Rivers of Gold

by Hugh Thomas

  The Dominicans did nothing immediately, and the years 1510 and 1511 passed uneventfully. Diego Colón’s lawsuit over his inheritance was resolved by the Council of the Realm in Seville on May 5, 1511. The new Admiral’s hereditary rights were recognized, not over all the territory west of the line of Tordesillas that he had claimed, but at least over the island of La Española and the other lands that had actually been discovered by his father—a not inconsiderable archipelago.24

  This decision was not what Diego had hoped for; it merely meant that he was governor, with his rights as viceroy left unrestored;25 but all the same it was enough for him to encourage explorations to begin again, and so Juan de Agramonte, a friend of his, was commissioned to set out for the northwest of the continent, toward and beyond Panama.26

  The first audiencia, or supreme court, of the New World was also established in La Española in 1511. The siting of it in Santo Domingo allowed that city for several generations to remain effectively the capital of the Spanish Empire in the New World. The first judges named were Lucás Vázquez de Ayllón, who had had been in Santo Domingo as deputy to Judge Maldonado and had even been in business on the island; Juan Ortiz de Matienzo; and Marcelo de Villalobos. Of these, Vázquez de Ayllón was of a converso family from Toledo, where his father had been a councillor. Ortiz de Matienzo was a nephew of the treasurer of the Casa de Contratación, Sancho de Matienzo, to whom he owed his appointment, while Villalobos was a Sevillano and married to Isabel de Manrique, a kinswoman of the Duke of Nájera. All these judges believed their appointments enabled them to enter into business in the island, especially Vázquez de Ayllón. They also expected to have an important share in the administration of the colony. Spanish audiencias were more judicial. Diego Colón protested, though not about the commercial question. He did not think that there should be any appeal from him in his capacity as governor. If the judges had to stay, could they not serve as a gubernatorial council sitting under him?27

  But before the judges arrived in La Española, several more Dominicans had reached the island.28 There were now nearly twenty of these friars in the colony, more than there were Franciscans. Of these men, Fray Pedro de Córdoba, the leader, was a saintly individual, a man of prudence, well versed in theology. He came from Córdoba, of a good family, and he had a fine presence. He had studied in Salamanca and had been for a time at Torquemada’s monastery of St. Thomas in Ávila. He was well received by the Governor.

  For several weeks the Dominicans were the favorites of the settlers. Fray Pedro de Córdoba preached eloquently. Then, on the fourth Sunday in Advent, December 4, Fray Pedro inspired one of his colleagues, Fray Antonio de Montesinos, to preach in the large but still thatched wooden building that served as a church for the Dominican friars. He announced that the theme of his sermon would be St. Matthew, chapter 3, verse 3: “I am a voice crying in the wilderness” (Ego vox clamantis in deserto).

  A Dominican preacher was still a novelty in Santo Domingo, so the church that day was full of settlers, including many old hands who had been on the island with Columbus and others who had come with Ovando as well as with Diego Colón. Dominicans had the reputation of being able to preach well. The sermon that day, however, posed an extraordinary challenge to all settlers. Fray Montesinos said:

  In order to make you aware of your sins against the Indians, I have come up to this pulpit, I … am a voice of Christ crying in the wilderness of this island … and, therefore, it behooves you to listen, not with careless neglect but with all your heart and senses; for this is going to be the most lively voice that ever you heard, the sharpest and hardest and most awful and dangerous that you ever expected to hear.…

  Montesinos spoke so forcefully that some of those who heard him thought they were already listening to divine judgment. He went on:

