CHAPTER XIV.

THREATENED DESTRUCTION OF THE INDIES.

1526-1543.

DECREASE OF INDIAN POPULATION AT THE ISTHMUS—AND IN HONDURAS—TREATMENT OF SPANISH ALLIES IN GUATEMALA—TORTURE AND BUTCHERY OF HOSTILE NATIVES—TERROR INSPIRED BY ALVARADO—EARLY LEGISLATION—ITS NON-OBSERVANCE—THE NEW LAWS—THE AUDIENCIA OF PANAMÁ ABOLISHED—THE AUDIENCIAS OF LOS REYES AND LOS CONFINES ESTABLISHED—DISGUST CAUSED BY THE NEW CODE—THE FIRST VICEROY OF PERU ARRIVES AT THE ISTHMUS—HE TAKES CHARGE OF TREASURE ACQUIRED BY SLAVE LABOR—AND LIBERATES A NUMBER OF INDIANS.

[Sidenote: THE VEXED INDIAN QUESTION.]

The old Milanese chronicler, Girolamo Benzoni, mentions that during a journey from Acla[XIV‑1] to Nombre de Dios about the year 1541, his party entered some Indian huts to obtain a supply of provisions. The inmates thinking they were about to be enslaved attacked them savagely with hands and teeth, tearing their clothes, spitting in their faces, uttering doleful cries, and exclaiming guacci! guacci! which Benzoni translates as "the name of a quadruped that prowls by night in search of prey."[XIV‑2] Being at length pacified by signs they brought forth food, and one of them consenting to act as guide informed the travellers that there were no other Indian habitations on their line of route, for the Spaniards had either killed or made slaves of the entire population.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: SLAVERY AND DEATH.]

In Honduras slaves were still kidnapped, and sold by ship-loads among the islands or in Nicaragua, so that in the vicinity of Trujillo, where formerly were native towns with from six hundred to three thousand houses, there were in 1547 not more than a hundred and eighty Indians left, the remainder having fled to the mountains to avoid capture. At Naco, which a few years before contained a population of ten thousand souls, there were, in 1536, only forty-five remaining. At a coast town named La Haga, nine leagues from Trujillo, and containing nine hundred houses, there was but one inhabitant left, all having been sold into bondage save the young daughter of the cacique, who had contrived to elude the slave-hunters.[XIV‑3]

Cruel as was the treatment of the natives in every part of the Spanish provinces, nowhere was oppression carried to such an extreme as in Guatemala. Here little distinction was made between the allies and the conquered races; even the faithful Tlascaltecs, who, after the conquest, had settled with the Mexican and Cholultec auxiliaries at Almolonga, being enslaved, overworked, and otherwise maltreated, until in 1547 there were barely a hundred survivors.[XIV‑4] The natives of Atitlan, who had never swerved in their allegiance to the Spaniards, were treated with equal severity. After sharing the hardships of their military campaigns, they were compelled to supply every year four or five hundred male and female slaves and every fifteen days a number of tributary laborers, many of whom perished from excessive toil and privation. They were required to furnish, besides, a large quantity of cloth, cacao,[XIV‑5] honey, and poultry; and so grievous were the burdens laid upon them that even the caciques were impoverished, and their wives compelled to serve as beasts of burden and tillers of the soil.

If such was the treatment to which the most faithful allies of the Spaniards were subjected, what fell cruelties may we not expect to find inflicted on those who, undeterred by defeat, rose again and again upon their oppressors? No words can depict the miseries of these hapless races. Wholesale slaughter, hanging, and burning, torturing, mutilating, and branding, followed the suppression of a revolt. Starvation, exhaustion, blows, fainting under intolerable burdens, groans of despair, and untimely death, were their lot in time of peace. During Alvarado's time the waste of life was wanton and most sickening. In the field starving auxiliaries were fed on human flesh, captives being butchered for food; children were killed and roasted; nay, even where there was no want of provisions, men were slain merely for the feet and hands, which were esteemed delicacies by the anthropophagous races. Nor were the marital relations of the natives any more considered than if they had been by nature the brutes which the Spaniards made of them in practice. Households were rendered desolate, wives being torn from husbands and daughters from parents, to be distributed among the soldiers and seamen, while the children were sent to work at the gold-washings, and there perished by thousands. Thus the work of depopulation progressed, and it is asserted by Las Casas that during the first fifteen or sixteen years of the conquest the destruction of Indians in Guatemala alone amounted to four or five million souls.[XIV‑6]

None of the conquerors of the New World, not even Pedrarias Dávila, were held in such dread as Pedro de Alvarado. When the news of his landing at Puerto de Caballos was noised abroad the natives abandoned their dwellings and fled to the forests. In a few days towns, villages, and farms were deserted, and it seemed as if the whole province of Guatemala had been depopulated by enchantment.[XIV‑7] The plantations were destroyed by cattle; the cattle were torn by wild beasts; and the sheep and lambs served as food for the blood-hounds, which had been trained to regard the Indians as their natural prey, but now found none to devour.

