the Feast 
 of Pentecost," in the year 1514 ; and studying 
 either the sermons that he preached himself, or 
 that he heard the other clerigo preach at this Las Casas 
 
 communes 
 
 time, he began to ponder over certain passages with 
 (" authorities" he calls them) of Scripture. 
 
 * LAS CASAS, Hist, de las Indias, MS., lib. iii. cap. 78 
 
20 CONVERSION OF LAS CASAS. 
 
 The 34th chapter of Ecclesiasticus, the 18th, 
 19th, 20th, 21st and 22nd verses, first arrested, 
 and then enchained, his attention : 
 
 " He that sacrificeth of a thing wrongfully 
 gotten, his offering is ridiculous : and the gifts of 
 unjust men are not accepted. 
 
 " The Most High is not pleased with the offer 
 ings of the wicked : neither is he pacified for sin 
 by the multitude of sacrifices. 
 
 " Whoso bringeth an offering of the goods of 
 the poor doeth as one that killeth the son before 
 his father s eyes. 
 
 " The bread of the needy is their life ; he that 
 defraudeth him thereof is a man of blood. 
 
 " He that taketh away his neighbour s living 
 slayeth him ; and he that defraudeth the labourei 
 of his hire is a bloodshedder." 
 
 I think that the Clerigo might have dwelt upon 
 one of the remaining verses of the chapter with 
 great profit : 
 
 " When one prayeth, and another curseth 
 whose voice will the Lord hear ?" 
 
 In recounting the steps which led to his con 
 version, Las Casas takes care to say, that what he 
 
CONVERSION OF LAS CASAS. 21 
 
 had formerly heard the Dominicans preach in 
 Hispaniola was, at this critical period of his life, of 
 great service to him. Then he had only slighted 
 their words; but he now particularly remembers 
 a contest he had with a certain Religioso, who re 
 fused to give him absolution, because he possessed 
 Indians. This is an instance of the great mistake 
 it may be to hold your tongue about the truth, 
 for fear it should provoke contest and harden an 
 adversary in his opinion. The truths which he Good 
 
 arguir 
 not lo 
 upon men. 
 
 argument 
 
 has heard sink into a man at some time or other : not lost 
 
 and, even when he retires from a contest, appa 
 rently fixed in his own conceits, it would often be 
 found that if he had to renew the contest the next 
 day, he would not take up quite the same position 
 that he had maintained before. The good seed 
 sown by the Dominicans had now, after having 
 been buried for some years, found a most fruitful 
 soil; and it shot up in the ardent soul of the 
 Clerigo like grain in that warm land of the tropics 
 upon which he stood. Las Casas studied the 
 principles of the matter : from the principles he Las Casas 
 
 convinced 
 
 turned to considering the facts about him ; and, of the 
 
 evil of 
 
 with his candid mind thus fully aroused, he soon reparti- 
 
 mieiitos. 
 
 came to the conclusion that the system of reparti- 
 
22 
 
 CONVERSION OF LAS CAS AS. 
 
 Las Casas 
 resolves to 
 give up 
 his own 
 Indians. 
 
 mientos was iniquitous/ and that he must preach 
 against it. 
 
 What, then, must he do with his own Indians ? 
 Alas, it was necessary to give them up ! Not 
 that he grudged giving them up for any worldly 
 motive, but he felt that no one in Cuba would be 
 as considerate towards them as he, even in the 
 days of his darkness, had been ; and that they 
 would be worked to death as indeed they were. 
 But still, the answer to all the sermons he might 
 preach would be his own repartimiento of Indians. 
 He resolved to give them up. 
 
 Now, as Las Casas was not only the friend, 
 but the partner, of Pedro de Renteria, this deter 
 mination on the part of the Clerigo was a matter 
 which would affect the interests of his friend; 
 and, unluckily, Renteria happened to be absent 
 from home at this time, having gone to Jamaica 
 
 * " Pasados pues algunos dias en aquesta consideration, 
 y cada dia mas y mas certificandola por lo que leia cuanto al 
 derecho, y via del hecho, aplicandolo uno al otro, determine 
 en si mismo convencido de la misma verdad, ser injusto y 
 tiranico todo cuanto cerca de los Tndios en estas Indias se 
 cometia." LAS CASAS, Hist, de las Indias, MS., lib. iii. 
 cap. 78. 
 
CONVERSION OF LAS CASAS. *6 
 
 upon their joint affairs. Las Casas, however, 
 
 went to the Governor Velazquez, and laid open 
 
 his mind to him upon the subject of the reparti- He informi 
 
 mientos, putting the matter boldly as it concerned Governor. 
 
 his lordship s own salvation, as well as that of 
 
 Las Casas and the rest of the Spaniards. The 
 
 Clerigo added, that he must give up his own 
 
 slaves, but wished that this determination might 
 
 be kept secret till Pedro de Kenteria should 
 
 return. 
 
 The Governor was greatly astonished ; for Las 
 Casas, who, no doubt, took warmly in hand any 
 thing he did take up at all, passed for a man fond 
 of gain, and very busy in the things of this world. 
 Velazquez, in replying, besought the Clerigo to 
 consider the matter well to take fifteen days, 
 indeed, to think of it and to do nothing that he 
 would repent of afterwards. Las Casas thanked 
 his lordship for his kindness, but bade him count 
 the fifteen days as already past ; and added, that 
 if he, Las Casas, were to repent, and were to ask 
 for the Indians again, even with tears of blood, 
 God would punish the Governor severely if he 
 were to listen to such a request. Thus ended 
 the interview ; and it is to the Governor s credit 
 
24 CONVERSION OF LAS CASAS. 
 
 that he ever afterwards held the Clerigo in greater 
 esteem than before. 
 
 Las Casas, however, did not long confine his 
 efforts at conversion to the Governor alone, nor 
 did he conceal his intention until his partner had 
 returned home ; for, when preaching on the day 
 of " The Assumption of Our Lady," he took occa 
 sion to mention publicly the conclusion he had 
 come to as regards his own affairs, and also to 
 urge upon his congregation in the strongest man 
 ner his conviction of the danger to their souls if 
 they retained their repartimientos of Indians. All 
 were amazed ; some were struck with compunc 
 tion; others were as much surprised to hear it 
 called a sin to make use of the Indians as if they 
 had been told it was sinful to make use of the 
 beasts of the field. 
 
 After Las Casas had uttered many exhortations 
 both in public and in private, and had found that 
 they were of little avail, he meditated how to go to 
 the fountain head of authority, the King of Spain. 
 The Clerigo s resources were exhausted: he had 
 not a maravedi* or the means of getting one, ex- 
 
 * Equal to about two-thirds of a farthing. 
 
CONVERSION OF LAS CASAS. 
 
 25 
 
 cept by selling a mare which was worth a hundred Resolves 
 
 to go to 
 
 pesos* Resolving, however, to go, he wrote to s P ain - 
 Renteria, telling him that business of importance 
 was taking him to Castille, and that unless Ren- 
 teria could return immediately, he, Las Casas, 
 could not wait to see him a thing, as he adds, 
 not imaginable by the good Renteria, so firm was 
 their friendship. 
 
 It was a singular coincidence that, not long 
 before this time, the services of the Church had 
 also brought into active existence very serious A silent 
 
 community 
 
 thoughts in the breast of Pedro de Renteria. There of thought 
 may be a community of thought not expressed in 
 language; and, perhaps, these two good men, 
 while apparently engaged in their ordinary secular 
 business, had, unknown to themselves, been com 
 municating to each other generous thoughts about 
 their poor Indians, which had not hitherto been 
 embodied in words. While Renteria was waiting 
 in Jamaica for the despatch of his business, he went 
 into a Franciscan monastery to spend his Lent in 
 " retreat " (these pauses from the world are not to 
 be despised !); and there thinking over the miseries 
 
 between 
 
 friends. 
 
 * A peso was equivalent to four shillings and eight pence 
 farthing. 
 
26 
 
 CONVERSION OF LAS CASAS. 
 
 Conference 
 between 
 Las Casas 
 and his 
 friend 
 Renteria. 
 
 of the Indians, the shape his thoughts had taken 
 was, whether something for the children, at least, 
 might not be done. Finally, he had come to the 
 conclusion to ask the King s leave to found col 
 leges where he might collect the young Indians, 
 and have them instructed and brought up. For 
 this purpose, Renteria resolved to go to Spain 
 himself, in order to obtain the King s sanction ; 
 and, immediately after receiving the letter of the 
 Clerigo, he hurried back to Cuba. 
 
 As the meeting of the friends took place in 
 the presence of others, and as Renteria was wel 
 comed back by the Governor in person, they had 
 no opportunity for any explanation until they 
 were alone together at night : then, in their dig 
 nified Spanish way, they agreed who should 
 speak first, and after a friendly contention, the 
 humble Renteria spoke first, which was the mark 
 of the inferior. " I have thought sometimes," 
 he said, "upon the miseries, sufferings, and evil 
 life which these native people are leading; and 
 how from day to day they are all being con 
 sumed, as the people were in Hispaniola. It has 
 appeared to me that it would be an act of piety 
 to go and inform the King of this for he cannot 
 
CONVERSION OF LAS CASAS. 2J 
 
 know anything of it and to ask him that at the 
 least he should give us his royal licence to found 
 some colleges, where the children might be 
 brought up and taught, and where we may shel 
 ter them from such violent and vehement destruc 
 tion."* Las Casas heard Renteria s words with 
 astonishment and reverential joy, thinking it a 
 sign of divine favour, that so good a man as Ren- 
 teria should thus unexpectedly confirm his own 
 resolve. 
 
 When it was the Clerigo s turn to speak, he 
 thus began (e You must know, sir and brother " 
 (for these people did not omit the courtesy which, 
 however varied in its form, affection should not 
 presume to dispense with), (f that my purpose is 
 no other than to go and seek a remedy for these ^ 
 unhappy men " (the Indians). The Clerigo then 
 gave a full account of what he had already 
 thought and done in this matter, during Ren 
 teria s absence. His friend replied in all humi- They agree 
 lity, that it was not for him to go, but for Las CaUs^ 8 
 Casas, who, as a lettered man (letrado), would toSpain 
 know better how to establish what he should 
 
 * LAS CASAS, Hist, de las Indias, MS., lib. iii. cap. 79. 
 
28 CONVERSION OF LAS CASAS. 
 
 urge. Renteria begged, therefore, that the stock 
 and merchandize which he had just brought with 
 him from Jamaica, and the farm, their joint pro 
 perty, might be turned into money to equip Las 
 Casas for his journey and his stay at court ; 
 and he added, " May God our Lord be He who 
 may ever keep you in the way and defend you." 
 
 The farm was sold, and in this manner Las 
 Casas was provided for his journey. Bad as the 
 world is said to be, there is always money forth 
 coming for any good purpose, when people really 
 believe in the proposer. 
 
 At this time Pedro de Cordova, the prelate of 
 the Dominicans in the New World, sent over 
 four brethren of his order from Hispaniola to 
 First Dpmi- Cuba. They were very welcome to Las Casas, 
 as he was to them. They listened with interest 
 to his account of the state of the Indians in 
 Cuba ; and Brother Bernardo, the most eloquent 
 and learned amongst them, preached to the same 
 purpose and with fully as much animation, as 
 the Clerigo himself had done. Their sermons 
 terrified the hearers, but did not seem to change 
 their way of proceeding. The Dominicans, ac- 
 
 nicans in 
 
CONVERSION OF LAS CASAS. 
 
 29 
 
 cordingly, resolved to send back one of their bro 
 therhood, Gutierrez de Ampudia, to Pedro de 
 Cordova, to inform him of the state of things at 
 Cuba. It was arranged that Gutierrez should 
 accompany Las Casas, who, by giving out that 
 he was going to Paris, to study there and take a 
 degree, contrived to leave Cuba without attract 
 ing the notice of the Governor, who might, per 
 haps, have detained him, had his true purpose and 
 destination been known. 
 
 So Las Casas quitted the island of Cuba in 
 company with Gutierrez de Ampudia and another 
 Dominican, without being much observed by any 
 one, or meeting with any hindrance. 
 
 After their departure from the island, the 
 cruelties of the Spaniards towards the Indians 
 increased ; and, as the Indians naturally enough 
 sought for some refuge in flight, the Spaniards 
 trained dogs to pursue them. The Indians then 
 had recourse to suicide as a means of escape, for 
 they believed in a future state of being, where 
 ease and felicity, they thought, awaited them. 
 Accordingly they put themselves to death, whole 
 families doing so together, and villages inviting 
 other villages to join them in their departure 
 
 Suicide 
 of the 
 
 Tndians. 
 
SO CONVERSION OF LAS CAS AS. 
 
 from a world that was no longer tolerable to 
 them. Some hanged themselves ; others drank 
 the poisonous juice of the Yuca. 
 
 One pathetic and yet ludicrous occurrence is 
 mentioned, in connection with this practice of 
 suicide amongst the Indians. A number of them 
 belonging to one master had resolved to hang 
 themselves, and so to escape from their labours 
 and their sufferings. The master being made 
 aware of their intention, came upon them just as 
 they were about to carry it into effect. " Go 
 seek me a rope, too," he exclaimed, " for I must 
 hang myself with you." He then gave them to 
 understand that he could not live without them, 
 as they were so useful to him ; and that he must 
 go where they were going. They, believing that 
 they would not get rid of him even in a future 
 state of existence, agreed to remain where they 
 were ; and with sorrow laid aside their ropes to 
 resume their labours. 
 
 Meanwhile, Las Casas and his companions 
 were pursuing their journey, having arrived at 
 the port of Hanaguana, in Hispaniola. Father 
 Gutierrez, unhappily, fell ill of a fever and died on 
 
VOYAGE OF LAS CASAS TO SPAIN. 31 
 the road ; but Las Casas reached St. Domingo in Las Casas 
 
 arrives 
 
 safety. On arriving there, he found that the at St. 
 
 J t Domingo. 
 
 Prelate of the Dominicans was absent, having just 
 commenced a voyage for the purpose of founding 
 monasteries in the Terra-firma, being accompanied 
 not only by monks of his own order, but also by 
 Franciscans, and by some monks from Picardy, 
 who had lately come to the Indies. 
 
 It happened that a great storm compelled the 
 Prelate and his company to return to port ; and 
 thus Las Casas was fortunate enough to obtain an 
 interview with one of whom he ever speaks with 
 great veneration, the Prelate of the Dominicans, 
 Pedro de Cordova. 
 
 This excellent monk received Las Casas very 
 kindly, and applauded his purpose greatly, but at interview 
 
 . between 
 
 the same time gave but little hope of its being Las Casas 
 
 and De 
 
 brought to a successful termination in King Fer- Cordova. 
 dinand s time, on account of the credit which, he 
 said, the Bishop of Burgos and the Secretary, 
 Lope Conchillos, had with the King, and their 
 being entirely in favour of the system of reparti- 
 mientos, and moreover possessing Indians them 
 selves. 
 
 The Clerigo, grieved but not dismayed at 
 
32 LAS CASAS AT THE COURT OF SPAIN. 
 
 these words, declared his intention to persevere, 
 to the delight of Pedro de Cordova, who, as the 
 Dominican monastery was very poor, and only 
 partly built, resolved to send Antonio Montesino, 
 one of his monks, in company with Las Casas to the 
 King, to solicit alms for completing the building. 
 Moreover, if any opportunity should offer, he was 
 to aid the Clerigo in his mission. And so, 
 
 Las Casas 
 
 fc^iTafn m September, 1515, Las Casas, Montesino, and 
 Sept. loio. another brother embarked at St. Domingo for 
 Spain. 
 
 After their arrival at Seville, Montesino pre- 
 Las Casas sented Las Casas to the Archbishop of Seville, 
 Seville.^ ^ on Fray Diego de Deza, a prelate in great 
 favour with King Ferdinand, who had been per 
 suading the King to come to his diocese, as being 
 an excellent climate for the aged. This advice 
 Ferdinand had listened to, and was now making 
 his way from Burgos to the South of Spain. 
 The Archbishop received Las Casas graciously, 
 and furnished him with letters to the King and 
 to some of the courtiers. Armed with these let 
 ters, the Clerigo continued his journey, and found 
 the King at Plasencia, arriving there a few days 
 
LAS CASAS AT THE COURT OF SPAIN. 33 
 
 before Christmas in the year 1515. Las Casas 
 shunned the ministers Lope de Conchillos and 
 the Bishop of Burgos, knowing how prejudiced 
 they were likely to be ; but he sought an inter- Las Casas 
 
 TT" 8ees King 
 
 view with the King, and, obtaining it, spoke at ferdi- 
 large to the Monarch of the motives which had Dec. 1515. 
 
 o 
 
 brought him to Spain. He had come, he said, to 
 inform his Highness of the wrongs and sufferings 
 of the Indians, and of how they died without a 
 knowledge of the Faith and without the Sacra 
 ments, of the ruin of the country, of the diminu 
 tion of the revenue ; and he concluded by saying, 
 that as these things concerned both the King s 
 conscience and the welfare of his realm, and as to 
 be understood they must be stated in detail, he 
 begged for another and a long audience. Fer 
 dinand, now an old and ailing man, whose death 
 was near at hand, did not deny Las Casas the 
 second audience he asked for, but said he would 
 willingly hear him some day during the Christmas 
 Festival. 
 
 In the mean time, Las Casas poured his com 
 plaints against the King s ministers, and his nar- Las Casas 
 
 T T gains the 
 
 rative of the wrongs of the Indians, into the ears King s 
 of the King s Confessor, Tomas de Matienzo, 
 
34 LAS CASAS AT THE COURT OF SPAIN. 
 
 who, repeating them to the King, received orders 
 to tell Las Casas to go to Seville and wait there 
 for the King s coming (Ferdinand was about to 
 set off immediately), when he would give him a 
 long audience, and provide a remedy for the evils 
 he complained of. The Confessor advised Las 
 Casas to see the Bishop of Burgos,* who had the 
 chief management of Indian affairs, and also Con- 
 
 * The Bishop of Burgos was one of those ready, bold, 
 and dexterous men, with a great reputation for fidelity, who 
 are such favourites with princes. He went through so 
 many stages of preferment, that it is sometimes difficult to 
 trace him ; and the student of early American history will 
 have a bad opinion of many Spanish bishops, if he does not 
 discover that it is Bishop Fonseca who re-appears under 
 various designations. He held successively the Arch- 
 diaconate of Seville, the Bishoprics of Badajoz, Cordova, 
 Palencia, and Conde, the Archbishopric of Rosano (in 
 Italy), with the Bishopric of Burgos, besides the office of 
 Capellan mayor to Isabella, and afterwards to Ferdinand. 
 
 The Indies had a narrow escape of having him for their 
 Patriarch. In the year 1513, Ferdinand instructed hia 
 ambassador at Rome to apply for the institution of a uni 
 versal patriarchate of the Indies to be given to Archbishop 
 Fonseca. 
 
 What answer the Pope gave to this application does not 
 appear ; but it is at any rate satisfactory to find that Bishop 
 Fonseca was not appointed Patriarch of the Indies. 
 
LAS CASAS AT THE COURT OF SPAIN. 35 
 
 chillos, for, as he observed, the matter would 
 ultimately have to come into their hands; and, 
 perhaps, when they had heard all the miseries 
 and evils which the Clerigo could tell them, they 
 would soften. Las Casas, to show that he was 
 not obstinate, sought out these ministers, and 
 submitted his views and his information to them. 
 Conchillos received the Clerigo with the utmost 
 courtesy and kindness, and seems to have listened 
 a little to what Las Casas had to tell him: the 
 Bishop, on the contrary, was very rough. Las interview 
 Casas finished his audience with the Bishop by Las Casas 
 informing him how seven thousand children had Bishop of 
 perished in three months ; * and, as the Clerigo 
 went on detailing the account of the death of 
 these children, the ungodly Bishop broke in with 
 these words, " Look you, what a droll fool ; what 
 is this to me, and what is it to the King ?" To 
 which Las Casas replied : " Is it nothing to your 
 Lordship, or to the King, that all these souls 
 should perish ? Oh great and eternal God ! And 
 to whom then is it of any concern ? " And, having 
 said these words, he took his leave. 
 
 * I do not know to what transaction he alludes. 
 
36 LAS CASAS AT THE COURT OF SPAIN. 
 
 Considering the number of excellent churchmen 
 whose conduct comes out nobly in the discovery 
 and colonization of the Indies, it is not surprising 
 that we should meet with one bad biskop ; but it is 
 almost heartbreaking to consider, that it is the one 
 who could have done more than all the rest to 
 redress the wrongs of the Indians, and to recover 
 affairs in the New World. Let men in power 
 see what one bad appointment may do ! 
 Las Casas Las Casas soon after left the court for Seville, 
 
 departs for 
 
 Seville. where almost the first thing he heard of on his 
 arrival, was the death of the King, which took 
 place at Madrigal ejos, a little village on the road 
 to Seville, on the 23rd of January, 1516. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 Las Casas sees the Cardinal Ximenes He is appointed to go 
 out and inquire into the wrongs of the Indians, with the 
 Jeronimite Fathers, and made " Protector of the Indians " 
 He returns to Spain. 
 
 S soon as Las Casas heard of the King s 
 death, he prepared to go to Flanders, to 
 produce what impression he could upon 
 the new King; but, previously to taking this 
 step, he went to Madrid, to lay his statement of 
 the wrongs of the Indians before the Cardinal- 
 Governor Ximenes, and the Ambassador Adrian. 
 They were governing conjointly, Ximenes having 
 been appointed regent by Ferdinand during the 
 minority of Charles the Fifth, and Adrian of 
 Utrecht (who had been Charles s tutor) having 
 been instructed by the young King to act in 
 concert with the Cardinal. 
 
38 ADMINISTRATION OF XIMENES. 
 
 Las Casas resolved to let them know of his in 
 tended journey, and to tell them that if they 
 could remedy the evils he complained of he would 
 stay with them; if not, he would go on to 
 Flanders. 
 
 He drew up his statement in Latin, and 
 began by laying it before Adrian. That good 
 man was horrified at what he read ; and without 
 delay he went into the apartment of the Cardinal 
 (for the two great men were lodged in the same 
 building), to ask him if such things could be. 
 The result of the conference was, that Las 
 Las Casas Casas was informed by Ximenes that he need not 
 
 sees 
 
 Ximenes. proceed to Flanders, but that a remedy for the 
 evils he spoke of should be found there, at 
 Madrid. 
 
 The associates whom the Cardinal took into 
 council, to hear what Las Casas had to tell of 
 Indian affairs, were the Ambassador Adrian, the 
 Licentiate Zapata, Dr. Caravajal, Dr. Palacios 
 Rubios, and the Bishop of Avila. These impor 
 tant personages summoned the Clerigo many 
 times before them, and heard what he had to 
 say. In the course of these hearings a curious 
 circumstance took place, which is well worth re- 
 
ADMINISTRATION OF XIMENES. 39 
 
 cording. During one of these juntas* the cardinal 
 ordered that the laws of Burgos (the last laws 
 made touching the Indians) should be read. It 
 is a slight circumstance, but serves to give some 
 indication of the excellence of the Cardinal as a 
 man of business and a member of a council, that 
 he should wish to know exactly where the matter 
 was, and what they were to start from. The Clerk 
 of the Junta, an old retainer of Conchillos, when A junta 
 
 to hear 
 
 he came to the law about giving a pound of Las Casas. 
 meat to the Indians on Sundays and feastdays, 
 probably thinking that this in some way 
 touched himself or his friends, read it wrongly. 
 Las Casas, who knew the laws almost by heart, 
 at once exclaimed, ee The law does not say that." 
 The Cardinal bade the clerk read it again. He 
 gave the same reading. Las Casas said again, 
 " That law says no such thing." The Cardinal, 
 annoyed at these interruptions, exclaimed, " Be 
 silent, or look to what you say." But Las Casas 
 was not to be silenced by fear, when he knew 
 himself to be in the right. " Your Lordship may 
 order my head to be cut off," he exclaimed, " if 
 
 * A junta was a council. 
 
40 ADMINISTRATION OF XIMENES. 
 
 what the clerk reads is what the law says." Some 
 members of the Council took the papers from the 
 clerk s hands, and found that Las Casas was 
 right. " You may imagine," he adds, " that 
 that clerk (whose name, for his honour s sake, I 
 will not mention) wished that he had not been 
 born, so that he might not have met with the 
 confusion of face he then met with." Las 
 Casas concludes by remarking, " that the Clerigo 
 lost nothing of the regard which the Cardinal 
 had for him, and the credit which he gave to 
 him." 
 
 The result of these meetings was, that the 
 Cardinal appointed Las Casas and Dr. Palacios 
 Rubios, who had all along shown great interest 
 in favour of the Indians, to draw up a plan for 
 securing their liberty and arranging their govern 
 ment. At the request of Las Casas, Antonio 
 Montesino was afterwards added to this com 
 mittee. Their way of proceeding was as follows. 
 Las Casas, as the more experienced in the matter, 
 made the rough draft of any proposition, which 
 he then showed to Antonio Montesino, who gene 
 rally approved it, then to the doctor, who did the 
 same, except that he perhaps added to it, and put 
 it in official language. It was then taken to the 
 
ADMINISTRATION OF XIMENES. 41 
 
 Cardinal and the Ambassador; and council held 
 upon it. 
 
 The thing to be done and the mode of doing it 
 were thus after much labour arrived at : the legis 
 lation was accordingly complete. And now the 
 persons who were to have the great charge of 
 administering the law had to be sought out. The 
 Cardinal bade Las Casas find these persons ; but 
 the Clerigo, from his absence for so long a time 
 from Castille, did not know fit persons, and 
 begged to give the commission back into the 
 Cardinal s hands, presenting at the same time a 
 memorial in which he stated what in his opinion 
 were the qualifications for the office in question. 
 The Cardinal, smiling, observed to Las Casas, 
 <f Well, Father, we have some good persons." 
 
 The Cardinal resolved to look for his men Jeronimites 
 
 chosen to 
 
 amongst the Jerommite monks, on account of administer 
 
 the law. 
 
 their not being mixed up with the contention that 
 had already taken place between the Franciscans 
 and Dominicans touching the fitness of the In 
 dians for freedom. Ximenes, accordingly, wrote 
 to that effect to the General of the Order, who 
 called a chapter, when twelve of the brethren were 
 named, and a deputation of four priors was sent to 
 the Cardinal to inform him of the nomination. 
 
42 
 
 ADMINISTRATION OP XIMENES. 
 
 Four of 
 their priors 
 come to 
 Madrid. 
 
 Proceed 
 ings at the 
 Jeronimite 
 monastery. 
 
 Las Casas, who was naturally anxious about 
 the answer of the Jeronimites, went one Sunday 
 morning to hear mass at their convent near to 
 Madrid. There he found a venerable man pray 
 ing in the cloister : upon asking him whether 
 there was any reply to the Cardinal s missive, 
 the old man told him, that he was one of the 
 priors who had brought an answer, that they 
 arrived last night, and that the Cardinal, having 
 been made aware of their arrival, was to come to 
 the convent that day. 
 
 Accordingly, in the course of the day, the Car 
 dinal and Adrian came with a cavalcade of cour 
 tiers to the convent. The monks received the 
 Junta in the sacristy, the main body of the 
 courtiers remaining outside in the choir ; amongst 
 them, doubtless to his no small chagrin, the 
 Bishop of Burgos, long accustomed to direct 
 Indian affairs, but now of no authority in them. 
 
 The Cardinal, after thanking the Order for the 
 tenor of their reply, and magnifying the work in 
 hand, desired Las Casas to be called for, who, 
 with great delight, walked through the assembled 
 courtiers, much regarded by them, but most of 
 all, as he conjectures, by the Bishop of Burgos. 
 
ADMINISTRATION OF XIMENES. 43 
 
 Entering the sacristy, Las Casas knelt down 
 before the Cardinal, who told him to thank God 
 that the desires which God had given him were 
 in the way of being accomplished. The Cardinal 
 then informed him that the priors had brought 
 twelve names of persons who might be chosen for 
 the work, but that three would suffice. His 
 Eminence added, that this night Las Casas should Las Casas 
 have letters of credit to the General of the Jero- letters of 
 
 credit to 
 
 nimites and money for his journey, and that he the Jeroni- 
 
 mite Gene- 
 Was to go and confer with that Prelate about the ral. 
 
 choice of the three, informing the General of the 
 requisite qualities for the office in question. Las 
 Casas was then to bring to court the first Jeroni- 
 mite of the chosen three whom he should find 
 ready to accompany him. The despatches should 
 thereupon be prepared, after which he might at 
 once set off with them * for Seville. 
 
 We may observe throughout that nothing lin 
 gers in the Cardinal s hands. Commonplace 
 statesmen live by delay, believe in it, hope in it, 
 
 * " Y habido el primero que de los tres mas presto hal- 
 laredes, venios con el a esta Corte, y hacerse ban los Des- 
 pachos, y de camino para Sevilla los podeis despues llevar." 
 LAS CASAS, Hist, de las Indias, MS., lib. iii. cap. 85. 
 
44 ADMINISTRATION OF XIMENES. 
 
 pray to it : but his Eminence worked as a man 
 who knew that the night was coming, ft in which 
 no man can work." 
 
 Las Casas, almost in tears with joy, poured 
 out his thanks and blessings on the Cardinal, and 
 concluded by saying, that the money was not 
 necessary, for that he had enough to sustain him 
 in this business. The Cardinal smiled, and said, 
 " Go to, Father, I am richer than you are." 
 (Andoi) Padre, que yo soy mas rico que vos). And 
 then Las Casas went out, " the Cardinal saying 
 many favourable things of some one who shall be 
 nameless."* 
 
 The Clerigo received his letters, conferred with 
 the General of the Order of St. Jerome, and three 
 brethren were chosen. Their names were Luis 
 de Figueroa, Prior of La Mejorada ; Alonso de 
 Santo Domingo, Prior of the Convent of Ortega ; 
 and Bernardino Manzanedo. 
 
 Las Casas brought with him Bernardino Man 
 zanedo to Madrid ; the other two joined him 
 there, and they all lived with him at his inn. 
 
 * " Diciendo multa favorabilia de Johanne." L\s 
 CASAS, Hist, de las Indias, MS., lib. iii. cap. 85. 
 
ADMINISTRATION OF XIMENES. 45 
 
 Afterwards, however, they went to a hospital of 
 their own Order in that city. While staying 
 there, they were waylaid, so to speak, by the 
 agents for the Spanish colonists, who told them 
 all manner of things against the Indians, and 
 spoke ill of Las Casas; and, in the end, suc 
 ceeded, as he thinks, in prejudicing the minds of 
 the Fathers to that extent, that even before they 
 set out, Las Casas and Dr. Palacios Rubios began 
 to think that no good would come of this mission, 
 which promised at the first so well. 
 
 The preparations, however, for their departure 
 went on, and their orders and instructions were 
 made ready. The first order was a cedula, to the 
 effect that, on their arrival at St. Domingo, they 
 should take away all the Indians belonging to 
 members of the Council, or to any other absentees. 
 The second was, that they should also deprive 
 the judges and officers in the Indies of their 
 Indians. The third was, that they should hold 
 a court of impeachment upon all the judges and 
 other officers in the colony, " who had lived, as 
 the saying is, ( as Moors without a king. " 
 
 Then came the main body of instructions, 
 which I will not quote here, and concerning 
 
Las Casas 
 instructions 
 and 
 difficulties. 
 
 46 ADMINISTRATION OF XIMENES. 
 
 which it is sufficient to say that Las Casas was 
 dissatisfied with many of them, and especially 
 with regard to the compulsory* working at the 
 mines, and the payment to be demanded from the 
 Indians for whatever cattle and implements were 
 to be furnished them. He was also averse to the 
 provision for the capture of the Caribs, and 
 declared that all these things were inserted con 
 trary to his wishes. I hardly see how, without 
 prophetic vision, any body of statesmen of that 
 time, who had not themselves been in the Indies, 
 could have been wise and foreseeing enough to 
 leave the Indians alone in their settlements, not 
 compelling them to go to the mines, but looking 
 forward to the time when they would become 
 civilized and taxable communities. 
 
 * The words of Las Casas on this subject, though some 
 what unpractical, are very remarkable for the noble spirit 
 they indicate : " Y solo el pensamiento de que habian por 
 fuerza de andar en las Minas la tercera parte bastaba para 
 del todo acaballos. Manifiesto es que se les habia de dar 
 las Haciendas y los Ganados y lo demas de valde para que 
 comenzaran a respirar y saber que cosa era LIBERTAD (sic 
 in MS.), 6 a costa del Rey, 6 de los Espanoles que de ellos 
 con tanto riesgo de sus vidas se habian aprovechado." 
 LAS CASAS, Hist, de las Lidias, MS., lib. iii. cap. 88. 
 
ADMINISTRATION OF XIMENES. 47 
 
 The despatches for the Jeronimite Fathers 
 being now concluded, other matters connected 
 with this great proposed reform were brought to 
 a close. Las Casas was by a cedula formally 
 appointed to advise and inform the Jeronimite 
 Fathers, to be in correspondence with the govern 
 ment, and generally to take such steps in the 
 matter as might be for the service of God and 
 their Highnesses. All authorities were to abet 
 him in the same. He was also named " Protector Las Casas 
 
 appointed 
 
 of the Indians," with a salary of a hundred pesos Protector 
 
 of the 
 
 of gold, which he himself observes, " was then not Indians, 
 little, as that hell of Peru " (infierno del Peru) 
 <f had not been discovered, which, with its multi 
 tude of quintals of gold, has impoverished and 
 destroyed Spain." These are remarkable words 
 for that time. 
 
 It now only remained that the legal part of 
 the reform contemplated by Ximenes should be 
 provided for. To ensure this, the Cardinal chose 
 a lawyer of repute named Zuazo, giving him very 
 large powers. He was to take a residencies* of 
 
 * To take a residencia was equivalent to making an in 
 quiry concerning, or calling to account, a public officer. 
 
43 ADMINISTRATION OF XIMENES. 
 
 all the Judges in the Indies, and what was of 
 more importance, his decisions were not to be 
 appealed against. The Licentiate Zapata and 
 Dr. Caravajal called these powers exorbitant, and 
 refused to give their signature, which was neces 
 sary, to the instructions. This led to much delay. 
 Zuazo threatened to return to Valladolid, saying, 
 if he once returned to his college, no one should 
 get him out of it again. Upon this Las Casas 
 hurried off to the Cardinal, who supposed that 
 Zuazo had already gone upon his mission, when 
 the Clerigo informed his Eminence of the delay 
 and the cause of it. The Cardinal, who, as Las 
 Casas then observes, was not a man to be played 
 with (ninguno con el se lurlaba), sent for the 
 Licentiate Zapata and Dr. Caravajal, and bade 
 them in his presence sign all the provisions of the 
 
 Zuazo powers for Zuazo : which they did, putting, how- 
 
 appointed. 
 
 ever, a certain private mark to their signatures, 
 
 which was to denote what they intended after 
 wards to say, namely, that the Cardinal had 
 forced them to sign. 
 
 At last, all was ready for these seeds of well- 
 devised legislation to be taken out and sown in 
 the Indies. Las Casas went to take leave of 
 
ADMINISTRATION OF XIMENES. 49 
 
 Ximenes and to kiss hands. He could not on 
 this occasion refrain from uttering his mind to 
 the Cardinal, telling him that the Jeronimite 
 Fathers would do no good thing, and informing Las Casa* 
 
 . . . i i takes leave 
 
 him of their interviews with the agents from the of the 
 
 Cardinal. 
 
 colonies. It moves our pity to think that the 
 sick old man, wearied enough with rapacious 
 Flemish courtiers and untameable Spanish gran 
 dees, should now be told, after he had given so 
 much time and attention to this business of the 
 Indies, that the mission would do no good. Well 
 may Las Casas add, that the Cardinal seemed 
 struck with alarm ; and that, after a short time, 
 he said, " Whom then can we trust ? You are 
 going there: be watchful for all." Upon this, 
 after receiving the Cardinal s benediction, Las 
 Casas left for Seville. 
 
 The Jeronimite Fathers and the Clerigo then 
 commenced their voyage, in different vessels, 
 however, for probably being somewhat tired of his 
 discourses, and perhaps not wishing to alarm the 
 colonists more than could be helped by being seen 
 in such close contact with one so odious to them 
 as Las Casas, the Fathers had contrived on some 
 E 
 
50 ADMINISTRATION OF XIMENES. 
 
 pretext to prevent his going with them, though 
 
 he much wished it ; and when they arrived at St. 
 
 TheJero- Domingo, they seemed inclined there, too, to 
 
 nimites 
 
 arrive take a separate course from what he thought 
 Domingo, right. He speaks of them as gained over by the 
 shrewd official men they fell amongst, such as the 
 Treasurer Pasamonte. In discourse with Las 
 Casas, the Fathers began, he says, to gild over 
 and excuse the inhumanity of the colonists ; and 
 what was a shameful defect in their mode of pro 
 ceeding according to his view of the case, they 
 did not put in execution the charge they had 
 received, to take away the Indians from the 
 Spanish Judges and men in office, though they 
 deprived the absentees of their Indians. 
 
 In three months time Zuazo arrived. Las 
 Casas now resolved on a bold, perhaps we may 
 say, a yiolent step, though if we had been eye 
 witnesses of the cruelties that he had seen, our 
 indignation, like his, might not always have been 
 Las Casas, amenable to prudence. He resolved, himself, to 
 the Judges, impeach the Judges.* To use his own phrase, 
 he brought against them a tremendous accusation 
 
 * The " Jueces de apelacion." 
 
ADMINISTRATION OF XIMENES. 51 
 
 (pusoles una terrible acusacion), both in respect 
 to their conduct in bringing Indians from the 
 Lucayan islands, and also in reference to the 
 infamous proceedings connected with an incident 
 in Cumana, where two poor Dominicans were left 
 to be murdered by the natives. Certainly, if any 
 charges were to be made against these Judges, it 
 must be admitted that the subjects of accusation 
 were well chosen. 
 
 The Jeronimite Fathers were much grieved at 
 this bold step being taken by Las Casas. They 
 evidently wished to manage things quietly ; and 
 were proceeding mainly with the second class of 
 remedies for the Indians, giving them in reparti- 
 miento to such of the colonists as they thought 
 well of, and publishing the orders for ameliorating 
 the condition of the subject people. The Fathers 
 seem on the whole to have made great efforts to 
 do good, which must not pass without due recog 
 nition. I think with Las Casas, that if they had 
 ventured to adopt the scheme, which he, Dr. 
 Palacios Kubios, and Antonio Montesino, had 
 planned (the main points of which were, the doing 
 away with the system of repartimientos and com 
 pulsory working at the mines), it would have 
 
52 ADMINISTRATION OF XIMENES. 
 
 The author 
 hazards a 
 remark 
 about 
 govern 
 ment. 
 
 been better ; and there is no doubt that, while 
 Ximenes lived, they would have had a sufficiently 
 powerful protector to enable them to carry out 
 such a measure. But, though not determined 
 enough to carry out such a bold undertaking, 
 which few men, indeed, would have had courage 
 for, and leaving many of the colonists in pos 
 session of their Indians, they still made great 
 efforts to carry out the second class of measures 
 for the relief of the Indians and the benefit of 
 the colony. 
 
 Las Casas may complain of the Jeronimites, 
 but I have no doubt they were more vigorous, 
 and aimed at better purposes than almost any 
 mere official persons would have done : and their 
 conduct illustrates to my mind what I have long 
 thought about government, that there are occa 
 sions when those do best in it who are not strictly 
 bred up for it, and who are not, therefore, likely 
 to have the vigour and force of their natures en 
 crusted with routine and deadened by a slavish 
 belief in the incomplete traditions of the past. 
 
 Such measured proceedings as the Jeronimite 
 Fathers at first adopted did not accord with the 
 temperament of Las Casas; neither were they 
 
ADMINISTRATION OF XIMENES. 53 
 
 such remedies as the fearful nature of the disease 
 demanded. Moreover, in addition to his dis 
 approval of their measures, he distrusted the men 
 themselves. He states that they had relations 
 whom they wished to benefit in the island of 
 Hispaniola, but as they feared him too much to 
 do so there, they recommended these relations to 
 Diego Velazquez, the Governor of Cuba ; and 
 Las Casas observed, that in a letter which he 
 happened to see when they were about to close 
 it, they signed themselves, " Chaplains to Your 
 Honour" (Capellanes de Vuestra Merced), a mode 
 of describing themselves which seemed to him 
 conclusive of the position the Fathers were going 
 to take up with regard to this Governor. The 
 Protector of the Indians, therefore, resolved to 
 return to Castille and to appeal against the 
 Fathers : and in this resolve he was strengthened 
 by the opinion of Zuazo and of Pedro de Cordova, 
 who still continued to be the head of the Domini 
 can Order in those parts. 
 
