many who had resisted the arms of the adventurers. The celebrated Bartholomew de Las Casas “preached the gospel among the natives of Nicaragua and Guatemala ; and succeeded in converting and reducing to obedience some wild tribes in the latter province who had defied the arms of his countrymen.” *

With this evidence before us of the character of the missionaries, we cannot assent to the assertion of Robertson, that the converts were admitted without due instruction in the Christian doctrines, or a cordial abandonment of their superstitious practices. Regard was doubtless had to the weakness of their intellect, and their very limited capacity ; but sincere conviction of the truth and divine origin of Christianity was exacted, and they were specially instructed in its great mysteries. The chief ground for regarding their transition to the Christian worship as merely nominal is the rapidity of the conversions ; which, with more apparent reason, might be objected to the three thousand and five thousand converts that marked the first promulgation of the Gospel. Should not the believers in revealed truth feel happy in seeing parallel cases to those just mentioned, in the numbers of Indians who embraced the faith on the preaching of the missionaries of the sixteenth century ? “ A single clergyman,” says Robertson, “ baptized in one day above five thousand Mexicans, and did not desist until he was so exhausted by fatigue, that he was unable to lift his hands. In the course of a few years after the reduction of the Mexican empire, the sacrament of baptism was administered to more than four millions.” To deny that conversions so numerous could be solid and sincere is not the best means of rendering credible the facts recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. What Robertson asserts may be true of some of the new Christians, that they occasionally relapsed into superstitious practices ; but the perseverance of the immense multitude is beyond question. Prescott attests that the labors of the missionaries rendered finally effectual even the indiscreet efforts of the conquerors to bring the Indians to the profession of Christianity. “The seeds thus recklessly scattered must have perished but for the missionaries of their own nation, who, in later times, worked over the same ground, living among the Indians as brethren, and by long and patient culture enabling the germs of truth to take root and fructify in their hearts.”+

Who has not heard of the atrocities of the Spanish adventurers, — the cruelty with which they sometimes set bloodhounds to tear in pieces the naked Indians, — the perfidy with

which they invited them to friendly interviews, and then massacred them ? God forbid that we should say a word to mitigate the horror which such crimes excite! Baluffi is unsparing in denouncing them, and we join from our hearts in the strong language which he employs. Yet truth and justice require us to observe, that cruelty and perfidy did not ordinarily mark the career of Spanish discovery. If it be lawful to use force to put a stop to unnatural enormities, — such as human sacrifices and cannibalism, most of the horrific scenes exhibited in the discovery of America must be classed among the incidents of just warfare. Robertson and Prescott agree that Cortés had certain information of a plot formed by the inhabitants of Cholula for the destruction of the Spaniards, before he resolved on anticipating the attack by their massacre. Rumors of a plot formed by the Aztec nobles led Alvarado to fall upon them when assembled for a religious festival. Of the conquerors of Mexico Prescott testifies, — " Their swords were rarely stained with blood, unless it was indispensable to the success of their enterprise.” If this did not wholly justify it, it affords some extenuation, since the desperate condition of men engaged in a perilous undertaking for a just end may prompt them to measures from which they would otherwise shrink with horror.

Unhappily, the annals of our country present instances of cruelty and perfidy towards the aborigines, which should make us speak less severely of the Spanish adventurers. Robertson states that the Indians made an attempt to massacre all the English settlers in Virginia, and actually murdered a considerable number, which naturally provoked retaliation, but marked with ferocity and perfidy the most execrable. “ They bunted the Indians like wild beasts, rather than enemies ; and as the

; pursuit of them to their places of retreat in the woods, which covered their country, was both difficult and dangerous, they endeavoured to allure them from their inaccessible fastnesses by offers of peace and promises of oblivion, made with such an artful appearance of sincerity as deceived their crafty leader, and induced them to return to their former settlements, and resume their usual peaceful occupations. . . The English, with perfidious craft, were preparing to imitate savages in their revenge and cruelty. On the approach of harvest, when they knew an hostile attack would be most formidable and fatal, they

a

a

fell suddenly upon all the Indian plantations, murdered every person on whom they could lay bold, and drove the rest to the woods, where so many perished with hunger, that some of the tribes nearest to the English were totally extirpated.” *

The religious settlers of the more northern provinces, who would not proceed to battle until they had cast out from among thein the unclean, “who were under a covenant of works,” are not free from the like reproach. As they advanced against the Indians on one occasion, “ setting fire to the huts which were covered with reeds, many of the women and children perished in the flames ; and the warriors, in endeavouring to escape, were either slain by the English, or, falling into the hands of their Indian allies, were reserved for a more cruel fate.” All this may be put to the account of lawful warfare ; but the historian proceeds to inform us, that, “after the junction of the troops from Massachusetts, the English resolved to pursue their victory ; and hunting the Indians from one place of retreat to another, some subsequent encounters were hardly less fatal to them than the action on the Mistick. In less than three months the tribe of Pequods was extirpated. Instead of treating the Pequods as an independent people, who made a gallant effort to defend the property, the rights, and the freedom of their nation, they retaliated upon them all the barbarities of Ameri

