Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 2 (of 8) / Spanish Explorations and Settlements in America from the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Century Papyras Classics

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Chapter 17

Critical Essay on the Sources of Information

THE subject of this chapter is so nearly exclusively concerned with the personal history, the agency, and the missionary work of Las Casas, both in the New World and at the Court of Spain, that we are rather to welcome than to regret the fact that he is almost our sole authority for the statements and incidents with which we have had to deal.

Giving due allowance to what has already been sufficiently recognized as his intensity of spirit, his wildness of imagination, and his enormous overstatement in his enumeration of the victims of Spanish cruelty, he must be regarded as the best authority we could have for the use which he serves to us. Free as he was from all selfish and sinister motives, even the daring assurance with which he speaks out before the monarch and his councillors, and prints on his titlepages the round numbers of these victims, prompts us to give full credit to his testimony on other matters, even if we substitute thousands in place of millions. As to the forms and aggravations of the cruel methods in which the Spaniards dealt with the natives, the recklessness and ingenuity of the work of depopulation,—which was as naturally the consequence of the enslaving of the Indians as of their indiscriminate slaughter,—Las Casas’ revelations seem to have passed unchallenged by even his most virulent enemies.

Sepulveda may be received by us as the representative alike in spirit and in argument of the opposition to Las Casas. He was an acute and able disputant, and would readily have availed himself of any weak points in the positions of the apostle. It is observable that, instead of assailing even the vehement and exaggerated charges alleged by Las Casas against the Spanish marauders for their cruelty, he rather spends his force upon the maintenance of the abstract rights of Christian champions over the heathen and their territory. The Papal and the Royal prerogatives were, in his view, of such supreme and sweeping account in the controversy, as to cover all the incidental consequences of establishing them. He seemed to argue that heathens and heathenism invited and justified conquest by any method, however ruthless; that the rights of the Papacy and of Christian monarchs would be perilled by allowing any regards of sentiment or humanity to stand in the way of their assertion; and that even the sacred duty of conversion was to be deferred till war and tyranny had obtained the absolute mastery over the natives.

The eight years spent by Las Casas in retirement in the Dominican convent at San Domingo were used by him in study and meditation. His writings prove, in their references and quotations from the classics, as well as from Scripture, that his range was wide, and that his mind was invigorated by this training.

AUTOGRAPH OF LAS CASAS.

In 1552-1553, at Seville, Las Casas printed a series of nine tracts, which are the principal source of our information in relation to his allegations against the Spanish oppressors of the Indians. It is only necessary to refer the reader to the bibliographies for the full titles of these tracts, of which we simply quote enough for their identification, while we cite them in the order in which they seem to have been composed, following in this the extensive Note which Field has given in his Indian Bibliography:—

1. Breuissima relacion de la destruycion de las Indias ... año 1552; 50 unnumbered leaves.

The series of tracts is usually cited by this title, which is that of the first tract, for there is no general printed designation of the collection. Four folios appended to this, but always reckoned as a distinct tract, are called,—

2. Lo que se sigue es vn pedaço de vna carta, etc. It records the observations of a Spanish traveller upon the enormities practised on the natives.

3. Entre los remedios ... para reformaciō de las Indias; 1552; 53 unnumbered leaves. It gives the eighth of the proposed remedies, assigning twenty reasons against the enslaving of the natives.

4. Aqui se cōtienē vnos auisos y reglas para los confessores, etc; 1552; 16 unnumbered leaves. It gives the rules for the confessors of his bishopric of Chiapa to deny the offices of the Church to such as held repartimientos.

5. Aqui se contiene vna disputa ... entre el obispo ... y el doctor Gines de Sepulveda; 1552; 61 unnumbered leaves. This strong enunciation of Las Casas’ convictions grew out of his controversy with Sepulveda. It contains, first, a summary by Domingo de Soto of the differences between the two disputants; second, the arguments of Sepulveda; and third, the replies of Las Casas,—twelve in all.

6. Este es vn tratado ... sobre la materia de los Yndios, que se han hecho en ellas esclauos; 1552; 36 unnumbered leaves. This contains reasons and judicial authorities on the question of the restitution of the natives to freedom.

