SOURCE: Traboulay, David M. “Bartolome de las Casas and the Issues of the Great Debate of 1550-1551.” In Columbus and Las Casas: The Conquest and Christianization of America, 1492-1566, pp. 167-90. Lanham, Md: University Press of America, 1994.

[In the following essay, Traboulay analyzes the famous 1550-51 debate between Bartolomé de las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda over the nature and rights of Native Americans; unfortunately, Traboulay concludes, subsequent laws to protect Indians did little to slow Spanish greed and cruelty or the near extinction of aboriginal Americans.]

In late 1550, an assembly of jurists and four theologians met with the council of the Indies in Valladolid at the request of the king to hear the opposing views of Bartolome de Las Casas and the noted Spanish Aristotelian scholar, Gines de Sepulveda, on the conquest of America.¹ This debate encapsulated the often conflicting Spanish responses to the conquest. Sepulveda himself never came to America, but relied for his information on historians like Oviedo who had taken a dim view of Indian rights. In light of the tense political situation in Peru and Mexico following the New Laws of 1542, Sepulveda became the darling of the colonists for his support of a militant imperialism in America. For the advocates of the rights of native Americans, Las Casas's defense was one of the splendid moments of their struggle. For Las Casas himself, it represented the maturation of his reflections on the consequences of the clash between European and American civilizations. He was seventy-six years old. Although he remained in contact with his friends in America and was still active in Spain in support of Indian causes, he had left America for good in 1547.

News about the uproar caused by his Confesionario, twelve rules for confessors, urging the denial of absolution to colonists who held encomiendas and Indian slaves until they made restitution to the Indians, had already reached Spain. No sooner had Las Casas arrived in Spain in 1547 than he learned that the emperor saw the Confesionario as implying criticism of the Crown's role in the colonization of America and demanded an explanation in writing. Las Casas then hurriedly composed his Thirty Propositions in which he argued that the purpose of Europe's mission in the new world was to preach the message of Christianity to its peoples. Using the familiar argument of pope Innocent IV, he stated that the pope had “the authority and power of Jesus Christ … over all human beings, Christians and non-Christians, insofar as he determined what is necessary to guide and direct them to the end of eternal life and remove obstacles to it.”² The bulls of donation of Alexander VI were intended to coopt the Iberian monarchs in the project of “expanding and protecting the faith, the Christian religion, and converting the infidels.” For Las Casas, the principal reward of the Crown would be in advancing the spiritual purpose of the Spanish presence in America, not in its material and commercial ambition.

Native rulers, he insisted, could not be deprived of their sovereignty. They preserved the right to lordship, dignity, and royal preeminence in accordance with “natural law and the law of nations.” In his mind, those who opposed this view have encouraged unspeakable theft, violence, and tyranny. Idolatry did not constitute a just cause for seizing the property of native lords or their subjects. After all, the gospel had not been previously preached to them. They should therefore not be punished except those who “with malice prevent the preaching of the faith.” Native rulers were expected to recognize the Spanish Crown as universal lords and sovereigns after they freely chose to become Christian. They could not be punished, if they chose not to convert. The colonists did not have a just cause to make war against “the innocent natives who were secure and peaceful in their own lands and homes.” Armed conquests had no basis in law and “were, are, and will be unjust, iniquitous, tyrannical, and condemned by every law from the time of the discovery of the Indies till today.” As for the labor systems, he felt that the devil himself could not have invented a more effective way to destroy the world of native Americans than the encomienda and the repartimiento which forced the Indians to work for Spaniards in the mines and as carriers over two hundred leagues. He reminded the king that he had the responsibility of “protecting native laws and customs which were just, changing those which were not, and helping them overcome the defects in their system of governing.”

The New Laws of 1542 and the refusal of missionaries to grant absolution to the colonists unless they made restitution to wronged Indians made the political climate charged with emotion. The king's sensitivity to Las Casas's criticism of the Spanish conquest was mild compared to the storm that threatened from the treatise, Democrates Secundus, by Gines de Sepulveda.³ An Aristotelian scholar who had written several works of history and literature, Sepulveda had written the Democrates Secundus probably in 1544 to defend the Crown's military conquests in America. His political views were already well-known. In 1529 he had exhorted the emperor Charles V to undertake a crusade against the Turks; he had supported the militant position of his patron Alberto Pio, prince of Carpi, against the pacifism of Erasmus. After receiving initial support for the publication of Democrates Secundus from the council of Castile, the book was sent in 1547/48 to a commission of theologians at the universities of Salamanca and Alcala who condemned it. Sepulveda was certain that Las Casas was behind the decision. He sent a summary of the book to the papal court where it was published in the form of an Apologia. All copies of this work were ordered to be burned in Spain. Las Casas in turn wrote his own Apologia to counter Sepulveda's justification of Spanish military conquests. Las Casas's Confesionario on the one hand, and Sepulveda's Democrates Secundus on the other, rivetted the minds of those who were interested in America and caused the emperor to convene a meeting of theologians and jurists in Valladolid and have them decide the merits of the two views of the conquest of America. In 1550 and 1551, Las Casas and Sepulveda presented their arguments. After Sepulveda summarized the main points of his thesis, Las Casas read from his Apologia for several days. Although both claimed victory in the debate, no formal decision was taken by the commission.

