Are These Not Also Men

'Are These Not Also Men?
': The Indians' Humanity and Capacity for Spanish Civilisation

Author(s): Patricia Seed
Source: Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Oct., 1993), pp. 629-652
Published by: Cambridge University Press
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COMMENTARY
'Are These Not Also Men?': The

Indians' Humanity and Capacity for
Spanish Civilisation
PATRICIA SEED
When on an Advent Sunday morning in I5 i Fra

uttered the phrase 'Are these [Indians] not also
political controversy that would rage in Spain for t
And the continuing fall-out of that fiery speech st
inflame scholarly tempers and spark heated contest
years later.1 At stake for Spaniards of the sixteent
the inhabitants of the New World were to be treated. At issue for
subsequent historians has been how that Spanish civilisation's trea

of the natives in the New World is to be assessed.
Fray Montesinos and his fellow Dominicans on the island of Hispanio

accused the Spanish settlers of behaving inhumanely towards the nativ
of the New World. 'You are all in mortal sin', he told the Spanish settler
'for the cruelty and tyranny that you use against these innocent peoples
Tell me, with what right and with what justice have you subjected the
Indians to such cruel and horrible servitude?... How is it that you have
oppressed them and worn them out... with the excessive work you hav
given them ?... What care have you taken to instruct them, that they know
their God and Creator?... Are these not men? Do they not have rationa
souls ?'2 In demanding an end to inordinate amounts of forced labour an
neglect of the religious schooling of indigenous peoples, Montesinos an
1 Lewis Hanke, The Spanish Struggle for Justice (Philadelphia, I949); Alberto Mar
Carrenio, 'La irracionalidad de los indios', Divulgacion histdrica, vol. I (1940), pp
272-82, 328-39, 374-85; Lewis Hanke, All Mankind is One (DeKalb, Ill., I974), pp
48-9 n. 20; Edmundo O'Gorman, 'La naturaleza bestial del indio', Filosofiay letra
vols. I & 2 (I94I), pp. I41-58, 305-I5, esp. 305; Juan Perez de Tudela, Obras
escogidas de fray Bartolome de Las Casas (Madrid, 1957), vol. I, pp. xxxi-xxxii n. 46; Lino
G6mez Canedo, 'Hombres or bestias? (Nuevo examen critico de un viejo t6pico)',
Estudios de historia novohispana (Mexico), vol. I (I967), pp. 29-5 I.
2 Bartolome de las Casas, Historia de las Indias (Mexico, 1986), vol. II, pp. 440-2 (lib. III,
cap. iv).
Patricia Seed is Associate Professor of History at Rice University, Houston.
J. Lat. Amer. Stud. 25, 629-652 Copyright ? 1993 Cambridge University Press 629
630 Patricia Seed
his fellow Dominicans were appealing to their (and our) belief in the
humanity of all peoples.
It was this appeal to a common humanity that has kindled t
continuing contention. At the time these words were voiced, Montes
incandescent vocabulary fired a debate over the validity of Spain's ex
of political power over the New World peoples that reached the king
the Council of the Indies. But in subsequent historical debate, the qu
has centred on the justice of the Spanish conquest itself.
At the heart of contemporary debates is the attempt by Hispanis
Europe and the Americas to combat the 'Black Legend', the reputat
for excessive cruelty that has clung to the Spanish conquest ever s
Bartolome de Las Casas's account of Spanish atrocities was translate
read throughout Europe during the 5 70s, 5 8os and 59os. To co
the picture of the brutal and rapacious Spanish conquistador, describ
us in this instance by Montesinos, and reported by Las Casas, Hispa
have tried to point out, with only limited success outside of their
field, that the Spaniards had a more benevolent side- one in
represented by Las Casas - and which acknowledged the humanity of
Indians. Thus these Hispanists argue that a considerable numb
Spaniards were never party to, nor ever condoned, the abuses comm
by other Spaniards, and which Las Casas himself criticised so compell
But the problem has been that, engaged in the struggle against the
Legend, historians and literary critics have been reluctant to criticise eit
Las Casas or the partisans of the Indians' 'humanity'.3 Perhaps fear
reinforcing the readily credible stereotypes of the Black Legend, they
allowed a mythology of benevolence and disinterestedness - the self-
presented by Las Casas and others - to stand unchallenged, as a
of'Rose Legend'. Political and other interests operating in the 'hum
argument have not been carefully scrutinised, nor have its shortcom
and limitations been questioned. In this way the myth of a disinter
discourse about the humanity of the natives has remained unchalle
The point of departure for a challenge to this way of thinking i
Edward Said has argued, that 'no production of knowledge in the h
sciences can ever ignore or disclaim its author's involvement as a h
subject in his own circumstances'.4 Simply put, Said's question is: W
3 Edmundo O'Gorman, 'La naturaleza bestial de los indios', esp. p. 144; Lewis H
All Mankind is One; Silvio Zavala, Filosofia politica, p. 95. A brief history o
polemics is Benjamin Keen, 'Introduction: Approaches to Las Casas, 1535-19
Juan Friede and Benjamin Keen (eds.), Bartolome de Las Casas in History (DeKa
197I), pp. 3-63. See also discussion in Henry Mechoulan, 'Vitoria, pere du
international?', in Actualite de la penseejuridique de Francisco de TVitoria (Brussels,
pp. 11-26, esp. p. 2z; Joe Verhoeven, 'Vitoria ou la matrice du droit internati
op. cit., pp. 97-128.
4 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York, 1978), p. 11.
'Are These Not Also Men?' 631
were the producers of knowledge of the Indians' humanity? Were they the
natives themselves, or were there others who claimed the privilege of
speaking on behalf of the native? If the latter, what was their political
relationship relative to those on whose behalf they claimed to be
speaking?
In addition to questioning the political relationship of the 'speakers
for' the natives, a second challenge comes from ethnography.
Ethnography is the translation or representation of'the natives' point of
view'.5 Applied to this issue, the ethnographic question is, how did the
natives conceive of or represent their own humanity? Were Spanish
discussions about the Indian's humanity ever justified or argued in terms
of the natives' conception of their own humanity? Thus, while Said raises
the question of the relationship of the speaker with respect to those
spoken for, the ethnographic challenge concerns the content - did it
include 'natives' points of view' on their own humanity?
This article will explore the political agendas involved in discussions of
the Indians' humanity - by casting a critical eye upon the social and
political position of the participants in the debate over the Indians'
'humanity' as well as an equally critical eye upon their stakes in the
outcome of the decision to label the Indians as 'human'. To further clarify
the political characteristics of the Spanish proponents of 'humanity' this
article will conclude with a critical comparison of the fundamental
political relationship between indigenous peoples and the Crowns of
England and of Spain, suggesting why the issue of the humanity of the
New World's inhabitants never became an issue in the English colonial
and post-colonial worlds, when it has been a concern for Hispanic and
Hispanic-American worlds.
Throughout Western Europe there was intense curiosity about the
peoples whose existence Europeans had never even suspected prior to
1492. Western Europeans had long held beliefs that the people who lived
on the outside or boundaries of western Europe or the Orient were, as one
historian put it, 'the object of their anthropological daydreams',6 but
equally often the object of their anthropological nightmares. These latter
people were thought to belong to the 'monstrous races', of giants,
pygmies, two-headed men, Amazons, and hermaphrodites.7 These beliefs,
5 Clifford Geertz, 'From the Natives' Point of View', Interpretation of Cultures (New
York, 1973). The translation position is best exemplified by E. E. Evans-Pritchard,
Nuer Religion (Oxford, 1956); Zandi Witchcraft and the Oxford School of British
Anthropology.
6 Richard Bernheimer, Wild Men in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, Mass., 1952), p. I06.
7 Bernheimer, Wild Men; Jonathan Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and
Thought (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), pp. 9-22, 37-58; M. T. Hogden, Early Anthropology
in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Philadelphia, 1964), pp. 49-77. One of the
medieval sources was Augustine's pupil Orosius (c. 385-420), Seven Books of History
against the Pagans, according to Annemarie de Waal Malefijt, Images of Man (New York,
24-2
632 Patricia Seed
originating in classical antiquity and elaborated through medieval times,

still circulated widely in Western Europe in the sixteenth century through
enormously popular books such as Sebastian Miinster's (1489-I 552)
Cosmographie universalis.8
Hence, upon their arrival in the New World, many Europeans believed
that they encountered members of these 'monstrous races' in the New
World. Dutch, English and Spanish writers all claimed to have seen
Amazons, a tribe of female warriors, and many claimed to have seen flesh-
eating anthropagi, or cannibals as they were known in the New World,
and even the learned Jesuit Jose de Acosta claimed to have knowledge of
giants.9
Since the monstrous races were primarily identified visually, the
physical appearance of peoples was widely believed to provide the key to
their supposed 'monstrosity'. Hence there was great interest in the
physical characteristics of the New World peoples. In the first decades of
the sixteenth century, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Spaniards and Portuguese
all took Indians back with them to Europe to display them to an
inquisitive public. Columbus took back seven Indians to present to Queen
Isabella, Cortes brought Indian jugglers and ball-players to her successor,
and travelled with them to Rome where they performed for the Pope.10
Three North American natives were brought to King Henry VII in 502,
foreshadowing over a hundred years of English slaving on the North
American coast, culminating in its best-known episode, the capture of an
Abnaki Indian named Squanto who had made his way back just before the
1976), p. 27; Malefijt, 'Homo monstrosus', Scientific America, vol. 219 (1968), pp.
112-18.
8 Cosmographie universalis (Basle, I55o). In his 'Introduction' to the Th

