Rivers of Gold
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68. Oficio 15, lib. 2, escribanía Bernal González Valdesillo, f. 230, Aug. 17, 1517. Here Juan and Sebastián de Torres undertake to pay Juan Rodríguez of the vessel Santa María 13 ducats to take them to Santo Domingo (APS, 1,144).
69. Las Casas [2:50], 3, 274.
70. AGI, 46, 6, I, doc. 95, doc. 5, qu. Scelle [28:58], 1, 190.
71. CDI, 7, 423fn, speaking of the concession.
Chapter 29
1. Manuel Serrano y Sanz, Las orígenes de la dominación española en las Indias, Madrid 1918, reissued Barcelona 1991, 580–82. This work includes the author’s Los amigos y protectores aragoneses de Cristóbal Colón [5:15], which has recently been separately published.
2. As qu. Hanke [16:14], 60.
3. Las Casas [2:50], 3, 189–90.
4. Las Casas [2:50], 3, 191–92. “¿Vos, padre, a qué queréis ir a las Indias siendo tan viejo y tan cansado?” Respondio el buen viejo, “A la mi fe, señor, a morirme luego, y dejar mis hijos en tierra libre y buenaventurada.…”
5. Las Casas [2:50], 3, 190.
6. Las Casas [2:50], 3, 191: “por falta que tenga acá, porque cada uno tenemos 100,000 maravedís de hacienda y aún más … sino que vamos por dejar nuestros hijos en tierra libre y real.” A most surprising statement for the sixteenth century!
7. Las Casas [2:50], 3, 193: “Por Dios,” Fonseca said, “que es gran cosa, gran cosa es.”
8. Scheurl, Briefbuch, Aalen 1562, 2, 109, qu. Headley [17:24], 80. See also Carl Brandi, Carlos V, vida y fortuna de una personalidad y un Imperio, Madrid 1937, 47.
9. Cf. Richard Haas’s book on the United States in the 1990s, The Reluctant Sheriff, New York 1997.
10. CDI, 32, 332–53; “not without errors,” commented Giménez Fernández [2:39]!
11. Hanke [16:14], 46.
12. Cadenas [22:2], 198.
13. Otte [15:83], 162.
14. CDI, 31, 366–68; Las Casas [2:50], 2, 272.
15. Deive [6:36], 157.
16. Sauer [8:5], 203.
17. See Kellenbenz [3:32], 505. The bankers of Augsburg, the Fuggers, helped to procure and market this. Ulrich von Hutten would say that he had been cured, thanks first to Christ, then to the Fuggers.
18. Giménez Fernández [2:39], 2, 638.
19. Giménez Fernández [2:39], 2, 375.
20. Molins lies a few miles west of Barcelona. The modern visitor is hard-pressed to find any sign of a royal presence.
21. These were Fernández de Velasco, the Constable; Fadrique Enríquez, the Admiral; and the dukes of Alba, Béjar, Cardona, Nájera, Escalona, Infantado, and the Marquis of Astorga. The Count of Benavente refused the invitation, saying that “he was very Castilian and so could not be honored by foreign orders.”
22. AGI, Patronato 252, r. 3, doc. 1, summarized in Giménez Fernández [2:39], 2, 730.
23. Léon Schick, Un grand homme d’affaires au début du xvième siècle: Jacob Fugger, Paris 1957, 170–74.
24. Letter from Valladolid dated April 24, 1523, quoted by Schick [29:23], 161.
25. For confirmation of the role of Margaret, see Kellenbenz [3:32], 77.
26. This elector had returned to him also the manor of Haguenau, which Frederick of Saxony had appropriated during the war of the Bavarian succession.
27. Brandi [29:8], 95; Chabod [26:21], 96.
28. These figures are all rounded. See appended table on p. 484 for details.
29. Elliott [1:25], 137.
30. Giménez Fernández [2:39], 2, 259. Actually, it was not Charlemagne who had divided the empire, but his son, Louis le Débonair.
31. “Porque, señor, tan grandes reinos, y provincias tan diversas, con la monarquía imperial, no se pueden conducir ni gobernar bien sin buen orden y buen consejo, que consisten en la elección de las personas, pues se tiene frecuentemente más carestía de gente que de dinero. Es necesario que Vuestra Majestad [sic] tenga más ciudado en proveer que los oficios y beneficios sean honorados con personas virtuosas dignas y suficientes que en querer decorar personas indignas e inhabiles mediante oficios, beneficios y dignidades.”
