Part 7 (1/2)
The King being seated on his throne, the others present were accommodated on benches extending along both sides of the audience chamber; to the right of the King sat M. de Chievres, next to whom was the Admiral Don Diego Columbus; then the Bishop of Darien and finally the licentiate, Aguirre. On the left hand of the throne was seated the Grand Chancellor, next to whom came the Bishop of Badajoz and so on with the others in their order of precedence. Las Casas and the Franciscan stood at the foot of the room, opposite the throne.
After a moment of silence following the seating of the Court, M. de Chievres and the Grand Chancellor rose, advanced together, and mounting the steps of the throne knelt before the King, to whom they spoke in whispers as though receiving some secret instructions. Returning then to their respective places and being again seated, the Chancellor said, ”Reverend Bishop, his Majesty commands that if you have anything to say concerning the Indies you shall speak.” The Bishop of Darien rose and began with an eloquent exordium in the cla.s.sical style customary in such discourses at that time and which produced the best impression on his hearers. He declared that he had long desired the honour of appearing in the royal presence, and now that G.o.d had satisfied his wish, he recognised that facies Priami digna erat imperio, which was a graceful reference to the Imperial dignity to which the young monarch had recently been elected in Germany. He asked, however, that as the matters he had to present to his Majesty's attention were of a private nature, all those present who were not members of the Council should be ordered to withdraw. The Chancellor signed to him to be seated and again he and M. de Chievres approached the throne with the same ceremonial and after having received the royal commands, sotto voce, they returned to their places and the Chancellor said, ”Reverend Bishop, his Majesty commands that if you have anything to say, you shall speak.” The Bishop however repeated his demand that all those not of the Council should withdraw, and a third time the Chancellor and M. de Chievres went through the ceremony of receiving the royal commands. Again the Chancellor, when he resumed his place, said, ”Reverend Bishop, his Majesty commands that if you have anything to say, you shall speak, for all here present have been called to be of this Council.”
The Bishop's efforts to exclude Las Casas and the Franciscan being thus defeated, for it was impossible for him to insist further, he began as follows: ”Most potent lord, the Catholic King, your grandfather (may he rest in holy glory) commanded the construction of an armada to go and make settlements on the mainland of the Indies and solicited our very Holy Father to create me Bishop of that first settlement; besides the time occupied in coming and going, I have been there five years, and as a numerous company went and we only had provisions enough for the journey, all the rest of our people died of hunger: the remainder of us who survived, in order to escape the fate of the others, have done nothing during all that time but rob and kill and eat. As I perceived that that country was going to perdition and that its first governor was bad and the second worse, I determined to return and report these things to our King and Lord in whom is all the hope of a remedy. As for the Indians, judging by the accounts of those in that country whence I come, and those of others whom I saw on my way, they are a natura slaves.” The remainder of this speech has not been preserved, but the opening of it was singular enough, considering that it was delivered by the advocate of the colonists and one of the bitterest opponents of Las Casas. At its conclusion the ceremony of taking the royal orders was repeated and the Chancellor commanded Micer Bartholomew in the King's name to speak.
The speech which Las Casas then delivered is given, in part, in the third part of his _Historia General_. (38) In it he declared that he had accepted his vocation not to please the King but to serve G.o.d and that he renounced, once for all, any temporal honour or favour his Majesty might ever wish to confer upon him. A remarkably bold sentence followed: ”It is positive, speaking with all the respect and reverence due to so great a King and Lord, that I would not move from here to that corner to serve your Majesty, saving my fidelity as a subject, unless I thought and believed I would render service to G.o.d by so doing.” The chief point in the Bishop's discourse which he controverted, was the a.s.sertion that the Indians were by nature slaves. He was supported throughout, and especially on this point, by the Franciscan; and even the Admiral Diego Columbus, who had himself held encomiendas and whose renowned father had indeed initiated the very abuses which were being denounced, bore witness to the truth of his statements and the weight of his arguments. When Las Casas had finished, Quevedo, who expressed his wish to reply, was notified that anything further he had to say must be submitted in writing. This closed the audience and the King withdrew.
In conformity with the King's order that his answer to Las Casas should be presented in writing the Bishop of Darien prepared two statements, one of which set forth all the various abuses and the destruction caused by the Spaniards in that colony, while the other contained suggestions for remedying those evils; one of these remedies was the prohibition of the customary raids amongst the Indian tribes and the other was that the peaceable Indians should be induced to live in villages where they might be taught, and also pay some tribute to the Crown. The Bishop's view of the lamentable state of things in the colony, his condemnation of the violent conduct of the Spaniards, and his opinion that it was urgent to introduce a new system for regulating the relations between the colonists and natives seem not to have differed from those of Las Casas himself, and both the corrective measures he proposed met with the latter's hearty approval. These memorials were first read by the Bishop to the Chancellor and M. Laxao, both of whom were highly satisfied to discover such unexpected conformity with the representations of their friend the clerigo. When asked by them what he thought of Las Casas's projects, the Bishop replied that he found them excellent and most just.