Terrarum, (Amsterdam, 1968), R. Oehme says that Minster relied on Pto
descriptions of Africa and Asia, with some supplements for Africa from
voyages of discovery. It contains very little on America. On p. xix Miins
all 'savage and barbarian' peoples as belonging to the 'monstrous' r
Early Anthropology, pp. 127-8. 'Unnatural Conceptions: the Study of
Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century France and England', Past and Pr
(198I), pp. 20-54.
9 Pedro Martir, Decadas del Nuevo Mundo (i 5 6), vol. III, lib, 9, cap. 3, lib
IV, lib. 4, cap. i, vol. V, lib. 3, cap. 2 (Amazons and cannibals). Oviedo,
not believe accounts of monstrous men, but does describe natural obje
from fables. Alberto Maria Salas, Tres cronistas de Indias, 2nd edn. (Mex
125-7. For other Spanish writers see Lewis Hanke, Aristotle and the Am
A Study in Race Prejudice in the Modern World (London, I959), pp. 4-5. W
The Discovery of the Large, Rich, and Beautiful Empire of Guinea (I 595).
0 For accounts of these presentations see Peter Martyr Anghiera De Orbe
Paul Gaffarel (Paris, 1907), dec. VIII, cap. 9, p. 717. Bernal Diaz, cap. cx
p. 527. Francisco L6pez de G6mara, Historia de la conquista de Mexico (
vol. II, cap. cxcii, pp. I85-6.
arrival of the Pilgrims. Thomas Aubert was the first Frenchman to bring
Indians from Canada to Rouen in 5og9.11 Portuguese Gaspar Corte-real
carried North American natives with him back to Lisbon in I5oi.12 For
those Europeans not privileged to be at court, there were very popular
pictures in circulation. Theodore de Bry's massive copper engravings of
the living conditions and dress of New World natives were best sellers
from the moment they were first issued in 59o.13
Not only did the exotic pictures of the New World peoples sell well in
the sixteenth century, but tales of their 'barbaric' conduct were equally
popular in Europe. The enormous popularity of a highly sensationalist
account of cannibalism in Brazil by a German sailor exemplified the appeal
that such tales of 'monstrous' conduct had in Europe. The popularity of
such tales can be understood as titillating confirmation of the preconcep-
tions that most Europeans had about hitherto unknown and remote
peoples. Thus the interest in the physical appearance and conduct of the
New World peoples was largely a function of their novelty and
exoticism.14 However, the thrill of the unfamiliar and exotic rapidly
exhausted itself, and these accounts were later satirised by writers such as
Rabelais in Pantagruel and Daniel Defoe in Gulliver's Travels.
Sensationalism aside, whether the New World peoples were 'mon-
strous' 'Amazons', or 'cannibals' were all European questions. All these
terms were conventional, sometimes long-standing European labels for
people remote and different from themselves. Employing these categories
involved shoehorning these peoples into familiar European categories. It
was, as one historian put it, using 'arguments once applied in the
classrooms of thirteenth-century Paris...in the New World'.15 Using
categories of Parisian classrooms produced descriptions of the natives that
had little to do with the economic, political, social or cultural lives of the
New World peoples themselves, or what they would have described about
themselves.
But once an initial curiosity was satisfied, in Spain there was little
11 Carolyn Thomas Foreman, Indians Abroad, I493-r938 (Norman, I938), pp. 8-9, I 5-17.
12 Ibid., pp. 7-8.
13 Theodore de Bry's multivolume sets are customarily called the Grands et petits voyages
for the folio size of the engravings, and were published between 1590 and I634. The
classical bibliography is James Lindsay Crawford, Grands et petits voyages of De Bry,
Bibliotheca Linsiana, Collations and Notes, no. 3 (London, i884). For the success of
the first volume see Stefan Lorant, The New World, the First Pictures of America Made
by John White and Jacques le Moyne (New York, 1946), p. I82. A recent analysis is
Bernadette Bucher, Icon and Conquest, trans. by Basia Miller Gulati (Chicago, I98I).
14 Peter Martir's Decadas del Nuevo Mundo, first published in 5 i6, is the best known
presentation of the Indies as exotic. See Salas, Tres cronistas de Indias, pp. 32-3 for the
consensus on this position.
15 Friedman, Monstrous Races, p. 207; A. Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man, 2nd edn.
(Cambridge, 1986), p. 6.
634 Patricia Seed
continued interest concerning the 'monstrous' character of the American

Indian. Indeed the exoticism that characterised French writing about New
World peoples through the sixteenth century is absent in the Spanish
accounts.16 The leading theoretician of Spain's New World policy, Juan
Sol6rzano, concludes after a very brief description of the matter, that no
monsters were found in the New World.l7 But if the Spaniards in the New
World were not concerned to demonstrate the Indians' humanity in
opposition to prevailing popular beliefs elsewhere that they were exotic
monsters, what was the question of Indians' humanity all about?
The question of the Indians' humanity erupted into public debate in
Spain twice: first between I 5 I I and 5 20, and secondly between I 5 32 and
1537. Fray Montesinos, who opened the debate in i 5 1 arrived with the
first group of Dominicans to reach the New World, landing on the island
of Hispaniola in i 50. They had been preceded on the island by the
Franciscan friars who had effectively monopolised the conversions on
Hispaniola. Making no headway against their local rivals, and unable to
persuade local notables to switch to using their order for religious
instruction, the Dominicans were determined to break into the Franciscan
monopoly. What they chose as a strategy was the argument that the
Spanish settlers on the islands were overworking New World natives and
consequently failing to allow them time for religious instruction.18 In
other words, their complaint was that no Spanish settler would release
Indians from their work obligations to attend sessions of religious
instruction run by Dominicans.19 Calling upon officials of the island to
rectify the abuses by giving the Indians time to attend religious
instruction, Montesinos did not phrase the demands of his order for a
greater share of the work of conversion in terms of the political ambitions
of his order and their competition with the dominant Franciscans. Rather
he declared, not that he and his fellows desired to convert the Indians, but
16 Gilbert Chinard, L'exoticisme americaine dans la litteraturefranfaise au XVI? siecle (Paris,