 The Fathers were much disconcerted when 
 they heard of the intention of Las Casas to return 
 to court, saying that he was a torch that would 
 set everything in a flame, and they had thoughts 
 
54 
 
 ADMINISTRATION OF XIMENES. 
 
 Las Casas 
 returns 
 to Spain, 
 1517. 
 
 Sees 
 Ximenes. 
 
 of stopping him ; but this was not within the 
 scope of their powers. What they could do, and 
 what they afterwards did, was to send one of their 
 own body to court, to make representations on 
 their behalf. 
 
 Meanwhile the Clerigo left St. Domingo in 
 May, 1517, and in July reached Aranda on the 
 Douro, where he found Cardinal Ximenes at the 
 point of death. Las Casas seems to have been 
 fated to appear to great personages a few days 
 before their death. This time, though, whatever 
 complaints he might have been able to make of 
 the administration of Indian affairs, he had no 
 thing to say which could wound the conscience 
 of the dying statesman. The Clerigo s letters to 
 Ximenes had, he says, been intercepted, and, in 
 the little that passed between them then, the 
 Protector of the Indians found the Cardinal ill- 
 informed of what had occurred in Hispaniola. 
 
CHAPTEK IV. 
 
 Las Casas is introduced to the Grand Chancellor, and lays 
 his Emigration Scheme before the King His Plans are 
 checked by the Death of the Chancellor He holds a Con 
 troversy with the Bishop of Burgos. 
 
 tf*| HOSE who have never lived at courts 
 have been very apt to magnify the vice 
 and treachery of such places, just as 
 those who dwell in the country are prone to be 
 lieve in the singular wickedness of towns; but, 
 after all, Virtue, like the rest of us, being some 
 times very weary of dulness, quits groves and 
 primeval settlements, to take up her abode with 
 polished people. And, certainly, whenever the 
 course of this narrative conducts us to the court 
 of Spain, even the most cursory reader cannot 
 fail to have the pleasure of observing that there 
 was at least sympathy for the injured, and gene- 
 
56 
 
 ADMINISTRATION OF 
 
 rally, in some quarter or other, an earnest en 
 deavour to redress the wrong, which stand in 
 striking and favourable contrast with the terrible 
 oppressions and misdeeds that meet his eyes at 
 4 every turn in the pages which record the pro 
 ceedings of the Spanish colonists. It is like 
 coming into daylight again after sudden darkness. 
 I cannot illustrate this contrast better than by 
 an incident which occurred in Trinidad about 
 this time, and which will serve to show what 
 enormities were occasionally perpetrated in the 
 West Indies, even under the supervision of 
 the Jeronimite Fathers. Such a narrative, 
 moreover, will give us a deeper interest in the 
 efforts of the Protector of the Indians, will 
 explain his vehemence, and tend to justify his 
 views. 
 
 Here, too, I must premise that Las Casas, 
 according to my observation of his writings and 
 character, may be thoroughly trusted whenever 
 
 Accuracy of he is speaking of things of which he has corn- 
 Las Casas. . 
 
 petent knowledge. Seeing his vehemence, an 
 ordinary observer might be apt to doubt his 
 accuracy, though there has never been a greater 
 mistake, or a much more common one, than to 
 
THE FLEMINGS. 57 
 
 confound vehemence with inaccuracy. Far from 
 being an inaccurate man, he was studiously accu 
 rate, which is to be seen throughout his history 
 in all manner of little things. His countenance,* His 
 too, though benevolence may be its chief cha 
 racteristic, gives strong indications of acuteness, 
 firmness, and refinement, and is rather the face of 
 a lawyer or a statesman than of an ecclesiastic. 
 Indeed he was not especially fitted for an eccle 
 siastic,! excepting in so far as a man of the 
 world, if essentially a good man, may make an 
 excellent ecclesiastic, as often happens. He was, 
 moreover, a gentleman, and in his history shows 
 delicacy and kindness in suppressing names where 
 there is no occasion to mention them, and where 
 the bringing persons forward would give them or 
 their descendants unnecessary pain. 
 
 The following narrative of what occurred at 
 
 * The portrait of Las Casas is to be seen, if I recollect 
 rightly, in a private collection at Seville. 
 
 f In a very nai ve way he lets you see somehow or other 
 in his history, that it was not so much care for the Faith, 
 though he was a deeply religious man, as natural pity that 
 led him to espouse the cause of the Indians, which, especially 
 in those times, would have been thought so much the inferior 
 motive. 
 
58 HOW INDIANS WERE 
 
 Trinidad, to hear which we are going to quit the 
 court of Spain for a time, is given on the authority 
 of Las Casas. 
 
 There was a certain man named Juan Bono, 
 and he was employed by the members of the 
 audiencia of St. Domingo to go and obtain 
 Indians. He and his men, to the number of 
 fifty or sixty, landed on the island of Trinidad. 
 Now the Indians of Trinidad were a mild, 
 loving, credulous race, the enemies of the Caribs 
 who ate human flesh. On Juan Bono s land 
 ing, the Indians, armed with bows and arrows, 
 went to meet the Spaniards, and to ask them 
 who they were, and what they wanted. Juan 
 Bono replied, that his crew were good and 
 peaceful people, who had come to live with the 
 Indians ; upon which, as the commencement of 
 good fellowship, the natives offered to build 
 houses for the Spaniards. The Spanish captain 
 expressed a wish to have one large house built. 
 The accommodating Indians set about building 
 it. It was to be in the form of a bell, and to be 
 large enough for a hundred persons to live in. 
 On any great occasion it would hold many more. 
 Every day, while this house was being built, 
 
OBTAINED AT TRINIDAD. 59 
 
 the Spaniards were fed with fish, bread, and fruit Juan 
 
 Bono s 
 
 by their good-natured hosts. Juan Bono was story. 
 very anxious to see the roof on, and the Indians 
 continued to work at the building with alacrity. 
 At last it was completed, being two stories high, 
 and so constructed that those within could not see 
 those without. Upon a certain day Juan Bono 
 collected the Indians together, men, women, and 
 children, in the building, to see, as he told them, 
 " what was to be done." Whether they thought 
 they were coming to some festival, or that they 
 were to do something more for the great house, 
 does not appear. However, there they all were, 
 four hundred of them, looking with much delight 
 at their own handiwork. Meanwhile, Juan Bono 
 brought his men round the building, with drawn 
 swords in their hands: then, having thoroughly 
 entrapped his Indian friends, he entered with a 
 party of armed men, and bade the Indians keep 
 still, or he would kill them. They did not listen 
 to him, but rushed against the door. A horrible 
 massacre ensued. Some of the Indians forced 
 their way out, but many of them, stupified at 
 what they saw, and losing heart, were captured 
 and bound. A hundred, however, escaped, and, 
 
60 HOW INDIANS WERE 
 
 Juah snatching up their arms, assembled in one of 
 
 story. their own houses, and prepared to defend them 
 
 selves. Juan Bono summoned them to sur 
 render : they would not hear of it ; and then, as 
 Las Casas says, " he resolved to pay them com 
 pletely for the hospitality and kind treatment he 
 had received," and so, setting fire to the house, the 
 whole hundred men, together with some women 
 and children, were burnt alive. The Spanish 
 captain and his men retired to the ships with their 
 captives: and his vessel happening to touch at 
 Porto Rico when the Jeronimite Fathers were 
 there, gave occasion to Las Casas to complain of 
 His this proceeding to the Fathers, who, however, 
 
 depth of 
 
 ingratitude, did nothing in the way of remedy or punish 
 ment. The reader will be surprised to hear the 
 Clerigo s authority for this deplorable narrative. 
 It is Juan Bono himself. " From his own mouth 
 I heard that which I write. Juan Bono acknow 
 ledged that never in hia life had he met with the 
 kindness of father and mother but in the island 
 of Trinidad. Well, then, man of perdition, 
 why did you reward them with such ungrateful 
 wickedness and cruelty ? On my faith, Padre 
 because they (he meant the auditors) gave me ftr 
 
OBTAINED AT TRINIDAD. 61 
 
 destruction (he meant instruction) to take them in 
 peace if I could not by war. " 
 
 Such were the transactions which Las Casas 
 must have had in his mind when he was pleading 
 the cause of the Indians at the court of Spain ; 
 and that man would have been more than mortal, 
 who, brooding over these things, and struggling 
 to find a remedy for them, was always temperate 
 in his language and courtly in his demeanour. 
 I feel confident that St. Paul would not have 
 been so. 
 
 Returning now to the court of Spain, I will Spanish 
 
 govern- 
 
 recount what took place immediately after the ment 
 
 r t on the 
 
 death of the great Cardinal. On that event the deat}l f 
 
 Ximenes. 
 
 administration of the affairs of Spain fell inevitably 
 into much confusion. The King, as mentioned 
 before, was only sixteen years old ; and it could 
 not be expected that he was yet to have much 
 real weight in affairs. It has been a common 
 saying, that he did not give promise, at this period 
 jf his life, of the sagacity which he afterwards 
 manifested. This is a mistake. The truth is, Charles 
 
 the Fifth 
 
 that Charles was as a boy what he turned out to as a boy. 
 be as a man grave, undemonstrative, cautious, 
 
62 ADMINISTRATION OF 
 
 thoughtful, valiant. No doubt he was very ob 
 servant ; and I think it is manifest that the infor 
 mation he now obtained about Indian affairs, 
 swayed him throughout his reign, and influenced 
 him in the advice he gave in a great matter, 
 connected with the government of the Spanish 
 colonies, which occurred many years after, at a 
 period when he had withdrawn for the most part 
 from all human affairs. At this time of his life 
 he trusted to his councillors, like a sensible boy, 
 was very constant to them, and exceedingly liberal 
 to all persons about him. 
 
 The two men who had now the supreme 
 authority in Spain, were Chievres,* the King s 
 former Governor, and his present Lord Chamber 
 lain and the Grand Chancellor, Jean Salvage, 
 Chievres called by the Spaniards Selvagius. The Chan- 
 
 and Selva- -i i 
 
 giusruie cellor settled all matters connected with jus- 
 
 Spain. . 1*1 
 
 tice ; the other, those connected with patronage. 
 Las Casas speaks well of the disposition of the 
 Flemings, especially of their humanity; and he 
 
 * He is called familiarly Chievres by writers of that 
 period; but his name was William de Croy, Lord of 
 Chievres, in Hainault, afterwards Marquis or Duke of 
 Aarschot. 
 
THE FLEMINGS. 
 
 63 
 
 seems to think that the Chancellor was an upright 
 man. 
 
 These ministers were not without their especial Perplexity 
 perplexities. They did not know whom to trust, Flemings, 
 or what to do : and they were too cautious to 
 act without sufficient knowledge. They did not 
 even know the language of the country they 
 governed. The King himself was busy learning 
 it. In this state of things the public business 
 languished. 
 
 The affairs of the Indies, however, gained 
 much more attention than might have been ex 
 pected at this juncture. It happened thus: as 
 Las Casas was at St. Domingo, on his way to 
 appeal against the proceedings of the Jeroni- 
 mite Fathers, he had seen those Franciscan monks 
 from Picardy, who had now been some time in 
 the island, and, as the reader may remember, 
 had formed part of Pedro de Cordova s company, 
 when he set out for the Terra-firma. These 
 monks, with others, had signed letters of recom 
 mendation in favour of Las Casas, and by good Las Casas 
 
 made 
 
 fortune some of the foreign monks were known known to 
 to the Grand Chancellor, and their signatures Chancellor. 
 
64 
 
 ADMINISTRATION OF 
 
 proved a favourable introduction for the Protector 
 of the Indians. He soon enlarged the advantages 
 arising from this introduction ; and at last be 
 came on such terms with the Chancellor, that this 
 great functionary used to give Las Casas all the 
 letters and memorials from the colonists or their 
 representatives, and the Clerigo then turned them 
 into Latin, and made his remarks upon them, 
 showing what was true and what was false, or 
 wherein he approved, or dissented from, the views 
 The Chan- of the writer. Finally, the Grand Chancellor 
 LasCasas spoke of Las Casas to the King, and received his 
 fofthe Highness s commands that they two should con 
 
 sult together, and provide a remedy for the bad 
 government of the Indies.* 
 
 Again, therefore, great hopes might naturally 
 be entertained that something effectual would 
 now be done on behalf of the Indians. Las Casas 
 prepared his memorials, taking for his basis the 
 plan which the Jeronimites had carried out to > ; 
 Hispaniola, and which by this time they had- 1 
 partially acted upon. He added, however, some d 
 
 * "Dominus noster jubet quod vos et ego apponamus 
 remedia Indis faciatis vestra memorialia." LAS CASAS, 
 Hist, de las Indias, MS., lib. iii. cap. 99. 
 
 Indies. 
 
THE FLEMINGS. 65 
 
 other things; amongst them, that of securing to 
 the Indians their entire liberty. And he provided 
 a scheme for furnishing Hispaniola with labourers 
 from the mother country. 
 
 The outline of this scheme was as follows: 
 The King was to give to every labourer willing to Proposed 
 emigrate to Hispaniola his living during the fronfspai 
 journey from his place of abode to Seville, at the 
 rate of half a real a day throughout the journey, 
 for great and small, child and parent. At Seville 
 the emigrants were to be lodged in the Casa de 
 la Contratacion (the India House), and were to 
 have from eleven to thirteen maravedis a day. 
 From thence they were to have a free passage to 
 Hispaniola, and to be provided with food for a 
 year. 5 * And if the climate " should try them so 
 
 * " La orden de la poblacion della hizo de esta manera ; 
 que el Bey diese a cada labrador que quisiese venir a poblar 
 en ella desde que partiese de su poblacion hasta Sevilla de 
 comer, para lo qual se senalo a cada persona chico con 
 grande medio real cada dia ; y en Sevilla se les diese posada 
 en la casa de la Contratacion, y once a trece maravedises 
 para comer cada dia, de manera que tanto se dava al nifio 
 de teta, como a sus Padres. 
 
 " De alii pasage y matalotage hasta esta Isla, y en ella un 
 ano de comer hasta que ellos lo tuviesen de suyo. Y si la 
 tierra los probase tanto que no estubiesen para trabajar 
 P 
 
6ti ADMINISTRATION OF 
 
 much," that at the expiration of this year they 
 should not be able to work for themselves, the 
 King was to continue to maintain them, but this 
 extra maintenance was to be put down to the 
 account of the emigrants, as a loan which they 
 were to repay. The King was to give them lands 
 (his own lands), furnish them with ploughshares 
 and spades, and provide medicines for them. 
 Lastly, whatever rights and profits accrued from 
 their holdings were to become hereditary. This 
 was certainly a most liberal plan of emigration. 
 And, in addition, there were other privileges held 
 out as inducements to these labourers. 
 
 In connection with the above scheme, Las 
 Licences Casas, unfortunately for his reputation in after 
 
 to import 
 
 negroes ages, added another provision, namely, that each 
 
 by Las Spanish resident in the island should have licence 
 
 Casas. 
 
 to import a dozen negro slaves. 
 
 The origin of this suggestion was, as he 
 informs us, that the colonists had told him, that 
 
 mas tiempo de un ano, que lo que demas de un afio que el 
 Rey les diese, fuese prestado para que se lo pagase quando 
 pudiese." LAS CASAS, Hist, de las Indias, MS., lib. iii. 
 cap. 10. 
 
THE FLEMINGS. 67 
 
 if licence were given them to import a dozen 
 negro slaves each, they, the colonists, would 
 then set free the Indians. And so, recollecting 
 that statement of the colonists, he added this 
 provision. LAS CASAS, writing his history in Heafter- 
 his old age, thus frankly owns his error : " This his error, 
 advice, that licence should be given to bring 
 negro slaves to these lands, the Clerigo Casas first 
 gave, not considering the injustice with which 
 the Portuguese take them, and make them slaves ; 
 which advice, after he had apprehended the nature 
 of the thing, he would not have given for all he 
 had in the world. For he always held that they 
 had been made slaves unjustly and tyrannically ; 
 for the same reason holds good of them as of the 
 Indians."* The above confession is delicately 
 and truthfully worded " not considering " he 
 does not say, not being aware of; but, though it 
 
 * " Este aviso de que se diese licencia para traer esclavos 
 negros a estas tierras ; dio primero el Clerigo Casas, no ad- 
 virtiendo la injusticia con que los Portugueses los toman y 
 haeen esclavos ; el qual despues de que cayd en ello no lo 
 diera por quanto habia en el mundo. Porque siempre los 
 tuvo por injusta y tiranicamente hechos esclavos : porque 
 la misma razon es de ellos que de los Indios." LAS CASAS, 
 Hist, de las Indias, MS., lib. iii. cap. 101. 
 
68 
 
 ADMINISTRATION OF 
 
 Negro 
 slavery not 
 introduced 
 into the 
 Indies by 
 Las Casas. 
 
 The Jero- 
 nimites 
 give the 
 same 
 advice as 
 Las Casas. 
 
 was a matter known to him, his moral sense was 
 not watchful, as it were, about it. We must be 
 careful not to press the admissions of a generous 
 mind too far, or to exaggerate the importance of 
 the suggestion of Las Casas. 
 
 It would be quite erroneous to look upon this 
 suggestion as being the introduction of negro 
 slavery. From the earliest times of the discovery 
 of America, negroes had been sent there ; and the 
 young King Charles had, while in Flanders, granted 
 licences to his courtiers for the importation of ne 
 groes into Hispaniola. But, what is of more signi 
 ficance, and what it is strange that Las Casas was 
 not aware of, or did not mention, the Jeronimite 
 Fathers had also come to the conclusion that 
 negroes must be introduced into the West Indies. 
 Writing in January, 1518, when the Fathers could 
 not have known what was passing in Spain in 
 relation to this subject, they recommended licences 
 to be given to the inhabitants of Hispaniola, or to 
 other persons, to bring negroes there. From the 
 tenour of their letter it appears that they had 
 before recommended the same thing. Zuazo, the 
 judge of residencia, and the legal colleague of Las 
 Casas, wrote to the same effect. He, however, 
 
THE FLEMINGS. 
 
 69 
 
 suggested that the negroes should be placed in 
 settlements, and married. Fray Bernandino de 
 Manzanedo, the Jeronimite Father, who had been 
 sent over to counteract Las Casas, gave the same 
 advice as his brethren about the introduction of 
 negroes. He added a proviso, which does not 
 appear in their letter (perhaps it did exist in one 
 of the earlier ones), that there should be as many 
 women as men sent over, or more. 
 
 The suggestion of Las Casas was approved Seivagius 
 
 and Adrian 
 
 of by the Chancellor, and by Adrian, the colleague approve 
 
 J J this advic. 
 
 of the late Cardinal: and, indeed, it is probable 
 there was hardly a man of that time who would 
 have seen further than the excellent Clerigo did. 
 Las Casas was asked, what number of negroes 
 would suffice ? He replied that he did not know ; 
 upon which a letter was sent to the officers of the 
 India House at Seville, to ascertain the fit number 
 in their opinion. They said that four thousand 
 would at present suffice, being one thousand for 
 each of the islands, Hispaniola, Porto Rico, Cuba, 
 and Jamaica. Somebody now suggested to the 
 Governor De Bresa, a Fleming of much influence Licence to 
 
 De Bresa 
 
 and a member of the Council, that he should ask for 4000 
 for this licence to be given to him. De Bresa 
 
70 ADMINISTRATION OF 
 
 accordingly asked the King for it, who granted 
 his request ; and the Fleming sold this licence to 
 certain Genoese merchants for twenty-five thou 
 sand ducats, having obtained from the King a 
 pledge that for eight years he would give no other 
 licence of this kind. 
 
 The consequence of this monopoly enjoyed by 
 the Genoese merchants was, that negroes were 
 sold at a great price, of which there are frequent 
 complaints. Both Las Casas and Pasamonte 
 (rarely found in accord) suggested to the King 
 Unexpected that it would be better to pay the twenty-five 
 
 resultofthe IT 
 
 monopoly, thousand ducats and resume the licence, or to 
 abridge its term. Figueroa, writing to the Em 
 peror from St. Domingo in July, 1520, says: 
 " Negroes are very much in request : none have 
 come for about a year. It would have been 
 better to have given De Bresa the customs duties 
 (i. e. the duties that had been usually paid on 
 the importation of slaves) than to have placed a 
 prohibition." I have scarcely a doubt that the 
 immediate effect of the measure adopted in conse 
 quence of the Clerigo s suggestion was greatly to 
 check that importation of negro slaves, which 
 
THE FLEMINGS. 71 
 
 otherwise, had the licence been general, would 
 have been very abundant. 
 
 Before quitting this subject, something must 
 be said for Las Casas which he does not allege 
 for himself.* This suggestion of his about 
 the negroes was not an isolated one. Had 
 all his suggestions been carried out, and the 
 Indians thereby been preserved, as I firmly be 
 lieve they might have been, these negroes might 
 have remained a very insignificant number in the 
 general population. By the destruction of In 
 dians a void in the laborious part of the com 
 munity was being constantly created, which had 
 to be filled up by the labour of negroes. The 
 negroes could bear the labour in the mines much 
 better than the Indians; and any man who per 
 ceived that a race, of whose Christian virtues and 
 capabilities he thought highly, were fading away 
 by reason of being subjected to labour which 
 their natures were incompetent to endure, and 
 
 * Las Casas is much misrepresented by Herrera, who 
 gives an account of the suggestion as if it were made, not 
 in addition to, but in substitution for, other measures 
 
72 ADMINISTRATION OF 
 
 which they were most unjustly condemned to, 
 might prefer the misery of the smaller number 
 of another race treated with equal injustice, but 
 more capable of enduring it. I do not say that 
 Las Casas considered all these things; but, at 
 any rate, in estimating his conduct, we must re 
 collect, that we look at the matter centuries after 
 it occurred, and see all the extent of the evil 
 arising from circumstances which no man could 
 then be expected to foresee, and which were in 
 consistent with the rest of the Clerigo s plans for 
 the preservation of the Indians. 
 
 I suspect that the wisest amongst us would 
 very likely have erred with him : and I am not 
 sure that, taking all his plans together, and taking 
 for granted, as he did then, that his influence at 
 oourt was to last, his suggestion about the negroes 
 was an impolitic one. 
 
 One more piece of advice Las Casas gave at 
 this time, which, if it had been adopted, would 
 have been most serviceable. He proposed thai, 
 forts for mercantile purposes, containing about 
 thirty persons, should be erected at intervals 
 along the coast of the Terra-firma, to traffic with 
 merchandize of Spain for gold, silver, and precious 
 
THE FLEMINGS 73 
 
 stones; and, in each of these forts, ecclesiastics 
 were to be placed, to undertake the superintend 
 ence of spiritual matters. In this scheme may 
 be seen an anticipation of our own plans for com 
 mercial intercourse with Africa. And, indeed, 
 one is constantly reminded by the proceedings in 
 those times of what has occurred much later and 
 under the auspices of other nations. 
 
 Of all these suggestions, some of them certainly 
 excellent, the only questionable one was at once 
 adopted. Such is the irony of life. If we may 
 imagine immortal beings beholding, with alterna 
 tions of hope and fear, the great contests of the 
 world, this fatal conclusion was a thing which 
 all those who love mankind must have regarded 
 with poignant sorrow and dismay. 
 
 Turning our thoughts from bad angels to bad 
 men, it is vexatious to find the Bishop of Burgos 
 creeping back to power just at this period. For 
 a long time the Bishop had been quite in the 
 background : and Conchillos, Ferdinand s minis 
 ter, who also formerly had great weight in the 
 government of the Indies, finding himself without 
 any authority, had retired to his estate. But 
 
74 
 
 ADMINISTRATION OP 
 
 Bishop of 
 Burgos 
 recalled to 
 power. 
 
 Las Casas 
 falls ill. 
 
 The King s 
 regard for 
 him. 
 
 now, owing, it is said, to the effect of sixteen 
 thousand ducats, or because the Bishop had been 
 so long engaged in the Indian administration 
 that his absence was felt (for Las Casas is by no 
 means certain of the bribery), the Bishop was re 
 called to the Council ; and he opposed, as quietly 
 as he could, the excellent plans of Las Casas for 
 colonization. The Bishop said, that for these 
 twenty years he had been endeavouring to find 
 labourers to go to the Indies, and that he had 
 not yet found twenty men who would go. Las 
 Casas engaged to find three thousand. The 
 Clerigo, too, could give a reason why the Bishop 
 had not succeeded in getting labourers, saying 
 that it was because the Indies had been made a 
 penal colony. 
 
 At the time of these altercations in the Coun 
 cil, the court had been moving from Valladolid, 
 in order that the King might take formal posses 
 sion of the throne of Aragon. In the course of 
 the journey, at Aranda on the Douro, Las Casas 
 fell ill, and was left behind, much regretted, as 
 he tells us, even the boy King saying, (f I wonder 
 how Micer Bartholomew is " ( Oh quo tal estard 
 Micer Bartolome). The King, young as he was, 
 
THE FLEMINGS. 7o 
 
 was likely to approve of a sound-hearted man like 
 Las Casas ; and, though a person who has but 
 one subject is apt to be rather troublesome, yet 
 his devotedness elicits a certain interest for him. 
 Moreover, anything that has life and earnestness 
 in it is welcome to sombre people. I am parti 
 cular in noticing this liking of the young King 
 for Las Casas, as I cannot but attribute some of 
 the King s future proceedings with regard to the 
 Indians to the information he was silently acquir 
 ing from the Clerigo at this period. Thus it is 
 that good seed is not lost, which should be a com 
 fort to those who in their own time make great 
 efforts, and seem to effect nothing. In a few days 
 the Clerigo, whom the court left ill at Aranda, 
 got better, and he overtook them before they Las Casas 
 reached Saragossa. The Grand Chancellor re 
 ceived him very kindly. The great business of 
 the reformation of the Indian government, of 
 which only the part that was no reformation at all 
 had been accomplished, was now to be proceeded 
 with. Again, however, it was delayed this time 
 by the illness of the Bishop of Burgos, who had 
 now to be consulted ; though, as Las Casas 
 retained his full favour with the Chancellor, of 
 
76 ADMINISTRATION OF 
 
 which there is good evidence, the Bishop was not 
 able to thwart the views of the Clerigo. Las 
 Casas received at this juncture the evidence of 
 Father Roman concerning the horrible cruelties 
 committed by one of the captains of Pedrarias, 
 named Espinosa, which caused the destruction of 
 40,000 souls ; * and Las Casas took care to bring 
 this evidence before the Chancellor, who sent him 
 with it to the Bishop. 
 
 At last, on the Bishop s recovery, the Junto 
 for the business of the Indies was on the point of 
 being called together " to-morrow," it may be 
 (Las Casas is speaking of a certain Friday when 
 he is to sup with the Chancellor), when, in the 
 evening of that day, the Chancellor s servants tell 
 him that a little page of his, a nephew, who was 
 ill in the house, is dead, at which he appeared 
 
 * " Entre tanto recibio una Carta el Clerigo de Sevilla del 
 Padre Fray Reginaldo de quien arriba en el Capftulo no- 
 venta y ocho hizimos mencion, haciendole saber, como habia 
 llegado alii de la tierra firme un Religiose de San Fran 
 cisco, llamado Fray Francisco de Sant Roman, que afirmaba 
 por sus ojos, haver visto meter a espada, y echar a perros 
 brabos sobre quarenta mill animas de Indios." LAS CASAS. 
 Hist, de las Indias, MS., lib. iii. cap. 102. 
 
THE FLEMINGS. 
 
 77 
 
 very sorrowful. " To-morrow " the Chancellor 
 himself feels ill, and does not go to the palace. 
 There are symptoms of fever. On Monday, how 
 ever, he is well enough to go to the window of 
 his room. We may imagine with what anxiety 
 Las Casas heard of the illness : it may be that 
 he was the very person who, ever on the watch, 
 perceived the Chancellor at the window. But the 
 fever was not to be baffled : they did not bleed 
 the poor man in time, according to the theory of 
 those days. He died, and on Wednesday he was 
 not even on the face of the earth. fe And the 
 Grand Chancellor being dead, of a truth there 
 died, for that time, all hope of a remedy for the 
 Indians." 
 
 liinoss and 
 
 death of 
 
 
 This, as Las Casas remarks, was the second A second 
 
 time* when the " salvation " of those nations (the 
 
 * I suppose the first time was when, according to Las 
 Casas, Ximenes took Indian affairs in hand ; but I should 
 name three occasions 1. The appointment of the Junta 
 who made the laws of Burgos. 2. The appointment of 
 Jeronimites. 3. The present one, viz. the appointment by 
 the King of the Chancellor Selvagius and Las Casas to pro 
 vide a remedy for the Indies. 
 
 Averse 
 
 for the 
 Jndies. 
 
78 ADMINISTRATION OF 
 
 Indians) seemed assured, and when a reverse 
 occurred, and hope altogether vanished away. So 
 fearfully valuable is the life of a great man in a 
 despotic state : and it may console us, who live 
 under representative governments, for a certain 
 mediocrity and difficulty in the management of 
 public affairs, that at least we are not subject to 
 these dreadful reverses occasioned by the loss of 
 one man. What is gained by us is mostly gained 
 by the increase of insight in large bodies of 
 men, and will live and augment itself with the 
 advancement of the general thought of the nation. 
 
 Upon the Grand Chancellor s death, the Bishop 
 of Burgos instantly regained all his old influence 
 in the government of the Indies ; and down went 
 the Clerigo " into the abysses," as he expresses it. 
 Nothing was to be done with the interim Chan 
 cellor, a very phlegmatic Dean,* who praised the 
 Clerigo s unwearied efforts, but could not summon 
 up energy enough to assist him : " and certainly," 
 to use our historian s own words, (( when a man 
 of a choleric temperament, like the Clerigo, and 
 
 * The Dean of Besanqon. 
 
THE FLEMINGS. 79 
 
 an excessively phlegmatic person, like the good 
 Dean, have to transact business together, it is no 
 slight torment to each of them. However," he 
 slyly adds, " it did not kill the Dean, such was 
 his phlegmatic patience." 
 
 At this time, on the Bishop of Burgos s sugges- Council for 
 
 the Indies. 
 
 tion, an especial Council for Indian affairs was 1518. 
 formed. He was appointed president ; Hernando 
 de Vega and Zapata, both of whom had connec 
 tions in the colonies, and who had themselves 
 been deprived of Indians by the first law of 
 Ximenes, were of this Council ; Peter Martyr, 
 the historian, was put upon it; also Don Garcia 
 de Padilla, the only person in the Council likely 
 to take up new views. The appointment of such 
 a council was very disheartening to Las Casas, 
 who, nevertheless, like a brave man as he was, 
 went about his work just as if all were smooth 
 before him and shining brightly upon him. 
 
 The first act of the Bishop was to recal the Jeronimitea 
 Jeronimite Fathers. Though for some time be 
 fore this they had possessed no real power (we 
 find that their letters to the authorities in Spain 
 were never answered), their presence and their 
 influence must still have been productive of 
 
80 
 
 ADMINISTRATION OF 
 
 good, and must at least have been felt as a con 
 siderable restraint upon evil-doers. Those, there 
 fore, who cared for the welfare of the Indies, must 
 have been sorry to see the last vestige of the 
 policy of the great Ximenes now altogether effaced 
 from the Indian government. 
 
 It has been stated* that, on the Jeronimite 
 
 Fathers placing the Indians in settlements, the 
 
 small-pox came among them and carried off num- 
 
 Effect of bers. As I said before, I think this cause of the 
 
 the small 
 pox in the destruction of the Indians (a very convenient one 
 
 Indies v 
 
 over-rated. f or the conquerors to allege) has been exagge 
 rated ; and I am confirmed in this opinion by a 
 letter written by Zuazo, which must have arrived 
 at court about four or five months before this 
 time, in which he says nothing of the small- pox, 
 but assigns as one of the main causes of the de 
 crease of the Indians the frequent change of 
 government that there had been, which led to 
 new repartimientos, and to changes of climate and 
 water for the Indians, which were fatal to many 
 of them ; " as in a number of small things, passed 
 
 * See OVIEDO and HERRERA. 
 
THE FLEMINGS. 81 
 
 rapidly from hand to hand, even with care, the 
 uumber is soon diminished." 
 
 Just at this time, when the Bishop of Burgos 
 was carrying it with a high hand in the Council 
 of the Indies, a little gleam of good fortune broke 
 most unexpectedly upon Las Casas and his cause. 
 In all his affairs at court, he had principally been 
 conversant with the late Chancellor; yet some 
 knowledge of the business for which Las Casas 
 worked at court with such indomitable persever 
 ance was doubtless generally circulated amongst 
 the courtiers. Amongst them there was a certain 
 Monsieur de Bure (a young man, as I conjecture), 
 who, it appears, had a desire to make himself ac 
 quainted with this business of the Indians., He 
 caused his wish to be made known to the Clerigo : 
 they had a meeting in the palace, and Las Casas 
 acquainted him fully with the whole state of the Flemish 
 case. Monsieur de Bure was much affected by favour 
 the Clerigo s narration. De Bure was a powerful 
 man, being the nephew of De Laxao,* who en 
 joyed great influence with the King, and who, 
 
 * Carl Puper, Lord of Laxao. 
 G 
 
82 
 
 ADMINISTRATION OF 
 
 being the sommelier du corps,* slept in the King s 
 room. De Laxao was a person celebrated for his 
 wit, and probably on that account his society was 
 exceedingly relished by the grave young King. 
 Monsieur de Bure brought Las Casas to his uncle 
 De Laxao, who also was much interested in the 
 account which Las Casas gave of Indian affairs, 
 and the result was, that he found protectors in 
 these powerful men of the King s household and 
 council. 
 
 Resideticias 
 taken of 
 several 
 authorities 
 in the 
 Indies. 
 
 At this time the Spanish court sent over 
 Rodrigo de Figueroa to take a residencia of the 
 auditors of St. Domingo, and of the judges ap 
 pointed by the Admiral. A certain Doctor de la 
 Gama was appointed to take a residencia of the 
 Lieutenant- Governor of San Juan, and of Yelaz- 
 
 * Sommelier was corrupted into Sumiller by the Spaniards. 
 The following is the definition of the office : " La persona 
 muy distinguida en palacio, a cuyo cargo esta la asistencia 
 al rey en su retrete, para vestirle y desnudarle, y todo lo 
 perteneciente a la cama real. Summus pr&fectus ciibiculi 
 regis. 
 
 " Es nombre introducido en Castilla con la casa de Bor- 
 gona." Diccionario de la Lengua Castellana por la Aca- 
 demia Espanola. 
 
THE FLEMINGS. 83 
 
 quez in Cuba; and Lope de Sosa was sent to 
 succeed Pedrarias as governor of the Terra-firma, 
 and to take a residencia of the same Governor. 
 Information having been given that the inhabi 
 tants of Trinidad were cannibals, the King s Coun 
 cil resolved to order war to be made upon them ; 
 but Las Casas prevailed upon the Council to in 
 sert in the instructions which Figueroa was to 
 take with him, that, as the Clerigo Bartolome de 
 Las Casas asserted that the natives of Trinidad 
 were not cannibals, Figueroa should, on arriving 
 at St. Domingo, examine carefully into the truth 
 of this statement. He did so, and found that The natives 
 these poor islanders were not cannibals, but very no t 6anni- 
 quiet people, as Figueroa himself afterwards bore 
 testimony. 
 
 At this period the Clerigo received a letter Pedrode 
 from Pedro de Cordova, in which, after telling of letter, 
 some horrible exploits of the Spaniards in the 
 island of Trinidad, and expressing himself in a 
 way that seems to show he was much dissatisfied 
 with the proceedings of the Jeronimite Fathers, 
 the good prelate of the Dominicans went on to 
 say, that he wished the King would set apart one 
 hundred leagues on the coast of the Terra-firma 
 
84 ADMINISTRATION OF 
 
 about Cumana, to be entered solely by the 
 Franciscan and Dominican monks, for the purpose 
 of preaching the Gospel there. His desire was, 
 that no layman might be permitted to enter, so 
 that no hindrance might occur to the good work ; 
 and he suggested, that, if Las Casas could not 
 obtain a hundred leagues, he should endeavour to 
 obtain ten ; and that, if he could not get such a 
 tract of land on the Terra-firma set apart for this 
 purpose, he should try and get some little islands, 
 called the Islands of Alonso, about fifteen or 
 twenty leagues from the coast. The object was, 
 that this land set apart might be a city of refuge 
 for the poor Indians, and a place wherein to teach 
 the Gospel to them. Pedro de Cordova added 
 that, if none of these requests should be granted, 
 he would recal the brethren of his Order from 
 those parts, for it was of no use their preaching 
 "when the Indians saw those who called them 
 selves Christians acting in opposition to Chris 
 tians." 
 
 The good Father imagined that Las Casas 
 was very powerful at court, not knowing how 
 things had been changed by the death of the 
 Chancellor, and by the return of the Bishop of 
 
THE FLEMINGS. 85 
 
 Burgos to power. Las Casas, however, did what 
 he could to further the request of Pedro de Cor 
 dova, but with no avail, the Bishop of Burgos 
 saying, the King would be well advised indeed to 
 grant a hundred leagues without any profit to 
 himself. Such was the reply, as Las Casas notes, 
 of one of the successors of the apostles, who laid 
 down their lives for the sake of conversion. 
 And, as for profit to the King, "no profit did 
 he derive for forty years and more from those 
 hundred leagues, or from eight thousand in addi 
 tion, except to have them ravaged, desolated, and 
 destroyed. * 
 
 As nothing could be done at present in the 
 scheme suggested by Pedro de Cordova, Las 
 Casas returned to the prosecution of his own Emigration 
 plan, namely, the sending out of labourers to the Las Casas. 
 West India islands. In this he was favoured by 
 Cardinal Adrian and the other Flemings ; and 
 he succeeded in obtaining all the provisions and 
 orders that he wanted for that purpose. Amongst 
 others, he procured that a certain esquire called 
 
 * LAS CASAS, Hist, de las Tndias, MS., lib. iii. cap. 104. 
 
86 PLAN OF LAS CASAS FOR 
 
 Berrio, an Italian, should be appointed by the 
 King, and called the king s captain. He was to 
 accompany Las Casas, to be under his orders, 
 and to give notice by trumpet in the various 
 towns of the purpose which Las Casas came to 
 announce. This man, however, had no intention 
 of really serving under the Clerigo, but he went 
 to the Bishop of Burgos, and secretly got his 
 orders altered from "Do what he shall desire 
 you," to " Do what may seem good to you."* 
 
 The Clerigo, with his squire and other atten 
 dants, set off on his expedition for procuring emi 
 grant labourers. He directed his course from 
 Saragossa towards Castille, assembling the people 
 in the churches, and informing them of the benefits 
 and privileges they would acquire by emigrating. 
 Numbers consented to go, inscribing their names 
 in a book. At Berlanga, out of a population of 
 two hundred, more than seventy inscribed their 
 names. It gives a curious insight into those 
 times, to see that the inducement with these 
 
 * " Manda el Obispo luego que se raya la Cedula, y que 
 donde decia hagais lo que el os dixere, hagais lo que os 
 pareciere." LAS CASAS, Hist de las Indias, MS., lib. iii. 
 cap. 104. 
 
\ 
 
 FOUNDING A COLONY. 37 
 
 people to emigrate, was to get away from the 
 seignorial rights over them. They came to Las 
 Casas with the greatest secrecy ; and he relates 
 this speech made by four of them. " Senor, no one A motive 
 of us wishes to go to the Indies for want of means gration. 
 here, for each of us has a hundred thousand mara- 
 vedis of hacienda and more, but we go to leave 
 our children in a free land under royal juris 
 diction."* 
 
 As was to be expected, the lords of these 
 places were very hostile to Las Casas ; but their 
 opposition was a trifling evil compared to the in 
 subordination of Berrio. This man often re 
 quested leave to go to Andalucia, where his wife 
 was. The Clerigo would not allow this ; they 
 would come, he said, to Andalucia in good time ; 
 they were upon duty now : but no remonstrances 
 sufficed to retain Berrio, who came one day, 
 booted and spurred, to the Clerigo, and asked if 
 he had any orders for Andalucia. Las Casas 
 then learrt for the first time that this Berrio was 
 in fact no servant of his, but free to act for him 
 self: and the man accordingly took his departure 
 
 * LAS CASAS, Hist, de las Iiidias, MS., lib. iii. cap. 104. 
 