Some they massacred in cold blood; others they gave up to be tortured by their Indian allies ; a considerable number they sold as slaves in Bermudas ; the rest were reduced to servitude among themselves.” | Under one pretext or another, the Indians residing near the English settlements were extirpated ; or if spared, they had 10 part with the hunting-grounds of their fathers for a nominal consideration. The almost total extinction of the Northern tribes has been the result of the English policy; whilst, notwithstanding the many that fell in the struggle against the Spanish invaders, and the greater number that were worked to death in the mines, the Indian tribes of the Southern portion of our continent have been preserved, and have been allowed to commingle with their conquerors, and to rise in some places to an equality of power. The proud Spaniard did not disdain connubial alliance with the daughter of the red man, which the haughty Briton spurned as calculated to deteriorate the Anglo-Saxon race. Travellers

can war.

a

who see the great varieties of men in Southern countries, the result of the inixture of the races, may superciliously despise the motley populations ; but they should reflect that the liberty of marriage left to all by the Spanish crown was more consonant with the dictates of reason and rights of humanity, than the exclusive principle which elsewhere has preserved the purity of European blood. The mestizo fruit of these mixed nuptials may be fairly regarded as elevated above the mere Indian as far at least as he is below the Spaniard.

The kind partiality with which the aborigines were viewed by the Spanish ecclesiastics is testified by Prescott and Robertson. The latter expressly refutes those who have accused them of animating their countrymen to the slaughter of that innocent people, as idolaters," and attests that “ they uniformly exerted their influence to protect the Indians, and to moderate the ferocity of their countrymen.”* A solitary exception to this general eulogium is pointed out by him in the person of Father Vincent de Valverde, who is represented as urging the Spaniards to fall on the Peruvians, and make havoc of them, because they would not at once yield to bis invitation to submit to the Pope and to the king of Spain, the Inca having, as is alleged, answered the summons by casting indignantly to the ground the breviary of the friar.' This highly improbable story did not receive full credit from the historian, who utterly denies that Valverde continued to encourage the soldiers as they proceeded in the work of blood. It originated with the friends of Pizarro, who sought to veil the perfidy by which an unsuspecting chief and his people were assailed and massacred at the conference to which they had been invited. Garcilasso de la Vega, a descendant by his mother from the Inca, and who derived his information from Spaniards present on the occasion, expressly contradicts the charge, and lays the blame where it should lie. The court of Spain, which was probably deceived for a time, afterwards did justice to the pious missionary, who was promoted to the bishopric of Cuzco, a post for which a sanguinary fanatic was not likely to be selected. Baluffi triumphantly vindicates him.

There were among the adventurers some who deemed the Indians incapable of mental culture, and unfit to enjoy personal liberty or Christian privileges ; whilst others, and especially

* Book VI., Note XV. VOL. 1. NO. III.

NEW SERIES.

49

66 all the ecclesiastics," as Robertson admits, maintained, that, “though rude and ignorant, they were gentle, affectionate, docile, and, by proper instructions and regulations, might be formed gradually into good Christians and useful citizens.” Some, indeed, were slow to admit them to the Eucharistic banquet, from which even an ecclesiastical assembly (not a council), held in Lima in 1552, directed them to be withheld, unless they should manifest a clear perception of its mysterious character ; but their admissibility was fully recognized in a solemn council held in the same city in 1567. Pope Paul the Third had already, thirty years before, declared them entitled to all the privileges of Christians. The Cardinal, by reference to these facts, reduces the statement of the historian within its just limits.

The servitude to which the Indians were reduced, and the labor to which they were consequently subjected, involve the adventurers in severe censure, but serve only to present in increased lustre the claims of the missionaries to our admiration. We shall leave the Scottish historian to speak their praise. “ The missionaries, in conformity to the mild spirit of that religion which they were employed to publish, early remonstrated against the maxims of the planters with respect to the Americans, and condemned the repartimientos, or distributions by which they were given up as slaves to their conquerors, as no less contrary to natural justice and the precepts of Christianity than to sound policy. The Dominicans, to whom the instruction of the Americans was originally committed, were most vehement in testifying against the repartimientos. In the year 1511, Montesinos, one of their most eminent preachers, inveighed against this practice, in the great church at St. Domingo, with all the impetuosity of popular eloquence. Don Diego Columbus, the principal officers of the colony, and all the laymen who had been his hearers, complained of the monk to his superiors; but they, instead of condemning, applauded

; his doctrine, as equally pious and seasonable. The Dominicans, regardless of political and interested considerations, would not relax in any degree the rigor of their sentiments, and even refused to absolve or admit to the Sacrament such of their countrymen as continued to hold the natives in servitude." *

We have already had occasion to name Bartholomew de las Casas as a successful missionary ; we must now present him as the uncompromising and persevering advocate of the Indians.

Book III.