91 i). Despite confusing the exoticism of the American landscape with that of the
people, Hanke himself cites only Orellana's Amazons and Cieza de Leon's (like
Acosta's) belief in giants. Hanke, Aristotle and the Indians, pp. 3-6.
17 Juan Sol6rzano, Disputationem de Indiarumjure (Madrid, I629), lib. 2, cap. 8, nos. 4, 8
contains a summary discussion of Augustine's monsters and their relation to Spanish
categories of dominion. He concludes (lib. 2, cap. 9) that no such monsters have been
found (p. 340).
18 The tales of Indian overwork were reported by a remorseful encomendero who joined the
Dominicans as penance not for mistreating his Indians but for having beaten his wife to
death out of jealousy and suspicion. But neither Las Casas nor any other Dominicans
make anything of the analogy to the way women were treated in Spanish society (Las
Casas, Historia, lib. 3, cap. 3.)
19 Coleccion de documentos ineditos, relativos al desubrimiento, conquista y organidacion de las
antiguas posesiones espanolas... de Indias, 42 vols. (Madrid, 1864-84), (hereafter CDI), vol.
VII, pp. 397-430.
'Are These Not Also Men?' 63 5
rather that the Indians had a right to be converted. How much the Indians
of Hispaniola actually cared about being converted is an open question.
But as Montesinos phrased it, all men had a right to be converted, on
grounds of their humanity.20 The initial question about the 'humanity' of
the New World peoples -'are the Indians not men?' - was initially asked
as a rhetorical question by priests demanding enhanced opportunities for
their own order to proselytise by issuing a general call for greater concern
for the conversion of native people.21 Such a concern was of course a
Spanish concern, a concern for the extension of a certain kind of
hegemony over indigenous peoples.
But in raising the question in this fashion the friars were also provoking
a political maelstrom. The issue of the Indians' conversion was also a
political question relating to Spain's right to rule the New World.22 For
the papal bulls granting Spain control over the New World contained the
phrase that this dominion was granted in order that the Spaniards might
Christianise the natives.23 The initial rationale for both conquest and
permanent Spanish dominion over the New World was the Papal
'donation', the bulls Inter Caetera and Dudum siquidem by which Pope
Alexander VI granted dominion over the New World to the Spaniards in
order that they might Christianise the natives?24 Hence to challenge
Spanish authorities for failing to Christianise the natives was to challenge
them for failing to exercise political power legitimately in the New World.
Proper concern for Christianising the natives was crucial to rightful
Spanish sovereignty over the New World.25 In this way the question of
20 Las Casas, Historia, lib. 3, cap. 3, p. 4.
21 Las Casas's account in his Historia, lib. 3, cap. 4 has the prior of the Dominican convent
affirming that the decision to preach the sermon had been made after much deliberation
in the convent and agreed upon as 'verdad evangelica y cosa necesaria a la salvaci6n
de todos los espafioles y los indios desta isla'. That Montesinos would have asked about
the justice of the wars against the Indians this early in the debates is highly unlikely.
See Dimitrios Ramos et al., La etica de la conquista: Francisco lVitoria y la escuela de
Salamanca (Madrid, 1984).
22 Montesinos's sermon challenged the authority of the settlers' actions in the New
World, to which they responded that the Indians had been legally granted by the
Crown and that what the Dominicans wanted would be a great disservice to the Crown
(Las Casas, Historia, lib. 3, cap. iv, p. 441).
23 'hortamur vos...qua mandatis Apostolicis obligati estis, et viscera misericordae
Domini Nostri Jesu Christi attente requirimus, ut cum expeditionem hujusmodi
omnino prosequi et assumere proba menta orthodoxae Fidei zelo inendatis, populos,
in hujusmodi insulis et terris degentes ad christianum religionem suscipiendum
inducere... Et ut negotii provinciam Apostolicae gratiae largitate donati... omnes
insulas et terras firmas' (Inter caetera, in Francisco Hernaez, Coleccion de bulas, breves
y otros documentos relativos a la iglesia de America y Filipinas (Brussels, I879), vol. I,
p. I3).
24 Ibid., pp. z2-I4, I7-18.
25 Eloy Bull6n y Fernindez, 'Et problema juridico de la dominacion espafiola en America
antes de las Relecciones de Francisco Vitoria', Anuario, vol. 4 (1933), pp. 99-I28, esp.
63 6 Patricia Seed
conversion was not just a matter of belief, but also of public (imperial)
policy.
When the Dominicans on Hispaniola in I 5 demanded greater
attention to religious instruction by appealing to the idea that the Indians
were also men (and hence had a 'right' to be converted) they understood
the Indians' 'humanity' in relation to their potential Christianity. In
Montesinos's famous phrase, the rhetorical question 'are they not men?'
was followed immediately by its rephrasing 'do they not have rational
souls?' The meaning of humanity was clearly allied to the possession of
a 'rational soul'. But the term 'rational soul' had a very specific technical
meaning, originating in specifically Christian thought, and developed
most fully in the writings of the greatest of all Dominicans, Thomas
Aquinas.
At the core of the issue of the 'humanity' or 'rational soul' was a
fundamentally Christian distinction between men and animals. Although,
for example, the Greeks and Romans, separated themselves from
barbarians, they did not distinguish sharply between men and animals, but
related them more closely on a continuum.26 But, beginning with
Augustine, Christianity had established possession of 'reason' as a
defining characteristic of humanity. 'Reason', which 'humans' were
defined as having, and animals defined as lacking, thus became the way of
establishing an absolute difference between men and animals.27 In
pp. 104-5. Silvio Zavala, 'Las doctrinas de Palacios Rubios y Matias de la Paz ante la
conquista de America', in De las islas del mar oceano (Mexico, I 954), pp. ix-cxxx. Palacios
Rubios summarises his defence of the Papal donation in De las islas, ch. 5, esp. pp. I 28,
I36.
26 Hayden White, 'The Forms of Wildness: Archeology of an Idea', Edward Dudley and
Maimillian E. Novak (eds). The Wild Man Within (Pittsburgh, 1972), pp. 3-38, esp.
p. 24; J. H. Elliott, The Old World and the New, 1492-16fj (Cambridge, 1970), p. 42.
Justinian's Institutes, book i, tit. 2. Pagden, p. I6, appears to suggest a dichotomy
between man and animal in Aristotle, but Aristotle's discussion suggests a continuum.
De partibus animalium, 66oa, lines 17- 8, reads 'It is in man that the tongue attains its
greatest degree of freedom'.Aristotle's suggestion later in this same book (673a, line 25)
does not suggest that 'a man may sacrifice the right to be called a man' but rather
simply observes that 'where heads are chopped off with great rapidity' as the
barbarians do, there are no reports of post-mortem speech. In the Nichomachean Ethics,
1145 a, lines 24-9, Aristotle appears to have placed men on a continuum between those
who were gods, and those who were brutes, with ordinary men in between. 'If, as they
say, men become gods by excess of virtue, of this kind must evidently be that state
opposed to the brutish state ... Now since it is rarely that a godlike man is found ... so
too the brutish type is rarely found among men [sic] it is chiefly among barbarians.'
Arthur Lovejoy's history of the Platonic idea is The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge,
Mass., 1953).
27 Augustine, De civitate dei, lib. XVI, cap. 8, 'id est animal rationale mortale'. Opera
omnia, vol. VII (Paris, 1841). Clement of Alexandria has the rationale soul as the essence
of the person. The origin of this thinking is Greek, but became transformed in
medieval Christian thought, particularly that of the great Dominican

Thomas Aquinas, the presence of a rational soul was used to distinguish
between all those who were Christians, or potentially so. Everyone who
was baptised, or who could potentially be baptised, was 'human' that is,
having a 'rational soul', while all those not capable of being Christians
were 'brute animals'.28 The Spaniards, following Aquinas, believed that
their religious system was the result of 'natural' law, and by 'natural' they
meant 'obvious' and 'rational'. Hence they assumed that anyone who was
'rational' would find their religion 'obvious', and so convert. Hence the
definition of 'humanity' was related to the capacity of individuals to be
baptised, to be brought into the Catholic faith.29 Hence in sixteenth-
century Catholic Spain (and among Dominicans in particular) the notion
predominated of an absolute difference between 'humans' (potential
Christians) and 'animals' (not potential Christians).
Partisans of the derogatory opinion rarely affirmed categorically that
the Indians were animals.30 Rather they more often used expressions of
similarity 'like parrots' or 'as a horse' or more commonly 'as brute
Christianity. For a critique of the Greek emphasis in Christian thinking see John
Dwyer, Son of Man, Son of God (New York, I983). On the distinction between men and
apes in the Middle Ages see H. W. Janson, Apes and Ape Lore in the Middle Ages
(London, 1952), pp. 74-99. Albertus Magnus whose De animalibus argued more than
any other medievalist in favour of a connection between men and animals, nonetheless
retained the Christian distinction because of reason (pp. 84, 88). Hogden argues that
in England in the last quarter of the seventeenth and the first third of the eighteenth
century a search began for links between man and the animals (Early Anthropology,
p. 418).
28 'Homo bruta animalia superexcedit in hoc quod habet rationem... Ergo videtur quod,
sicut bruta animalia non baptizantur... quod furiosi vel amentes carent usa rationis per
accidens... non autem propter defectum animae rationalis, sicut bruta animalia' (Summa
3a, quest. 68 art. 2, 2, and ad 2). Natural reason was deemed a characteristic of all men
from early Christian time (Institutes of Justinian, book i, tit. 2), but Aquinas emphasised
the use of the term in distinguishing between 'human' and 'bruta animalia'. The
Institutes have natural law instilled in animals.
The earlier controversy about the meaning of 'bestial' seems to have revolved
around the literal versus the metaphoric meaning of the word. See Lewis Hanke, 'Pope
Paul III and the American Indians', Harvard Theological Review, vol. 30 (I937), pp.
65-102'; Carrenio, 'La irracionalidad', pp. 374-8; Juan Perez Tudela, 'Introduction'
to Historia de las Indias. Neither interpretation explains why the question was critical
to the Spanish definition of sovereignty over the New World.
29 Acosta says that the Church of Christ saves everyone up to animals. Deprocuranda, book
i, cap. 7, p. I39. Friedman, Monstrous Races, pp. 178-96. Hogden confuses the
animal/human distinction with general issues of human social and political hierarchy
(pp. 389ff.).
30 The exception is the much cited 1 5 17 Parecer of Lucas Vasquez de Ayll6n, 'Mejor les
es ser ombres siervos que bestias libres' and 'dexar estar los yndios a la continua en sus
tierras... siempre serian bestias condenadas para el ynfierno' reproduced in Gimenez
Fernandez, pp. 573-90, esp. 58I, 586.
638 Patricia Seed
beasts'.31 But omitting the comparative term, 'like' or 'as', Las Casa
no trouble in exaggerating his opponents' arguments, accusing them
calling human beings 'beasts '.32 Many of Las Casas's subsequent defe
have argued that he captured the sentiments behind these statements
if he failed to note the greater caution with which the distinction
usually committed to paper.33
The accusation of'animal' was in fact highly categorical, and l
specific content. Those accusing Indians of lacking humanity i
highly politicised debate rarely identified the Indians as members o
particular animal species.34 Rather they usually referred to the Ind
terms of the general category of 'animal'. This suggests that their lab
was aimed only at the creation of the Indians as a category of (inf
Other - those not like us, and furthermore those not capable of bec
like us, i.e. Christians. The category Aquinas selected of 'anim
reinforced the notion of difference, a difference that could not be overc
'Animals' could not become 'humans'. The so-called 'bestiality' o
Indians was in this sense a definition of the Indians as radically Othe
the Spaniards, and thus unable to become like them.
As Hayden White has pointed out, the word 'humanity' usually d
'not so much refer to a specific thing...as dictate a particular at
governing a relationship'.5 And in this case the relationship was be
those who could become Christians ('humans') and those who could
(' animals'). Consequently the question of the natives' 'humanity' w
frequently cast by sixteenth-century Spanish writers in terms of
Indians' 'capacity'. What was most usually meant by the word 'capa
31 Palacios Rubios establishing precedence for dominion over infidels in general de