83 PLAN OF LAS CASAS FOR 
 
 in this most wilful fashion. The mischief did 
 not stop here. Berrio went to Andalucia, and, 
 having collected about two hundred vagabonds, 
 tapsters and roysterers and idle people, anything 
 but labourers, went with them to the India House 
 at Seville. The official persons there, having 
 received no orders about them, were in complete 
 perplexity what to do. They shipped them off, 
 however, in two vessels which happened to be on 
 the point of sailing at that time ; and the unfor 
 tunate rabble of emigrants arrived in this way at 
 St. Domingo. There again the official people had 
 received no orders to provide anything for the 
 emigrants, many of whom died; others crowded 
 into the hospitals ; others returned to their former 
 mode of life ; and others preyed upon the Indians. 
 Thus ended this miserable expedition ; and this 
 ending may justly be attributed to the outrageous 
 conduct of the Bishop of Burgos in altering a 
 despatch, after it had been signed. 
 
 Las Casas resolved to return to court. He 
 was now fully assured of the facility of obtaining 
 emigrants, but he did not wish to do any more at 
 present than he had done in the matter, consider- 
 
FOUNDING A COLONY. 89 
 
 ing the probable opposition of the great lords and 
 the defection of Berrio, and also taking into ac 
 count the readiness of the common people to 
 emigrate, which made it only a subject of more 
 urgent concern to consider carefully what was to 
 be done. When the Bishop of Burgos had heard 
 the Clerigo s account of his expedition, in which 
 he told his Lordship that he could answer for pro 
 curing not only three thousand but eight thousand 
 labourers, the Bishop said it was " a great matter, 
 a great matter indeed ;" but, as usual, nothing 
 came of this speech, only that by repeated and 
 energetic remonstrances Las Casas prevailed upon 
 the Council to send wine and provisions after the 
 poor wretches who had already sailed. These 
 supplies, however, came too late. And so ended 
 this plan for the benefit of the Indies. 
 
 With all our aids and appliances of modern 
 times, we, too, find emigration to be no light un 
 dertaking one of the main difficulties being that 
 the emigrants are generally of one class, so that 
 the peculiarities of that one class are liable to be 
 developed to the uttermost, and have to be pro 
 vided for all at once. 
 
90 
 
 PLAN OF LAS CASAS FOR 
 
 A controversy that the Clerigo had at Barce 
 lona with the Bishop of Burgos about the emigra 
 tion scheme deserves to be mentioned. Las Casas 
 would not in any way further the proposed emi 
 gration, without being assured of the emigrants 
 receiving support for a year after their arrival. 
 This was a fundamental part of his plan, and 
 finding that it was not to be conceded, and that 
 other persons were being sought for to take charge 
 of the emigration, he wrote to the towns which 
 he had previously visited, and warned the people 
 against going. When Las Casas was arguing 
 one day before the Council of the Indies for the 
 allowance of a year s support to be made to the 
 emigrants, the Bishop said that the King would 
 spend more with those labourers, than with an 
 armada of twenty thousand men (the Lord Bishop 
 was much more versed in fitting out armadas than 
 in saying masses), to which Las Casas replied: 
 " It appears then to your Lordship, that after you 
 have been the death of so many Indians, you wish 
 to be the death of Christians also." "I do not 
 know," he adds, "whether the Bishop, who was 
 no fool, took it." 
 
 In fine, however, he could make nothing of this 
 
FOUNDING A COLONY. 9t 
 
 obdurate Bishop, and, almost glad to be freed from Las Casas 
 
 abandons 
 
 the responsibility of the emigration scheme, he ins emi- 
 
 . gration 
 
 immediately turned his fertile mind to another scheme, 
 plan, which he thought with worldly men might 
 appear more feasible. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 Las Casas brings forward his Plan for founding a Colony. 
 After failing in gaining his point with the Council of the 
 Indies, he goes to Court, and succeeds in obtaining full 
 power to carry out his design. 
 
 ;AS CASAS still pondered over the 
 original plan of Pedro de Cordova, for 
 enclosing, as it were, a hundred leagues 
 along the coast of the Terra-firma, and forbidding 
 the entrance of laymen into it. That scheme, 
 however, was liable to the objection of the Bishop 
 of Burgos, that it held out no solid pecuniary ad 
 vantage to the crown. These two things, profit 
 f or fa e King and the preaching of the Gospel, 
 must therefore be combined ; and from this idea 
 came the following ingenious proposition. 
 
 I may mention here, in the way of parenthesis, 
 that a new Grand Chancellor, a learned and good 
 
PLAN FOR FOUNDING A COLONY. 93 
 
 man, according to our historian, had come from 
 Flanders. This was Charles the Fifth s celebrated 
 Chancellor, Arborio de Gattinara, a man whose 
 name is found in connection with several of the 
 greatest events of the age in which he lived. Just 
 before his death, in 1529, he was made a cardinal. 
 
 His moderation in reference to the Reformation 
 is well known, and coincides with the high esteem 
 which he had for Erasmus. I imagine him to 
 have been one of the earliest of those professional 
 statesmen, if the phrase may be used, who were 
 afterwards so trustfully employed by Charles the 
 Fifth, and in another generation by Elizabeth of 
 England. Gattinara and Granvella correspond 
 to Burleigh, the elder Bacon, and the other states 
 men who stood round the throne of that Queen. 
 
 Gattinara favoured Las Casas almost as much 
 as his predecessor in the chancellor s office, Selva- 
 gius, had done. The Clerigo says that the Chan 
 cellor loved him much ; and as Las Casas was 
 only a poor suitor, whose claims for attention 
 were no other than the justness and the goodness 
 of his cause, it is greatly to the credit of this 
 Chancellor that he was always willing to give 
 audience to Las Casas, and that he uniformly do- 
 
 The 
 
 Chancellor 
 
 Gattinara 
 
 concerned 
 
 in great 
 
 affairs. 
 
 His 
 
 modera 
 tion. 
 
 He favours 
 the Olerigo. 
 
94 PLAN OF LAS CASAS FOR \ 
 
 fended him. Whether, however, Gattinara had 
 not quite as much influence as Selvagius (and it 
 is certain he was not on such good terms with 
 Chievres), or whether he himself was won over 
 to a certain extent by the Bishop of Burgos, 
 it is clear that this mischievous prelate had more 
 power now in Indian affairs than he had possessed 
 under the former Chancellor. 
 
 Gattinara, though mixed up with so many 
 great affairs in France, in Germany, in Italy, and 
 in Spain, was never perhaps seen so closely, nor, 
 I imagine, to such advantage, as he will be in the 
 following pages. 
 
 The new proposition which Las Casas had to 
 bring forward under this new dynasty (for the 
 change of chancellors was almost a change of 
 dynasty to him), is a very remarkable one. It 
 formed the turning-point of the Clerigo s own 
 life, and in its consequences had the widest in 
 fluence upon the fortunes of the New World. 
 The substance of it was as follows : 
 
 Las Casas engaged to find fifty Spaniards, 
 which he thought he could do amongst the 
 colonists, moderate and reasonable men, who 
 
FOUNDING A COLONY. 95 
 
 would undertake the good work he had in hand The plan 
 for them out of Christian motives, at the same Casasfpr 
 
 colonizing 
 
 time having a fair view to furthering their own the Ten-a- 
 
 firma. 
 
 interests by lawful means. He limited himself 
 to fifty, because fifty would be more manageable 
 than a greater number, and would be sufficient 
 for peaceful converse with the Indians. 
 
 These fifty were to subscribe two hundred 
 ducats each, making ten thousand in the whole, 
 which he thought would be enough to provide 
 the requisite outfit and sustenance for a year, and 
 presents for the Indians. 
 
 The fifty were to wear a peculiar dress, white 
 cloth with red crosses, like that of the Knights of 
 Calatrava, but having some additional ornament. His 
 Much ridicule was afterwards thrown on this part 
 of the scheme ; and the proposed knights obtained 
 the name of sanbenitos* in allusion to the dress of 
 penitent convicts of the Inquisition. The object, 
 however, of having a peculiar dress, was to distin 
 guish this band from any Spaniards whom the 
 Indians had seen before. They were also to bring 
 a message to the Indians, of a new tenour, telling 
 
 * The garment called a saribenito had a large red and 
 yellow cross before and behind. 
 
96 PLAN OF LAS CASAS FOR 
 
 them that they were sent to salute them from the 
 King of Spain, who had heard of the evils and 
 oppressions they (the Indians) had suffered, that 
 they were to give them presents as a sign of 
 amity, and to protect them from the other Span 
 iards who had done them injury. 
 
 Las Casas says that he had it in his mind, if 
 God had prospered the work, to get the Pope and 
 the King to allow this body to be formed into a 
 religious fraternity. 
 
 For the profit of the King, Las Casas held out 
 the following inducements ; that he would pacify 
 the country assigned to him, which he requested 
 should begin a hundred leagues above Paria* and 
 extend down the coast a thousand leagues ;f 
 
 * That means a hundred leagues to the eastward of Paria r 
 i. e., taking the river Dulce as the eastern limit. " Conviene 
 a saber desde cien leguas arriba de Paria, del Rio que 
 llamaban el rio dulce, que agora llamamos el Rio y la tierra 
 de los Arvacas, la cost a abajo hasta a donde las mill leguas 
 llegasen." LAS CASAS, Hist, de las Indias, MS., lib. iiL 
 cap. 131. 
 
 f It was ultimately restricted to about two hundred and 
 sixty leagues. 
 
 A letter has recently been brought to light, bearing the 
 signature of Las Casas, but without date, which must, how- 
 
FOUNDING A COLONY. 97 
 
 that after being settled there three years, he 
 would contrive that the King should have fifteen 
 thousand ducats of tribute from the Indians and 
 the Spanish settlements, if there should be any ; 
 and that this tribute should increase gradually, 
 until, at the tenth year, and thenceforward, it 
 should amount to seventy thousand ducats. 
 
 ever, have been addressed by him to the Grand Chancellor 
 in the course of these negociations. 
 
 It begins bj stating that he does not wish to lose more 
 time in a thing which is so manifestly good as this business, 
 and so " practicable," unless, as he adds, the time which is 
 lost here should prevent it (sino que lo que aqui se pierde de 
 tiempo pudiendose escusar). 
 
 He mentions that he first asked for a thousand leagues ; 
 that when the matter was referred to the Council of the 
 Indies, they reduced it to six hundred, and in those six 
 hundred there were only two provinces, namely Cenu and 
 Santa Martha, which produced gold, and that these provinces 
 were included in a hundred leagues. He also mentions that 
 he had asked for the pearl fisheries, but that they had been 
 " taken" from him. This, however, he had acceded to, on 
 the condition that those Spaniards who had the permission 
 to go to the pearl fisheries, should be prevented from in 
 juring and scandalizing the Indians. He intimates, that 
 now Cenu is about to be taken from him, and that, if so, it 
 will greatly diminish the inducements which he can hold 
 out to secular persons to join in his enterprize, and aid 
 II 
 
98 PLAN OF LAS CAS AS FOR 
 
 Las Casas also offered to found three settle 
 ments in the course of five years, with a fortress 
 in each of them. Moreover, he would obtain 
 geographical knowledge about the country as 
 signed to him, and give the King information on 
 that head : and he would do what he could to 
 convert the natives without its being any charge 
 to the King. 
 
 him with their funds ; " for," he adds, " as your Lordship 
 may judge, we shall find few laymen who will be inclined 
 to go and spend their estates, and to die and labour, solely 
 to serve God, to convert souls, and to preach their faith to 
 the infidels, (porque, como v. s. puede juzgar, pocos seglares 
 hollar emos que se quieran mover a yr a gastar sus haziendas 
 y a morir y trabajar como dicho es solamente por servir a 
 Dios y convertir animas y predicar sufee a los ynfieles). 
 
 He puts it plainly to the Grand Chancellor, whether 
 Lope de Sosa, who went out to supersede Pedrarias in the 
 government of Darien, will not have enough to govern, and 
 his people to destroy, without the province of Cenu. " Sin 
 la provincia del Cenu queda a Lope de Sosa harta tierra y 
 muy rica de oro desde el Darien versus occidentem para 
 que el pueda governar y su gente destruyr." 
 
 After offering many good reasons to the Chancellor for 
 the request being granted, he prays that, at least, the pro 
 vince of Cenu may be divided between himself and Lope 
 de Sosa, or, if that be not possible, that the onerous con 
 ditions which he had undertaken for himself and his knights 
 might be diminished accordingly. 
 
FOUNDING A COLONY. 99 
 
 The Clerigo on his part demanded, that the Demands v 
 King should ask for a brief from the Pope, to 
 allow the Clerigo to take with him twelve priests, 
 Franciscans and Dominicans, who should come 
 voluntarily : and that His Holiness should give a 
 plenary indulgence to all those who should die on 
 the voyage, or in the act of assisting in the said 
 conversion. 
 
 He also demanded that he might take ten In 
 dians from the islands, if they would come with 
 him of their own accord. 
 
 He also made it a provision, that all the In 
 dians who had been taken from that part of the 
 Terra-firma which might be assigned to him, 
 should be placed in his charge for the purpose of 
 being restored to their own country. 
 
 We come now to the inducements for the fifty 
 to combine in this enterprize. They were to have 
 the twelfth part of the revenues accruing to the 
 King, and to be enabled to leave this to their 
 heirs for ever.* 
 
 * This was granted only for four descents. 
 
100 PLAN OF LAS CASAS FOR 
 
 Then they were to be made Knights of the 
 Golden Spur, and to have a grant of arms. Such 
 of them as the Clerigo should appoint were to 
 have the government of the proposed fortresses 
 and of the settlements. There were also many 
 other provisions and exemptions made in their 
 favour (such for instance as their salt being tax- 
 free), which we need not recount. 
 
 Each of the fifty might import three negroes 
 half of the number men, half women,* and here 
 after, if it should seem good to the Clerigo, they 
 might have seven more negro slaves each. It is 
 evident, therefore, that at this time Las Casas 
 had not discovered his error with regard to the 
 negroes. 
 
 No **<<>- On behalf of the Indians, Las Casas de- 
 
 to hem the manded that the King should give assurance 
 that, neither at this present nor at any future 
 time, should the Indians within the limits agreed 
 upon, being in due obedience and tributary, be 
 given to the Spaniards in repartimientos, or in 
 slavery of any kind. 
 
 * Rather a difficult matter ; but I suppose it means that 
 the total number brought over should consist of an equal 
 number of males and females. 
 
FOUNDING A CO-LONY. Idl 
 
 There was to be a treasurer, a contador, and a 
 judge. 
 
 Also, as a false relation of what should take 
 place in these territories might be carried to the 
 King, the King was to promise, that on no ac 
 count would he make any change in the order 
 of things, as regarded this colony, without first 
 hearing from the treasurer and the contador. 
 
 Several other matters of detail were provided 
 for ; but the above is an outline of the most im 
 portant portions of this proposal made by Las 
 Casas. Like any thing of long extent and large 
 bearings, it presents certain points of attack ; but, 
 upon the whole, if sufficient power were given 
 to the head of the colony, it was likely to work 
 well. The plan may remind the reader of feudal 
 times, and of an abbot with a large domain and a 
 retinue of knights to do his bidding. Those 
 abbacies, probably, did not work ill for the poor 
 in their neighbourhood. 
 
 The great scheme being now ready, in which Las Casas 
 it may be observed that Las Casas asked nothing plan be- 
 for himself, he explained it to the Grand Chan^r ^ftijju of 
 cellor and the other Flemings, rtf 
 
 fljjS&w -*,< 
 
 *7*** 
 
i<& ; PLAN OF LAS CASAS FOR 
 
 favourably, and desired him to lay it before the 
 Council of the Indies. There it was very ill 
 received by the unflagging enemy of Las Casas, 
 the Bishop of Burgos, and by the rest of the 
 councillors. Still they did not utterly reject it, 
 but sought by delay to put it aside. At this 
 time the Grand Chancellor and Chievres were 
 obliged to go to the borders of France, to treat 
 of peace with the French King. Las Casa& 
 urged the settlement of his business ; and, on 
 mentioning to the Flemings that he would have 
 to leave the court on account of his poverty, a 
 Monsieur de Bure and a relation of his advanced 
 the Clerigo money, for fear he should have to 
 leave while the Chancellor was absent. The 
 favour of Las Casas with the Flemings on the 
 King s arrival in Spain has been attributed to a 
 wish to oppose the policy of Ximenes and the 
 Spanish councillors. These gifts to Las Casas 
 cannot be accounted for on this supposition. He 
 says that these men had no interest to serve ; and 
 there is every reason to believe, that they acted 
 from a regard for the man and a belief in the 
 goodness of his cause. The Chancellor and 
 Chievres returned ; but still Las Casas could 
 
FOUNDING A COLONY. 103 
 
 make DO way in the Council of the Indies. Not 
 daunted, however, his fertile genius and amazing 
 vigour stirred up new means for furthering his 
 cause, and there is thus brought before us one 
 of the most interesting episodes in the whole of 
 this narrative. 
 
 It has been a common practice at courts, to 
 have certain set preachers. For the Spanish 
 court at this time there were eight preachers to 
 the King: and Las Casas bethought himself of 
 laying his troubles and the wrongs of the Indians 
 before these ecclesiastics, and beseeching their 
 favour and assistance. I will here give their 
 names, as I think we ought not to grudge naming 
 men, who, though they come but once or twice 
 before us, and speak but a few words in the great 
 drama of history, do so in a way that ought to 
 confer reputation upon them. First, then, there 
 were the brothers Coronel, Maestro Luis and 
 Maestro Antonio, both very learned men, doctors 
 of the University of Paris ; then there was Miguel 
 de Salamanca, also a doctor of the same univer 
 sity, and a master in theology, afterwards Bishop 
 of Cuba ; then Doctor de la Fuente, a celebrated 
 
104 
 
 PLAN OF LAS CASAS FOR 
 
 man in the time of the late Cardinal Ximenes, 
 of his University of Alcala ; then brother Alonso 
 de Leon, of the Franciscan Order, very learned 
 in theology ; brother Dionysius, of the Order of 
 St. Augustin, " a great preacher and very copious 
 in eloquence : " the names of the other two Las 
 Casas had forgotten. 
 
 The King s preachers and Las Casas formed 
 a Junta of their own. They admitted one or two 
 other religiosos into it, a brother, as it was said, of 
 the Queen of Scotland,* being one of them. This 
 last mentioned noble monk was one of those who 
 had come over from Picardy in the year 1516 or 
 1517 ; and who himself had gained experience of 
 the proceedings of the Spaniards on the coast of 
 Cumana. The bold Scot wished to propose to 
 the Junta a large question of the most searching 
 
 * " For este tiempo (1516, or early in 1517,) vinieron 
 quatorce religiosos de Sant Francisco, todos extrangeros de 
 Picardia, personas muy religiosas, de muchas letras y muy 
 principales, y de gran celo para emplearse en la conversion 
 de estas gentes, y entre ellos vino un hermano de la Reyna 
 de Escocia (segun se decia) varon de gran autoridad, viejo 
 muy cano y todos ellos de edad madura, y que parecian 
 como unos de los que imaginamos Senadores de Roma." 
 LAS CASAS, Hist, de las Indias, MS., lib. iii. cap. 94. 
 
FOUNDING A COLONY. 105 
 
 and fundamental nature, namely, " With what 
 justice or right could an entrance be made into 
 the Indies after the manner which the Spaniards 
 adopted in entering those countries ? " 
 
 Each day the Junta thus constituted met at the 
 monastery of Santa Catalina, and formed, as the 
 historian describes, a sort of antagonist Council 
 to that held daily on Indian affairs under the 
 auspices of the Bishop of Burgos. They met at The court 
 the same hour as the Indian Council, perhaps the employ 
 
 . . themselves 
 
 better to evade observation, for I imagine their in Indian 
 
 affairs. 
 
 proceedings were kept quite secret. 
 
 The conclusion this Junta came to, was, that 
 they were obliged by the Divine Law to under 
 take to procure a remedy for the evils of the 
 Indies : and they bound themselves to each other 
 by oath, that none of them were to be dismayed, 
 or to desist from the undertaking until it should 
 be accomplished. 
 
 They resolved to begin by " the evangelical 
 form of fraternal correction." First, they would 
 go and admonish the Council of the Indies ; if 
 this had no effect, they would then admonish the 
 Chancellor; if he were obdurate they would ad 
 monish Monsieur Chievres ; and, if none of these 
 
100 
 
 PLAN OF LAS CASAS FOR 
 
 admonitions addressed to the officers of the crown 
 were of any avail, they would finally go to the 
 King and admonish him. 
 
 If all these earthly powers turned a deaf ear to 
 fraternal admonitions, they, the brethren, would 
 then preach publicly against all of these great 
 men, not omitting to give his due share of blame 
 to the King himself. 
 
 This resolution, drawn up in writing, they sub 
 scribed to ; and they swore upon the cross and 
 the gospels to carry out their resolve. 
 
 On a certain day they entered the Council of 
 the Indies, to the astonishment of the Bishop of 
 Burgos, and the rest of the Council, and having 
 requested leave to speak, laid before the Council 
 their admonitions and suggestions, bringing their 
 discourse to an end by urging upon their wisdom 
 the careful consideration of the proposals they had 
 advocated. 
 
 The Council received the paper with courtesy, 
 and even with somewhat of approbation. To 
 me it seems, as it did to Las Casas, that the 
 scheme of the preachers for the regeneration of 
 the Indies laboured under a great, if not a vital 
 objection, in allowing too much work at the 
 
FOUNDING A COLONY. 
 
 107 
 
 mines. But, on the whole, it is a very re 
 markable state paper ; sagacious, humane, and 
 bold. 
 
 The Council of the Indies seems by quiet de 
 meanour to have absorbed the opposition of the 
 preachers ; and these good men, thinking that 
 they had produced the proper impression upon 
 the minds of the statesmen, left the matter in 
 their hands, considering themselves to have ful 
 filled their vow. As a body of men acting to 
 gether, they are no more heard of in this history. 
 Still we must not conclude that their labours and 
 their boldness went for nothing. The river that 
 carries civilization through a country, and creates Legislation 
 
 ,..,, , the work 
 
 a metropolis, is led by many streams whose names of many 
 and waters are lost in it ; and in like manner, 
 many are the unnoticed currents of thought and 
 endeavour which go to form the main volume of 
 wise legislation. 
 
 minds. 
 
 In the meanwhile the indefatigable Las Casas, 
 having little hope of any good coming from the Las Casas 
 
 presses on 
 
 remonstrance of the preachers, pressed on with his own 
 
 scheme. 
 
 vigour his own scheme of colonization. The 
 Bishop of Burgos and the Council of the Indies 
 
108 LAS CAS AS RENEWS 
 
 with equal vigour resisted it. The Clerigo, backed 
 by many of the Flemings, and, as he intimates, 
 having access to the young King and being 
 favourably received by him, took up a position 
 of attack in reference to the Council of the Indies, 
 and inveighed against its proceedings with his 
 usual boldness. The end of this contest was, 
 that the King, with the advice of the Chancellor, 
 appointed a special Council to judge between Las 
 Casas and the Council of the Indies in the matter 
 at issue between them, Las Casas being permitted 
 to name some of the members of this judicial 
 Council. The Bishop of Burgos, when sum 
 moned to attend this Council, evaded the sum 
 mons, pleading indisposition : but, on another 
 occasion, being summoned in general terms to a 
 council, and supposing it to be a council of war, 
 or state, he came readily enough, and was dis 
 mayed to find that Indian affairs and the business 
 of Las Casas were the questions to be discussed. 
 
 Being heard before this judicial Council, La? 
 Casas eventually succeeded in obtaining a tract of 
 land, extending from the province of Paria, to that 
 of Santa Martha, about 260 leagues along the coast, 
 and the proper official papers were put in course 
 
HIS OWN SCHEME. 109 
 
 of preparation. The Clerigo thought now, that 
 his business at court was really ended. But the 
 Bishop had another arrow in his quiver. Oviedo, New op- 
 the historian, had just come over from the Indies; 
 and he and two others offered to take the land 
 that Las Casas asked for, agreeing to pay a much 
 higher sum to the King. It is curious to look 
 back and see these two men, who were to be the 
 most celebrated historians of the Indies, bidding 
 against each other for the land to found a colony 
 there ; but in those days men of letters were men 
 of action, as perhaps they would be in any time, 
 if they were not supposed to be unfitted for it. 
 
 The Council, which I have described as the 
 judicial Council, was summoned to hear this new Las Casas 
 
 T r* i i heard 
 
 proposition. .Las Casas spoke out very boldly before tho 
 before it ; and, in the course of the proceedings, 
 Antonio de Fonseca, the brother of the Bishop of 
 Burgos, a man of great authority, thus addressed 
 Las Casas, interrupting him probably in the midst 
 ^>f some statement : " You cannot now say that 
 the members of the Indian Council have been the 
 death of the Indians, for you have taken all their 
 Indians away." He alluded to the order issued 
 by Ximenes, that the Indians should be taken 
 
no 
 
 LAS CAS AS RENEWS 
 
 away from absentee proprietors, amongst whom 
 were members of the Council. Las Casas replied, 
 " My Lord, their Lordships have not been the 
 death of all the Indians, but they have been the 
 death of immense numbers where they possessed 
 them : the principal destruction, however, of the 
 Indians has been effected by private persons, which 
 destruction their Lordships have abetted." 
 
 The Bishop in a furious manner then broke 
 into the discussion with these words : " A fortu 
 nate man, indeed, is he who is of the Council of 
 the King, if, being of the Council of the King, 
 he is to put himself in contest with Casas." To 
 this unmannerly speech the Clerigo replied with 
 much readiness and dignity : " A more fortunate 
 man is Casas, if, having come from the Indies two 
 thousand leagues, encountering such risks and 
 dangers, to advise the King and his Council, in 
 order that they might not lose their souls (que no 
 se vayan a los Infiernos) on account of the tyranny 
 and destruction which is going on in the Indies, 
 in place of being thanked and honoured for it, he 
 should have to put himself in contest with the 
 Council." 
 
 At the end of the proceedings the votes were 
 taken, and were found to be in favour of Las 
 
HIS OWN SCHEME. Ill 
 
 Casas. Still, the Council of the Indies, not likely 
 to be much softened by the way in which he had 
 spoken out before the great Council on this last 
 occasion, continued to make resistance. Here we 
 miss the late Cardinal, who would never have 
 allowed for a day these mean endeavours to un 
 dermine a great undertaking. As a new device, Memorial 
 
 against I 
 the Council of the Indies drew up and presented Casas. 
 
 to the Chancellor a memorial against the proposed 
 grant being made to Las Casas, consisting of thirty 
 articles, most of them of a very absurd character. 
 Amongst them were such allegations as these : 
 that Las Casas, being a Clerigo, was not under 
 the King s jurisdiction ; and that he would league 
 with the Genoese and Venetians, and make off to 
 foreign countries with plunder. In their last 
 article the Council alleged, that they had many 
 other reasons which were secret, but which they 
 would tell His Highness (for the memorial was 
 addressed to the King), when he should be pleased 
 to hear them. 
 
 The memorial was laid before the great Coun 
 cil ; and the result was, that the Chancellor, upon 
 coming out of it, said to Las Casas, that he must 
 give an answer to this document. The difficulty 
 then arose of getting the memorial, for the Council 
 
112 
 
 MEMORIAL AGAINST 
 
 The Chan- 
 r-pllor ob 
 tains the 
 memorial. 
 
 of the Indies made frivolous excuses for with 
 holding it. Months were wasted about this 
 trumpery affair, which may give us some notion 
 of the perseverance and endurance of the Pro 
 tector of the Indians. At last the Chancellor 
 got the memorial into his hands. He then in 
 vited Las Casas to dinner, and afterwards, taking 
 out of his escrutoire a large bundle of papers, he 
 said to the Clerigo, " Answer now to these things 
 they say against you." Las Casas replied, that 
 the Council of the Indies had been months pre 
 paring this accusation, " and I have to answer 
 them in a credo* Give me the papers for as 
 many hours as they had months, and your Lord 
 ship shall see that I will answer them." The 
 Chancellor said, that he could not part with the 
 papers, as he had promised he would not let them 
 go out of his possession, but Las Casas might 
 answer them there. So, of an evening, while the 
 Chancellor was at his work, the Clerigo came, 
 and sat in a corner of the room, and drew up his 
 reply. Chancellors, even in those days, seem to 
 have been greatly overworked; but, indeed, this 
 
 * In the time he could recite his belief. 
 
LAS CASAS. 113 
 
 has always been the case, that the work of the 
 world, of all kinds, gets into knots, as it were ; 
 and one man is often left to do the work of six 
 men, who, with infinite dissatisfaction to them 
 selves, are looking on and noting how ill the 
 work is done. At eleven o clock, a collation 
 was always brought in ; at twelve, the Clerigo 
 took his leave, and went home to his posada, not 
 without some fear of what might happen to him 
 on the way from such powerful enemies as were Las Casas 
 
 T T /"N replies 
 
 ranged against him. In four evenings Las Casas to the 
 had prepared his reply. 
 
 The Chancellor then summoned a council, and 
 laid the reply before them. It seems to have 
 been successful, for all the Bishop of Burgos could 
 say against it was, " The preachers of the King 
 have made these answers for him." This, of 
 course, the Chancellor knew to be false. He 
 reported to the King the whole course of the 
 proceedings; and His Highness ordered that 
 Micer Bartolome should have the grant, and 
 that no notice should be taken of the offers of 
 those who wished to outbid him. 
 
 The reader will think that he has now accom 
 panied the Clerigo to a triumphant lonclusion of 
 
 T 
 
114 
 
 LAS CASAS 
 
 Altercation 
 between 
 the Bishop 
 of Darien 
 and Las 
 Casas. 
 
 his present business at court ; but, before he 
 left, he was destined to have what he calls (< a 
 terrible combat ; " and, as it will bring the young 
 King into presence, upon whose disposition and 
 knowledge of Indian affairs so much depended, 
 it will be well to give an account of this combat. 
 
 Just at this time it happened that the Bishop 
 of Darien came to court upon what business 
 will hereafter appear from a statement of his own. 
 The court was still at Barcelona, but, on account 
 of a pestilence that prevailed there, the King was 
 lodged at a place called " Molins de Rey," three 
 leagues from the town ; and the great Lords oc 
 cupied houses in the suburbs. Las Casas, seeing 
 the Bishop of Darien for the first time, in the 
 King s apartments, asked what prelate that was. 
 They told him, " The Bishop of the Indies." 
 Las Casas went up to him, and said, " My Lord, 
 as I am concerned in the Indies, it is my duty to 
 kiss the hands of your Lordship." The Bishop 
 asked who it was that addressed him, and, being 
 informed, rudely replied, " 0, Senor Casas ! and 
 what sermon have you to preach to us ? " 
 
 Las Casas, who was never daunted by bishop 
 or councillor, answered at once, ef There was a 
 
PREVAILS AT COURT. 115 
 
 time, my Lord, when I desired to hear you 
 preach" (the Bishop had been King s preacher 
 in former days), "but I now declare to your 
 Lordship, that I have two sermons ready for 
 you, which, .if you please to hear and well con 
 sider them, may be worth more than all the money 
 that you bring from the Indies." " You have 
 lost your senses ; you have lost your senses," said 
 the Bishop. An acquaintance of the Bishop 
 said to his Lordship, " All these Lords approve 
 of Senor Casas, and of his intentions." The 
 Bishop replied, " With good intentions he may 
 do a thing which shall be mortal sin." At this 
 moment, when the Clerigo, once engaged in con 
 troversy, would doubtless have uttered some severe 
 and angry speech, the doors of the council cham 
 ber, where the King was, opened, and the Bishop 
 of Badajoz came out, for whom the other Bishop 
 was waiting, as he was to dine with him. 
 
 Now the Bishop of Badajoz, who was in great 
 credit with the King, had always favoured the 
 Clerigo ; and Las Casas, fearing that the Bishop 
 of Darien might injure him with his brother 
 Bishop, resolved to go to his house that day. 
 He went there when the company had finished 
 
116 BISHOP OF DARIEN 
 
 their dinner, and found the Bishop of Badajoz 
 playing at backgammon (a las tablets) with the 
 Admiral Don Diego Columbus, the Bishop re 
 creating himself until it was the hour to return 
 to the King s lodgings again. There was a knot 
 of bystanders looking on at the game, and one of 
 them happened to say to the Bishop of Darien, 
 that wheat was grown in Hispaniola. The Bishop 
 said that it was not possible. Now Las Casa 
 happened to have in his purse some grains of 
 wheat which had been grown under an orange 
 tree in the garden of the Dominican Monastery 
 of St. Domingo ; and so, after controverting most 
 respectfully the assertion of the Bishop, he pro 
 duced the wheat. The Bishop replied with fierce 
 ness, and then launched into a general attack of 
 the rudest kind upon Las Casas, declaring his 
 unfitness for the business he had come to court 
 upon. Great ecclesiastics have mostly been well- 
 disposed and well-spoken men ; but, when there 
 has arisen an insolent one, his ill-breeding has 
 always, I imagine, far outgone that of other men. 
 The fervid Las Casas was not behindhand in the 
 war of words, and told the Bishop that he drank 
 the blood of his own flock, and that unless he 
 
COMES TO COURT. 117 
 
 returned to the last farthing all the money he had 
 brought over, he was no more likely to be saved 
 than Judas Iscariot. The Bishop endeavoured 
 to laugh down these violent sayings. The Cle- 
 rigo told him he ought to weep rather than ip 
 laugh. At last the Bishop of Badajoz, using the 
 authority of a host, interfered, saying, 6( No more, 
 no more;" and after the Admiral and another 
 great Lord had said some words in favour of Las 
 Casas, the Clerigo retired. 
 
 The Bishop of Badajoz, when he saw the King 
 in the afternoon, told him of what had taken place 
 between the Bishop of Darien and the Clerigo, 
 saying that His Highness would have been amused 
 to hear what Micer Bartolome said to the Bishop. 
 I have but little doubt that there was supposed 
 to be some truth in the hard sayings of the Cle 
 rigo. The King resolved to hear what they both 
 had to say, and for that purpose fixed an hour of 
 audience three days from that time. The Admiral 
 of the Indies, as the matter concerned him, was 
 requested to be present ; and, as it happened that 
 a Franciscan brother from Hispaniola had just 
 arrived at court, he also was ordered by the King 
 to attend this audience. 
 
118 
 
 AUDIENCE BY THE KING 
 
 The day came : the King took his seat on the 
 throne, a few of his greatest councillors being 
 ranged around him on benches below. The order 
 of the proceedings was as follows. The Chan 
 cellor and the Lord of Croy ascended the dais 
 where the King was seated, and on their knees 
 conferred with him and received his commands. 
 Then, when they had returned to their places, 
 the Chancellor gave utterance to these com 
 mands : " Eeverend Bishop, His Majesty" 
 (Charles had just been elected Emperor, and was 
 therefore styled Majesty) " commands you to 
 speak, if you have anything to say touching the 
 Indies." 
 
 The Bishop of Darien then rose, and made, as 
 Las Casas admits, an elegant exordium, saying 
 how he had long desired to see that Royal Pre 
 sence, and that now, God having complied with 
 his desire, he knew that the face of Priam was 
 worthy of his kingdom. Having finished this 
 exordium, the Bishop went on to say, that he had 
 come from the Indies, and had secret matters of 
 much importance to communicate, which had better 
 be told to His Majesty and the Council only, 
 wherefore he begged that those who were not 
 
ON AFFAIRS OF THE INDIES. 119 
 
 of the Council, might be ordered to depart. The 
 King desired, through the Chancellor, that the 
 Bishop should say there and then whatever he 
 had to say. Part of the Bishop s speech is so 
 remarkable, that it is better to give that in his 
 own words. 
 
 " Very powerful Sir, the Catholic King your 
 grandfather (may he be in glory !) determined to 
 make an armada to go and people the Terra- 
 firma of the Indies, and he begged our very holy 
 Father to create me Bishop of that new settle 
 ment ; and, not counting the time passed in going 
 and returning, I have been five years there, and, 
 as we were much people and took with us no 
 more provisions than were necessary for the 
 journey, the greatest part died of hunger, and 
 we who remained, in order not to die as those His opinion 
 did, have all this time done no other thing than governors 
 rob and kill and eat. Seeing, then, that the land 
 was going to destruction, and that the first Go 
 vernor was bad, and the second much worse, and 
 that Your Majesty had in a happy hour arrived 
 in these kingdoms, I determined to come and give 
 You intelligence of this, as to my Lord and 
 King." Touching the Indians, the Bishop said, 
 
120 AUDIENCE BY THE KING 
 
 that from what he had seen of them, both in his 
 own diocese, and on his journey, his opinion was 
 that they were by nature slaves. 
 
 Las Casas was now commanded to speak. It 
 will be needless, however, to recount his speech, 
 as his thoughts on these subjects, and the prin 
 cipal facts which he enumerated, have already 
 been stated in various parts of this narrative. 
 It appears that the Bishop of Darien, in the 
 course of his argument, had quoted Plato, to 
 which the Clerigo, I am sorry to say, made this 
 reply : " Plato was a Gentile, and is now burning 
 in Hell, and we are only to make use of his 
 doctrine as far as it is consistent with our holy 
 Faith and Christian customs." 
 
 Though the speech of the Clerigo need not be 
 reported in full, one declaration that he made 
 must not be omitted, in which he told the King, 
 that he had not taken up his vocation to please 
 him, but to please God, and in proof of this bold 
 assertion, went on to say, " I renounce whatever 
 temporal honour or reward Your Majesty may 
 wish to confer upon me."* 
 
 * Indeed, he went so far as to say that, with all respect 
 for so great a King, he would not go from where he stood 
 
ON AFFAIRS OF THE INDIES. 121 
 
 Las Casas having finished, the Franciscan 
 Father was ordered to speak. " My Lord," he Speech of a 
 
 Franciscan 
 
 said, " I have been certain years in the island of monk - 
 Hispaniola, and I was commanded with others to 
 go and visit and take the number of Indians in 
 the island, and we found that they were so many 
 thousand. Afterwards, at the end of two years, 
 a similar charge was again given to me, and we 
 found that there had perished so many thousand. 
 And thus the infinity of people who were in that 
 island has been destroyed. Now, if the blood of 
 one person unjustly put to death was of such 
 effect that it was not removed out of the sight of 
 God until he had taken vengeance for it, and the 
 blood of the others never ceases to exclaim e Vin- 
 dica sanguinem nostrum, Deus noster? what will 
 the blood do of such innumerable people as have 
 
 to the corner of the room, merely to serve His Majesty, 
 unless it were to perform his duty as a subject, and unless 
 he thought that it were consistent with the will of God to 
 Jo so< " Es cierto (hablando con todo acatamiento y re- 
 verencia que se deve a tan alto Rey e Senor) que de aqui 
 a aquel rincon no me mudare por servir a Vuestra Ma- 
 gestad, salva la fidelidad que como subdito devo, sino pen- 
 sase y creyese hacer a Dios en ello gran sacrificio." LA 
 CASAS, Hist de las Indias, MS., lib. iii. cap. 148. 
 
122 
 
 AUDIENCE BY THE KINO 
 
 perished in those lands under such great tyranny 
 and injustice? Then, by the blood of Jesus 
 Christ and by the wounds* of St. Francis, I pray 
 and entreat Your Majesty, that you would find a 
 remedy for such wickedness and such destruction 
 of people, as perish daily there, so that the divine 
 justice may not pour out its severe indignation 
 upon all of us." 
 
 It was a short speech, but uttered with such 
 fervour, that it seemed to Las Casas as if all the 
 persons there present were already listening to 
 words pronounced in the Day of Judgment. 
 
 The Admiral was then requested to speak. 
 He spoke prudently, acknowledging the evils, 
 bearing witness as to what the religiosos had done 
 in denouncing these evils, and praying also on his 
 part for a remedy. 
 
 Upon the Admiral s ceasing to speak, the 
 Bishop of Darien asked for leave to reply, but 
 he was desired to deliver in writing what more he 
 had to say. The King then rose, and retired 
 into his room, and the audience was ended. It 
 may be hoped that the young Emperor, who, we 
 
 * The stigmata. 
 
