Lesson 8 logo is Father Las Casas

---

Lesson 8 Text: The Indigenous Perspective and "The Defender of the Indians"

---

I. The Indigenous Perspective of the Conquest

As we noted previously, in their zeal to impose their will on the conquered peoples of the Americas, the Spanish attempted to suppress all manifestations of the earlier cultures and religions. Since most of the pre-Columbian literature was passed on orally, it was not simply a matter of burning books and destroying libraries. The oral tradition survived in many cases, with poems and stories being re-told time and again out of the hearing of the new Spanish authorities and settlers. And in a few cases these traditions were written down in Spanish by Indigenous and mestizo story-tellers who had learned how to read.

Among the interesting elements of this literature are those pieces dealing with the conquest itself, since they provide the unique perspective of those who lost the battle and paid the price. The authors are anonymous, and we must assume that there may have been important modifications from the original to the versions we know.

The Aztec view of the Conquest

(Anonymous; first version presumably authored during the conquest of Mexico, around 1521).

And all this happened with us.

We saw it,

we watched it

and with this mournful and sad fate

we were anguished.

In the roads lie broken spears;

our hair is in disarray.

The houses are roofless,

the walls are red with blood.

Worms swarm in the streets and plazas

and the walls are spattered with brains.

The waters are red, as if dyed,

and if we drink them, they are salt brine.

In our despair

we beat against the adobe walls

and all that is left of our inheritance

is a net of holes.

Our shields were our defense,

but shields cannot stop desolation.

We have eaten bread of flax seed,

we have chewed salty marsh grass,

and pieces of adobe, lizards, rats,

and dirt dust and even worms.

We ate the meat

when it was barely on the fire.

When it was cooked,

they grabbed it out of the

very coals and ate it.

A price was put on us.

A price for the young man, the priest,

the child, the girl.

It was enough:

for the poor man

the price was two handfuls of corn

or ten cakes of flies;

our price was only

twenty cakes of salty marsh grass.

Gold, jade, rich cloaks,

quetzal feathers,

all that was precious

was valued as nothing.

The fall of Tenochtitlán:(Anonymous; first version presumably authored circa 1521)

The cry spreads out,

tears fall there in Tlatelolco.

By water the Mexicans fled;

they are like women

the flight is general.

Where are we going?

Oh my friends! Was it true?

They have abandoned

the city of Mexico:

the smoke rises;

the fog is spreading...

Cry, my friends,

understand that with these events

we have lost the Mexican nation.

"The Hundred Years of the People of the Sun"

(For comparison with the despair of the last poem, consider this one, authored before the Conquest)

From where the eagles repose,

from where the tigers rise up,

the Sun is invoked.

Like a shield that comes down

the sun is setting,

In Mexico nightfall is nigh

and war rages all around.

Oh Giver of Life!

War draws near.

Proud of itself

the city of Mexico-Tenochtitlan rises up.

Here no one fears death in combat.

This is our glory.

This is your command.

Oh Giver of Life!

Remember it, oh princes,

do not forget it.

Who can lay siege to Tenochtitlan?

Who can shake the foundations of heaven?

With our arrows,

with our shields,

the city exists,

Mexico-Tenochtitlan endures!

II. The "Defender of the Indians": Las Casas

Bartolomé de las Casas (1474-1566) came to America in 1502 as a young man in search of his fortune. He was assigned an "encomienda" (grant of land and the Indigenous living on it) in Hispaniola, and he proceeded to exploit the Indigenous in much the same manner as his fellow Spaniards. After a few years, however, he became associated with a group of Dominican priests, entered the priesthood himself, and developed a social conscience on the issue of the exploitation of the Indigenous. He gave up both his lands and his Indians and became a life-long crusader against these wrongs.

