TRIBUTE AND LABOR IN THE SPANISH COLONIES 77
tion with the doctrinal foundations of its policy.
What was the nature of the indígenas? What was
their cultural level? Were they the slaves by na-
ture described by Aristotle, a race of subhumans
who might properly be conquered and made to
serve the Spaniards? What rights and obligations
did the papal donation of America to the Span-
ish monarchs confer on them? Summoned by the
monarchs to answer these and similar questions,
jurists and theologians waged a battle of books in
which they bombarded each other with citations
from Aristotle, the church fathers, and medieval
philosophers. Less frequently, they supported their
positions with materials based on direct observa-
tion or written accounts of indigenous life.
Tribute and Labor in the
Spanish Colonies
Behind these subtle disputations over Spain’s ob-
ligations to the indígenas, however, raged a com-
plex struggle over the question of who should
control their labor and tribute, the foundations of
the Spanish Empire in America. The main parties
to this struggle were the crown, the church, and
the colonists.
THE ENCOMIENDA AND SLAVERY
Hispaniola was the fi rst testing ground of Spain’s
policy. The situation created on the island by the
arrival of Columbus’s second expedition has been
aptly summed up by Samuel Eliot Morison in the
phrase “Hell on Hispaniola.” Eager to prove to the
crown the value of his “discoveries,” Columbus
compelled the natives to bring in a daily tribute
of gold dust. When the hard-pressed Arawaks re-
volted, they were hunted down, and hundreds were
sent to Spain as slaves. Later, yielding to the de-
mands of rebellious settlers, Columbus distributed
Arawaks among them, with the grantees enjoying
the right to use the forced labor of the natives.
This temporary arrangement, formalized in
the administration of Governor Nicolás de Ovando
and sanctioned by the crown, became the enco-
mienda. This system had its origin in the Spanish
medieval practice of granting to leading warriors
jurisdiction over lands and people captured from
the Moors. The encomienda assigned to a colonist
responsibility for indigenous people who were to
serve him with tribute and labor. He in turn as-
sumed the obligation of protecting them, paying
for the support of a parish priest, and helping de-
fend the colony. In practice, the encomienda in the
West Indies proved a hideous slavery. Basically as a
result of this mistreatment, the indigenous popula-
tion of Hispaniola dwindled from several million to
29,000 within two decades. This decline was not
the result of epidemic disease, for there is no record
of any epidemic in the Antilles before 1518.
The fi rst voices raised against this state of af-
fairs belonged to a company of Dominican friars
who arrived in Hispaniola in 1510. Their leader
was Father Antón Montesinos, who on Advent Sun-
day, 1511, ascended the church pulpit to threaten
the island’s Spaniards with damnation for their
offenses against the natives. The angry colonists
and the Dominicans soon carried their dispute to
the court. King Ferdinand responded by approving
the Laws of Burgos (1512–1513), which did little
more than sanction and regularize the existing
situation.
This agitation raised the larger question of the
legality of Spain’s claim to the Indies. To satisfy the
royal conscience, a distinguished jurist, Dr. Juan
López de Palacios Rubios, drew up a document,
theRequerimiento, which the conquistadors were
required to read before making war on indigenous
peoples. This curious manifesto called on the na-
tives to acknowledge the supremacy of the church
and the pope, and the sovereignty of the Spanish
monarchs over their lands by virtue of the papal
donation of 1493, on pain of suffering war and
enslavement. Not until they had rejected those de-
mands, which were to be made known to them by
interpreters, could war be legally waged against
them. Some conquistadors took the Requirement
lightly, mumbling it into their beards before an at-
tack or reading it to captured natives after a raid;
the chronicler Oviedo relates that Palacios Rubios
himself laughed heartily when told of the strange
use these captains made of the document.