Though a former student of Pomponazzi at the Spanish college in Bologna, Sepulveda was hardly an enlightened humanist. Anthony Pagden described his mind as “rigidly orthodox and highly chauvinistic.”⁴ He agreed that conversion of native Americans to Christianity was an important purpose of the encounter, but he felt that military conquest was appropriate because it facilitated the task of conversion. Dispossession of Indian sovereignty and property was justified because Indians were cultural barbarians and must submit to their European cultural superiors. To support his argument, he borrowed heavily from Aristotle's notion of natural slavery as well as Augustine's definition of slavery as punishment for sin. Native idolatry, human sacrifice, and cannibalism were in his mind the evidence to support his position. The use of Aristotle's notion of natural slavery to justify war against the Indians had a long history. Until Vitoria, Las Casas, and the Salamancan theologians constructed arguments against it, theologians like John Major and Palacios Rubios made significant use of it in elaborating their views of the Spanish conquest. Sepulveda's use of this argument demonstrated its persistence and significance for those who supported militant imperialism. The tone of Sepulveda's work was extremely deprecating to native Americans. Part of the reason was his dogmatic, ideological mind. One could see this in his earlier defense of Alberto Pio against the pacifist views of Erasmus; but, resentment against him arose because he chose to write his work in the form of a dialogue rather than in the scholastic manner. The polarities of civilized and barbarian were used for good literary effect, but were not in the process nuanced. For him, Indians had weak minds and practiced barbarous customs. They were capable of improvement through Christian and European rule and customs; they could as natural slaves even become friends of their civilized rulers. While their talents might improve beyond those of monkeys or bears, their mental limitations could not transcend those of bees or spiders. Indians were not human beings in his opinion; they had only the appearance of men. He contrasted the courage, magnanimity, and civilized virtues of Spaniards with the savagery of native Americans who rejected civilized life. For him, Hernan Cortes was noble and courageous; Moctezuma, cowardly. He articulated this moral polarity between civilized Europeans and barbarous Indians to serve his argument that Spanish masters were morally and politically justified in ruling over native Americans. This notion of natural slavery placed limits on the usefulness of the concept of civilization for human development. How different was Vitoria's view of the alleged savagery of native Americans. Vitoria stated that the description of some of the native cultures of America resembled the cultural level of peasants in Europe. It was culture, not natural slavery, that was responsible for the diversity and strangeness of Indian customs.

Las Casas's defense of native Americans and their cultures rested on the Apologia from which he read and his Apologetica historia, completed after 1551.⁵ Las Casas had hoped that these works would have a wider audience than the commission at Valladolid. His purpose was to demonstrate by argument and the evidence of his experience that Indian peoples were members of the human community and that their pre-conquest societies were true civil societies, in spite of the differences of their customs. As Anthony Pagden has pointed out, Las Casas's work was original because he sought to prove that “beneath the glaring cultural differences between the races of men there existed the same set of social and moral imperatives.”

Las Casas accepted Sepulveda's paradigm for determining human development. Civil society and Christianity were the keys to cultural transformation and the realization of human potential. He argued that the splendid cities of the Aztecs and Incas were eloquent witnesses of Indian civil society before the Spanish conquest. But he defined civil society more broadly. Where groups of families came together and built houses, there existed true civil society. This intellectual move was of course calculated to include all Indian societies, even those in the Caribbean and Florida, in his definition of civil society. Conversion to Christianity was important for native development, but their societies were already sufficiently developed that their consent was necessary. They could therefore be converted only by peaceful means.

This philosophy of conversion was enunciated in his first major work on the Indies, the De Unico Vocationis Modo. Completed between 1538 and 1539 while in Mexico to attend a conference on ecclesiastical reform, it included pope Paul III's papal bull, Sublimis Deus, which claimed that native Americans were rational and endowed with liberty and free will. Conversion by peace and kindness was advocated by Las Casas from his early years as a Dominican friar. That was essentially the spirit behind his failed colonizing attempt in Cumana in 1521, although Spanish soldiers were a part of that project. Critics like Oviedo never stopped chiding him with biting sarcasm about the Cumana experiment. The De Unico Vocationis Modo was inspired, however, by a significant success. Las Casas proposed that a small contingent of friars alone and unaccompanied by soldiers be allowed to bring the Indians of an unconquered region of Guatemala, Tuzulutlan, under Spanish rule peacefully and to preach the gospel to them. The Franciscan, Jacobo de Tastera, had already had success with a similar project in the Yucatan. On May 2, 1537, the project began. Some verses of poetry covering Christian doctrine were composed in Quiche and set to music and given to four Christian Indian merchants to memorize. They recited the verses and sang before the cacique of Tuzulutlan for eight days, answering questions as well. The cacique invited the friars to come to his town, built a church, and himself converted to Christianity. It was with confidence, then, that Las Casas would assert his method of evangelization, a method that had a certain resonance with the thirteenth-century Majorcan, Ramon Llull: “One and only one is the method that Divine Providence instituted in all the world and at all times to teach men the true religion, namely, that which persuades the understanding with reason and gently attracts the will, and this is common to all men without any difference.”

Angel Losada reminded us that Las Casas was not a pacifist. He felt that war was sometimes a necessary evil, especially some wars against Muslims and heretics. Las Casas did not dismiss lightly Sepulveda's reasons for arguing that Spain's wars in America were just. In a sense, the center of the controversy was fixed on the Aristotelian distinction between civilized and barbarian peoples and the presumed rights of the former to rule over the latter. War against the natives was justified if they refused to accept Spanish imperial rule, according to this line of argument. Las Casas found this argument unacceptable. He argued that Sepulveda's definition of barbarian was too simple. There were many definitions of barbarian. If the term barbarian was used for non-Christians, then the Indians were barbarians. But in no way were they cruel or inhumane and incapable of self-government, which was the definition offered by Sepulveda. He insisted that native Americans did not belong to the class of barbarians that Aristotle recommended be hunted and brought forcefully to civilized life. Peaceful means was the only legitimate way. Indeed, Indian arts and crafts and their ability to learn the European liberal arts constituted proof that Indians were rational and capable of governing themselves.

Las Casas's argument against conquest and dispossession on the grounds of idolatry, human sacrifice, and cannibalism showed a skilful mind at home in history, law, and theology. Military intervention could take place, he argued, only if the occupying power had jurisdiction over that territory. But neither the pope nor Christian rulers possessed universal political jurisdiction. In his mind, freedom, not force, was the more defensible Christian approach to religious differences. Citing the examples of Christian practices towards Muslims and Jews in Europe, Las Casas showed that although Jewish and Muslim minorities were under the political jurisdiction of Christian rulers in Europe, they could not be punished for their religious rituals. The infidelity of Jews and Muslims was more serious than that of American Indians because Jews and Muslims had been exposed to Christian teachings. Yet, Las Casas emphasized that they possessed rights against forced labor and oppression. Was intervention not justified to save innocent victims from ritual sacrifice? Las Casas accepted the principle that human beings were responsible for other human beings and were obligated to come to the assistance of the innocent against suffering and death. But he defended all the same the native American case as different. For one thing, he contended that the wars of conquest in America had caused greater human destruction than ritual human sacrifice. The lesser evil was in the circumstance more appropriate than the destruction of kingdoms and cities. Correction or reform was the objective of punishment. It would have been more useful to pardon their past practice of human sacrifice. After all, he reminded his audience, the ancient Spaniards, Greeks, and Romans practiced ritual human sacrifice. In addition, Abraham's offer to sacrifice his son demonstrated the significance of the idea of sacrifice to divine worship. The appeal to abandon human sacrifice like all religious conversion should be made by rational teaching and persuasion, not by force.

