Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings Part 18

The Pearl Coast

Paria, and the Island of Trinidad

1. Great and notorious have been the destruction that the Spaniards have worked along the Coast of Paria, (97) extending for two hundred leagues as far as the Gulf of Venezuela, a.s.sa.s.sinating the inhabitants and capturing as many as they could alive, to sell them as slaves.

2.2. They frequently took them by violating their pledged word and friendship, the Spaniards failing to keep faith, while the Indians received them in their houses, like fathers receive their children, giving them all they possessed and serving them to the best of their ability.

3.3. Certainly it would not be easy to relate, or describe minutely the variety and number of the injustices, wrongs, oppressions, and injury practised upon the people of this coast by the Spaniards from the year 1510 up to the present day. I will relate but two or three instances from which the villany and number of the others, worthy of punishment by every torment and fire may be judged.

4.4. In the island of Trinidad which joins the continent at Paria, and is much larger and more prosperous than Sicily, there are as good and virtuous people as in all the Indies; an a.s.sa.s.sin going there in the year 1516, with sixty or seventy other habitual robbers, gave the Indians to understand that they had come to dwell and live in that island along with them.

5.5. The Indians received them as though they were children of their own flesh and blood, the lords and their subjects serving them with the greatest affection and joy, bringing them every day double the amount of food required; for it is the usual disposition and liberality of all the Indians of this new world to give the Spaniards in excess of all they need and as much as they themselves possess.

6.6. In accordance with the Spaniards' wish, they built one great house of timber, where all might live: they needed no more than one in order to carry out what they had in mind and afterwards accomplished.

7.7. When they were putting the straw over the timbers and had covered about the height of two paces so that those inside no longer saw those without, the Spaniards, under pretence of hurrying on the completion of the house, induced many people to go inside; meanwhile they divided, some surrounding the house outside, with their weapons ready for the Indians who should come out, and the others stationing themselves inside the house. The latter drew their swords and threatening the naked Indians with death if they moved, they began to bind them, while some who ran out seeking to escape were cut to pieces with swords.

8.8. Some who got out, wounded, and others sound, joined with one or two hundred natives who had not entered the house, and arming themselves with bows and arrows they retired to another house of the community's to defend themselves; while they defended the door however, the Spaniards set fire to the house, and burnt them alive; they then took the prey they had captured, amounting to perhaps a hundred and eighty or two hundred men, and carried them bound to their ship. Hoisting sail they departed for the island of San Juan, where they sold one half as slaves, and afterwards to Hispaniola, where they sold the remainder.

9.9. When I at the time reproved the captain in the same island of San Juan for such infamous treachery and malice, he replied "Go to, Senor, thus was I commanded, and instructions were given me by those who sent me, that if I could not capture them in war, I should take them under pretext of peace."

10.10. And in truth he told me that in all his life he had found neither father nor mother, if not in the island of Trinidad; such were the good services the Indians had rendered him. This he said to his greater shame and the aggravation of his sins.

11.11. Numberless times have they done these things on this continent, capturing people and making them slaves under promise of safe conduct. Let it be seen what sort of acts these are: and whether those Indians taken in such a way, are justly made slaves.

12.12. Another time the friars of our Order of St. Dominic determined to go and preach to those people and convert them, for they were without the hope or the light of doctrine by which to save their souls, as they still are to-day in the Indies; they sent a monk, who was a theological scholar of great virtue and sanct.i.ty, accompanied by a serving friar as his companion; his object was to see the country, become intimate with the people, and seek convenient sites to build monasteries.

13.13. When the monks arrived, the Indians received them as angels from heaven, and listened with great affection, attention, and joy to those words which they could make them understand more by signs than speech, as they did not know the language.

14.14. It happened that after the departure of the vessel that had brought the monks, another ship arrived there; the Spaniards on board of it practising their infernal custom, deceitfully enticed the lord of that land, named Don Alonso, on board without the monks perceiving it; either the friars or some other Spaniards, had given him this name, for the Indians like and desire Christian names and at once ask to have them, even before they know enough to be baptised. So they deceived the said Don Alonso, to make him come aboard their ship, with his wife and certain other persons, by telling him they would prepare a feast there for him.

15.15. At last seventeen persons went on board with the lord and his wife, confident that as the monks were in the country, out of respect for them, the Spaniards would not do anything wicked; because otherwise they would not have trusted them. Once the Indians were on the ship, the traitors set sail and were off to Hispaniola, where they sold them for slaves.