  This voice says that you are in mortal sin, that you are living and may die in it, because of the cruelty and tyranny which you use in dealing with these innocent people. Tell me, by what right or by what interpretation of justice do you keep these Indians in such a cruel and horrible servitude? By what authority have you waged such detestable wars against people who were once living so quietly and peacefully in their own land?… Why do you keep those who survive so oppressed and weary, not giving them enough to eat, not caring for them in their illnesses? For, with the excessive work you demand of them, they fall ill and die or, rather, you kill them with your desire to extract and acquire more gold every day. And what care do you take that they be instructed in religion, that they know God, the creator, and that they are baptized and hear Mass, keeping Holy days and Sundays?… Are these not men? Have they not rational souls? Are you not bound to love them as you love yourselves? Do you not understand this? Do you not feel this? Why are you sleeping in such a lethargic dream? Be certain that in a state such as yours, you can be no more saved than Moors and Turks.…29

  Fray Montesinos then proudly left the church, his head high, leaving the colonists aghast.30 They had never given much thought to their Indian charges, and they had never considered that they were doing wrong to them. Several prominent settlers (we may imagine among them Diego de Alvarado, Columbus’s ex-secretary; Rodrigo de Moscoso; Juan Mosquera; Juan de Villoria; and Pedro de Atienza, to mention some of the other, richer landowners) went to call on the Governor in his palace, asking for the preacher to be punished as a scandal maker or as the sower of a new doctrine. Then they went to the Dominican monastery, where Fray Pedro de Córdoba assured them that Montesinos had spoken for all the Dominicans.

  Diego Colón himself complained to Fray Pedro. Since he had spoken so harshly, the Dominicans themselves obviously ought not to own Indian slaves, the Governor commented. He asked the friar to tell Montesinos to withdraw his statements; otherwise he would receive an appropriate punishment. Fray Pedro replied by saying that Montesinos would preach again the following Sunday. Diego Colón assumed that he would retract his harsh words. But Fray Antonio’s opening words were: “I will return to repeat what I preached last week,” and he went on again to speak harshly, on a text from Job. He said that he and his fellow friars would henceforth no more hear the confessions of settlers and conquistadors than they would those of highway robbers. They might write home to whomever they thought right if they wanted to complain. The church was crowded with outraged settlers who, however, took no further action.31 But the Spanish possessions overseas would never be the same again.

  22

  “Infidels may justly defend themselves”

  If an invitation to accept Christianity has not been made, the infidels may justly defend themselves.

  Matías de Paz, c. 1512

  The sermons of the Dominicans in Santo Domingo had no immediate effect. The island of Trinidad continued to be used as a source for slaves for La Española, on the understanding that the operations of slave merchants would not affect the Pearl Islands. The natives of Trinidad were declared cannibals on December 23, 1511, and their capture was therefore authorized.1 The same day, the King issued a decree in Burgos that stated that “one could fight and take as slaves anyone who resisted, or did not wish to receive and welcome in their lands, the captains and others who, by my mandate, go to those shores to indoctrinate the people there in the holy Catholic faith.”2 This included the Carib inhabitants of all the Antilles and the north coast of South America, from Martinique as far as Cartagena.3 The colonizers of Santo Domingo were delighted. They knew very well (whatever people in Castile supposed) that almost anyone could be designated a Carib and therefore was enslavable.4

  The judges of the audiencia arrived in Santo Domingo. They did not support the position of Montesinos and the Dominicans. The three—Vázquez de Ayllón, Matienzo, and Villalobos—became indeed the most determined entrepreneurs in dealing in Indian slaves as well as in pearls, setting a pattern for judicial involvement in commerce that affected Spanish legal credibility thereafter. Two expeditions left Santo Domingo in search of slaves in 1512, the first consisting of four caravels, two br
igantines, and four hundred men, organized by Diego Méndez, that valiant colonist who had saved Columbus in 1502; and the second by Juan Fernández de las Varas, a converso merchant of Seville connected with all the administrators. Two of his ships were destined for the Virgin Islands and what later became Dominica, in the Windward Islands.5

  King Fernando, having heard of Montesinos’s sermon, told Diego Colón to reason with the preacher. If he and his fellow Dominicans continued in their error (which, said the King airily, had been denounced as such ten years before), the Governor would be ordered to send them all back to Spain.6 A few days later, on March 23, Fray Alonso de Loaysa, the Dominican superior in Spain, wrote to reprove Fray Pedro de Córdoba and Montesinos, and called on the latter to stop preaching his scandalous doctrine. No more friars would be sent if such sermons continued.7 It was scarcely a punishment, certainly not one that would have any effect.