In an interesting twist to the question of ritual human sacrifice, Las Casas argued that it demonstrated a deep religious devotion on the part of native Americans. Indians had some knowledge of God and loved God more than themselves: “They offered to their Gods their most precious and beloved of possessions, namely, the sacrifice of their children.”⁶ Those societies which “ordained by law and custom that human sacrifice be offered to their Gods at certain times … had a more noble concept and esteem of their Gods.” Human sacrifice was not opposed to natural reason; it was an error rooted in natural reason itself. Indians could not be expected to abandon the religion of their ancestors until they were persuaded by peaceful means of a better alternative. Las Casas concluded: “If such sacrifices offend God, it is for God alone to punish this sin, and not for men.” For Las Casas, then, the conditions essential for the mission to civilize and Christianize America were respect for the culture and beliefs of native Americans and that they should be allowed to choose freely to accept or reject Christianity.

The acrimony of this debate was caused in large part by the chain of events arising from the reform legislation of 1542. In the hearing before the council of the Indies in 1541, Las Casas gave an oral presentation of his Very Brief Relation of the Destruction of the West Indies.⁷ Not one to mince his words or to compromise, he accused the Spanish colonists of exterminating the Indians in region after region of the Americas. He framed his argument by establishing a dualism between evil Spaniards and good Indians. From the perspective of Las Casas, the stakes were too high to have faith in quiet diplomacy. The catastrophe that befell the natives of the Caribbean and the terror practiced in Mexico and Peru left Las Casas no alternative but to paint the colonization of America in black and white. In his mind, the social consequences of the search for riches were ruining the mission to Christianize the native people. He placed hope in convincing the king to issue laws to protect them. He found the peoples of America “patient,” “humble,” and “peaceful.” They possessed a lively intelligence and were willing “to receive our holy catholic faith and to be endowed with virtuous customs.”⁸ Into this flock of peaceful native people came the Spaniards like “hungry wolves, tigers, and cruel lions … for forty years they have torn them to bits, killed them, caused them anguish, affliction, and torment, and destroyed them.” As evidence, Las Casas drew attention to the fact that only 200 natives of Española remained and that the population of Puerto Rico and Jamaica were similarly ravaged and destroyed: “We should realize the truth that in forty years some twelve million souls of men, women, and children have died unjustly and tyrannically at the hands of the Christians.” The cause of this destruction, he felt, was the insatiable thirst and ambition for gold. Initially, the Indians thought that the Spaniards had come from heaven until they were subjected to vexations of every kind.

In his Entre Los Remedios, Las Casas proposed solutions to create a more humane order in America. The eight remedy was considered the most significant in that it exercised a major influence on the New Laws of 1542. Las Casas argued that America should be integrated into the Spanish kingdom and all its peoples be incorporated as free subjects and vassals of the Spanish Crown.⁹ He warned that they should not be entrusted to individual Spaniards. America and its people should be under the jurisdiction of the Crown. “… not now, nor ever in perpetuity can they be taken or alienated from the Crown, nor given to anyone as vassals in encomienda or as feudal vassals.” Insisting that the immediate abolition of the encomienda become a principle that all future monarchs should swear to uphold, Las Casas gave twenty reasons to support his point of view. He reminded the king that the purpose of the Spanish presence in the new world was to convert the Indians to Christianity: “As the purpose of the rule of Your Majesty over these peoples is no other than the preaching and establishment of the faith among them, and their conversion and knowledge of Christ … Your Majesty is obliged to remove all the obstacles in the way of this project.” He then went on to show that the encomienda had hindered this purpose. He reminded the king that queen Isabella herself had ordered Columbus in 1499 to return the Indian slaves he had brought to Spain, exclaiming angrily: “What power does the Admiral have to give my vassals to anyone.”

It seemed to him that the objectives of the missionaries were at odds with those of the colonists. Control over the native people was important to the world of the colonists because the labor of the native people was indispensable for the acquisition of wealth. But such a world, Las Casas argued, inspired only fear on the part of the Indians. Missionaries were witnesses of this and were resented by the colonists as “disturbing their temporal interests.” The encomienda did not create a viable society because husbands were separated from their wives and fathers from their children to work far from their communities. If this system was conceived as a way of teaching the Indian civilization, he was convinced that it was a failure. The colonists were more like an enemy than teachers. Their efforts to uplift those under their care were nothing but “pretentious, false, and deceitful.” Indians did not need teachers in civil affairs; they needed people to preach the tenets of Christianity and to provide responsible government for free communities and people. The burden of serving the Crown and the colonists in addition to their native lords was overwhelming and unbearable: “All the peoples and communities of the [New] World are free. They do not lose their freedom when they observe Your Majesty as their universal lord. Even if before they suffered defects to their republics, it was incumbent upon Your Majesty to remedy these defects so that they would enjoy a better quality of liberty … there is no power on earth which sanctions making the condition of the free worse and less free; only blame. The key of justice does not err; Liberty is the most precious and highest of all the temporal goods of this world.” In the actual functioning of the encomienda, the condition of the Indians had changed from freedom to slavery. Indian towns were destroyed and their peoples made into abject slaves, reduced to “pure beasts,” crushed “like salt in water,” in a world where their consent and free will played no part.