16.16. On seeing their lord and his wife carried off, all the Indians came to the friars intending to kill them. The friars were like to die for sorrow on beholding such great villany, and it may be believed they would have rather given their lives than that such injustice should have been done; especially as it impeded those souls from ever hearing or believing the word of G.o.d.

17.17. They called the Indians as best they could and told them that by the first ship that pa.s.sed there, they would write to Hispaniola and bring about the restoration of their lord and of the others who were with him. For the greater confirmation of the d.a.m.nation of those who were governing, G.o.d caused a ship to come at once to hand. The monks wrote to their brethren in Hispaniola lamenting and protesting repeatedly. The auditors never would do justice, because they themselves had divided a share of the Indians so barbarously and unjustly carried off by the tyrants.

18.18. The two monks who had promised the Indians that their lord, Don Alonso, together with the others, should return in four months'

time, seeing that they did not come, neither in four, nor in eight months prepared for death, and to give their lives to those to whom they had consecrated them before they left. And so the Indians took vengeance upon them, killing them justly, although they were innocent: because it was believed that the monks had been the cause of that treachery, and because they saw that what had been faithfully promised them within four months was not fulfilled; and also because up to that time and up to the present day they neither knew, nor know, that there is a difference between the friars and the Spanish tyrants, bandits, and a.s.sa.s.sins of all that country.

19.19. The blessed friars suffered unjustly, and by that injustice there is no doubt that, according to our holy faith, they are true martyrs, and reign blissfully to-day with G.o.d in the heavens; for they were sent to that land under obedience, and their intention was to preach and spread the holy faith, to save all those souls and to suffer every kind of affliction and death that might be offered them for Jesus Christ crucified.

20.20. Another time, through the great tyranny and execrable works of the wicked Spaniards, the Indians killed two monks of St. Dominic and one of St. Francis, of which I myself am a witness, for I escaped the same death by divine miracle; so serious and horrible was the case I might have much to say that would amaze mankind, but on account of the length of the narration I will not relate it here nor until the time comes. The last day will disclose all more clearly, for G.o.d will then avenge such horrible and abominable outrages as are done in the Indies by those who bear the name of Christians.

21.21. Another time there was a town in the provinces called Capo della Codera, the lord of which was called Nigoroto; this is either a personal name or else one common to all the lords of that country.

22.22. He was so kind and his people so virtuous, that when the Spanish ships pa.s.sed there the Spaniards found comforts, provisions, rest, and every consolation and refreshment, and many did he deliver from death, who, wasted with hunger, took refuge there from other provinces where they had a.s.sa.s.sinated, and practised evil and tyranny. He gave them food and sent them safe to the Pearl Island [Cubagua], where some Christians dwelt, whom he could have slain, without any one knowing it, and did not: all the Christians finally called Nigoroto's town the mansion and home of everybody.

23.23. An ill-starred tyrant deliberated within himself to attack this place, as the people felt so safe: so he went there with a ship and invited many people to come on board, as they were used to, trusting the Spaniards. When many men, women, and children were gathered in the ship, he set sail and came to the island of San Juan, where he sold them all as slaves. And I arrived just then at the said island and saw that tyrant and heard what he had done.

24.24. He left all that country ruined; and all those Spanish tyrants, who robbed and a.s.sa.s.sinated along those coasts took it ill, and detested so dreadful a deed because they lost the asylum and dwelling place they had had there as though in their own houses.

25.25. To abbreviate, I omit the narration of the tremendous wickedness and fearful deeds that have been committed, and are committed to-day in these countries.

26.26. They have taken more than two million ruined souls from that populous seacoast to the island of Hispaniola, and to that of San Juan, where they have likewise caused their death in the mines and other works, of which there were many, as has been said above. And it excites great compa.s.sion and sorrow to see all that most delightful coast deserted and depopulated.

27.27. It is certainly true, that never does a ship sail loaded with kidnapped and ruined Indians (as I have told) without the third part of those that embarked, being thrown dead into the sea, besides those that they kill in effecting their capture.

28.28. The reason of this is, that as they need many men to accomplish their aim of making more money from a greater number of slaves, they carry but little food and water, so as to save expense to the tyrants, who call themselves privateers; they have enough for only a few more people than the Spaniards who man the ships to make the raids; as these miserable Indians are in want and die of hunger and thirst, the remedy is to throw them in the sea.