Chapter 30
1. Richard Levene, “Introducción a la historia del derecho indiano,” BRAH, 1924, 56–57.
2. Juan Manzano y Manzano, La incorporación de las Indias a la corona de Castilla, Madrid 1948.
3. Earl Hamilton [3:8], 42. The figure given by Hamilton was 9,153,220 grams.
4. I. A. Wright, “The Commencement of the Cane Sugar Industry in America,” AHR, 21, 1916, 757–58.
5. Hanke [16:14], 46.
6. Las Casas [2:50], 3, 312.
7. Schäfer [9:19], 1, 35–36, discusses.
8. “¿Cómo, señor, estuvieron ellos tres meses forjándolos y haciéndolos … y tengo yo que responder agora en un credo? Demelos … cinco horas.…”
9. Summarized in Deive [6:36], 173.
10. Otte [15:83], 162.
11. Deive [6:36], 123.
12. Such as the merchants Diego Caballero, Juan Fernández de las Varas, Rodrigo de Bastidas, and Juan Mosquera.
13. Deive [6:36], 17ff.
14. Santo Tomás and San Juan Bautista, on the coast near Higuey; Mejorada, near Cotui, named of course after Prior Figueroa’s monastery so loved by the Catholic Kings, and another, unnamed, in La Vega.
15. San Juan de Ortega, in Bonao; Villaviciosa, in La Vega; Santiago, on the River Yaque; Verapaz, in Jaragua—the names as usual echoing well-remembered places in Old Spain.
16. AGI, Justicia, leg. 47, no. 3. Jacome de Castellón was the illegitimate son of Bernardo Castiglione, a merchant of Genoa, and Inés Suárez of Toledo (Otte [15:83], 109, 239; Giménez Fernández [2:39], 2, 1199). He was born in 1492, a mercader of Santo Domingo, where he went in 1510, and a brother of Tomás. He was involved with trade in indigenous Indians. He was also involved with ganaderías (cattle ranching) and haciendas. In 1513, Castellón had been a partner of Diego Caballero, “El Mozo,” and Jerónimo Grimaldi, in trading Indian slaves. In 1518 he was still active on the Pearl Coast, mixing evangelization, trade (wine, arms, including swords and even lombardas), and forced labor. See Deive [6:36], 157, 374. In 1522, he was captain of an armada of his own to the coast of Cumaná, where he was asked to build a fortress, of which he was named alcaide in 1524 and paid 900 pesos. But he continued to live in Santo Domingo and had Andrés de Villacorta as his lieutenant. He carried out numerous journeys for indigenous slaves, so it was appropriate that in 1527, when he obtained a coat of arms, it should have had on it a fortress and four Indians’ heads.
17. Antonio Flores, the Governor of La Vega, became chief magistrate of Cubagua, off the Pearl Coast, to prevent breaches of these rules. He was Figueroa’s trusted friend. But he turned out to be a brute, appointing friends of his own to important places under him: for example, Juan Martín de Trebejo, a Portuguese muleteer, as alguacil, and García González Muriel, veedor of a recent armada, as notary (escribano del juzgado). Flores’s aim was to increase the quantity of both pearls and slaves, not to improve the way that the latter were obtained. But becoming “the determining power in Cubagua” (papa y rey y alcalde mayor de Cubagua), and himself benefiting from both businesses, as well as establishing the happy principle that “his lies are worth more than other people’s truths,” he eventually fled in 1520, being succeeded by Francisco de Vallejo, at a higher salary.
18. Deive [6:36], 235.
19. “No hay mercader que tenga consciencia ni verdad.”
20. “Señor, por lo que me toca de las Indias, soy obligado a besar las manos de vuestra señoría.”
21. “¿Que sermón os traigo para predicarnos?”
22. “Por cierto señor, días ha que yo deseo oír predicar a vuestra señoría, pero también a vuestra señoría certifico que le tengo aparejados un par de sermones, que si los quisiere oír y bien considerar, que valgan más que los dineros que trae de las Indias.…”
23. Las Casas [2:50], 3, 337.
24. Juan de Zúñiga y Avellaneda, born Jan. 17, 1488, son of Pedro de
Zúñiga y Velasco, second Count Miranda, to begin with a supporter of Philip I, was in Flanders 1506–17 with a minor post in the royal household. He became camalengo to Charles V in 1511, then camarero, then Caballero de Santiago, and from 1535 was Philip II’s godfather and adviser: ayo del príncipe. Always in the confidence of Charles V, who made him ambassador to Portugal after the comuneros’ war of 1520–21, since many of the leaders of the rebellion took refuge in that country. He was in Portugal (with Laxao) to work on the wedding of the King with Isabel. He was majordomo of Philip II’s from 1539. He seemed to be a great friend and supporter of Cobos, but Charles V said he was as jealous of that statesman as he was of the Duke of Alba. Cobos once wrote that “don Juan de Zúñiga is working hard for himself. I do not mean against me, lest I myself become suspect by that comment. He wants complete control, without regard for the loyalty and service of the rest and, to gain that, he does everything he can to make him his only privy councillor, to such a point that his ambition is known.… The sternness and rigor with which he brought up the Prince has been turned into sweetness and gentleness, all of it arising from flattery to help him attain his goal” (Cobos to Charles V, Keniston [26:13], 271).
