The ordinances of 20 March 1524: Cortés legislates for New Spain
In March 1524 the governor of New Spain issued a code for the Spaniards living in it, and it stayed in a private family archive until a Mexican historian printed it in 1844. It arms every householder in proportion to the Indians he holds, orders Castilian vines grafted and wheat sown in the Indian towns, requires a church and a priest in each, and forbids anyone to press the Indians for gold or to strike them — on a ground the text states plainly, that they would otherwise rise.
Why this wins its question: English accounts of the first years of New Spain reach for the Laws of Burgos, then jump to the New Laws of 1542, and treat the intervening two decades as lawless. The document that governed them is in print and is almost never quoted. This object quotes it: the graduated militia obligation, the order to graft Castilian vines and sow wheat in the Indian towns, the clause that puts the sons of native lords with the friars and the one that levies a schoolmaster's salary on the encomenderos, the requirement of a priest for every holding above two thousand Indians, and the prohibition on demanding gold or striking an Indian under pain of losing him. It also quotes what a defensive account would leave out, from the same pages: that the papal grant is read as licence to be served by these people, that idols are to be seized, that children are to be taken from their towns, and that the reason given for restraining the encomenderos is that otherwise the Indians would rise. The provenance and the limits of the text — an 1844 printing from a private archive, an ordinance whose enforcement is entrusted to the men it binds — are on the record rather than in a footnote.
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 text is printed under the heading "ORDENANZAS INÉDITAS DEL AÑO DE 1524", with its provenance stated beneath it — "Sacadas del archivo del Exmo. Sr. Duque de Terranova y Monteleone, en el hospital de Jesus.—Partida 4a del legajo núm. 19 del 2o inventario" — and opens "Yo Fernando Cortés Capitan general, y Gobernador desta Nueva-España, y sus Provincias por el Emperador y Rey D. Cárlos, y la Reina Doña Juana nuestros señores." What is read is an 1844 transcription of a manuscript then in the hands of Cortés's heirs, kept in the hospital he founded in Mexico City; no manuscript was inspected for this object.
The preamble states the ends the code is meant to serve, and it names two of them in the same breath: everything is to be directed to the service of God and of His Majesty, and to "la conversion, bien y sosiego de los naturales de estas tierras, é á la buena órden, utilidad, é seguridad de todos los dichos españoles". The good of the natives and the security of the Spaniards are written as one purpose, not as competing ones.
The first clauses are a militia law graduated by the number of Indians a man holds. Every vecino or resident is to keep at home a lance, a sword, a dagger, a buckler and a helmet and to appear with them at musters; a holder of fewer than five hundred Indians in repartimiento adds a crossbow or an arquebus with its full kit, down to six dozen headed arrows or two hundred balls and powder for two hundred shots; from five hundred to a thousand, a saddle horse fully harnessed within a year; from two thousand upward, three lances with their pikes and four crossbows or arquebuses. The penalties are money for the first and second default and, for the third, forfeiture of the Indians themselves — the sanction the code reaches for again and again.
Two clauses make the transfer of Old World crops a legal duty rather than an accident of settlement. Where there is stock of Spanish vines to be had in quantity, holders are bound to graft the vines they have of the land's own stock, or to plant afresh; where there are other Spanish trees, or wheat, or barley, or any other vegetables, they are likewise bound to plant or sow them — and the place named for the sowing is "en los pueblos de los indios que tuvieren", the Indian towns they hold, under the same penalties.
The religious clause carries the frankest sentence in the document. It grounds the enterprise on the papal grant of dominion to the Emperor for the conversion of these peoples, and then adds that by that same grant His Majesty "nos hace merced que nos podamos servir de ellos" — grants that the Spaniards may make use of them. Conversion and forced service are set out as two faces of one title. What follows is coercive in the same key: holders of Indians are to take away every idol they have, to be diligent in finding out whether any are kept, and to prevent them killing people for the honour of those idols, on pain of forfeiture at the third offence, and to build in each Indian town a house of prayer or church with images and crosses, on the scale the town can bear.
One clause is the earliest instruction in New Spain for the schooling of the sons of native lords. Any vecino holding Indians in a town that has a señor is to bring that lord's sons to the Spanish town where he lives and hand them to the friars of the monastery there to be instructed in the Catholic faith, and to provide them with food, clothing and everything else needed; where there is no monastery, to the priest or to a person appointed for the purpose; where there is no principal lord, or he has no sons, the sons of the leading men of the town instead. The penalty for failing is loss of the Indians. The clause is an obligation laid on the encomendero and a removal of children from their towns at once, and the document does not distinguish the two.
Where no monastery exists to do the teaching, the alcaldes and regidores of each town are to put on salary a person able, sufficient and of good habits to take charge of instructing the boys, the salary to be paid by the holders of the Indians in proportion to what each holds. The same alcaldes are to visit the boys being taught, to find out how they are treated, and to establish which persons are failing to send them, on pain of losing their own offices. A public school paid for by a levy on encomenderos, with municipal inspection, is written into the first code of New Spain.
A further clause requires any person holding more than two thousand Indians to keep in their town a clérigo or other religious to instruct them in the faith, forbid them their old rites and ceremonies, and administer the sacraments — and to forfeit the Indians for not having one where one can be had. Holders of small repartimientos lying within a league of each other are to agree among two, three or four of them and pay a single priest between them, the code admitting in terms that a priest each would be a heavy cost and that there were not enough priests to be found.
The clause against extortion opens by conceding that it has been happening. Those who have held Indians "les han pedido oro, é sobre esto les han hecho algunas premias" — have demanded gold of them and put pressure on them for it — and this was borne until now, the text says, both because the Spaniards were in debt for what they had spent in the wars and because the natives had gold jewels of former times. They no longer have them; to permit it further would be to the great harm of the natives; and the code adds a second reason, that being unable to bear it "se levantarian", they would rise. On that stated ground no person of any law, estate or condition may press the Indians for gold, nor give them "herida de azote, palo, ó de otra cosa", by himself or through another, on pain of losing them by that very act. A Spaniard whose Indians do not serve as they ought is to appear before the governor, or in his absence before his lieutenants and alcaldes mayores, who are ordered to have consideration of what the Indians are and where they are settled before ordering service.
The document closes as an act of government. Complaints about the distribution of Indians are referred to the Reverend Father fray Juan de Tecto and to Alonso de Estrada, the King's treasurer, before whom the aggrieved are to appear stating how long they have been in these parts, what they have served and where, and what they hold. The capítulos are then ordered kept throughout New Spain and proclaimed publicly in Temixtitan and in the other villas by voice of crier before a public notary who is to attest it. The subscription reads "Fecha en esta dicha ciudad á veinte dias del mes de marzo de mil y quinientos é veinte y cuatro años.—Fernando Cortés.—Por mandado de su mercé.—Gregorio de Villanueva."
The reach of the code should not be overstated from its text. It is a governor's ordinance, not a royal law; it was issued by the man who was distributing the Indians in the first place, as its own closing clause on grievances over that distribution shows; and its enforcement is entrusted to the encomenderos it binds, to their town councils and to the governor's own lieutenants. Nothing in the pages read records whether any of its penalties was ever exacted. The evidence here is of what was commanded in 1524, not of what was done.