This is a translation of the original Spanish text of Historia de las Indias, Volume 3, Book III, Chapters III–VIII by Bartolome De Las Casas. Translated by Claude.
By this time, the friars of Santo Domingo had already considered the sad life and most bitter captivity that the native people of this island suffered, and how they were being consumed, the Spaniards who possessed them making no more account of them than if they were useless animals—grieving only after they were dead that they had died, on account of the loss they caused in the gold mines and other enterprises; yet not even in those who remained did they show any more compassion or gentleness regarding the harshness and severity with which they were accustomed to oppress, exhaust, and consume them.
And in all of this there were differences among the Spaniards, for some were utterly cruel, without pity or mercy, caring only to enrich themselves with the blood of those wretches; others were less cruel; and still others, it must be believed, were pained by their misery and anguish. But all of them—every one, tacitly or expressly—subordinated the health, lives, and salvation of those poor souls to their own private and temporal interests alone. I do not recall knowing a single man among them who was merciful toward the Indians who served him, except only one, who was called Pedro de la Rentería, of whom below, God willing, there will be much good to say.
Thus it was that the said friars, seeing and observing and considering, over many days, the deeds the Spaniards were doing to the Indians, and the utter disregard they had for their bodily and spiritual welfare, and the innocence, inestimable patience, and meekness of the Indians, began to join the law to the facts—being men who were spiritual and great friends of God—and to discuss among themselves the ugliness and enormity of this unheard-of injustice, saying: “Are these not men? Must not the precepts of charity and justice be kept and fulfilled toward them? Did they not have their own lands, and their own lords and dominions? Have they offended us in anything? Are we not obligated to preach the law of Christ to them, and to labor with all diligence to convert them? Then how is it that, being so many and so innumerable the peoples who were on this island—as we are told—in so brief a time, which is the work of fifteen or sixteen years, they have so cruelly perished?”
Added to this was the case that one of the Spaniards who had taken part in the cruel massacres and devastation wrought upon these people murdered his wife by stabbing, on suspicion that she was committing adultery against him. She was one of the principal native ladies of the province of the Vega, a lady ruling over many people. This man wandered through the mountains for three or four years, before the Order of Santo Domingo came to this island, out of fear of justice. When he learned of the Order’s arrival and the odor of holiness it gave off, he came one night to the straw house that had been given to the friars as their dwelling, and having given an account of his life, he begged with great importunity and perseverance that they give him the habit of a lay brother, in which he intended, with God’s favor, to serve for the rest of his life.
They gave it to him out of charity, seeing in him signs of conversion and detestation of his past life, and a desire to do penance—which he afterward did in the greatest measure. In the end, we hold it certain that he died a martyr, for God is wont, in great sinners, to show His immense mercy, working wonders through them; of his martyrdom we shall speak below, God willing, if we reach that point in our lives, and it will be near the end of this third book. This man, whom they called Fray Juan Garcés—and in the world Juan Garcés—known well enough to me, revealed to the friars in great detail the execrable cruelties that he and all the others had committed against these innocent peoples, in war and in peace (if any of it could be called peace), as an eyewitness.
The friars, horrified to hear of deeds so hostile to humanity and Christian custom, took greater courage to challenge the beginning, the middle, and the end of this horrible and unprecedented form of tyrannical injustice. Inflamed by the heat and zeal of divine honor, and grieving over the offenses committed against God’s law and commandments, and the infamy of their faith which, on account of the said deeds, stank among these nations, and feeling the deepest compassion for the destruction of so great a number of souls—with no one to grieve for them or take account of them, as they had perished and were perishing every hour—supplicating and commending themselves greatly to God, with continual prayers, fasts, and vigils, that He might enlighten them so they would not err in a matter of such consequence, however much they anticipated how novel and scandalous it would be to awaken persons who slept in so profound and abyssal a slumber, and so insensibly; finally, having taken their mature and many-times-repeated counsel, they resolved to preach it publicly from the pulpits, and to declare the state in which those sinners of ours who held and oppressed these people were living, and dying in that state, where at the end of their inhumanities and greed they were going to receive their reward.
All the most learned among them agreed, by order of the most prudent servant of God, Father Fray Pedro de Córdoba, their Vicar, on the first sermon that should be preached on this matter, and they all signed it with their names, so it would appear as coming not only from the one who would preach it, but from the opinion, deliberation, consent, and approval of all of them. The said Father Vicar imposed, commanding by obedience, that the sermon be preached by their principal preacher after the said Father Vicar himself, who was called Father Fray Antón Montesino, the second of the three who had brought the Order here, as was said above, in Book II, Chapter 54.
This Father Fray Antón Montesino had a gift for preaching; he was most harsh in rebuking vices, and above all, in his sermons and words very choleric and most effective, and so he produced, or it was believed he produced, much fruit in his sermons. To him, as a man of great courage, they entrusted the first sermon on this subject, so new to the Spaniards of this island—and the novelty was nothing other than to affirm that killing these people was a greater sin than killing bedbugs.
And because it was the season of Advent, they decided that the sermon should be preached on the fourth Sunday, when the Gospel is sung in which the Evangelist Saint John recounts: “The Pharisees sent to ask Saint John the Baptist who he was, and he answered them: Ego vox clamantis in deserto.” And so that the entire city of Santo Domingo would be present at the sermon, that no one should be absent—at least none of the principal men—they invited the second Admiral who governed this island at that time, and the King’s officials, and all the learned jurists there were, each one at his house, telling them that on Sunday in the main church there would be a sermon of theirs, and they wished to make known to them a certain matter that greatly concerned them all, and they begged them to be present to hear it.