'Los Saracenos que como animales carentes de raz6n, adoran a los idolos, despre
al verdadero Dios' (pp. 8i, 103). Francisco Vitoria in his Commentaries on the S
Secundae of Aquinas said 'et sic [...] insulani, quodam modo bestiales et inc
doctrinae'.
32 'Libel I say [it is] defaming men as beasts, lacking in reason... as brute animals
incapable of learning and full of heinous sins' (Aquise contiene una disputa, in Bartolome
de las Casas, Tratados, ed. Lewis Hanke (Mexico, I956), p. 445).
33 Lewis Hanke, All Mankind is One, pp. 48-9, n. 20; Edmundo O'Gorman, 'La
naturaleza bestial del indio', esp. p. 305; Juan Perez de Tudela, Obras escogidas de fray
Bartolome de Las Casas (Madrid, I957), vol. I, pp. xxxi-xxxii note 46; Lino G6mez
Canedo, ' Hombres or bestias?' pp. 29-5 I.
34 The only exception appears to have been the encomenderos of the Caribbean who
apparently insulted their workers by calling them 'dogs' (Altamira, 'Leyes de Burgos'
ley 24, p. 39). But the terms 'dog of a Moor' or 'Moorish dog' were insults used
against newly converted people in sixteenth century Spain, and signified that they were
non-believers, i.e. that their faith was insincere rather than that they lacked humanity.
Amdrico Castro, The Structure of Spanish History (Princeton, i956), p. 228.
35 White, 'The Forms of Wildness', p. 4. Perez Tudela's argument that discussions of the
Indians' 'nature' refer to a state rather than an unchangeable nature is fundamentally
correct (pp. xxi-xxxii n. 46).
[capacidad] or 'ability' [habilidad] was the potential of the natives to become

Christians.36 And it is this sense of the word that pervades the writings of
both Jose de Acosta and Bartolome de Las Casas, as well as the sense in
which it is used in royal legislation.37 The question of the Indians'
'humanity' - meaning their capacity for Christianity - became the focus of
the shorter-lived of the two major controversies in Spain over the 'nature'
of the Indians.38
If the Indians were defined as fully 'human', or having 'rational souls',
then implicitly they had a full capacity for Christianisation. If they were
animals, then they lacked all such potential and were 'incapable' of
Christianisation.39 But if they were some sort of intermediate term-
human but insane or mentally deficient, or perhaps belonging to one of
the monstrous races of medieval legend - then there was the possibility,
discussed at length by St Thomas and others, that they were men 'lacking
the use of reason' hence also 'incapable'.40 These three positions, that the
Indians were fully human (capable of Christianity) (having 'rational
souls'); or men lacking the use of reason (generally 'incapable'); lacking
capability altogether ('beasts'); were the central positions argued in the
political debates over the natives' 'humanity' on Spanish political circles.
The political stakes were considerable. For if the Spanish title to the
New World rested upon their conversion of the native peoples, the
question of whether or not they were capable of Christianisation signified
whether they could be brought under the political authority of the Spanish
Crown through the title of the Papal donation. So too was the type of
political dominion related to the issue of their 'humanity'. If they had
'little capacity' then enslavement or some other system of tutelary
36 'Carta que escribieron varios padres de la 6rden de Santo Domingo residentes en la

isla Espafiola a Mr. de Xevres', [i 5 6] in CDI, vol. VII, pp. 397-430. In this letter the
Dominican friars use 'habil' for the ability to receive the faith. Hanke, All Mankind is
One, p. 174 adds 'civilization', a word not used in sixteenth-century Spain.
37 Las Casas writing the Historia de las Indias during the I5 5os, uses 'capacity' to refer to
their potential for Christianisation, as does Father Acosta later that century in De
procuranda indorum salute; Recop. Lib I tit. i leyes iii, xix. Recop. Lib I tit. I ley v uses
'habilidady suficiciencia' (i 563, 568).
38 The subsequent debate over their 'nature' as barbarians is described in Anthony
Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man, rev. edn. (Cambridge, 1986).
39 Hanke, All Mankind, p. I45.
40 'The insane and mentally deficient lack the use of reason accidentally because of some
impediment of a bodily organ, but not for lack of a rational soul as is in the case with
brute animals' (Summa, 3a q. 68 ad 2). ' Sugiri6 a no pocos espafoles, y aun a algunas
personas tenidas del vulgo por sabias, que los indios americanos no eran verdaderos
hombres con alma racional, sino una tercera especie de animal entre hombre y mono.'
Juan Jose de la Cruz y Moya, Historia de la Santa y Apostolica provincia de Santiago de
Predicadores de Mexico en la Nueva Espana [1756/I757] (Mexico, 1954-5), vol II, chap. 7,
p. 46.
640 Patricia Seed
domination such as the encomienda would be wholly justifiable.41 If they

were 'incapable' the Crown would have to find some other means of
making them subjects, some other rationale for its dominion over them.
In other words, upon the foundation of the Indians 'capacity for
conversion' rested the entire edifice of Spain's political control over the
New World.
The question thus phrased was fundamentally an argument about the

potential for assimilation of Spanish beliefs and values (expressed in
religion). It was establishing a set of judgments about the natives, not in
terms of their own categories, but in terms of those of the Spaniards.
Among sixteenth-century Spaniards, the question of the degree of
indigenous capacity related to the level of participation that natives would
be permitted in the core rituals (sacraments) of Spanish Catholicism. The
Dominican friars whose accusations had sparked the first controversy
accused Spanish encomenderos on the island of Hispaniola of not believing
the Indians had the ability to receive the sacraments such as marriage or
baptism. They wrote to the Crown: '[These Spaniards] have said they [the
Indians] are not capable of marriage nor of receiving the faith .42 And
indeed there were Spaniards who so argued. The royal treasurer on Puerto
Rico, Andres de Haro, wrote in 5 17 that the Indians of that island 'are
incapable of the things of faith'.43 Even after the close of the controversy
over the 'capacity' of the natives to participate in the sacraments of
marriage and baptism, it was still controversial whether they had the
'capacity' to receive the Eucharist.44
Complaints by Spanish residents on Hispaniola about the Dominicans'
demands for increased time for religious instruction were carried to the
king. And because a challenge about the Christianisation policies of the
Crown was a challenge to its political legitimacy in the New World, the
complaints were heard by the Council of the Indies. In response to the
Dominicans' allegations Fray Bernardo de Mesa, a royal preacher, said
that most people would put it more moderately. 'I believe... that no one
of sound mind could say these Indians do not have the capacity to receive
41 'Memorial de fray Bernardino de Manzanedo sobre el buen regimen y governo de los
indios' [I518], in Manuel Serrano y Serrano, Los origenes de la dominacidn espanola,
pp. 567-75. Letter from the Treasurer of Puerto Rico [ 5r 17], ibid., pp. 5 75-7. See also
the Hieronymite interrogatory in CDI, vol. xxxiv, pp. 201-29 and the response of
Cardinal Cisneros in Gimenez Fernandez, pp. 637-48. J. A. Fernandez-Santamarfa, The
State, War and Peace: Spanish Political Thought in the Renaissance IrT6-Isj9 (Cambridge,
1977), pp. 235-6 characterises this as the core of Sepdlveda's position.
42 CDI, vol. VII, pp. 397-430, esp. 418 (15 6). The Dominican friars use 'habil' for the
ability to receive the faith.
43 Letter from Alonso de Haro, royal treasurer on Puerto Rico, to Crown, 21 Jan. 15 17,
in Serrano, pp. 575-7.
44 'Rogamos y encargamos... que se administre a los Indios que tuvieren capacidad el
Santisimo Sacramento de la Eucaristia' (emphasis added) (Recop. lib. I tit. i, ley xix
(I578)).
'Are These Not Also Men?' 64I
our faith... but I dare to say that there is in them such little aptitude by
nature and habit that in order to bring them to the faith... a great deal of
work is necessary'.45 The Franciscan bishop of Avila (Spain), and
secretary to the governing Regent, Cardinal Cisneros, argued that the
Indians were 'not capable of the natural judgement needed to receive the
faith, nor do they have the other virtues of upbringing required for their
conversion'.46 The conclusion of Cardinal Cisneros was similar to his
secretary's. 'Said Indians do not have the capacity to take in and succeed
in [understanding] the things of the faith by themselves... each day the
limited capacity of the Indians is known and held as more certain'47
(emphasis added). And Cisneros ordered the Dominicans, whom he
blamed for continuing agitation over the Indians' 'capacity for
Christianity' to be ordered to cease and desist. And if that failed, the
Dominicans should be shipped out of Hispaniola on the next available
ship, thus effectively putting a temporary end to discussions of Indian
potential for conversion.48 Thus the first debate over the capacity of the
Indians ended abruptly in the silencing of the Dominicans on this
question.
However, the Dominican complaints did bear fruit in at least one way.
The Crown did proceed with an inquiry into the attitudes of local settlers
regarding the Indians' capacity to become Christians. And new laws - the
laws of Burgos - of I5 12 were issued to allow greater time for the
conversion activities of priests.49 But the Dominicans were not necessarily
granted an increased role in this process. While the charges of excess
labour were undoubtedly true, it is doubtful whether the Dominicans
would have raised this issue had they been given their own share of the
natives to convert. But the Dominicans arrived at a time when the native
population of Hispaniola was declining, and the Franciscans had little

