XXVI Congreso Internacional de Americanistas

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Christian laborers in Castile" may indeed seem a puny one. The al111
wás doubtless too. high; the officials charged with carrying out the experiments
in America were sometimes weak vessels, dominated by greed;
and the social milieu of Española and Cuba in the period 15°3-1535 was
most unpromising for such radical attempts.
But the story of these unique social experiments, as drawn from manuscripts
in the Archivo de Indias, is a most curious and moving drama.
It not only i!lustrates a hitherto unemphasized aspect of early Spanish
Indian policy, but it also provides food for much thought to every student
of the clash of cultures and raC'es.
THE SPAN1SH CONCEPT OF THE INDIAN.
'Who were these strange creatures living in the new rworld ? Columbus
called them Indians, but not for long did Spaniards consider them
inhabitants of ancient India. Could they be remnants of the lost teo
tribes of Israel ? Were they pagans, or had they been Christianized centuries
before by the apostle Thomas whose heroic work illumined their
lives for a short time only beca use they soon forgot his teachings ? Were
these dark skinned natives rational beings, or barbarians, or a sort of
intermediate species beetween mm and animals? ,Were their disagreable
and bestial habits mere ly superficial flaws which might be correctecl
by proper education? Did God create them free beings or were they
slaves by nature in conformity with the Aristotelian conception? Finally,
and most important of all to the crown, what capacity did they have
lO absorb the e'ements of a Spanish and Christian civilization? \Was it
true, as Pope Alexander VI was informed by representatives of Ferdinand
and Isabel!a that:
these v·ery peoples living in the said islands and countries believe
111 one Go'd, the Creator in heaven, and seem sufficiently disposed
to embrace the Catholic faith a,nd be trained in good morals.
These theoretical and highly debatable questions, some of which have
not been entirely settled today, early raised the dust of controversy in
almost every department of Spanish administration in the newly discovered
lands. Rarely w as any part of t'he Spanish Indian policy conceived
01' developed wi thout some reference to the theoretical questions
outlined above.
One may not agree with Si r Art¡.{ur Helps when he asserts:
"I have not the slightest doubt t.>hat the account in the Bible of
the origin of our first parents and the unity of the human race ('wihch
wil! be found constantly referred to) was the cause of millions of
people, \vhole nations, being maintained' upon theearth. ..
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