25. Las Casas [2:50], 3, 337–38.
26. Las Casas [2:50], 3, 339.
27. See Fernández Álvarez [17:19], 97–99.
28. “Su majestad manda que habléis si algunas cosas tenéis de las Indias que hablar.” Las Casas [2:50], 3, 340.
29. Keniston [26:13], 57.
30. Las Casas [2:50], 3, 242.
31. Las Casas [2:50], 3, 244.
32. Bataillon [26:42], 232.
Chapter 31
1. Qu. Chabod [26:21], 103.
2. There were two Barbarossas: Arudj, assassinated by the Spanish governor of Oran, the Marquis of Gomera, in 1518; and Khayr al-Din, who converted Algiers into the main Turkish pirate base of the Mediterranean. He became Bey of Algiers in 1536.
3. Chabod [26:21], 92.
4. Qu. Headley [17:24], 27.
5. The mother of Louis XIV was Anne of Austria, daughter of Philip III of Spain.
6. Santa Cruz [5:7], 1, 255.
7. We can still see this fine room.
8. See list in Giménez Fernández [2:39], 2, 341.
9. “más rey que otro, porque tiene más y mayores reynos que otro.”
10. “el imperio vino a busca a la España … Rey de Romanos y emperador.”
11. “el fundamento, el amparo y la fuerza de todos los otros” … “el huerto de sus placeres, la fortaleza para su defensa, la fuerza para atacar, su tesoro y su espada han de ser los reinos de España.” Diario de las sesiones de las Cortes Españolas.
12. Martyr [1:2], 3, 306.
13. This speech was published in Rome by Jacobus Mazochius of Augsburg, and there was a German edition by Martin Landsberg of Leipzig.
14. Ramón Menéndez-Pidal, La Idea Imperial de Carlos V, Buenos Aires 1941, 10.
15. Discussed by Haring [13:87], 20.
16. “Dios creó los indios libres e no subjetos ni obligados a ninguna servidumbre que de aquí adelante se guarde lo que sobre ello está acordado y definido.”
17. Las Casas [2:50], 3, 361: “Los Indios generalmente debían ser libres y tractados como libres y traídos a la fe por la vía que Cristo dejó establecida.”
18. “la via mahomética.” Las Casas [2:50], 3, 361.
19. Las Casas [2:50], 3, 363. Las Casas was probably thinking of people such as Pedro de Rentería, his ex-partner in Arimao, Cuba, but also such persons as Gabriel de Peñalosa, his uncle, Gonzalo de Ocampo, and Juan de Villoria, all of whom had respectable records of humane conduct in the New World.
20. Hanke [16:14], 46.
21. See Genealogy 2 in my Conquest of Mexico [27:15].
22. Ibid.
23. Text of discussions in CDI, 18, 27, also CDI, 12, 458. This is discussed in Silvio Zavala, Las instituciones jurídicas en la conquista de América [8:11], 524ff.
24. Sandoval [26:36], 1, 219.
25. Martyr [1:2], 3, 335.
Chapter 32
1. So says Brandi [29:8], 169, but there is no English source that backs this statement. Where Brandi derived his information about the treasure is unknown. As Professor Scarisbruch, the biographer of Henry VIII, pointed out, he could not have invented the story.
2. Perhaps the picture by Lucas van Leyden known as The Card Players is an impression of Charles negotiating with Wolsey and with his aunt, Margaret, in the center telling her nephew to eschew France? The picture is in the Thyssen Collection, Madrid.
3. There is an account by Alonso de Valdés to Peter Martyr in Martyr [1:2], 3, 93.
4. This account is discussed in my Conquest of Mexico [27:15], 536–37. Dürer later made an engraving, The Reformation in the City, printed by Poel. Rather remarkably, Dürer does not seem to have made any drawing of what he saw.
