Fear, wages and recompense (Quito, 1668): a confessional rule that contracts made with Indians out of fear were void, that an underpaid Indian could take back what he was owed, and that one real stolen from a poor Indian was mortal sin
A bishop of Quito gave nine sessions of his manual for parish clergy to what is owed in conscience when Spaniards trade with, employ and tax Indians. Fear of a priest, corregidor or cacique voids the sale in the internal forum; a man paid two reales for eight days' work may take back the difference; one real stolen from a poor Indian is mortal sin where the same sum from a Spaniard is not. The reasoning that protects is also demeaning, and both are printed here.
Why this wins its question: The economics of indigenous labour in the Spanish Indies reaches English readers either as statute - the wage and tribute laws of the Recopilacion - or as denunciation. This object is neither: it is the working rule a confessor was told to apply in the box, from a volume almost never quoted in English, and it therefore carries what statute and denunciation both lack, a price. Two reales for eight days' work by fifty men hauling a beam over the sierra; twelve pesos paid where the audiencia's own decree made the debt more than fifty; a tribute schedule itemised down to the hundred-and-twenty-foot canoe that took four men six months. It supplies three doctrines a reader will not find assembled anywhere else: that fear of a priest or corregidor voids the sale in conscience though the courts would enforce it, with the threshold of fear lowered specifically for indigenous parties; that an underpaid Indian may take back what he is defrauded, and that no confessor should scruple at his taking it from an encomendero who has robbed him of his liberty; and that one real stolen from a poor Indian is mortal sin where the same sum from a Spaniard is not. It also keeps what a defensive account would drop - that the protective rule rests on an explicit slur about indigenous pusillanimity, that the same treatise tells confessors not to believe an Indian's promise, and that the bishop's own province had gone from twenty thousand tributaries to barely four hundred.
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 subject has a treatise of its own in a manual written for parish priests, and the heading names both directions of the wrong. Libro II, tratado III of the Itinerario para parochos de indios is "De los defectos, y faltas que se hazen en tratar, y comprar a los Indios, y los que ellos cometen en hurtar, y no pagar a sus amos", running from folio 248 over eleven sessions. A confessor's book, not a treatise of protest, is where these rules are found.
Session IV asks whether the fear Indians have of their superiors is enough to undo a bargain, in the internal forum. Its heading: "Si el miedo que tienen los Indios a los Curas, Corregidores, y Caziques es bastante para anular, y rescindir los contratos in foro conscientiæ?" The author states his purpose as instruction for the Indian as much as for the priest: he writes it "Para que el Indio pueda conocer la injusticia de algunos contratos, y la obligacion que ay en el fuero de la conciencia a rescindirlos, y restituir, por aver sido hechos por fuerça, y atemorizandolos."
The session opens by separating the two fora, and the separation is what makes the rule bite. "Supongo lo primero, que las reglas que sirven para el fuero exterior, no siempre aprovechan en el interior, porque en el exterior para evitar pleytos, se dan algunos contratos por validos, que en el fuero de la conciencia son nulos, con obligacion a restituir." Where a sale was made for less than its worth through slight fear or deceit not exceeding half the just price, the law gives no action to rescind, "pero no por esso aprueba el contrato, porque de suyo es injusto, y malo". A contract the courts would enforce is still to be undone by the confessor.
The standard of fear is made relative to the person frightened, on authority the corpus of Spanish American theology already knew. Whether the threatened harm causes grave or slight fear "no se ha de mirar en si, sino respeto de la tal persona a quien atemorizan"; what falls on a weak subject as fear enough to move a constant man is slight fear in one strong and robust, "como dize Veracruz in speculo conjug. 1.p.art.8. Aliqua leviora poterunt movere virum unum, sicut graviora virum alium". Thomas Sanchez, the Gloss, Domingo de Soto and, the text says, thirty-six further jurists and nine more theologians are cited for it.
The inference drawn for Indians is protective in effect and demeaning in its reasoning, and this entry prints it whole rather than paraphrase it. "De donde puede inferir el Confessor, que conoce la pusilanimidad de los Indios, pues no ay muger Española tan pusilanime, como el mas atrevido Indio, quan poco temor es bastante para llamarse grave, ò que cae en coraçon constante, respeto del Indio." The threshold of duress is lowered for indigenous parties by asserting that they are more easily frightened than any Spanish woman. The legal effect is a wider power to escape a bad bargain; the premise is a slur, and the object does not separate them.