He was of the opinion that the initial allocation of native people in Española lacked any authorization from the Crown. The encomienda, therefore, exceeded the terms of the agreement in establishing the colony on Española. When governor Ovando came to Espanola in 1502, he was instructed to treat the Indians as “free human beings with much love, affection, charity, and justice.” In order to satisfy the wishes of those who came with him, he distributed Indians among them. He defended this practice by informing the Crown that the native people did not want to communicate with Spaniards and that this practice was necessary to encourage contact. Las Casas insisted that this report was a blatant lie. Relations between the native people and the Spaniards had actually improved before Ovando arrived. He confessed that there were even marital relations between Spaniards and Indians. To the historical argument that the institution of the encomienda was established against the orders of the Crown was added a more philosophical line to which Las Casas would repeatedly return. The encomienda was illegal because it did not receive the “consent of all those peoples who were not called, heard, or defended … as required by natural, divine, canon, and imperial law.” He warned the king that unless the encomienda were abolished and the Indians taken from the control of the colonists, they would perish shortly and the vast lands of the new world would be empty of the native inhabitants. The private allocation of Indians to individual colonists worked against the interests of the Crown. He insisted that if the native people were treated as free vassals of the Crown, the new world would bring prosperity to Spain. The death, suffering, and demoralization of the Indians that resulted from the encomienda brought neither riches nor glory. If the Indians were placed under royal jurisdiction, they would feel great joy and consolation, knowing that they would no longer be “condemned to perish, and that life and happiness would come to them.”

The abolition of the encomienda would give Spain the opportunity to atone for the destructiveness of the conquest of America. The whole world should know that the “money, gold, and wealth taken from the Indies were robbed, usurped, and seized violently and unjustly from the native owners.” Las Casas concluded this treatise by repeating the warning that unless the tyrannical institution of the encomienda were abolished, all the Indies would in a few days be barren and depopulated like Española and other islands of the Caribbean. Then “God will send horrible punishments and perhaps will destroy all of Spain.”

Contemporary historians agreed that the New Laws issued in 1542 reforming Spanish policies in America were inspired largely by Las Casas. Future Indian slavery was forbidden and existing slaves were to be freed unless their owners could show legitimate title. Indians could not be used as carriers. As for Indians held in encomienda, all public officials were to transfer immediately their Indians to the jurisdiction of the Crown. The encomiendas of private colonists who could not show legal title were also revoked. More significantly, the encomienda was to be gradually suppressed. No new ones were to be granted and, on the death of existing owners, their encomiendas were to be transferred to the Crown. There were other important measures. Explorers had to have a license for future discoveries. Religious had to be taken along and, above all, the native people were to be treated with respect. Las Casas complained about the policy of gradual abolition, but these laws were nevertheless impressive. The problem lay in putting them into effect. The resentment on the part of the colonists was deep. There were protests, riots, and open rebellion. Delegations of colonists and their sympathizers hurried to Spain to protest the New Laws. In the meantime, Las Casas was consecrated bishop of Chiapas in 1544 with the expectation of carrying out a more humane kind of encounter between Spaniards and native Americans with the assistance of the spirit of the New Laws. On his way to Central America to take up his post, he learned that the New Laws were not put into practice and that there was a movement, backed by some religious, to have the laws revoked. When he reached Chiapas and urged the colonists to free their Indian slaves, Las Casas was harassed and subjected to abuse. There were also threats to his life. It was the rebellion in Peru, however, that convinced the king that the New Laws threatened the survival of his empire in America. The viceroy of Peru, Nuñez Vela, was unable to enforce the laws; Gonzalo Pizarro refused to recognize him and considered himself king of Peru. Bowing to pressure, the emperor revoked the law dealing with the inheritance of the encomiendas on Oct. 20, 1549. In early 1546, Las Casas had decided to give up the office of bishop. The anger of the colonists that was directed at him made his work as bishop ineffective. He journeyed to Mexico to participate in a conference of bishops to discuss doctrinal matters. When this was over, he convened a meeting of Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians to discuss the vexing problem of Indian slavery.

In his treatise on Indian slavery, Las Casas argued that all Indian slaves were held unjustly.¹⁰ The temper of that age had permitted slavery provided that the slaves were captives in a just war. His argument was built on the premises that, first, the wars against the native Indians were not just and, second, that the Crown did not issue any authorization permitting slavery. Reiterating once more that the native Americans were different from Turks and Moors in that the Indians had no history of causing injury to Christians or taking their lands, he implied that the objective of reconquest, legitimate in the cases of Spain and Jerusalem, was invalid in America. Spanish presence in America was legitimate only in its mission to evangelize the native Americans. No divine or human law permitted war to advance this cause. As for the reason of the defense of innocent Indian victims against ritual human sacrifice, Las Casas contended that it was not worth much comment because “our Spaniards never went to war for this purpose, but to kill, despoil, and rob the innocent; to usurp their lands, their homes, their states, and their dominion.” While Las Casas built his argument within the framework of the medieval European canon and civil law tradition, his use of concrete and extreme language to narrate his story and illustrate his analysis was designed to persuade the authorities of the reality of the human destructiveness in the Americas.

To an extent, the debate over the European encounter with America was conducted in too theoretical a manner. Early in the sixteenth century, the question of Spain's right to dominion over America was raised, especially after Montesinos and the Dominicans had voiced criticism of Spanish policies. The first responses of John Major, Matias de Paz, and Palacios Rubios were conceived broadly within the context and traditions of Europe.¹¹ The injunction called the Requerimiento which the king asked Palacios Rubios to draw up and which had to be read to the native people prior to intervention was meant to convince Europeans that the Spanish conquest was based on legal principles. For Las Casas, the reading of the injunction that “God chose S. Peter as leader of mankind … to establish his seat in all parts of the world and rule all people, whether Christians, Moors, Jews, Gentiles or any other sect” was nothing but hypocrisy. The proclamation that the pope had granted the Spanish Crown dominion over America and that, unless they complied, war would be waged against them was unjust and detestable. Las Casas exonerated Palacios Rubios whom he described as favoring the Indian cause. He saw instead the influence of the opinion of Hostiensis that non-Christians had no right to dominion. James Muldoon has argued persuasively that the Requerimiento was inspired more by the views of Innocent IV than Hostiensis.¹² The injunction was conceived to counteract possible charges by other European countries that the Spanish conquest was based on the views of John Wyclif that dominion depended on Christian grace which was condemned at the council of Constance in 1414. What the Requerimiento said in effect was that native American communities possessed real dominion, but that native dominion could be superseded by the right of evangelization. One might add that this was the theoretical framework that influenced the Salamancan theologians and jurists. The example of the Requerimiento highlights the difficulty of evaluating the sincerity of the laws that were passed to ameliorate Indian exploitation. The significance of the efforts of Las Casas and his supporters was to make the intellectual debate in Europe respond to the actual conditions of colonial life in America.

