supplies needed; and he offered, pending the discovery of more precious
things, to defray expenses by shipping to Spain some of the island natives,
"who are a wild people fit for any work, well proportioned and very
intelligent, and who when they have got rid of their cruel habits to which
they have been accustomed will be better than any other kind of slaves."[9]
Though this project was discouraged by the crown, Columbus actually took a
cargo of Indians for sale in Spain on his return from his third voyage;
but Isabella stopped the sale and ordered the captives taken home and
liberated. Columbus, like most of his generation, regarded the Indians
as infidel foreigners to be exploited at will. But Isabella, and to some
extent her successors, considered them Spanish subjects whose helplessness
called for special protection. Between the benevolence of the distant
monarchs and the rapacity of the present conquerors, however, the fate of
the natives was in little doubt. The crown's officials in the Indies were
the very conquerors themselves, who bent their soft instructions to fit
their own hard wills. A native rebellion in Hispaniola in 1495 was crushed
with such slaughter that within three years the population is said to have
been reduced by two thirds. As terms of peace Columbus required annual
tribute in gold so great that no amount of labor in washing the sands could
furnish it. As a commutation of tribute and as a means of promoting the
conversion of the Indians there was soon inaugurated the encomienda system
which afterward spread throughout Spanish America. To each Spaniard
selected as an encomendero was allotted a certain quota of Indians bound to
cultivate land for his benefit and entitled to receive from him tutelage
in civilization and Christianity. The grantees, however, were not assigned
specified Indians but merely specified numbers of them, with power to seize
new ones to replace any who might die or run away. Thus the encomendero was
given little economic interest in preserving the lives and welfare of his
workmen.