7. Aqui se cōtienē treynta proposiciones ...; 1552; 10 leaves. These are the Propositions, mentioned on a preceding page, as Las Casas’ reply to those who objected to the rigor of his rules for his confessors.

8. Principia quedā ex quibus procedendum, etc; 1552; 10 leaves. This gives the principles on which he conducts his defence of the rights of the natives.

9. Tratado cōprobatorio del imperio soberano, etc.; 80 unnumbered leaves. The title-date is 1552, but that in the colophon is 1553. The purpose is “to prove the sovereign empire and universal dominion by which the kings of Castile and Leon hold the West Indies.”

Complete sets of these tracts have become very rare, though it is not uncommon to find, in current catalogues, single copies of some of those less scarce.

In 1571, five years after Las Casas’ death, what is sometimes called a tenth part was printed at Frankfort, under the title of Explicatio questionis utrum Reges vel Principes jure aliquo.... Cives ac subditos a regia corona alienare? This further showing of the arguments of Las Casas is even rarer than its predecessors. Its authorship, without much reason, has been sometimes denied. It is translated, however, in Llorente’s edition, as is also a letter of Las Casas which he wrote in 1555 to the Archbishop of Toledo, protesting against the contemplated sale of Encomiendas in perpetuity, which, being communicated to the King, led to the prohibition of the plan.

In 1854 Henry Stevens printed, in a style corresponding to that of the tracts of 1552, a series of six papers from original manuscripts in his possession, interesting as contributions to the history of Las Casas and his work; and there is also a letter of Las Casas in the volume a few years since printed by the Spanish Government as Cartas de Indias. There is an enumeration of thirteen other treatises, noted as still in manuscript, which is to be found in Sabin’s Dictionary or in his separate Works of Las Casas; but Mr. Field is inclined for one reason or another to reduce the number to five, in addition to the two which were published by Llorente. There are also two manuscripts recorded in the Carter-Brown Catalogue.

The most labored of Las Casas’ books was his Historia de las Indias,—the original manuscript of which is still preserved, according to Helps, in the library of the Academy of History at Madrid. Las Casas began this work while in his convent in 1527, and seems to have worked upon it, without finishing it, up to 1561. It has all the fervor and vigor of his nature; and so far as it is the result of his own observation, its character is unimpeachable. It is in large part, as Helps has remarked, autobiographic; but it does not bring the story down later than 1520. Its style is characteristically rambling and awkward, and more or less confused with extraneous learning, the result of his convent studies, and interjected with his usual bursts of a somewhat tiresome indignation. Outside of his own knowledge he had large resources in documents, of which we have no present knowledge. He seems to have had a prescience of the feelings in his countrymen which would long keep the manuscript from the printing-office, for he left instructions at his death that no one should use it for forty years. The injunction did not prevent Herrera having access to it; and when this latter historian published his book in 1601, the world got a large part of Las Casas’ work,—much of it copied by Herrera verbatim,—but extracted in such a way that Las Casas could have none of his proper effect in ameliorating the condition of the Indians and exposing the cruelty of their oppression. In this way Las Casas remained too long eclipsed, as Irving says, by his copyist. Notwithstanding the publication of the book was prohibited, various manuscript copies got abroad, and every reputable historian of the Spanish rule has made use of Las Casas’ labors. Finally, the Royal Academy of History at Madrid undertook the revision of the manuscript; but that body was deterred from putting their revision on the press by the sentiments, which Spanish scholars had always felt, adverse to making public so intense an arraignment of their countrymen. At last, however, in 1875-1876, the Academy finally printed it in five volumes. The Historia was of course not included, nor were two of the tracts of the issues of 1552 (nos. 4 and 8) embraced, in the edition of Las Casas’ Obras which Llorente issued in Paris in 1822 in the original Spanish, and also in the same year in a French translation, Œuvres de Las Casas. This work is dedicated “Au modèle des virtues héréditaires, A. M. le Comte de las Casas.” Sufficient recognition has been made in the preceding narrative of this work of Llorente. As a Spaniard by birth, and a scholar well read in the historical literature of his own country, as one trained and exercised in the priestly office, though he had become more or less of a heretic, and as a most ardent admirer of the virtues and the heroic services of the great Apostle to the Indians, he had the attainments, qualifications, and motives for discharging with ability and fidelity the biographical and editorial task which he undertook. It is evident from his pages that he devoted conscientious labor in investigation, and a purpose of strict impartiality to its discharge. He is not an undiscriminating eulogist of Las Casas, but he penetrates with a true sympathetic admiration to the noble unselfishness and the sublime constancy of this sole champion of righteousness against powerful forces of iniquity.