29.29. And in truth, one of them told me, that from the Lucayan Islands, where very great havoc of this sort was made, to the Island of Hispaniola, which is more than sixty or seventy leagues, a ship is supposed to have gone without compa.s.s or nautical chart, finding its course by the trail of dead Indians who had been thrown out of ships and left in the sea.

30.30. When they are afterwards disembarked at the island where they are taken to be sold, it is enough to break the heart of whomsoever has some spark of compa.s.sion to see naked, starving children, old people, men, and women falling, faint from hunger.

31.31. They then divide them like so many lambs, the fathers separated from the children, and the wives from the husbands, making droves of ten or twenty persons and casting lots for them, so that each of the unhappy privateers who contributed to fit out a fleet of two or three vessels, and the tyrant villains who go to capture and prey upon the natives in their homes, receives his share.

32.32. And when the lot falls on a drove in which there is some old or ill person, the tyrant who gets it, says: "Why in the devil do you give this old man to me? That I shall bury him? Why should I take this ill one? To nurse him?" It may be seen how the Spaniards despise the Indians and whether they carry out the precept of divine love to one's neighbour, upon which rest the law and the prophets.

33.33. The tyranny exercised by the Spaniards upon the Indians in fishing pearls, is as cruel, and reprehensible a thing as there can be in the world. Upon the land there is no life so infernal and hopeless as to be compared to it, although that of digging gold in the mines is the hardest and worst.

34.34. They let them down into the sea three and four and five fathoms deep, from the morning till sunset. They are always swimming under water without respite, gathering the oysters, in which the pearls grow.

35.35. They come up to breathe bringing little nets full of them; there is a hangman Spaniard in a boat and if they linger resting, he beats them with his fists, and, taking them by the hair, throws them in the water to go on fishing.

36.36. Their food is fish and the fish that contain the pearls, and a little cazabi or maize bread, which are the kinds of native bread: the one gives very little sustenance and the other is very difficult to make, so with such food they are never sufficiently nourished.

Instead of giving them beds at night, they put them in stocks on the ground, to prevent them from escaping.

37.37. Many times the Indians throw themselves into the sea while fishing or hunting pearls and never come up again, because dolphins and sharks, which are two kinds of very cruel sea animals that swallow a man whole, kill and eat them.

38.38. From this it may be seen, whether the Spaniards who thus seek profit from the pearls, observe the divine precepts of love to G.o.d and one's neighbour; out of avarice, they put their fellow creatures in danger of death to the body and also to the soul; because they die without faith and without sacraments.

39.39. They lead the Indians such a wretched life that they ruin and waste them in a few days; for it is impossible for men to live much under water without respiration, especially because the cold of the water penetrates their bodies and so they generally all die from haemorrhages, oppression of the chest caused by staying such long stretches of time without breathing; and from dysentery caused by the frigidity.

40.40. Their hair, which is by nature black, changes to an ashen colour like the skin of seals, and nitre comes out from their shoulders so that they resemble human monsters of some species.

41.41. With this insupportable toil, or rather, infernal trade, the Spaniards completed the destruction of all the Indians of the Lucayan Islands who were there when they set themselves to making these gains; each one was worth fifty and a hundred crowns, and they were sold publicly, although it had been prohibited by the magistrates themselves; it was even more unjust elsewhere for the Lucayans were great swimmers. They have caused the death of numberless others here, from other provinces, and other regions.

The Yuyapari River

On a river called the Yuyapari, which flows for more than two hundred leagues through the province of Paria, a wretched tyrant(98) sailed a great distance in the year 1539, accompanied by four hundred or more men; and he did very great slaughter, burning alive and putting to the sword numberless innocent and inoffensive people who were in their towns or houses, unsuspicious of danger; and he left immense tracts of country burnt, terrorized, and the inhabitants scattered. He finally died a bad death and his fleet was dispersed. Other tyrants succeeded him and continued this wickedness and tyranny: and to-day they go through those regions destroying, killing, and sending to h.e.l.l those souls that were redeemed by the son of G.o.d with His own blood.

The Kingdom of Venezuela

1. The Spaniards have always exercised diligent care to hide the truth from our lord the King about injuries and losses to G.o.d, to human souls, and to his State; and in the year 1526, he was deceived and perniciously persuaded into giving and conceding to some German merchants, the great kingdom of Venezuela which is much larger than all Spain; the entire management of the government and all jurisdiction were conceded under a certain agreement and compact, or condition that was made with them. (99) 2.2. These men invaded these countries with a force of three hundred or more and found the people the same gentle lambs, (and much more so), as they usually find them everywhere in the Indies before the Spaniards injure them.

