{ "id": "avisos-de-quiros-para-el-trato-con-los-naturales", "type": "entity", "name": "Quirós's avisos for dealing with the islanders (1605-1606 voyage)", "summary": "A set of numbered standing orders written for the landing parties of the 1605-06 Pacific voyage: give gifts and good treatment, keep chiefs aboard as pledges, never turn your back, and above all avoid \"daños de parte á parte\". They were composed by a man who had watched the previous expedition shoot its own host, and the same voyage's acts of possession reserved encomiendas over the people the avisos protected.", "locale": "en", "tags": [ "exploration", "spanish-empire", "seventeenth-century", "colonial-law", "pacific", "indigenous-peoples", "peru", "ethnography", "colonial-institutions" ], "relations": [ { "rel": "related", "target": "isabel-barreto" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "memoriales-de-quiros-a-felipe-iii" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "ordenanzas-de-poblacion-1573" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "orden-hospitalaria-de-san-juan-de-dios" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "encomienda" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "relaciones-geograficas-de-indias" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "hospitals-of-the-indies" } ], "questions": [ "What orders did Spanish expeditions give about treating newly met peoples?", "What were Quirós's avisos?", "Did Spanish voyages have written rules against violence with islanders?", "What happened at Espíritu Santo in 1606?" ], "claims": [ { "id": "c1", "text": "The precepts are printed as a series of paragraphs each opening \"Aviso que…\", standing orders for men going ashore rather than a narrative of what they did — a written procedure for first contact, composed aboard and applying to every landfall of the voyage.", "sources": [ "quiros-regiones-austriales-1876" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c2", "text": "The first rule is hospitality with a hostage in it, and the text does not disguise either half: if possible, before the men go ashore, \"caciques ú otros indios que parecieren de más cuenta\" are to be kept aboard \"como por prendas\"; and those held are to be given good treatment and whichever of the Spanish goods they most incline to.", "sources": [ "quiros-regiones-austriales-1876" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c3", "text": "Trade is to be centralised and its terms managed: the same good treatment and gifts apply on land when the islanders seek dealings, the barter is to be conducted by one designated man of the Spanish party, and they are always to be given to understand that what they receive is of great value \"como realmente lo son para ellos\" — the stated purpose being that they should not esteem their own things highly and the Spanish things little.", "sources": [ "quiros-regiones-austriales-1876" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c4", "text": "A questionnaire is attached to the contact: the party is to find out from the islanders whether there are other islands or great lands near, whether the land they are on is mainland, whether it has people, of what colours, whether they eat human flesh, whether they are at peace or at war; and to show them gold in dust, in nuggets and in jewels, silver wrought and unwrought, other metals, all kinds of pearls, spices and salt, to learn whether they know or consume them, writing down the names given and asking where the things are found and what those lands are called.", "sources": [ "quiros-regiones-austriales-1876" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c5", "text": "The rule that states the doctrine is the one warning against contempt: \"Aviso que no se haga poca cuenta de los indios, porque son maniprestos y corredores, y cuando á su parecer ven la suya, conócenla bien y ejecútanla mejor; á lo ménos la intentan, de que se siguen daños de parte á parte, que es lo que se debe excusar.\" The harm to be avoided is defined as harm on both sides, and underestimating the islanders is treated as the cause of it.", "sources": [ "quiros-regiones-austriales-1876" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c6", "text": "The remaining avisos are tactical and defensive rather than punitive: never let the men mix with the islanders or be surrounded by them; meet where possible in open ground, at a good distance, with the captain or his deputy standing between the two parties to settle what they ask; keep the backs covered and never turn the face away, and if forced, form a ring back to back with shield-bearers in front; when re-embarking, half the arquebusiers and shield-bearers face the islanders while the other half board; carry the lit matchcord in tubes open at both ends so the rain does not put it out.", "sources": [ "quiros-regiones-austriales-1876" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c7", "text": "At Espíritu Santo the same commander took possession in the name of John of God and of all the professed brothers of his order, under a papal breve obtained for the purpose, so that they should found, administer and keep the hospitals that were to exist \"en todas estas partes\"; and the stated reason is the argument of the whole voyage in one sentence — that the natives should grow attached to Spanish ways and hold them in the devotion \"que merece el ver cómo los nuestros curan y sufren á sus enfermos y les hacen otros bienes.