In the same passage the manual quotes Solorzano saying that the timidity is caused rather than natural, which cuts against the premise it is being used to support. Indians are so timid "que aunque vean los agravios que les hazen, no tienen animo de quexarse al Corregidor", and the Latin quoted says that if these injuries were punished, "Non ita facilè, & frequenter miseri Indi omnium injuriis impeterentur, neque ipsi adeo timidi essent, ut eas summisso animo ferre satius ducant, quam Pretoris officium pro illis vindicandis interpellare, à quibus alias longè majores recipere solent." That the reading of these two sentences as being in tension is this entry's, not the author's, is stated here: he prints them as mutually supporting.
The resolution is restitution, and it does not require that the fear be grave. "Digo, que las cosas que se compran, ò venden, y las donaciones hechas por miedo, aunque sea leve (quanto mas siendo grave) si el miedo fue causa, sin la qual no se hiziera la venta, ò donacion, en conciencia se han de restituir", on Thomas Sanchez with twenty-four grave doctors. The reason given is that one who procures a contract by fear "incurrió en injusticia, pues contra la libre voluntad del que dà, recibe la cosa, y es hurto, y rapina, por ser invito Domino".
The corollary reaches the customary gift, and denies that it was a gift. "De aqui se infiere, que las dadivas gratuitas que hazen los Indios a sus Corregidores, Alcaldes, Caziques, y otras personas a quienes tienen respeto, y miedo, no son meramente libres, sino ofrecidas por temor grave, ò leve, que tienen de parecer delante de sus Superiores con las manos vacias" - a fear well founded in many years' experience that otherwise "ni son bien recibidos, ni bien despachados, y a vezes son castigados, ò por lo menos maltratados de palabras". An ordinance is quoted forbidding officials to take any present, "aunque sea cosa de comida, y en poca cantidad, sin pagar lo que realmente entre los Indios vale."
Session V asks the harder question and puts it as a question about theft. "Si quando la paga del amo no es igual al trabajo, podrà el Indio por via de recompensa hurtarle algo?" The rule offered for judging the wage is comparative - what others in the republic commonly earn in the same service, and what is ordinarily given, or the official tariff where it is just, "porque sino lo es, no se ha de estar a ella, y podràn los agraviados recompensar lo que se les defrauda."
The worked example is a piece of labour economics with the numbers in it, presented by the author as "un exemplo muy practicable". Fifty Indians are taken from a pueblo on a corregidor's warrant to the forest for timber; one great beam takes seven or eight days to bring out "passando con ella quebradas, y subiendo sierras asperas, que cuesta mucho sudor, y gotas de sangre", their food carried on the shoulders of their children or wives; on delivery they are given a dozen patacones, "que repartidos entre ellos, les cabe a dos reales por el trabajo de ocho dias", sleeping unsheltered in the open. "Quien no dirà que es injusticia manifiesta, aunque sea tassa de Iusticia?"
A remedy attempted from the bench is recorded, together with its failure. Don Alonso Perez de Salazar on one such occasion ordered that each Indian earn a real a day in wages plus food in kind, counting also the days spent travelling to the forest - "aunque no se executò, porque a los Indios de Machangarilla les dieron doze pesos, y no mas, montando mas de cinquenta, segun el decreto de esta Real Audiencia de Quito." The audiencia's own decree put the debt above fifty pesos and twelve were paid.
The answer to the session's question is yes, and it is given without hedging. "Digo, pues, que en estos, y semejantes casos pueden los Indios hurtar todo aquello que les defraudan, como tambien lo pueden hazer quando a titulo de tributo les cobran cantidad desproporcionada a sus caudales." What the manual is authorising is occult compensation - self-help recovery of an unpaid wage or an excessive tribute - by the party with no practical access to a court.
The tribute schedule of one doctrina is set out item by item with its money value, which makes the passage unusual economic evidence from a pastoral book. In Santa Maria de Nieva, province of Santiago, each tributary Indian gives seven shirts worth two patacones each and twenty fowl worth two reales each and two fanegas of maize, "que montan diez patacones"; every four Indians owe the encomendero yearly a canoe a hundred and twenty feet long and two varas wide, "que tardan casi seis meses en hazerla, y vale cien patacones"; and beyond that they feed the encomendero with the ordinary camarico of beans, yucas and camotes, and by fishing and hunting on the road.