5. See Chabod [26:21], 111.
6. Chabod [26:21], 110.
7. Chabod [26:21], 113.
8. Menéndez-Pidal [31:14], 17.
9. Headley [17:24], 35.
10. Sandoval, 2, 123.
11. Pérez [26:34], 53.
12. As Charles Péguy put it: “Tout commence en mystique et se termine en politique.”
13. Gil [3:37], 1, 286.
14. See Gil [3:37], 3, 195ff. for Alcázar’s life and descendants.
15. Giménez Fernández [2:39], 2, 967, publishes a facsimile of the letter.
16. Gil [3:37], 1, 289.
17. See Cooper [9:19], 2, 1109.
18. See Fernández Álvarez [3:51], chs. 14, 15.
19. The old regime continued on at least one level: thus, on March 23, 1521, after a moment of anxiety lest some mutineers might seek to seize the castle of Triana in Seville, and another such moment lest there might have to be an interruption in the plans of the Inquisition, there was an auto-de-fe “in which three men and two women were burned, among whom was Alonso Tello, once an alcalde ordinario of the city, as well as Beatriz de Albornoz, “La cochina,” a butcher. Two absent men were burned in effigy: Jacques de Valera, once a continuo real, and his father, Álvaro Pérez de Rosales, both of whom had gone to Fez, in Morocco, and become Jews (Gil [3:37], 1, 291).
20. Las Casas remarked: “Ad plura teneitur, reverendísima dominatio sua Deo et proximis quia unicuique mandavit Deus de proximo suo”; and Adrian replied, also in Latin, “Ad minus debetis mihi vestras orationes.” He added, “Ego iam dicavi me prorsus obsequio et obedientiae vestre, reverendísima dominationis in quo proposito usque ad mortem inclusive perseverabo.…”
21. Haring [13:87], 20.
22. Among whom were Blas Fernández, Francisco de Soto, Juan de Vagrumen, Alonso Sánchez, Guillermo de la Rocha, Fernán Martín, Pedro Hernández, Gonzalo Escribano, and Antonio Blas.
23. Pedro Gutiérrez de Santa Clara, Historia de las Guerras Civiles del Perú, 6 vols., Madrid 1904–29, 1, 36–40.
24. Las Casas [2:50], 3, 384.
25. Arranz [12:17], 543.
26. George Kubler and Martin Soria, Art and Architecture in Spain and Portugal and Their American Dominions, 1500–1800, Harmondsworth 1959, 63; Peter Boyd-Bowman, Indice geobiográfico de más de 56 mil pobladores de la América Hispánica, 1493–1519, Mexico 1985, 1, 127. It is a hall church, the north door being essentially Gothic, the west portal plateresque. Rodrigo Gil de Liendo of Santander was the architect.
27. Las Casas [2:50], 3, 369.
28. CDI, 10, 32–9.
29. Las Casas [2:50], 3: “la más preciosa moneda que los indios amaban.”
30. Las Casas [2:50], 3, 379.
31. Las Casas [2:50], 3, 386.
32. Oviedo [2:43], 36, ch. 1.
33. Santa Cruz [26:31], 5, 15. Charles would on this occasion remain in Spain for seven years, the longest period he ever spent in the kingdom or anywhere else.
34. Joseph Pérez, Los comuneros, Madrid 2001, 137.
35. See Francisco Morales Padrón, Historia de Sevilla, la ciudad del quinientos
, Seville 1989, 131.
Chapter 33
1. This chapter and the two following ones were difficult for me to write since some time ago I wrote a history of the conquest [27:15]. The present treatment of the civilization of the Mexica depends on the first five chapters of my earlier book, suitably amended to take new discoveries into account.
2. Fr. Angel Garibay, Historia de la literatura Nahuatl, 2 vols., Mexico 1953, 1, 90.
3. There are now about fifty such languages in Mexico. For the vexed question of the size of the pre-Columbian population, see Appendix 1 to my Conquest ([27:15], 609).
4. I use the word “Mexica” to describe the people of ancient Mexico, not “Aztecs.” “Mexica” is how the people concerned spoke of themselves. They may have called themselves “Aztec” at an early stage in their history since they were said to have come from Aztlán, but in the sixteenth century, the usage “Aztec” was unknown and figures in no memoir or chronicle of the era. None of the Spanish conquistadors or chroniclers used the word. “Aztec” was a nineteenth-century usage popularized by the Jesuit Clavijero in his Historia Antigua de México and by North Americans, such as Prescott and Bancroft.
5. Ignacio Bernal, The Olmec World, Berkeley 1969, 187.
6. Mary Pohl et al., “Olmec Origins of Mesoamerican Writing,” Science, December 6, 2002.
7. The Olmecs only received their name in 1929 from Marshall Saville, then director of the Museum of the American Indian; they themselves may not have known it.
8. Scientific American, March 1977.
9. They had the corbeled vaulting by which two legs of a vault are held together until the space between can be bridged by capstones.
10. The so-called códices gained that name from the Spanish conquerors, who thought that the cloth folded together between wooden covers resembled pharmacists’ lists of medicines.
11. Perhaps for Mexicans it foreshadowed the dual worship by modern Mexicans of the Virgin of Guadalupe and of Christ.