Fig. 8-4: Las Casas

One of his approaches was to remind the settlers that the King had given them their "encomiendas" on the condition that they educate the Indians, teach them the Catholic faith, and treat them well, conditions which very few of the settlers complied with. When this approach did not have much effect, Las Casas took his case to the highest authorities in Spain. Here he received a sympathetic hearing, was given the title of "Defender of the Indians", and was instrumental in persuading the King to promulgate the "New Laws of the Indies" in 1542. This new legislation aimed at ameliorating the brutal treatment given to the Indians, and although they did not fundamentally change the situation, they stand as testimony to Las Casas' efforts.

At one point Las Casas suggested that an alternative to enslaving the Indians would be to bring Black slaves from Africa. He has often been criticized for this idea, but in fairness to him it should be noted that the idea was not originally his, and he quickly repudiated it, arguing that slavery was inherently evil whether it involved the Indian or the Black.

In 1547 he wrote his most powerful tract, the Brevísima Relación de la Destrucción de las Indias (Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies), in which he presented in gruesome detail the excesses of the Spaniards. Although he exaggerated, his accusations were justified, and they did cause the Spanish Crown to institute reforms. However, his tract also reached the Northern Europeans, who seized upon it as proof of the truth of the so-called "Black Legend", which portrayed Spain in the worst possible light. In a short period of time the work was translated into Latin, English, French, German and Dutch. Here is the subtitle carried in the English translation of 1606: "Popery truly Display'd in its Bloody Colours: Or a Faithful Narrative of the Horrid and Unexampled Massacres, Butcheries, and all manner of Cruelties, that Hell and Malice could invent, committed by the Popish Spanish Party on the Inhabitants of West-India... Composed first in Spanish by Bartholomew de las Casas, a Bishop there, and an Eye-Witness of most of these Barbarous Cruelties; afterwards translated by him into Latin, then by other hands into High-Dutch, Low-Dutch, French, and now Modern English".

Fig. 8-5: Guamán Poma de Ayala

Las Casas stands as an example of moral outrage and conscience against the abuses of the early Spanish settlers. Although he unwittingly provided the Northern European enemies of Spain with ammunition for their propaganda, the excesses in their own colonies were also brutal, and there were few voices raised in protest in Northern Europe. His voice of accusation against exploitation was the first to be heard from Spanish America, it and continues to have echoes in the literature of social protest to the present day.

Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1547) by Bartolomé de las Casas (extract)

The Island of Hispaniola was where the Christians first entered and began their great ravages and ruination of these people. The Christians first destroyed and depopulated, beginning by taking the women and the children from the Indians in order to have them as servants and to abuse them and take their food which was the fruit of their sweat and their labors. The Christians were not happy with what the Indians gave up voluntarily on the basis of what each one possessed. The Indians never did possess much, and they barely had enough to survive. What is enough for three Indian households of ten people each for a month is eaten and destroyed by a Christian in just a day. After much violence, force and oppression, the Indians began to understand that these men had not come from the heavens. So some began to hide their food and others their women and children. Others fled to the forests to get away from those hard and terrible people. The Christians would slap and hit them with fists and clubs, and even laid hand on the lords of the people. And this reached such temerity and shameful abuse that a Christian captain forcibly raped the wife of the principal king of the island.

Enriquillo's Rebellion.

During this time (late 1518) notable events occurred on this island of Hispaniola, and one of them was the way in which the Indians were dying out, and despite this the Spaniards did not cease to overwork and mistreat them. One of the Spaniards was a young man named Valenzuela who unjustly and tyrannically possessed an inherited "repartimiento" of Indians from his father, and the chief and lord of this repartimiento was named Enriquillo.

Enriquillo had been raised as a child in the monastery of San Francisco in the village the Spanish called Vera Paz, in the province, according to the Indian tongue, of Xaragúa. Here ruled Behechio, the principal monarch of the five kings of this island, of whom we have talked much in our first and second book.

The friars had taught Enriquillo to read and write, and had given him the Christian doctrine, and he missed nothing, and knew how to speak our tongue very well, and he always showed in his deeds that he had learned much from the priests (...) This chief and lord of that province of Baoruco, having studied the doctrine of the priests and become a man, married an Indian lady, a noble woman of good lineage, called Doña Lucía, and they were married as Christians in the sight of the Holy Mother Church.

