Testamentos de indios — the will of an Indian, and the law that guarded it
An Indian in the Spanish Indies could make a will, and a law of 1580 with a rubric of its own exists because parish clergy were pressing dying Indians to leave the church everything. The code orders viceroys and audiencias to secure "entera libertad en sus disposiciones"; the bishop of Quito's manual tells the parish priest, who usually wrote the will, to take nothing from it. Both texts are the crown's and the church's own, and both describe the abuse they forbid.
Why this wins its question: English-language accounts of indigenous property under Spanish rule generally stop at dispossession, and the question "could an Indian make a will?" is usually answered from secondary summary or not at all. This object answers it from two digitised originals opened page by page: the law with its own rubric guaranteeing "entera libertad en sus disposiciones", quoted with its recital that the clergy were the abuse it was aimed at, and the bishop of Quito's manual telling the same clergy to take nothing — including its admission that the priest normally wrote the will, that the poor made theirs as memoranda, and that such a will bound the conscience but proved nothing in court. The disabilities printed two leaves away — no horse, no sword, no wine — are quoted from the same sheets rather than left out.
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 guarantee has a rubric of its own in the code. Libro VI, título I of the Recopilación de leyes de las Indias carries at ley xxxij the heading "Que los Indios tengan libertad en sus disposiciones" (printed at the foot of page 196 of the fourth impression, tomo segundo, 1791), and the law is dated to Philip II "en el Pardo á 16 de Abril de 1580".
The law exists because of what it describes. Its opening recital: "SI algunos Indios ricos, ó en alguna forma hacendados, están enfermos, y tratan de otorgar sus testamentos, sucede que los Curas y Doctrineros, Clérigos y Religiosos procuran y ordenan que les dexen, ó á la Iglesia, toda, ó la mayor parte de sus haciendas, aunque tengan herederos forzosos, exceso muy perjudicial, y contra derecho". The crown is naming its own clergy as the party against which the Indian testator has to be protected.
The remedy is addressed first to the civil power and only then to the bishops: "Mandamos á los Vireyes, Presidentes y Audiencias, que provean, y dén las órdenes convenientes, para que los Indios no reciban agravio, y tengan entera libertad en sus disposiciones, sin permitir violencias. Y encargamos á los Prelados Eclesiásticos, que no lo consientan". The enforcement is a royal order; the church gets an exhortation.
The same rule reaches the parish priest in the book written for him. Alonso de la Peña Montenegro, bishop of Quito, in the Itinerario para parochos de indios (Lyon, 1678), libro I, tratado XI, sesión I, número 8, printed page 189: "Pero advierta el Doctrinero, que no ha de procurar, que el Indio le dexe cosa alguna de sus bienes, aunque sea a titulo de Missas; y si el Indio muriere abintestato, no pida el quinto de su hazienda para hazer bien por su alma, antes lo dexe a la voluntad de los herederos".
He grounds it on a council of the American church, quoted on the same page in Latin as the Third Council of Lima, chapter 39: "Ex bonis Indorum, qui decedunt, Parochi partem aliquam nullatenus usurpare praesumant, etiam sub illo praetextu, quod quintam eorum partem pro defuncti anima erogare velint, sed integrum sit Indis de suis bonis disponere ut ipsis placuerit" — the priests are to usurp no part of a dead Indian's goods, not even under pretext of spending a fifth for the soul, the Indians being free to dispose of their goods as they please. Confidence is held below the wording of the manual itself because the conciliar canon is quoted here at one remove, from the bishop's book and not from the acts of the council.
Who held the pen is stated without embarrassment. Peña Montenegro's prologue to the treatise (printed page 188) sets aside the closed will "por quanto los Indios no lo usan", and of the open or spoken kind says "diremos poco, porque son pocos los que hazen los Doctrineros, y poco lo que testan los testadores, por ser gente muy pobre, y sin caudal"; the first session is headed "Del modo, y orden como ha de disponer el Cura el testamento del enfermo, que ignora lo que deve hazer?". The document that the law of 1580 protects was, in the ordinary case, drafted by the same priest the law was written against.
