The Land We Live In | Page 6

officers of the vice-royalty. His court was formed
on the model of Madrid, and displayed an equal and often superior
degree of magnificence and state. He had horse and foot guards, a
regular household establishment and all the ensigns and trappings of
royalty. The tribunals which assisted in the administration were similar
to those of the parent country. The Spanish-American colonies, in brief,
possessed no political privileges; the authority of the crown was
absolute, but not more so than in the parent State, and it could hardly
have been expected that liberties denied to the people at home would
have been granted to subjects in distant America.
Over the viceroys, and acting for the sovereign, was the tribunal called
the Council of the Indies, established by King Ferdinand in 1511, and
remodeled by Charles V. in 1524. This Council possessed general
jurisdiction over Spanish-America; framed laws and regulations
respecting the colonies, and made all the appointments for America
reserved to the crown. All officers, from the viceroy to the lowest in
rank, could be called to account by the Council of the Indies. The king
was supposed to be always present in the Council, and the meetings
were held wherever the monarch was residing. All appeals from the
decisions of the Courts of Audience, the highest tribunals in America,
were made to the Council of the Indies.
The absolute power of the sovereign did not stop short at the Church.
Pope Julian II. conferred on King Ferdinand and his successors the

patronage and disposal of all ecclesiastical benefices in America, and
the administration of ecclesiastical revenues--a privilege which the
crown did not possess in Spain. The bulls of the Roman pontiff could
not be admitted into Spanish America until they had been examined
and approved by the king and Council of the Indies. The hierarchy was
as imposing as in Spain, and its dominion and influence greater. The
archbishops, bishops and other dignitaries enjoyed large revenues, and
the ecclesiastical establishment was splendid and magnificent. The
Inquisition was introduced in America in 1570 by Philip II., the
oppressor of Protestant England and of the Netherlands, and patron of
the monster Alva. The native Indians, on the ground of incapacity, were
exempted from the jurisdiction of that tribunal. No scruple was shown,
however, in converting the natives to Christianity, and multitudes were
baptized who were entirely ignorant of the doctrine they professed to
embrace. In the course of a few years after the reduction of the
Mexican empire, more than four millions of the Mexicans were
nominally converted, one missionary baptizing five thousand in one
day, and stopping only when he had become so exhausted as to be
unable to lift his hands.
Conversion to Christianity did not save the Indians from being reduced
to slavery. Columbus himself, in the year 1499, to avoid the
consequences of a disaffection among his followers, granted lands and
distributed a certain number of Indians among them to cultivate the soil.
This system was afterward introduced in all the Spanish settlements,
the Indians being everywhere seized upon and compelled to work in the
mines, to till the plantations, to carry burdens and to perform all menial
and laborious services. The stated tasks of the unhappy natives were
often much beyond their abilities, and multitudes sank under the
hardships to which they were subjected. Their spirit was broken, they
became humble and degraded, and the race was rapidly wasting away.
The oppressions and sufferings of the natives at length excited the
sympathies of many humane persons, particularly among the clergy,
who exerted themselves with much zeal and perseverance to ameliorate
their condition. In 1542 Charles V. abolished the enslavement of the
Indians, and restored them to the position of freemen. This caused great
indignation in the colonies and in Peru forcible resistance was offered

to the royal decree. But although relieved in some degree from the
burdens of personal slavery, the natives were required, as vassals of the
crown, to pay a personal tax or tribute in the form of personal service.
They were also put under the protection of great landholders, who
treated them as serfs, although not exacting continuous labor, so that
during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the condition of the
Indians did not greatly improve.
Notwithstanding the avidity of the first Spanish adventurers for the
precious metals, and the ardor with which they pursued their researches,
their exertions were attended for a number of years with but little
success. It was not until 1545 that the rich mines of Potosi, in Peru,
were accidentally discovered by an Indian in clambering up the
mountain. This was soon followed by the discovery of other highly
productive mines of gold and silver in the various provinces, and
Spanish America began to pour a flood of wealth into the