All agreed very willingly—partly from the great reverence they held for them, and the esteem they had for them on account of their virtue and the austerity in which they lived, and the rigor of their religious life; partly because each one was eager to hear that which they had been told so concerned them. But had they known beforehand what it was, it is certain that it would not have been preached to them, because they would neither have wished to hear it, nor allowed it to be preached.
When Sunday came and the hour of preaching, the aforesaid Father Fray Antón Montesino ascended the pulpit, and took as the theme and foundation of his sermon, which he carried already written and signed by the others: Ego vox clamantis in deserto. Having made his introduction and said something pertaining to the matter of the Advent season, he began to stress the barrenness of the desert that was the consciences of the Spaniards on this island, and the blindness in which they lived, with how much danger they walked toward their damnation, not heeding the most grievous sins in which, with such insensibility, they were continually plunged and in which they were dying.
Then he returned to his theme, saying thus: “In order to make these things known to you, I have come up here, I who am the voice of Christ in the desert of this island, and therefore it is fitting that, with attention—not just any attention, but with all your heart and with all your senses—you hear it; which voice shall be the newest you have ever heard, the harshest and hardest and most frightful and dangerous you ever thought to hear.”
This voice he amplified for a good while with very piercing and terrible words, which made the flesh of his listeners tremble, and made them feel as if they were already standing before the divine judgment. The voice, then, having been built up to a great degree in its universal intensity, he declared to them what it was and what it contained within itself:
“This voice,” he said, “says that you are all in mortal sin, and in it you live and die, because of the cruelty and tyranny you practice against these innocent peoples. Tell me, by what right and by what justice do you hold these Indians in such cruel and horrible servitude? By what authority have you waged such detestable wars against these peoples who were in their lands, meek and peaceful, where so infinitely many of them, with deaths and devastations never before heard of, you have consumed? How do you hold them so oppressed and exhausted, without feeding them or curing them in their illnesses, which from the excessive labors you give them they fall into and die—or rather, you kill them—in order to extract and acquire gold every day?
“And what care do you take that anyone should instruct them, and that they should come to know their God and Creator, be baptized, hear Mass, keep the feasts and Sundays? Are these not men? Do they not have rational souls? Are you not bound to love them as you love yourselves? Do you not understand this? Do you not feel this? How is it that you are in such a depth of lethargic slumber, so deeply asleep? Be certain that, in the state you are in, you can no more be saved than the Moors or Turks who lack and do not want the faith of Jesus Christ.”
Finally, in such a manner did he explain the voice that he had so greatly amplified before, that he left them astonished—many as if out of their senses, others more hardened, and some somewhat pricked in conscience, but not a single one, as far as I afterward understood, converted.
His sermon concluded, he descended from the pulpit with his head not very bowed, because he was not a man who wished to show fear, just as he did not have any, nor did he care much about displeasing his hearers, doing and saying what, according to God, seemed fitting to him. With his companion he went to his straw house, where, perhaps, they had nothing to eat but broth of greens without oil, as sometimes happened to them.
Once he had left, the church remained full of murmuring, so that, as I believe, they hardly let the Mass be finished. One can well judge that no lesson on contempt of the world was read at anyone’s table that day. When they had finished eating—which could not have been a very pleasant meal—the entire city gathered at the house of the Admiral, second in this dignity and royal office, Don Diego Colón, son of the first discoverer of these Indies, especially the King’s officials: the Treasurer and the Accountant, the Factor and the Inspector. They resolved to go and reprimand and intimidate the preacher and the rest, and if they did not punish him as a scandalous man, a sower of new doctrine never before heard, who had condemned them all, and who had spoken against the King and his sovereignty over these Indies, affirming that they could not hold the Indians even though the King had given them; and these were matters most grave and unforgivable.
They knock at the door of the friary; the porter opens; they tell him to call the Vicar and that friar who had preached such great nonsense. The Vicar alone comes out—the venerable father, Fray Pedro de Córdoba. They speak to him with more imperious command than humility, telling him to summon the one who had preached. He responds, being most prudent, that there was no need, that if His Lordship and their Graces had some command, he was the Prelate of those friars, and he would answer for them. They press him greatly to summon the preacher; he, with great prudence and authority, with very modest and grave words, as was his custom of speaking, excused himself and evaded them.
Finally, because divine Providence had endowed him, among other natural and acquired virtues, with so venerable and religious a person that his very presence showed him worthy of all reverence—the Admiral and the others, seeing that by words and arguments of great authority the Father Vicar would not be persuaded, began to soften and humble themselves, and they begged him to have the preacher summoned, because they wished to speak to both of them and ask how and on what grounds they had determined to preach something so new and so harmful, in disservice to the King and damage to all the residents of that city and of the entire island.
The holy man, seeing that they had taken another path and were tempering the bluster with which they had come, ordered the said Father Fray Antón Montesino to be called, who came without the slightest fear. When all were seated, the Admiral first presented his complaint on behalf of himself and all, saying: how had that father been so bold as to preach things so greatly in disservice to the King and so damaging to that whole land, affirming that they could not hold the Indians even though the King, who was lord of all the Indies, had given them—especially since the Spaniards had won those islands through great labors and had subjugated the infidels who held them—and because that sermon had been so scandalous and in such great disservice to the King and so prejudicial to all the residents of this island, they should determine that that father should retract everything he had said, or else they intended to impose such remedy as they saw fit.
The Father Vicar responded that what that father had preached had been by the opinion, will, and consent of himself and of all of them; that after having looked into it very carefully and conferred among themselves, with much counsel and mature deliberation they had determined that it should be preached as evangelical truth and a matter necessary for the salvation of all the Spaniards and Indians of this island, whom they saw perishing every day without anyone caring for them any more than if they were beasts of the field. To this they were obligated by divine precept—by the profession they had made, first in baptism as Christians, and then as friars and preachers of the truth—in which they did not intend to disserve the King, who had sent them here to preach what they felt they should preach as necessary for souls, but rather to serve him with all faithfulness. They were certain that once His Highness were well informed of what was happening here, and of what they had preached about it, he would consider himself well served and would give them his thanks.