[Sidenote: LAWS OF LITTLE AVAIL.]

As early as 1525 intelligence of the terrible rapidity with which depopulation was progressing reached the emperor, and on the 17th of November he issued a cédula for the protection of the fast decreasing races.[XIV‑8] In 1519 he ordered the council of the Indies to draw up regulations for the government of the provinces, and that body issued a decree regarding the treatment of natives, which, although the protection of the interests of the throne may be a somewhat prominent consideration, exhibits sympathy and enjoins moderation toward the oppressed races.[XIV‑9] Other cédulas were issued at brief intervals,[XIV‑10] but that all were inoperative is shown from many incidents which have already been related.

Distant legislation was of no avail. The branding-iron still seared the captive's flesh, the pine-torch was still applied to the rich victim's feet, and the lash still fell on the toiler's uncovered back. The encomenderos, bent only on amassing wealth, worked their Indians until they were on the verge of death, and then cast them forth from their houses or left them where they fell dead in the streets, as food for prowling dogs and carrion birds, until the odor of corruption infected the settlements.[XIV‑11] Nor did the homes of the living escape destruction or their property violent seizure. Their dwellings were pulled down to supply building materials, and the produce and wares which they brought each day to exchange in their market at Santiago were taken from them by the servants of the Spaniards, or by soldiers, who repaid them only with blows or stabs.[XIV‑12]

Thus notwithstanding the ordinances enacted by the emperor for the protection of the natives, and in the face of a papal bull issued in 1531 by his holiness Paul III.,[XIV‑13] restoring to the Indians their liberty throughout the provinces, their numbers rapidly decreased and the condition of the survivors grew worse as fresh taskmasters arrived in the New World. Few even of the poorer and none of the wealthier class of Spaniards expected to find there an abiding-place. Spain's boldest and most reckless left her shores and voyaged westward with the placid satisfaction of ruffians released from law's control, and now free from the check of an effectual executive power regarded themselves as masters of the position.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: BARTOLOMÉ DE LAS CASAS.]

In 1542 Bartolomé de Las Casas placed in the hands of the emperor the manuscript of his well known work on the destruction of the Indies, and through the exertions mainly of that never-tiring missionary a royal junta composed of ecclesiastics and jurists was held during the previous year at Valladolid for the purpose of drawing up regulations for the better government of the provinces. The great apostle of the Indies pleaded his favorite cause with all the fire of his eloquence, urging that the natives of the New World were by the law of nature free, and giving utterance to the now somewhat trite maxim "God does not allow evil that good may come."

It is somewhat singular, to say the least, to hear such doctrine from the lips of a Dominican,[XIV‑14] while yet the dark looming cloud of the inquisition cast, as from the wings of a fallen angel, the dun spectre of its huge eclipse athwart the hemispheres.

[Sidenote: THE NEW LAWS.]

The ordinances framed by the junta received the emperor's approval, and after being somewhat amplified were published in Madrid in 1543, and thenceforth known as the New Laws.[XIV‑15] The code contains a large number of articles, many of them relating almost exclusively to the enslavement and treatment of the natives. It was provided that all Indian slaves should be set free, unless their owners could establish a legal title to their possession.[XIV‑16] None were thenceforth to be enslaved under any pretext.

Proprietors to whom the repartimientos had given an excessive number must surrender a portion of them to the crown. On the death of encomenderos[XIV‑17] the slaves were to revert to the crown. All ecclesiastics and religious societies and all officers under the crown must deliver up their bondsmen or bondswomen, not being allowed to retain them even though resigning office. Inspectors were appointed to watch over the interests of the natives, and were paid out of the fines levied on transgressors. Slaves were not to be employed in the pearl-fisheries against their will under penalty of death to the party so employing them, nor when used as pack-animals was such a load to be laid on their backs as might endanger their lives. Finally they were to be converted to the Catholic faith, and it was ordered that two priests should accompany all exploring parties, to instruct the Americans that his Majesty the emperor regarded them as his free subjects, and that his holiness the pope desired to bring them to a true knowledge of him the spread of whose doctrines had in less than half a century been attended with the depopulation of the fairest portions of the New World.