3.3. More cruel beyond comparison than any of the other tyrants we have told of, was their invasion; and more irrational and furious were they than the cruellest tigers, or raging wolves and lions. Their liberty of action was the greater because they held all the jurisdiction of the country; with greater eagerness and blind greediness of avarice, and with ways and arts for stealing and acc.u.mulating gold and silver more exquisite than their predecessors, they abandoned all fear of G.o.d and the King and all shame of men, forgetting that they were mortal beings.

4.4. These devils incarnate have devastated, destroyed, and depopulated more than four hundred leagues of most delightful country containing large and marvellous provinces, valleys extending for forty leagues, pleasant regions, very large towns, most rich in gold.

5.5. They have killed and entirely cut to pieces divers large nations and destroyed many languages, so that not a person who speaks them remains, except a few, who have hidden in caverns and in the bowels of the earth to escape from the pestilential sword of the foreigners.

66. They have killed, destroyed, and sent to h.e.l.l, (according to my belief), more than four or five millions of those innocent races by means of various strange and new kinds of cruel iniquity and impiety; nor do they, at the present day, cease sending them there.

7.7. I will relate no more than three or four instances of the endless injustice, outrages, and slaughter they have done, and are doing to-day; it may be imagined from these what they must have done to accomplish the great destruction and depopulation we have described.

8.8. They took the supreme lord of all the province, putting him to torture, for no other reason than to obtain his gold. He escaped and fled to the mountains, where he remained in hiding amongst the rocks, with his enraged and terrified people. The Spaniards attacked them in their search for him; they recaptured him and, after cruel slaughter, they sold at auction all whom they took alive.

9.9. Before they captured that ruler, they had been received in many, nay in all the provinces, wherever they went, with singing and dances and many gifts of large quant.i.ties of gold; the payment they made the Indians was to put them to the sword and cut them to pieces in order to terrorise the whole country.

10.10. Once, when the inhabitants had come out to meet him in the aforesaid way, the tyrant German captain put a great number of people into a large straw louse and cut them to pieces. As the house had some beams at the top and many climbed up to escape from the b.l.o.o.d.y hands and swords of those men or pitiless beasts, this infernal man caused fire to be set to the house; thus all who remained were burnt alive. This action caused the depopulation of a great number of towns as all the people fled to the mountains where they hoped to be safe.

11.11. They came to another large province on the borders of the province and kingdom of Santa Marta, where they found the Indians in their towns and houses, peaceably occupied with their affairs. They stayed with them a long time, eating their substance while the Indians served them as though it were their duty to give them life and succour; they bore with their continual oppressions and usual exactions, which are intolerable, for one parasite Spaniard eats as much in one day as would be sufficient for an Indian household of ten persons for a month.

12.12. During this time, the Indians spontaneously gave them great quant.i.ties of gold, besides the best of treatment. At last when the tyrants wished to depart, they determined to repay their hospitality in this following manner.

13.13. The German governor, who was a tyrant and, for what we know also a heretic-for he never attends ma.s.s neither does he let many others go, besides which, other signs mark him as a Lutheran,-ordered his men to capture all the Indians they could, with their wives and children, and to confine them in a large yard or wooden enclosure prepared for the purpose; he then announced that whoever wished to go out and be free, must ransom himself according to the will of the iniquitous governor, giving so much gold for himself, so much for his wife and for each of his children; and to force them the more, he commanded that nothing whatever should be given them to eat, until they brought him the gold he demanded as ransom.

14.14. Many who were able, sent to their houses for gold and redeemed themselves. They were set free, and returned to their occupations and to their houses to provide themselves with the necessaries of life. The tyrant sent certain villainous Spanish thieves to recapture these miserable Indians, who had once ransomed themselves; they brought them back to the enclosure and tortured them with hunger and thirst to make them ransom themselves again.

15.15. Many who were captured were ransomed two and three times. Others who could not, because they had given all the gold they possessed and had not enough left, he left languishing in the enclosure till they died of hunger.

16.16. By this deed, he left ruined, desolate, and depopulated, a most populous province most rich in gold, which has a valley of forty leagues, where he burnt a town that had a thousand houses.

