Note XIV‑8 — Chapter XIV · THREATENED DESTRUCTION OF THE INDIES. 1526-1543.

Real Cédula de 17 de Novre 1526, in Soc. Mex. Geog., Boletin, v. 326-31. In the preamble to this decree the emperor states that it is notorious that excessive toil in mines and at other labor and the want of food and proper clothing had caused the death of such numbers that some parts of the country had become depopulated, while whole districts were abandoned by the natives, who had fled to the mountains and forests to escape ill-treatment. This cédula, designed to apply to the king's dominions in the west from Panamá to Florida, ordered diligent inquiry to be made relative to the killing, robbery, and illegal branding of Indians, and that the perpetrators should be delivered over to the council of the Indies. Other provisos were that slaves should be restored to their native country, and if this were not possible they were to be placed in reasonable liberty, nor were they to be too heavily worked or made to labor in the mines or elsewhere against their will. In future expeditions of discovery and colonization the leader was to take with him two ecclesiastics at least, who were to use greatest diligence in obtaining kindly treatment for the Indians. Natives who were peaceably inclined were not to be made slaves; at the same time the promotion of morality and good customs was not left out of sight, and in cases where it might be deemed beneficial by the priest they might be assigned to Christian Europeans as free servitors; and lastly no discoverer was to take with him out of their native land on any of his expeditions more than one or two Indians to act as interpreters. Ximenez, lib. iii. cap. lii., states that natives were branded as slaves through having been merely assigned to an encomendero, and that young boys and tender girls were taken from the towns by hundreds to wash for gold in the gulches, where they perished from hunger and hardship. Pelaez, Mem. Guat., i. 67. A notable case of branding Indians who had peaceably submitted, was that of the natives of Cuzcatlan by Alvarado in 1524, described by witnesses in Cortés, Residencia, 96, 155.