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The arrival of Don Nicholas de Ovando's fleet at Hispaniola was an event of the greatest importance to the colony. The first news that greeted the new arrivals was that of the discovery of a huge nugget of gold, the largest yet found and which, in fact, was never again equalled in size until the rich lodes in California were tapped in 1849, for it weighed thirty-five pounds and was valued at 3600 pesos in the money of that time.

This famous nugget was found eight or nine leagues from the settlement of San Domingo, by an Indian girl, who, while resting from her labours, idly turned up the soil with an instrument she held, and thus brought to light the wonderful treasure. The Governor appropriated it for the King, paying its value to the two owners of the mine. The jubilant Spaniards used the nugget, which was shaped like a broad, flat dish, to serve up a roast sucking-pig at a banquet given in honour of the occasion, saying that no king ever feasted from such a platter. Las Casas remarks that as for the miserable Indian girl who found it, we may without sin suppose that they never gave her so much as a [pg 32] red silk petticoat, and lucky was she indeed if she got even a mouthful of the pig!

The second piece of glad news the colonists communicated was, that owing to a recent uprising of the Indians in a certain province, they had been able to enslave a goodly number of the rebels. Such occasions rejoiced their hearts, over the profits they thus derived from the struggles of the unhappy natives to recover their freedom, and it may likewise without sin be supposed that their ingenuity was not barren in suggesting devices for provoking such lucrative revolts.

In the instructions delivered to Ovando, as well as in the Queen's verbal behests to him before sailing, the sovereigns sought to remedy the abuses under which the Indians suffered. The Queen explicitly laid down the fundamental principle that “all the Indians in Hispaniola are and should be free from servitude; nor should they be molested by any one, but should live as free vassals, governed and protected as are the vassals of Castile.” They were to pay a tribute—all Spanish vassals were taxed—and they were to work in the gold-mines but for their labour they were to receive a daily wage. The Queen's obvious intention was that the government should, in some measure at least, be carried on for the benefit of the Indians it was instituted to govern. The orders describing the measures to be taken for the instruction and conversion of the natives were equally clear and imperative.

Ovando was authorised to permit the importation into Hispaniola of negroes who were born slaves, [pg 33] belonging to Christian owners. 19 They were consequently brought to the colony in such numbers that the Governor soon wrote to Spain, advising that the traffic in African slaves be stopped, as the negroes constantly escaped and took refuge in the forests and mountains, taking with them also many Indians. These negroes were for the most part born in Andalusia of slave parents, who had been brought there by the Portuguese who had carried on the slave-trade since early in the fifteenth century.

The first official action of the new Governor was to institute an inquiry into the administration of his predecessor, Bobadilla, against whose harsh and arbitrary treatment of him, Columbus had filed complaints. The Admiral had meanwhile been received by the sovereigns, and Queen Isabella's compassionate heart had been much grieved by the sad accounts of the indignities put upon him, the confiscation of his properties, the violation of the rights solemnly conferred upon him and his heirs under her signature, and finally the supreme outrage of his deposition and his return to Spain wearing the chains of a common malefactor. Francisco de Bobadilla had far outstripped the limits of the sovereign's intentions as well as those of his own authority and had, by his treatment of Columbus, violated the commonest sentiments of justice and humanity. Ovando made full restitution of the confiscated properties, and the rights and privileges guaranteed to Columbus were once more recognised and made valid. The latter organised [pg 34] his fourth and last expedition to America, which sailed on the ninth of May, 1502, 20 and arrived at Hispaniola after a prosperous voyage, on the twenty-ninth of June. Bobadilla set sail for Spain on board the same ship which carried the famous gold nugget, but neither arrived, as the vessel was overtaken by a violent hurricane, and was lost when barely forty hours out from port. Thus perished one whose iniquities have caused his name to be handed down to eternal execration in the pages of American history.

Such was the condition of the colony in Hispaniola, when Bartholomew de Las Casas, then a young licentiate, twenty-eight years of age, arrived there. The purpose of his coming was no different from that of the other gentlemen-adventurers who were bent on acquiring speedy fortunes in a land of supposed riches that formed the theme of fabulous and alluring tales, which often enough had but slender foundation in fact. As his father had already acquired properties in the island, it is probable that Bartholomew came to assume the direction of them. There is nothing to show that he was at that time especially impressed or moved by the sad condition of the Indians and the violation of their rights; on the contrary, he procured slaves, worked them in the mines, and attended to the cultivation of his estates with the energy he employed in every undertaking to which he put his hand. He says himself that during eight years of Ovando's governorship, this "pestilential disorder" [pg 35] took root without there being a man who spoke or heeded or thought anything about it, notwithstanding that such multitudes were being sacrificed, that out of the infinite number of the inhabitants of whom the Admiral first wrote to the Catholic sovereigns, there perished more than nine tenths in that brief period. 21