Fig. 8-6: Enriquillo

Enriquillo was a tall and gentle man with a well-proportioned body and disposition; his face was neither beautiful nor ugly, but rather was grave and severe. He served the aforementioned young man Valenzuela with his Indians as was required of him, under the law, patiently suffering his unjust servitude and affronts which he received every day. Among the few and pitiful goods which he possessed was a mare, and this mare was taken from him against his will by the tyrannical master he served; and after this, not being content with that armed robbery, he tried to violate the chief's matrimony and rape his wife. And when Enriquillo complained to him, asking why he had done this harm and affront, it is said that Valenzuela beat him with a stick in order to make the proverb come true: "insulted and beaten".

Enriquillo went to complain of his mistreatment to the governor's lieutenant who lived in that village, by name Pedro de Vadillo. He found in Vadillo that comfort that the Indians always found in matters of justice at the hands of the ministers of the king. Vadillo threatened him, warning him what would happen and what he would do to Enriquillo if he returned with any more complaints against Valenzuela: he told Enriquillo that he would throw him in jail or in the stocks. After he was let go with no satisfaction at the hands of this minister of justice, the saddened Enriquillo decided to come to this city of Santo Domingo to complain to the Audiencia of the injuries and insults which he had received. But he was very poor, tired and hungry, and had no money to remedy his situation.

The head of the Audiencia gave Enriquillo his sympathy, but he sent him back to the aforementioned lieutenant Vadillo with no other recourse; and this too was the consolation which the Audiencias and even the king's Counselor, who resides in Castille, give to the injured and the miserable: to send them back, one should realize, to the very people they had complained about, back to their own enemies.

Fig. 8-7

Once back at the village, which was 30 leagues away, Enriquillo presented his documents, and the justice he received from Vadillo was, it was said, to mistreat him with words and threats worse than the first time. With the approval of his master Valenzuela, he received worse treatment and surprises and beatings and threats of death and other events, based on the ancient disdain in which the Indians were viewed, and the harsh rule which the Spaniards afflicted them with, without any fear of God or justice, so that they would beat them with sticks or blows instead of giving them food as consolation and rest after their voyage.

The chief Enriquillo bore the new injuries and affronts quietly. But then came the period of several months in the year in which the group of Indians working for the Spaniards was to be changed, and it was Enriquillo's role to bring the new Indians and take the first group back. In this process the chief was the one who would endure insults and beatings and even jail if any Indians were missing. And Enriquillo, who by now had little faith in Spanish justice, and more faith in his own land, which was rough, and where horses could not climb, decided to serve his enemy no longer, to send no more Indians, and to defend himself in his own territory. And this the Spanish called, and still call to this day, the "uprising and rebellion of Enriquillo and his followers". In truth, it was nothing more than to flee from his cruel enemies, who had killed and consumed them, in the same way that the cow or the ox flees the butcher. And Valenzuela, when he realized that Enriquillo was not going to send him any more Indians because of his mistreatment, and that he was angry and upset and, as they would say, had risen up, he went with eleven men to bring him down by force and mistreat him some more.

Fig. 8-8: Guamán Poma de Ayala

Once he arrived there he found Enriquillo and his people prepared, with weapons, which were spears, clubs with nails and fish bones, and bows and arrows and stones and anything else they could find as weapons. They came out to meet them, with chief Enriquillo at the head, and he told Valenzuela to go back, because neither he nor his Indians would work for him any more. And Valenzuela, who saw him as a slave, and held him in the usual contempt with which the Spaniards saw the Indians, as if they were dung in the plaza, began to call him a dog and many other hurtful words, and then he attacked Enriquillo and the Indians who were with him. But the Indians defended themselves well and quickly, killing one or two of his Spaniards and wounding all of the others, who turned their backs and ran away. Enriquillo did not want to pursue them, but rather let them go, and said to Valenzuela: "Be grateful, Valenzuela, that I do not kill you. Go, leave this place and never come back. You are warned."