17.17. This infernal tyrant determined to go inland, as he eagerly desired to discover the h.e.l.l of Peru in those parts. To make this unhappy journey, he, and the others brought numberless Indians, chained to one another, carrying loads of sixty, and seventy pounds each.

18.18. If one tired, or fainted from hunger, fatigue, and weakness, they at once cut off his head at the collar of the chain so as not to stop to loosen the others in the line; and the head fell to one side and the body to the other, and they distributed his load among the other bearers.

1919. To tell of the provinces he destroyed, the towns, and places he burnt (for all the houses are built of straw)-the people he killed, the cruelty he displayed in the several ma.s.sacres during this journey, would make an incredible and terrifying story, but it would be true, nevertheless.

20.20. These journeys were afterwards undertaken by other tyrants who followed in the same Venezuela, and others from the province of Santa Marta, animated by the same holy intention of discovering this holy house of gold in Peru; and they found all the country for more than two hundred leagues, so much burnt, depopulated, and deserted, from formerly being most populous and prosperous, as has been said, that though they themselves were cruel tyrants, they marvelled and were horrified to behold the traces of such lamentable devastation.

21.21. Many witnesses have proved these things before the chancellor of the exchequer of the India Council and the proofs are in the possession of the same Council but they have never burnt alive any of these nefarious tyrants.

22.22. But what has been proven is as nothing compared to the ma.s.sacres and great wickedness that have been committed, because all the officers of justice in the Indies are so mortally blind that they do not investigate the crimes, destruction, and slaughter that have been, and are to-day wrought by all the tyrants of the Indies, beyond declaring that as such and such a one has used cruelty towards the Indians, the King's revenue has lost so many thousand crowns; they are satisfied with little proof, and that of a very general and confused character.

23.23. And even this they do not verify, nor make it as clear as they should; for if they did their duty to G.o.d and the king, they would discover that the said German tyrants have robbed the king of more than three million crowns' worth of gold, because that province of Venezuela, with the others they have ruined, devastated, and depopulated for an extent of more than four hundred leagues, (as I have said) was the most prosperous, the richest in gold, and the most populous of the universe.

24.24. During the sixteen years those tyrants, enemies of G.o.d, devastated it, they have wasted and caused the loss of more than two millions of revenue that the king of Spain would have drawn from that kingdom. Nor is there hope of repairing this damage between now and the end of the world, unless G.o.d, through a miracle, should resuscitate so many million persons.

25.25. These are the temporal injuries to the king. It would be well to consider what, and how many are the injuries, the dishonour, blasphemies, and insults to G.o.d and His law, and with what will be requited so many numberless souls, burning in h.e.l.l, because of the avarice and cruelty of these tyrant animals or Germans. (100) 26.26. To sum up this wickedness and ferocity, I will only say that from the day the Germans entered the country till the present time, that is in these sixteen years, the Indians they have transported in their ships amount to more than a million who were sold as slaves in Santa Marta, Hispaniola, Jamaica, and the island of San Juan.

27.27. And even now, in the year 1542, the traffic continues, for the royal Audiencia of Hispaniola dissembled-nay favoured this and all the other numberless acts of tyranny and destruction done along all that coast of the continent, which is more than four hundred leagues from Venezuela to Santa Marta, and is under their jurisdiction, though they could have prevented and corrected them.

28.28. There has been no other reason to make slaves of all these Indians except the perverse, blind, obstinate will of these most avaricious tyrants, and to satisfy their insatiable avarice for money; just as all the others have always done everywhere in the Indies, taking those lambs and sheep away from their houses, their wives, and their children in the said cruel and wicked ways, marking them with the king's brand to sell them as slaves.

The Provinces of that Part of the Continent which is Called Florida

1. These provinces(101) have been visited at divers times since the year 1510 or 1511 by three tyrants who imitated the deeds done by the others, and also by two of them in other parts of the Indies seeking to advance to a degree disproportioned to their merit, at the cost of the blood and destruction of their fellow creatures.

2.2. And all three died a bad death, and their families and properties established in human blood, perished, for I am witness of all three, whose very memory is already as extinct in the world as though they had never lived.

3.3. The infamy and horror of their names scandalised all the land because of some ma.s.sacres they perpetrated: these were not many, however, for G.o.d killed them before they did more, for He had reserved till that hour the punishment for the wickedness that I know and saw they committed in other parts of the Indies.