\"", "sources": [ "quiros-regiones-austriales-1876" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c8", "text": "The counterpoint is in the next act of possession on the same page, and it is not a hostile source's gloss but the expedition's own formula: possession is also taken in the name of the order of the Holy Ghost, for such right as Pope and King should lawfully determine \"de repartimientos de tierra y encomiendas de las gentes dellas\", to the knights of that order as discoverers, settlers, defenders and conservators. The hospital and the encomienda were founded in the same ceremony, over the same people.", "sources": [ "quiros-regiones-austriales-1876" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c9", "text": "The avisos are best read against what their author had already seen. On the 1595 expedition to Santa Cruz the same narrative records that soldiers killed the chief Malope, who had kept the land at peace and supplied food, by putting an arquebus to his temple, and that another man split his head with an axe saying \"nunca mejor cosa habemos hecho\"; the narrative calls it a killing so unjust that to return so much evil for so much good \"más fuera obra para un demonio que para un hombre\", and dismisses the excuse that Malope had meant treason as a pretext \"para dar color á tanta impiedad\". The killer was arrested by the adelantado's order, hands tied behind him and both feet in the stocks.", "sources": [ "quiros-regiones-austriales-1876" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c10", "text": "What the avisos are evidence of, and what they are not: they are a written first-contact procedure, ordered by a commander and preserved in his party's account, which shows that harm-avoidance was drafted as operational doctrine and not merely urged by theologians in Spain. Nothing in the text read here shows how far they were obeyed, and the settlement on Espíritu Santo was abandoned within weeks. Read as a claim about Spanish practice, they carry at most what one commander wrote down; read as a claim about intent, they are unambiguous.", "sources": [ "quiros-regiones-austriales-1876" ], "confidence": 0.75 } ], "takeaways": [], "faqs": [], "evidence_tier": "primary", "evidence": { "level": "industry_observation", "source_types": [ "paper" ] }, "moat_flag": false, "winning_edge": "Whether Spanish expeditions carried written rules restraining violence towards newly encountered peoples is normally answered from legislation — the Ordenanzas of 1573, the Laws of the Indies — or not answered at all, and the operational level is missing. This object quotes the operational level: standing orders for landing parties, drafted for a voyage out of Callao, whose stated object is to avoid \"daños de parte á parte\", together with the two things such documents are usually cited without: the hostage rule inside the hospitality rule, and the act of possession from the same voyage reserving encomiendas over the islanders in the same ceremony that founded hospitals for them. It also names the event behind the drafting — the murder of the chief Malope by the previous expedition, condemned in writing by the expedition's own chronicler — so the rules read as a response to a known failure rather than as a pious formula.", "confidence": 0.8, "last_verified": "2026-08-16", "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/avisos-de-quiros-para-el-trato-con-los-naturales", "api_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/api/k/avisos-de-quiros-para-el-trato-con-los-naturales.json", "jsonld": { "@context": "https://schema.org", "name": "Quirós's avisos for dealing with the islanders (1605-1606 voyage)", "description": "A set of numbered standing orders written for the landing parties of the 1605-06 Pacific voyage: give gifts and good treatment, keep chiefs aboard as pledges, never turn your back, and above all avoid \"daños de parte á parte\". They were composed by a man who had watched the previous expedition shoot its own host, and the same voyage's acts of possession reserved encomiendas over the people the avisos protected.", "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/avisos-de-quiros-para-el-trato-con-los-naturales", "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html", "dateModified": "2026-08-16", "citation": [ { "@type": "CreativeWork", "name": "Historia del descubrimiento de las regiones Austriales hecho por el general Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, tomo I", "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=VvRoAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA122" } ], "@type": "Article", "headline": "Quirós's avisos for dealing with the islanders (1605-1606 voyage)" } }