ON AFFAIRS OF THE INDIES. 123 
 
 ! 
 
 are told, was unmoved by his new title,* but who 
 had now begun to reign for himself, f found much 
 to ponder over, from this his first audience in the 
 affairs of the Indies. 
 
 It may be as well to mention here, that the 
 Bishop of Darien did submit his information and Bishop 
 
 oi Darien 
 
 his opinions about the Indies in writing, that his gives his 
 
 opinion ia 
 
 memorials were very much in accordance with writing. 
 the statements that Las Casas had already made, 
 and that the Bishop, when asked his opinion re 
 specting the Clerigo s plan, approved of it, to the 
 great delight, as Las Casas tells us, of the Chan 
 cellor and Laxao, as men who loved to favour a 
 good design, and had no mean ends of their own. 
 It may be remarked that Peter Martyr, who is 
 always sufficiently severe upon the Flemings, 
 finds much to praise in this Chancellor. 
 
 * "Rex, jam Caesar, quicquid in human is prsestare for- 
 tuna potest visus est nihili facere. Tanta est ejus gravitas 
 et animi magnitude, ut habere sub pedibus universum prae 
 se ferre videatur." PETER MARTYR, Epist., 648. 
 
 \ " Porque, como el Rey comenzaba entonces a reinar, 
 eran frecuentes los consejos." LAS CASAS, Hist, de las 
 Indicts, MS., lib. iii. cap. 147. 
 
J24 LAS CAS AS OBTAINS HIS GRANT, 
 
 Jeroni- 
 mites. 
 
 The grant 
 to Las 
 Casas. 
 
 At this time the Jeronimite Fathers came to 
 court, on their return from Hispaniola ; but, not 
 being able to obtain an audience of the King, 
 they retired to their monasteries, and, I believe, 
 were no more heard of in the government of the 
 Indies. 
 
 The King went to Coruna, in order to embark 
 there, and to proceed to Germany for the purpose 
 of being made Emperor with the due formalities, 
 and the last seven days before his embarkation 
 were given to the business of the Indies. In one 
 of the Councils held on this occasion, the Cardinal 
 Adrian (the former colleague of Ximenes) made 
 a great speech in favour of the liberty of the 
 Indians; and it was resolved that they ought to 
 be free, and should be treated as free men. The 
 grant to Las Casas was also concluded, and the 
 King signed the necessary deed on the 19th of 
 May, 1520. On the 20th he embarked for Flan 
 ders. It was during this voyage that he landed 
 at Dover ; and his object in making this visit was 
 to prevent, if possible, the injury which he, or his 
 councillors, foresaw might arise to his affairs from 
 the meeting of the Kings of France and England 
 at the proposed tourney, afterwards called the 
 Field of the Cloth of Gold. Cardinal Adrian was 
 
AND COMPLETES HIS BUSINESS. 125 
 
 nominated as Regent of Spain during the King s 
 absence. 
 
 In the settlement of the details of the Clerigo s 
 business, he was left to the mercy of the Bishop 
 of Burgos 3 and a most formidable opposition might 
 in consequence have been expected ; but, strange 
 to say, the Bishop facilitated the settlement of the Bishop 
 
 of Burgos 
 
 affair, thus showing himself to have some noble- favours the 
 
 Clerigo. 
 
 ness of mind, for, the King and the Flemish 
 ministers having departed, Las Casas was but a 
 shadow of his former self. The Clerigo, too, 
 meeting his old adversary s relentings with equal 
 generosity, expresses a hope (though mingled 
 with great fear about the result) that all the 
 mischief the Bishop had been the cause of in 
 the Indies might not come upon his soul; and 
 Las Casas finds some excuse for the Bishop in 
 his not having been a learned man, but having 
 followed the ignorance of the learned. Each 
 must have felt for the other as one of the chiefs 
 in OSSIAN, who says, " I love a foe like Cath- 
 mor : his soul is great ; his arm is strong ; there 
 is fame in his battles. But the little soul is 
 like a vapour that hovers round a marshy lake. 
 It never rises on the green hill, lest the winds 
 meet it there." 
 
126 SUSPICIONS OF AGUIRRE 
 
 We must not suppose that, absorbed in all these 
 secular negociations, the Clerigo had changed the 
 main drift of his purpose. That was still spiri 
 tual, or, at the lowest, philanthropic, as we may 
 gather from a remarkable answer which he made 
 at an early stage of the proceedings to a certain 
 licentiate, called Aguirre, a very good man, of 
 great authority in those times, whom Queen Isa 
 bella had chosen for one of her executors. This 
 man had always loved and favoured Las Casas, 
 but when he found that the Clerigo was pursuing 
 an enterprize in which Aguirre heard of rents 
 being paid to the King, and of honours being 
 sought for by Las Casas on behalf of his com 
 panions, the licentiate said ff that such a manner 
 of proceeding in preaching the gospel had scan 
 dalized him, for it evinced an aiming after tem 
 poral interests, which he had never hitherto sus 
 pected in the Clerigo."* 
 
 * " Dijo que le habia desedificado aquella manera de 
 proceder en la predicacion Evangelica, porque mostraba 
 pretender temporal interese, lo que nunca hasta entonces 
 habia sospechado de el." LAS CASAS, Hist, de las Indias, 
 MS., lib. iii. cap. 137. 
 
APOLOGY OF LAS CASAS. 127 
 
 Las Casas, having heard what Aguirre had 
 said, took occasion to speak to him one day in 
 the following terms : " Senor, if you were to see 
 our Lord Jesus Christ maltreated, vituperated, 
 and afflicted, would you not implore with all your 
 might that those who had him in their power 
 would give him to you, that you might serve and 
 worship him ? " " Yes," said Aguirre. " Then," His reply 
 replied Las Casas, " if they would not give him licentiate 
 
 Ap uirre. 
 
 to you, but would sell him, would you redeem 
 him?" "Without a doubt." "Well, then, Se- 
 fior," rejoined Las Casas, " that is what I have 
 done, for I have fifft in the Indies Jesus Christ, 
 our Lord, suffering stripes, and afflictions, and 
 crucifixion, not once but thousands of times, at 
 the hands of the Spaniards, who destroy and deso 
 late those Indian nations, taking from them the 
 opportunity of conversion and penitence, so that 
 they die without faith and without sacraments." 
 
 Then Las Casas went on to explain how he 
 had sought to remedy these things in the way 
 that Aguirre would most have approved. To 
 this the answer had been, that the King would 
 have no rents, wherefore, when he, Las Casas, 
 saw that his opponents would sell him the gospel, 
 
128 APOLOGY OF LAS CASAS. 
 
 he had offered those temporal inducements which 
 Aguirre had heard of and disapproved. 
 
 The licentiate considered this a sufficient an 
 swer, and so, I think, would any reasonable 
 man. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Las Casas tries to detain Ocampo s Expedition He com 
 plains to the Audiencia He is put in command of an 
 Expedition to the Terra- -firma His followers desert him 
 on his arrival there. 
 
 jEFORE following Las Casas any far 
 ther, we must mention that in 1518 
 several monks, Franciscans, as well as 
 Dominicans, founded two monasteries on the Pearl 
 Coast, one called Santa Fe de Chiribichi and the 
 other Cumana. They were very successful in 
 attracting to themselves the Indians, and lived a 
 peaceful and unmolested life, till a Spaniard of 
 the name of Ojeda, a pearl fisher, who dwelt in 
 the neighbouring island of Cubagua, being in 
 want of slaves, treacherously captured and carried 
 off some of the Indians dwelling in their neigh 
 bourhood. Ojeda had previously visited the Do 
 minicans, and it is supposed that the Indians 
 K 
 

 130 
 
 REVOLT OF THE INDIANS. 
 
 imagined the Dominicans (who, however, were 
 perfectly innocent) to be connected in some way 
 with this outrage, and resolved to revenge them 
 selves. A few Sundays afterwards, as they were 
 celebrating mass, the Indians rushed in, and mur 
 dered several of them. The Franciscans at Cu- 
 mana were also attacked, and the fury of the 
 Indians, once excited, was such that they did 
 not spare even the live creatures found in the 
 monastery, down to the cats. 
 
 The Spaniards on the island of Cubagua, hearing 
 that the infuriated Indians intended attacking them, 
 were seized with a panic, and deserted the island, 
 and when the Indians poured over it like a furious 
 wave they found great stores of goods and mer 
 chandize which these wealthy pearl fishers had 
 left behind them. 
 
 When these events at Cubagua and on the 
 Pearl Coast came to the knowledge of the au- 
 diencia at St. Domingo, they resolved to send an 
 expedition to Chiribichi and its vicinity, to avenge 
 the murder of the monks and the devastation of 
 Cubagua, and, as a matter of course, to enslave 
 Indians, This expedition was now on its way, 
 
OCAMPO S EXPEDITION. 131 
 
 and was expected at Porto Rico, when Las Casas 
 arrived there ; and this is the news with which 
 he was greeted. We may imagine the dismay 
 that such tidings, appreciated by him in all their 
 consequences, would cause in his mind. Fortu 
 nately for himself, he was one of those men who 
 find some relief for their misfortunes in their in 
 dignation. Moreover, he probably entertained a 
 hope that he would yet be able to prevent the 
 mischief which he foresaw; and, accordingly, 
 when the vessels arrived at Porto Rico, he showed 
 his powers to Ocampo, whom the audiencia had Las Ca*a 
 
 seeks to 
 
 entrusted with the command, and endeavoured to detain 
 detain the expedition. But Ocampo, with all due 
 expressions of civility to Las Casas, said, that he 
 must execute his orders, and that the audiencia 
 would bear him harmless. The expedition ac 
 cordingly sailed on : and Las Casas, after distri 
 buting his labourers by threes and fours amongst 
 the inhabitants of Porto Rico, hastened to St. 
 Domingo. 
 
 His appearance there was very unwelcome. 
 Indeed, from the exertions he had already made 
 at the court of Spain and elsewhere in favour 
 of the Indians, he was odious to all the Spanish 
 
132 OCAMPO S EXPEDITION. 
 
 colonists.* He endeavoured to carry things with 
 a high hand, but met with the usual hindrances 
 and vexations that he had endured both at home 
 and abroad from his countrymen in office. They 
 did not dare, however, to oppose him openly, 
 clothed as he was with the King s authority, and 
 having the reputation of being in favour with the 
 all-powerful Flemish ministers. He demanded 
 that a proclamation should be made of the Royal 
 Order of which he was the bearer : namely that 
 no one should dare to injure or affront any of the 
 natives of those provinces which were within the 
 limits granted to the Clerigo Las Casas. If they 
 did do so, it would be at the peril of the con 
 fiscation of all their goods, and even of their 
 lives. This was proclaimed in the usual manner, 
 with sound of trumpet, in the principal streets, 
 the Admiral and all the chief authorities being 
 present. 
 
 He then demanded, that, with the least pos- 
 
 * " El que muchos no quisieron ver porque ya era por 
 todas estas tierras odioso por saber que pretendia libertar 
 los Indies y librallos de las manos de sus matadores." LAS 
 CASAS, Hist, de las Indias, MS., lib. iii. cap. 156. 
 
OCAMPO S EXPEDITION. 133 
 
 sible delay, they should recal their fleet, discon- Efforts of 
 
 . . Las Casas 
 
 tinue the war, and cause their troops to quit the to coua- 
 territory which had been given in charge to him. Ocampo s 
 
 expedition. 
 
 Again, they did not dare to refuse openly, but 
 made answer that they were about to take the 
 matter into consideration: and many days they 
 spent in discourse about it without their coming 
 to any conclusion. 
 
 Meanwhile, a counter attack was very skilfully 
 made by the Clerigo s enemies, which term pro 
 bably included the whole population of the colony, 
 with the exception of a few private friends, and 
 of the Dominican monks, or any other persons in 
 religious orders. There was a certain Biscayan 
 shipwright who had two vessels of his own that 
 were constantly engaged in the Cubaguan slave- 
 trade, for so it may be called. This man no 
 sooner saw Las Casas and knew the business 
 upon which he had come, than, as the Clerigo 
 expresses it, he would sooner have seen the Evil 
 One. Scanning the ship of Las Casas with all 
 the critical dislike of an enemy, the Biscayan 
 pronounced that it was not sea-worthy, and that 
 it could not be made sea-worthy. Here was a 
 subject for enquiry which the authorities were 
 
134 OCAMPO S EXPEDITION. 
 
 williDg should be investigated without delay. 
 The King s subjects must not be permitted to 
 go in vessels that were not sea-worthy. An 
 examination was made, the hostile shipwright 
 being, according to the Clerigo s recollection, one 
 of the persons appointed to examine. The body 
 thus constituted condemned the vessel, pro 
 nouncing it neither fit for navigation, nor cap 
 able of being made fit. " All this," as Las Casas 
 declares, " was done to hinder the business of the 
 Clerigo, as being odious to all; for all, both 
 judges and official men, had a share in the busi 
 ness of man-stealing." By the condemnation of 
 his vessel, Las Casas lost what was worth to him 
 500 pesos of gold, and, what were far more valu 
 able at the present juncture, time, reputation, 
 and the means of transit. 
 
 Meanwhile, Ocampo had reached the port of 
 Maracapana, in the territory of Gil Gon9alez, 
 where the Spaniard took a very crafty method 
 of securing the chief men of that district. On 
 approaching the coast, Ocampo kept all his men 
 but a few of the sailors, under hatches. The 
 Indians, on hailing the vessels, enquired whence 
 they came, to which the Spaniards answered 
 
OCAMPO S EXPEDITION. 135 
 
 " Castilla." The Indians shouted out " Hayti, 
 Hayti?" The Spaniards again replied "Castilla, 
 Castilla/ and made signs that they had wine and 
 other things from Spain to barter. The Indians, 
 thinking that they had to deal with Spaniards 
 who did not know what had happened on that 
 coast, no longer hesitated to enter the vessels and 
 exchange goods. The Cacique himself, more wary 
 than his followers, remained in a boat near to the 
 vessel. But one of the sailors, who was an excel 
 lent swimmer, let himself down by a rope, sprung 
 into the Cacique s canoe, plunged with him into 
 the water, and, stabbing him in several places 
 with a dagger, succeeded, with the help of some 
 other sailors, in carrying him to the vessel. At 
 the same time, a signal having been given on 
 board, the concealed Spaniards rushed on deck, 
 and the Indians in the vessel were captured. Gil Ocamp 
 
 success 
 
 Gon9alez and the principal chiefs were hung from 
 the yard-arm as an example of terror to the In 
 dians standing on the shore. Amongst these, it is 
 said, was the Cacique of Cumana. Now Oeampo 
 had on board the wife, or one of the wives, of this 
 Cacique, named Donna Maria, who had been car 
 ried by Flores from Cubagua to Hispaniola. The 
 
136 OCAMPO S EXPEDITION. 
 
 Spanish Commander gave her liberty and set her 
 on shore, and through her means peace was ulti 
 mately restored between the Spaniards and the 
 Indians of that coast, but not until Ocampo had 
 thoroughly chastized the latter, and captured 
 many slaves ; carrying his incursions, I observe, 
 into that mountainous country, the abode of the 
 Tagares, where Ojeda had bought his maize and 
 had committed the crime which caused the general 
 rising of the inhabitants of the Pearl Coast. 
 
 Las Casas soon learnt by the surest means 
 what was going on in his province of Cumana, 
 for, while he was endeavouring to adjust matters 
 with the authorities of Hispaniola, Indian slaves 
 were brought to St. Domingo, the first-fruits of 
 Ocampo s campaigning. At this the Clerigo was 
 excessively indignant : to use his own expressive 
 words " he went raging, and with terrible 
 sternness bore witness against this thing before 
 the audiencia" * pouring out all manner of threats 
 against them. They thought it better to come 
 
 * " Viendolos venir el Padre Clerigo, rabiaba, y con 
 terrible rigor lo detestava delante el Audiencia." LAS 
 CASAS, Hist, de las Indias, MS., lib. iii. cap. 156 
 
OCAMPO S EXPEDITION. 137 
 
 to terms with him, and for this purpose they Scheme 
 
 devised a plan which would not only remedy the audientia. 
 
 past, but from which they might hope for some 
 
 profit in the future. This was to offer to become 
 
 partners with Las Casas in working out his grant 
 
 from the King. They sent for him and made 
 
 their proposition. He listened favourably to their Adopted by 
 
 I>as Casas. 
 
 terms ; and it was finally agreed that Las Casas 
 should go to the territories assigned to him ; and 
 that the expedition which had been sent out under 
 Ocampo should now be placed under the Clerigo s 
 command. Accordingly, two vessels were fitted 
 out for him, and well provisioned. Ocampo s 
 expedition consisted of three hundred men : out 
 of them Las Casas was to choose a hundred and 
 twenty, who were to be paid wages: the rest 
 were to be sent back. 
 
 This agreement between the authorities of St. 
 Domingo and Las Casas took the form of a com 
 mercial speculation. There was to be a company, 
 and the venture was to be divided into twenty- 
 four shares. The King was to have six shares 
 in the concern, the Clerigo and his Knights six 
 shares, the Admiral three shares, the Auditors, 
 the Treasurer, the Contador and other official 
 
138 OCAMPO S EXPEDITION. 
 
 people, each a share. The means of profit were 
 to be found in pearl-fishing, exchanging trifling 
 commodities for gold, and making slaves, which 
 last was a great object, for the following reason. 
 Many of the principal persons in St. Domingo 
 had bands of slaves employed under mayordomoh 
 in the pearl fishery at Cubagua ; and human life 
 was swiftly exhausted in procuring these diseased 
 productions then so highly valued the water 
 mines, if we may so call them, being quite as 
 injurious to the delicate Indian as those on land. 
 A constant supply of slaves on the spot where 
 their services were most valuable, was much to be 
 desired. 
 
 This last mentioned means of profit was to be 
 provided for in the following manner. Las Casas 
 was to ascertain what Indians in those parts were 
 cannibals, or would not be in amity and converse 
 with the Spaniards, or would not receive the 
 Faith and the preachers of it. Upon his pro 
 nouncing against the natives of any province 
 upon either of the above points, these people 
 were to be attacked by the hundred and twenty 
 men under Ocampo, and were to be made slaves. 
 Anybody who hoped that Las Casas would so 
 
OCAMPO S EXPEDITION. 139 
 
 pronounce must, as he intimates, have been some 
 what mistaken in their man.* 
 
 The whole of this business must have been 
 exceedingly distasteful to Las Casas ; but he saw 
 no other way of accomplishing any part of his 
 object, and prudently availed himself of this. 
 
 Near at hand, there lay on his death-bed the 
 man who, of all others, would have sympathized 
 most with Las Casas in his efforts to civilize and 
 convert the poor Indians of the Terra-firma. 
 This was Pedro de Cordova, who, at the early 
 age of thirty-eight, was now dying of consump 
 tion in the monastery of St. Domingo, worn out 
 by the ascetic life he had led. We do not learn 
 whether Las Casas was able to consult " that 
 servant of God," as he always calls him, about 
 
 * " Y era tanta su ceguedad, que no advirtieron que 
 habiendo andado cinco 6 seis anos el Clerigo (como todos 
 sabian) trabajando y muriendo, yendo y viniendo a Castilla 
 & Castilla, (sic in MS.) porque no hiciesen esclavos, y los 
 que tenian hechos los libertasen, aunque fuesen de los Ca- 
 ribes 6 que comian came humana, oyendole afirmar que 
 hacellos aquellos esclavos era tirania, que asi enganasen a 
 si mismos, que pensasen que el Clerigo habia de ser causa 
 de aquellas guerras." LAS CASAS, Hist, de las Indias, MS., 
 lib. iii. cap. 156. 
 
140 OCAMPO S EXPEDITION. 
 
 the expedition ; but, if he had done so, the dying 
 Father could but have given one reply, as any 
 thing must have seemed advisable which pro 
 mised to hinder the outrages which the men in 
 Ocampo s expedition were inflicting upon the 
 natives of the Terra-firma. 
 
 Pedro de Cordova departed this life in May, 
 1521. We know, however, that he left one 
 worthy to succeed him in his office, for it is men 
 tioned that Antonio Montesino, already well- 
 known to the readers of this history, preached 
 the funeral sermon on his late prelate, taking for 
 the text, " Behold, how good and how pleasant 
 it is for brethren to dwell together in unity." 
 This resolute and noble monk, the especial friend 
 of the Indians, no doubt felt as his late prelate 
 would have done about the project of Las Casas. 
 Another motive, too, which would have ensured 
 the concurrence of Pedro de Cordova, Antonio 
 Montesino, or any of the Dominican fraternity in 
 Hispaniola, with the plans of Las Casas was, that 
 in him they were certain of a protector to any 
 monastery they might found again at Chiribichi, 
 to replace the one which had been swept away in 
 the late outbreak of the Indians. 
 
OCAMPO S EXPEDITION. 141 
 
 Meanwhile the provisions were put on board 
 the vessels intrusted to Las Casas by the audiencia 
 of San Domingo. These provisions consisted of 
 wine, oil, vinegar, and a great quantity of cheese 
 from the Canary Islands. He had orders to go 
 to the island of Mona, and take on board eleven 
 hundred loaves of cassava bread from the King s 
 stores in that island. He was also well provided 
 with sea-stores of all kinds, and articles of mer 
 chandize; and, everything being now ready, in Las Casas 
 
 sets sail, 
 
 July of that year he set sail from San Domingo. July, 1521. 
 
 Having received his cargo of bread at the 
 island of Mona, he proceeded to Porto Rico for 
 the labourers he had left there. But, as might have 
 been expected, not a single man of them was to be what had 
 found ; and the Clerigo had not even the comfort of his 
 of finding that his humble and simple followers 
 had been employed in the cultivation of the earth, 
 or in any good work, but he learnt that they had 
 enlisted with certain freebooters, whose occupation 
 it was to attack and pillage the Indians. It re 
 quires a large experience of mankind before we 
 ascertain that gentle, simple, and ignorant people 
 are not the best for keeping their promises. With 
 some men it requires a certain training of the intel- 
 
142 
 
 OCAMPO S EXPEDITION. 
 
 lect, or an acquaintance with discipline, to make 
 them faithful and true. Had Las Casas been en 
 abled to bring out with him from Spain real knights, 
 men worthy of wearing golden spurs, they might 
 have been true to themselves and to him. Now 
 he was left to prosecute his enterprize without 
 any body of followers especially attached to him. 
 Nothing was to be done, however, but to pro 
 ceed in his voyage to the Terra-firma. When he 
 arrived there, he found, as might have been fore 
 seen, that Ocampo s men were pillaging and making 
 slaves. They were in great want of provisions, 
 as the Indians fled before them : and, without the 
 assistance of the natives, the Spaniards were never 
 able to purvey adequately for themselves. Ocampo 
 was busy founding a town about half a league 
 above the river Cumana, which he called Nueva 
 Toledo; but even if it had been named New 
 Seville, as Las Casas humorously remarks, the 
 men would not have taken to it any the more. 
 On the arrival of the Clerigo, they all resolved to 
 avail themselves of the licence to return which 
 had been granted beforehand for some of them, 
 and to go home, having no fancy to continue with 
 the Clerigo, being weary of the country, and 
 
OCAMPO S EXPEDITION. 143 
 
 looking upon him as a bad captain for marauding Ocampo s 
 
 men will 
 
 expeditions. So fearful were they of being de- not stay 
 tained, that they would never come on shore all Casas. 
 at once, but took care to leave twenty men, whom 
 they could depend upon, in the ships. 
 
 Furnishing them with provisions for the voy 
 age, Las Casas allowed them to go, but remained 
 himself with a few servants and hired labourers. 
 The polite and witty Ocampo, as might be ex 
 pected from the feelings that one gentleman would 
 have for another, showed regret at leaving the 
 Clerigo in this deserted state ; but was obliged, 
 nevertheless, to take his departure. And now 
 Las Casas, with his great projects, his immense 
 territory, his scanty resources, was indeed alone. 
 Never, perhaps, was there a position which the 
 philanthropic part of mankind would have re 
 garded with more profound concern and more 
 solicitous apprehension. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Las Casas alone in the land He is received into the 
 Franciscan Monastery Fate of his Colony. 
 
 HE Dominican community, to whom 
 of course Las Casas would first have 
 turned, had, as it appears, been en 
 tirely swept away. The Franciscans, however, 
 had returned, and they were the sole nucleus 
 of Christianity and of civilization in that immense 
 expanse of country, a seventh part of the whole 
 world. People are often seeking for romance in 
 all kinds of fiction ; but how really romantic such 
 a situation as this was! The light from that 
 monastery, the sound of its bell amidst the wil 
 derness of idolatry, what signs of hope they 
 were which angels might have watched with 
 unspeakable joy, and yet with apprehension. 
 It must have been no little comfort to Las 
 
THE FRANCISCAN MONASTERY. 145 
 
 Casas, at this juncture, to find that the Franciscans 
 had already repaired the ruin which had fallen 
 upon them, together with the rest of the Spaniards 
 in that part of the country. The monks must 
 have re-established themselves under Ocampo s 
 protection ; and it does not seem as if their 
 monastery could have suffered anything like the 
 ^devastation which had come upon the unfortunate 
 and equally innocent Dominicans. 
 
 When the Franciscans heard of the Clerigo s The Fran- 
 
 ciscans re 
 
 arrival, they came out to meet him with great ceiveLae 
 
 Casas. 
 
 joy, chanting a Te Deum. Their little monas 
 tery was on the river-side,* "a cross-bow-shot" 
 from the sea-shore. It was constructed of wood 
 and thatched with straw ; and it had a pleasant 
 garden with orange trees, vines, and melons in it. 
 Las Casas built a large storehouse adjoining the 
 monastery, and there he stowed away his goods. ~x 
 The first thing he did was to convey his message / 
 of peace to the Indians, which he accomplished 
 by means of Donna Maria (before mentioned as 
 the wife of the Cacique of Cumana), who knew 
 something of the Spanish language. Through 
 
 * The river Cumana, now called the Manzanares. 
 L 
 
146 A GREAT OPPORTUNITY 
 
 this woman Las Casas informed the Indians that 
 h e h a( j been sent by the new King of Spain, and 
 that henceforth they were to experience nothing 
 but kind treatment and good works from the 
 Christians, as an earnest of which, he sent them 
 some of the presents which he had brought from 
 Castille, to gain their friendship. 
 
 The founding of a colony is always one of the 
 most interesting things in the world ; and it is 
 surprizing that rich and powerful men in our own 
 times do not more frequently give themselves to 
 such splendid undertakings. But, in this par 
 ticular case, the interest is doubled, from the 
 feeling that the leader is no mere adventurer and 
 has no private ambition, but is trying a great 
 experiment for the good of the world. Moreover, 
 one is always curious to see a man in a position 
 which he has long sought for, where he has in 
 some measure to fulfil the day-dreams of his life. 
 The first proceedings of Las Casas seem to have 
 been judicious ; and, altogether, though this set 
 tlement at Cumana was but a little one, a mere 
 fragment of the great undertaking which Las 
 Casas had originally designed, still much might 
 have been hoped from it, if there had been no 
 
FOR LAS CASAS. 
 
 147 
 
 Spaniards iiear to hinder the good work. Un 
 fortunately, however, there was the island of 
 Cubagua at a short distance from the coast, and, 
 as there was no fresh water there, the Spaniards, 
 engaged in pearl-fishing near that island, had a 
 motive for coming frequently to the river Cumana 
 in the main land, which was but seven leagues off. 
 Las Casas, thinking to have some curb upon 
 these Spaniards, engaged with a master mason at 
 the rate of ten ducats a month, to build a fort at 
 the mouth of the river ; but the Spaniards of the 
 island, the " apostles of Cubagua," as Las Casas 
 sarcastically calls them, soon perceived the drift 
 of the Clerigo s building, and the builder was 
 bribed, or persuaded, by them, to desist from his 
 work. The visits, therefore, of the Spaniards to 
 the mainland were as uncontrolled as ever. The 
 Indians had no love for these visitors, but then 
 they brought wine with them, and this won over 
 even those Indians who had most distaste to the 
 Spaniards. And, just as a child cannot handle 
 with any safety the arms of a grown-up man, so 
 there is always danger for a people when, without 
 fit preparation, it comes to use the products of an 
 older state, whether it be strong wine, or a well- 
 
148 
 
 INDIAN SLAVERY. 
 
 compacted political constitution. To obtain this 
 all-seducing wine, which, or the like of which, 
 has ever proved the subtlest and most destruc 
 tive weapon against aborigines, clearing them off 
 as fire consumes the dry herbage of the prairie, the 
 Indians brought gold and slaves to the Spaniards, 
 the slaves being youths and simple persons. 
 
 Of the light way in which such simple persons 
 were made slaves among the Mexicans, and pro 
 bably among these Indians too, we have a curious 
 instance in the letter of Kodrigo de Albornoz to 
 Light way the Emperor in 1525.* He says, that "for very 
 
 in which . 
 
 the Indians little things and almost in jest they became slaves 
 
 bf;a;ne 
 
 slaves to one another, and, as an instance, he mentions 
 
 union " 
 
 their own that when he was once officially examining some 
 
 people. 
 
 slaves, he asked one of them the origin of his 
 
 * " Dijo que no, sino que un dia que ellos estavan en 
 sus areitos, que es su fiesta, tania uno un at aval que ellos 
 usan en sus fiestas, como los de Espana i que le tomo gana 
 de taner en el, i que el dueno no se lo quiso dexar tafier 
 si no se lo pagaba, i como el no ten la que le dar, dixo seria 
 su esclavo, i el otro le dejo taner aquel dia, i de alii ade- 
 lante quedo por su esclavo i despues le havia vendido tres 
 o quatro veces." Al EMPERADOR CARLOS 5. RODRIGO DE 
 ALBORNOZ, en Temistitan d 15 de diciembre, de 1525. 
 Coleccion de MUNOZ, MS., torn. 77. 
 
CUBAGUANS MOLEST LAS CASAS. 149 
 
 lavery, whether he was the son of slave pa 
 rents, for instance ; and the Indian replied, (t No, 
 but that one day when they were in the midst 
 of their areitos, which is their festival, a man 
 was beating an ataval, which they use in their 
 feasts, like those of the Spaniards, and that he 
 wished very much to play upon it, and that the 
 Downer would not let him without being paid for 
 it; as he had nothing to give, he said that he 
 would be his slave, and the other let him play the 
 instrument for that one day, and thenceforward 
 he was the other s slave." And Albornoz tells 
 the Monarch, that the existence of such light 
 modes of creating slavery is a thing to be con 
 sidered " for the sake of Your Majesty s con 
 science as well as of Your Majesty s service." 
 
 But to return to the Cubaguans. There is no 
 doubt that their frequent communication with the 
 Indians of Curnana was likely to be fatal to the 
 plans of the Clerigo : and so he felt it to be. 
 Their conduct was a practical denial of his mes 
 sage from the King. He went to Cubagua and 
 made most forcible appeals (requerimientos terribles) 
 to the Alcalde there : but all to no effect. The 
 chief monk of the Franciscans, Padre Joan de 
 
150 
 
 LAS CASAS IS PERSUADED 
 
 Garceto, saw the matter in the same light as La& 
 Casas, and urged him to go to St. Domingo and 
 to appeal to the audiencia, in order to provide 
 some remedy for the evils arising from the visits 
 of the Cubaguans. Two vessels were lading with 
 salt, and the Clerigo, he said, could go in one of 
 them, which would be ready to sail in a month. 
 Las Casas did not see the need for his going ; but 
 the Franciscan Father was very urgent about it. 
 Every day they had mass and prayers for inspira 
 tion in this matter, and discoursed upon it after 
 prayers. Father Garceto, with true Flemish per 
 severance, never swerved from his opinion, or from 
 the same expression of it, winding up the discourse 
 by saying, " It does not appear to me, Sir, but 
 that you have to go and seek a remedy for these 
 evils, in the cessation of which so much is at 
 stake."* 
 
 But Las Casas was naturally very unwilling to 
 leave his territory without the protection, slight 
 as it might be, of his presence; and, besides, 
 
 * " No me parece, Senor, sino que vos habeis de ir a 
 buscar el remedio de estos males en cuya cessacion tanto 
 v4." LAS CASAS, Hist, de las Indias, MS., lib. iii. cap. 157. 
 
TO LEAVE HIS COLONY. 151 
 
 though this was a small matter^ he had been en 
 trusted with no small amount of merchandize. 
 He accordingly prepared two sets of papers : one 
 being a memorandum naming Francisco de Soto 
 captain in the Clerigo s absence, and giving him 
 the necessary instructions ; and the other being a 
 despatch, in which an appeal was made to the 
 audiencia of St. Domingo for protection from the 
 visits of the Spaniards at Cubagua. This course 
 left it open to Las Casas to change his mind at 
 the final moment of the departure of the ships. 
 At last the day came when it must be decided 
 whether Las Casas was to go or not. Mass was 
 said as usual, and the friends afterwards took 
 counsel together as they were accustomed ; when 
 Father Garceto pronounced his unvarying opi 
 nion " Sir,, you have to go, and by no means to Father 
 
 . Garceto s 
 
 remain. pertinacity. 
 
 Overcome by this perseverance on the part of the 
 Franciscan, which the Clerigo thought might be 
 an expression of the will of God, he yielded, but 
 still was not convinced. God knows," he ex 
 claimed, "how much I do this against my judg 
 ment and also against my will, but I am willing 
 to do it, since it seems good to your Reverence ; 
 
152 LAS CASAS PERSUADED 
 
 and if it be an error, I would rather err upon the 
 opinion of another man, than succeed by taking 
 my own. Wherefore I hope in God that, since I 
 do not do this thing for any other intent than to 
 perform my duty in that which I have undertaken 
 for His service, He will convert even error into 
 advantage." Hereupon we may remark, that 
 a man seldom makes so signal a blunder as when 
 he acts exceptionally, and contradicts the usual 
 tenour of his life and character. Las Casas was 
 not wont to defer much to other men s opinions, 
 and why he should have given way to this 
 good Franciscan, who knew much less of the 
 world than the Clerigo did, is scarcely explicable, 
 except upon the ground that the Franciscan s 
 arguments were so weak, and his opinions sc 
 strong, as to give an appearance of mysterious 
 significance to it, before which a pious man like 
 Las Casas would be more likely to bow than to a 
 well-connected train of reasoning. However, the 
 decision was now arrived at, and he set sail in 
 the salt- carrying vessel bound for St. Domingo, 
 having parted from the Franciscan monks with 
 great grief on their part, and he not being a man. 
 
TO LEAVE HIS COLONY. 153 
 
 as he well says, alluding to his affectionate dispo 
 sition, to feel less grief on his part.* 
 
 Las Casas was not fortunate, perhaps not wise, 
 in his choice of agents. Francisco de Soto was 
 a good and prudent man, but poor ; and the 
 Clerigo assigns to this poverty all the evils which 
 De Soto was the cause of. The first thing after 
 the departure of Las Casas that Francisco de Soto 
 did, notwithstanding the express written orders (a 
 copy of which orders De Soto had signed) of 
 his master to the contrary, was to send away the i> e Soto 
 only two boats the little colony had, to traffic for 
 pearls, gold, and even for slaves, as some believe. 
 Now the Clerigo, aware to some extent of the 
 temper of the Indians, had given orders to De 
 Soto, not on any account to send away these 
 boats, so that if he should perceive symptoms of 
 hostility in the Indians, he might be able to em 
 bark the men and goods in these boats, or the 
 men at least, if there were not time to embark 
 the goods, and thus to save the little colony. One 
 
 * "Asi se partio con harto dolor de los Frailes, no siendo 
 el qui el llevaba menos." LAS CASAS, Hist, de las Indias, 
 MS., lib. iii. cap. 157. 
 
154 
 
 APPREHENSIONS OF 
 
 of these boats was fitted with sails ; the other was 
 a Moorish rowing-boat with many oars, which the 
 Indians in their language called " the centipede/ 
 and of which they were much afraid. 
 
 The Indians had not had time to appreciate the 
 motives or the purposes of Las Casas. Nothing 
 but evil had hitherto come to them from converse 
 with the Spaniards. The pearl-fishers of Cu- 
 bagua had not ceased to molest the natives of 
 Cumana ; and now, whether moved by former, 
 yet recent, injuries, or by new insults received 
 after the Clerigo s departure; or whether, as he 
 also conjectures, they were by the decrees of 
 Providence not destined to receive the blessings 
 of the gospel, they resolved to make an onslaught 
 upon the settlement. Twelve days had not 
 elapsed since Las Casas had sailed, before the 
 Franciscan brotherhood discerned the symptoms 
 of coming danger ; and they asked Donna Maria 
 whether their suspicions were just or not, to 
 which, as some of her countrymen were present, 
 who might make out something of the conversa 
 tion, she replied with her voice " No," but with 
 her eyes she said " Yes." 
 
 At this point of time a Spanish vessel touched 
 
THE NEW COLONY. 
 
 155 
 
 at the coast, and the servants of the Clerigo 
 begged to be taken on board ; but, whether from 
 fear or malice, the masters of the vessel would 
 not listen to the request; and the little colony 
 was left to its fate. 
 
 The poor Franciscan monks and the Clerigo s 
 lieutenant roamed about now in all the agony of 
 fear and indecision, endeavouring to find out, by 
 going from one Indian hut to another, when the 
 blow was to take place. On the fourteenth day 
 after the departure of Las Casas, they discovered 
 that the attack was to be made on the following: 
 
 O 
 
 morning ; and then at last they resolved to fortify 
 the monastery and the adjoining storehouse. 
 With that purpose they placed round the building TheSpan- 
 the twelve or fourteen guns which they pos- 
 sessed; but on examination they found at this 
 critical juncture that their powder was damp. 
 
 Early on the ensuing morning, (this was now 
 the third day after warning had come to them 
 from the eyes of the kind-hearted Indian woman), 
 and while they were drying their powder in the 
 sun, the Indians with a terrible war-whoop 
 rushed down upon them. Two or three of the 
 
 
156 
 
 THE INDIAN ATTACK. 
 
 The Clerigo s servants were killed at the first onset : 
 
 1 ndians 
 
 attack the rest, with the Franciscans, made good the 
 
 them. 
 
 entrance to the monastery. The Indians, how 
 ever, succeeded in setting it on fire. But fortu 
 nately there was a postern door that led into the 
 enclosed garden before mentioned, which was 
 .surrounded by a hedge of canes. Another door 
 from the garden led out upon the bank of the 
 river. At the moment of attack Francisco de 
 Soto happened to be in the Indian pueblo of 
 Cumana, which was situated on the sea shore, a 
 very short distance from the monastery. As soon 
 as he perceived what was going on, he fled to the 
 monastery, but in his flight was wounded by a 
 poisoned arrow. He succeeded, however, in 
 making his way into the garden with the other 
 Spaniards. At the distance of a " stone s-throw 
 there was a little creek, where the monks had a 
 canoe of their own which would hold fifty persons. 
 Flight They gained this canoe, and pushed off down the 
 
 from the 
 
 monastery, river, while the Indians thought they were being 
 burnt in the monastery. The number of persons 
 in the canoe was about fifteen, or twenty, includ 
 ing all of Las Casas s servants and all the Fran 
 ciscan monks, with the exception of one lay- 
 
THE INDIAN ATTACK. 157 
 
 brother, who at the first war-whoop of the Indians 
 
 had fled, and thrown himself into a bed of canes. 
 
 He now made his appearance high up upon the 
 
 bank : his friends in the boat did their utmost to 
 
 get to the place where he was, but the stream 
 
 was very strong against them. He, poor man, 
 
 very nobly made signs to them, not to attempt 
 
 to return; and they left him to his fate. All 
 
 this must have taken some time, and the Indians 
 
 now caught sight of the boat. Instantly they 
 
 manned a light boat of their own, lighter than 
 
 the canoe, called a piragua, set off in pursuit, 
 
 and soon gained upon the Spaniards, whose 
 
 object was to pull for the port of Araya, two 
 
 leagues and a half across the gulf (of Cariaco). 
 
 They pulled as men pulling for their lives, but 
 
 the swift piragua still gained upon them ; and 
 
 they had not proceeded more than a league, when 
 
 they saw that their only chance was to take to 
 
 the shore again, and throw themselves into one 
 
 of the dense beds of cactus with which that coast 
 
 abounds. The piragua and the canoe landed not 
 
 " a quoit s-throw " from each other. Happily there 
 
 was time enough for the Spaniards to take refuge Escape 
 
 amongst the cactuses, pervious only to despair, Spaniards. 
 