inclination to share a diminishing resource with the Dominican late-
comers. Such conflicts among orders were common in Latin America.50
While Dominicans on the island of Hispaniola cast their opponents in
45 Las Casas, Historia, lib. 3, cap. ix, p. 462. Albert de la Hera, 'El derecho de los indios
a la libertad y a la fe', Anuario de historia del derecho espanol, vol. 26 (1956), pp. I 15-17
argues for this as the principal way in which asseverations of 'animal' nature were
understood.
46 'No es gente capaz ni de juicio natural para rescibir la fe ni las otras virtudes de crianza
necesaria a su conversi6n y salvaci6n' (Angel Ortega, La Rdbida, vol. II (Seville, 1925),
pp. 306-309, esp. 308).
47 Gimenez Fernandez, Bartolome de Las Casas, pp. 637-48, esp. p. 646.
48 Ibid.
49 For the Hieronymite inquiry see Hanke, Gimenez Fernandez, Serrano Sanz; CDI, vol.
VII, pp. 11-12, 445-6; Las Casas, Historia lib. 3, cap. 8, p. 456-7, cap. 13, pp. 475-8.
Rafael Altamira, 'El texto de las leyes de Burgos de 15 12', Revista de historia de America,
vol. I (1938), pp. 5-79.
50 For Paraguay see Rene Hort's 'Earthly Paradise or Community of Indians? The Myth
of the Paraguayan Jesuit Missions', unpub. paper.
642 Patricia Seed
terms of greed and self-interest (trying to increase the number of hours

that Indians laboured) in affirming the natives lack of 'capacity' for
Christianity,51 secular Spaniards often countered that the priests were
simply trying to monopolise the Indians for their own benefit.52 Both
sides were right. Both said that they were doing something for the
Indian's benefit, but both were competing to use the Indians for their own
ends. The secular Spaniards were trying to enrich themselves; the friars,
while perhaps individually dedicated to a moral goal, were also attempting
to enrich their community, and to strengthen their own political base in
the highly competitive world of sixteenth-century religious politics.
While clerics such as Bartolome de las Casas tried to characterise the
debate as one between self-interested (secular Spaniards) and dis-intereste

(clerics), the question of the humanity of the Indians was a political issu
for clerics as well. The clerics needed the declaration of indigenous
'humanity' in order to legitimise their dominion over the natives.
Following the death of Cardinal Cisneros, the question of the natives
'capability' for Christianity remained relatively quiescent as a political
issue for over a decade. It continued to be raised, as before, by clerics. O
two subsequent occasions after the silencing of the Dominicans, it was
priests who raised the issue of the natives' 'capacity' for Christianisation
But unlike Montesinos, who charged that secular Spaniards believed the
Indians were like animals, clergymen themselves placed this label on th
Indians when their efforts at conversion ended in failure. The frustration
of Dominican friar Tomis Ortiz at his inability to persuade American

