The taking of pieces in Sucumbios and Mocoa (Quito, 1668): a bishop's ruling that slave raiding was mortal sin, that the sale was void, and that the captive and his children could lawfully run
On the eastern frontier of Quito, parties of Spaniards and Christian Indians went into unconquered country to take pieces - people to work their land. The bishop's manual for confessors names the two provinces where it happened, holds the raid mortal sin and the sale void, and rules that anyone enslaved on such a title, and the children born to him in that slavery, may run without sin and owe nothing. It also prints the three titles on which war could still be made.
Why this wins its question: The Spanish argument over the enslavement of American peoples reaches English readers as a sixteenth-century set piece - Las Casas, Vitoria, Valladolid - that is treated as having ended with the New Laws. This object is that argument still being applied, a hundred and twenty years later, as an operating instruction to parish confessors on a live Amazonian slaving frontier, from a book almost never quoted in English. It names the two provinces where the raids happened; it records that the object of the raid was children; it holds the raid mortal sin and the resulting sale void with the buyer liable as well as the seller; it grants an unconquered gentile people a just war against Christian raiders; it rules that the captive, the captive resold, and the children born to him in that slavery may all run without sin and owe nothing, on the maxim that an odious condition is to be construed as narrowly as possible; and it denies that unbelief is a title to anyone's goods or liberty. It also prints, without softening, the three titles on which war could still be made - including freedom of entry and transit, broad enough to justify most of what the rest of the passage condemns.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The practice is named, located and dated by the session heading itself, in a manual printed for the parish clergy of the Indies. "Muchas vezes los Indios en compañia de Españoles entran en las tierras de los Gentiles a coger pieças, esto es, personas para servirse dellas en sus tierras, como sucede en la Provincia de Sucumbios, y de Mocoa, vezinas de los Infieles." A bishop of Quito is telling confessors, as a present fact about two provinces of his own jurisdiction, that mixed parties of Spaniards and Christian Indians were raiding for people.
The rule the manual applies is royal law overriding the law of nations, and it says so in that order. By common law, it holds, the faithful could reduce gentile Indians to servitude on the grounds set out earlier in the treatise. "Aora digo, que por Derecho municipal de las Indias no pueden los Indios Fieles, ni los Españoles, aunque la guerra sea justa, hazer esclavos a los Indios Gentiles, porque su Magestad lo tiene assi ordenado, y mandado por sus Reales Cedulas (como ya he dicho en este tratado) y encarga mucho su buen tratamiento." The licence the ius gentium gave to enslave prisoners of a just war is closed, for this class of prisoner, by the crown's own decrees.
Two inferences are drawn from that, and they reach the raiders and the market both. First, "pecan mortalmente, y contra justicia los Españoles, y los Indios que se entran en las tierras de los Gentiles sin autoridad alguna, mas que la suya, solo a prisionir los muchachos, para servirse de ellos como esclavos, y tenerlos por tales, vendelos" - the object of the raid, in the bishop's own description, is children. Second, even where legitimate authority was had, the captives may not be held or sold as slaves, "pues su Magestad lo tiene prohibido; y vendiendolos, sera la venta nula, y assi el vendedor, como el comprador pecara contra justicia". The buyer is made liable alongside the raider.
Even a just war is capped short of killing. Although the faithful Indians may have a right of just war to despoil the gentiles, their sons and their wives, of their estates and their liberty for the wrongs done, "no podran hazerlo de las vidas, ni Pueblos que han delinquido, ni aun los mismos inocentes", because neither the commonwealth nor its members hold dominion over life, and the innocent are not liable at all - the authority cited being Banez and the common theologians. The limitation is stated in the same breath as the licence, and this entry keeps both: the text does license despoiling of goods and of liberty.