The speech and arguments that the holy man gave in justification of the sermon did little to satisfy them and calm the agitation they had felt upon hearing that they could not keep the Indians as they held them, tyrannized—because that was no path by which their greed might be sated, for if the Indians were taken away, all their desires and longings would be thwarted. And so each one who was present, especially the principal men, said whatever suited his purpose.
They all agreed that that father should retract on the following Sunday everything he had preached, and they arrived at such blindness that they told the friars: if they did not do it, they should prepare their bundles and get ready to board ship and go back to Spain. The Father Vicar responded: “Certainly, sirs, in that we shall have very little trouble.” And indeed so it was, for their furnishings were nothing but habits of very coarse serge that they wore, and blankets of the same serge with which they covered themselves at night; their beds were poles set upon forked sticks, called cadalechos, with bundles of straw on top; as for Mass supplies and a few small books, it could all perhaps fit in two chests.
Seeing how little the servants of God valued every kind of threat placed before them, they softened again, as if begging them to reconsider the matter, and that, having reconsidered it, in another sermon what had been said should be amended to satisfy the people, who had been and remained greatly scandalized. Finally, after much insistence that the first sermon should be moderated and the people satisfied, the fathers agreed—in order to be rid of them and put an end to their frivolous importunities—that very well then, Father Fray Antón Montesino himself would return the following Sunday to preach, and would return to the subject, and would say regarding what he had preached whatever seemed best to him, and as far as he could, he would try to satisfy them and explain everything that had been said. This being thus agreed upon, they departed happily with this hope.
They immediately published—or some of them did—that they had arranged with the Vicar and the rest that on the following Sunday, that friar was going to retract everything he had said. And to hear this second sermon, there was no need to invite anyone, for not a person remained in the entire city who was not present in the church, one inviting another, to go and hear that friar who was going to retract everything he had said the previous Sunday.
When the hour of the sermon arrived, and he had ascended the pulpit, the theme he found as the foundation for his retraction and recantation was a passage from Holy Job, chapter 36, which begins: Repetam scientiam meam a principio, et sermones meos sine mendatio esse probabo. “I shall set forth my knowledge again from the beginning, and I shall prove that my words are without falsehood.” “I shall return to relate from its beginning my knowledge and truth that I preached to you last Sunday, and those words of mine that so embittered you, I shall show to be true.”
Upon hearing his theme, the more astute among them immediately saw where he was headed, and it was remarkable patience that they let him continue from there. He began to build his sermon and to repeat everything he had preached in the previous sermon, and to corroborate with more arguments and authorities what he had affirmed: that they held those peoples unjustly and tyrannically, oppressed and exhausted. He returned to repeating his teaching: that they should be certain they could not be saved in that state, and that therefore they should remedy the situation in time, making it known to them that the friars would not confess a single one of them—no more than they would highwaymen—and that they should publish this and write it to whomever they wished in Castile. In all of which the friars were certain they were serving God, and rendering no small service to the King.
His sermon finished, he went to his house, and all the people in the church remained in an uproar, grumbling, and far more indignant against the friars than before—finding themselves, in the vain and wicked hope they had held that he would retract what he had said, defrauded—as if once the friar recanted, the law of God, against which they were offending by oppressing and exterminating these peoples, would be changed.
It is a dangerous thing, and one much to be wept over, for men who are living in sin—especially those who through robbery and harm to their neighbors have risen to a higher station than they ever had before—because to fall from that station seems harder to them, and indeed it is, than casting themselves down from great cliffs. I add that it is impossible to leave such a state by human means, unless God works a great miracle. Hence they find it most harsh and abominable to hear themselves rebuked from the pulpits, because as long as they do not hear it, it seems to them that God is unconcerned, and that the divine law is revoked, because the preachers remain silent. Of this insensibility, peril, stubbornness, and consummated malice—more than in any other part of the world, or any other kind of people—we have countless examples, and the daily ocular experience, of the people of our Spain suffering in these our Indies.
To return to the matter: having left the church in a fury and gone to eat, their meal was not very savory but rather, I believe, more than bitter. They no longer bothered with the friars, since they understood that talking to them about this was useless. They resolved, in earnest, to write to the King with the first ships, reporting that those friars who had come to this island had scandalized the world by sowing new doctrine, condemning them all to hell because they held the Indians and used them in the mines and other labors—contrary to what His Highness had ordered—and that their preaching was nothing other than stripping the King of his sovereignty and his revenues in these parts.
These letters, upon reaching the court, threw it all into turmoil. The King wrote and sent for the Provincial of Castile, who was the superior of those friars in the Indies (for this was not yet a province of its own), complaining of his friars whom he had sent there, saying they had greatly disserved him by preaching things against his interests and had caused great upheaval and scandal throughout the land, and that he should remedy it at once, or else the King would order it remedied.
See here how easily kings are deceived, and how unhappy kingdoms are made by the reports of wicked men, and how truth is suppressed on the land so that it neither sounds nor breathes. The letters of greatest effect that arrived in Castile and reached the King were those of the Treasurer Miguel de Pasamonte, of whom we spoke above in Book II, for he had great authority with the King; and because Lope Conchillos, the Secretary, was, like him, Aragonese, and the King was old and tired—conditions that did not a little hinder the King from understanding the truth.
