CHAPTER II. NATURE OF ENCOMIENDAS RE-STATED-HISTORY OF ENCOMIENDAS-MEANWHILE CORTES HAD GRANTED ENCOMIENDAS - PONCE HA AVING now disengaged the main subject B. XIV. from the various important adjuncts which Ch. 2. beset it, we may proceed, with more ease, to consider the history of the encomienda system, taken strictly by itself. Referring again to what might have been seen, by an observant person, in the Indies at any time within fifty years after the Conquest, he would have been sure to notice certain bands of Indians who were more closely connected together than the slaves, either of ransom or of war, whose fate, up to the year 1542, we have just been tracing. After any conquest in the Indies that was not ferociously mismanaged (as was the case in the Terra-Firma), the Indians remained in the pueblos, or villages. There, according to the theory of encomiendas, quoted above, they were to Nature of live, paying tribute to their encomenderos, who, endas. encomi Ch. 2. services : a branch comienda system. 134 Meaning of "Repartimiento." B. XIV. theoretically, stood in the place of the King, and were to receive this tribute from the Indians, as from his vassals. But such a state of things would ill have suited with the requirements of the Spaniards. Money is the most convenient thing to receive in a civilized community; but in an infant Personal colony, personal services are most in requisition. Accordingly, these are what were at once of the en demanded from the Indians; and, in order that this demand might consist with the maintenance of these Indian pueblos, it was necessary that a portion of the native community should, for certain periods of the year, quit their homes, and, betaking themselves to the service of the Spaniards, work out the tribute for themselves and for the rest of the Indian village. This was called repartimiento.* In the words of the greatest jurist who has written on this subject, ANTONIO DE LEON, "Repartimiento, in New Spain, is that which is made every week of the Indians who are given for mines and works by the judges for that purpose (los Juezes Repartidores), for which the pueblos contribute, throughout twenty weeks of the year, what they call the dobla (a Spanish coin), at the rate of ten Indians for every hundred; and the remainder of the year what they call the sencilla (another Spanish coin), at the rate of two Indians for every hundred. The above rate was for works, and cultivation of land. When it was *This is the second meaning after conquest, by the chief of the word repartimiento in captain, or by the authorities Mexico. The first was the ori- sent from Spain. ginal partition of the Indians Questions arising from "Encomiendas." 135 Ch. 2. for mines, to work at which particular pueblos were B. XIV. set aside, it was a contribution for the whole year, at the rate of four Indians for every hundred."* The encomienda, with this form of repartition attached to it, corresponds to nothing in feudality or vassalage, and may be said to have been a peculiar institution, growing out of the novel circumstances in the New World. The history of the encomienda constitutes the greatest part of the history of the bulk of the people in the New World for many generations. arising institu the enco To any one who has much knowledge of civil life, or of history, it will be obvious how many questions will arise from such a strange and Questions hitherto unheard-of arrangement of labour. What from this distance will these Indians be carried from their peculiar homes? Will there be a sufficient number left tionto provide for the sustenance of the native com- mienda. munity? Will the population of those communities be maintained? How will it be managed that the repartition should be fair? for, if otherwise, the same Indians may be sent over and over again, and, in fact, be different in no respect from slaves. Then, again, these services are to go for í las demas, que llaman de I es la causa, que Repartimiento en aquella tierra, se llama el que se haze cada semana, de los Indios, que se dan para minas í labranças, por los Juezes Repartidores, que ay nombrados en los partidos: para lo qual contribuyen los pueblos; las veinte semanas del LEON, Confirmaciones Reales, año, que llaman de dobla, á parte I, cap. I. razon de diez Indios por ciento, Ch. 2. B. XIV. tribute. Who is to assign the value of the services, or the rate of the tribute? More subtle questions still remain to be considered, if not solved. Shall the tax be a capitation tax, so many pesos for each Indian, or shall it be a certain sum for each pueblo? If the former is adopted, shall the women and children be liable? Shall overwork be allowable, so that the bands of Indians in repartimiento may not only work out their own taxes, and the taxes of their little community, but bring back some small peculium of their own which will render them especially welcome when they return to their friends and families? All these problems, and others which I have not indicated, were eventually worked out by a course of laborious and consistent legislation, to which, I believe, the world has never seen any parallel, and which must have a very considerable place in any history, aiming to be complete, that may hereafter be written, of slavery, or colonization. At the first, everything was as vague in this matter as oppression could desire; and oppression loves vagueness as its favourite element. History of encomiendas resumed In the course of this history it has been seen what was done by the earliest discoverers and conquerors in respect to encomiendas;* and therefore it will only be necessary to begin at the point Conquest of time when Cortes had completed his audacious from the of Mexico. * See ante, vol. 1, b. 2, ch. 2, | pp. 145, 152, 163, 173; b. 3, ch. 1, p. 197; ch. 2, pp. 222, 260; b. 5, ch. 1, p. 296; b. 6, ch. 2, p. 377; b. 8, ch. 1, pp. 468, 482; ch. 2, pp. 504, 514; vol. 2, b. 9, ch. 1, pp. 44, 55 after the Conquest of Mexico. 137 conquest of Mexico. Cortes was a statesman as B. XIV. well as a soldier: he had lived in Cuba, and knew Ch. 2. well the destruction of the Indians which had gone on there, and in the rest of the West India Islands. Moreover, as men are prone to love and magnify anything in which they have been greatly concerned, he was inclined to rate the Mexican Indians much more highly than those of the islands; and, in the first mention that he makes of this subject, the repartition of the Indians, in his letters to Charles the Fifth, he indicates a project, which, if it could have been adopted, would have been the salvation of those parts of the world. He says that, considering the capacity of the Mexican Indians, "it appeared to him a grave thing to compel them to serve the Spaniards in the manner in which those of the other islands had been compelled."* But then the Spanish conquerors must be maintained and re- Original warded; and this necessity he had wished to provide Cortes not for out of the revenues which belonged to the King carried in the Indies. But, afterwards, when he came to effect. consider the great expense which His Majesty had already been put to, the long time the war had lasted, the debts which the Spanish soldiers had contracted, the long time it would be before His Majesty could order anything of the kind which Cortes had at first wished, and, above all, the great importunity of His Majesty's civil servants, and of all the Spaniards (in just or unjust causes "Me parecia cosa grave, por entonces, compelerles á que sirviessen á los Españoles de la manera que los de las otras Islas."-LORENZANA, p. 319. plan of into |