* * * * *

Among the provisions of the new code were others almost as distasteful to many of the Spaniards as were those relating to the enfranchisement of the natives. The audiencia of Panamá was abolished and two new tribunals were to be established, one at Los Reyes, which now first began to bear the name of Lima, and was thenceforth the metropolis of the South American continent; the other termed the audiencia de los Confines, at Comayagua, with jurisdiction over Chiapas, Yucatan, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and the province of Tierra Firme, known as Castilla del Oro. From the decision of these tribunals and from those of the audiencias of Mexico and Santo Domingo, there was to be in criminal cases no appeal. In civil suits the losing party might demand a second trial, the benefit of which is not apparent, as no new evidence was admitted, and the case was conducted by the oidores who rendered the first judgment. If the amount exceeded ten thousand pesos de oro, there lay right of appeal to the council of the Indies. Moreover, the oidores[XIV‑18] were empowered to inquire into the administration of the governor and other civil functionaries, and to suspend them from office, their report being sent to the council of the Indies for final action.

Such were the main features of the new code which sought to strike the fetters from a nation which was fast disappearing from the family of man. Tidings of this remarkable piece of legislation soon spread throughout the New World, and from Mexico to Los Reyes the entire population was in a state of ferment bordering revolution. To deprive the settlers of their slaves was to reduce them to beggary. Slaves constituted the chief source of wealth throughout the provinces. Without them the mines could not be worked, towns could not be built, lands could not be tilled. The soldier urged his right of conquest, and many a scarred veteran, worn with toil and hardship, threatened to defend by the sword which had helped to win an empire for his sovereign the estates now threatened by these vexatious regulations.

[Sidenote: VASCO NUÑEZ VELA.]

The colonists were soon to learn that the new laws were not to remain a dead letter as had been the case with the royal ordinances. In January 1544 Vasco Nuñez Vela, the first viceroy of Peru, arrived at Nombre de Dios, and finding there some Spaniards returning to their native country with stores of wealth acquired by the sale of their Peruvian slaves, ordered them to deliver up their treasure,[XIV‑19] and but for some doubt as to the legality of such a proceeding would certainly have confiscated it.

After crossing the Isthmus the viceroy liberated and sent back from Panamá at the expense of their proprietors, several hundred Indians who had been brought from Peru or were unjustly held in bondage. Bitter were the remonstrances against these high-handed measures, but Vela merely answered, "I come not to discuss the laws but to execute them." The condition of the natives was not improved, however, by their liberation, for we learn that numbers died on board ship from starvation and ill-usage, while others, cast ashore unarmed on a desolate coast, fell a prey to wild beasts or otherwise perished miserably.

A committee of the most noble and influential of the Spaniards waited on the new viceroy to gain from him, if possible, some concessions. They urged that, inasmuch as the Indians had been converted to Christianity, it would be a great loss to the church to enfranchise them, and that if enfranchised they would always be in danger of perishing from starvation. They dared not return to their own tribes, for the caciques inflicted the penalty of death on all who had become Christians. These arguments served but to rouse the wrath of the viceroy, who dismissed the deputation saying, "Were you under my jurisdiction I would hang you every one." Thenceforth none dared oppose him further. Even the oidores of the newly established audiencia of Los Reyes who had accompanied him from Spain made no protest, and on his departure for Peru remained for some time at Panamá before they could muster courage to follow.

In Tierra Firme and in the islands of the Spanish West Indies the new laws were partially obeyed, although complaints were still frequent of the ill-treatment of natives, of their being punished with stripes if they dared to complain, and of the arrival in Panamá of cargoes of slaves from Nicaragua. The priests were earnest in their protestations, and their reports to the emperor abounded in lofty expressions of concern for the cause of Christ and of humanity. The ecclesiastical and secular interests were ever at variance. Should the alcaldes render any decision that threatened to work adversely against the authority of the church, they were excommunicated, and thus rendered incapable, in the eyes of the people, of discharging the functions of their office. The governor and the bishop were continually at war, the latter cloaking under his pretended zeal for the conversion of the Indians, and the former under the pretext of upholding the dignity of the crown, the real purpose for which each was too often striving—that of gathering into his coffers the gold of his Majesty's vassals.[XIV‑20]