  There followed a prolonged discussion in Spain of the issues raised by these sermons. Both Dominicans and colonists sent emissaries to court, the Dominicans sending Montesinos himself, the colonists the Franciscan Alonso de Espinal.8 Legal arguments about conquests were not unusual in Spain. After all, the conquest of the Canaries had been preceded by a justificatory legal declaration by Bishop Alonso de Cartagena saying that the islands had been part of the kingdom of the Visigoths.9

  In August 1512, Fray Antón Montesinos, back in Spain, called in person on the Council of the Realm in Burgos. He said to the King, “Lord, may your Highness be good enough to give me an audience because I have to tell you things that are extremely important for your service.” The King replied: “Say, Father, whatever you like.”10 Montesinos then gave a long list of Indian grievances. The King was impressed, even horrified, and summoned a group of theologians and officials to consider the matter. The establishment of a royal commission of this nature was, it will be recalled, what the Spanish Crown had decided on in relation to Columbus. The committee met more than twenty times in Burgos, probably in the house of the constable of Castile, the Casa del Cordón, a Moorish-style building with a rope carved above its portal. It was here that Fernando and Isabel had received Columbus in 1496, here that King Philip had died in 1506. The belt of St. Francis connected the coat of arms of the Velascos with the royal one. It seemed emblematically appropriate. The house had begun to be built in 1482.

  Here some unusual things were said, and we should recognize that this debate was unique in the history of empires. Did Rome, Athens, or Macedon inspire such a debate in respect of their conquests? Would Britain mount a learned disputation in Oxford to speculate whether the wars against the Ashanti or the Afghans were legal? Or the French speculate similarly about their standing in Algeria? The idea is laughable.

  These discussions had been preceded by a peculiar work entitled The Commentaries on the Second Book of Sentences, written in Paris by a Scottish philosopher, John Major, in 1510. This constituted the first extended theoretical treatment of the role of Spain in America. Major conceded temporal power to neither pope nor emperor, and declared that mere ignorance of the faith did not deprive men of their own autonomy, though armed opposition to the preaching of the faith did.11

  The King’s committee in Burgos was composed of Bishop Fonseca, Hernando de Vega, the eternal courtier and Viceroy of Galicia, Luis Zapata, the royal secretary Licenciado Santiago and Dr. Palacios Rubios (both learned men), Licenciado Mújica, Licenciado Sosa, two Dominican friars (Tomás de Durán and Pedro de Covarrubias), and a jurist of Salamanca, Matías de Paz: the great and the good of Castile.12

  At this conference in Burgos, Fray Bernardo de Mesa, then the King’s favorite preacher, of a noble Toledan family, presented a thesis in which he proved, to his own satisfaction at least, that the Indians of the New World were a free people. Yet they suffered from a disposition to idleness. It was the King’s duty to help them overcome that. Absolute liberty was bad for them, so a form of servitude was desirable “to curb those vicious inclinations.” Mesa justified the enslavement of the indigenous people with arguments deriving mostly from The Rule for Princes (Regimiento de Príncipes), a document usually then ascribed to St. Thomas of Aquinas but in fact written by one of his pupils, Ptolemy of Lucca.13

  Then Fray Matías de Paz, a young Dominican professor of theology at Salamanca who afterwards taught in that university for many years, contended that the Indians could not be reduced to slavery, since they were not covered by the Aristotelian definition of natural law.14 In fifteen days at Valladolid, Paz had written a major treatise on “the origins of the rule of the King of Spain over the Indies.” This raised and answered three questions: first, could the King govern these Indians despotically or tyrannically? The answer was: “It is not just for Christian princes to make war on infidels simply because of a desire to dominate or to obtain their wealth. They can only do so in order to spread the faith. If the inhabitants of these lands (which have never before been Christian) wish to listen to and receive the faith, Christian princes may not invade their territory.…”

  Second, can the King of Castile exercise political dominion? The answer was: “If an invitation to accept Christianity has not been made, the infidels may justly defend themselves, even though the King, moved by Christian zeal and supported by papal authority, is waging a just war. Such infidels may not be held as slaves unless they pertinaciously deny obedience to the prince or refuse to accept Christianity.”

