Part 28

It was soon found that these taxes could not be collected. Accordingly, in 1496, a change was made; instead of gold and cotton, labor was substituted. The Indians near the plantations were obliged to prepare and work them. Such was the origin of the “repartimiento” system which, applied to a population unused to regular toil, and administered by harsh and unprincipled masters, transformed the larger Antilles into virtual prison houses. The natives who resisted were treated as guilty of rebellion and were sent to Spain to be sold as slaves. Oftentimes, in order to escape this servitude, whole villages and even tribes would take refuge in the forests. Regular raids were organized against those who tried to evade the tribute; those who were captured were sent to Spain. In 1498 the vessels of Columbus, fleet took home a consignment of six hundred, one-third of whom were given to the masters of the ships to cover the freight charges.

There were scruples on the part of the home government against sanctioning such an arrangement, and on more than one occasion, in applying his policy of “pacific penetration,” Columbus acted without waiting for royal sanction. After the two years’ insurrection of Roldon, the chief justice, had been brought to an end by mutual agreement, Columbus, in order to institute an era of good feeling, made a generous distribution of slaves and lands among Roldon’s supporters. Each man was to receive a certain number of hillocks for the purpose of manioc culture. The operation of tillage was placed in the hands of an Indian chieftain whose people were obliged to dwell on the land they cultivated. Those of the former rebels who chose to return home received from one to three slaves apiece. Fifteen took advantage of this last offer; but they soon found themselves confronted by a royal proclamation which directed that all holders of slaves given them by Columbus should return them to Hayti under pain of death. An unfortunate exception was, however, made in the case of Indians who had been taken as rebels.

Further indications of the attempt of the home government to curb the economic exploitation of the island introduced by Columbus are seen in the instructions given to Nicolas de Ovando, who succeeded Bobadilla as royal governor in April, 1502. He was directed to convert the Indians, not to maltreat them, nor to reduce them to slavery; to require them to work the gold mines, but to pay for their work; to refuse to allow Jews or Moors to have access to the island; to accept blacks as slaves. The idle and the dissolute were to be returned to Spain, and all mining concessions made by the previous governor were to be revoked. Ovando’s rule was to extend over all of the West Indies, with his residence on Hispaniola (Hayti).

The expedition conveying the new chief was of imposing size; there were thirty ships and 2500 persons. On board was the famous Las Casas, afterwards the apostle and champion of the Indians, who came now to make his fortune in the New World like so many other adventurers. The attraction of the reported mines of gold was irresistible, and it can be imagined how great was the joy of the Spaniards when the first news they heard in the colony was the report of the finding of a huge nugget of gold thirty-five pounds in weight. This treasure was dug up by an Indian girl not far from the settlement of San Domingo.

Equally reassuring as a foundation for the prosperity of the colony was a second piece of news which recounted how, in a part of the island, there had been an uprising of the natives which had been successfully punished, and in which the victors had reaped the reward of turning the captured rebels into slaves. It was well known that the feeling in the home country was becoming distinctly unfavorable to a colonial polity practised so ruthlessly on the natives. The Spanish sovereigns had declared themselves to be the protectors of the Indians, and had ordered them both to be treated mildly by the civil authorities and to be prepared for Christianity by the representatives of the Church. They were to be civilized, and taught the Spanish language and habits of industry. No arms should be sold to them, nor strong drink; there was to be cultivation of the soil, but it was not to be done under duress. The Indian lands could be bought or sold, and the natives were to be encouraged to adopt autonomous municipal institutions under the direction of the priests. They were also to have the right of appearing in court to act as witnesses or to institute suits. As to the mines, they were permitted to work in them, but were not to be forced. Even tribal customs were allowed to be continued, where they were not contrary to the ethical obligations of a higher type of civilization.

It was an almost idyllic scheme for assuming the white man’s burden, but it remained a paper reformation; as the testimony of Las Casas shows. For some time before his ordination this untiring advocate of the rights of the natives lived in Hispaniola the life of the ordinary Spanish colonist. He acquired slaves; worked them in the mines, and devoted himself with such assiduity to the control of the estates previously acquired in the colony by his father that he declares they turned in to him a yearly income of 100,000 castellanes, an enormous sum, considering the purchasing power of money at the beginning of the sixteenth century.

