Note 40 — Chapter III · THE JUDICIAL FUNCTIONS OF THE AUDIENCIA

Ibid., 133 (1563). Helps (Spanish conquest, I, 102, 103–104) states that the repartimiento system was originated in 1496, from the requirement of Columbus that the natives of Hispaniola should pay him a certain quantity of gold as tribute. In view of the inability of the natives to meet the demands of the Spaniards in regard to the precious metal, “the villagers were ordered to make (and work) the farms in the Spanish settlements. This may be considered as the beginning of the system of repartimientos, or encomiendas, as they were afterwards called.”

In a subsequent chapter the same author tells of the difficulty which Ovando had in compelling the Indians to live among the Spaniards, to pay tribute and accept religious teaching. Ferdinand and Isabella, in a letter dated December 20, 1503, directed Ovando to compel the Indians to deal with the Spaniards, to work for wages, to go to mass, to be instructed in the faith, and further, that they should do all these things “as free persons, for so they are.” ... “Ovando adopted the following system,” says Helps; “he distributed Indians amongst the Castillians, giving to one man fifty, to another a hundred; with a deed that ran thus: ‘to you, such a one, is given an encomienda of so many Indians, with such a Cacique, and you are to teach them the things of our Holy Catholic Faith’. The word encomienda ... was a term belonging to the military orders, corresponding to our commandery or preceptory; and this term naturally enough came into use with the appointment, as governors in the Indies, of men, who held authority in those orders, such as Bobadilla and Ovando.” (See also Bancroft, History of Central America, I, 262.) “With respect to the implied condition of teaching the Indians ‘the Holy Catholic Faith’ it was no more attended to from the first than any formal clause in a deed, which is supposed by the parties concerned to be a mere formality.”

“We have now arrived,” continues Helps, “at the climax of the repartimiento system. That which Bobadilla did illegally, was now done with proper formalities on parchment: ... We may notice again that the first repartimientos made by Columbus ... apportioned to any Spaniard, whom he thought fit, such and such lands, to be worked by such a Cacique and his people—a very different procedure to giving men—a feudal system, not a system of slavery.”—Helps, Spanish conquest, I, 138–139.