aborigines of Chichiribichi to convert, and his resentment of their burning
of the Dominican mission there, was apparent in his statement before the
Council of the Indies in I525. The Indians were 'like asses, stupid-
looking, reckless, mad... did not hold to the truth unless it was to their
benefit... inconstant... ungrateful... they were incapable of doctrine
[Christianity] ... About the age of ten or twelve years it appears they are
going to turn out with some education and virtue, but from then on they
become like brute beasts'.53 Pedro de Gante in I558 expressed similar
51 'Para paliar su tirania, dieron en decir que los indios no eran hombres verdaderos sino
una especie de salvajes en algo parecidos al hombre' (Cruz y Moya, Historia, II, cap.
7, P. 47).
52 Salas, Tres cronistas de Indias, pp. I 19-20; Joaquin Garcia Icabalcezta, Don Fray Juan de
Zummdrraga, primer obispo y ar7obispo de Mexico (Mexico, 1947), chap. Io. Josefina
Vasquez Vera, 'El indio americano y su circunstancia en la obra de Fernandez de
Oviedo', Revista de Indias, nos. 69 & 70 (1957), pp. 469-5 o1, esp. 495-7, 502; Alonso
de la Vera Cruz, vol. II, p. 373; Juan Avalle Arce, Las memorias de Gonzalo Ferndndeg
Oviedo, 2 vols. (Chapel Hill, 1974). Such kinds of accusations were endemic in the
Americas. See Rene Horst, 'Earthly Paradise or Community of Indians? The Myth of
the Paraguayan Jesuit Missions', unpub. paper.
53 Peter Martyr, De orbe novo, Dec. VII, cap. 4, pp. 603-4, repeated by Antonio Herrera,
Dec. III, lib. 8, cap. Io.
frustration when Nahuas fled from the friars calling them 'like animals
without reason'.54 That so many Indians neither converted nor showed
much interest in converting powerfully frustrated clerical expectations
about 'reason' - the idea that Roman Catholicism was obviously true to
anyone possessing 'reason'. But the frustration of these expectations that
anyone with a 'rational soul' would immediately convert to Roman
Catholicism did not lead the clerics to question their own beliefs about the
'rationality' of their faith or their beliefs in the relationship of 'humanity'
to 'reason'. Instead it led these priests to accuse the Indians of a 'lack of
capacity', a lack of 'reason', a lack of humanity.
Indeed the fiery controversy over the Indians' humanity was reignited
by precisely such an expression of frustration by a Dominican friar,
Domingo Betanzos. Testifying in late 1 5 3 or 5 33 before the Council of
the Indies in a statement that has since been lost, Betanzos allegedly
declared that the Indians were not of the same nature as Spaniards and
hence were incapable of converting to Christianity.55 Betanzos himself
subsequently maintained that his opinions were being exaggerated by his
opponents and that he merely found the natives to be of 'very little
capacity'.56 However they were expressed, his doubts about the 'capacity'
of Indians for the faith was reportedly shared by many others. 'In Peru
and New Spain [many] were of the opinion they [the Indians] were not
capable of confessing and receiving communion.'57 A royal official in
Cuba wrote to the Crown in 15 32 that 'Indians... were not capable... [and]
could not believe in God except as a parrot'.58 Even a president of the
Council of the Indies was convinced by Betanzos's reasoning, defending
the position that the Indians' capacity for Christianity did not exceed that
54 Letter from Pedro de Gante to Philip II (23 June, 1 558) about Nahuan commoners: 'la
gente comin estava como animales sin raz6n indomables que no los podiamos traer
al gremio y congregaci6n de la iglesia ni a la doctrina ni a serm6n, sino que hufan desto
como el demonio de la cruz' (Fr. Fidel de J. Chauvet, Cartas de Fr. Pedro de Gante,
O.F.M. (Mexico, n.d.), pp. 39-52, esp. 45-6).
55 'Hubo gente, y no sin letras, que puso duda en si los indios eran verdaderamente
hombres, de la misma naturaleza que nosotros; y no falt6 quien afirmase que no lo eran,
sino incapaces de recibir los Santos Sacramentos de la Iglesia' (Agustin Davila Padilla,
Historia de la fundacidn y discurso de la Provincia de Santiago de Mexico de la Orden de
Predicadores [1596], lib. i, cap. 30. 3rd edn. (Mexico, I955). Also letter of Bernardino
Minaya, in Lewis Hanke, Estudios sobre Bartolome de Las Casas (Caracas, I968), p. 76.
56 Alberto Maria Carreio, 'La irracionalidad de los indios', pp. 272-82, 328-39, 374-85,
esp. 383-4. A recent advocate of this position is Lino G6mez Canedo, '~Hombres o
bestias?', pp. 45-6.
57 Gregorio Santiago Vela, Ensayo de una biblioteca iberoamericana de la orden de San Agustin
(Madrid, 1913), vol. I, p. 34; also Gimenez, Introduccin al estudio, p. 5. Santiago Vela
cites as defenders of Indian 'capacity' for the sacraments the Augustinian friars Juan
Bautista de Moya, Alonso de la Veracruz, Nicolas de Agreda and Friar Agurto.
58 L. Hanke, The First Social Experiments in America: a Study in the Development of Spanish
Indian Policy in the Sixteenth Century (Glouster, Mass., I964), p. 78.
644 Patricia Seed
of parrots.59 While for churchmen the question was, as before, the extent
to which Indians were to be permitted to participate in Catholic rituals
such as confession and communion, more generally there were also, again
as before, questions of considerable political interest as well.
When Betanzos's statement was allegedly read, there were far greater
numbers of Indians to be converted than ever before. The conquest of the
vast territory of central Mexico had taken place over a decade before, and
the even vaster Inca empire to the south had just been discovered by
Spaniards. By the early 530os there were thus large numbers of clerics of
many religious orders already well-entrenched in missionary activity in
New Spain. And the relatively recent discovery of Peru meant that there
was soon to be a second explosion of religious activity in that territory.
It was no longer an issue for a small dispute between two rival orders
(Dominicans and Franciscans) on a tiny island in the Caribbean. There
were Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians in large numbers, in addition
to huge numbers of diocesan clergy as well. And these orders were facing
an unparalleled opportunity for conversion comparable to the early days
of Christianity.60
Hence the concern of many friars to secure their rights over the Indians.
Their special role in converting New World peoples was at stake. While
the tone of moral outrage undoubtedly stemmed from personal
conviction, there was another more political issue at stake as well. They
rightly perceived that if the Indians were declared to be lacking the
capacity to become Christians (or judged to have little ability to do so)
they would be edged out of the responsibilities and unprecedented power
they enjoyed in the New World. Even the rumour that such a statement had
been made produced a negative reaction from them that was immediate
and overwhelming. The larger, well-entrenched, and highly organised
missionary orders protested against any intimation of the Indians' 'lack of
capacity' with a rapid, highly orchestrated campaign of letter-writing to
Spanish authorities.
The President of the Audiencia of Mexico, bishop Ramirez de Fuenleal
responded that Bentanzos's opinion was worthless because 'he agreed to
59 'Le hice saber del derecho y la capacidad de los indios para ingresar al Cristianismo.
El Cardenal me contest6 que yo estaba engafiado, que los indios no era mas que
papagayos' (Fray Bernardino Minayo, quoted in Hanke, Estudios sobre Bartolome de Las
Casas, pp. 76-7).
60 Robert Ricard, The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico, trans. Lesley Byrd Simpson (Berkeley,
1966), pp. 91-2. On Peru see 'Memorial que Don Francisco de Toledo dio al Rey
Nuestro Senor del estado en que dej6 las cosas del Peru ' (I 5 8 I-2), in Lewis Hanke (ed.),
Los virreyes espaioles en Amdrica durante el gobierno de la casa de Austria, vol. CCLXXX
(Madrid, 1978), p. 131; Letter, Bartolome Hernandez, S.J. to Juan de Ovando,
President of the Consejo de Indias (Lima, April 19, 1572), appendix v of Acosta De
procuranda, pp. 642-53, 644.
affirm that which is said by those who wish to hold these [Indians] in
subjection as beasts, so as to benefit themselves, but the Indians are not
only competent... they will become great Christians'.61 According to
another friar, Franciscan Luis Fuensalida 'that father, if he were of our
order, I would say he had lost his head'.62 Julian Garces, the first bishop
of Tlaxcala, in a letter to Pope Paul III in 1536 described 'the false
doctrine affirmed by those instigated by the devil, that the Indians are
incapable of our religion... This voice comes from the avaricious throats
of Christians whose greed is such that in order to swallow their fill, they
wish to swear that rational creatures created in God's image are beasts and
asses, for no other reason than to have charge of them and not have to
worry about freeing them from the rabid grasp of their greed'.63 The
accusations that the declarations of Indians' 'lack of capacity' for
Christianity were self-interested were identical to the protestation of
religious 'disinterestedness' made nearly twenty years before by the
Dominicans of Santo Domingo.64
But the clergy of New Spain were not content with simply writing to
Spanish political authorities. The threat to their power was too grave. So
great was the insecurity engendered by the rumour of a declaration that
the Indians had little capacity that the Mexican clergy, on their own, went
over the heads of government officials to Rome. In order to counter any
threat that the Spanish Crown might remove the Indians from religious
control on grounds they lacked the capacity to become Christians, they
sought direct support from the Pontiff himself. While there is no evidence
that the Crown was planning anything of the sort, it was clear that even
the remotest hint of a suspicion that the Crown might make such a move
met with an immediate response. A friar, Bernardino Minaya, was sent
with a letter to the Pope to obtain a papal declaration of the natives'
'humanity'. In 537 Pope Paul III provided the clergy with the support
they desired. In Sublimus deus he established the official opinion of the
Catholic Church. 'We... consider, however, that the Indians are truly men
and that they are... capable of understanding the catholic faith.'65 The
61 Paso y Troncoso, Papeles de la Nueva Espana, vol. XV, pp. I62-5.

62 Paso y Troncoso, Papeles, vol. III, pp. 93-6.
63 Padilla, Historia, lib. I, cap. 42-3, pp. 3 2-49, esp. I4I; Hernaez, vol. I, pp. 56-63.
64 CDI, vol. VII, pp. 397-430, esp. 428 (I516). They claimed the Spaniards 'used them
like brute animals': 'por aprovechar de ellos y para que mejor nos sirvamos de ellos
como bestias y animales sin raz6n hasta acabarlos con trabajos, vejaciones, y servicios
escesivos' [sic] (Vasco de Quiroga, 'Informaci6n en derecho sobre algunas provisiones
del Real Consejo de Indias', CDI, vol. X, pp. 333-513, esp. 367, 383-4).
65 'Attendentes Indos ipsos, utpote veros homines, non solum christianae fidei capaces
exsistere, [existere: Hernaez] sed ut nostris [nobis: Hernaez] innotuit ad fidem ipsam
promptissime currere'. Alberto de la Hera, 'El derecho de los indios a la libertad y a
646 Patricia Seed
Papal declaration clearly linked the Indians' 'humanity' to their 'capacity'

for understanding the Catholic faith. After Pope Paul III issued his
famous message, Bartolom6 de Las Casas asserted (with his characteristic
exaggeration) that accusations of' bestiality' or lack of capacity of Indians
to convert had been declared heretical. 'Defaming [the Indians] also as
beasts... daring to say that they were incapable of the law or the faith of
Jesus Christ... is a constituted heresy.'66
The Spanish Crown did not disagree with the basic premises of the bull,
since it was actually in its own political interest to assert the capacity of
the natives for Christianisation. But the Crown was more disturbed by the
friars' direct appeal to Rome. Shortly thereafter the Crown ensured that
no further papal decrees would be sent from Rome to the Americas. All
such pronouncements would have to be granted royal approval first.
Although the debate continued through the middle of the sixteenth
century, it soon became clear that the majority of political opinion in
Spain favoured the position enunciated by Pope Paul III that the Indians
were possessed of 'rational souls' and fully capable of being converted to
Christianity.67 In the New World, provisions that the Indians were indeed
'capable' of Christianity were affirmed by the ecclesiastical juntas in
Mexico City in 1532 and I546,68 and by the Mexican and Peruvian
provincial councils later that century.69 It was, of course, in the Church's
interest to affirm the Indians' potential for Christianisation, since it
la fe', Anuario de historia del derecho espaiol, vol. 26 (I956), 89-181, esp. I62; Hernaez,
Bulas, vol. I, pp. I02-3. Lewis Hanke, 'Pope Paul III and the American Indians',
pp. 65-Io2. English translation by Hanke, All mankind, p. 21; Spanish translation,
Mariano Cuevas (ed.), Documentos ineditos del siglo XI 'Ipara la historia de Mexico, znd ed.
(Mexico, 1973), pp. 84-6.
66 Las Casa, Entre los remedios (i 5 5 2), p. 695. The only evidence that this opinion was ever
labelled 'heretical' comes from Las Casas's own account in the Historia de las Indias, lib.
3, cap. 99, of a meeting of theologians in Salamanca in 15 17 who declared that insisting
the Indians were incapable of the faith was heretical. But the Pope in Subliminus Deus
does not specifically declare the proposition heretical.
67 Luciano Perefia Vicente, 'La soberania de Espafia en America segin Melchor Cano',
Revista espanola de derecho internacional, vol. 5 (X956), pp. 893-924, esp. 907. Francisco
L6pez de G6mara, Historia de la Conquista de Mexico, dedication, p. 36.
68 Item No. 7, 'Todos [miembros de la junta] dixeron que no ay dubda de aver capacidad
y suficiencia en los naturales y que aman mucho a la doctrina de la fe y se a hecho y haze
mucho fruto.' Text of I532 junta's conclusions in Jose A. Llaguno, La personalidad
juridica del indioy el III Concilio Provincial Mexicano (I 585 ), pp. I 5 1-4. A provision of the
1546 junta says that the Indians 'para ser verdaderamente xptianos e politicos, como
hombres razonables que son' (CDI, vol. XXIII, 542-3).
69 Jos6 de Acosta, De procuranda indorum salute, reproves those who insist on Indian
incapacity, pp. 89 ff. In his Historia natural y moral de Las Indias (Mexico, 1962) he
combats the idea that the Indians are brutal and bestial people without understanding
(p. 90).
provided the rationale for ecclesiastical participation in ruling over the