The gold fever caused terrible havoc among the colonists; they were not used to manual labor, they knew nothing of the methods of mining, they were poorly supplied with tools for the work. Often they rushed to the mines without taking with them an adequate supply of food. The tropical climate soon brought on a strange disease, probably pernicious malaria. Under its ravages, in a short period, 2500 of Ovando’s men met their deaths not long after they came to the colony. The conditions of life were hard, even food being scarce in the neighborhood of the mines, and, when the royal tax of one-fifth was deducted from the small proceeds after the expenses were paid, the colonist’s share was barely sufficient to cover his living expenses. The few who were contented with agricultural pursuits were really better off in every way, but in the mania for gold discovery no thought was given to the magnificent resources of the soil.

Las Casas notes that the worst effects of this colonial policy began in the year 1504, when Queen Isabella’s death became known. Ovando’s short and easy methods with the natives are described with great vividness by Las Casas, who took part in the warfare against one of the native chieftains. It was, of course, a conflict in which the weaker race could play their part only through ruse and stratagem, for, as Las Casas says, “all their wars are little more than games with little sticks such as children play in our countries.” Nor were the natives well qualified even for this sort of hostilities, since they were “most humble, most patient, most peaceful and calm, without strife or tumult; not wrangling nor querulous, as free from hate and desire for revenge as any in the world.” Even Columbus, in the hearing of Las Casas, bore witness to their humane qualities. He said that he met with such gentle and agreeable reception and such help and guidance when the ship in which he sailed was lost there, that in his own country and from his own father better treatment would not have been possible.

The escape of the natives to the mountains and their efforts to retaliate started, according to Las Casas, the war of extermination. When the governor Ovando arrived in the part of the island which was ruled over by a woman chieftain, Anacaona, more than 300 chiefs were brought together and assured of the pacific intentions of the Europeans. “He lured the principal ones by fraud into a straw house, and, setting fire to it, he burnt them alive; all the others, together with numberless people, were put to the sword and lance; and to do honor to the lady Anacaona, they hanged her.” Death by fire, administered with the most exquisitely devised tortures, was the fate of the Indian chieftains. “I once saw,” he continues, “that they had four or five of the chief lords stretched on the gridiron to burn them, and I think also there were two or three pairs of gridirons where they were burning others.” The fugitives were hunted down by boar-hounds who were taught and trained to tear an Indian to pieces as soon as they saw him.

Although Cuba had been discovered by Columbus, no attempt was made to occupy the island until 1511, when his son Diego, acting under the powers conferred upon him by the home government, selected Velasquez, one of the oldest and most respected colonists in Hispaniola, to take charge of the enterprise. With only three hundred men he easily occupied the island. Like the Indians of Hispaniola they were not able to organize any effective resistance. There was a repetition of the atrocities by which Hispaniola had been pacified. By 1521 the miserable natives were so brought under control that they were turned into the unwilling and inefficient instruments of the colonial policy of their new masters.

Las Casas was present at the close of this expedition, and he speaks of frequent burnings and hangings of the inhabitants. Many committed suicide to escape the enforced working in the mines. The following item in his indictment deserves to be reproduced: “There was,” he says, “an officer of the king in this island to whose share 300 Indians fell, and by the end of three months he had, through labor in the mines, caused the deaths of 270; so that he had only 30 left, which was the tenth part. The authorities afterwards gave him as many again, and again he killed them; and they continued to give and he to kill.... In three or four months, I being present, more than 7000 children died of hunger, their fathers and mothers having been taken to the mines.” The concentration of the conquerors on economic success may be gathered from the experience of Las Casas himself, who, though he had done all in his power to restrain the commission of cruel deeds, wherever he was present, did not hesitate to take advantage, priest though he was, of the “repartimiento” system, under which he received a valuable piece of land and a number of Indians to work it, in recognition of the services he had rendered in conciliating the natives.

Columbus, it must be remembered, received an authorization to deport from Spain criminals under sentence of either partial or perpetual banishment. Other delinquents had had their sentences remitted provided they agreed to go to the Indies. The result among such a motley crowd, released from the ordinary pressure of social obligations, was a laxity and dissoluteness such as was seen in the nineteenth century among frontier communities. Even Columbus spoke with no admiration of the colonists. “I know,” he said, “that numbers of men have gone to the Indies who did not deserve water from God or man.”

Despite the fact that the exploration and subjugation of the larger Antilles went on with feverish energy, Puerto Rico and Jamaica both being taken in 1509, the profits of the colonial system were most disappointing. The expeditions were costly, there was no economy in organization; at home and abroad, there were a host of officials who had to receive salaries. The gold mines were poor in quality. The native population, by war and disease, had been so much diminished that labor became scarce. The smaller islands were then drawn upon to keep up the supply of labor in Hispaniola, and as the death-rate still continued excessively high, the place of the natives was filled by negroes imported from the Portuguese colonies in Africa. Some negroes were taken to Hispaniola as early as 1505. In 1517 the African slave traffic was authorized by Charles V.