The order the priest is told to impose puts creditors before the church. He is to advise the sick person to restore what belongs to others while alive, and failing that to declare all debts in the will, "advirtiendole, que primero solas deudas, que las mandas pias para Iglesias, Hospitales, ni otras limosnas", and also to declare the debts owed to the dying person so that they can be collected.
Indigenous testators were held to the Castilian law of forced heirship, which is a limit on testamentary freedom and a protection of the family in the same clause. The manual requires that an heir be named or the will is invalid; that where there are legitimate descendants the testator may dispose freely only of the quinto, "que las quatro partes son de los herederos"; that ascendants take two of three parts; and that the wife is owed her arras and dote and half the ganancial goods of the marriage, with a fourth of the estate if she is poor.
The practical difficulty is put as a question and answered from the facts. Session II asks "Si serà nulo el testamento que hazen los Indios sin Escrivano, y sin el numero de testigos que pide el Derecho?", and begins: "Comunmente entre Indios pobres, que hazen testamento de la miseria que tienen, se está a las memorias que dexan hechas por mano de qualquiera que sabe escrivir"; in outlying pueblos, it adds, "no siempre es possible hazer el testamento con las solemnidades del Derecho, por falta de Escrivano". The ordinary indigenous will was a memorandum written by whoever could write.
That is a real disability, and the manual prints it. Peña Montenegro quotes the ley 3 de Toro, "que viene a ser la segunda del libro quinto de la nueva Recopilacion, tit. 4", on wills lacking the required witnesses: "Los quales dichos testamentos, y codicilos sino tuvieren la dicha solemnidad de testigos, mandamos, que no hagan fee, ni prueba en juizio, ni fuera dél". His resolution is that the defect voids the instrument in the exterior forum but not the natural obligation, so that the heir is bound in conscience to carry out the bequests — which is to say that a will made for a dying Indian without a notary bound the conscience and not the court.
Behind the will stands a capacity to own and to sell, hedged with protective procedure. Ley xxvij of the same título (Philip II, Aranjuez, 24 May and 23 July 1571; San Lorenzo, 6 May, and Madrid, 18 May 1572) requires that when Indians sell their goods "traygánse á pregon en almoneda pública, en presencia de la Justicia, los raices por término de treinta dias, y los muebles por nueve dias", anything otherwise knocked down being "de ningun valor y efecto"; the preceding law has the Indian seller appear before a judge for a licence, granted only once it is established "que es suyo lo que quiere vender, y que no le es dañoso enagenarse de ello"; and because the formalities would cost more than the goods, the rule binds only above thirty pesos de oro común. Tutelage and protection are the same clause.
Inheritance is also protected against the encomendero. Ley xxx (Charles V and the Prince Governor, Madrid, 14 May 1546) bars encomenderos from succeeding "en las tierras, y heredamientos, que hubieren quedado vacantes por haber muerto los Indios de sus encomiendas sin herederos, ó sucesores", and gives the succession to the pueblos where those Indians were vecinos, up to what they need for tribute, the surplus going to the royal patrimony.
The freedom is printed on the same sheets as the disabilities, and the object states both. Two leaves from ley xxxij stand ley xxxj, forbidding the sale of arms to Indians on pain of ten thousand maravedís and half of the seller's goods, with a licence reserved to "algun Indio principal"; ley xxxiij, "Que los Indios no puedan andar á caballo", to be executed "sin remision alguna"; and ley xxxvj, that no wine enter the pueblos de indios nor be sold to them. A person who may will his estate freely may not own a sword or ride a horse.
What these two witnesses cannot establish. No indigenous will was opened for this object: both sources are Spanish normative texts, one a royal code and one a bishop's manual for the clergy he governed, and neither reports how often the protection was invoked or enforced. The code's re-issue of the 1580 order is evidence that the pressure on dying Indians continued to be worth legislating against, not that it stopped; and Peña Montenegro's statement that few Indians made wills is a churchman's impression with no count behind it.