He took part in the second war against the Cacique Cocubanó22 in the province of Higuey, of which he afterwards wrote the most horrifying description. He related incredible cruelties, concluding thus: “All these deeds, and others foreign to all human nature did my own eyes witness, and I do not now dare to recount them, being hardly able to believe myself, lest perhaps I may have dreamed them.” Throughout these massacres Las Casas, young, enthusiastic, generous-hearted, noble-minded, and with his naturally keen sensibilities refined and sharpened by the best education of his times, appears to have played his part with the others, neither better nor worse than they, equally blind to the injustice and tyranny practised upon the inoffensive and defenceless Indians and only eager for his share of the profits derived from their sufferings. The contradiction is as flagrant as in the case of the great Admiral who initiated the system which brought all these horrors in logical sequence. The war in Higuey finished with the capture of the unfortunate Cocubanó, whom Ovando caused to be hanged at San Domingó instead of allowing [pg 36] him to be torn to pieces with pincers as the Spaniards demanded should be done. Such was the quality of mercy in that Governor's heart.

The affairs of Las Casas prospered and he grew rich, though it is difficult to believe that his yearly income from his properties amounted to 100,000 castellanos—an enormous sum, given the value of money at that time—yet this is the figure he himself has given in his own writings. 23

Such being the attitude of a man of finer temperament during eight years passed amidst scene of rapacious ferocity, something must be admitted to explain the callousness of men of fewer sensibilities and lower moral standards, who found themselves far removed from the usual restraint of civilised society and confronted by many hard ships and severe disappointments. The moral and physical condition of the majority of these men was indeed deplorable. Many of them had staked all they could obtain on this great venture in the Indies, hallucinated by the craze for gold, of which they dreamed as lying, waiting to be picked up, in lands where pearls strewed the sands of the beach. Rapid exploitation of such sources of fabulous wealth and a speedy return to Spain, rather than the enterprises usually suggested to Anglo-Saxons by the term “colonisation,” had lured them over the mysterious ocean. Little thought was given to the pastoral and agriculture resources of a rich soil that would have yielded abundant crops in response to the simplest tillage [pg 37] and made of the islands a granary sufficient to feed all Spain. Unaccustomed to manual labour, ignorant of the simplest principles of mining, poorly supplied—when at all—with the necessary implements, they rushed to the mines with but scanty provision even of food; fevers seized them, strange diseases attacked them—most of all, disillusion confronted them; out of Ovando's 2500 men more than one thousand died within a brief period, in the most wretched manner. Those who had the courage and strength to work, barely made enough to feed themselves, for it not infrequently happened that after the royal fifth was deducted and other expenses met, the remainder, when divided, hardly gave to each colonist more than his daily, scanty living. The state of degradation into which they sank was pitiable and there is little cause to wonder that, in their brutalised condition, they took small account of the physical sufferings of the Indians and no interest at all in weighing their claims to liberty and just treatment. The few who did turn their attention to agriculture fared better, both as to the comforts of their surroundings and the profits they derived from their occupation; their Indians likewise led far easier lives than their fellows who worked for the miners. The vicious principles underlying slavery once established, innumerable abuses are bound to follow, and when responsibility for an iniquitous system is widely distributed, even the most humane unconsciously drift into acquiescence in continuous and monstrous acts of inhumanity, partly from want of strength to combat [pg 38] the established order of things and partly from the easy ability of each to shift his share of the blame for what his instincts condemn, onto the shoulders of others. Reforms left to the collective conscience of such a community are apt to languish. Such is man's nature that the most unnatural and abnormal conditions come to be tolerated by common acquiescence, until something—an event without or a stirring of his soul within—startles his better self into a realisation of his surroundings, the scales fall from his eyes which, having, he saw not, and in a flash, the iniquity of proceedings to which he has assented, in which he has shared, and by which he has profited, becomes manifest.

In the Indies a premium was placed on rebellion; the oftener the Indians could be goaded into open revolt, the more slaves could be acquired according to due process of law, and everybody's profits increased. To such profitable encouragement the colonists were not slow to respond and they were fertile in devices for rendering the lives of the Indians intolerable.

No champion was forthcoming to defend the helpless native or even to make his woes known; the tender-hearted Queen, who loved justice and hated iniquity, was remote and her beneficent intentions towards her humble subjects in the islands were inoperative. “The heavens are high and the Tzar is far” say the long-suffering mujiks, whose road to their “little father's” throne is barred by an army of interested bureaucrats. Tyranny is of divers sorts and one tyranny differs from another [pg 39] other in infamy, but the worst tyranny of all is the dual tyranny over both body and soul exercised collectively by irresponsible men over their fellows, and this was the tyranny of such slavery as prevailed in the Spanish colonies. The specious argument that the only way to convert the Indians was to keep them among the Spaniards, was constantly insisted upon in pious phrases meant to delude the Queen by a display of zeal in carrying out her plan for their conversion. Ovando wrote complaining of the desertion of the Indians, who escaped whenever they could from contact with the Spaniards and fled in numbers to the remotest recesses of the forests, facing starvation rather than endure their life in the settlements. And what wonder! for would any rational Indian voluntarily live amidst such surroundings and submit to such labour for the sole benefit of his tyrants? Nothing that the afflicted natives saw of the religion or the civilisation of the Spaniards could possibly attract them to either.