158 THE INDIAN ATTACK. 
 
 but otherwise hardly to be penetrated by a fully- 
 armed man. The Indians were naked, and though 
 they made great efforts to get at the Spaniards 
 in this " thorn fortress," they could not do so,* 
 though they were at one time very near to them, 
 so near that Father Joan Garceto lived to tell 
 Las Casas, how one Indian was close upon him, 
 and lifted up his club (macana) to kill him, and 
 the Father bent his knees, and shut his eyes, and 
 raised his heart to God ; but when he looked up, 
 there was no one. Finally, in the course of the 
 next day, they got to their countrymen s ships. 
 De Soto died of the wounds which he had re 
 ceived, as the arrows were poisoned. The other 
 servants of Las Casas, all but the two or three 
 who perished at the first onset, together with 
 the Franciscans, arrived in a short time at St. 
 Domingo. 
 
 All this happened in little more than a fort 
 night after the Clerigo s departure. Meanwhile, 
 
 * " Y como los Indies eran, de los pies a las cabezas, 
 desnudos, estubieron mucho tiempo en llegar aquella poca 
 distancia en donde estaban los Seglares y Frailes. Y pa- 
 rece que habia tanta espesura que no pudieron menearse." 
 LAS CASAS, Hist, de las Indias, MS., lib. iii. cap. 158. 
 
LAS CAS AS HEARS THE BAD NEWS. 159 
 
 he himself had been carried by the ignorance of 
 his mariners far beyond the port of St. Domingo : 
 he had to waste two months in beating against 
 contrary currents; and finally he landed on an 
 other part of the island of Hispaniola. As he 
 was travelling thence to St. Domingo in com 
 pany with other persons, and they were taking 
 their siesta on the bank of a river, and he was 
 asleep under a tree, a party from the city came 
 up to them, and, being asked the news, said that 
 the Indians of the Pearl Coast had killed the 
 Clerigo Bartolome de Las Casas and all his house 
 hold. Those who journeyed with the Clerigo 
 said, " We are witnesses that that is impossible." 
 While they were disputing, Las Casas awoke to i^as Casas 
 
 learns the 
 
 hear this news; and, versed in misfortune as he fate of big 
 
 colony. 
 
 was, this must have been the most fatal intelli 
 gence he ever received, and the most difficult to 
 bear, for, though he was sure enough that some 
 of it was untrue, yet he could easily divine that 
 some terrible disaster had happened to his little 
 colony. Afterwards, he came to look upon the 
 event as a judgment upon him for having acted 
 in company with men whose only object had been 
 self- enrichment, saying, " that though God uses 
 
160 LAS CASAS HEARS THE BAD NEWS 
 
 human means to bring about his ends, yet that 
 such helps (adminiculos) are not needed for 
 preaching the gospel." " Still," as he urges on 
 the other side, " if he was in such haste to accept 
 the offer of the audiencia, it was but to prevent 
 the slaughter and destruction which Ocampo s 
 expedition was occasioning." 
 
 Meanwhile, in great anxiety to hear the whole 
 of the bad news, he approached the city of St. 
 Domingo, and when near there, some " good 
 Christians," friends of his, came out to meet and 
 console him, offering him money, even as much 
 as four or five thousand ducats, for a new attempt 
 to colonize. 
 
 But none was to be made ; and here, not Avith- 
 out much regret at such a termination, we take 
 leave of any further hopes from the Clerigo s 
 noble attempt at colonization ; and must content 
 ourselves with being rejoiced that he returned in 
 safety from the Indians of the Pearl Coast, who 
 little knew the disservice they had been doing to 
 their ill-fated race, in thrusting away from them 
 its greatest benefactor. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Las Casas becomes a Dominican Monk He devotes himself 
 to Literature. 
 
 HE transactions narrated in the pre 
 ceding chapter did not pass without 
 much comment, and, amongst other 
 comment, that of contemporary historians, who 
 have given a most unjust and inaccurate version 
 of the whole affair. It affords them great amuse 
 ment to talk of the " smock-frock soldiers " of the 
 Clerigo, and of the labourers dressed like Knights 
 of Calatrava ; but, as we have seen from his own 
 account, which he says is " the pure truth" (la Comment* 
 
 of contem- 
 
 verdad pura), none of these labourers went to poranes. 
 Cumana, and, if they had gone there, it was not 
 from their body that the knights were to have 
 been chosen. There were also other statements 
 M 
 
162 
 
 COMMENTS OF 
 
 made by these historians equally false, which Las 
 Casas takes the pains of refuting. 
 
 If the writer of this narrative may be per 
 mitted to fancy himself addressing Las Casas 
 (and a fearful consideration it is, that biographers 
 and the people they write about may some day 
 be brought into each others presence), he would 
 say, " You need not have spent so many pages of 
 your valuable history in confuting what has been 
 written on the subject of your expedition, with 
 manifest ill-nature, by Gomara, or, in the spirit 
 of mere worldliness, by Oviedo. But I should 
 like to suggest to you (having been made wise by 
 the event), that, when you had once collected this 
 body of labourers together, and had brought them 
 to Porto Rico, you should not have let them 
 disperse ; but, instead of going to the audiencia 
 at St. Domingo (never likely to be friendly to 
 you), to prevent the ill effects of Ocampo s expe 
 dition, you should have accompanied him at once 
 to Cumana. 
 
 " It was certain that his expedition would 
 render the Indians intolerant of your designs ; 
 and you could hardly hope to be in time to check 
 his proceedings by orders from St. Domingo. 
 
HISTORIANS. 163 
 
 Besides, according to your own account, Ocampo 
 was a witty, gracious, agreeable man, an old 
 friend of yours ; and had you accompanied him 
 on the voyage, and told him the real feelings 
 of powerful people at court, and then addressed 
 such offers of personal advantage to himself, as 
 I think you might have made, you would perhaps 
 have gained him over. Then at the head of your 
 two or three hundred colonists, and with your 
 own vessels and outfit, you would have been 
 more powerful than you ever were afterwards, 
 though armed with letters from the audiencia. 
 I speak, as I said before, with all the easy wis 
 dom gained by knowing the event; and am 
 aware of the foolishness of most criticism upon 
 action. Moreover, I can thoroughly understand 
 your aversion to bring your great scheme into 
 any contact with what was avowedly an avenging, 
 and was likely to be a marauding, expedition. 
 
 " I forbear to dwell much upon your rare and 
 unfortunate modesty in yielding to the advice of 
 Father Garceto, and forsaking your little colony, 
 at a time when the presence of one earnest and 
 vigorous man was worth a wilderness of orders 
 from the audiencia, which, as you must have 
 
164 THE SAD REFLECTIONS 
 
 known, lost some of their force in every league 
 that they were borne from the centre of autho 
 rity, until at last in the llanos, or the forests, of 
 the Terra-firma, these missives were little better 
 than so much waste-paper." 
 
 From the molestation of such remarks, in 
 
 which, however, criticism is meant to be tem- 
 
 Las Casas pered by profound respect, Las Casas was, in 
 
 informs the . 
 
 King of his all probability, quite free. He wrote to the 
 
 misfortune. . 
 
 King, to Cardinal Adrian (by this time advanced 
 to the Papacy, though Las Casas did not know 
 it), and to his other Flemish friends, to tell them 
 what had happened ; and then waited until their 
 answers should arrive from Spain. 
 
 His thoughts at this period of his life must 
 have been very bitter, crowded with infinite 
 regrets, and full of fearful anticipations. The 
 prize that had been ever hovering before him 
 was so great the safety and pacification of vast 
 territories and numerous populations: the hin- 
 derances that had fatally thwarted him were so 
 disproportionately, so malignantly small. The 
 truth is, that for great enterprises, and even in 
 the conduct of common life, it seems as if two 
 
OF LAS CASAS. 165 
 
 souls were needed : the one to watch, while the 
 other sleeps; one to do the worldly work, the 
 other the spiritual ; and each to cheer the other 
 with a perfect sympathy. Had Las Casas met 
 with but one man having a soul like his own, 
 who would have been a real lieutenant to him, 
 the obstacles in his way, fearful as they were, 
 might have been doubled, and yet his end have 
 been attained. But what could be hoped from 
 men like Berrio or De Soto, who manifestly pos 
 sessed none, or next to none, of the spirit and 
 intelligence of their leader ? 
 
 Harmonious conjoint action was then, as it is 
 now, the greatest difficulty in the world. 
 
 Happily, there is an end to all things. Human 
 endeavour ends in conquest, or in defeat, and, in 
 case of either being carried to an extreme, is apt 
 to sink into insensibility. There is the swooning 
 limit to mental, as well as to bodily, endurance. 
 It is most picturesque, and seems grandest, when 
 this is the death-swoon ; and when a man s good 
 fortunes, his energies, and his life all unite in 
 falling down together before some great calamity. 
 And, if such had now been the case with the 
 heroic Clerigo, it could have been no matter of 
 
166 
 
 PERSEVERING CHARACTER 
 
 surprise to any one who had traced his career up 
 to this fatal period. 
 
 Of his power to endure and to persevere, the 
 history of the Indies, if faithfully told, will con 
 vince every reader. Indeed, in this power lay 
 the peculiarity of his character, and it was that 
 which marked him out from other men of his time 
 as much perhaps as his benevolence. This kind 
 of perseverance is much more rare than people 
 suppose, and is so hard to maintain, that we can 
 not but admire even bad men, who silently, reso 
 lutely, enduringly pursue some evil object of self- 
 interest, or mere glory, through long and toilsome 
 years. Rarer even than profound attention in 
 the intellect is this kind of pertinacity in the 
 moral powers. Each day brings its own interests 
 with it, and makes its claims very loudly upon 
 the men of that day. But a man with a great 
 social purpose, like Las Casas, has to work on at 
 something, which, for any given day, appears 
 very irrelevant and makes him seem very obtru 
 sive. This unwelcome part he must perform 
 amidst the disgust and weariness of all other 
 people, through weeks, months, years perhaps, 
 of the most dire discouragement, when all the 
 
OF LAS CASAS. 167 
 
 while life seems too short for a great purpose, and 
 when he feels the tide of events ebb by him, and 
 nothing accomplished. The spectre of Death 
 cowers in his pathway, and, whenever he has 
 time to think away from his subject, occurs to 
 threaten him. But all these vexations and hin- 
 derances are as nothing when compared with the Much con- 
 
 versancy 
 
 weariness and want of elastic power which arise with a sub- 
 from that terrible familiarity with their subject, destroy all 
 
 m care about 
 
 which, in the case of most persons^ unless they it. 
 have very deep and very imaginative souls, grows 
 over and incrusts, like a fungus, the life of their 
 original purposes. There are everywhere men of 
 an immense capacity for labour, if their duties 
 are such as come to them day by day to be done, 
 and are connected with self-advancement or re 
 nown; but that man is somewhat of a prodigy 
 who is found, in self-appointed labour, as earnest, 
 as strenuous, and as fresh for his work, as those 
 who receive impulses daily renewed which keep 
 them up to their appointed tasks. 
 
 Such considerations demand our attention when 
 contemplating the career of such a remarkable 
 man us Las Casas. The age in which he lived 
 was one of singular movement; and his was a 
 
168 
 
 PERSEVERING CHARACTER 
 
 mind capable of great versatility, and inclined 
 to take an interest in many things. Wars with 
 France, conquests in Italy, contests with Eng 
 land, civil commotions about the liberties of the 
 Spanish Parliaments, the suppression of heretics, 
 dire strife throughout the Germanic Empire, and 
 hard-contested battles with the Moors, were all of 
 them subjects, that in their turn agitated Charles 
 the Fifth and his ministers. Vast discoveries of 
 unknown lands, unheard-of treasures in gold and 
 precious stones, new animals, new men, new trees, 
 the most wild and fanciful forms of life, extraor 
 dinary changes of fortune, and romantic adven 
 tures, were the daily topics in the Indies. This 
 remarkable man, Las Casas, heard all these things, 
 sympathized with all men s feelings about them ; 
 but hardly, I conceive, for any single day, omitted 
 to do something in promoting the fixed purpose 
 of his life. Walking about amongst his fellow 
 men in that tremendous and saddening solitude in 
 which a great idea enwraps a great man ; feeling 
 that all his efforts, even if successful, might be so 
 too late; it is to be wondered that such a man 
 retained his sanity, and that we are cognizant but 
 of one long fit of dire despondency in a life of 
 
OF LAS CASAS. 169 
 
 such unwearied effort, such immense successes, 
 and such overpowering disappointments. 
 
 The present was the lowest point of depres 
 sion that the resolute mind of Las Casas ever 
 sounded. 
 
 In recounting the latter part of his story as Deapond- 
 
 . . enc y f 
 
 a colonist, a certain hopelessness creeps in upon Las Casa 
 
 his narrative. Perhaps the Indians are by the 
 profound ways of Providence ordained to be 
 destroyed, as many other nations have been ; 
 perhaps the Spaniards are not to be saved from 
 the commission of great wickedness and from 
 decay of their power ; perhaps his own merits 
 were not such as to warrant his being the man 
 chosen to save the one nation, or to redeem the 
 other.* Thus he argues. He intimates that he 
 should have gone back to Spain to seek new 
 
 * " Pero en la verdad no se lo puso Dios en el corazon 
 que fuese, 6 porque el no lo merecid, 6 porque aquellas 
 gentes segun los profundos juicios divinos se habian con 
 otras muchas de perder, 6 porque tambien los facinerosos 
 pecados de nuestra Nation que en aquellas gentes ban 
 cometido, no se habian tan presto de fenecer." LAS CASA 
 Hist, de Ins Indias, MS., lib. iii. cap. 159. 
 
170 THE DOMINICANS 
 
 remedies, had he possessed the means; and that, 
 if he had done so, the whole course of events in 
 the Indies might have been greatly changed for 
 the better. I think it is evident, however, that 
 it was not strictly want of means (did not his 
 friends come out to meet him, proffering money?), 
 but that the hopeful spirit, which had been the 
 mainstay of his life, was now deficient in him. 
 Had he been a weak, a selfish, or not a religious 
 man, he would have been absolutely broken 
 hearted. He was probably as utterly cast down 
 as a good man can be : and I conjecture that he 
 suffered under that abject, nervous depression 
 which results from extreme distress of mind 
 or prolonged overwork, and which none, but 
 those who have suffered something like it, can 
 imagine. 
 
 There are but small indications of the mental 
 sufferings which Las Casas went through at this 
 period of his life. As a gentleman, a scholar, an 
 ecclesiastic, above all, as a Castillian, Las Casas 
 was not likely to spread out the sorrows of his 
 soul on the pages of his history ; but enough is 
 there, even in the restrained tone of the narra 
 tive, to show how his ardent nature must for 
 
RECEIVE LAS CASAS. 
 
 171 
 
 the moment have been crushed into torpor by 
 misfortune. 
 
 The kind Dominicans, his old friends, received 
 
 him into their monastery. 
 
 There I fancy him His 
 
 thoughts 
 
 sitting in some retired nook in their garden, in the 
 
 i ! i /^ monastery. 
 
 thinking at times or the similar garden at Cu- 
 mana, or of the court at Barcelona, Valladolid, or 
 Saragossa, and the great men he had seen and 
 heard there ; then of his old enemy the Bishop 
 of Burgos, whereupon the tears come into his 
 eyes, for, in the bitterest encounters, there is a 
 tenderness which is to come out hereafter. And, 
 besides, he thinks the Bishop would not exult 
 over him now, but would be rather sorry than 
 otherwise. He has sat so long (the once restless 
 man !) that the timid lizard has hurriedly rustled 
 by him many times. And now, with measured 
 step, comes one of his kind hosts, and seats him 
 self on the bench beside him, a certain Father Father Be- 
 Betanzos, whom the Clerigo had known for several Las Casas. 
 years, a grey-haired young man, grey from his 
 terrible penances in other lands, who was after 
 wards a most prominent figure in the history 
 of the New World. And now the good monk, 
 alluding perhaps to some speech which the Clerigo 
 
172 LAS CASAS BECOMES 
 
 had uttered in the first bitterness of his disap 
 pointment, about retiring from the world, exalts 
 the theme, impresses upon him the paramount 
 necessity for a man to consider his own soul and 
 what he can do to save that, tells him he has done 
 enough for the Indians, and delicately hints that 
 the Clerigo does not seem to be the chosen vessel 
 for the conversion of these nations : to which, in 
 his intense humiliation, Las Casas makes but a 
 poor reply, and, indeed, thinks it must all be true. 
 And then the severe young monk moves away, 
 quite satisfied that he has done a very serviceable 
 thing for the soul of his friend. 
 
 Whether the rest of the above picture is to 
 the life, or not, at any rate we know that the 
 brethren did solicit him to become one of them 
 selves. He pleaded that he had written to the 
 King, to Cardinal Adrian, and to others of his 
 Flemish friends; and that he must await their 
 answers. " What will it profit you, if you should 
 die before their answers come?" replied Father 
 Betanzos.* From this it appears as if Las Casas 
 
 * " Respondio el buen padre, si entre tanto vos os moris, 
 quien rescivira el mandate del Key 6 sus Cartas?" LAS 
 CASAS, Hist, de las Indias, MS., lib. iii. cap. 159. 
 
A DOMINICAN MONK. 
 
 173 
 
 had been ill, although he mentions no illness at 
 this point of his narrative. I conjecture, there 
 fore, that it was the temporary abeyance of the , 
 energy within him, which looked like the pre 
 cursor of death. Hopeless for the moment of 
 gaining his great object, sick of the world, and 
 beginning to ponder more frequently on the state 
 of his soul,* he yielded to the wishes of the 
 friendly monks, and in 1522 received the tonsure 
 from Father Betanzos, to the great joy of the Las Caas 
 
 takes the 
 
 brethren, and also of the inhabitants of St. Do- tonsure, 
 
 1522. 
 
 mingo, but for very different reasons, as he 
 remarks the former no doubt rejoicing to gain 
 a distinguished and good man for their brother 
 hood, the latter delighting to see a man interred, 
 as they thought, in a monastery, who had been in 
 the habit of hindering them in all the robberies 
 and wickedness which they had been wont to 
 commit for their " iniquitous temporal interests." 
 
 Afterwards letters for him did come from court, Not for- 
 
 . gotten by 
 
 breathing kind encouragement and invitation from his friends 
 
 at court. 
 
 * " Estas palabras le atrave saron el alma al Clerigo 
 Casas, y desde alii comenzd a pensar mas frequentemente 
 de su estado." LAS CASAS, Hist, de las Indias, MS., lib. iii. 
 cap. 159. 
 
174 HIS HISTORY. 
 
 his friends the Flemings ; but Ids superiors did 
 not show him these letters, for fear of disquieting 
 his mind. Letters also came from Pope Adrian 
 for the Clerigo, but it was when he could no 
 longer dispose of himself.* If he had gone to 
 Spain, it is probable, as he would have found King 
 Charles there, that he might have succeeded in 
 some new enterprise of colonization.! But this 
 
 * " Y el mismo Papa Adriano tambien le mandd escri- 
 bir, sino que llegaron las Cartas cuando ya no podia deter - 
 minar de si." LAS CASAS, Hist, de las Indias, MS., lib. iii. 
 cap. 159. 
 
 f Las Casas would have been well able to prove that his 
 failure had not arisen from any palpable fault of his. Al 
 though his own history has been the authority mainly 
 referred to in the foregoing account of his attempt at 
 colonization, it entirely coincides with what remains of 
 the official narrative, sent in to the Emperor by his Ma 
 jesty s contador, who accompanied Las Casas. This officer 
 describes the opposition which Las Casas met with from 
 the Governor of Cubagua, the desertion of Ocampo s 
 armada, the ruin that on three occasions fell upon the 
 monks, who, he says, have received glorious deaths (han 
 recibido muertes admirables ;) and he estimates the number 
 of slaves at 600, who were made on that coast previously 
 to Las Casas reaching it. " Vi en la Espanola que en obra 
 de dos meses se trajeron mas de seiscientos esclavos de do 
 habia de ir Casas y venderlos por los oficiales en Santo 
 
HIS HISTORY. 175 
 
 was not to be ; and he remained in the monastery 
 of St. Domingo, moving in the narrow circle of 
 his duties there, and, as we are told, writing his 
 history * of the Indies. 
 
 Profiting so much as we do by this history, 
 
 Domingo." Representation del Contador Real (Miguel 
 Castellanos) que fue con Casas a Cumana. QUINTAN A, 
 Apendices a la Vida de Las Casas, No. 9. 
 
 * It is generally said by Quintana, and other learned 
 men, that Las Casas commenced his history at this period 
 in the monastery of St. Domingo. Their assertion may be 
 founded upon some fact which has escaped my observation. 
 The only dates I can refer to, in reference to this point, 
 where Las Casas speaks of t he times of his writing, are as 
 follows. In the Prologue there is a passage, quoted below, 
 in which he speaks as if that were written in 1552. In 
 lib. iii. cap. 155, he mentions the year 1560, as the time of 
 his writing ; and, in the last sentence but one of his history, 
 he gives the date 1561, as the time at which he is then 
 waiting. " No puede alguno rehusar con razon de con- 
 ceder hacerse hoy que es el ano de 1552 las mismas calami- 
 tosas obras que en los tiempos pasados se cometian." He 
 may, however, at a very early period, have begun to collect 
 and prepare his materials for writing, amongst which may 
 be numbered some of the most valuable documents that 
 ever existed as sources of early American history. The 
 one which I should most like to have seen was Tovillas 
 Historia Barbdrica, of which, I believe, there is now ncT 
 trace. 
 
176 
 
 HIS STUDIES. 
 
 still it must be regretted that Las Casas should 
 have been thus occupied ; and, however desirable 
 it might be that he should regard his soul, I can 
 not but regret, in somewhat of a secular spirit, 
 that he should have been taken away for the 
 present from the civil administration of the Indies, 
 which gained one more devout man, and lost that 
 much rarer character, a profoundly and perse- 
 veringly philanthropic reformer, of which latter 
 character the Indies had then far more need than 
 all the rest of the world put together. 
 
 It is doubtful, moreover, whether his studies 
 at the monastery did not do far more harm than 
 good to his faculty for historical writing. It must, 
 I conjecture, have been at this period, that he 
 studied those works which enabled him to confuse 
 his narrative with inappropriate learning. Before 
 his becoming a monk, I imagine he knew little of 
 what Pliny, Diodorus Siculus, Dionysius Hali- 
 carnassensis, Aristotle, the Master of the Sen 
 tences, or other learned writers, whose names infest 
 his pages, had said upon any subject. It is not 
 to be forgotten, however, that, while Las Casas 
 dwelt in monastic retreat, he probably acquired 
 that knowledge of the Fathers and the School- 
 
HIS HISTORY. 
 
 177 
 
 men, which enabled him to battle so successfully 
 before kings and princes with the most learned 
 persons of his time, using the favourite scholastic 
 weapons of that age. 
 
Las Casas 
 in the Do 
 minican 
 monastery. 
 
 What had 
 happened 
 in the 
 Indies 
 while Las 
 Casas was 
 in his 
 monastery. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Las Casas in the Dominican monastery His studies He 
 goes to Mexico Establishes himself in the monastery ai 
 Santiago de Guatemala He proposes to conquer the 
 " Land of War" with the aid of his monks. 
 
 AS CASAS remained for eight years 
 in the Dominican monastery of His- 
 paniola, during which time he led a 
 life of extreme seclusion. In these eight years 
 the bounds of the Indian Empire had been im 
 mensely enlarged. Cortes had completed his 
 conquest of New Spain, Alvarado had conquered 
 Guatemala, Pizarro had commenced the con 
 quest of Peru, and the captains or the rivals 
 of Pedrarias, exceeding all other Spaniards in 
 cruelty, had devastated the fertile regions of Ni 
 caragua.* Las Casas must have heard about all 
 
 * See LAS CASAS, Brevissima Relacion de la destruycion 
 de las Indias, " De la Provincia de Nicaragua" p. 14. 
 
LAS CASAS IN HIS MONASTERY. 179 
 
 these transactions, and we can well imagine what 
 he must have thought of them. For five years 
 of his life namely, from 1522 to 1527, there is 
 but one fact known about him ; but that one is 
 very significant. It is that he was not allowed 
 to preach : probably, because the monastery 
 wished to stand well with the town, and feared 
 to allow Las Casas to enter the pulpit, knowing 
 what terrible truths he would utter. We learn 
 this fact in a very curious and authentic manner, 
 from a witness in a legal process which, in after 
 days, was instituted against Las Casas by the 
 governor of Nicaragua. The witness says, that, 
 baring remained in San Domingo two years, he 
 does not know that in the whole of that time 
 brother Bartholomew preached ; and the witness 
 further deposes, that the Auditors of San Do 
 mingo had charged Las Casas not to preach c 
 It may be doubted, however, whether any secular 
 command would have been sufficient to restrain 
 him. 
 
 In 1527, it is said, he commenced his history,* 
 
 * I am content to take the evidence of Remesal, referring 
 as it does to Las Casas himself : " Lo que no la (duda) 
 tiene, porque el mismo lo afirma, es, que el ano de 1527. 
 
180 LAS CAS AS RE-ENTERS THE WORLD. 
 
 the most valuable groundwork for the history of 
 America that exists. 
 
 The exact time and the particular cause of 
 the re-entrance of Las Casas into the world are 
 both very doubtful. A rebellion of the Indians 
 in Hispaniola, under the cacique Enrique, is 
 supposed to have engaged his attention ; and it 
 is stated by Oviedo that he was sent to negotiate 
 Occupa- with the revolted cacique. He is also said, upon 
 
 tions of . 
 
 Las Casas some grounds, as it appears to me, to have gone 
 
 from 15(29 
 
 to 1536. to the Court of Spain in the year 1530. More 
 over, it is alleged that, shortly before the second 
 expedition of Pizarro to Peru, Las Casas, fore 
 seeing the evils of that expedition, procured a 
 royal decree, ordering that Pizarro and Almagro 
 should abstain from making slaves of the Indians ; 
 and it is further stated that Las Casas himself 
 travelled to Peru, and delivered this order into 
 the hands of these captains.* 
 
 comengd a escrivir la historia general de las Indias, coligida 
 de los escritos mas ciertos y verdaderos de aquel tiempo, 
 particularmente de los originates del Almirante don Christo- 
 val Colon." REMESAI,, Hist, de Chiapa y Guatemala, lib. 
 iii. cap. 1. 
 
 * Quintana rejects all this part of the narrative, and, as 
 Las Casas in his account of Peru never mentions himself as 
 
 
HIS OCCUPATIONS. 181 
 
 There are few lives in which the main events, 
 and the circumstances on which they depended, 
 are clearer than in that of Las Casas. But, at 
 this period of his life, from his entrance into the 
 Dominican monastery in Hispaniola until his oc 
 cupation of the Dominican monastery of Santiago 
 in Guatemala, founded by Betanzos, there is great 
 confusion and incertitude. If we abide by the 
 account of Remesal, the writer from whom we 
 learn most about Las Casas, the following is the 
 order of events. 
 
 Las Casas having, by his presence at Court, 
 obtained the decree in favour of the natives of 
 Peru, returned to Hispaniola. Immediately after 
 his return, a provincial Chapter of the Dominican 
 Order was held in that island, and upon that 
 occasion a prior was appointed for the Dominican 
 
 an eye-witness, I was at first inclined to reject it also. But, 
 observing that, in his account of Nicaragua, where he cer 
 tainly had been, and whe"re the law -suit before alluded to 
 was brought against him, he never makes the least allusion 
 to himself, I am not inclined to pronounce hastily upon 
 these statements, more especially as Remesal speaks of 
 a letter written by the Bishop of Guatemala, which seems 
 to allude to the circumstance of Las Casas passing through 
 the town of Santiago on his way to Peru. 
 
182 
 
 LAS CASAS IN MEXICO. 
 
 How Las 
 Casas came 
 to Mexico. 
 
 Las Casas 
 attends a 
 Chapter in 
 Mexico. 
 
 Goes to 
 
 Nicsiragua, 
 
 1581. 
 
 convent at Mexico, the " Province," as it was 
 called, of Mexico being dependent upon that of 
 Hispaniola. That prior, Francisco de San Mi 
 guel, took Las Casas with him, intending to give 
 him companions for passing on to Peru, not only 
 to notify the royal decree, but to found convents 
 in the newly-discovered country. Thus it was 
 that Las Casas came to Mexico. The assumption 
 of prelatical authority on the part of the convent 
 at Hispaniola was the cause of great trouble to 
 the Dominican brethren in New Spain. We 
 have already seen how Domingo de Betanzos was 
 suddenly summoned to attend a chapter, or meet 
 ing, of his Order in Mexico; and the cause of 
 his being sent for was no other than the arrival, 
 or the rumour of the arrival, of the new prior. 
 Remesal states that Las Casas helped to allay the 
 differences which arose on this occasion amongst 
 the brethren ; and then commenced his mission to 
 Peru, accompanied by two Dominicans, who after 
 wards became celebrated men, Bernardino de 
 Minaya and Pedro de Angulo. 
 _ It was at the beginning of the year 1531 that 
 Las Casas set out from Mexico with his compa 
 nions, and traversing New Spain and Guatemala, 
 
EMBARKS FOR PERU. 183 
 
 came to Nicaragua, in which province they took 
 ship at the port of Realejo. There the good 
 fathers were fortunate enough to find a vessel* 
 which was going with men and provisions to 
 Pizarro. They availed themselves of this means 
 of transport, and notified the decree to the Spanish 
 captains in Peru; but finding that the state of 
 
 * That Las Casas commenced a voyage to Peru is clear 
 from the following passage in his Historia Apologetica. He 
 is speaking of tears being occasionally a mode of expressing 
 joy. " Yo vide un pldtico soldado muy solemne taur y que 
 segun presumimos iba con otros muchos a robar los Indios a 
 los Reynos del Peru ; handando que handabamos perdidos por 
 la mar acorddmos de hechar suertes sobre que camino tomari- 
 amos, 6" 1 para ir al Peru, donde el y los demas iban, por que 
 bullia el oro alii, enderezados, sino que nos era el tiempo con- 
 trario, 6" a la Provincia de Nicaragua, donde no habia oro, 
 pero podiamos mas presto y matar la ambre alii d llegar : y 
 por que salio la suerte que prosiguiesemos el camino del Peru, 
 recibio tanta y tan veemente alegria que comenzo d llorar y 
 derramar tantas Idgrimas como una muy devota vieja 6 veata, 
 y dijo : por cierto no me parece sino que tengo tanto consuelo 
 como si agora acabara de comulgar ; y otra cosa no hacia en 
 todo el dia sino jugar d los naipes y tan desenfrenadamente 
 como los otros. Los que alii veniamos que deseabamos salir 
 de alii donde quiera que la mar nos hechara, vista la causa de 
 sus Idgrimas reiamonos de su gran consuelo y devotion." 
 LAS CASAS, Historia Apologetica, MS., cap. 180. 
 
184 LAS CAS AS STATIONED 
 
 the country did not then admit of the founding 
 
 of monasteries, they returned to Panama, and from 
 
 Returns to thence went to Realejo, which port they reached 
 
 Realejo, 
 
 March, in February or March of the year 1532. 
 
 A bishop, Diego Alvarez Osorio, had just been 
 nominated by the Emperor for Nicaragua, who 
 was also endowed with the office of Protector 
 of the Indians. The bishop, naturally enough, 
 saw in this advent of the good fathers from Peru 
 an excellent opportunity for founding a Dominican 
 convent in Leon, the chief Spanish town of Nica 
 ragua, and he begged them to stay with him. 
 They consented, and began to learn the language 
 of the country, with the exception of Pedro de 
 Angulo, who already knew Mexican well, and 
 was therefore able at once to catechize the In 
 dians, and to teach them the Christian Faith.* 
 
 * The foregoing details depend solely, or mainly, upon 
 the authority of Remesal. They are liable to objections 
 of considerable weight, which have, for the most part, been 
 well stated by Quintana, the excellent modern biographer 
 of Las Casas. On one point I am bound to confirm Quin 
 tana, namely, that in the account which Las Casas him 
 self gives of the insurrection of Enrique (see chapters 
 124, 5, and 6, lib. iii. of his History), he does not assign to 
 himself any such part as that given to him by Remesal. 
 
7A r NICARAGUA. 185 
 
 We are now, happily, on the firm ground of 
 history, when we bring Las Casas into Nicaragua; 
 though we must not suppose that he remained 
 stationary there for any long period. In 1534, 
 he undertook a second voyage to Peru, but was 
 driven back by a storm, and did not renew the 
 enterprise. Herrera makes him go to Spain, 
 and though he gives a wrong date (1536) for 
 this, yet the main statement may be true. Re- 
 mesal makes Las Casas go in 1533 to the island 
 of Hispaniola; and if this should be a true ac 
 count (as it seems, from certain circumstances 
 that are mentioned, a probable one),* it was 
 then also that Las Casas may have interfered 
 
 He, however, promises to give further information in the 
 next book, which he did not live to write. But still, what 
 he has told us is by no means in accordance with Remesal. 
 
 With regard to the rest of the story, I do not feel at all 
 disposed to throw over the authority of Remesal. He had 
 access to the archives of Guatemala early in the seven 
 teenth century, and he is one of those excellent writers, 
 so dear to the students of history, who is not prone to de 
 clamation, or rhetoric, or picturesque writing, but indulges 
 us largely by the introduction everywhere of most important 
 historical documents, copied boldly into the text. 
 
 * See OVIEDO, " Hist. Gen. y Nat. de Indias," lib. v 
 cap. 2. 
 
186 
 
 LAS CASAS OPPOSES THE 
 
 Atrocities 
 
 m Nica- 
 
 T^iT cfb 
 Las Casas. 
 
 more potently in the affairs of the revolted 
 cacique, Enrique, than is generally admitted by 
 secular writers. There is no doubt, however, that, 
 whilst at Nicaragua, Las Casas organized a for 
 midable opposition to the governor, Rodrigo de 
 Contreras, whom he prevented from undertaking 
 one of those expeditions into the interior which 
 were always most injurious to the native Indians. 
 Las Casas had great reason for opposing any 
 such expedition in this country, as we learn from 
 him that the most outrageous atrocities against 
 the Indians had already taken place in this pro 
 vince. He mentions that it had been known 
 to happen that, when a body of four thousand 
 Indians accompanied an expedition to carry bur 
 dens, only six of them returned alive. He like- 
 w i se describes how when an Indian was sick with 
 wear i ness an d hunger, and unable to proceed, as 
 a quick wav o f getting the chain free from the 
 Indian, his head was cut off, and so he was dis 
 engaged from the gang in which he travelled. 
 " Imagine," he says, " what the others must have 
 felt."* 
 
 Y acaecio vez de muchas que esto hizo, que de 
 
GOVERNOR OF NICARAGUA. 187 
 
 The Bishop of Nicaragua, who endeavoured to 
 make peace between Las Casas and the governor, 
 died ; and their feud, consequently, raged more 
 violently than before. 
 
 In passing through Guatemala on his way by 
 land to Realejo, in his first attempt to reach 
 Peru, Las Casas must have observed the deserted 
 Dominican monastery in Guatemala; and, in all 
 probability, he rested in one of its cells. He must 
 also have made acquaintance with the curate of 
 the town, Francisco de Marroquin. Marroquin 
 had since become a bishop, and it seems certain 
 that he now invited brother Bartholomew to come 
 from Nicaragua to Guatemala. Las Casas pro 
 bably finding that he could not resist the governor 
 of Nicaragua, abandoned the convent there, and, 
 
 quatro mil Indies, no bolvieron seys vivos a sus casas, que 
 todos los dexavan muertos por los caminos. E quando 
 algunos cansavan, y se despeavan de las grandes cargas, y 
 enfermavan de hambre, e trabajo, y flaqueza ; por no desen- 
 sartarlos de las cadenas les cortavan por la collera la cabecja, 
 e caya la cabeqa a un cabo, y el cuerpo a otro. Vease que 
 sentirian los otros." -LAS CASAS, Brevissima Relation de la 
 Destruycion de las Indias, p. 15. I do not know what 
 governor or captain it was who authorized these cruelties. 
 It was not Contreras, whose appointment was recent. 
 
188 LAS CAS AS AT GUATEMALA. 
 
 Las Casas accompanied by his brethren, proceeded to Guate- 
 Guatemala, mala and took up his abode in the convent which 
 Domingo de Betanzos had built, and which had 
 remained vacant for six years. 
 
 It will be necessary now, to give a short re 
 view of the principal events which had occurred 
 in Guatemala between the departure of Domingo 
 de Betanzos and the arrival of Las Casas and his 
 brethren to occupy the deserted monastery. 
 
 Alvarado, one of the most restless even of those 
 restless men the conquerors of the New World 
 had been devoting his energies to fitting out a 
 fleet for the purpose of further discoveries. This 
 fleet was built at a port called Iztapa, situated 
 about seventeen leagues from the present city of 
 Guatemala. When Alvarado was at the Court 
 of Spain he had held out hopes of making further 
 discoveries. But the great news of Pizarro s 
 golden success reaching the greedy ears of the 
 Alvarado rapacious governor of Guatemala, he resolved to 
 
 resolves to T- . 
 
 joiuPizarro proceed southwards, and to join Fizarro in his 
 
 in Peru. .-IT 
 
 enterprise. He was the more readily induced to 
 The king s do this, as he knew that Pizarro was but poorly 
 
 officers pro- . . . 
 
 test against equipped. It was in vain that the king s officers 
 
 the enter- 
 
 prise. at Guatemala protested stoutly against Alvarado s 
 
ALVARADO RESOLVES FOR PERU. 189 
 
 expedition to Peru. They said that he would 
 leave his own colony bare, and that it would, 
 therefore, be in great peril, because a large part 
 of it was in a state of war ; and that even the 
 subdued Indians, seeing themselves freed from 
 the yoke of armed men, would rise in revolt. 
 Moreover, they added, with a shrewd insight 
 into the future, that the lieutenant-governor 
 whom Alvarado was leaving would be conti 
 nually obliged to be sending men and horses 
 to assist his master ; and, consequently, that the 
 armed force of the country would, day by day, 
 be growing weaker. To these sound arguments 
 Alvarado replied that the government of Guate 
 mala was a small matter for him, and that he 
 wished to go and seek another greater one. 
 "With regard to the question of danger, he said 
 that he intended to take with him the principal 
 Indians, and so leave the province secure for the 
 Spaniards. 
 
 The king s officers persevered in their remon 
 strances, and wrote both to the king, and to the 
 audiencia of Mexico. The audiencia agreed with 
 the king s officers of Guatemala, and wrote to 
 Alvarado, forbidding the enterprise. He was 
 
190 
 
 RETURN OF ALVARADO. 
 
 Returns to 
 Guatemala, 
 1535. 
 
 Las Casas 
 and his 
 brethren 
 study the 
 Quiche 
 language. 
 
 not, however, to be daunted by their endeavours 
 to restrain him, and he persevered in taking his 
 departure for Peru. 
 
 The result of this expedition was disastrous, 
 although Alvarado himself did not suffer much, 
 as he received an ample sum for the forces which 
 he made over to Pizarro. Alvarado returned to 
 Guatemala at the end of the year 1535, not long 
 before Las Casas with his Dominican monks 
 established themselves in the monastery at San 
 tiago de Guatemala. 
 
 The Dominican brethren who accompanied Las 
 Casas, and all of whom afterwards became cele 
 brated men, were Luis Cancer, Pedro de Angulo, 
 and Rodrigo de Ladrada. These grave and reve 
 rend monks might any time in the year 1537 
 have been found sitting in a little class round the 
 Bishop of Guatemala, an elegant scholar, but 
 whose scholarship was now solely employed to 
 express Christian doctrines in the Utlatecan lan 
 guage, commonly called Quiche. As the chroni 
 cler says, (f It was a delight to see the bishop, as 
 a master of declensions and conjugations in the 
 Indian tongue, teaching the good fathers of St. 
 Dominic " This prelate afterwards published a 
 
TREATISE BY LAS CAS AS. 191 
 
 work in Utlatecan, in the prologue of which he 
 justly says, " It may, perchance, appear to some 
 people a contemptible thing that prelates should 
 be thus engaged in trifling things solely fitted for 
 the teaching of children; but, if the matter be 
 well looked into, it is a baser thing not to abase 
 one s self to these apparent trifles, for such teach 
 ing is the f marrow of our Holy Faith." The 
 bishop was quite right. It will soon be seen 
 what an important end this study of the language 
 led to; and, I doubt not indeed, it might al 
 most be proved that there are territories, neigh 
 bouring to Guatemala, which would have been 
 desert and barren as the sands of the sea but for 
 the knowledge of the Utlatecan language acquired 
 by these good fathers, an acquisition, too, it 
 must be recollected, not easy or welcome to men 
 of their age and their habits. 
 