The bishop's own demographic figure for that province is given in the same passage, and it is the gravest thing in the treatise. Every four or five months entradas were made into the neighbouring province of the Cocamas "a hurtar, y cautivar Gentiles", Christian Indians of the encomiendas being taken along and exposed to the enemy, "con que se van acabando a gran prisa; tanto, que en esta Provincia se hallavan veinte mil Indios tributarios, con doze Curatos muy ricos, y oy ay poco mas de quatrocientos Indios, que los demas los ha acabado la tirania cruel de los Encomenderos". The number is the author's assertion, from within his own diocese, and is not corroborated here.
He then turns the question round on his own profession, and this is the sentence that makes the session more than a rule. "Aora diganme, que Confessor escrupulizarà en que uno de estos robe las entrañas al Encomendero, en recompensa de la libertad que le roba contra tantas Cedulas que lo prohiben, y contra el Derecho natural, que està dando vozes contra semejantes tiranias? por mucho que le hurten, no tiene igual satisfaccion, porque non benè pro toto libertas venditur auro." Solorzano is quoted immediately after, warning in Latin that the injuries and mortal dangers of this servitude must shortly consume the very republic that the servitude is defended as preserving.
The provinces named as the proof of that warning are named as emptied. Macas, Sigchos, Mocoa, Socumbios and Barbacoas "fueron numerosissimas de naturales, con muchos Curas, que les administravan los Santos Sacramentos, y oy estàn desiertas". Two of them are the frontier provinces this same volume elsewhere names as the scene of raiding for captives; here they appear as the demographic result.
Session IX fixes the point at which theft becomes mortal sin, and the answer is deliberately asymmetric. Following Machado and Bonacina, gravity is measured by harm to this owner, so that "hurtar menos cantidad a un pobre, serà pecado mortal, y no lo serà respecto de un rico". For poor Indians earning twelve patacones a year, or day-labourers earning a real, "hurto de un real es pecado mortal", because a real is a day's food and a day's wage: "hazer a un pobre Indio trabajar todo el dia sin paga, es pecado mortal, por ser grave molestia: luego tambien lo serà quitarle el jornal de todo el dia de trabajo."
The asymmetry is then made an express instruction to the confessional, and it runs in both directions. "Quando el Indio confiessa algun hurto, se le ha de preguntar si fue à Indio, ò à Español; porque si fue a Indio pobre, bastara un real para ser pecado mortal, y tener obligacion grave de restitucion; y si fue à Español el hurto, se varia totalmente la gravedad de la culpa, sino es que el Español sea tan pobre, como son los Indios." A rich Indian is given the same treatment as a rich Spaniard - though the parity offered is itself striking, "el Indio que tiene tres, ò quatro mil patacones, es tan rico, como el Español que tiene trecientos mil".
A claim a favourable reading would leave out: the same treatise instructs confessors to distrust the word of indigenous penitents as a class. "Los Indios generalmente son de tan poca palabra, que hombres doctos, que los conocen bien, dizen, que pecara mortalmente el Confessor, que fia de su palabra"; the reason given is that they come to confession "mas de fuerça, que de grado" because they are brought and called in Lent by roll. The exception offered is narrow and is itself revealing - absolution may be given "quando un Indio ladino, y devoto, que se be la obligacion que tiene", or on a third promise, deferred at a fourth or fifth.
The treatise ends on the duty of gentleness, given a session and a scriptural proof of its own. Session XI is headed "Los Curas, y Corregidores han de ser amorosos, y blandos con los Indios: pruebase con Escritura, y razones", and opens: "Las azedias de los disgustos, y rigores de la condicion, no son prendas aproposito para los que tratan de convertir almas: todo ha de ser blandura... porque es tan fuerte, que lo recaba todo a poder de mansedumbre, y amor." The same register appears earlier in the treatise, where the confessor is warned that taking a thing against its owner's will is commonly mortal sin even when paid for, "y assi llora una India vieja por una gallina, como pudiera por un hijo".
The limits of this entry, including two printing faults. It is read from pages 252 to 255, 260 and 261 of a commercial Lyon reprint of 1678; the sessions between were not opened. Page 261 prints the folio number "265" in its head, and is shown to be the leaf after 260 by the catchword; the running heads in the same gathering read "Tract. II." where the index and page 253 read tratado III. Both are recorded rather than corrected. This is a confessor's manual: it is evidence of what a bishop of Quito told his clergy to hold, not that any confessor applied it, that any contract was undone, or that any Indian recovered a wage. The audiencia decree, the ordinance on gifts and the tribute schedule are known only as this book prints them, and the depopulation figure of claim c14 is the author's assertion, uncorroborated here.