Wars against native Americans were unjust also because they were not authorized by the Crown. Indeed, Spanish colonists made little effort to put into practice laws and decrees that were passed to protect the welfare of the Indians. It was therefore illegal to make slaves of Indian captives. When the labor supply became scarce, some colonists would sail with two or three ships to the islands of Española, Puerto Rico, and Cuba, and also to the mainland. They would attack Indian villages at night in order to seize captives. They would pack three to four hundred people in one ship with the hope of selling them as slaves. Other colonies arbitrarily demanded Indian labor and products. Slaves were sometimes branded and chained. Las Casas remarked that he had seen this with his own eyes. Whole regions were depopulated by the kidnapping of Indians as slaves. What Las Casas described was, from the perspective of the Indians, a state that practiced terror. Indian slavery was but one form of terror. To the question whether slavery practiced by native Americans was milder than Spanish slavery, Las Casas maintained that there was no equivalence between Indian and European slavery. Slavery practiced by Indians was “a light burden”; it connoted a person who had a greater obligation to help and serve. An Indian who was a slave of other Indians was little different from a master's son because “he had his home, his herd, his wife, and children, and enjoyed liberty as other free subjects.” Where Indian practices went beyond the boundaries of justice, Las Casas urged them to remember that it was the Christian practice to preserve good native laws and customs and extirpate evil ones. In this general thesis on slavery, he exhorted his audience to be mindful that liberty was the most precious and worthy possession after life itself. It must be pointed out that when Las Casas wrote this denunciation of slavery, he had not yet condemned African slavery. In fact, his slave, Juanillo, often accompanied him to ferry him across rivers. It was after the anti-slavery conference in Mexico in 1546 that he confessed that African slavery was as unjust and cruel as Indian slavery.

Las Casas drew several conclusions from his argument condemning all Indian slavery as unjust. He urged the king to free all Indians held as slaves by Spaniards; bishops were obliged to plead before the Crown and council of the Indies to free Indian slaves from tyranny and oppression and “if necessary, to risk their lives.” Finally, he asked Franciscan, Dominican, and Augustinian religious to refuse to absolve any Spaniard who held Indian slaves unless he was examined by the Audiencia in accordance with the New Laws.

At the second conference of the friars in Mexico, Las Casas presented his Confesionario.¹³ As bishop of Chiapas, he had already put into practice several of the measures he recommended. His refusal to absolve slaveowners was already well-known. This formulary for confession was meant to apply to conquistador, encomendero, slaveholders, and merchants who were engaged in selling arms. The central theme was the imperative of restitution before absolution could be given. The antagonism of the colonists to Las Casas was not surprising. On his deathbed or healthy, the penitent had to execute a legal document in the presence of a public notary empowering the confessor to free all Indian slaves, if he had any, and to distribute all his property to the Indians he had exploited or their survivors. After all, Las Casas contended, he had brought nothing from Spain. All that he had accumulated in America was through the labor of the Indians. No property was to be granted to the conquistador's heirs. Even if he had one hundred legitimate children, they were not to receive one cent. To add to his humiliation, he had to acknowledge that he had participated in “such and such conquests or wars against Indians in these Indies, and that he was an accomplice in the robbery, violence, death, and captivity of Indians as well as the destruction of many of their towns and villages.” Even colonists who were not conquistadors but who had Indians allocated to them had to restore whatever they had taken as tribute and services to the surviving Indians, their heirs, or the villages where they lived. It is worthwhile underscoring the two principles that he insisted on. First, he urged freedom for all who were enslaved or exploited; second, restitution and compensation had to be given to the victims. Manuscript copies of this work circulated in America and Spain. Sepulveda had no hesitation in labeling the work “scandalous and diabolical.”

Did these rules have any impact? Guillermo Lohmann Villena has presented evidence that in Peru the Lascasian teaching on restitution did produce fruit.¹⁴ The publication of several of his works in 1552 circulated the ideas of Las Casas. In addition, his friends and supporters, especially Fray Tomas de San Martin and Fray Domingo de Santo Tomas in Peru, had nurtured the spiritual climate of Peru by their sermons on the need for restitution. Tomas de San Martin had written a stinging criticism of the encomienda to the king in 1551, and in 1553 wrote a manual on confession for conquistadors and encomenderos. He wrote this work in Seville at the same time that Las Casas was there.¹⁵ It is possible to see the hand of Las Casas in this work. For San Martin, the conquistadors obtained their wealth unjustly and both biblical and canon law traditions had counselled restitution of ill-gotten goods as the price of moral reintegration. Encomenderos came in for a more realistic approach in that they were entitled to receive tribute with an easy conscience provided that they treated their Indians humanely and followed the required rules governing the use of Indian services. Fray Domingo de Santo Tomas, professor of theology at the university of San Marcos in 1553 and successor to Tomas de San Martin as bishop of Charcas, similarly identified with Las Casas in his actions and ideas.¹⁶ When he visited Spain between 1555 and 1561, he kept up a correspondence with Las Casas. The archbishop of Lima, Jeronymo de Loaysa, also corresponded with Las Casas. The Lascasian vision therefore found fertile soil in Peru. Another reason why some conquistadors observed the rule of restitution was, Guillermo Lohmann Villena pointed out, that the Spanish colonists were not the monolithic, greedy, and cruel exploiters as Las Casas painted them. To be sure, they were thirsty for wealth. But some were moved by the suffering of the Indians. The picture of the conquistador Francisco Pizarro that we get from his will (1537) showed a man who set aside funds “to rescue Christian captives from the Turks, to pay a cleric to teach Indians, and to offer masses for the soul of Indians who died in the campaigns.”¹⁷

In a document witnessed by Fray Domingo de Santo Tomas in 1563, Nicholas de Ribera declared that “I have taken account and searched my conscience and consulted with theologians and experts in moral questions. I confess that I owe the Indians of my encomienda a debt and I am responsible for paying eight thousand gold pesos … I ask that they be paid from my property.” It seemed that Las Casas's censure of the wealth of the colonists and their treatment of the Indians troubled the consciences of the conquistadors and clerics. With the passing of the first conquistadors, the admonitions of Las Casas lost their force only to revive again in the 1560s. The right of the encomenderos to receive tribute became once more an important issue. Las Casas's doctrine of restitution was for a time an effective instrument in regulating the greed of the colonists.