Having sent the letters, they employed another device, quite effective against the friars—and this was one the demons have long used so that their kingdom may prevail, and that of Christ and of truth, which are the sinews that sustain it, may be forever besieged and deadened and left tottering. To this end, as ministers of their wickedness, though under the appearance of good and goodness, the devils labor with all their power to install spiritual persons—because to recruit the wicked and those of depraved life would be easy, and their cunning and artful malice would be easily understood and frustrated.
It was said above, in Book II, Chapter 3, how in the year 1502 certain good friars of the Order of Saint Francis came to this island, whose superior and leader was a father of quite venerable presence and religious life, called Fray Alonso del Espinal. He, as was said, was a zealous and virtuous friar, but not a learned one—knowing only what many friars commonly know—and all his study was reading the Summa Angelica for hearing confessions. This venerable father was persuaded by all the leading men of the city to go to Castile on their behalf, to speak and make the King understand what the Dominican friars had preached against what the King had ordered regarding the holding of Indians: that by holding them, the island remained populated with Spaniards, and gold was extracted and revenues were sent to His Highness, and that otherwise the land could not sustain itself; and that this had caused great scandal and upheaval throughout the island and unrest of conscience. They asked him to petition His Highness, on all their behalf, to order a remedy—and many other things, as many as they saw could serve the perpetuation of their tyrannies. In the end, they contrived to send friars against friars.
The good Franciscan father, Fray Alonso del Espinal, with his not inconsiderable ignorance, accepted the charge of the embassy, not realizing that they were sending him to keep in captivity and unjust servitude—in which it was certain that so many thousands and millions of innocent men, their neighbors, would perish, as they had already perished, and in the end they all died, not one remaining, as will appear below. In all of which the colonists were sinning most mortally, and were obligated, jointly and severally, to make total restitution for all the damages and everything they had acquired through this tyranny. I do not know how the ignorance of the said father could excuse him from being a participant in all those most grave mortal sins.
I will not dare to affirm that what I am about to say helped him to accept such a charge, but this is what happened: in the distributions of the past, they had given at least one repartimiento—and I know this for a fact—to the Franciscan monastery in the city of Concepción, in the Vega, to sustain the friars who lived there. And I believe that since they gave one to the monastery of Concepción, they must have given one to the monastery in the city of Santo Domingo as well, because these were the only two Franciscan monasteries on this island; there was another house in the town of Xaraguá, but it had only two, three, or four friars, and so they probably did not give them Indians.
As for the repartimiento of Indians that I know was given to the monastery of the Vega, they did not give the Indians to the friars themselves (which would actually have been better for the Indians, because the friars would have treated them with more mercy), but rather they were left with a Spanish resident of the town, so that he could make use of them and send the friars their daily food. He would send them cassava bread and sweet potatoes, which are other roots, and pork—all of it wretched (for they neither ate nor drank nor even saw wheat bread or wine, except for Mass)—for six or eight friars who were there, and I do not believe they numbered even eight. And the resident would send the Indians to the mines, and it was the talk and common knowledge that they extracted for him, each demora of eight or ten months, 5,000 castellanos or pesos of gold from the mines, and perhaps he had even more from other enterprises. So that, under the pretext of feeding the friars, the wretched Indians were perishing, like all the rest, in the mines and in the other enterprises.
This too was no small blindness on the part of those friars, although they were certainly good men—that they did not see the great danger and harm they were incurring, because, even though what they received in that food was of almost no value, the Indians were still dying while that man held them under the friars’ title. And so I say that I do not know whether, along with the simplicity of that father, the superior of them all, that arrangement of holding Indians in the name of Saint Francis in that manner might have provided some additional motive for him to accept the embassy on behalf of the Spaniards, against the Indians and against the Dominican friars. But what I believe for certain is that everything that father did and was doing was out of simplicity and ignorance, not perceiving the wickedness and iniquity that the message and charge he was taking upon himself contained. And I affirm that of his goodness and piety I never had any doubt, because he knew me well, and I knew him.
The time of departure arrived. He had no need to go about with a saddlebag begging for the things he needed for his provisions, because they prepared everything for him so lavishly that if the King himself had been about to embark, he could not have been better or more abundantly provisioned—because they all thought and hoped that through him they would be redeemed and given remedy. And the remedy was to persuade the King to leave them the Indians in their repartimientos, with no one to restrain them until they had finished them off, as they did finish them off.
They all wrote in his favor, practically canonizing him as a saint, to whom His Highness could give all the credit due a holy man, one so experienced—unlike the Dominicans, who did not know what they were talking about, who had arrived only yesterday, and had no experience of the Indians or the land whatsoever. All their good fortune and business, they believed, depended on building up the credit of Father Fray Alonso del Espinal, and discrediting the Dominicans, who had preached against their sins. They wrote to the Bishop of Burgos, Don Juan de Fonseca, and to Lope Conchillos, the Secretary, who governed everything, in favor of the said father; and to the chamberlain Juan Cabrero, an Aragonese very close to the King; and to all the others they knew could help with the King; and to the members of the Royal Council who gathered for affairs of the Indies—for at that time there was no separate Council of the Indies formed and set apart from the Royal Council.
Seeing the diligence and boldness with which the entire city was working to send Father Fray Alonso del Espinal to Castile—to excuse the inexcusable in their sins and to blame the friars—the Dominicans deliberated among themselves (and I firmly believe not without many earnest prayers and tears) as to what they should do about this matter, which was no small one. They resolved, in the end, that the same Father Fray Antón Montesino who had preached the sermon should also go to Castile, because he was a man, as has been said, of learning and experienced in practical affairs, and of great courage and effectiveness, so that he might defend himself and them, and give account and reason for his sermon, and for the arguments that had moved them to determine to preach it.