A more intelligent side of the colonial system was seen in the aim of the government to acclimatize in America European plants, trees, and domestic animals. From the time of the second voyage of Columbus there had been detailed government orders, according to which each ship that carried colonists should also be provided with specimens of such seeds as might be useful. Though there were very few domesticated animals in America, it was soon found that the European varieties would flourish there. Las Casas often speaks of the astonishment caused among the natives by their first sight of the horse. This animal soon became an economic necessity, and in many places herds of wild horses in unoccupied regions proved how fast the original stock multiplied in the newly discovered countries. Cattle also soon became one of the chief articles of internal trade between the colonies, and hides were one of the staple goods carried on the fleets engaged in West Indian trade. Sheep and European poultry also were introduced with great success. As to plants, the vine was not encouraged because the mother country produced more wine than was needed for home consumption, and it was an article that could be transported easily to the colonists. The introduction of the sugar-cane was a social benefaction, for it set the settlers free from the burden of gold mining under unfavorable conditions. The sugar industry was developed rapidly after the introduction of negro labor.

With the prevailing ideas of state control of industry, colonial autonomy was out of the question. The need of a central body with supreme powers was suggested from the first by the dissensions caused by the conflict of jurisdiction between the various officials, whose spheres of action were not carefully distinguished. In 1509 the king decided to establish at Hispaniola a supreme tribunal which could hear appeals from the decisions of the governor. From this body grew the committee called the Real Audiencia, or royal court of claims, which, after 1521, governed most of the West Indies. The function of this body was to look after the welfare of the natives, to watch over the executive acts of the governor and other functionaries, and to put a stop to abuses. An appeal from the committee lay to the Council of the Indies in Spain. This body was given final jurisdiction in all civil, military, ecclesiastical, and commercial affairs. With the consent of the king it named the viceroys, the presidents of the Audiencia, and the governors, and it had full control of the higher ecclesiastical patronage.

There was also the Indian Chamber of Commerce, the so-called Casa de Contratacion, which was intrusted with the supervision of the West Indian trade. This body saw to the provision of ships, received all goods, and had jurisdiction of all commercial questions between the colonies and the home country. Through the “Casa” passed all the enormous mineral wealth that came from the opening up of the mines on the continent of America. In 1515, owing to the representations made in Spain by Las Casas of the grievances of the native population, Cardinal Ximenes sent three friars of the order of St. Jerome with full authority to act on behalf of the Indians. Las Casas was appointed protector. When the commission was under discussion, he asked specifically for unconditional liberty for the natives and for the suppression of the serf system in all its forms and provisions, in order to enable the European proprietors to work their estates profitably. These humanitarian efforts had little effect in arresting the prevailing methods of exploitation. When the pearl coast near Trinidad in the northeastern region of South America attracted settlers, there was a fresh demand for enforced labor of a new type, and the native tribes were raided in order to secure supplies of pearl divers. Although through the voyages of explorers various widely separated points on the mainland had been touched, no place had been effectively occupied by settlement. Wherever efforts were made, the native population, the Caribs, were found to have such warlike qualities that no successful foothold could be secured. The climate also proved fatal to Europeans. After Balboa made his celebrated passage across the Isthmus, an expedition of 15 ships and 2000 men came to occupy the land, but 600 of these died in a few months.

No point yet visited by European adventurers had offered examples of native civilization higher than the primitive standards attained by the Carib and the Arawak. But in the interior, in the thick forests of Central America, were scattered about the relics of an ancient culture. In a triangular space including some of northern Yucatan, Mitla in Oaxaca, and Copan in Honduras, there are the remains of sixty communities distinguished by temples, tombs, statues, bas reliefs, fragments of buildings, and deserted palaces. These are relics of a race who at the discovery of America had lost their supremacy for many generations. According to some reckonings, at least as early as the twelfth century these celebrated dead cities were founded.

The difficulty of historical research in reconstructing the records of these aboriginal peoples is due partly to poor methods of transmission and also to the fact that so many of the original documents were lost at the time of the Spanish conquest and before. Chronological reckonings were kept for the purpose of marking the days on which tributes and sacrifices were due. To this were added the figures of chieftains, the notices of tribal conquests, and such events as floods, famines, and eclipses. All of this miscellaneous popular lore was embodied in paintings, executed by a large class of artists, some of whom were women, on paper or fiber rolls or on prepared skins. For this picture-writing skins, oblong in shape and of great length, were employed. Along with these “pinturas” there was handed down an oral method of interpretation. Our knowledge of Mexican history has to be derived from the surviving examples of these picture rolls and from the traditional explanations which were taken down in writing at the time of the entrance of the Spaniards into the country.