peoples of the New World.
The argument about the Indians' capacity or lack thereof to convert
was just as derivative of European thought as were other categorisations
of native Americans as exotics or monsters. The categories of 'bestiality'
and 'humanity' were related to the way in which the Indians responded
to the Spaniards. If they were ready to accept Christianity, they were
described in admirable, if not glowing terms. If they refused or resisted
the imposition of a new religion they were 'more stupid than asses'. If
they merely mouthed its precepts while refusing to conform their
behaviour to European expectations they were 'like parrots'. Gestures of
incomprehension, refusal and resistance were all interpreted under the
same rubric, all were interpreted in terms of indigenous lack of'capacity',
rather than indigenous unwillingness to accept a foreign religion.
Expressed in more modern terms, the Indians' 'humanity' or 'rationality'
was related to their response to a European ideology, Christianity. If they
accepted this religion, or showed signs of acceptance, Indians were
considered (by Europeans) to have the capacity for Christianisation, and
hence were 'human'. Refusing, resisting, or even misunderstanding this
foreign religion were interpreted as 'stupidity', lacking the capacity for
assimilation, being little better than beasts. Defining Indians by virtue of
their response to European ideology signified the focus of Spanish thinking
upon their 'capacity' for assimilation of Hispanic culture. It separated
Indians from Spaniards as those Others - those not like us - who did not
respond by becoming like us (Christians).
While the I 5 3 7 papal bull deemed all Indians capable of Christianity and
the sacraments of the church, one issue underlying the debate over the
Indians' humanity remained. According to Catholic teachings since the
age of Aquinas, all humans possessed rational souls. And if they had
rational souls, then they would convert to Christianity, because it was the
religion of reason. How then were clerics of subsequent generations to
explain the unwillingness of indigenous peoples either to accept or to
practice this European belief system (Catholic doctrine)? Since the
question of the Indians' potential to become Roman Catholics had been
established by Pontifical decree, and by several Church councils, the
domain of ecclesiastical discourse shifted. After the middle of the sixteenth
century, it was no longer usual to explain indigenous resistance to

conversion as because they were 'animals without reason' or 'more stupid
than asses', but because they consumed excessive amounts of alcohol. In
classic Catholic thinking drinking interfered with the operation of their
rational souls. Hence it became alcohol that rendered Indians' minds
incapable of rationality, that is of understanding and adopting
648 Patricia Seed
Christianity.70 And in the seventeenth century this became the most

commonly accepted reason among clerics explaining the failure of efforts
at conversion. Thus the controversy over the 'humanity' of the American
natives for Christianisation was effectively ended by common religious
and political interests in ruling New World peoples. The concerns for
native 'capacity' transformed into preoccupations with indigenous
alcoholism by the end of the sixteenth century.
But the Spanish self-ascription of'reason' continued well into the
eighteenth century. For in ecclesiastical censuses and countless political
documents the Spaniards described themselves as 'people of reason' (gente
de razon). While they did not label the people excluded from the category
'people of reason' as 'animals' their very exclusion from the category
'people of reason' signified that they were clearly not fully human - but
somehow deficient or lacking in 'reason'. Those excluded from the
category 'people of reason' were, of course, the Indians.71
But the primary context of the debate was ecclesiastical. The principal
proponents of both the 'rationality' of the Indians and their lack of
thereof were clerics. The instigators of the controversy - Montesinos, Las
Casas - were all priests, as were nearly all the respondents - Bernardino
Minaya, Domingo de Betanzos, Pope Paul III. Furthermore, most of the
clerics in this controversy were Dominicans, for whom Aquinas's
definition of humanity (potential Christianity) was immediately familiar.
Even the ultimate resolution of the issue of the natives' humanity was
done by a cleric, the Pope, in terms of the natives' potential for
evangelisation.
Furthermore, the terms of the debate, the medieval Christian definition
of a potential Christian ('human') and a non-potential human ('animal')
again suggest that in addition to the participants, the terms of the debate
itself are a discussion internal to a religious discourse. The terms of the
debate were not created by a dialogue with the natives, nor were they
created by an initiative started by the natives. The entire debate was begun
by a priest talking to his fellow Spaniards. The rest of the debate was
conducted again, in terms of Spanish categories, among Spaniards, and
refereed by Spanish authorities.
If the terms 'animal' and 'human' stood for the opposing poles of a
debate over potential for Christianisation, it should come as no great
surprise that no other European powers would debate the issue. No other
powers were as profoundly concerned with proselytising the natives,
70 Dictamen de Fray Bernardino de Cardenas sobre que no se venda chicha ni vino a los
indios (I639), CDI, vol. VII, pp. 496-514, esp. 497; Acosta, De procuranda, lib. 3, cap.
22.
71 Sherburne F. Cook and Woodrow Borah, Essays in Population History

and the Caribbean (Berkeley, 1974), pp. 76-7, 332.
because no other power legitimated its rule over the New World in terms
of the authority to convert.
The basic definition of the relationship of the indigenous communities
of the New World to the Spanish state was first articulated by Queen
Isabel in I501. That year she ordained that Indians were 'subjects and
vassals of the Crown'.72 While that principle was not established without
a domestic political struggle it was enshrined in law in I 542, and would
remain in place until the end of Spain's colonial empire. Spain alone of all
the European powers established that Indians were royal subjects, a policy
that formed the keystone to Spain's political control of natives. In no
other European overseas possession, not even those of Portugal, were all
native peoples forced to become subjects and vassals of the Crown.
Transforming the natives of the New World into 'our subjects and
vassals' meant that regardless of whatever systems of political allegiance
were in operation at the time of the Spanish arrival, all of these political
ties were immediately rendered secondary by the arrival of the Spaniards,
and submission (vassalage) to the Spanish political system was the primary
relationship of all indigenous peoples and communities of the New
World. This system of forced political assimilation established a
fundamental duty of obedience to the Spanish state as the basis of the
Spanish conquest.
The second part of this duty of obedience was religious. The guiding
principle of Hispanic expansion overseas enshrined in the opening lines of
Hispanic colonial legal code was 'Go forth and teach', the injunction
invented in sixteenth-century Spanish political debates as the religious
justification for political colonisation.73 It was never primarily a question
of individual private intention but of regal political ambitions. Hence the
question of ability of the people over whom the Crown desired to rule to
become Christian was critical to royal rationales for political sovereignty.
What was at stake was the legitimisation of Spanish political power and
the creation of a central role for religion in cementing and legitimating
the power. Animals do not make very satisfactory 'subjects and vassals'.
Nor do they make respectable Christians. Hence all the partisans of
indigenous 'humanity' were Spaniards, and all were clerics. While their
position was critical of their fellow Spaniards who tended to treat
indigenous peoples as commodities,74 their own arguments would
reinforce Spanish (and their own religious) authority over the peoples of
the New World.
72 Instrucci6n a Nicolas de Ovando, i6 Sept. I50o in CDI, vol. XXXI, pp. I5-I6.
73 This is the opening quotation in the compilation of laws governing the New World
the Recopilacion de las leyes de Indias as well the opening line of Francisco Vitoria's De
indis.
74 Beatriz Pastor Bodmer, The Armature of Conquest (Stanford, Calif., I992), pp. 2 I0-I i.
65o Patricia Seed
Indigenous peoples of the Spanish New World did not have the right
to choose between becoming vassals or remaining independent. Spanish
political dominion unilaterally invented them as 'subjects'. Nor did they
have the right to reject Spanish religious domination. Thus the Spanish
system of colonisation single-handedly incorporated the indigenous
peoples as 'subjects and as vassals' of the Crown by eliminating both their
political independence and their religious liberty. The political location of
those justifying the 'humanity' of the natives was thus among those
insisting upon the political and religious submission of indigenous
peoples. In answer to Said's question - who were the producers of
knowledge of the Indian's humanity - whether they were natives
themselves or others who claimed the privilege of speaking on behalf of
the native - it was clearly the latter, those 'speaking for' the natives. And
their political relationship with those whom they claimed to be speaking
for was one of ruler to subject.
Nor can the terms of the debate be considered ethnographic.
Attribution of 'humanity' was limited to a set of self-referential Spanish
and European categories. What indigenous peoples considered 'human'
and 'not human' was never considered. There were indeed sixteenth-
century Spanish clerics who were attempting something like

