are still acting like ravening beasts, killing, terrorizing, afflicting, tortur-
ing, and destroying the native peoples, doing all this with the strangest
and most varied new methods of cruelty, never seen or heard of before,
and to such a degree that this Island of Hispaniola, once so populous
(having a population that I estimated to be more than three millions), has
now a population of barely two hundred persons.As the Spaniards expanded their sphere of control, Indian populations
would virtually disappear: in what is now Florida, the Timucua had been
estimated at half a million people in the middle of the sixteenth century. By
1728 only a single Timucua Indian was known to be still alive.
As they regularized their new empire, the Spaniards sought to make
the Indians work for them. Steps toward the creation of a system of forced
labor began as early as 1496, after an Indian revolt. Then when Columbus
imposed a tribute or repartimientoto be paid, when the Indians had no
other means, in labor. Without forced labor, Spain’s colonies could not be
maintained. Spaniards were told to treat the Indians well, but only as far as
was possible. That vague injunction made no impact. What men had won
with the sword, they would not give up to the cross.
So bad had oppression of the Indians become that in 1511 the king set
out regulations, known as the “Laws of Burgos,” to develop a more tolerant
policy. To supervise it, Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, who had originally
gone to the Caribbean as a conquistador, was appointed “protector of
the Indians.” He was blocked at every turn by the new sugar planters and,
seeing his efforts fail, concluded that the only way to protect the Indians
was to import black slaves. The planters eagerly adopted his suggestion,
and by the middle of the sixteenth century, sugar plantations on Hispaniola
were being worked by about 20,000 blacks. Fray Bartolomé had uninten-
tionally promoted the nightmare with which Americans would live for cen-
turies.
Meanwhile, Catholic priests struggled to convert the Indians. The
record of their activities has all the elements of tragedy, comedy, self-
sacrifice, and destruction. Some priests were murdered by the people they
thought they were saving; and many priests abused their position for per-
sonal satisfaction. As one senior Spanish official remarked in the late
46 THE BIRTH OF AMERICA