114 Law and Morality Abroad (to ca. ad 1550)wished. Th ey were then called upon to “acknowledge the Church as the
ruler and superior of the whole world” and the Spanish monarchs as their
“lords and kings” and to permit Christian clerics to preach the faith. Th ey
were expressly assured that they would not be compelled to convert to
Christianity against their own wishes. But they were required to acknowl-
edge their po liti cal subjection to their new sovereign. If they refused (the
Indians were told), the Spanish would “forcefully enter into your country
and... make war against you... and... subject you to the yoke and obedi-
ence of the Church” and of the Spanish monarchs. Slavery and confi scation
of property would follow. A notary was to be present to record in writing
that the requerimiento had been duly issued.
Th e fi rst recorded employment of the requerimiento in the fi eld was in
1514 on the Ca rib be an coast of what is now Colombia. It appears to have
been taken fairly lightheartedly by the Spaniards on that occasion, with sto-
ries of its being read out to trees and empty huts or intoned from the decks
of ships as they approached Indian territories. But there was no signifi cant
contemporary opposition to it. It was dutifully employed by Hernán Cor-
tés in his famous conquest of Mexico in 1519– 22. It may have been read out
to the Incans in 1532 in Cajamarca, by Pizarro’s chaplain Valverde— who
was later to sojourn at San Esteban— although there was doubt on the point.
Th e requerimiento continued to be employed until the 1540s. Its last use ap-
pears to have been in a campaign against Chichimec Indians in Mexico in
- It was read out on that occasion by a friar who stood prudently out of
arrowshot range of the Indians— but probably beyond the range of audibil-
ity, too.
From a legal standpoint, the requerimiento was far from airtight. To be
eff ective, it would have to be heard and understood by the native popula-
tions. Making the requerimiento audible over a signifi cant distance would
have presented a challenge. Comprehension of it would have posed an even
greater diffi culty, since there is no evidence of the requerimiento’s e ver hav-
ing been translated into any of the native American languages. Unless a
translator was ready to hand on the Indian side, the requerimiento could
only have been so much incomprehensible gibberish. In recognition of this
problem, a Spanish ordinance of 1526, promulgated by the Council of the
Indies (the governing body for the Spanish colonies in the New World), re-
quired its proclamation in the native languages by interpreters.