ethnographic approach - the natives' point of view - friars such as D
Durin and Bernardino Sahaguin. But their ideas were never debated in
corridors of political power, their understandings of indigenous peo
never invoked in the debates over indigenous 'humanity'. In fact bot
were prohibited from expressing their quasi-ethnographic understand
of native peoples; indeed Sahagun had his manuscripts confiscated.75 T
debate over indigenous 'humanity' was neither open to, nor welcomi
of, indigenous points of view. What was taken as confirming knowle
of indigenous 'humanity' was confined to the classic texts of high Wes
European Orientalism - Aristotle and Aquinas. The debate over
'humanity' of the natives developed not neutral let alone ethnograph
competence,76 but knowledge created in the service of political powe
Other groups of contemporary historians have attempted to justify
the neutrality but the superiority of the Spanish conquest becau
recognised the humanity of the natives.77 Such an assertion succeeds
75 Jorge Klor de Alva, H. B. Nicholsom, Eoise Quifiones Keber (eds.), The Wor
Bernardino de Sahagun: Pioneer Ethnographer of Sixteenth-Century Aztec Mexico (Alba
N.Y., 1988). 76 Pagden, znd ed., p. 6.
77 Ram6n Menendez Pidal, The Spaniards in their History, trans. Walter Stark
1950), p. 3o; Lewis Hanke, Aristotle and the American Indians: a Study in Ra
in the Modern World (London, 1959), 107-16. 'No other nation made so co
so passionate an attempt to discover what was the just treatment for the na
under its jurisdiction than Spaniards' (Hanke, Aristotle, p. 107).
by failing to consider the political context in which such debates occurred

- the need to create the natives as humans in order to render them dutiful
subjects and tolerable Christians. But belief that one nation's characteristic
forms of political domination are preferable to another's is usually only
generated out of the internal terms of the argument within a society. The
self-conception of political supremacy is actually based only upon
superiority to other members of their own group - Spanish advocates of
'humanity"s self-proclaimed superiority to advocates of'objectification'
- which was then inappropriately generalised as superiority to other ways
of domination in other nations. Such assertions work only if other
nations' political premises are not understood.
The political goals of English colonisation were quite different
regarding both conversion and vassalage. In English colonies conversion
was a private matter. While Charles II sometimes 'graciously accepted' his
subjects' desire to convert the natives, evangelisation was attempted as an
imperial policy only twice, and then rapidly abandoned.78 Nor were
indigenous peoples incorporated as 'subjects' of the English Crown. The
basic political aims of English colonisation were the assertion of authority
over indigenous land, proclaiming North America 'a vacant land', whose
occupants were not using fertile agricultural ground in useful and
appropriate ways.79 While the Spanish Crown officially declared all
Indians its subjects and vassals in 542, Indians collectively never became
subjects of the English Crown (save in several isolated instances), and did
not become citizens of the United States until 1924.80 Even those isolated
instances of subjection did not require altering religious beliefs or political
allegiances. They required the Indians to renounce their rights to land, not
to religious or political autonomy.81 Under the English system, Indians
were citizens of a foreign nation, who could be deprived of their lands if
they failed to utilise them appropriately, but who were entitled to political
78 Patricia Seed, 'Taking Possession and Reading Texts: Establishing the Authority of
Overseas Empires', William and MaryQuarterly, no. 49 (1992), I88 nn. i6, 17.
79 Seed, 'Taking Possession and Reading Texts', pp. 183-209; John Winthrop's History
of New Englandfrom i60o to 649, ed. John Savage (Boston, 1825), vol. I, p. 290; John
Cotton, The Bloody Tenent Washed and Made White in the Blood of the Lamb, orig. pub.
1647 (New York, 1972). For the continued use of this strategy in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries see Wilcomb Washburn, 'The Moral and Legal Justifications for
Dispossessing Indians', in James Morton Smith (ed.), Seventeenth-Century America
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 1959), pp. 26-32.
80 Felix Cohen, Handbook of Federal Indian Law (Washington, D.C., 1942), pp. 153-6;
W. Stitt Robinson (ed.), Virginia Treaties, 6o07-I722 (Washington, D.C., I983), vol. IV,
Early American Indian Documents: Treaties and Laws, i607-1789, pp. 17, 2z, 67-70, 223.
81 William Walter Hening, The Statutes at Large. Being a Collection of all the Laws of lirginia
(New York, I823), vol. I, pp. 323-6. On the voluntary nature of religious association
in Anglo-America see James Axtell, Beyond 1492: Encounters of Colonial North America
(New York, 992), pp. 15-7.
65 2 Patricia Seed
and religious freedom because they were subjects of another power. While
the English system deprived them of their land, the Spanish eliminated
indigenous religious freedom under the guise of rendering the Indians
'human'. The differences lay between a policy of forced assimilation
(Spanish political and religious subugation) and a system of equally forced
exclusions (Indians as a 'dependent sovereign' nation).
While it is true that there was no debate over the Indians' humanity in
England, it is hard to ascribe this to greater Spanish humanitarianism.82
The Spanish debates fit with a political tradition that needed human
subjects in order to legitimate imperial control. There were no advocates
of the Indians' 'humanity' in political debates in England or in the
English world because there was no need to invent the Indians as 'human'
in order to force them into political and religious subjugation. Because the
English wanted indigenous land, but not subjects, there was no
compelling political motive to label the Indians human, therefore no
political debate about their being 'human' and no political need to
conclude that they were 'human', potential subjects for assimilating
Western European religious ideology.
Finally what advocates of Spanish 'humanitarianism' ultimately fail to
consider are the continuing negative consequences of the decision to call
the Indians 'human' - that is, to define them in terms of their capacity to
assimilate European moral codes. The contemporary struggles of
indigenous peoples in the former Spanish colonies of the Americas are
sharply limited by their inability to demand religious and moral freedom.
Even in those countries which have made progress in granting lands to
indigenous communities there has been extensive and vocal public
opposition to granting indigenous communities rights to moral and
religious autonomy. The widespread recent public outcry from Paraguay
to Ecuador to Colombia against such efforts suggest that Indians'
continuing capacity for assimilating European religious and moral beliefs
is still at stake in discussions of their contemporary autonomy.83 The right
of Indians to choose their own moral code and their religion is not an
option in Spanish America; it never has been. To be 'human', indigenous
peoples of Spanish America still must be morally European.
82 Ram6n Menendez Pidal, The Spaniards in Their History, p. 130; Lewis Hanke, Aristotle
and the American Indians, pp. 107-I 16.
83 Patricia Seed, 'No Perfect World: Colonial Origins of the Contemporary Predicaments
of Aboriginal Communities in the Americas and Australasia' Address to 'Fourth
World Conference', University of Essex, November i992.

Are These Not Also Men

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'Are These Not Also Men?

': The Indians' Humanity and Capacity for Spanish Civilisation

'Are These Not Also Men?': The

When on an Advent Sunday morning in I5 i Fra

subsequent historians has been how that Spanish civilisation's trea

Fray Montesinos and his fellow Dominicans on the island of Hispanio

Patricia Seed is Associate Professor of History at Rice University, Houston.

originating in classical antiquity and elaborated through medieval times,

8 Cosmographie universalis (Basle, I55o). In his 'Introduction' to the Th

continued interest concerning the 'monstrous' character of the American

16 Gilbert Chinard, L'exoticisme americaine dans la litteraturefranfaise au XVI? siecle (Paris,

medieval Christian thought, particularly that of the great Dominican

31 Palacios Rubios establishing precedence for dominion over infidels in general de

[capacidad] or 'ability' [habilidad] was the potential of the natives to become

36 'Carta que escribieron varios padres de la 6rden de Santo Domingo residentes en la

domination such as the encomienda would be wholly justifiable.41 If they

The question thus phrased was fundamentally an argument about the

population of Hispaniola was declining, and the Franciscans had little

terms of greed and self-interest (trying to increase the number of hours

debate as one between self-interested (secular Spaniards) and dis-intereste

of Dominican friar Tomis Ortiz at his inability to persuade American

61 Paso y Troncoso, Papeles de la Nueva Espana, vol. XV, pp. I62-5.

Papal declaration clearly linked the Indians' 'humanity' to their 'capacity'

provided the rationale for ecclesiastical participation in ruling over the

century, it was no longer usual to explain indigenous resistance to

incapable of rationality, that is of understanding and adopting

Christianity.70 And in the seventeenth century this became the most

71 Sherburne F. Cook and Woodrow Borah, Essays in Population History

century Spanish clerics who were attempting something like

by failing to consider the political context in which such debates occurred

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