This singular conversion of the Bishop of Darien from a formidable opponent into a supporter, delighted Las Casas, who, when the Chancellor showed him the two memorials, asked for a pen that he too might sign them, saying: ”Did I ever tell your lords.h.i.+p more than the Bishop has here admitted? What greater cruelties, murders, and destruction in that country have I ever reported to your lords.h.i.+p than these?”
What influence worked upon Quevedo does not appear; whether he perceived that the King looked with sympathy on the enthusiastic Las Casas and that the latter was high in favour with the important Flemish group at Court and therefore sure to carry his point, and so decided, as a practised courtier, to pa.s.s over to the winning side, or whether under his choleric exterior there was a chord that responded to the sufferings of the obscure Indians in their miseries, and a sense of justice that was outraged by the rapacious cruelty of his countrymen, we have no means of knowing. Shortly afterwards he fell dangerously ill of a sickness which carried him off in three days. Las Casas was much impressed by his Christian end and by the fact that before he died he had been moved to testify to the true condition of things in the Indies, than which no other act on his part could have been a better preparation for death.
The affairs of Las Casas were now well advanced and all seemed plain sailing ahead; he conferred with Diego Columbus, Admiral of the Indies, concerning the foundation of the forts he had undertaken to build along the coast at intervals of one hundred leagues from one another. These forts were to serve for defence and also as centres of trade to which the Indians would be attracted to bring their gold, pearls, and other things of value to be exchanged for the Spanish merchandise they prized-hawks'-bells, beads of coloured gla.s.s, and like trifles. The Admiral was in agreement with this project, until he consulted his brother Fernando Columbus, who suggested to him that he should ask from the King the administration of justice in the new settlements and their extensions.
Las Casas opposed this project, but the Admiral followed his brother's counsel and presented his pet.i.tion to the Council, where it was disallowed; the Admiral in consequence took no further interest in the plan and thus Las Casas was deprived of his valuable support.
CHAPTER XI. - ROYAL GRANT TO LAS CASAS. THE PEARL COAST. LAS CASAS IN HISPANIOLA. FORMATION OF A COMPANY.
As the date for the King's departure from Spain to a.s.sume the imperial dignity drew near the opposition to his leaving grew so strong that the question of stopping him by force, if necessary, was even mooted, and various parts of Spain were in a state of ferment bordering on civil war.
Charles left Barcelona and proceeded through Aragon to Burgos and from thence to Coruna, where he had summoned the Cortes of Castile to a.s.semble.
This city had been chosen, partly because it was a convenient port of embarkation and partly, also, because the tide of opposition and hatred against the Flemish courtiers had reached such a height that they felt it wiser to keep to a seaport, from whence flight would be easier than from an inland town, in case their position became untenable after the King's departure.
In the midst of such preoccupations, it required all the energy and unflagging perseverance of Las Casas to keep his affairs to the front and save them from being forgotten; as it was, even he had moments of discouragement in which he was tempted to drop the whole matter and retire from the Court. His faithful Flemings, however, did not fail him, and with their aid, he managed to get no less than seven days in the month of May devoted to Indian affairs, before the sovereign sailed from Coruna.
During one of these sittings of the Council, Cardinal Adrian contrived to overcome the opposition which was still active against Las Casas, by a masterly discourse, in which he proved that by all natural and divine laws, the policy so far pursued in the Indies was a mistaken one, and that the Indians must be civilised and converted by humane and peaceful means.
The desired grant was finally made and consisted of two hundred and sixty leagues of coast between Paria and Santa Marta, inclusively, and extending inland in a direct line from its two extremities to the South Sea. The text of this grant, which Charles V. signed in Coruna on May 19, 1520, fills several chapters of the third part of the _Historia General de las Indias_.
All the necessary formalities having been complied with and all obstacles overcome, Las Casas was at last ready to launch his colonial venture.
Friends in Seville advanced him loans of money and others presented him with a quant.i.ty of article of trade, of small enough value in Spain but of great worth in the eyes of the Indians. The fifty men who were to adopt the white habit of the Knight of the Golden Spur had not been selected, but it was thought well to begin the settlement with labourers and perhaps to choose the candidates for the new knighthood from amongst the Spaniards already settled in the Indies. He sailed with his little company from San Lucar de Barrameda on November 11, 1520, and after an uneventful voyage reached the island of Puerto Rico, called by the Indians Boriquen, and first named San Juan by the Spaniards.
While Las Casas had been sustaining his long struggle in Spain in behalf of the Indians, a series of disastrous events had occurred in America, which created serious obstacles in the way of his scheme for colonisation.