Valenzuela went with his men to San Juan de la Maguana, with his damaged pride, and desire for revenge. And the news ran through the island that Enriquillo was leading an uprising. The Audiencia determined that men had to put the rebellion down; so some 70 or 80 Spaniards went to find him. These, after many days of hunger and exhaustion, found him in a certain hill; he went out to meet them, killed some and wounded others, and they were all routed and humiliated, and agreed with much sadness and affront to retreat. The fame and victories of Enriquillo were soon known all over the island, and many Indians fled their forced servitude and the oppression of the Spaniards to join the refuge and flag of Enriquillo. He was like an impregnable rocky castle, and they came to him, anguished, oppressed by debts and bitter in their spirits, as if he were David and they were fleeing from the tyranny of Saul, as it appears in the first book of Kings, Chapter 22. And so, because of this resemblance there came to Enriquillo some 300 men who accepted his leadership, although his own people were, I believe, barely 100.

He taught them how they should fight against the Spanish, and how to defend themselves if they should come. And he never allowed them to go out and attack or kill any Spaniard, instead limiting them to defending themselves, and their loved ones, against the Spanish attacks, which many times came to submit him and offend him. This was a just war against the Spanish under his elected leadership; it was like the history of the Maccabeans in the divine Scriptures, or like the Spanish fights which are narrated in the deeds of the prince Don Pelayo, who not only fought a just war of natural defense, but also could proceed to wreak vengeance and punishment for the injuries and harm and death and killing of their peoples and theft of their lands, in the same manner and with the same rights.

As far as natural law is concerned (and leaving aside the teachings of our sacred faith, which is another chapter dealing with the right of Christian self-defense), Enriquillo and his few Indians on this island had just, very just, cause, because they had fallen into the cruel hands and horrible tyranny of the Spaniards, who pursued, destroyed, punished and laid waste to them as if they were their capital enemies, destroyers of their great republics, such as existed on this island, and what they did under natural law was not called war, but natural self-defense.

On the many occasions on this island in which armed groups rose up, they were able to obtain many weapons, and the Indians who rebelled were able to steal weapons from their masters. And all over the island there was an unusual vigilance and diligence and care to protect Enriquillo and all those who were with him, as if all his life he had been a captain in Italy. He had his guards and spies in the ports and other places where he knew that the Spaniards could come to look for him.

When the spies and guards would tell him that there were Spaniards in the area, he would take all the women and children and the old and sick, if there were any, and everyone who could not fight, along with the 50 warriors he always had with him, and he would take them 10 to 12 leagues away, in secret places he had in the hills, where he had cultivated lands and food. He would leave behind a captain, a nephew of his barely a cubit high, but very strong, with all his warriors to wait for the Spaniards. When they arrived, they would fight against the Indians like lions. But then Enriquillo would arrive, fresh, with his 50 men, and he would deal with them as he saw fit, wounding and killing them, so that even though many Spaniards came to fight him, they were always routed, and he always won.

One time it happened that a group of 71 or 72 Spaniards had been routed and they fled to some caves in the mountains in order to hide from the Indians. When the Indians discovered the Spaniards, they wanted to bring firewood and burn them. Enriquillo ordered: "I do not want them burned. Instead, take their weapons and leave them be. Let them go". And so they did, and they obtained many swords and spears and crossbows, even though they did not know how to use these. Of these 70 Spaniards one became a friar in the monastery of Santo Domingo, in the city of Santo Domingo, because of a promise he had made when he believed he would not escape, and I learned of all this from him.

Each day the fame of the victories and diligence, effort and stratagems of Enriquillo and his people spread more and more around the island because, it was said, the Spaniards who went out to find Enriquillo always came back routed. And so the entire island admired him, and there was unrest, and when the Spaniards raised a force to hunt him not all went voluntarily, and they would not have gone at all had the Audiencia not forced them to. All of this lasted thirteen to fourteen years, and the Royal treasury spent more than 80 or 100,000 castellanos on it.