The number of versions of all or of part of the series of the 1552 tracts into other languages strikingly indicates the interest which they created and the effect which they produced throughout Europe. None of the nations showed more eagerness to make public these accusations against the Spaniards by one of their own number, than the Flemings and Dutch. The earliest of all the translations, and one of the rarest of these publications, is the version of the first tract, with parts of others, which appeared in the dialect of Brabant, in 1578,—the precursor of a long series of such testimonies, used to incite the Netherlanders against the Spanish rule. The French came next with their Tyrannies et cruautéz des Espagnols, published at Antwerp in 1579, in which the translator, Jacques de Miggrode, softened the horrors of the story with a due regard for his Spanish neighbors. A somewhat bolder venture was a new version, not from the originals, but from the Dutch translation, and set out with all the horrors of De Bry’s seventeen engravings, which was supplied to the French market with an Amsterdam imprint in 1620. It is a distorted patchwork of parts of the three of the 1552 tracts. In a brief preface, the translator says that the part relating to the Indies is derived from the original, printed at Seville by Sebastian Trugillo in 1552, the writer “being Las Casas, who seems to be a holy man and a Catholic.” There were still other French versions, printed both in France and in Holland. The earliest English translation is a version signed by M. M. S., entitled The Spanish Colonie, or Briefe Chronicle of the Acts and Gestes of the Spaniardes in the West Indies, called the Newe Worlde, for the Space of XL. Yeeres, issued in London in 1583. The best-known of the English versions is The Tears of the Indians, “made English by J. P.,” and printed in London in 1656. “J. P.” is John Phillips, a nephew of John Milton. His little book, which contains a terse translation of Las Casas’s “Cruelty,” etc., without his controversy with Sepulveda, is dedicated to Oliver Cromwell. It is prefaced by a glowing appeal “To all true Englishmen,” which rehearses the proud position they hold in history for religion, liberty, and human rights, and denounces the Spaniards as “a Proud, Deceitful, Cruel, and Treacherous Nation, whose chiefest Aim hath been the Conquest of this Land,” etc., closing with a call upon them to aid the Protector in the threatened contest for the West Indies.

While Phillips places the number of the slaughtered Indians at twenty millions, these are reckoned at forty millions by the editor of another English version, based upon the French Tyrannies et cruautéz, which was printed at London, in 1699, as A Relation of the First Voyages and Discoveries made by the Spaniards in America. The earliest German edition appeared, in 1597, as Newe Welt: warhafftige Anzeigung der Hispanier grewlichen ... Tyranney. The Latin edition appeared at Frankfort, in 1598, as Narratio regionum Indicarvm per Hispanos qvosdam deuastatarum verissima. This Latin translation has a brief introduction, mainly a quotation from Lipsius, commenting on these atrocities. The version is spirited and faithful, covering the narrative of Las Casas and his discussion with Sepulveda. The engravings by De Bry are ghastly and revolting, and present all too faithfully the shocking enormities related in the text. It is a fearful parody of deception and truth which introduces a hooded friar as holding a crucifix before the eyes of one under torment by fire or mutilation. We can scarcely regret that the circumstances under which the indiscriminate slaughter was waged but rarely allowed of this desecration of a sacred symbol. The artist has overdrawn his subjects in delineating heaps of richly wrought and chased vessels as brought by the hounded victims to appease their tormentors.

To close this list of translations, it is only necessary to refer to the sundry ways in which Las Casas was helped to create an influence in Italy, the Italian text in these publications usually accompanying the Spanish.