The tradition existing in Mexico at this period told how the primitive stock inhabiting the land were giants, many of whom had perished by flood, fire, and earthquake. Then came a body of men who wished to reach the sun, and for this purpose they reared a tower. The sun, angered at the presumption of the earth-dwellers in aspiring to share with the gods the dwellings in the heavens, summoned all of the supernatural powers; the building was destroyed; and the guilty mortals were scattered over the earth. A mythical legislator then appears in Central America who teaches the people, the offspring of the giants, the arts of civilized life. The basis of this folklore may not unreasonably be ascribed to the finding of the bones of large extinct animals and, on the site of the Central American ruined cities, of mammoth statues of human beings. The residuum of truth seems to be that the Mexicans of the Conquest were correct in their common tradition that their ancestors had come from the north, and that the country had been gradually occupied by successive swarms of invaders who came south while they were still dependent on hunting game for their food and were finally reduced to settled forms of life by the cultivation of maize. The various tribes who took part in this migration are called by the Mexican word “Nahuatlaca,” used to denote those communities who were dependent on agriculture and followed a nahua or rule of life dictated by a custom administered by hereditary chiefs. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the Nahuatlaca had reached the present limits of Costa Rica. That there were aboriginal inhabitants is inferred from the mention of the Otomi, the Huaxtecs, the Totonacs, and the Ulmecs, who at the time of the Conquest occupied districts not overrun by the Nahuatlacan immigration.

In the first stage of the southward movement the Toltecs take the lead; it is stated that, being expelled from their own country, they came from the region of the north by both land and sea. Their chief center in their new land was Tollan, a pueblo which stands on a tributary of the Moctezuma River, a stream which falls into the Gulf of Mexico. This place seems to have been once a center of trade, for the Toltecs had the reputation of being clever craftsmen. In addition to knowledge of preparing skins and of manufacturing clothing and articles of domestic use, they must have become familiar with various metals and with the employment of stone for building. Colored stones and crystals were used in their decorative work; from the coasts were brought the colored shells with which they covered their buildings, and the feathers which were woven into their tapestry. Besides this, they had a reputation for the knowledge of medicinal plants. The ruins of Tollan are extensive; as described by those who saw some of the still extant buildings at the time of the Conquest, they must have been most impressive. Sahogun mentions especially the Chalchiauhapan (On the blue water) because it was built between the two forks of the river. There were richly decorated apartments, four being more magnificent than the rest. One was called the House of Gold, another the House of Green Jade and Turquoise; a third room was covered with colored sea-shells arranged as mosaics, the interstices being filled with silver; the last room was decorated in red stones, combined with colored shells. There were besides four rooms adorned with tapestry made of the plumage of different colored birds. As with Selinus, a famous Greek city in Sicily, the downfall of Tollan must have been sudden, for there was an unfinished building seen in the ruins with remarkable pillars in the form of rattlesnakes, and also a mound in process of construction to be used as a foundation of a building of unusually large size. This fate seems to have overtaken it some centuries before the Spanish conquest, and was probably due to an insurrection among the subordinate pueblos.

The name Toltec came to be used as a synonym for a builder in stone or a worker of metals, and it was due to the influence of this race that the other branches of the Nahuatlaca stock made their progress in the civilizing arts. Not only do they stand out among other peoples of the New World as prominent in the pursuit of useful arts and in artistic achievement, but they deserve a place of honor because the deity they worshipped, Suetzalcohuatl, was not propiatiated by sacrifices of blood, but by offerings of maize, perfumes, and flowers. Probably many of them migrated to the regions of Central America, where they were able to preserve their own traditions. Here can be seen better than in the neighborhood of their ancient capital the specimens of their artistic skill. Some of the Toltecs of the dispersion took refuge at Cholula, which at the time of the Conquest was the chief seat of Toltec arts and religion, and also the center of the slave trade. Not far off is the town of Tlaxcallan.

The dissolution of the Toltec control was followed by a long period marked by successive waves of migration. Some of these nomadic tribes who described themselves as Chichimecs of the sun (Teo Chichimecs) established themselves in the strong places of the mountains, and took possession of Tlaxcallan, making it their center. In time this pueblo and its neighbors became of great importance, emigrants spreading from it over parts of Yucatan and Central America. Even at the time of the Spanish conquest the territory which Tlaxcallan dominated, although it was only forty miles in its greatest length and considerably narrower in breadth, mustered 50,000 warriors.