This having been decided, they went out to beg alms through the town for food for his journey. All who read this may well believe that it was not prepared for him as quickly as for the said father, and that he received some insults from certain conscienceless persons—although on account of the holiness in which the friars lived, which was well known throughout the city, they were greatly revered. In the end, some prudent and God-fearing persons were found who helped them so that Father Fray Antón Montesino had something to eat for his voyage.
The two fathers departed, each in his own ship—the one with every favor the world and men could give him, and the other without the favor of anyone, but placing all his trust in God, through the prayers of those who remained behind. They arrived in Castile safe and sound, and from there each went his own way to court. It is reasonable to believe that each first went to give account to the superiors of his Order of his arrival and his mission.
And since the King had sent for the Provincial of Castile and had complained to him about the friars he had sent to this island—that they had preached things against his service and caused scandal in the land, charging him to remedy it, as was said—the Provincial at once wrote to the Vicar, Fray Pedro de Córdoba, and to all the others, saying that the King had been informed against them, that they had preached things against his service and most scandalous, and that they should consider well what they had said, and if these were things that ought to be retracted, they should do so, so that the great scandal that had been stirred up in the King and at court might cease—though he first said they were astonished that the friars had affirmed anything from the pulpit unworthy of their learning, prudence, and habit. In the end, the Provincial’s letter was prudently moderate, on account of the great confidence he had in the prudence, piety, and learning of the said Father Fray Pedro de Córdoba and the other friars with him, given how indignant the King had shown himself to be from the reports sent by those here in their sacrilegious letters.
When the Franciscan father, Fray Alonso del Espinal, arrived at court and entered the palace, the King received him as if he were the archangel Saint Michael sent by God, owing to the great esteem the King already had for him, and to the letters that had been sent from here, and because the Secretary Conchillos, and perhaps the Bishop of Burgos, had extolled his person and authority. The King ordered a chair brought for him and bade him sit; and, seated, it is believed that he favored the wrong side—that of those who had sent him against the Dominican friars and against the wretched Indians. The reason one can infer this is that otherwise the King would not have ordered him to sit, nor would he from then on have been so venerated and even celebrated by everyone, for every time he came to speak with the King, a chair was brought out and the King commanded him to sit. The King also ordered that he should always be present at the Council meetings whenever the matter of the Indians was discussed.
Once the favor the King showed him was known throughout the palace and beyond, and that he brought so just a cause—namely, that the Indians should serve the Spaniards, that gold should be extracted from the mines, and that riches should flow from this island to Spain—there was no closed door nor any other obstacle to his speaking to the King whenever he wished, nor any reverence, nor kissing of hands and of his habit, that was not lavished upon him throughout the court.
Some days later, when he could, the Dominican father Fray Antón Montesino arrived at court. When it became known to all that he had come to argue the opposite of the Franciscan father—affirming that the Indians could not be held, as it was against reason and divine law, and that natural justice was being violated—everyone despised him, or at least shunned him, and spoke of him as an inventor of novelties and a scandal-maker. Even some of the favored ones, who considered themselves theologians and preachers of the King, presumed to say to him words most arrogant and discourteous.
He would come to the door of the King’s chamber to speak with him and give him an account and report of what he had preached, of the blindness and cruelty surrounding the unjust servitude and destruction that the Indians suffered, and the multitude of them that had perished in so short a time. But every time he arrived at the door, the doorkeeper slammed the door in his face and, with none-too-modest words, told him he could not speak to the King and sent him away.
This is the established custom of the world, and indeed a general rule that God has—either permitted or established—throughout it all: namely, that all those who endeavor to follow and defend truth and justice shall be disfavored, humiliated, persecuted, and poorly heard, and regarded as madmen, as presumptuous, and as monsters among other men—especially where the struggle involves deeply rooted vices. And the hardest battle is usually the one that challenges avarice and greed; and above all, the one that cannot be endured as most terrible of all is when it is joined by resistance to tyranny. On the contrary, those who lend their support—directly or indirectly, whether through ignorance and simplicity, or to please with good or bad intent, or perhaps out of their own great malice—to the temporal and profitable affairs that men pursue for their advancement, however much these overflow with falsehood and injustice: it is plain to all, without need of witnesses, how great a standing such people usually have in every place and among all persons great and small, how esteemed, how honored and venerated, how regarded as wise and prudent. Of this, many and quite clear examples could be brought forth and gathered from this History of the Indies.
To return to the thread: the said Father Fray Antón Montesino, going about most afflicted and humiliated, and thus rejected by all, as I have said, and above all unable to speak with the King, came one day to the door of the King’s chamber to beg the doorkeeper to let him in, as other persons were allowed in, because he had matters to report that greatly concerned the King’s service. But the doorkeeper did to him what he had done on other occasions.
Then, as the doorkeeper opened the door for someone else, not imagining that the friar would dare so much, and being caught off guard for just a moment, Father Fray Antonio and his companion—who was a pious lay brother—burst through the door with great force into the King’s chamber, against the will of the doorkeeper, and found themselves almost at the foot of the King’s dais.
Father Montesino immediately said: “Sire, I beseech Your Highness to be pleased to give me a hearing, for what I have to say are matters of great importance to your service.” The King answered him benignly: “Speak, Father, whatever you wish.” The said father carried a sheaf of papers, written out by chapters, detailing the particular cruelties that had been committed—in the wars and outside them—against the Indian inhabitants of this island, which the aforementioned lay brother, who had received the habit after being one of the sinners who had perpetrated them, had seen and been present at. He also carried in his papers an account of the treatment inflicted upon the Indians after the devastation of the wars—in the service and labors of the mines and in all other tasks.