  Third, could settlers who received substantial personal services from these Indians, treating them like slaves, be obliged to make restitution? The reply was that only by the authority of the Pope would it be lawful for the King to govern these Indians and to attach them to the Crown. Therefore, Spanish settlers who oppressed Indians after they had been converted should definitely make restitution. Once the Indians were converted, however, it would be lawful, as was the case in all political circumstances, to require work from them. Even greater services, after all, were exacted from Christians in Spain, as long as they were reasonable—taxes, for example, to cover the costs of travel and other expenses connected with the maintenance of peace and the good administration of distant provinces.

  Paz also cited, with approval, Henry of Susa, a bishop of Ostia (“Ostiensis”) of the thirteenth century, who had argued that when heathens were brought to a knowledge of Christ, all their powers and rights passed to Christ, who became their Lord in the temporal as well as the spiritual sense. His rights subsequently passed to the pope. Paz added benignly: “I am told that there also exist in those [Indian] lands gentle people, not ambitious, avaricious, or malicious, but docile and potentially submissive to our faith, provided they are treated charitably. Some observe the natural law, and others pay tribute to the devil, with whom they maintain speech. Perhaps it was this that led God to inspire our King to send people to point out to these persons the way to salvation.”15 This liberal statement was not equaled, much less surpassed, for three centuries.

  Next to intervene was Juan López de Palacios Rubios, a clever lawyer who had become a member of the Council of the Realm. He was by origin from Santander and had the calm efficiency of men from that region. He had been a professor of law at Valladolid. He had also been an unsuccessful ambassador of Spain to the Vatican, and he was president of the Council of the Mesta. No one was better connected, no one was better prepared for the discussion—save that he knew much more about Spanish sheep than he did about American Indians.16

  Palacios Rubios thought it obvious that God had created all men equal and it was war that changes that situation. Those taken prisoner in a just war could always be looked upon as slaves. He had written an apologia for Fernando’s recent claim for Navarre, in which he had argued that all goods acquired in that “very holy, very just war” against Navarre would become “the property of the conquerors”; though he had not suggested that captured men and women from Pamplona could be justly enslaved. In his “Of the Ocean Isles” of 1512, he would argue that the right of Spain to the Indies derived from Pope
Alexander’s gift of 1493. The Indians had to be required to come to the faith, but those who mistreated them had to make restitution. He spoke warmly of Indians and even argued that they had to be treated as if they were tender plants. He, too, accepted the idea that the pope had temporal as well as spiritual authority.17

  Another professor of law, Licenciado Gregorio, was disdainful. He spoke of the Indians as “animals who talk.” He quoted extensively from Aristotle, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and Augustinus of Ancona to prove this point.18 But Fray Antonio Montesinos did not gain many followers when he declared that he would preach from the text “Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.” His eloquence was wasted. The Franciscan Fray Alonso de Espinal (with whom Montesinos quarreled in a street in Burgos) also spoke, as did Martín Fernández de Enciso, who had the advantage of having been to the Indies as second in command to Alonso de Hojeda.

  In conclusion, this committee of Burgos decided that the Indians all had to be treated as free beings. All the same, they would be subject to coercion in order to be instructed in the Catholic faith. They would be obliged to work for their own benefit, their labor being paid for by the provision of clothes and houses. Grants of land to settlers were to be recognized “in view of apostolic Grace and donation and, therefore, in agreement with both divine and human law.” But “no one may beat or whip an Indian nor call an Indian a dog, nor any other name—unless it is his real name.”19