306 The Dominicans learn the Quiché Language.

The Dominican brethren who accompanied Las Casas, and all of whom afterward became celebrated men, were Luis Cancér, Pedro de Angulo, and Rodrigo de Ladrada. These grave and reverend monks might any time in the year 1537 have been found sitting in a little class round the Bishop of Guatemala, an elegant scholar, but whose scholarship was now solely employed to express Christian doctrines in the Utlatecan language, commonly called Quiché. As the chronicler says, "It was a delight to see the bishop, as a master of declensions and conjugations in the Indian tongue, teaching the good fathers of St. Dominic." This prelate afterward published a work in Utlatecan, in the prologue of which he justly says, "It may, perchance, appear to some people a contemptible thing that prelates should be thus engaged in trifling things solely fitted for the teaching of children; but, if the matter be well looked into, it is a baser thing not to abase one's self to these apparent trifles, for such teaching is the marrow' of our holy faith."* The bishop was quite right. It will soon be seen what an important end this study of the language led to; and, I doubt not-indeed, it might almost be proved-that there are territories, neighboring to Guatemala, which would have been desert and barren as the sands of the sea but for the knowledge of the Utlatecan language acquired by these good fathers-an acquisition, too,

* "Por ventura parecerá á alguno cosa digna de menosprecio que los Prelados (los quales por la altura de su dignidad suelen estar ocupados en negocios graves, y de importancia) se ocupen en cosas baxas, y que solamente son coaptadas para la informacion de los niños, aunque, si bien se mira, mas suez y baxa cosa es, no abaxarse á las cosas semejantes, ó por mejor dezir, levantarse, pues que es el tal enseñamiento la medula de nuestra Santa Fé Católica, y de nuestra sagrada Religion."-REMESAL, Hist. de Chiapa y Guatemala, lib. iii., cap. 7.

Important Result of their Study.

307

it must be recollected, not easy or welcome to men of their age* and their habits.

* No contemporary, and, indeed, no subsequent writer, ever speaks of Las Casas as old. He was forty-eight years of age, however, when he entered the Dominican monastery in Hispaniola. He was now in the prime of life for a man of his wonderful powers; that is, he was sixty-two. Fourteen years afterward, in 1550, when he was seventysix years old, his greatest public disputation took place, with the celebrated Doctor Sepulveda. In the year 1556, when he was eighty-two years old, we are informed that he was vigorous in his self-appointed work of Protector of the Indians (“En el de 1556, exercitó grandemente el señor don fray Bartolomé de las Casas, su oficio de padre y protector de los Indios."-REMESAL, lib. x., cap. 24); and he attained the great age of ninety-two, having just completed successfully an arduous business for the colony of Guatemala, which he had come from Valladolid to Madrid to transact.

CHAPTER VI.

66

LAS CASAS AND HIS MONKS OFFER TO CONQUER THE LAND OF WAR."-THEY MAKE THEIR PREPARATIONS FOR THE

ENTERPRISE.

T is not often that in any part of the world mere literature has been more fertile in distinct historical results than in this province of Guatemala, and, indeed, throughout the Indies generally. It happened that, a little before the year 1535, Las Casas had composed a treatise, which, though it was never printed, made a great noise at the time. It was entitled De unico vocationis modo. It was written in Latin, but was translated into Spanish, and so became current, not only among the monks and learned men, but also among the common soldiers and colonists. It consisted of two propositions. The first was, that men were to be brought to Christianity by persuasion; and the second, which seems but a consequence of the first, that without special injury received on the part of the Christians, it was not lawful for them to carry on war against infidels merely as infidels. The treatise, though requiring in parts to be passed quickly over, would, if we may judge by other works of the same author, be interesting even now; and, having close reference to the daily affairs of life in the Indies, must, at the time it was written, have been read with eager and angry attention by the Spanish colonists possessing Indian slaves, whom they had won by their bows and their spears. To gain these slaves they had toiled and

Treatment of Las Casas by the Colonists. 309

bled. During long and harassing marches they had been alternately frozen, parched, and starved; sufferings only to be compensated for, and poorly compensated, by the large droves of captives which they had brought in triumph back with them. We may imagine the indignant manner in which these fierce veterans read what parts they could or would read of this wise and gentle treatise, De unico vocationis modo, written by the great Protector of the Indians, who had now, indeed, emerged to some purpose from his quiet cell in the Dominican monastery.*

But the conquerors were not only indignant at the doctrines propounded in this treatise of Las Casas; they laughed at his theories—that mocking laugh of the so-called practical men—a kind of laugh well known to all those who have attempted to do any new and good thing. "Try it," they said; "try, with words only and sacred exhortations, to bring the Indians to the true faith;" and Las Casas, who never said the thing he did not mean to abide by, took them at their word, and said he would try it.

Now there was a neighboring province called Tuzulutlan, which, among the Spanish inhabitants of Guatemala, had the ill name of the Tierra de Guerra, "The Land of War." This district was a terror to them, and the people in it were a "phantom of terror'

* The following is an eloquent description of the evils of war, which occurs in this treatise, and is quoted by REMESAL: "Mæret domus metu, luctu, et quærimoniis; lamentis complentur omnia. Fugiunt artes opificum. Pauperibus, aut ad jejunandum aut ad impias confugiendum est artes. Divites aut ereptas deplorant facultates, aut timent relictis, utroque modo miserrimi. Virgines, aut nullæ aut tristes, et funestæ nuptiæ. Desolatæ matronæ domi sterilescunt. Silent leges, ridetur humanitas, nullum habet locum æquitas. Religio ludibrio est, sacri et profani nullum omnino discrimen."-REMESAL, Hist. de Chiapa y Guatemala, lib. iii., cap. 9.

310

"The Land of War."

to the Spaniards. Thrice they had attempted to penetrate this land; thrice they had returned defeated, with their hands up to their heads (las manos en la cabeça). Such is the statement of REMESAL. The land, therefore, was much more difficult to penetrate than if no Spaniard had ever been there, being an ir

ritated country, not merely an untried one.

With all our knowledge hitherto acquired of Las Casas, we can not but feel timid and apprehensive as to the result of this bold undertaking of his. We are not left in doubt as to the magnitude of the enterprise. The story is no monkish narrative to magnify the merits of the writer's order. There was a formal compact entered