When Las Casas sailed for Spain in 1547, his writings and political activity were already well known. His uncompromising moral stance, the harshness of his rhetoric, and the severity of his solutions did not endear him to conservatives like Sepulveda. That was why the debate at Valladolid did not illuminate the question or lead to the possibility of a compromise. The manichaean shape of the arguments of both Las Casas and Sepulveda made discourse difficult. Yet, in 1550 most of the contemporaries of Las Casas were recording the destruction of the Indies and the astounding deaths of the native people. The chronicles and histories concluded that the search for gold and wealth was the overriding motivation. It is difficult to dispute Las Casas's narrative. His analysis of the human catastrophe was not unreasonable. He made an excellent case for attributing the causes of destruction to the nature of the conquests and the establishment of forced labor systems. The number of deaths was too enormous and Indian suffering too moving to permit him to be tender with conquistadors and encomenderos. He had hoped that only by a brutal analysis could he expect a more humane policy. The defense of the dignity of native Americans was an important struggle; so too were his concern and projects for Indian cultural and social development. The abolition of forced labor systems was the prerequisite for both causes.

Although he never returned to America, Las Casas became the representative of Indian reform at the court of Spain. He corresponded frequently with his friends like Tomas de San Martin and Domingo de Santo Tomas in Peru, or Alonso de la Vera Cruz and Alonso de Zorita in Mexico. Whenever he learned that there were moves to reimpose the encomienda, he was quick to organize his political network to block these measures. This was not an easy time for Phillip II who found the treasury with scarce resources at his accession to the Spanish throne in 1556. He decided to grant encomiendas in perpetuity as a way of raising new funds. Las Casas immediately presented a petition showing that more funds could be raised if the king freed the Indians and restored native rulers. This was not accepted, of course. But it effectively blocked Philip's initial policy until the royal commission decided to allow perpetual encomiendas only for the first conquistadors, one lifetime for some colonists, and others to revert permanently to the Crown. Due to Las Casas's life-long struggle, royal legislation was able to control the arbitrariness of the encomenderos. In some cases, as under the administration of judge Zorita, Indian tribute was actually lowered.

Yet, the Indians did not benefit a great deal from these changes. Phillip II's desperate need for greater financial revenue led generally to increased taxation. The dramatic decline in Indian population should have lowered the tax burden for Indian communities. But, despite protective legislation, tax rolls were padded. Some Indian communities that had been exempt from tribute, lost this status. That was why Las Casas continued to criticize the encomienda with no less vigor that when he first raised the issue in 1515. Consider, for example, the memorandum he sent to the council of the Indies in 1562; “For days upon days, years upon years we have overlooked the two kinds of tyranny by which we have destroyed countless republics; one called conquest when we first entered … The other was and is tyrannical government … to which they gave the name repartimiento or encomienda.”¹⁸ The conclusion of this work summed up well Las Casas's perspective on the encounter between Europeans and native Americans: “First, all the wars which were called conquests were and are unjust. Second, we seized unjustly all the kingdoms and governments of the Indies. Third, encomiendas or repartimientos of Indians are cruel, in themselves evil, and therefore tyrannical. Fourth, all who grant them or receive them are in mortal sin. If they do not give them up, they will not be saved. Fifth, the king … cannot justify the wars and theft against the native people … any more than the Turks can justify their wars and plunder against Christian towns. Sixth, all the gold, silver, pearls, and other riches which have come to Spain … have been stolen. Seventh, unless they make restitution … they will not be saved. Eight, the native peoples of the Indies … have the right to make a just war against us and to drive us from the face of the earth. This right will last until the day of judgement.” These were the issues he fought for throughout his long life. The doctrine of restitution became more urgent in his later years. In his very last work, a petition to pope Pius V, he asked the pope to excommunicate anyone who said that the war against the Indians was just only because of their idolatry. He urged the pontiff to demand that those bishops, friars, and clergy who have enriched themselves and lived magnificently “make restitution of all the gold, silver, and precious stones they have acquired.”¹⁹

During his retirement, he completed his major work, The History of the Indies. Although the narrative ended in the early 1520s, it presented a story of the conquest of the Caribbean that was coherent, comprehensible, and sad. He minimized the effects of diseases on the decline of the native population, to be sure. But, the weight of the evidence for his argument that the Spaniards were responsible for the destruction of the Indians was massive. It was the experience of the cruelties of the Caribbean encounter that influenced his later political activity and writings. Criticism of the colonists remained unrelieved by any distinctions. A general condemnation of Spaniards seemed unwarranted. Was he not favored at court? Was his influence among the theologians and jurists at the universities of Spain not profound? In America, he must have been aware that he was respected by most of the religious. It was true that the outstanding Franciscan missionary, Fray Toribio de Motolinia, had written a harsh letter about him to Charles V in 1555, but that was in response to Las Casas's criticism of the practice of mass baptisms of native Americans. Franciscans like bishop Zumarraga and Jacobo de Tastera were keen supporters of his missionary methods. The tone of bitterness in his works would suggest that his efforts were solitary and attended by failure. But that conclusion would miss the major significance of his work which was that he created a reform movement which confronted the advocates of militant imperialism in Spain and America. Wherever and whenever the burdens of the labor system and Indian servitude became overwhelming, Las Casas and his supporters challenged the system. Anton de Montesinos and Pedro de Cordoba in the Caribbean, Tomas de San Martin and Domingo de Santo Tomas in Peru, Jacobo de Tastera in Central America, Alonso de la Vera Cruz and Alonso de Zorita in Mexico, Marcos de Niza in the borderlands, and Francisco de Vitoria in Spain were among those who respected Las Casas and supported the cause of Indian rights and peaceful conversion. Las Casas could not be unaware how deep an influence he had. The plan of judge Zorita and the Franciscan Jacinto de San Francisco to pacify and convert the nomadic tribes to the north of Mexico was inspired by Las Casas's successful experiment in Tuzulutlan, Guatemala.²⁰ Zorita corresponded frequently with Las Casas. Indeed, it was Las Casas and the Franciscan Alonso Maldonado de Buendia who presented Zorita's plan to the council of the Indies in 1562. The council was still committed to conquest as the means of pacification and offered faint support. They approved it provided that financial support came out of Zorita's pocket. The plan did not get off the ground then, but when the policy of “war by fire and blood” proved a failure, Zorita's Lascasian plan was later put into effect with some success and would inspire the creation of the mission system during the later Spanish expansion on the American continent.