Father Fray Antonio then knelt at the King’s feet, took out his memorial, and began to read it. He related how the Indians, being in their homes and their lands without offending anyone alive, the Spaniards would enter and take their wives, daughters, and sons to serve them, and as for the men themselves, they would carry them off loaded down with the Spaniards’ beds and goods, committing many other abuses and acts of violence against them. Unable to bear it, the Indians would flee to the mountains, and when they could catch a Spaniard who had strayed, they would kill him as a mortal enemy. The Spaniards then went to make war against them, and to put the fear of God into their bodies, they committed devastation never before heard of upon them—naked, unarmed, and without offensive weapons—cutting them in half, making bets on who could cut off a head with a single blow, burning them alive, and other exquisite cruelties.
Among other things, he told the King that some Spaniards, jesting among themselves by a river, one of them took a child of about one or two years old and threw it over his shoulders into the river; and because the child did not sink at once but floated on the water for a moment, the man turned his head and said: “Still wriggling, are you, you little so-and-so, still wriggling?” The King said: “Is that possible?” The friar responded: “It is more than possible—it happened just so, and it cannot be undone. But because Your Highness is compassionate and merciful, it does not seem to you that any man could do such a thing. Does Your Highness command these things to be done? I am quite certain you do not.” The King said: “No, by God, nor may I ever command such a thing in my life.”
Having finished with the devastation and killings of the wars, he then recounted the cruelties of the repartimientos and the slaughter of souls, and the other labors, the lack of food and the neglect of bodily health, the failure to treat them in their illnesses; how the women who found themselves pregnant would take herbs to expel their babies dead, so as not to see them or leave them in those infernal labors; the utter failure to give them any knowledge of God, or any thought for their souls, no more than if they had been animals.
Having read his memorial, and the King being somewhat pained and moved to hear such inhuman things, Father Montesino begged him to take pity on these peoples and to order the necessary remedy before they were entirely consumed. The King said it pleased him and that he would order the matter attended to with diligence at once. And so Father Fray Antonio rose, kissed the King’s hands, and departed—having that day, in spite of the doorkeeper, accomplished his business well.
The King at once ordered that certain theologians should join with the members of his Council whom he designated for this purpose. The Council members at that time were: the Bishop of Palencia, who later became Bishop of Burgos, Don Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, of whom much mention has been made above, and to whom, since the discovery, the sovereigns had entrusted the governance of these Indies, and who served as a kind of President, although there was not yet a separate Council of the Indies, as has been said. Another was Hernando de Vega, a most prudent man, and regarded as such throughout Castile. Another was the licentiate Luis Zapata, a person of prudence and prominence among the licentiates, and more beloved of the King than any other—and who, by the authority he enjoyed with the King, with whom, in the opinion of many, he alone consulted on the favors to be granted, was called by some “the little King”; although I am not certain that he, Hernando de Vega, and the licentiate Móxica entered this particular meeting—they did many times afterward.
Another who attended this council was the licentiate Santiago, a Christian man and of very good will. Another was Doctor Palacios Rubios, most learned in his discipline of law, more esteemed in it than all others, and also regarded as a good man and a good Christian. He, being very learned and inclined to write on matters of law, as he had written many other legal works, began from that time to write a certain book that he entitled De insulis Occeanis, which he later continued and completed, following the error of Hostiensis, and founding upon it the title that the kings of Castile hold to the Indies. And certainly, if the right of the Kings to the Indies rested solely upon that erroneous and even heretical opinion, very little of what exists in them would have been theirs by law. He certainly seems to have gone on at great length in his said book, seeking to please the King rather than displease him—for which reason, perhaps, God allowed the King to grant him few favors, although the King was quite fond of him. Yet for all that, as he was by nature a good man, he always favored the Indians as far as he could, as will appear below.
Another member of the Council designated for this assembly was the licentiate Móxica, also a learned man of virtue. Another was also named, namely the licentiate de Sosa, who later died as Bishop of Almería, a person of great virtue, and one who greatly favored the Indians as time went on and he became more informed—as did the licentiate Santiago and Doctor Palacios Rubios. These are the ones I remember; I do not know if I have forgotten anyone.
Along with these jurists, the King ordered the following theologians to join: Master Fray Tomás Durán and Master Fray Pedro de Covarrubias, friars of Santo Domingo. Also named was a cleric, likewise a preacher of the King, called the licentiate Gregorio. And because at that time the most distinguished scholar was held to be Father Fray Matías de Paz, professor of theology at the University of Salamanca, a friar of the same Order of Santo Domingo, Father Fray Antonio Montesino labored very hard to have the King send for him—he being in Salamanca, as we said, holding his professorship. The court, when these matters were being discussed, was at Burgos.
Among those close to the King, some tried to prevent that master, Father Fray Matías de Paz, from being summoned, because they did not want as much light as they believed the said father would shed upon this matter. And it was always recognized, more and more each day, that those who counseled the King sought to keep this business of the Indians away from the clarity of truth—especially once the members of the Council began to have a personal stake in the labors, sweat, and deaths of the Indians, as will be seen. I well believe not all of them did, but I also suspect that some did, and perhaps most.
Finally, through the utmost solicitude and diligence of Father Fray Antonio Montesino, the King was compelled to order that the said Master Fray Matías de Paz be sent for. And since Father Fray Antonio was treated by everyone as a complete stranger, and all those at court—at least those in the palace and among the officials who dealt with these matters—could not bear to see him, even in a painting, he lived in great anguish, because everything was hidden from him and he did not know where to turn, nor what opening to seek, nor what to remedy, fearing that in the assemblies being held, where the said Franciscan father, Fray Alonso del Espinal, entered every day—with no one to speak on behalf of the Indians—something might be determined to their even greater harm.