The session's own question is put from the raider's side and answered against him. If the infidels catch the raiders and hold them captive, the war having been unjust on the Christian side and just on the gentile side, may such captives escape without sin. The answer: Indians and Spaniards who enter to take pieces without licence from one who can give it and without just cause "pueden ser cautivos, y quedarse esclavos de los Gentiles, pero huyendo de su cautiverio, y bolviendose a sus tierras, no pecan, ni quedan con obligacion alguna de restitucion por su esclavitud". A gentile people is granted, without qualification, a just war against Christian raiders.
The reason given is a general one about slavery, not a special one about this frontier. Servitude was introduced by the law of nations, and as the nations have used it so it must be observed; and among all nations it is the usage "que si los cautivos se huyen, y recuperan la libertad, que la naturaleza les avia liberalmente comunicado, no se tiene por pecado, ni que ayan quitado a los dueños cosa alguna, por donde tengan obligacion a satisfacerles, y restituirles". Liberty is described as something nature had freely given and the captive recovers.
The right to run follows the captive through the market and into the next generation. If the gentiles sold these captives on to other gentiles or to other persons, they may equally flee "del poder de sus compradores", because the seller could convey no right he did not have. And when such captives come to have children, "estos pueden licitamente huir como sus padres, sin genero alguno de restitucion", since the slavery of the children takes its origin from the servitude contracted by right of war and must carry its same condition and qualities - "los hijos no son de peor condicion que sus padres, en quanto al derecho de poder adquirir la libertad". Hereditary slavery is treated as inheriting the defect in the title along with the status.
The strongest objection is printed and then answered with a rule of construction. The objection is that whoever deprives another of the dominion of a thing he justly possesses sins mortally and must restore, and the escaping slave does exactly that. The answer distinguishes flight by force, fraud or resistance from simple flight, and then gives the ground: the master by right of war "no tiene dominio, ni possession en el, sino mientras le tiene en guarda, y custodia, que con esta condicion se cautivan en la guerra, por quanto la condicion de semejantes esclavos es condicion miserable, odiosa, y violenta, y assi se ha de restringir todo lo possible por la regla juris in 6. que dize: Odia restringi, & favores convenit ampliari". Slavery is classed as an odious status, and odious statuses are to be construed as narrowly as possible.
The next session denies that unbelief is a title to anything. Asked whether Christian Indians may rob and lay waste the estates of infidel Indians and carry them off to serve in their houses merely because they are gentiles, it answers with Aquinas, Summa 2.2 question 66 article 8, that they may not: infidels do not cease to hold dominion over their estates and their liberty by being infidels, a title is needed to despoil anyone, and the Christian Indians have none, "porque dezir que son Infieles y Gentiles, esto no es titulo, ni razon bastante para que los particulares puedan quitarles sus bienes, y hazerles vejaciones, obligandoles a que les sirvan de criados en sus labores".
The counterpoint is in the same paragraph and is not softened here. Having denied the general title, the manual immediately allows three: war, despoiling and reduction to servitude are lawful if the infidels prevent priests from preaching the Gospel; if they hinder those who would convert after hearing it; and if they hinder peaceful entry into their lands and passage through them to other provinces. These are the standard scholastic just titles of the sixteenth-century debate, restated a century later as working rules for confessors. This entry records them without endorsement and notes what a reader of claim c1 should already suspect: the third of them, freedom of entry and transit, is broad enough to cover most of the entradas the first nine claims condemn.
The limits of this entry. It is read from pages 365 to 367 of a commercial Lyon reprint of 1678, with pages 364 and 368 opened only to fix where the sessions begin and end. It is a confessor's manual: direct evidence of what a bishop of Quito instructed the clergy of his diocese to hold, and no evidence at all of what happened on the Sucumbios and Mocoa frontier, of how many people were taken, or of whether a single raider was ever refused absolution. The royal cedulas it invokes were not seen here in an archival copy and are known only as this book cites them. What the text does establish, and what a purely legislative account misses, is that the raiding was common enough in 1668 for a bishop to write a rule for it.