 It happened that a little before the year 1535, 
 Las Casas had composed a treatise, which, though 
 it was never printed, made a great noise at the 
 time. It was entitled De unico vocationis modo. 
 It was written in Latin, but was translated into 
 Spanish, and so became current, not only amongst 
 the monks and learned men, but also amongst the 
 
192 THE COLONISTS INDIGNANT. 
 
 common soldiers and colonists. It consisted of 
 two propositions. The first was, that men were 
 to be brought to Christianity by persuasion ; and 
 the second, which seems but a consequence of the 
 first, that without special injury received on the 
 part of the Christians, it was not lawful for them 
 to carry on war against infidels, merely as infidels. 
 The treatise, though requiring in parts to be 
 passed quickly over, would, if we may judge by 
 other works of the same author, be interesting 
 even now, and having close reference to the daily 
 affairs of life in the Indies, must at the time it 
 was written have been read with eager and angry 
 attention by the Spanish colonists possessing In 
 dian slaves, whom they had won by their bows 
 and their spears. To gain these slaves, they 
 had toiled and bled. During long and harassing 
 marches they had been alternately frozen, parched, 
 and starved; sufferings only to be compensated 
 for, and poorly compensated, by the large droves 
 of captives which they had brought in triumph 
 back with them. We may imagine the indignant 
 manner in which these fierce veterans read what 
 parts they could or would read of this wise and 
 gentle treatise, De unico vocationis modo, written 
 
THE COLONISTS INDIGNANT. 193 
 
 by the great protector of the Indians, who had 
 now indeed emerged to some purpose from his 
 quiet cell in the Dominican monastery. 
 
 But the conquerors were not only indignant at 
 the doctrines propounded in this treatise of Las 
 Casas : they laughed at his theories that mocking xhe 
 laugh of the so-called practical men, a kind of Guatemala* 
 
 laugh well known to all those who have attempted casa/. 
 to do any new and good thing. " Try it," they 
 said ; " try with words only and sacred exhorta 
 tions to bring the Indians to the true faith;" and 
 Las Casas, who never said the thing he did not 
 mean to abide by, took them at their word, and 
 said he would try it. 
 
 Now there was a neighbouring province called 
 Tuzulutlan, which, amongst the Spanish inha 
 bitants of Guatemala, had the ill name of the 
 Tierra de Guerra, " The Land of War." This The Tier 
 
 de Guerra. 
 
 district was a terror to them ; and the people in 
 it were a " phantom of terror " to the Spaniards. 
 Thrice they had attempted to penetrate this land ; 
 thrice they had returned defeated, with their 
 hands up to their heads (las manos en la cabeqd). 
 Such is the statement of REMESAL. The land, 
 therefore, was much more difficult to penetrate 
 o 
 
194 AGREEMENT BETWEEN LAS CASAS 
 
 than if no Spaniard had ever been there, being 
 an irritated country, not merely an untried one. 
 With all our knowledge hitherto acquired of Las 
 Casas, we cannot but feel timid and apprehensive 
 as to the result of this bold undertaking of his. 
 We are not left in doubt as to the magnitude of 
 the enterprise. The story is no monkish narra 
 tive to magnify the merits of the writer s Order. 
 There was a formal compact entered into by the 
 temporary governor of Guatemala with Las Casas, 
 as vicar of the convent of San Domingo, in which 
 it is admitted that the Indians in question were 
 fierce men in revolt, whom no Spaniard dared to 
 go near. Their country, too, was a most difficult 
 one to conquer, where the ways were obstructed 
 by mountains, intersected by rivers, and lost 
 amidst dense forests. 
 
 The substance of the agreement is, that if Las 
 Casas, or any of his monks, can bring these Indians 
 into conditions of peace, so that they should re 
 cognize the Spanish monarch for their lord para 
 mount, and pay him any moderate tribute, he, the 
 governor, would place all those provinces under 
 his majesty in chief (en cabega de su Magestad\ 
 and would not give them to any private Spaniard 
 
AND THE GOVERNOR. 195 
 
 in encomienda. Moreover, no Spaniard, under 
 heavy penalties, except the governor himself in 
 person, should be allowed for five years to enter 
 into that territory. This agreement bears date 
 the 2nd of May, 1537, and was signed by Alonzo 
 Maldonado, the temporary governor of Guatemala. 
 
 Las Casas would hardly have been able to per 
 suade the ruthless soldier, Pedro de Alvarado, to 
 sign any such contract as the foregoing. It was, 
 therefore, a singular felicity for the enterprise in 
 hand, that Alvarado was at that time absent from 
 the province, and powerless in it. 
 
 After the manner of pious men of those times, The Do- 
 Las Casas and his monks did not fail to commence prepare fb 
 
 , . , , . i -i . their ente: 
 
 their undertaking by having recourse to the most prise in 
 
 - " the Lam 
 
 fervent prayers, severe fasts, and other mortifica- of War." 
 tions. These lasted several days. They then 
 turned to the secular part of their enterprise, 
 using all the skill that the most accomplished 
 statesmen, or men of the world, could have brought 
 to bear upon it. The first thing they did, was to 
 translate into verse, in the Quiche language, the 
 great doctrines of the Church. In these verses Christian 
 
 ., doctrines 
 
 they described the creation of the world, the fall expressed 
 of man, his banishment from Paradise, and the vers*. 
 
196 
 
 INDIAN MERCHANTS TAUGHT 
 
 mediation prepared for him; then the life of 
 Christ, His passion, His death, His resurrection, 
 His ascension; then His future return to judge 
 all men, the punishment of the wicked and the 
 reward of the good. They divided the work, 
 which was very extensive, into coplas, after the 
 Castillian fashion.* We might well wish, for 
 many reasons, that this laudable work remained 
 to us, but I am not aware of there being any 
 traces of its existence. 
 
 The good fathers then began to study how 
 
 they should introduce their poem to the notice ot 
 
 the Indians of Tuzulutlan; and, availing them- 
 
 The Do- selves of a happy thought for this purpose, they 
 
 minicans 
 
 attach some called to their aid four Indian merchants, who 
 
 Indian 111. 
 
 merchants, were in the habit of going with merchandise, 
 
 several times a year, into this province called 
 " the Land of War." The monks, with great 
 care, taught these four men to repeat the couplets 
 which they had composed. The pupils entered 
 entirely into the views of their instructors. In 
 deed, they took such pains in learning their lessons, 
 
 * See BOUTERWEK S History of Spanish Literature, vol. i. 
 p. 108 ; and TICKNOR, History of Spanish Literature, vol. i. 
 pp. 371-2. 
 
THE QUICHE VERSES. 197 
 
 and (with the fine sense for musical intonation 
 which the Indians generally possessed) repeated 
 these verses so well, that there was nothing left 
 to desire. The composition and the teaching 
 occupied three months, and was not completed 
 until the middle of August, 1537. Las Casas 
 communicated his intended undertaking to Do 
 mingo de Betanzos, now the head of the Domini 
 can Order in New Spain, who was delighted to 
 give his sanction and his blessing to the good 
 work. The monks and the merchants, however, 
 were not satisfied until they had brought their 
 labours to much greater perfection, until, indeed, 
 they had set these verses to music, so that they The poetry 
 
 11 ITT- is set to 
 
 might be accompanied by the Indian instruments ; music. 
 taking care, however, to give the voice parts a 
 higher place in the scale than that of the deep- 
 toned instruments of the natives.* No doubt, 
 
 * " Es de saber que no solo se contentaron con esto, 
 sino que se las. pusieron en tono y armonia miisica al son 
 de los instrumentos que los Indies usan, accompanandolos 
 con un tono vivo y atiplado para deleytar mas el oydo, por 
 ser muy baxos y roncos los instrumentos miisicos de que 
 usan los Indies." REMESAL, Hist, de Chiapa y Guatemala, 
 lib. iii. cap. 15. 
 
198 THE MERCHANTS SET OUT. 
 
 this music was a great improvement upon any 
 thing the Indians had ever heard in the way of 
 sweet sounds. 
 
 The enterprise was now ready to be carried 
 into action, to be transplanted from the schools 
 into the world. It was resolved that the mer 
 chants should commence their journey into " the 
 Land of War," carrying with them not only their 
 own merchandise, but being furnished by Las 
 Casas with the usual small wares to please abori 
 gines, such as scissors, knives, looking-glasses, 
 and bells. The pupils and the teachers parted, 
 the merchants making their accustomed journey 
 into the territories of Quiche and Zacapula, their 
 destination being a certain pueblo of a great cacique 
 of those parts, a wise and warlike chief, who had 
 many powerful alliances.* 
 
 * This must, I think, have been the Chief of Atitlan, for 
 though, in Remesal s narrative he is never named directly, 
 yet as he was baptized as Juan, and as the only cacique 
 who is addressed as Don Juan, in a formal letter from the 
 Emperor, thanking the caciques of those parts for the aid 
 they had given to the Dominicans, is Don Juan de Atitlan, 
 it is highly probable that Atitlan was the province visited 
 by the merchants. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 Las Casas succeeds in converting by peaceable means " The 
 Land of War" He is sent to Spain, and detained there by 
 the Council of the Indies. 
 
 iEHIND all ostensible efforts of much 
 novelty and magnitude, what silent 
 longings and unutterable expectations 
 lie unnoticed or concealed ! In the crowded 
 theatre, or the cold, impatient senate, the voice 
 that is raised for the first time perhaps for ever 
 afterwards to command an absolute attention 
 trembles with all the sensibility of genius, while 
 great thoughts and vast aspirations, hurrying to 
 gether in the agitated mind, obstruct and confuse 
 the utterance. We pity, with an intense sym 
 pathy, the struggles of one who is about to be 
 famous. Meanwhile, perhaps, in some dark corner 
 or obscure passage, is the agonized and heart-sick 
 
200 
 
 ANXIETIES OF LAS CAS AS. 
 
 mother, who can hardly think, or hope, or pray, 
 convinced, as far as she is conscious of anything, 
 that her child ought to succeed, and must suc 
 ceed, but suffering all the timid anxiety that ma 
 ture years will ever bring, and with the keenest 
 appreciation of every difficulty and drawback that 
 can prevent success. 
 
 It is a bold figure to illustrate the feelings of 
 
 a monk by those of a mother; but it may be 
 
 doubted whether many mothers have suffered a 
 
 keener agony of apprehensive expectation than 
 
 The Las Casas and his brethren endured at this and 
 
 anxieties of 
 
 Las Casas other similar points of their career. They had 
 
 and his 
 
 brethren. the fullest faith in God and the utmost reliance 
 upon Him ; but they knew that He acts through 
 secondary means, and how easily, they doubtless 
 thought, might some failure in their own pre 
 paration some un worthiness in themselves 
 some unfortunate conjunction of political affairs 
 in the Indies some dreadful wile of the Evil 
 One frustrate all their long enduring hopes. 
 In an age when private and individual success 
 is made too much of, and success for others too 
 little, it may be difficult for many persons to 
 imagine the intense interest with which these 
 
RECEPTION OF THE MERCHANTS. 201 
 
 childless men looked forward to the realization 
 of their great religious enterprise the bringing 
 of the Indians by peaceful means into the fold of 
 Christ. 
 
 The merchants were received, as was the cus- Reception 
 
 of the mer- 
 
 tom in a country without inns, into the palace chants in 
 
 Tuzulutlan. 
 
 or the cacique, where they met with a better 
 reception than usual, being enabled to make him 
 presents of these new things from Castille. They 
 then set up their tent, and began to sell their 
 goods as they were wont to do, their customers 
 thronging about them to see the Spanish novelties. 
 When the sale was over for that day, the chief 
 men amongst the Indians remained with the 
 cacique, to do him honour. In the evening, the 
 merchants asked for a " teplanastle" an instru 
 ment of music which we may suppose to have 
 been the same as the Mexican teponaztli* or 
 
 * " The teponaztli, which is used to this day among the 
 Indians, is cylindrical and hollow, but all of wood, having 
 no skin about it, nor any opening but two slits lengthways 
 in the middle, parallel to, and at a little distance from each 
 other. It is sounded by beating the space between those 
 two slits with two little sticks, similar to those which are 
 
202 THEY COMMENCE THEIR CHANT. 
 
 drum. They then produced some timbrels and 
 ^ e ^ S w kich *^ e y had brought with them, and 
 began to sing the verses which they had learned 
 by heart, accompanying themselves on the musi 
 cal instruments. The effect produced was very 
 great. The sudden change of character, not 
 often made, from a merchant to a priest, at once 
 arrested the attention of the assemblage. Then, 
 if the music was beyond anything that these 
 Indians had heard, the words were still more 
 extraordinary ; for the good fathers had not 
 hesitated to put into their verses the question- 
 
 made use of for modern drums, only that their points are 
 covered with ule or elastic gum, to soften the sound. The 
 size of this instrument is various : some are so small as to 
 be hung about the neck ; some of a middling size ; and 
 others so large as to be upwards of five feet long. The 
 sound which they yield is melancholy, and that of the largest 
 so loud, that it may be heard at the distance of two or three 
 miles. To the accompaniment of these instruments .... 
 the Mexicans sung their hymns and sacred music. Their 
 singing was harsh and offensive to European ears ; but they 
 took so much pleasure in it themselves, that on festivals 
 they continued singing the whole day. This was un 
 questionably the art in which the Mexicans were least 
 successful." CLAVIGEBO, Hist, of Mexico, vol. i. pp. 398-9. 
 English translation 
 
CURIOSITY OF THE CACIQUE. 203 
 
 able assertion that idols were demons, and the 
 certain fact that human sacrifices were abomin 
 able. The main body of the audience was de 
 lighted, and pronounced these merchants to be 
 ambassadors from new gods. 
 
 The cacique, with the caution of a man in 
 authority, suspended his judgment until he had 
 heard more of the matter. The next day, and 
 for seven succeeding days, this sermon in song 
 was repeated. In public and in private, the Curiosity 
 
 of the 
 
 person who insisted most on this repetition was cacique. 
 the cacique; and he expressed a wish to fathom 
 the matter, and to know the origin and meaning 
 of these things. The prudent merchants replied, 
 that they only sang what they had heard ; that it 
 was not their business to explain these verses, for 
 that office belonged to certain padres, who in 
 structed the people. "And who are padres?" 
 asked the chief. In answer to this question, 
 the merchants painted pictures of the Dominican Explana- 
 monks, in their robes of black and white, and with 
 their tonsured heads. The merchants then de 
 scribed the lives of these padres: how they did 
 not eat meat, and how they did not desire gold, 
 or feathers, or cocoa ; that they were not married. 
 
204 THE PADRES SENT FOR. 
 
 and had no communication with women; that 
 night and day they sang the praises of God ; and 
 that they knelt before very beautiful images. 
 Such were the persons, the merchants said, who 
 could and would explain these couplets : they 
 were such good people, and so ready to teach^ 
 that if the cacique were to send for them, the} 
 would most willingly come. 
 
 The Indian chief resolved to see and hear these 
 marvellous men in black and white, with their 
 hair in the form of a garland, who were so dif 
 ferent from other men; and for this purpose, 
 when the merchants returned, he sent in com 
 pany with them a brother of his, a young man 
 twenty-two years of age, who was to invite the 
 Dominicans to visit his brother s country, and 
 to carry them presents. The cautious cacique 
 The cacique instructed his brother to look well to the ways 
 
 ends his 
 
 brother of these padres, to observe whether they had s;old 
 
 back with 
 
 the mer- and silver like the other Christians, and whether 
 
 chants. 
 
 there were women in their houses. These in 
 structions having been given, and his brother 
 having taken his departure, the cacique made 
 large offerings of incense and great sacrifices to 
 his idols for the success of the embassage. 
 
 O 
 
CHOICE OF THE MONKS. 205 
 
 On the arrival of this company at Santiago, 
 Las Casas and the Dominican monks received 
 the young Indian chief with every demonstration 
 of welcome : and it need hardly be said with what 
 joy they heard from the merchants who accom 
 panied him of the success of their mission. 
 
 While the Indian prince was occupied in 
 visiting the town of Santiago, the monks debated 
 amongst themselves what course they should pur 
 sue in reference to the invitation which they had 
 received from the cacique. Guided throughout 
 by great prudence, they resolved not to risk the 
 safety of the whole of their body, but to send only 
 one monk at first as an ambassador and explorer. 
 Their choice fell upon Father Luis Cancer, who Father 
 
 LuisCancei 
 
 probably was the most skilled of all the four in chosen 
 
 for the 
 
 the language that was likely to be best understood mission to 
 
 Tuzulutlan. 
 
 in Tuzulutlan. Meanwhile the cacique s brother 
 and his attendants made their observations on the 
 mode of life of the monks, who gratified him and 
 them by little presents. It was time now to 
 return ; and the whole party, consisting of Luis 
 Cancer, the cacique s brother, his Indians, and 
 the four merchants of Guatemala, set off from 
 Santiago on their way to the cacique s country. 
 
206 RECEPTION OF FATHER LUIS. 
 
 Luis Cancer carried with him a present for the 
 cacique in fabrics of Castille, and also some crosses 
 and images. The reason given for carrying these 
 latter is, " That the cacique might read in them 
 that which he might forget in the sermons that 
 would be preached to him."* 
 
 The journey of Father Luis was a continued 
 triumph. Everywhere the difference was noticed 
 between his dress, customs, and manners, and 
 those of the Spaniards who had already been 
 seen in Tuzulutlan. When he came into the 
 cacique s territory he was received under triumphal 
 arches, and the ways were made clean before 
 him as if he had been a monarch, traversing his 
 kingdom. At the entrance of the cacique s own 
 town, the chief himself came out to meet Father 
 Luis, and bending before him, cast down his eyes, 
 showing him the same mark of reverence that he 
 would have shown to the priests of that country. 
 More substantial and abiding honours soon fol 
 lowed. At the cacique s orders a church was 
 
 * " Para que leyesse en ellas lo que de los sermones 
 que le avia de hazer se le olvidasse." HEMKSAL, Hist, de 
 Chiapa y Guatemala, lib. iii. cap. 15 
 
HIS MISSION A SUCCESS. 207 
 
 built, and in it the father said mass in the pre- A church 
 sence of the chief, who was especially delighted Tuzuiutian, 
 with the cleanliness of the sacerdotal garments, 
 for the priests of his own country, like those of 
 Mexico, affected filth and darkness, the fitting 
 accompaniments for a religion of terror. 
 
 Meanwhile, Father Luis continued to explain 
 the Christian creed, having always a most attentive 
 and favourable hearer in the cacique. The good 
 monk had taken the precaution to bring with him 
 the written agreement signed by the governor, 
 and he explained to the chief the favourable con 
 ditions that it contained for the welfare of the 
 Indians. The merchants were witnesses who 
 might be appealed to for the meaning of this 
 document ; and that they were faithful to the 
 monks indeed, a sort of lay-brotherhood may 
 be inferred from the fact of their continuing to 
 chaunt every evening the verses which had won 
 for them at first the title of ambassadors from new 
 gods. The cacique s brother gave a favourable 
 report of what he had seen at Santiago, and the 
 result of all these influences on the mind of the 
 Indian chieftain was such, that he determined to The cacique 
 embrace the Christian faith. No sooner had he proselyte. 
 
208 RETURN OF FATHER LUIS. 
 
 become a proselyte, than, with all the zeal and 
 energy belonging to that character, he began to 
 preach the new doctrine to his own vassals. He 
 was the first to pull down and to burn his idols ; 
 and many of his chiefs, in imitation of their mas 
 ter, likewise became iconoclasts. 
 
 In a word, the mission of Father Luis was su 
 premely successful, and after he had visited other 
 parts of the country subject to the converted 
 Father Luis cacique, he returned, according to the plan that 
 
 returns to . 
 
 Santiago, had been determined upon by the brethren, to 
 the town of Santiago, where Las Casas and the 
 other monks received with ineffable delight the 
 good tidings which their brother had to com 
 municate to them. Even if the result of this 
 mission be looked at as a mere matter of worldly 
 success, all persons of any power of sympathy 
 will be glad to find that some enterprise projected 
 by Las Casas met with its due reward, and such 
 a reward, indeed, as might well serve to efface the 
 remembrance of the terrible disaster at Cumana, 
 which had driven him from secular into monastic 
 life. How often, perhaps, in the solitude of his 
 cell at St. Domingo, had he regretted taking that 
 irremediable step, especially when he found from 
 
LAS CAS AS TAKES HIS PLACE. 209 
 
 letters, that his friends at Court had not forgotten 
 him ; and how often had he painted to himself, 
 according to the fancies we all indulge in, the 
 good that he might have done had he taken " the 
 other course." 
 
 It was at the end of October, 1537, at the close 
 of the rainy season, when those provinces could 
 best be traversed, that father Luis returned to 
 Santiago. Las Casas himself now resolved to LasCasa* 
 
 takes his 
 
 go into " the Land of War," taking as a com- place, Dec.,, 
 panion father Pedro de Angulo, who also was 
 well acquainted with the language of that district. 
 As might be expected, the cacique (whom we 
 shall hereafter call by his baptismal name, Don 
 Juan) received Las Casas with all due honours. 
 In the interval of time that had elapsed between 
 the departure of father Luis and the arrival of 
 father Bartholomew, the new convert s sincerity 
 and energy had been sorely tried. Indeed, it was 
 hardly to be expected that this sudden conversion 
 could go on with all the success that had attended 
 it in the beginning. The first great difficulty 
 that he encountered arose from the following cir 
 cumstances. 
 
 p 
 
210 DIFFICULTIES OF THE 
 
 There happened to be a treaty of marriage for 
 a daughter of the cacique of Coban with the 
 brother of the converted cacique that same bro 
 ther who had visited the Dominicans at Santiago. 
 It was a custom on such occasions for those who 
 had charge of the bride to sacrifice certain birds 
 and animals, on arriving at the confines of the 
 bridegroom s territory. Don Juan s conscience 
 would not allow even these innocent sacrifices to 
 be made. The ambassadors from Coban were in 
 the highest degree vexed and affronted; but at 
 last, after much consideration, they resolved not 
 to break off an alliance with so powerful a prince 
 upon a mere matter of form, and the princess of 
 Coban was conducted into the bridegroom s coun 
 try. This difficulty, therefore, was for the pre 
 sent surmounted; but his own people now gave 
 Don Juan far more trouble than the ambassadors 
 from Coban. An ignorant mob is sometimes very 
 conservative. Pagans, as the scholar knows from 
 the derivation of the name, were but the inha 
 bitants of country villages, whose ignorance and 
 unimpressibility kept off the influence of any new 
 doctrine, however good. In Don Juan s terri 
 tories similar causes would produce similar effects. 
 
CONVERTED CACIQUE. 211 
 
 and there would be a body of dull and fierce 
 fanatics who would pride themselves on being the 
 last to quit the old heathen ways, and the slowest 
 to appreciate the merits of Christianity, More- Resistance 
 
 to the new 
 
 over, we cannot doubt that in this case the unclean doctrines, 
 priests, seeing their vocation falling from them, 
 stirred up the common people, who, thus acted 
 upon, contrived furtively to burn the church. 
 This was not done without suspicion of the am 
 bassadors from Coban being concerned in the 
 matter. The cacique, however, undaunted by all 
 this opposition, rebuilt the church. Las Casas 
 and his brother monk, Pedro de Angulo, said 
 mass in it, and preached in the open plain to the 
 people, who came in great numbers, some from 
 curiosity and from favour to the new religion, and 
 others with a gluttonous longing to devour the 
 monks, who, they thought, would taste well if 
 flavoured with sauce of Chili.* Las Casas and 
 his companion, anxious to extend their knowledge 
 of these regions, traversed, with a guard of sixty 
 
 * " Otros con golosina de comerselos, pareciendoles que 
 tendrian buen gusto con salsa de Chile." REMESAI,, lib. iii. 
 cap. 16. 
 
212 BRIEF OF PAUL III. IN 
 
 of his new friends the neighbouring territories, but 
 yielded to the wishes of Don Juan in not going as 
 far as Coban. The fathers were well received on 
 their journey, and they returned to the pueblo of 
 Don Juan at the beginning of the year 1538. 
 1538. At this juncture Las Casas and all lovers of 
 
 the Indians received a very seasonable aid from 
 the Court of Rome. That accomplished and re 
 fined pope, Paul the Third (Alexander Farnese), 
 was moved to a consideration of Indian affairs by 
 The Do- a letter, which the learned bishop of Tlascala had 
 
 minicans in 
 
 New Spain addressed to him, and also by a mission sent at 
 
 send to 
 
 Paul III. the instance of Betanzos and the chief Dominicans 
 in New Spain. This mission was conducted by 
 father Bernardino de Minaya, who in former days 
 had travelled with Las Casas through Guatemala 
 and Nicaragua. The pope answered the requisi 
 tions of the bishop and the monks in the most 
 favourable and forcible manner; and must have 
 shown a rapidity in giving this answer which his 
 Holiness who was celebrated for delay in busi 
 ness, usually waiting for some happy conjuncture 
 of affairs, was seldom known to manifest. He 
 
 Brief of issued a brief, founded on the great text Euntes 
 
 Pope Paul f 4 
 
 III. in docete omnes gentes, in which he declared in the 
 
FAVOUR OF THE INDIANS. 213 
 
 most absolute manner the fitness of the Indians favour of 
 
 the Indians. 
 
 for receiving Christianity, considering them, to June, 1537. 
 use the words of the brief, " as veritable men, 
 not only capable of receiving the Christian faith, 
 but as we have learnt, most ready to embrace 
 that faith." He also pronounced in very strong 
 language against their being reduced into slavery. 
 
 Nor was Paul the Third content with issuing His letter 
 
 to the, Pri- 
 
 this brief, but he addressed a letter to the Arch- mate of 
 
 bishop of Toledo, the primate of Spain, in which June, 1537. 
 
 his holiness said, " It has come to our knowledge 
 
 that our dearest son in Christ, Charles, the ever 
 
 august emperor of the Romans, king of Castille 
 
 and Leon, in order to repress those who, boiling 
 
 over with cupidity, bear an inhuman mind against 
 
 the human race, has by public edict forbidden all 
 
 his subjects from making slaves of the Western 
 
 and Southern Indians, or depriving them of their 
 
 goods."* 
 
 * " Ad nostrum siquidem pervenit auditum, quod cha- 
 rissimus in Christo films noster Carolus Romanorum Impe- 
 rator semper Augustus, qui etiam Castellae et Legionis Rex 
 existit, ad reprimendos eos, qui cupiditate sestuantes contra 
 humanuin genus inhumanum gerunt animum, publico edicto 
 omnibus sibi subditis prohibuit, ne quisquam Occidentals 
 
214 THE POPE S BRIEF TRANSLATED. 
 
 The pope then pronounced a sentence of ex 
 communication of the most absolute kind* against 
 all those who should reduce the Indians to slavery, 
 or deprive them of their goods. 
 
 The men who throw themselves most earnestly 
 into public affairs, if they meet with terrible re 
 buffs, have, on the other hand, at rare intervals, 
 signal joys and triumphs triumphs unknown to 
 those who commit their hopes to private ventures 
 only. Thus it fared with Las Casas on the pre 
 sent occasion. His delight on the arrival in the 
 Indies of these missives from the pope was very 
 keen ; and he soon found a practical way of ex 
 pressing it, by translating the brief into Spanish, 
 and sending it to many parts of the Indies, in 
 order that the monks might notify its contents to 
 the lay colonists. 
 
 In his own particular mission, however, Las 
 
 aut Meridionales Indos in servitutem redigere, aut bonis 
 suis privare praesumant." REMESAL, Hist, de CJiiapa y 
 Guatemala, lib. iii. cap. 17. 
 
 * " Sub excoramunicationis latae sententiae pcena, si secus 
 fecerint, eo ipso incurrenda." REMESAL, lib. iii. cap. 17. 
 
CONDITIONS FOR POLITICAL LIFE. 215 
 
 Casas found something else, beyond the papal 
 declaration of freedom, that was wanting, and 
 without which the welfare of the Indians of Tuz- 
 ulutlan could not, in his opinion, be secured. 
 According to a proposition which he maintained 
 most stoutly, it appeared to him, that for any 
 nation to receive a law, two conditions were 
 necessary : first, that there should be a pueblo, by Conditions 
 
 requisite 
 
 which he means a collection of families; and for political 
 
 life. 
 
 secondly, that the nation should have perfect 
 liberty ; for, not being free, he says, they cannot 
 form part of a community. This last is a great 
 doctrine. The arguments of Las Casas were 
 founded upon biblical history as, for instance, 
 that God gave no law in the time of Abraham, 
 because there was no community, but a single 
 household only. On the other hand, when the 
 Israelites were in Egypt, although they formed a 
 great community, they received no law, because 
 they were captives. God gave the law only when 
 the two conditions were combined namely, the 
 existence of a community, and freedom for the 
 people who dwelt in it. Now, looking around 
 him in Tuzulutlan, Las Casas found the element 
 of liberty sufficiently developed, but that of the 
 
216 
 
 DANGER TO THE INDIANS 
 
 existence of communities lamentably deficient. 
 The Indians, under the government of his friend, 
 the cacique Don Juan, were scattered over the 
 country in very small villages, seldom consisting 
 of so many as six houses, and these villages were 
 generally more than " a musket-shot " apart. This 
 state of things seemed to him intolerable, and cer 
 tainly, with a view to instruction, it was so. But 
 instruction and preservation are different things; 
 and it was afterwards found that collecting the 
 Indians together in settlements did not always 
 favour their preservation. 
 
 One evil effect of these settlements was, that it 
 Danger of exposed the Indians to the attack of contagious 
 
 bringing 
 
 the Indians diseases, like the small-pox, which, bein^ caught 
 
 together in 
 
 merits ^ rom a stron & P eo pl e > tne Spaniards, was a strong 
 
 disease, and carried off the infirmly-constituted 
 Indians by thousands. In reference to this sub 
 ject, a Mexican ecclesiastic, writing a century 
 afterwards, quotes with great significance, a com 
 mon Spanish proverb, " If the stone strikes against 
 the earthen jar, woe to the jar: and if the jar 
 strikes against the stone, woe not the less to the 
 jar."* We cannot wonder, however, that Las 
 
 * " Que si la piedra da en el cantaro, mal para el can- 
 
OF LIVING IN "PUEBLOS" 217 
 
 Casas, whose first aim at this period was con- Las Casag 
 
 desires to 
 
 version, should have insisted so much upon col- found 
 
 pueblos in 
 
 lecting the people into pueblos, as it enabled them the con- 
 to hear mass and to receive the sacraments. But country, 
 the Tuzulutlans were not at all of his mind. 
 They could not bear the idea of quitting the 
 spots where they had been born their forests, 
 their mountains, and their clefts, for the purpose 
 of forming & pueblo, which could not unite in itself 
 the peculiarities of each man s birth-place, and 
 would be likely to be chosen with a view to dull 
 convenience mainly. This measure, therefore, 
 second only in difficulty to that of winning a 
 people from a nomadic state to one of settled 
 habitation, was hard to effect in Tuzulutlan. 
 Though Las Casas was seconded in all his efforts 
 by the cacique, the people were almost inclined to 
 take up arms. At last, after great labours and 
 sufferings, Las Casas and Pedro de Angulo con 
 trived to make a beginning of a settlement, at a Founding 
 place called Rabinal, having wisely chosen a spot of Rabinai, 
 
 1538 
 
 which some few Indians, at least, were attached 
 to, as Rabinal had been inhabited before. There 
 
 taro : y si el cantaro da en la piedra, mal tambien para el 
 cantaro." DAVILA PADILLA, lib. i. cap. 33, p. 103. 
 
218 
 
 RABIN AL FOUNDED. 
 
 i 
 
 What the 
 mass at first 
 appeared to 
 the Indians. 
 
 Indians of 
 Coban 
 come to see 
 the new 
 town. 
 
 they built a church, and there they preached and 
 taught the people, teaching not only spiritual 
 things, but manual arts, and having to instruct 
 their flock in the elementary processes of washing 
 and dressing. These good fathers were not of 
 that school which holds that this life, God s gift, 
 is to be left uncomely because the next is to be 
 sublime. 
 
 It is admitted that the Indians, at first, re 
 garded the mass rather as a religious ceremony 
 which was new to them than for what, as Kerne- 
 sal says, " that most divine Sacrifice in itself is." 
 But it must have had its attractions; and the 
 active, kindly teaching of brother Bartholomew 
 and brother Pedro about things the Indians could 
 understand must have given weight and influence 
 to their words in all matters. The town began 
 to grow, one Indian family attracting another, 
 until, at last, a hundred families were collected 
 together. 
 
 This strange experiment of forming a pueblo 
 was not likely to go unnoticed long, and accord 
 ingly the inhabitants of Eabinal found their 
 neighbours of Coban stealing in to see this new 
 mode of life. It seems that their impressions of 
 
FATHER LUIS GOES TO COB AN. 2)9 
 
 it were favourable, for Luis Cancer, who had 
 been sent for by Las Casas to aid in founding the 
 town, took occasion now to penetrate as far as 
 Coban, and, finding himself well received, and 
 that the Indians there listened with pleasure to 
 what he told them of the Christian faith, returned 
 to Rabinal more contented, it is said, than if he 
 had discovered very rich mines of silver and of 
 gold. His joy was shared by Las Casas and 
 Pedro de Angulo, and they all commenced with 
 great vigour studying the language of Coban. 
 Each success was with these brave monks a step 
 gained for continued exertion. 
 
 The little town of Rabinal, which consisted of 
 five hundred inhabitants, having now been put 
 into some kind of order, Las Casas and Pedro de 
 Angulo resolved to return to Guatemala, for the 
 purpose of concerting measures with the bishop 
 for the further spread of the faith in those parts. 
 Las Casas bethought him of taking back with 
 them their principal convert, the cacique Don 
 Juan. It was not found difficult to induce the 
 cacique to accompany the fathers, but they were 
 obliged to persuade him to reduce his retinue, 
 which he would have made very large, as they 
 
 Father Luis 
 penetrates 
 to Coban. 
 
 Las Casas 
 induces the 
 cacique to 
 accompany 
 him. 
 
220 RETURN OF LAS CASAS, WITH 
 
 Persuades 
 the cacique 
 to reduce 
 his retinue. 
 
 Return of 
 Las Casas, 
 with his 
 convert, to 
 Guatemala, 
 1538. 
 
 feared that any injury or affront which any 
 Indian in the chief s train might meet with, 
 would bring down a torrent of trouble and re 
 proaches upon themselves, and they thought that, 
 the smaller the number of Indians, the less 
 chance there would be of anything untoward 
 happening between them and the Spaniards of 
 Santiago. Finally, the fathers and the cacique 
 Don Juan, with a moderate number of attend 
 ants, set off on their journey, leaving Luis 
 Cancer in charge of the Christianized town of 
 Rabinal. 
 
 Las Casas had given due notice to his friends 
 at Santiago of his intended return, and also of 
 what notable company was coming with him. 
 Rodrigo de Ladrada, the only monk left in the 
 convent of the Dominicans at Santiago, did the 
 best he could to prepare their poor house for the 
 reception of the chief and his retinue, by adding 
 huts to it, and collecting maize. 
 
 It was with more delight, and certainly with 
 more reason for being delighted, than many a 
 Roman conqueror has had on the day of his 
 ascent to the capitol, that Las Casas and his 
 brother monk brought the cacique Don Juan 
 
THE CACIQUE, TO GUATEMALA. 221 
 
 in triumph to their humble monastery. The 
 moment they had arrived, the Bishop of Guate 
 mala hurried forth to welcome the good fathers, 
 and also to salute the Indian chief. As the 
 bishop knew the language very well, he was 
 able to conduct the reception with all fitting 
 courtesy, and also to discourse with the new 
 convert about religious matters, upon which the 
 bishop found him well informed. 
 
 The bishop, being much pleased at this inter 
 view, felt sure the governor would be no less so ; 
 and he sent a message, begging his lordship 
 (Alvarado had returned from Spain) to come and 
 join them. The governor came forthwith. Now, 
 Alvarado, though a fierce and cruel personage, 
 was not without that power of rapid apprecia 
 tion which belongs to great commanders, and 
 knew well when he saw a noble and true man 
 before him. 
 
 When, therefore, the bold Adelantado met the 
 cacique, the Indian chieftain s air and manner, 
 his repose, the gravity and modesty of bis coun- The bishop 
 tenance, his severe look and weighty speech, won 
 so instantaneously upon the Spaniard, that. hayi 
 nothing else at hand, he took 
 
222 ALVARADO HONOURS THE CACIQUE. 
 
 hat, and put it on the head of the cacique. The 
 soldiers who stood around wondered and mur 
 mured at the strange fact, that a lieutenant- 
 governor of the emperor should take his own 
 hat off, and put it, as they said, on a dog of an 
 Indian. But Alvarado was not a man to care for 
 their murmurs, and so, on some ensuing day, far 
 from showing less favour to the grave cacique, 
 he placed the Indian between himself and the 
 bishop, and they traversed the town together, 
 the governor having previously ordered the mer 
 chants to display their goods to the greatest ad 
 vantage, and the bishop having told them that, 
 if the cacique should seem to take a fancy to 
 anything, they should offer it to him, and he, the 
 bishop, would be answerable for the payment. 
 But those whom we call savages, and people of 
 the highest breeding in civilized life, alike pride 
 themselves upon the coolness and composure with 
 which they regard any new thing that may be 
 oifered for their wonder or their admiration. The 
 cacique walked through the tents of the Guate 
 malan merchants with such gravity and apparent 
 indifference that it seemed as if the goods he saw 
 were no novelty to him " as if, indeed, he had 
 
LAS CASAS RETURNS TO RABIN A L -2-23 
 
 been born in Milan." Finding that he did not 
 seem to admire anything particularly, the governor 
 and the bishop changed their tactics, and began to 
 press articles of value upon him; but he would 
 not receive any of them. At last he fixed his eyes 
 upon an image of " Our Lady," and condescended 
 to ask what that was. The bishop informed 
 him ; when the Indian remarked that the bishop s 
 words agreed with what the padres had told him. 
 The bishop then ordered the image to be taken 
 down, and begged the cacique to accept it. The 
 cacique seemed pleased with this, and received 
 the image on his knees. He then delivered it to 
 one of his principal attendants, ordering him to 
 carry it with much veneration. The chieftain s 
 suite, not so dignified and self- restrained as their 
 master, were pleased at receiving little presents; 
 and, after a short stay at Santiago, they all returned 
 into their own country, accompanied by Las Casas 
 
 , T , , , . , 
 
 and .Ladrada, who were anxious to continue the 
 good work they had begun, and, if possible, to go 
 together into the territory of Coban. This they 
 succeeded in doing, and they found the people of 
 that country very ready to receive them. They 
 found, also, that it was well governed, and that the 
 
224 
 
 LAS CASAS RECALLED. 
 
 LasCasas sacrifices there were less offensive than in any 
 
 penetrates 
 
 into Coban. other part of the Indies. 
 
 Las Casas and his companions were not left 
 long to investigate this part of the country, as 
 they were recalled by their brethren at Santiago, 
 who told them "that certain good thoughts had 
 occurred to the Bishop of Guatemala, who wished 
 to communicate them to Brother Bartholomew and 
 his companions." They accordingly returned to 
 Santiago in the beginning of May, 1539. 
 