One day he resolved to go to the Franciscan monastery and wait at the door for the said Father Fray Alonso to come out on his way to the assembly—he of whom, as has been said, great account was made, even though he knew nothing of the law or the facts that could be of use, although he could well have testified to the many great tyrannies, cruelties, and inhuman deeds that he and I who write this saw together, perpetrated in the destruction of the peoples of this island.
When Father Fray Alonso came out of the Franciscan monastery, Father Fray Antonio Montesino approached him and said he wished to speak with him. The Franciscan stopped to listen, and Father Fray Antonio delivered to him a vehement and admonitory speech, saying with the passion with which he used to preach:
“You, Father—will you take nothing more from this life than the ragged, lice-ridden habit you carry on your back? Do you seek any goods other than serving God? Why do you entangle yourself with these tyrants? Do you not see that they have taken you as a stalking horse to sustain themselves in their tyrannies? Why are you against those poor, forsaken Indians? Is this how you repay them for the sweat from which, until now, you and your friars have eaten? Have you not seen, better than I, the detestable cruelties they have committed against them in the unjust wars, at which you yourself were present? Do you not know, and have you not seen, and do you not doubt that today and every day they kill them in the mines and in other labors, with such forgetfulness of humanity that they cannot treat their very beasts worse? And would to God they treated them as their beasts! Why, Father, do you wish to lose so many years that you have carried that habit on your back, in such penance and religious life, for something that puts nothing in your pocket—only to please, going with eyes shut, those who cannot get their fill of drinking human blood, not seeing the manifest harm you do to those wretches, without a living soul to defend them, doing a thing so contrary to justice and charity?”
These and many other words he said to him, which made his flesh tremble, because Montesino certainly had a special grace and fervor for persuading in matters that touched the soul, and had such effectiveness in it that few heard him who did not come away either pricked in conscience or reformed.
In the city of Santo Domingo there had been a woman sentenced to hanging, who felt the approach of death with such impatience that she refused to confess, and was thus going to her execution impenitent and in despair. They summoned Father Fray Antonio Montesino shortly before she was to be taken out for execution, and as soon as he entered he said to her, most harshly, these words: “You will not confess, wretched woman! Do you not know that within an hour you will stand before the terrible judgment of God, who will immediately condemn you forever to the pains of hell? What are you doing? Speak! Come back to yourself, wretch, do not destroy yourself.” These words were so effective that the woman, as if stunned and terrified, as if she were already burning in the eternal flames, asked to confess and receive communion, and so, contrite and at peace with dying, she was hanged.
Almost the same thing happened with Father Fray Alonso del Espinal, who, coming back to himself (for in the end he was a good friar and sinned only out of ignorance), said to Father Fray Antonio Montesino: “Father, may God reward you for the charity you have shown me in opening my eyes. I have been deceived by going along with these laymen. Tell me what you think I should do, and I will do it.” Montesino replied: “Father, in all your deeds, opinions, and words, defend the Indians in this way and that way, and always stand against those sinful Spaniards, whom you know labor with their greed to destroy them; and when such-and-such is discussed, respond thus, and whenever you see something I should know, inform me.”
From that point on, the Franciscan was a good friend to him and gave him reports of what was being discussed in the assembly, from which Father Fray Antonio would determine what he needed to negotiate and whom to alert among those who were helping him—such as Doctor Palacios Rubios, the licentiate Santiago, and the licentiate de Sosa.
At court at that time there were, as I believe, Francisco de Garay, one of the old settlers of this island, of whom we have made mention above and shall make more if God is willing; and Juan Ponce de León; and one Pero García de Carrión, a merchant, a man of authority in his way; and other residents of this island who held many Indians in servitude and had killed plenty of them through their own greed and self-interest. Some of these had been sent as representatives to petition the King to grant them the Indians in perpetuity, or for three generations, as was said in the preceding book; others had gone on their own private business.
All of these, or some of them, were the first—as I understood and have always understood—to defame the Indians at court, claiming they did not know how to govern themselves and needed guardians. This wickedness kept growing: they diminished them until they said the Indians were incapable of receiving the faith—which is no small heresy—and made them equal to beasts. As if for the many thousands of years these lands had been populated, full of towns and peoples, with their own kings and lords, living in complete peace and tranquility, in all the abundance and prosperity that nature requires for men to live and multiply immensely, they had ever needed our guardianship—which, would to God, they had never known, nor we usurped and exercised so contrary to justice, because then such immense numbers of them, in body and soul, would not have perished, and upon us there would not have been seen, as has been seen, and there will be seen an even greater and more terrible punishment.
This contempt and defamation of these peoples, who in relation to us were utterly innocent, befell them on account of our great pride and inhumanity, and on account of their great meekness, patience, humility, and obedience—for we found them ready at hand for all things, and willing for whatever task, however difficult, that we demanded of them. These sinful men, or some of them, introduced this stain. They informed at length those who joined the assembly, and it is to be believed—and I believe it—that some of those who sat in that body, being closer to the King’s ears, informed him against the Indians with what they heard from the others, whether because they thought thereby to defend or promote the King’s title, or because, as was ultimately revealed, they themselves had every intention of possessing Indians, though they lived absent from the Indies and at court, in order to pocket gold.
This was always, from that time especially—though it also began as early as the year 1500, as appeared in Book II, Chapter 1—down to today, which is the year 1559, the aim of the Spaniards. And so they established it throughout this whole world: namely, to defame and say as many credible evils as they could about the Indians, and chiefly that they were beasts and idlers and loved idleness, and did not know how to govern themselves—fabricating a supposed necessity that would make it appear fitting to hold them and make use of them in that infernal servitude in which they placed them, saying it was to put them in civil order and make them work, and that thus God and the King would be served by them.