Another consequence of the reform movement was the struggle to transfer the sixteenth century European system of justice to America, to give it teeth, and to direct colonial society in a more humane way. The use of legal and theological arguments in the debates over treatment of the native peoples seemed at times tiresome and irrelevant. But the intellectual context of Spain and Europe determined the forms of the debate. The European legal system, largely the legacy of the theological culture of the middle ages, was nevertheless an impressive achievement. If the obsession with legality was one aspect of this culture, a relatively broad area of freedom of expression was the other. The issue was to make the system of justice effective. The actions of the conquistadors during the initial conquests of the Caribbean, Mexico, the Yucatan, and Peru made one wonder whether they were constrained by any form of justice. As Vitoria had remarked, there were so many stories of massacres that it would be more appropriate to speak of power than justice.

The observations of Las Casas, Ramon Pane, and Bernardino de Sahagun, among others, showed that native American communities had effective systems of justice of their own. It would certainly have been appropriate and useful had they been allowed to contribute to the system of justice created in America. The insistence of Las Casas, Vera Cruz, and Zorita on the natural rights and liberty of the native communities was meant to preserve many of the features of Indian justice. As Spanish America was drawn more tightly into an imperial system, this part of Las Casas's movement came to an end. In any case, the logic of medieval Christianity with its dogma of superiority over all other religions made it unlikely that it would allow a different system of justice to operate alongside its own. The missionary orders were prepared to allow some aspects of the indigenous cultures to thrive, but not native religions. Like Europeans of that time, native American justice and morality sprang from their religious beliefs. It was easy to see the physical cruelty and death that resulted from slavery, the encomienda, and diseases; few were aware, however, of the cultural death that the native people suffered when their religion was deliberately destroyed.

A clear illustration of the enduring significance of the questions of the Spanish right of conquest and the natural rights of the native people was the Spanish right of conquest of the Philippines in 1571 by Miguel de Legaspi.²¹ The Augustinian friars, led by Andres de Urdaneta, condemned the conquest as unjust. They argued that the two conditions for a just war, authorization from the king and native aggression, did not exist. Phillip II had specifically enjoined Legaspi to secure the friendship of the native communities by peaceful means. The issue of Spanish dominion remained unsettled. The Augustinians and Jesuits came to support Spanish rule over the Philippines on the basis of the papal grants. For the Dominicans, however, as was their history in America, that principle alone was not satisfactory. Under the first bishop, Domingo Salazar (1581), and Miguel de Benavides, the third archbishop of Manila, the Dominicans did not accept the political sovereignty of Spain. They argued that the Spanish Crown was only an instrument of the spiritual power of the pope. The remaining way open for legitimate jurisdiction was the free consent of the natives. This was possible, Benavides stressed, if missionaries were sent to convert the natives by peaceful means. In 1597 Phillip II issued a decree offering restitution of tribute unjustly taken from the native people of the Philippines who were not Christian. The decree asked that the people voluntarily consent to submit to the Crown of Spain.

Consent of the governed, authorization from a duly constituted ruler, protection of the innocent, and the right of evangelization became principles governing the relations between Christian Spain and the non-Christian worlds in the sixteenth century. They represented an early formulation of principles of international relations. Sixteenth-century Spanish political thought resonated with these ideas. It must be remembered, however, that these principles in all likelihood stemmed from the thirteenth century works of Aquinas, Ramon Llull, Ramon Penyafort, and pope Innocent IV, on the one hand, and the expansion of Western Europe on the other. By the middle of the seventeenth century, the question of the Spanish right to conquest was no longer important. Juan de Solorzano y Pereira (1575-1654) published in 1629 and 1639 his volumes on Spain's right to America entitled Disputatio de Indiarum iure. It was a detailed account and analysis of those who questioned Spain's conquest of the Indies. Solorzano did not share their judgment.²² For him, Spain's conquest was justified. Spain had come to have jurisdiction over America by virtue of the papal donation; its dominion was achieved through subsequent occupation. His argument was derived from Roman law and was similarly used to justify ancient Roman conquests. What Solorzano's argument suggested was that the Spanish conquest of America was already consolidated and was not any longer problematical. The theory of natural rights had given way to legal rights obtained by a sufficiently long period of occupation. Solorzano's interests lay more in preserving the legitimacy of the Spanish monarchy's rule over the empire and the civilized legislation it inspired to govern the Americas than in articulating the rights of native peoples.

The central significance of Las Casas was his awareness of the human destructiveness that was taking place and his struggle to put a stop to it. Although he might have exaggerated the responsibility of human beings in the deaths of the native Americans and ignored the role of epidemics, the catastrophic decline of the native population was undeniable and was the context that shaped his sensibility and his politics. He had come to know, love, and sympathize with the native people. He obviously felt that a radical attack on the colonial system could reverse the genocide that was taking place.