In 1518 some Dominican and Franciscan friars had founded two convents on the Pearl Coast, the former at Chirib.i.+.c.hi and the latter at Maracapana, some seven leagues distant at the mouth of the c.u.mana River and just opposite the island of Cubagua. These religious communities had established the most peaceful relations with all the Indians in their neighbourhood and the friars came and went with perfect freedom, being welcomed in all the villages. All went quietly until the arrival of one Alonzo de Ojeda, who came from Cubagua, engaged ostensibly in the pearl trade, but likewise in raiding for slaves. Pearl diving was as perilous and fatal an occupation for the Indians as the work in the mines of Hispaniola and Cuba, and such numbers had perished in Cubagua that it was necessary to replenish the vacancies by bringing others from the neighbouring mainland. When Ojeda landed at Chirib.i.+.c.hi he repaired to the convent, where he found but one priest and a lay-brother, all the others being absent, preaching to the Spaniards in Cubagua. As he expressed a wish to see the cacique, Maraguey, the priest, thinking no evil, sent to invite the Indian to come to the monastery; on his arrival, Ojeda began to question him as to whether cannibalism was practised by any tribes in the neighbourhood, his answers being taken down on paper by a notary. The cacique declared that there were no cannibals thereabouts and, being displeased by the questions and alarmed by the formalities of ink and paper, he quickly withdrew. Ojeda next went to the convent at Maracapana, where the cacique, called Gil Gonzalez, came to meet him with every demonstration of friends.h.i.+p. Ojeda declared he had come to trade and wished to buy maize, and on the day following his arrival he left with fifteen of his men to go inland in search of the grain. Fifty Indians transported the loads from the interior to the coast, and while these bearers were resting, the Spaniards suddenly drew their weapons, killing some who tried to escape and forcing all the others on board their caravel. The effect of this act of unprovoked treachery in a peaceful settlement, where the Indians had received the newcomers with every hospitality as guests, may be easily imagined, and as was natural, Gil Gonzalez planned vengeance for the outrage. The scene at the convent whither the cacique of Chirib.i.+.c.hi had been summoned by his friend the priest, and the impressive formality of the writing with pen and paper furnished by the priest, unfortunately identified the monks in the minds of the Indians with Ojeda and his exploits. The alarm was pa.s.sed all along the coast, and the Indians bided the moment for a favourable attack; nor had they long to wait, for Ojeda, accompanied by ten men, came on sh.o.r.e again on Sat.u.r.day as indifferently as though nothing had happened.
Gil Gonzalez affected to receive them in a friendly manner, but no sooner had they reached the village than the Indians fell upon them, killing Ojeda and several others, while the remainder barely succeeded in reaching the caravel. The Indians even went out in canoes to attack the vessel but were repulsed, and the Spaniards, setting sail, put to sea.
The defenceless friars remained, however, and at Chirib.i.+.c.hi the priest, while vesting to say ma.s.s, and the lay-brother were both killed by the people of the cacique Maraguey and the convent was burned. So great was the fury of the Indians that they even killed a horse with which the monks worked in their garden.
The news of this ma.s.sacre reaching Hispaniola from the Spaniards at Cubagua, the royal Audiencia at once despatched a small force under Gonzalo de Ocampo to punish the Indians, and the disheartening news of these turbulent events was the greeting that met Las Casas on his arrival at Puerto Rico. Knowing that Ocampo's armada would touch there on its way to the Pearl Coast, he determined to await its arrival, where in fact Ocampo appeared within a few days. Las Casas had been a neighbour of his in other days and, though he knew that his treatment of the Indians did not differ from that of the other colonists, he held him in some esteem.
He showed Ocampo his cedulas with the royal signature, which prohibited any Spaniards from landing, against his will, in the territory granted to him, and he formally required him to desist from his errand of vengeance.
Ocampo answered that, while he did not refuse obedience to the royal commands, he was in this instance acting under the orders of the royal Audiencia and was obliged to carry out the instructions he had received; the responsibility lay with the Audiencia, which would protect him from any consequences following the execution of its mandate.
Seeing that Ocampo was not to be stopped, Las Casas resolved to go himself to Hispaniola, show his powers to the Audiencia, and exact the recall of the fleet. Meanwhile he placed his colonists amongst the various planters of Puerto Rico, who were glad enough to welcome labourers, who were scarce in the island. This decision of Las Casas was a most mistaken one and was the outcome of an error of judgment which did not require the light of after events to make plain. More was certainly to be hoped from his presence on the spot, and from the influence he might exercise over Ocampo, than from anything he could obtain from the Audiencia, whose members were his bitterest enemies. It was, moreover, impossible for any counter-orders he might be able to wrest from the reluctant Audiencia, to reach the Pearl Coast in time to stop the action of Ocampo, and Las Casas does not even appear to have sought to detain the latter in Puerto Rico, pending the arrival of further instructions.