We have already seen above, in the two preceding books, the civil order in which they placed them, and the fruit that God and the King harvested from their guardianship of the Indians—since it is now manifest, and even confessed by the very destroyers of the Indians, how justly, in many parts of these Indies, the Indians could have put the Spaniards into a more reasonable and humane civil order, and better governance, than they themselves maintained or even had in Castile.
The scholars, having met many times and debated the governance that should be imposed upon the Indians of this island—for no other parts of this world were being discussed, since there were no Spaniards except on this island and on that of San Juan, and Jamaica, and none on the mainland—having received all the false reports the laymen wished to give, and the true account that Father Fray Antonio Montesino was able to provide (which consisted in this: that the infidel peoples, especially these, ought to be brought to the faith with gentleness, love, liberty, and gifts, and not with harshness, servitude, and torments such as they suffered, as one reads of Saint Sylvester, who attracted the gentiles to the faith with gifts he gave them; and that the servitude these people suffered was condemned by God, as appeared from Ezekiel, chapter 34, Vae pastoribus Israel qui pascebant semet ipsos—which were threats against the King if he did not remedy the situation; he also said that to claim these peoples were incapable of doctrine and of the faith was to contradict the goodness and omnipotence of their Maker)—the said theologians and jurists at last determined the following propositions. Although defamation of the Indians was at its height, they could not deny in the first two that the Indians were free and ought to be treated as free persons, though in the subsequent ones there is an odor and flavor of sustaining the tyranny, which was the goal sought by those who defamed the Indians and those who listened to them gladly, supported them, and hoped to have their own profits as well.
“Most Powerful Lord: Your Highness has ordered us to look into the affairs of the Indies, on the basis of certain reports that had been given to Your Highness by certain friars who had been in those parts, both Dominicans and Franciscans. Having examined those reports, and heard everything they wished to tell us, and having also obtained further information from certain persons who had been in the said Indies and who knew the disposition of the land and the capacity of the persons, what we who sign below consider is the following:
First, that since the Indians are free, and Your Highness and the Queen our lady (of blessed memory) ordered them treated as free persons, so it should be done. Second, that they should be instructed in the faith, as the Pope commands in his bull and Your Highnesses ordered in your letter, and on this point Your Highness should command that all necessary diligence be applied. Third, that Your Highness may order them to work, but that the work should be of such a kind that it does not impede instruction in the faith, and that it be profitable to them and to the commonwealth, and that Your Highness may be benefited and served by reason of the sovereignty and service owed to you for maintaining them in the things of our holy faith and in justice. Fourth, that this labor should be such that they can endure it, giving them time to rest, both each day and throughout the year, at appropriate intervals. Fifth, that they should have houses and property of their own, as those who govern and shall hereafter govern the Indies see fit, and that they be given time to cultivate, hold, and maintain the said property in their own fashion. Sixth, that measures should be taken so that they always have contact with the settlers who go there, so that through this contact they may be better and more swiftly instructed in the things of our holy Catholic faith. Seventh, that for their labor they should be given a fitting wage, and this not in money, but in clothing and other things for their households.”
—Johannes, Episcopus Palentinus, Comes. —Licenciatus Sanctiago. —El Doctor Palacios Rubios. —Licenciatus de Sosa. —Frater Thomas Duran, Magister. —Frater Petrus de Covarrubias, Magister. —Frater Mathias de Paz, Magister. —Gregorius, Licenciatus.
By these seven propositions it appears what good intentions the scholars had, and how far they deviated from the defamations that had been raised against the Indians by those who held them and wished to hold them in perpetual servitude. Nevertheless, in the third, fourth, fifth, and seventh, it appeared that they assumed the Indians were to remain distributed among and in the power of the Spaniards as they had them; but they imposed certain limitations, because they lacked clear and particular information. Even Father Fray Antonio Montesino himself, having come to this island only recently, did not yet have a complete understanding, as he could have given a much fuller account later.
They lacked knowledge of the multitudes of peaceful villages, and lords, and kings of this island, and of the natural governance and orderly civil life—as much as can be had without faith and knowledge of the true God—for living in peace, abundance, prosperity, and immense growth, as I have said, that they possessed. They also lacked knowledge of the impossibility of the Indians’ being able to survive, and not perish as they perished, while being held by the Spaniards in repartimientos. And so they failed to recognize that that form of servitude was despotic—the servitude of slaves, not of men and peoples whom they themselves had determined were free—and thus they utterly lacked the light, clarity, and truth of the facts.
Against this, Master Fray Matías de Paz, looking more deeply into this matter, composed a treatise in Latin in the space of about fifteen days, banishing and refuting the despotic mode of using the Indians, and proving that they should be governed as free persons and peoples. In it he put forward this conclusion, which is the third: Auctoritate Summi Pontificis et non aliter licebit Catholico atque invictissimo Regi nostro supradictos indos regali imperio seu politico, non autem despotico, regere, atque sic perpetuo sub suo dominio retinere. And in the first corollary of that conclusion, he says: Unde quicumque eos hactenus servitute despotica premuit, postquam sunt ad fidem conversi, ad restitutionem de damno et lucro propter talem servitutem dumtaxat necessario tenetur.
In this way, he condemned and repudiated the manner of using the Indians through the repartimiento as despotic and as the servitude of slaves, which in very truth it was; and consequently, the repartimiento system itself. He determined that the Spaniards who had so used the Indians were obligated to make restitution of everything they had acquired through them, and of the damages they had caused. And who among them, even if the King had helped them with his entire estate, could have restored the damages that so innumerable a people as had lived on this island suffered at the hands of the Spaniards? For all of them, through the labors and bitter and inhuman treatment in the mines and in the other pestilential enterprises driven by their greed, had perished.