 When they were all met together in junta, they 
 found that the business upon which the bishop 
 wished to confer with them was the paucity of 
 ecclesiastics in that diocese ; to remedy which de 
 fect he stated his intention of sending to Spain. 
 He mentioned also that for this purpose he had 
 collected some money, and was ready to apply some 
 more which he had in the hands of aa agent at 
 Seville. His present difficulty was in the selec 
 tion of a person to whom he might intrust this 
 business, and he begged the assembled churchmen 
 to help him to decide that point. There was also 
 a chapter of their order about to be held at 
 Mexico, and the clergy of Guatemala must be 
 represented there. It was soon agreed that Las 
 
HE RETURNS TO SPAIN. 225 
 
 Casas and Ladrada should go to Spain, and that 
 Luis Cancer and Pedro de Angulo should attend 
 the chapter at Mexico. They lost no time in Las Casas 
 
 sent to 
 
 setting out upon their journey. The two monks, Spain. 
 who were to attend the chapter, took the road by 
 the sea-shore, which passed through Soconusco. 
 Las Casas and Ladrada went by Rabinal and 
 Coban, an arduous undertaking, but one which 
 they thought necessary in order to re-assure their 
 friendly Indians, who would otherwise be dis 
 mayed by their absence. And, in truth, the 
 cacique, Don Juan, was greatly disheartened 
 when Las Casas and Ladrada came into his coun 
 try, and told him that they were going to Spain. 
 He feared that the surrounding tribes, many of 
 whom were displeased with him for becoming a 
 convert to Christianity, would now, in the absence 
 of his protectors, the monks, no longer hesitate to 
 make war upon him. They consoled him with 
 the promise of a quick return, and he accom 
 panied them to the bounds of his own country, 
 furnishing them with an escort who were to see 
 them safe as far as Chiapa.* * 
 
 * That the cacique was most zealous in the cause of the 
 Q 
 
226 THE DOMINICAN MONASTERY. 
 
 Thus the Dominican monastery at Guatemala 
 was again left desolate. Certainly this monkish 
 fraternity was no pedantic institution, which could 
 not conform itself to the wants and the necessities 
 of the people amongst whom its lot was cast. A 
 faithful layman took charge of the convent, pro 
 bably with such orders as had been given many 
 years ago, on a similar occasion, by Betanzos, 
 
 monks, may be gathered from the following account of a 
 transaction which took place in the year 1555, and which 
 we conclude, by the date, relates to the cacique Don Juan, 
 mentioned in the text. 
 
 " Sabida, pues, la cruel barbaridad de los Idolatras en 
 toda aquella Tierra, el Indio Don Juan Cazique, Gover- 
 nador de la Vera-Paz, tomo tan por su quenta la venganc. a 
 de la Muerte de los Religiosos, que con las companias de 
 sus Indios, acaudillandolos el en Persona, empezo a guerrear 
 crudamente .... 
 
 " . . . . Y dezia publicamente a todos, y en especial a los 
 Padres del Convento de Santo Domingo de Coban : Que no 
 descansaria su Cora<jon, ni tendria sossiego alguna, hasta que 
 acabasse de raiz con todos los Acalanes, y Lacandones, en 
 satisfacion, y venganqa de la Muerte, que avian dado al 
 Padre Prior Fray Domingo de Vico, y al Padre Fray Andres 
 Lopez, su Companero: Tan excessivo era el amor, que al 
 Padre Prior tenia; y tal el dolor, que labrd en su sentimiento 
 la alevosa Muerte que a los dos dieron aquellos Barbaros ! " 
 JUAN DE VILLAGUTIERRE SOTO-MAYOR, Historic, de la 
 Conquista de la Provincia de el Itza, lib. i. cap. 10. 
 
CHAPTER OF DOMINICANS. 227 
 
 to open the convent church to any one who 
 wished to pray there; and this lay friend of the 
 monastery employed his leisure, somewhat as the 
 other laymen had done, in preparing unburnt 
 bricks for the future building materials of the 
 monastery. 
 
 The four monks reached Mexico safely, and 
 were very kindly received by Domingo de Betan- 
 zos. A chapter of the Dominicans was held on 
 the 24th day of August, 1539; and, though the 
 demand for Christian instruction was very urgent 
 in Mexico, the chapter, having been informed of 
 the proceedings in Guatemala and "the Land of 
 War," determined that four monks and two novices 
 should be appointed to go to Guatemala; that 
 Pedro de Angulo should be named as Vicar of the 
 Dominican convent at Guatemala, and that Las 
 Casas, with Ladrada and Luis Cancer, should be 
 allowed to go to Spain. Las Casas and his com 
 panions accordingly pursued their way to the 
 mother country. 
 
 We are left in no doubt of the activity of 
 Brother Bartholomew after he had arrived at the 
 Spanish Court ; for there are a number of royal or- R oja l 
 ders and letters, about this period, all bearirg upon Setters fa- 
 
j 
 
 228 LETTERS AND ORDERS 
 
 the conversion of the inhabitants of Tuzulutlan. 
 There is an order sanctioning the promise which 
 had been made on the Emperor s part, that no lay 
 Spaniard should enter that province within five 
 years, unless with the permission of the Dominican 
 monks. There are letters, addressed, by com 
 mand of the emperor, to each of the principal 
 caciques of fs the Land of War " who had favoured 
 the Dominicans, in which letters Charles thanks, 
 them for what they had done, and charges them 
 to continue in the same course.* There are 
 orders to the Governor of Guatemala to favour 
 these caciques in their endeavours to help the 
 Dominican monks, and instructions to the Governor 
 of Mexico to allow Indians to be taken from that 
 
 * The letter of the Emperor to one of the caciques com 
 mences thus : " EL REY. Don Jorge, Principal del pueblo- 
 de Tegpanatitan, que es en la Provincia de Guatemala. 
 Por relacion de fray Bartolome de las Casas e sido infor- 
 mado, que aveys travajado en pacificar, y traer de paz, los 
 naturales de las Provincias de Tagulutlan, que estavan de 
 guerra, y el favor y ayuda que para ello aveys dado al dicho 
 fray Bartolome de las Casas, y fray Pedro de Angulo, y a- 
 
 los otros Religiosos que en ello han entendido 
 
 Oct. 17, 1540." REMESAL, Hist, de Chiapa y Guatemala, 
 lib. iii. cap. 21. 
 
FROM THE EMPEROR. 22<> 
 
 province by the Dominican monks, if they should 
 find such Indians useful in their entry into Tuzu- 
 lutlan. Music, the means by which Las Casas 
 and his friends had accomplished so much good, 
 was not forgotten ; and the emperor commands 
 the head of the Franciscans in New Spain to allow 
 some of the Indians who could play and sing 
 church music in the monasteries of that order, to 
 be taken by Las Casas into the province of Tuzu- 
 lutlan. And, finally, there is a general order to 
 the authorities in America to punish those who 
 should transgress the provisions which had been 
 made in favour of Las Casas and his Dominicans. 
 
 We learn from one of these letters who were 
 the chiefs that favoured the introduction of 
 -Christianity, and the names of their provinces, 
 which is a valuable contribution to the history, 
 .and perhaps to the ethnology, of Central America. 
 They were Don Juan, Governor (so he is called) 
 of the town of Atitlan, Don Jorge, Principal of 
 the town of Tecpanatitan, Don Miguel, Principal 
 of the town of Zizicaztenango, and Don Gaspar, 
 Principal of the town of Tequizistlan. 
 
 The business of Las Casas at court was finished, 
 and the monks, for whose sustenance the good 
 
230 LAS CASAS DETAINED IN SPAIN. 
 
 Bishop of Guatemala had provided, were ready to 
 leave Spain, when the President of the Council 
 of the Indies detained Las Casas, in order that 
 he might assist at certain councils which were 
 about to be held, concerning the Government of 
 the Indies. This is the second time within a short 
 period, that we have seen the authorities in Spain 
 anxious to avail themselves of the local knowledge 
 and experience of eminent persons who had lived 
 in the Indies. 
 
 The monks chosen to aid in the conversion of 
 Guatemala consisted of Franciscans and Domi 
 nicans. The Dominicans were detained in Spain, 
 as Las Casas was their vicar-general. But the 
 Franciscans were sent on, and with them went 
 Luis Cancer, carrying all the letters and royal 
 orders relating to the province of Tuzulutlan, still 
 called "the Land of War," but which now de 
 served that name less than any part of the Indies. 
 Before sailing, a very solemn proclamation was 
 made on the steps of the Cathedral at Seville of 
 that royal order which sternly forbad the entrance 
 for the present of any lay Spaniards into the 
 favoured province of Tuzulutlan. This was a 
 precaution adopted by Las Casas, who well knew 
 
TEE ROYAL ORDER. 231 
 
 that the provincial governors, though they kissed 
 the royal orders very dutifully, and were wont to 
 put them, after the eastern fashion, upon their 
 heads, with every demonstration of respect, were 
 extremely dexterous in disobeying them, on the 
 pretext that His Majesty had been misinformed, 
 or had been informed in a left-hand manner 
 (siniestramente). Las Casas, therefore, was anxious 
 to give all possible publicity to this royal order in 
 Spain, where its validity could not be denied. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 Las Casas writes on Indian affairs He is made Bishop of 
 Chiapa His troubles with his flock He resigns the 
 bishopric His controversy with Sepulveda. 
 
 ;E left Las Casas detained at the court 
 of Spain by the Council of the Indies, 
 who wished to profit by his knowledge 
 of Indian affairs. It is easy to imagine with what 
 force he could then speak in favour of his Indians, 
 having, for once, a great practical success to 
 appeal to in the conquest of Tuzulutlan : he who 
 had never been even daunted when the course of 
 aifairs had apparently been most decisive against 
 him. 
 
 The Emperor Charles the Fifth was absent in 
 Germany, contending against Luther and the 
 German princes who favoured the great reformer, 
 
WRITINGS OF LAS CASAS. 233 
 
 and Las Casas employed his time in writing 
 the work, which of all his works has become 
 
 most celebrated, namely, The Destruction of the He writes 
 
 the De- 
 Indies. This was afterwards translated into struction oj 
 
 the Indies, 
 
 several languages, and has been read throughout 
 Europe- It gives a short account of what had 
 taken place in each colony, and is one of the 
 boldest works that ever issued from the press. At 
 that time it was not published, but submitted to 
 the Emperor and his ministers. It is possible that 
 in this its first form it was a still more daring 
 production than it appears to be now ; for in the 
 printed copies there is not a single name given of 
 the persons inculpated. These are generally 
 spoken of as this or that " tyrant." The work 
 was not published in its present form until twelve 
 years afterwards, when it was addressed with a 
 dedication to Philip, the heir to the throne. 
 
 The above, however, was not the only, or, 
 perhaps, the most important, work Las Casas 
 wrote about this time. He also drew up a me- He writes 
 
 a memorial 
 
 morial, which is in itself an elaborate work, con- called 
 
 Veynte 
 
 sisting of twenty reasons to prove that the Indians &on*. 
 ought not to be given to the Spaniards either in 
 encomienda, in fee, in vassalage, or in any other 
 
234 THE MEMORIAL OF LAS CASAS. 
 
 manner. It appears from the title (Veynte JRa- 
 zones), that it was written at the Emperor s com 
 mand for the information of a certain great junta 
 which was to be held at Valladolid, in the year 
 1542. There is one very striking passage in the 
 Memorial, in which Las Casas states that the In 
 dians were subjected to four masters, namely, 
 first, His majesty the Emperor; secondly, their 
 own caciques ; thirdly, their Encomendero ; and 
 fourthly, his manager, who, as Las Casas said, 
 " weighed more upon them than an hundred 
 towers." 
 
 Among the achievements of the statesmen, 
 
 =^ 
 
 churchmen, and lawyers, who distinguished them 
 selves as Protectors of the Indians during the first 
 half of the sixteenth century, those of Las Casas 
 are incomparably the most prominent. It cannot 
 even be said of any other protector, as was said of 
 the second competitor in the race in Virgil s 
 ^Eneidy that he was next to the foremost man, 
 " though next after a long interval ; " * for Las 
 
 * " Primus abit, longeque ante omnia corpora Nisus 
 Emicat, et ventis et fulminis ocior alls. 
 Proximus huic, longo sed proximus intervallo, 
 Insequitur Salius." JEneid, lib. v. 318. 
 
HIS UNTIEING ENERGY. 23,5 
 
 Casas was entirely alone in his pre-eminence, and 
 was the prime mover on almost all the great 
 occasions when the welfare of the Indians occupied 
 the attention of the court of Spain. 
 
 Gonzalo Pizarro s rebellion in Peru, which the 
 remarkable sagacity of the licentiate Pedro de la 
 Gasca only just sufficed to quell, was directly 
 traceable to the disinclination to adopt the New 
 Laws; and two minor rebellions which followed 
 were also caused by these same ordinances. The New Laws 
 
 due to the 
 
 New Laws had been a signal triumph for Las energy of 
 
 Las Casas. 
 
 Casas. Without him, without his untiring energy 
 and singular influence over those whom he came 
 near, these laws would not have been enacted. 
 The mere bodily fatigue which he endured was 
 such as hardly any man of his time, not a con 
 queror, had encountered. He had crossed the 
 ocean twelve times. Four times he had made his 
 way into Germany, to see the Emperor. Had a 
 record been kept of his wanderings, such as that 
 which exists of the journeys of Charles the Fifth, 
 it would have shown that Las Casas had led a 
 much more active life than even that energetic 
 monarch. Moreover, the journeyings of Las Casas 
 were often made with all the inconvenience of 
 
236 
 
 LAS CASAS IS MADE 
 
 Las Casas 
 is offered 
 the 
 
 bishopric 
 of Cusco. 
 
 Las Casas 
 refuses the 
 bishopric 
 of Cusco. 
 
 poverty, and were not in any respect like a royal 
 progress. 
 
 It was in 1543 that Las Casas, being at Bar 
 celona, whither he had gone to thank the Emperor 
 for the promulgation of the New Laws, was sur 
 prised by an offer which would have delighted 
 most other men, but which to him was singularly 
 unwelcome. One Sunday evening he was ho 
 noured by receiving a visit from the Emperor s 
 secretary, Francisco de los Cobos, who came to 
 press upon his acceptance the bishopric of Cusco 
 (a town in the province of New Toledo), vacant 
 by the death of Bishop Valverde. Now, there 
 were weighty reasons why this offer of a bishopric 
 should be unwelcome to Las Casas. To prove 
 that he was moved by no private interest in 
 his advocacy of the cause of the Indians, he 
 had publicly and solemnly renounced all per 
 sonal favour or gratification that Charles the Fifth 
 could bestow upon him. Moreover, his flock was 
 already larger than that in any bishopric ; and to 
 become a bishop was, for Las Casas, a limitation 
 of the sphere of his philanthropic endeavours. 
 Accordingly he refused the bishopric of Cusco, 
 and quitted Barcelona. 
 
BISHOP OF CHIAPA. 2S7 
 
 He was not, however, to escape being raised to Chiapa 
 
 made a 
 
 the episcopal dignity. The province of Chiapa diocese. 
 had recently been constituted into a diocese ; and 
 the first bishop who had been appointed had died 
 on his way to the seat of his bishopric. The 
 Council of the Indies felt that it would be de 
 sirable to have a bishop in that diocese who would 
 look to the execution of the New Laws. The 
 province of Chiapa was at a great distance from 
 Mexico, where there was an audiencia, and also 
 from Honduras, where a new one was about to 
 be constituted, to be called the Audiencia of the 
 Confines. Chiapa, therefore, might be much mis 
 governed, unless it had a vigorous bishop. The 
 Council resolved that Las Casas should have this 
 bishopric pressed upon him. The heads of the 
 Dominican order were of opinion that Las Casas 
 ought not to refuse this offer; and, after being 
 exposed to entreaty of all kinds, it being pressed 
 upon him as a matter of conscience that he should 
 accept the bishopric, he at last conquered his re- Las Casas 
 
 accepts the 
 
 pugnance, and submitted himself to the will of his bishopric of 
 
 Chiar-a. 
 
 superiors. 
 
 Having accepted the bishopric, Las Casas in 
 stantly set off for Toledo, where a chapter of his 
 
238 LAS CASAS GOES TO HIS BISHOPRIC. 
 
 Takes with 
 him some 
 Dominican 
 monks. 
 
 Las Casas 
 proceeds 
 to his 
 bishopric. 
 July, 1544. 
 
 Las Casas 
 and the 
 monks 
 arrive at 
 Ciudad 
 Real. 
 
 order was about to be held, and where he resolved 
 to ask permission to carry out with him a number 
 of Dominican monks, who might assist him in 
 christianising his diocese. The permission was 
 granted. Several monks were chosen, who with 
 Las Casas prepared themselves for their journey 
 and voyage to the New World. Las Casas was 
 consecrated at Seville; and on a Wednesday, the 
 4th of July, 1544, the new bishop, with his friend 
 Rodrigo de Ladrada, and some clerigos, took his 
 departure from Spain. The monks who accom 
 panied him were forty -four in number, and were 
 under the orders of their vicar, Thomas Casillas. 
 They all set sail from San Lucar; and, after touch 
 ing at the Canary Islands, arrived at the island of 
 Hispaniola. The bishop was exceedingly ill re 
 ceived there. Indeed, he was the most unpopulai 
 man in the New World, as being the one who 
 had done most to restrain the cruelty and curb 
 the power of the Spanish conquerors. We can 
 not pursue the voyages and the journeyings of 
 the bishop and the monks until they reached the 
 province of Chiapa, and were installed in the town 
 of Ciudad Real, the capital of that province. 
 There exists, however, a minute account of all 
 
HIS HABITS AS BISHOP. 239 
 
 their proceedings, which is most interesting, and 
 serves to show the hardships which such men 
 underwent at that period before they could estab 
 lish themselves in the Indies. 
 
 V 
 
 The episcopal dignity made no change in the The habits 
 
 of Las 
 
 ways or manners of Las Casas. His dress was Casas as a 
 
 bishop. 
 
 that of a simple monk, often torn and patched. 
 He ate no meat himself, though it was provided 
 for the clergy who sat at table with him. There 
 was no plate to be seen in his house, nothing but 
 earthenware ; and in all respects his household 
 was maintained in the simplest manner.* He 
 had lost all his books, which had been on board a 
 vessel that had sunk in Campeachy Bay. This 
 was a great grief to the good bishop, who, amidst 
 all his other labours, was a diligent student giving The bishop 
 
 . a student. 
 
 especial attention to the voluminous works of 
 
 * " En su persona se trato siempre como frayle, un habito 
 humilde, y algunas vezes roto y remendado. Jamas se puso 
 tunica de lienqo, ni durmid sino en sabanas de estamena, y 
 una frac,ada por colcha rica. No comia came, aunque para 
 los clerigos que assistian a su mesa se servia con mucha mo 
 deration, coma se ha dicho. Comia en platos de varro, y 
 las alhajas de su casa eran nmy pocas-" REMESAL, Hist, 
 de Chiapa y Guatemala, lib. vi. cap. 2. 
 
240 LAS CASAS PROTECTS THE NATIVES. 
 
 Oppression 
 of the 
 natives in 
 Chiapa. 
 
 The bishop 
 forbids ab 
 solution in 
 certain 
 capes. 
 
 Reasonings 
 of the colo 
 nists of 
 Chiapa. 
 
 Thomas Aquinas, which were a needful armoury 
 to all those who had any controversy to maintain 
 in that age. 
 
 It was only at rare intervals that Las Casas 
 achieved success, or knew happiness ; and the 
 sufferings of the Indians oppressed his soul here, 
 in Chiapa, as they had done in other parts of the 
 New World. The members of his household 
 could often hear him sighing and groaning in his 
 own room at night. His grief used to reach its 
 height when some poor Indian woman would come 
 to him, and, throwing herself at his feet, exclaim 
 with tears, "My father, great lord, I am free. 
 Look at me ; I have no mark of the brand on my 
 face ; and yet I have been sold for a slave. De 
 fend me, you, who are our father." And Las 
 Casas resolved to defend these poor people. His 
 way of doing so was by forbidding absolution to 
 be given to those Spaniards who held slaves, con 
 trary to the provisions contained in the New 
 Laws. This bold measure raised a perfect storm 
 in his diocese. Some of the colonists and con 
 querors put the question as a point of honour. 
 f( If we dismiss these Indians," they said, " and 
 cease to buy and sell them as we have hitherto 
 
HOSTILITY TO HIM. 241 / 
 
 done, they will say that we have been tyrants 
 from the beginning, and that we cannot do with 
 them what we have done, since a simple monk like 
 this restores them to their liberty. They will 
 laugh at us, mock at us, and cry after us in the 
 streets ; and there will not be an Indian who will 
 do what a Spaniard may command him." 
 
 There was nothing that the Spaniards in Cm- Hostility to 
 
 the bishop 
 
 dad Real did not say and do to molest the bishop, in his 
 
 diocese. 
 
 They called him a "Bachelor by the Tiles; " a 
 phrase of that time, signifying one who had not 
 been a regular student of theology, who had en 
 tered by the roof, and not by the door. iThey 
 made verses upon him, of an opprobrious kind, 
 which the children sang in the streets. An 
 arquebuse, without ball, was discharged at his 
 window, to alarm him. His dean would not obey 
 him, and gave absolution to some persons who 
 notoriously had Indians for slaves. The Do 
 minican monks partook of the unpopularity of the 
 bishop. Finally, Las Casas resolved to seek re- \\ Q appeals 
 dress, not for his own wrongs, but for those of his nearest 
 Indian flock, from the Royal Audiencia of the 
 Confines ; and he made a journey to Honduras 
 for that purpose. There is a letter ot his, dated 
 
242 LAS CAS AS FLOCK RESIST HIM. 
 
 the 22nd of October, 1545, addressed to that au- 
 diencia, in which he threatened the Auditors with 
 excommunication unless they should provide a 
 remedy for the evils which existed in his diocese. 
 When he appeared before them, the president, far 
 from listening favourably to the protestations of 
 Las Casas, poured forth a torrent of abuse upon 
 him: "You are a scoundrel, a bad man, a 
 
 Reply of 
 
 dent to Las monk, a bad bishop, a shameless fellow ; and you 
 deserve to be chastised." ff I do deserve all that 
 your lordship says," Las Casas replied. The 
 bishop said this ironically, recollecting how much 
 he had laboured to obtain for this judge his 
 place. 
 
 Notwithstanding his bad reception in the first 
 instance from the Auditors of the Confines, the 
 bishop at last succeeded in persuading them to 
 agree to send an Auditor to Ciudad Real, who 
 should see to the execution of the new laws. The 
 inhabitants of Ciudad Real were informed by 
 letter of this fact ; and they determined to make 
 the most strenuous resistance to the return of 
 their bishop into the city. They prepared a pro 
 test, in which they said that he had never shown 
 any bull from the pope, or mandate from the em- 
 
THEIR PREPARATIONS. 243 
 
 peror, authorizing him to exercise the rights of a 
 bishop. They insisted upon his proceeding like 
 the other bishops of New Spain, and not intro 
 ducing innovations. If he did not assent to this, 
 they would deprive him of his temporalities, and 
 refuse to admit him as their bishop. They placed 
 a body of Indians on the road that he would have 
 to traverse in returning to their city, having de 
 termined that they would not let him enter, unless, 
 as they said, he would treat them as Christians, 
 allowing them absolution, and not endeavour to 
 take away their slaves, nor to fix the tribute 
 of their encomiendas. Against the bishop, who Their pre. 
 
 parations 
 
 would come " unguarded and on foot, with only a for resist 
 ance. 
 stick in his hand, and a breviary in his girdle," 
 
 they prepared coats of mail and corslets, arque 
 buses, lances, and swords. The Indians were 
 posted some way out of the city, as sentinels, to 
 give notice of his approach. Meanwhile Las 
 Casas had arrived at Copanabastla, where there 
 was a Dominican monastery, and where he learnt 
 what reception was awaiting him in his diocese. 
 The Dominicans counselled him not to proceed ; 
 but the bishop s opinion was that he should fear 
 lessly prosecute his journey. " For," he said, " if 
 
.244 LAS CASAS RESOLVES TO PROCEED. 
 
 I do not go to Ciudad Real, I banish myself from 
 my church ; and it will be said of me, with much 
 reason, ( The wicked fleeth ; and no man pur- 
 sueth. " He did not deny that the intelligence 
 was true, and that his flock were prepared to kill 
 him. " But," he said, " the minds of men change 
 from hour to hour, from minute to minute, from 
 moment to moment. Is it possible that God has 
 been so chary with the men of Ciudad Real as to 
 deny pis holy assistance in causing them to abstain 
 from so great a crime as putting me to death ? 
 If I do not endeavour to enter my church, of 
 whom shall I have to complain to the king, or to 
 the pope, as having thrust me out of it ? Are my 
 adversaries so bitter against me that the first 
 word will be a deadly thrust through my heart,-! 
 without giving me the chance of soothing them ? 
 In conclusion, reverend fathers, I am resolved^ 
 trusting in the mercy of God and in your holy 
 prayers, to set out for my diocese. To tarry here, 
 or to go elsewhere, has all the inconveniences 
 which have just been stated." So saying, he rose 
 from his seat ; and, gathering up the folds of his 
 scapulary, he commenced his journey. 
 
 Now the Indian sentinels had heard that the 
 
ENTERS HfS DIOCESE. 245 
 
 bishop s baggage, which had preceded him, had 
 been taken back, and they were consequently 
 quite at their ease. The inhabitants of Ciudad 
 Heal had also heard of this, and there was great 
 joy in the city ; as they thought that their prepa 
 rations had daunted the bishop. 
 
 Suddenly the bishop in his journey came upon 
 these Indian sentinels. They fell at his feet, and The Indian 
 
 sentinels 
 
 with tears besought his pardon. "It was beau- fall at the 
 
 bishop s 
 
 tiful to hear the harangue which each of them feet. 
 made, clinging to the feet of the bishop, and 
 speaking in the Mexican language, which is very 
 expressive of the affections." 41 The kind bishop 
 was not angry with the Indians, and his only 
 fear was lest they should be scourged or put to 
 death for not having given notice of his approach. 
 He, therefore, with his own hands, assisted by a 
 certain Father Vicente who was with him, tied 
 these Indians to one another, and made them 
 follow behind him, as if they were his prisoners. 
 He did this partly with his own hands, in order 
 
 * " Y era donoso el modo de la arenga que cada uno 
 abraqado con los pies del Obispo dezia en lengua Mexicana, 
 que es muy significativa de afectos." REMESAL, Hist, de 
 Ckiapa y Guatemala, lib. vii. cap. 8. 
 
246 LAS CASAS ENTERS CIUDAD REAL. 
 
 that two or three Spaniards who were with him, 
 and a negro, who always accompanied him because 
 he was very tall and could carry the bishop across 
 the rivers, might not be subject to the charge of 
 having bound the Indians. That same night, as 
 the bishop journeyed, there was an earthquake at 
 Ciudad Real ; and the citizens said, " The bishop 
 must be coming, and those dogs of Indians have 
 not told us of it : this earthquake is a sign of the 
 destruction that is to come upon the city when he 
 arrives in it." 
 
 The bishop travelled all night, and reached 
 Ciudad Real at day-break. He went straight to 
 the church ; and thither he summoned the alcaldes 
 and regidors to meet him. They came, followed 
 by all the inhabitants of the city, and seated them 
 selves, as if to hear a sermon. When the bishop 
 advanced from the sacristy, no man asked his 
 benediction, or spoke a word to him, or made any 
 sign of courtesy. Then the notary to the Town 
 Council rose, and read a paper containing the re 
 quisitions which had been agreed upon. To this 
 the bishop replied in a speech of much gentleness 
 and modesty ; and his words were producing a 
 considerable effect on his hearers, when one of 
 
PROCEEDINGS IN THE CATHEDRAL. 247 
 
 the regidors, without rising, or taking off his cap, 
 commenced a speech, blaming the bishop, whom 
 he described as a private individual, for presuming 
 to summon them there instead of coming to the 
 Town Council. 
 
 " Look you, sir," the bishop replied, " when I 
 have to ask you anything from your estates, I 
 will go to your houses to speak to you ; but, when 
 the things which I have to speak about relate to 
 the service of God and the good of your souls, I 
 have to send and summon you, and to command 
 that you should come wherever I may be ; and if 
 you are Christians, you have to come trooping 
 there in haste, lest evil fall upon you." These 
 words, spoken with great animation, had the 
 Affect of dismaying and silencing the bishop s 
 opponents. 
 
 He rose and prepared to go into the sacristy, 
 when the secretary of the Town Council went up 
 to him, and presented a petition that he would 
 name confessors. " I shall willingly do so," said 
 the bishop ; and with a loud voice he named two 
 confessors. They were, however, well known to 
 be of his own way of thinking. The people, 
 therefore, were not satisfied. The bishop then 
 
24S A CONVENT BESIEGED. 
 
 named two others, of whose good disposition he 
 was well aware, but who were not so well known 
 as his partizans. The monk who had accompanied 
 him on his journey, Fray Vicente de Ferrer, laid 
 hold of the bishop s vestments, and exclaimed, 
 " Let your lordship die rather than do this," for 
 he was not aware of the character of these men 
 whom the bishop had named, and thought he was 
 giving way to clamour. Immediately a great 
 tumult arose in the church ; and, at that juncture, 
 two monks of the Order of Mercy entered it, who 
 persuaded the bishop and his companion to with 
 draw from the crowd, and to accompany them to 
 their convent. 
 
 Las Casas, having journeyed on foot all night, 
 
 was exceedingly exhausted ; and the monks were 
 
 giving him some bread, when they heard a great 
 
 The convent noise, and found that an armed populace had 
 
 beset by 
 
 armed men. surrounded the convent. Some of the armed 
 men forced their way even to the cell where the 
 bishop was. A new grievance, which had infu 
 riated them, was that their Indian sentinels had 
 been bound and treated as prisoners. The bishop 
 said that he alone was to blame in the matter , 
 that he had come upon these Indians suddenly, 
 
INSULTS TO LAS CASAS. 249 
 
 tind had bound them with his own hands, lest they 
 should be suspected of having voluntarily favoured 
 him, and be accordingly maltreated. One of the 
 rioters, a certain Pedro de Pando, said, " You see 
 here the way of the world. He is the saviour 
 of the Indians, and look, he it is who binds them. 
 Yet this same man will send memorials against 
 us to Spain, declaring that we maltreat them." 
 After this, another of the inhabitants of Ciudad 
 Real poured out most foul language against the 
 bishop. Las Casas only said, " I do not choose, 
 sir, to answer you, in order not to take out of 
 God s hands your chastisement ; for these insults 
 are not addressed to me, but to Him." 
 
 While this was going on in the cell of the 
 bishop, one of the mob in the courtyard had been 
 quarrelling with Juanillo, the bishop s negro, say 
 ing that it was he who had tied the Indians, and 
 he gave the negro a thrust with a pike which 
 
 stretched him on the ground. The monks rushed The con 
 vent is 
 forward to assist the negro; and two of them, cleared of 
 
 its invaders 
 
 who were youths, showed such courage that the 
 Fathers of Mercy succeeded in clearing, by main 
 force, their convent from its invaders. It was 
 now nine o clock in the morning. But by mid- 
 
250 
 
 THE RIOTERS REPENT. 
 
 day so great a change had been wrought in the 
 minds of the inhabitants of Ciudad Real, so com 
 pletely had they come to a sense of the turbu 
 lence and shamefulness of their conduct, that 
 nearly all of them proceeded to the convent, and, 
 on their knees, besought the bishop s pardon, 
 kissed his hands, and said that they were his 
 children. The alcaldes, as a sign of submission, 
 would not carry their wands of office in his pre 
 sence; others took off their swords; and, in festal 
 procession, they brought the bishop out of the 
 convent, carried him to the house of one of the 
 principal inhabitants, and sent him various costly 
 presents. Nay more, they resolved to hold a tour 
 nament in honour of their bishop, a mark of their 
 favour and esteem he could, perhaps, have dis 
 pensed with. Certainly few men have ever expe 
 rienced stranger turns of fortune than Las Casas 
 did in the course of this memorable day of his re 
 turn to his diocese. The very suddenness of the 
 change of feeling in his flock was a circumstance 
 that might well have engendered in his mind 
 misgivings as to the future, and have disgusted 
 him with the office of ruling as bishop over the 
 turbulent and versatile citizens of Ciudad Real, 
 the chief city of Chiapa. 
 
REVOCATION OF THE NEW LAWS. 251 
 
 But, indeed, in no part of the New World 
 would Las Casas have had an easy life. It was 
 at this time that Gonzalo Pizarro s rebellion in 
 Peru was at its height, and that the resistance to . 
 the New Laws was so great that Charles the 
 Fifth was obliged to revoke them. What anguish 
 must have been caused to Las Casas by the 
 revocation of these laws is known to no man. 
 Notwithstanding the disasters he experienced, 
 which would have crushed the spirit of almost 
 any other person, his zeal never slackened, and 
 his practical sagacity taught him not to reproach 
 Charles the Fifth or his ministers for a backward 
 course of legislation, which he knew had been 
 forced upon them by calamity. For himself, he 
 maintained his ground that the granting of 
 encomiendas to private persons was a great injus 
 tice to the native Indians ; but he seems to have 
 accepted the new position of affairs, and to have 
 bent his efforts to improving that system which 
 he must have felt could not now be destroyed by 
 a mere mandate from the court of Spain. At any 
 rate, he did not protest against the revocation of 
 the new laws as an act of folly or weakness on the 
 part of the Spanish authorities at home. This 
 revocation, could not have been known at this 
 
 Revocation 
 of the New- 
 Laws. 
 
 How Las 
 Casas bore 
 the revoca 
 tion of the 
 New Laws. 
 
252 ADDRESS OF THE AUDITOR. 
 
 time to the audiencia of the confines, for they 
 fulfilled their promise of sending one of their body 
 to Chiapa. 
 
 This Auditor heard, with attention and respect, 
 the representations that Las Casas made to him 
 on behalf of the Indians. But one day he thus re 
 plied : " Your lordship well knows that although 
 these new laws were framed at Valladolid, with 
 the accordances of sundry grave personages (as 
 your lordship and I saw), one of the reasons 
 that has made these laws hateful in the Indies 
 has been the fact of your having had a hand in 
 them. The conquerors consider your lordship 
 as so prejudiced against them, that they believe 
 that what you do in favour of the natives is not 
 so much from love of the Indians as from hatred 
 of the Spaniards. As they entertain this opinion, 
 if I have to deprive any of them of their slaves 
 or estates, they will feel more its being done 
 in your presence than they will the loss itself. 
 Don Tello de Sandoval (the president of the 
 Audiencia at Mexico) has summoned your lord 
 ship for a synod of prelates ; and I shall be glad, 
 if you will hasten your departure, for, until you 
 have gone, I can do nothing." 
 
LAS CASAS IN MEXICO. 
 
 253 
 
 The bishop had been preparing to attend this The bishop 
 
 goes to a 
 
 jynod, and he now took his departure. He never ^ynod at 
 
 Mexico. 
 
 beheld his diocese again. 
 
 When he approached the city of Mexico there His recep 
 
 tion in that 
 was a tumult as if a hostile army were about to city. 
 
 occupy the city. The authorities were obliged 
 to write to him, begging him to defer his entry 
 until the minds of men should be somewhat 
 quieted.* He afterwards entered in the daytime, 
 without receiving any insult. He took up his 
 abode in the Dominican monastery; and on the 
 first day of his arrival, the viceroy and the Audi 
 tors sent word that they were ready to receive a 
 visit from him. His reply evinced his habitual 
 boldness, but, at the same time, betrayed the want 
 of worldly wisdom that was occasionally manifest 
 
 * The hatred to Las Casas throughout the New World 
 amounted to a passion. Letters were written to the resi 
 dents in Chiapa, expressing pity for them as having met the 
 greatest misfortune that could occur to them, in being 
 placed under such a bishop. They did not name him, but 
 spoke of him as " That Devil who has come to you for a 
 bishop." The following is an extract from one of these 
 letters. " We say here, that very great must be the sins of 
 your country, when God chastises it with such a scourge as 
 Bending that Antichrist for a bishop." 
 
254 
 
 SYNOD IN MEXICO 
 
 Mexico. 
 
 in him. There was quite enough difficulty in the 
 
 affairs which he had to manage, on his own ac- 
 
 He refuses count; but he felt it his duty to inform the 
 
 to visit the 
 
 king s Offi- king s officers that they must excuse his visitino- 
 
 cers in 
 
 them, as they were excommunicated, since they 
 had given orders for cutting off the head of a 
 priest at Anteguera. This answer was soon 
 made known throughout the city of Mexico, and 
 increased the odium under which Las Casas 
 laboured. 
 
 The synod of prelates and other learned men 
 commenced its proceedings, and laid down as a 
 basis five principal points. 1st, That all unbe 
 lievers, of whatever sect or religion they might 
 be, and whatever sins they might have committed 
 against natural, national, or divine law, have 
 nevertheless a just lordship over their own pos 
 sessions. 2nd, That there are four different kinds 
 of unbelievers. The object of laying down this 
 maxim is not obvious at first, and requires a 
 knowledge of the controversies of that age. The 
 object was to place the Indians in the second class 
 of unbelievers; and more than once, on great 
 occasions, Las Casas placed them in the same 
 
ITS PRINCIPLES. 155 
 
 division as the ancient British, thus dividing them 
 from those barbarians who had no arts or polity 
 whatever. 3rd, That the final and only reason 
 why the Apostolic See had given supreme juris 
 diction in the Indies to the Kings of Castile and 
 Leon was, that the gospel might be preached, 
 and the Indians be converted It was not to make 
 those kings greater lords and richer princes than 
 they were. 4th, That the Apostolic See, in grant 
 ing this supremacy to the Kings of Castile and 
 Leon, did not mean thereby to deprive the lords 
 of the Indians of their estates, lordships, juris 
 dictions, or dignities. 5th, That the Kings of 
 Castile and Leon were bound to provide the re 
 quisite expenses for the conversion of the Indians 
 to the true faith. 
 
 Taking the foregoing as their main principles, 
 the synod made many deductions very unfavour 
 able to the claims of the conquerors; and espe 
 cially they pronounced what were the conditions 
 upon which absolution should be granted by con 
 fessors to the Spanish colonists, into which condi 
 tions restitution entered. 
 
 The proceedings of this synod were very bold, 
 but Las Casas was not satisfied with them, because 
 
256 LAS CASAS GOING TO SPAIN. 
 JL_. > 
 
 the particular point of slavery, though much dis 
 cussed, was not resolved upon. He therefore 
 Las Casas summoned a junta, which was attended by all the 
 
 summons 
 
 another learned men except the bishops; and this junta 
 
 junta. 
 
 pronounced that the Spaniards who had made 
 slaves were " tyrants ; " that the slaves were to be 
 considered as illegally made; and that all those 
 who possessed them were bound to liberate them. 
 They also pronounced against the personal service 
 of the Indians. 
 
 It must not be supposed that the members 
 of this junta imagined that their decisions would 
 immediately insure the liberation of the Indians. 
 These learned men contented themselves with de 
 claring to their countrymen what they held to be 
 the truth, and informing them of what was neces 
 sary for the salvation of their souls. They wer^ 
 not bound to do anything more. 
 
 Las Casas did not return from Mexico to his 
 
 bishopric. Ever since his interview with the 
 
 Las Casas Auditors of the Confines he had resolved to go 
 
 resolves to . 
 
 go to Spain, back to Spam; and the reason which he gave to 
 one of his reverend brethren was, that when at 
 court, and near the king and his council, he 
 would be able to do more good service, both to 
 
RESIGNS BISHOPRIC OF CHIAPA. 257 
 
 his own province and to the whole Indies, than 
 by staying in his diocese, especially as he had 
 now members of his own Order stationed there, 
 who could correspond with him, and inform him 
 of whatever evil might require a remedy. 
 
 He accordingly prepared to act upon this re 
 solve. He appointed confessors for his diocese, 
 and regulated the conditions of absolution, which 
 were expressed in twelve rules. He nominated 
 a vicar-general for his bishopric, and then pro 
 ceeded from Mexico to Spain, where he resigned 
 the bishopric.* His return was in the year 
 1547. 
 
 One of the biographers of Las Casas states, that 
 the bishop was obliged to return to Spain to an 
 swer certain charges that were made against him, 
 chiefly touching his formulary of confession, and 
 that he went back as a prisoner. I do not find 
 any authority for this statement; but it is certain 
 that on the bishop s return to Spain he did appear 
 before the Council of the Indies, and had to 
 
 Appoints 
 confessors 
 and a vicar- 
 general. 
 JVov. 9, 
 15i3. 
 
 * In 1555 he was allowed a pension of 200,000 
 maravedis (108/. 6s.), a sum not inconsiderable in that 
 day. 
 
 S 
 
7 
 
 258 SEPULVEDA S BOOK. 
 
 justify this forumlary, which he succeeded in 
 doing. 
 
 The learned men of Spain were not all of the 
 Bishop of Chiapa s way of thinking as regarded 
 the rights and claims of the Indians. A certain 
 Doctor Juan Gines Sepulveda,* principal histori 
 ographer to Charles the Fifth, a man of great 
 renown for learning in those days, had recently 
 written a treatise entitled, Democrates Secundus, 
 sive de Justis Belli Causis, in which he maintained, 
 in a very able manner, the right of the Pope and 
 of the kings of Spain to subdue by war the inha 
 bitants of the New World. Sepulveda called his 
 new work Democrates Secundus, because he had 
 previously written a book which was entitled 
 Democrates : a Dialogue on the Honourable Nature 
 of Military Study. The Democrates Secundus was 
 also written in dialogue; and in it, Leopold, a 
 German, made a formal statement, which probably 
 was sanctioned by the voice of public opinion 
 throughout Europe at that time, that the Spaniards 
 had, without sufficient attention to the laws of 
 
 * Sepulveda corresponded with Erasmus, Cardinals Pole 
 and Contarini ; and was the author of many learned treatises. 
 