Las Casas's writings criticizing the Spanish colonists were used by Spain's enemies as propaganda in the sixteenth-century conflicts between Protestant England and Catholic Spain, and in the struggle of the Protestant Dutch to become independent of Spain.²³ The first English edition of The Very Brief Relation of the Destruction of the West Indies was published in 1583 in London; in 1578, the first Dutch edition. Of greater political consequences were the Latin (1598) and German (1599) editions of the same work published and illustrated in Frankfurt by Jean Theodore and Jean Israel de Bry. These editions carried the message of Spain's cruelty throughout Europe. The Spanish conquest, not Las Casas's struggle for justice, was emphasized in these editions. Conquest, not the struggle for justice, came to define the Spanish legacy in America, at least for the English-speaking world. If the European discovery of America became a major source of interest and inspiration in the first part of the sixteenth century, the schism within Christian Europe that resulted from the Protestant and Catholic reformations created ideological tensions and political conflicts in Europe and America. The political context in Europe explained in part the popularity of Las Casas's works. His critique of Spanish policies and defense of the rights of native Americans might make it appear that his struggle was against Spanish imperial civilization. But that would be to misunderstand him and his work. Placing his hopes for changes in policy on the Spanish monarchy, he remained close to the center of power at court throughout his political life. Through the efforts of his friends and sympathizers at the major universities of Spain, he was able to bring his ideas and causes into the mainstream of Spanish intellectual and political life. The distinction between Las Casas and Spanish civilization in America is questionable. Las Casas's struggle for justice for native Americans in the sixteenth century was also the Spanish struggle for justice. It was equally true, however, that, despite the laws and rules that were won to protect native Americans, their condition did not appreciably improve nor their near extinction significantly come to an end. The self-interest of the powerful colonists in America and the growing sense of the importance of American resources to the Spanish Empire were the dynamics that proved stronger than the laws to control these interests.

Notes

1. Angel Losada, “The Controversy between Sepulveda and Las Casas in the Junta of Valladolid,” in Bartolomé de Las Casas in History, ed. by Juan Friede and Benjamin Keen (DeKalb, Illinois, 1971), 279-307.

2. Las Casas, Doctrina, prologue and selections by A. Yañez (Mexico City, 1982), 33-52. [cited as Doctrina]

3. Juan Gines de Sepulveda, Demócrates Segundo, ed. by Angel Losada (Madrid, 1951).

4. See Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man (Cambridge, 1982), 109-118 for a keen analysis of Sepulveda's presentation.

5. For Las Casas's argument, ibid., 118-145.

6. Las Casas, Apologética Historia, in Doctrina, 19-21.

7. Doctrina, p. 4; there is a new edition of the 1974 translation of the Brevíssima Relación-Las Casas, The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account, (Baltimore, 1992). For a full discussion of this theme, see Lewis Hanke, The First Social Experiments in America (Cambridge, 1935);—, Aristotle and the American Indians (Bloomington, Ind., 1959).

8. Las Casas, Tratado sobre las encomiendas, in Doctrina, 55-83; see Juan Friede, “Las Casas y el movimiento indigenista en España y America en la primera mitad del siglo XVI,” Revista de Historia de América, 34 (1952):339-411.

9. For the most part, the essential structure of the New Laws remained intact. The emperor sent secret orders to the viceroy not to grant new encomiendas. The laws against slavery were not revoked. See Henry Raup Wagner, The Life and Writings of Bartolome de Las Casas (Albuquerque, 1967), 160.

10. Las Casas, Tratado sobre la Esclavitud, in Doctrina, 87-134; See Silvio Zavala, “Bartolomé de Las Casas ante La esclavitud de los Indios,” Cuadernos Americanos, XXV (1966):142-156.

11. Ibid., p. 89; see Pierre Chaunu, “Francisco de Vitoria, Las Casas et la querelle des justes titres,” Bibliothéque d'Humanisme et de Renaissance, XXIX (1967):485-495.

12. See James Muldoon, “John Wyclif and the Rights of the Infidels: The Requerimiento Re-examined,” The Americans, XXXVI (1980):301-316; Lewis Hanke, The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of America (Phil., 1949), 31-36.

13. Las Casas, Avisos y Reglas para los Confesores, in Doctrina, 137-154.

14. Guillermo Lohmann Villena, “La Restitución por Conquistadores y Encomenderos: Un Aspecto de la incidencia Lascasiana en el Peru,” Anuario de Estudios Americanos, XXIII (1966):21-89.

15. L. A. Eguiguren, “Fray Tomás de San Martin,” Mercurio Peruano, 32 (1951):195-204.

16. R. Porras Barrenechea, “Fray Domingo de Santo Tomás,” Comercio, May 12, 1959.

17. Lohmann Villena, p. 36.

18. Las Casas, Memorial al Consejo de Indias, in Doctrina, 157-162; see also Venancio Carro, “Los postulados teológico-juridicos de Bartolome de Las Casas,” in Anuario de Estudios Americanos, XXIII (1966):109-246.

19. Las Casas, Petición a Su Santidad Pio V, in Doctrina, p. 165.

20. Ralph E. Vigil, “Bartolomé de Las Casas, Judge Alonso de Zorita, and the Franciscans. A Collaborative effort for the Spiritual Conquest of the Borderlands,” The Americas, XXXVIII (1981):45-57.

21. J. Gayo Aragón, “The Controversy over justification of the Spanish Rule in the Philippines,” in Studies in Philippine Church History, ed. by Gerald Anderson (Cornell, 1969), 3-21; see also John Leddy Phelan, The Hispanization of the Philippines (Madison, 1959).

22. James Muldoon, “Solorzano's De Indiarum lure: Applying a Medieval Theory of World Order in the Seventeeth Century,” Journal of World History, 2 no. 1 (1991):29-46; see Anthony Pagden, Spanish Imperialism and Political Imagination (New Haven, 1990), p. 34.

23. See Benjamin Keen, “Introduction: Approaches to Las Casas, 1535-1970,” in Bartolomé de Las Casas in History, 3-60. For the debate on Las Casas's role in creating the “Black Legend” of Spain, see Charles Gibson, The Black Legend: Anti-Spanish Attitudes in the Old World and the New, (New York, 1971); see the arguments of Lewis Hanke and Benjamin Keen in Hispanic American Historical Review, 44 (1964):293-340; 49 (1969):703-719; 51 (1971):112-127, 336-355.