ITS ItECEPTION IN SPAIN. 259 
 
 justice, piety, and Christianity, waged war against 
 the innocent Indians. Sepulveda, under the name 
 of Democrates, gave a full reply to his friend 
 Leopold s accusation of the Spaniards. 
 
 Sepulveda s work met with no favour, even 
 in the quarter where he might reasonably have 
 expected that it would be sure to be well received. 
 He submitted his treatise to the Council of the 
 Indies in the first instance ; but they would not 
 allow him to print it. He then appealed to 
 Charles the Fifth, praying that his work should 
 be laid before the Great Council of Castille. The 
 Emperor consented. It was in 1547, when the 
 court and the Great Councils of Spain were at 
 Aranda de Duero, that the royal order from 
 Charles arrived. Las Casas had also joined the Las Casa-* 
 
 hears of 
 
 court at that time, and then learnt what was the Sepulve 
 da s work. 
 
 nature of this treatise written by Sepulveda, upon 
 which there was so much question. As may be 
 imagined, he made the most determined and 
 vigorous opposition to Sepulveda s views, to use 
 his own words, " discovering and bringing to light 
 the poison of which the work was full." The 
 council submitted the Democrates Secundus, for 
 examination, to the universities of Alcala and 
 
260 
 
 NATURE OF 
 
 Salamanca. The decision of these learned bodies 
 was unfavourable to Sepulveda ; and the per 
 mission to print was still refused. Sepulveda 
 turned to Rome, where he had a great friend, 
 who was Auditor of the Rota ; and, under his 
 auspices, the work, or rather an apology for the 
 work, containing the substance of it, was printed 
 at Rome in 1550.* Charles the Fifth forbade its 
 introduction into Spain. The author thereupon 
 drew up a version in Spanish of his Apology, and 
 did what he could to put that in circulation. The 
 Apology is now to be found in Sepulveda s works, 
 reprinted from the Roman edition. It does not 
 contain anything which would at first sight be 
 thought to be displeasing to the monarchs of 
 Spain. ! Sepulveda declares that to Jesus Christ 
 all power was given in heaven and earth, and that 
 this power devolved upon the Pope, who accord 
 ingly possessed authority in every land, not only 
 for the preaching of the gospel, but also f&r com 
 pelling men to obey the law of nature. The 
 author defends his position by references to St. 
 Augustine, St. Ambrose, St. Gregory, and the 
 
 The title is Apologia pro Libra de Justis Belli Causis. 
 
SEPULVEDA S TREATISE. 261\ 
 
 great authority of the middle ages, Thomas Aqui 
 nas. He appeals to history, citing the law of 
 capital punishment enacted by (e that most pious 
 emperor," Constantine, against those pagans who 
 should persevere in their rites and sacrifices. He 
 maintains that men who are in a grievous state of 
 error are to be recalled to the truth, whether they 
 like it or not. He urges that more can be effected 
 in a month by conquest than in a hundred years 
 by mere preaching. Miracles are not to be asked 
 for, when human means, having the sanction of 
 divine authority, can attain the same end. jf" The 
 preachers of our time," he says, <f without miracles, 
 cannot effect more than the apostles did, blessed 
 with the co-operation of the Lord, and their words 
 being confirmed by miracles." War, therefore, 
 was a necessity. If the natives were taught 
 without being terrified, being obdurate in their 
 old ways, they would be much more slowly moved 
 to adopt the true faith, j 
 
 If Las Casas had been ardent in his opposition 
 to Sepulveda s doctrines, when they were not 
 printed, and while they could be read by those 
 only who understood Latin, his ardour was re 
 doubled when they were translated into Spanish, 
 
26 2 THE "APOLOGY" PROHIBITED. 
 
 and could be joyfully perused by the conquerors 
 in the Indies and their adherents at court, who 
 would pronounce them to be most comfortable 
 doctrines, and readily assign the palm of know 
 ledge and of wisdom to this learned doctor, who 
 justified the ways of his countrymen to themselves. 
 The go- it j s true that the government were not remiss. 
 
 vernment 
 
 prohibit the They seized upon whatever copies of Sepulveda s 
 of the Apo- Apology they could lay hold of, and strictly for 
 bade its circulation.* But prohibited works are 
 often not the less read on account of the pro 
 hibition. It is not likely that any of the numerous 
 band of agents and proctors who thronged the 
 court of Spain, and besieged it with applications 
 on behalf of the conquerors and colonists of the 
 New World, were ignorant of the arguments 
 which Sepulveda had urged, and which might 
 
 * It is worthy of notice that there could have been no- 
 personal hostility to Sepulveda on the part of the govern 
 ment. He was not punished for the publication of the 
 Apology. Charles the Fifth s friendship was not withdrawn 
 from him ; and he was one of the few persons who after 
 wards visited that monarch in his retreat at Yuste, where 
 he was kindly welcomed by Charles. See the graphic ac 
 count of The Cloister Life of Charles the Fifth, written by 
 Mr. STIRLING, p. 124. 
 
OPPOSITION TO SEPULVEDA. 268 V 
 
 salve the troubled consciences, if troubled they 
 were, of these conquerors and colonists. Las 
 Casas set himself more seriously to work than 
 ever to refute doctrines so fatal to his cause, and 
 which had thus obtained extended publication and 
 currency. 
 
 A great ferment arose about the controversy. 
 In times like our own, when there is so much that 
 is exciting and amusing in literature, it is difficult 
 to imagine the interest that was felt in learned 
 controversy in those ages, when controversy was 
 the chief excitement and amusement of learned 
 men. In this case, moreover, there were many 
 and great interests concerned. 
 
 Las Casas was not the only person who had 
 been shocked by the doctrines or the expressions 
 in Sepulveda s work, and who had sought to 
 controvert them. Melchior Cano, a Dominican, Melchior 
 
 Cano and 
 
 renowned in those times for learning, had found the Bishop 
 
 of Segovia 
 
 passages in the Democrates Secundus " which w T ere oppose Se- 
 
 pulveda. 
 
 offensive to pious ears." The Bishop of Segovia 
 had also been an ardent opponent to Sepulveda ; 
 and it was to him that the Apology for the work 
 was addressed. \ Cano s objection to the book 
 seems mainly to nave turned upon an expression 
 
264 SEPULVEDA S FEELINGS 
 
 which had been used by the author in reference 
 to St. Paul, Sepulveda having said that St. Paul 
 had borne contumely with impatience, or words 
 to that effect. A long correspondence ensued 
 between the friends, for Cauo was a friend of 
 Sepulveda; but the real gist of the question is 
 not touched upon in this correspondence. Las 
 Casas was the opponent whom Sepulveda had 
 
 Sepuive- most to fear ; and he seems to have had some- 
 da s feel 
 ings to- what of the same feeling towards him that his 
 
 wards Las 
 
 Casas. friend Erasmus must have had for the impetuous 
 
 Luther. The refined scholar Sepulveda, "the 
 Livy of Spain," as he has been called, looked 
 upon the earnest Las Casas as a furious and 
 dangerous person, (f of better intentions than 
 judgment ; " yet (for he seems to have been an 
 amiable man) declared that he bore no enmity 
 to the bishop, and only prayed " that God would 
 grant him a calmer mind, that he might learn 
 sometimes to prefer quiet cogitations to turbulent 
 designs." 
 
 Sepulveda might feel disgust at the uncon 
 trolled temper of his opponent, and might despise 
 his lesser acquisitions of learning, and his com 
 paratively rude Latinity. But he was soon to 
 
TOWARDS LAS CAS AS. 
 
 265 
 
 Uearn what strength there was in an adversary 
 whose practical knowledge of the subject in dis 
 pute was greater than that of any living man ; 
 whose eloquence was equal to his vehemence, 
 and not hindered by it; and who brought a 
 fervour to the cause which exceeded even that 
 of an author publicly defending his own work, 
 and one who must have thought himself most 
 ungratefully used by the court and the univer 
 sities in SpainJ 
 
 Charles the Fifth convoked at Yalladolid, in Junta at 
 
 Valladolid 
 
 1550, a junta of theologians and other learned to hearth* 
 
 dispute 
 
 men to hear this ffreat cause argued. " Whether between 
 
 Sepulveda 
 
 war of the kind that is called a war of conquest and Las 
 could be lawfully undertaken against the nations 
 of the New World, if they had not committed 
 any new faults other than those they had com 
 mitted in the times of their infidelity." The 
 Council of the Indies was associated with this 
 junta; and altogether it consisted of fourteen 
 persons. This practice of summoning persons of 
 special knowledge to assist the authorities in the 
 determination of difficult questions, was one of 
 the greatest advantages which the government of 
 Spain possessed at that period. 
 
 Casas. 
 
1 
 
 26G LAS CAS AS AND SEPULVEDA. 
 
 LasCasas Doctor Sepulveda appeared before the junta, 
 vedaapppar an( j delivered a statement of the arguments on 
 
 before the 
 
 junta. hjg gide. The bishop was then summoned for a 
 
 hearing; and, in five consecutive days, he read 
 that laborious work of his, which is called the 
 Historia Apologetica. It is rich in facts and argu 
 ments of every description, and he had been many 
 years preparing it. 
 
 e junta had deputed Domingo de Soto,*" 
 Charles s Confessor, to give a summary of the 
 arguments on both sides. This he did in a very 
 masterly manner. The summary was then sub 
 mitted to Doctor Sepulveda, who made a reply 
 before the junta, containing twelve objections to 
 the arguments of the bishop. The bishop then 
 gave twelve answers to these objections, and the 
 proceedings terminated. They were afterwards 
 published as a work entitled " A Dispute or Con- 
 
 V*^Mr. HALLAM, speaking of the Relectiones Theologies 
 of\Francis a Victoria, says, " The whole rejection, as well as 
 that on the Indians, displays an intrepid spirit of justice 
 and humanity, which seems to have been rather a general 
 characteristic of the Spanish theologians. Domingo Soto, 
 always inflexibly on the side of right, had already sustained 
 by his authority the noble enthusiasm of Las Casas. * 
 Literature of Europe, part ii. chap. iv. sect. 3. 
 
DISPUTE AT A JUNTA. 
 
 267 
 
 troversy between the Bishop Don Fray Bartolome 
 de las Casas, lately Bishop of Ciudad Real in 
 Chiapa, and Doctor Gines Sepulveda, Historio 
 grapher to our Lord the Emperor." 
 
 It would be impossible, and perhaps tedious to 
 our readers, to attempt a full account of this im 
 portant controversy within the limits which this 
 biography must occupy. The work which Las 
 Casas read in five days embodies much of the 
 knowledge and experience which he had been 
 acquiring for fifty years. We can hardly doubt, 
 moreover, that both the controversialists were 
 aided by other learned men, for an astonishing 
 weight of learning is brought to bear upon the 
 disputed points. The skill with which it is 
 summed up by Charles s Confessor is marvellous, 
 considering the immense mass of material with 
 which he had to deal, and that Las Casas was a 
 man who sought to exhaust his subject by an 
 appeal to facts and arguments drawn from every 
 conceivable source. 
 
 Doctor Sepulveda divided his statement of the 
 case into four heads. It was lawful, he said, to 
 commence war upon the natives in the New World 
 for the four following reasons: 
 
 Nature of 
 the con 
 troversy 
 between 
 Sepulveda 
 and Las 
 Casas. 
 
268 SEPULVEDA STATES THE CASE. 
 
 Sins of the 1st. For the gravity of the sins which the In- 
 
 Indians. 
 
 dians had committed, especially their idolatries 
 and their sins against nature. 
 Rudeness 2nd. On account of the rudeness of their na- 
 
 of their 
 
 nature. tures, which brought upon them the necessity of 
 serving persons of a more refined nature, such as 
 that which the Spaniards possessed. 
 
 Must be 3 r d. I n order to spread the faith, which would 
 
 conquered 
 
 before they b e mO re readily accomplished by the prior sub- 
 
 are con 
 
 verted, jugation of the natives. 
 
 Cruelties to 4th. To protect the weak amongst the natives 
 
 one an 
 other, themselves, duly considering the cruelties which 
 
 the Indians exercised upon one another, slaying 
 numbers in sacrifices to false gods, and practising 
 cannibalism. 
 
 It would have been difficult to make a better 
 division of the subject than that adopted by 
 Sepulveda. His fourth reason was well thought 
 of, and put with much skill. He adduced in 
 evidence the immense loss of life which had 
 taken place in the sacrifices to idols amongst the 
 Mexicans, and was enabled to argue that it 
 exceeded the loss of life in war. This was not 
 so ; but still the argument was a very plausible 
 one. 
 
ARGUMENTS FROM DEUTERONOMY. 269 
 
 The dealings of the Israelites with the neigh 
 bouring idolaters formed the basis of the contro 
 versy upon the first reason, and gave room for 
 elaborate argument. The doctor relied upon the 
 command given to the Israelites, in the 20th 
 chapter of Deuteronomy, to destroy the male in 
 habitants of those cities which should not be 
 delivered up to them upon their demanding a 
 surrender of the cities.* He dwelt especially 
 on the loth verse of that chapter, which says, 
 " Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are 
 
 * " When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against 
 it, then proclaim peace unto it. 
 
 " And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and 
 open unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people that is 
 found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall 
 serve thee. 
 
 " And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make 
 war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it : 
 
 " And when the Lord thy God hath delivered it into 
 thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the 
 edge of the sword. 
 
 " But the women, and the little ones,, and the cattle, and 
 all that is in the city even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou 
 take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine 
 enemies, which the Lord thy God hath given thee." Dent. 
 chap. xx. ver. 10-14. 
 
270 
 
 LAS CASAS S REPLY 
 
 Sepulve- 
 da s argu 
 ments from 
 Deutero 
 nomy. 
 
 The 
 
 bishop s 
 reply from 
 Deutero 
 nomy. 
 
 very far off from thee, which are not of the cities 
 of these nations." Upon this verse there is a 
 gloss which declares that the words "far off" 
 mean " of a different religion." Sepulveda con 
 sequently inferred that the Spaniards might make 
 war upon any nation of a different religion from 
 their own ; and he supported this view by other 
 passages quoted from Deuteronomy. 
 
 iFhe bishop replied that the wars commanded 
 by God against certain nations were not com 
 manded in respect of their idolatry, as in that 
 case the whole world, except Judaea, would have 
 had to be conquered and chastised ; but it was 
 only against the Canaanites, the Jebusites, and 
 other tribes who possessed the Land of Promise 
 that the Israelites were commanded to make war. 
 The bishop relied upon the 7th verse of the 23rd 
 chapter, which says, " Thou shalt not abhor an 
 Edomite; for he is thy brother: thou shalt not 
 abhor an Egyptian, because thou wast a stranger 
 in his land." 
 
 With regard to the gloss which gave to the 
 words " far off," the signification " of a different 
 religion," the bishop did not contend that this 
 was a wrong reading, but he argued that the 
 
FROM DEUTERONOMY. 271 
 
 words did not mean that upon that account alone, 
 namely difference of religion, war might be made 
 upon distant nations by the Jews. The words 
 "far off" served to distinguish other Gentiles 
 from the seven tribes who occupied the Land of 
 Promise, and to whom no terms of peace were to 
 be offered. With them it was to be a war of ex 
 termination ; but there was nothing to show that 
 a war with other Gentiles could be lawfully 
 undertaken, solely on account of their idolatry. 
 Finally, the bishop urged this general argument, 
 that the examples from the Old Testament, as 
 regarded those cruel chastisements, were given 
 us " to marvel at and not to imitate," for which 
 assertion he alleged the authority of certain de 
 cretals. 
 
 Upon the second reason, the rudeness of the 
 Indian nature, Las Casas, with his extensive 
 knowledge of Indian life, was easily triumphant ; 
 and, upon the third reason, namely the extension 
 of the true faith, Las Casas could appeal to his 
 own successes, and those of his brother Domini 
 cans, in " the land of war." 
 
 With regard to Doctor Sepulveda s fourth 
 reason, Las Casas alleged the general rule, " Of An sver of 
 
 Las Casas 
 
272V ANSWER TO FOURTH REASON. 
 
 tw ev ^ s cnoose the l east " Human sacrifices 
 were a less evil than indiscriminate warfare. 
 " Thou shalt not kill," is a more positive com 
 mand than Thou shalt defend the innocent. 
 Moreover, by these wars the true faith was de 
 famed, and had fallen into odium with the natives. 
 Then Las Casas boldly urged what defence can 
 be urged for human sacrifices namely, that to 
 the barbarous and Grentile apprehension, they 
 were an offering up to God of the best that 
 the worshippers possessed. He reminded his 
 hearers of the sacrifice that Abraham was 
 ready to make. The bishop also brought 
 forward instances of great nations, such as the 
 Romans and the Carthaginians, who had not been 
 free from the guilt of human sacrifice ; and he 
 quoted Plutarch to show that when the Romans 
 themselves became more humane and civilized in 
 this respect, and, in their march of conquest, camj^ 
 upon barbarous nations who were addicted to hu 
 man sacrifices, they did not punish them for this 
 cause, but simply prohibited the commission of 
 such ^{Fences for the future. 
 
 This controversy was conducted throughout 
 with much skill and learning upon both sides, and 
 
LAS CASAS S DANGER IN ARGUMENT. 273 
 
 with constant danger to Las Casas of bringing 
 upon himself the wrath of the higher ecclesiastical 
 and civil authorities. As, for instance, in opposing 
 Sepulveda on the ground that force should not be 
 employed to promote the faith, he was obliged to 
 use great tact ; for what was to be said about the 
 past doings of many emperors and popes ? Indeed, 
 in the course of his long career of controversy, it 
 is a matter for surprise that he did not come with 
 in the grasp of the Inquisition. 
 
 At the conclusion of his address to the junta, 
 Las Casas made a fierce onslaught upon Doctor 
 Sepulveda s mode of maintaining the rights of the 
 kings of Spain. The following is the substance 
 of what the bishop said upon this important 
 branch of the controversy. " The doctor founds The 
 
 bishop * 
 
 these rights upon our superiority in arms, and view of the 
 
 jurisdiction 
 
 upon our having more bodily strength than the of the 
 
 kings of 
 
 ., -Indians. This is simply to place our kings in Spain in 
 
 jf the Indies. 
 
 the position of tyrants. The right of those kings 
 rests upon their extension of the Gospel in the 
 New World, and their good government of the 
 Indian nations. These duties they woi ld be 
 bound to fulfil even at their own expense ; much 
 more so considering the treasures they have re- 
 T 
 
274 CONCLUSION OF THE CONTROVERSY. 
 
 ceived from the Indies. To deny this doctrine 
 is to flatter and deceive our monarchs, and to put 
 their salvation in peril. The doctor perverts the 
 natural order of things, making the means the 
 end, and what is accessory the principal. The 
 accessory is temporal advantage: the principal, 
 the preaching of the true faith. He who is 
 ignorant of this, small is his knowledge ; and he 
 who denies it, is no more of a Christian than 
 Mahomet was." 
 
 Then, after a not unbecoming allusion to his 
 own prolonged labours, the bishop says : " To 
 this end [that is, to prevent the total perdition 
 of the Indies], I direct all my efforts : not, as the 
 doctor would make out, to shut the gates of 
 justification, and disannul the sovereignty of the 
 kings of Castille ; but I shut the gates upon 
 false claims made on their behalf, of no reality, 
 altogether vain ; and I open the gates to those 
 claims of sovereignty which are founded upon lav, 
 which are solid, strong, truly catholic, and truly 
 Christian." 
 
 Result of Thus the controversy ended. The result seems 
 
 the con 
 troversy, to have been, substantially, a drawn battle. At 
 
VERDICT OF THE JUNTA. 275 
 
 first, according to Sepulveda, the jurists had to 
 give way to the theologians. But a timely rein 
 forcement came to Sepulveda s aid, in the person 
 of a learned Franciscan monk, named Bernardino 
 Arevalo. At the beginning of the controversy 
 he had been unable, from illness, to attend the 
 junta; but, afterwards recovering, he brought 
 such weight to Sepulveda s side of the argument, 
 that the junta ultimately pronounced a sentence The junta 
 (one theologian alone protesting against it), con- mfovour of 
 curring with the opinions expressed in Sepul 
 veda s treatise De Justis Belli Causis. His victory, 
 however, was a fruitless one. The government 
 must have been convinced the other way, or at 
 least must have thought that the promulgation of 
 Sepulveda s views would be dangerous ; for Prince 
 Philip, then governing in the name of his father, 
 gave directions that Sepulveda s work should not 
 be allowed to enter the Indies. In royal orders, Sepuive- 
 dated from Valladolid, in October and November tise not 
 of that same year, 1550, the Prince commanded enter the 
 the Viceroy of Mexico, and the Governor of 
 Terra-firma, to seize upon any copy they could 
 find of Sepulveda s work, and to send it back to 
 Spain- 
 
276 FEELINGS OF SEPULVEDA. 
 
 Sepulveda seems to have felt that Las Casas 
 had conducted the cause with exceeding vigour, 
 and had proved himself a terrible opponent ; for, 
 in a private letter describing the controversy, 
 Sepulveda speaks of him as (( most subtile, most 
 vigilant, and most fluent, compared with whom 
 the Ulysses of Homer was inert and stuttering." 
 Las Casas, at the time of the controversy, was 
 seventy- six years of age. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Las Casas appeals to Philip II. through Carranza lie 
 writes a Treatise on Peru His Death Review of his 
 Life. 
 
 HE controversy with Sepulveda was 
 but one of the many labours of Las 
 Casas, and he continued to exercise 
 his self-imposed functions of Protector to the 
 Indians with his accustomed zeal. He resided 
 in the Dominican college of St. Gregory at Yal- 
 ladolid, with his faithful friend and spiritual bro 
 ther, Ladrada, who seems to have spurred him 
 to exertion in behalf of the Indians, as may be 
 gathered from the following anecdote. Ladrada, 
 being deaf, was in the habit of speaking loudly ; 
 and the collegiate fathers could hear him, when 
 he was confessing Las Casas, exclaim, " Bishop, 
 beware lest you go to hell if you do not labour 
 for a remedy for those poor Indians, as you are 
 
 Las Casas 
 resides in 
 the Domi 
 nican col 
 lege atVal- 
 ladolid. 
 
 Admonition 
 of Ladrada 
 to Las 
 Casas. 
 
278 
 
 PHILIP THE SECOND 
 
 Financial 
 condition of 
 Philip II. 
 
 The rever 
 sion of the 
 encomiendas 
 saleable. 
 
 in duty bound to do." But this was more an 
 admonition than a correction, as Kemesal ob 
 serves, for never was there known in Las Casas 
 the slightest carelessness in this respect, especially 
 in those days. 
 
 In the year 1555 there arose a great occasion 
 for all the efforts that Las Casas could make on 
 behalf of the Indians. Philip the Second had 
 succeeded to the throne of Spain. He ruled over 
 immense possessions, such as might well make 
 him a terror to the European family of nations. 
 But his finances were in a most deplorable state, 
 and any project for improving them must have 
 been very welcome to the king and his coun 
 cillors. 
 
 Now there was one easy mode by which, with 
 a few strokes of the pen, Philip could raise a very 
 large sum of money. All the Spanish colonists 
 in the New World held their possessions upon 
 a most uncertain tenure. Philip had only to 
 give up the claims of the crown to the reversion 
 of the encomiendas, and he would be sure to 
 receive an ample and immediate recompense. 
 Neither had the monarch to begin the negotia 
 tion. There was already in England, attending 
 
AND THE ENCOMIENDAS. 279 
 
 Philip s Court, " a sinner," as Las Casas calls 
 him, from Peru, who was urging some such 
 measure on the monarch.* Never was the fate 
 of the Indians in greater peril. There were, 
 however, two persons, both of whom had laid 
 down their high offices, and had retired into 
 monasteries, who were towers of strength to the 
 poor Indians. These were Charles the Fifth and 
 Las Casas. The latter had shown great boldness 
 on many occasions of his life, but on this his 
 daring verged upon audacity. His appeal to Las Casas 
 
 appeals to 
 
 Philip was made through the king s confessor, iip u. 
 
 Bartolome Carranza de Miranda. Through him Carranza. 
 
 he dares to tell the monarch that any conclusion 
 
 he may come to in England will be rash, because 
 
 he is surrounded by few advisers, and those having 
 
 no especial knowledge of the New World, and 
 
 not being in communication with the Council 
 
 of the Indies. If the king commits an error 
 
 on this great occasion, can he allege the pretext 
 
 of invincible ignorance ? Las Casas boldly tells Letter of 
 
 Las Casas 
 
 Carranza, that in England and Flanders our to Car 
 ranza. 
 sovereigns seem to have forgotten that they have 
 
 * Don Antonio de Ribera by name. 
 
280 LETTER OF LAS CASAS 
 
 a kingdom of Spain to govern. What right have 
 they to impose upon the miserable Indians tri 
 butes of money, watered with tears, to pay the 
 debts of their crown? How repugnant to all 
 just ideas, and what an atrocity it is, to wish 
 to promote the interests of the king, without 
 thinking even of God ! If such a system is per 
 sisted in, will they in England and Flanders look 
 with a favourable eye at this maxim, that the 
 means may become the end, and the end the 
 means? As to the encomenderos possessing any 
 claim, they have not merited a single maravedi. 
 ic On the contrary I maintain," adds Las Casas, 
 f< that the king will be rigorously punished for 
 not having chastised these assassins as they have 
 deserved.* The kings of Castille owe a great 
 debt to him who discovered the New World. 
 They are also under obligation to those who have 
 restored the royal authority in Peru. But they 
 are not, on that account, to deliver up the wretched 
 inhabitants as one gives up to the butcher the 
 
 * " Je dirai, au contraire, que le roi sera rigoureuse- 
 ment puni pour n avoir pas chatie ces assassins comme ils 
 Font merite." LLORENTE, (Euvres de Don Barthelemi de 
 la* CasaS) torn. ii. p. 135. Paris, 1822. 
 
TO CARRANZA. 281 
 
 most stupid animals to be slaughtered. If your Las Casas 
 
 wishes the 
 
 paternity thinks it right to read this clause to his letter to be 
 
 f read to 
 
 highness, or indeed the whole of my memorial, Philip n. 
 ; I beg you to believe that I shall feel the greatest 
 satisfaction." 
 
 To show that he was not the only person 
 entirely opposed to the sale of the reversions of 
 the encomiendas, Las Casas, in the course of this 
 letter, makes the following statement: "It is A member 
 
 of the coun- 
 
 about fifteen days ago that a member of the Council cil urges 
 
 Las Casas 
 
 of the Indies, horrified at what is now known of to further 
 
 exertions. 
 
 the situation of America, and at the proposition 
 which is now mooted, made me fear the judg 
 ments of God, reproaching me with not doing 
 half my duty in that I did not summon, twenty 
 times a day, the whole earth to my aid, and that 
 I did not go, with a stick in my hand and a beg 
 gar s wallet on my back, even into England, to 
 protest against these tyrants; for it was to me 
 that God had entrusted this charitable and dif 
 ficult undertaking. What would he have said if 
 he had seen all that I have seen for the last sixty 
 years?" 
 
 It is impossible to tell what effect this letter 
 had upon Carranza, and upon Philip; but it is 
 
282 
 
 LAS CASAS S "HISTORY." 
 
 probable that it was considerable; and all the 
 more so, in that he had not intruded his advice 
 upon them, for it is evident, in the course of the 
 letter, that they had first written to consult Las 
 Casas upon the subject.* 
 
 Charles the Fifth was as decided as Las Casas 
 upon the point at issue. If we may trust the 
 
 01 encomi- 
 
 endas. report of the Venetian ambassador, Soriano, this 
 
 was almost the only public matter that Charles 
 had influenced, up to that time, since his retire 
 ment into the monastery of Yuste.f The dying 
 emperor supported the views of his old friend 
 Las Casas; and the weight of two such autho 
 rities on Indian affairs was such that the scheme 
 
 The project of selling the reversion of the encomie?idas, which 
 
 > aban 
 doned, would have led to the total slavery of the Indians, 
 
 was abandoned. 
 
 Las Casas continued to occupy himself in the 
 affairs of the Indies, corresponding with persons 
 
 * " Je repondrai un pen plus loin a ce qu elle" (son 
 Altesse) " a dit de la necessite de pourvoir a 1 entretien des 
 Espagnols qui sont employes dans les Indes." LLORENTE, 
 CEuvres de Don Barthelemi de las Casas, torn. ii. p. 135. 
 
 f See Ranke, Fiirsten und Volker von Sud Europa, 
 
HIS " TREATISE ON PERU." 283 
 
 ill America, and being referred to for advice and 
 information by the council at home. 
 
 He also continued to labour at his greatest 
 literary work, the History of the Indies. This 
 work is said to have been commenced in 1527, 
 when he first became a Dominican monk ; but it 
 is clear from the last sentence but one in this 
 History, that he was still engaged upon it in 
 the year 1561, the eighty- seventh year of his own 
 age.* 
 
 In 1564 he had reached his ninetieth year, and 
 in that year he wrote a treatise on the subject of A treatise 
 
 . of Las 
 
 Peru, which is, perhaps, one of the best that his Casas on 
 
 Peru. 
 
 fertile pen ever produced. As if he were aware 
 that whatever he should do now must be done 
 speedily, this paper is composed with more 
 brevity, though not with less force, than almost 
 any of his productions. In it there is a state 
 ment which the student may look for in vain 
 
 * " Pero esta ignorancia y cequedad del Consejo del Rey 
 tubo su origen primero, lo qual fue causa de proveer que 
 se hiciesen aquellos requerimientos, y plega a Dios que hoy, 
 que es elano que pasa de sesenta y uno, el consejo este 
 libre della." LAS CASAS, Hist, de las Indias, MS. lib. iii. 
 cap. 166. 
 
284 
 
 TYRANNICAL GOVERNMENT 
 
 An annual 
 tribute in a 
 certain en- 
 comienda. 
 
 amongst the most elaborate histories that were 
 written at that period, or have been written since, 
 of the Spanish Conquest in America. It is con 
 stantly mentioned that the tribute to be raised 
 from encomiendas, in this or that district, was 
 settled by this or that governor or royal auditor ; 
 but no accurate account is given of what the tri 
 bute was. In this treatise of Las Casas is set 
 forth the tribute to be paid annually by five hun 
 dred Indian families in Arequipa. They are to 
 furnish, (1), 180 Peruvian sheep. An additional 
 hardship was, that these sheep could not be pro 
 cured in that district, but had to be sought for 
 in a neighbouring province. (2), 300 pieces of 
 cotton goods, each sufficient for the dress of 
 an Indian; (3), 1000 bushels of maize; (4), 
 850 bushels of wheat ; (5), 1000 fowls ; (6), 
 1000 sacks, with cords to them; (7), 60 bas 
 kets of coca; (8), 100 cotton napkins; (9), 30 
 swine; (10), 50 arrobas of camaron* (a kind of 
 fish); (11), 500 arrobas of another kind of fish; 
 (12), 5 arrobas of wool; (13), 40 skins of sea- 
 
 * An arroba was twenty-five pounds in weight, each 
 pound consisting of sixteen ounces. 
 
OF THE INDIANS. 285 
 
 wolves, dressed, and 40 others undressed ; (14), 
 2 arrobas of cord; (15), 3 tents; (16), 8 table 
 cloths; (17), 2000 baskets of pepper ; (18), 2 ar 
 robas of balls of cotton; (19), 9 house cloths; 
 (20), 3 arrobas of fat, to make candles; (21), 15 
 Indians for the domestic service of the Spanish 
 encomendero ; (22), 8 Indians for the cultivation of 
 his garden ; (23), 8 others, to have charge of his 
 flocks and cattle. 
 
 This monstrous tribute might well call forth 
 indignation, even from a man uninterested in the 
 subject. Upon such a tribute Las Casas rests his 
 assertion that the Indians are deprived of their 
 goods and of their liberty, and that it is impossible 
 not to apply the epithet of tyrannical to the go 
 vernment under which they live ; for, according 
 to Aristotle, every government of a free people 
 ought to have for its object the temporal and the 
 spiritual good of the members of the body politic. 
 Such was the intrepid writing, skilfully inter 
 woven with the most important facts, which Las 
 Casas had the energy to produce at this advanced 
 period of his life. 
 
 Of all that is done in any great transaction, 
 so small a part can be told, that the historian is 
 
286 EVIDENCE ON INDIAN LABOUR. 
 
 often most unwillingly compelled to commit an 
 act of seeming injustice, when he carefully com 
 memorates the deeds of the chief of a party, to the 
 Many other exclusion of those of many of his associates. Las 
 
 Protectors 
 
 s besides Las Casas was but one, though immeasurably the first, 
 of a numerous body of men who may rightly be 
 called the Protectors of the Indians. Amongst 
 these protectors was an ex-auditor of the Audi- 
 encias of Guatemala and Mexico, named Zurita. 
 He also informed the Emperor of the excessive 
 Evidence of nature of the imposts levied upon the Indians, 
 
 the Auditor 
 
 Zurita. and declared that it was one of the causes which 
 led to the depopulation of the New World. An 
 other cause of the destruction of the Indians, 
 according to Zurita, was their being compelled to 
 work at the great edifices erected in the Spanish 
 towns. They were forced, he says, to labour 
 from the point of day until late in the evening. 
 " I have seen," he adds, " after the Angelus, a 
 great number of Indians cruelly conducted from 
 The In- their work by a very powerful personage. They 
 work. bore along an enormous piece of wood, as large as 
 
 a royal pine-tree, and when they stopped to rest, 
 a negro who followed them, armed with a whip, 
 forced them to continue their march, striking them 
 
LAST WORK OF LAS CASAS. 287 
 
 with this whip, from the first man to the last, not 
 that they should gain time, and undertake other 
 labours, for the day s work was finished, but to 
 prevent them from resting, and to keep up the 
 bad habit, so common, of beating them incessantly, 
 and maltreating them. As they were all naked, 
 except that they wore a piece of linen round their 
 loins, and as the negro struck as hard as he could, 
 all the strokes of the whip had their full effect. 
 Not one of the Indians said a word, or turned his 
 head, for they were all broken down by misery. 
 It is the custom to urge them constantly in their 
 work, not to allow them to take any rest, and to 
 chastise them if they attempt to do so. This ill- 
 treatment of the Indians is the cause of my 
 having, with the permission of your majesty, 
 resigned my place of auditor." Such testimony 
 as the above, confirmed by the resignation of office 
 on the part of the witness, is most important in 
 support of the statements and the conduct of Las 
 Casas, the chief Protector of the Indians. 
 
 The memorial on Peru, written by Las Casas 
 in his ninetieth year, appears to have been the 
 last effort of his fertile pen. Two years later, 
 however, in 156"6, he came forward, not to write, 
 
288 DEATH OF LAS CAS AS. 
 
 but to act on behalf of his Indians. In that year 
 a grievance that was suffered by the province of 
 Guatemala was made known to him. The Gua 
 temalans had been deprived of their audiencia. 
 The Dominicans in that province wrote to Las 
 Casas, telling him that the country suffered very 
 much for want of an audiencia. The natives had 
 no chance of justice, as they had to make a 
 journey to Mexico, in order to prosecute any 
 appeal. Las Casas well knew the importance of 
 this matter. He accordingly left his collegiate 
 monastery at Valladolid, and went to Madrid. 
 There he put the case of the Guatemalans so 
 strongly, to the King and to the Council of the 
 Indies, that the audiencia was restored to Guate 
 mala. This was the last work of Las Casas. He 
 Death of fell ill at Madrid, and, after a short illness, died 
 "y^. there in July, 1566, being ninety- two years of 
 
 age. His obsequies were attended by a large 
 concourse of the inhabitants of that city ; and he 
 was buried with all due solemnity in the convent 
 chapel of " Our Lady of Atocha." 
 
 In parting from Las Casas, it must be felt 
 that all ordinary eulogies would be feeble and 
 
HIS LIFE A PORTION OF HISTORY. 289 
 
 inadequate. His was one of those few lives that 
 are beyond biography, and require a history to 
 be written in order to illustrate them. His 
 career affords, perhaps, a solitary instance of a 
 man who, being neither a conqueror, a discoverer, 
 nor an inventor, has, by the pure force of bene 
 volence, become so notable a figure, that large 
 portions of history cannot be written, or at least The life of 
 
 _ Las Casas 
 
 cannot be understood, without the narrative of a portion of 
 
 history. 
 
 his deeds and efforts being made one of the 
 principal threads upon which the history is 
 strung. In early American history Las Casas 
 is, undoubtedly, the principal figure. His extra 
 ordinary longevity has something to do with this 
 pre-eminence. Very few men can be named who 
 have taken so active a part in public affairs over 
 such an extended period as nearly seventy years.j , 
 He was an important person in reference to all thati 
 concerned the Indies, during the reigns of Fer 
 dinand the Catholic, of Philip the Handsome, of 
 his son Charles the Fifth, and of Philip the Second. 
 Other men have undertaken great projects of 
 benevolence, and have partially succeeded in 
 them ; but there is not any man whose success or 
 failure, in such endeavours, has led to the great 
 u 
 
290 ENEMIES OF LAS CASAS. 
 
 civil and military events which ensued upon the 
 successes and failures of Las Casas. Take away 
 all he said, and did, and preached, and wrote, and 
 preserved (for the early historians of the New 
 World owe the records of many of their most 
 valuable facts to him) ; and the history of the 
 conquest would lose a considerable portion of its 
 most precious materials. 
 
 It may be fearlessly asserted, that Las Casas 
 
 had a greater number of bitter enemies than any 
 
 man who lived in his time ; and many were the 
 
 The accusa- accusations they brought against him. But these 
 
 tions of his 
 
 enemies. were, for the most part frivolous m the extreme, 
 or were pointed at such failings as are manifest to 
 every reader of his life. There is nothing unex 
 pected in them. That he was hasty, vehement, 
 uncompromising, and occasionally, though rarely, 
 indiscreet, must be very clear to everyone. But 
 such a man was needed. It was for others to sug 
 gest expedients and compromises. During his life 
 time there was always one person to maintain that 
 strict justice should be done to the Indians, and to 
 uphold the great principle that monarchs were set 
 to rule for the benefit of their subjects. Witho 
 him the cause of the native would at once have 
 
 itJb 
 
 1 
 
 ve\ 
 
HIS FAILURE AS A COLONIST. 291 
 
 descended into a lower level. Then, though vehe 
 ment, he was eminently persuasive ; and few who 
 came near him escaped the influence of his power 
 ful and attractive mind. The one event of his life 
 which his enemies fastened upon for censure, and is 
 as regards which their accusations are certainly 
 not frivolous, was his unfortunate attempt at 
 colonization on the coast of Cumana. To do 
 those enemies justice, it must be admitted that 
 they did not know the motives which had actuated 
 him in obtaining that territory, nor how little 
 blame could be attributed to him for the failure of 
 that romantic enterprise. They could only ri 
 dicule his labourers, adorned with crosses, as they 
 said, like the knights of Calatrava; and declare 
 that, as a colonist, he had made a signal failure. His failure 
 These accusers were not aware that, but for the n ist. 
 rapacity of conquerors like themselves, who had 
 previously infuriated the natives, Las Casas might 
 have succeeded in converting and civilizing the 
 inhabitants of the Pearl Coast, as he afterwards 
 succeeded in peaceably reducing the inhabitants 
 of the " Land of War." 
 
 The event in his life which his contemporaries 
 did not notice, but which has since been much 
 
292 HIS APOLOGY. 
 
 deplored, and greatly magnified, was his being 
 
 concerned in the introduction of negroes into the 
 
 New World. For this he has himself made a 
 
 His con- touching and most contrite apology, expressing 
 
 logy re- at the same time a fear lest his small share in 
 
 specting 
 
 the first im- the transaction might never be forgiven to him. 
 
 portation of 
 
 negroes. In the cause of the Indians, whether he upheld 
 it in speech, in writing, or in action, he appears 
 never for one moment to have swerved from the 
 exact path of equity. He has been justly called 
 " The Great Apostle of the Indies." 
 
 THE 
 
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