withhold receiving the money for the sale of these Indians that Torres had
brought with him until their Highnesses should be able to inform
themselves from men learned in the law, theologians and canonists, whether
with a good conscience these Indians could be ordered to be sold or not.
The historian Munoz, who has been indefatigable in his researches amongst
the documents relating to Spanish America, declares that he cannot find
that the point was decided; and if he has failed, we are not likely to
discover any direct evidence about the decision. We shall hereafter,
however, find something which may enable us to conjecture what the
decision practically came to be.


DISTRESS OF NATIVES.

Many of the so-called free Indians in Hispaniola had, perhaps, even a
worse fate than that which fell to the lot of their brethren condemned to
slavery. These free men, seeing the Spaniards quietly settling down in
their island, building houses, and making forts, and no vessels in the
harbour of Isabella to take them away, fell into the profoundest sadness,
and bethought them of the desperate remedy of attempting to starve the
Spaniards out, by not sowing or planting anything. But this is a shallow
device, when undertaken on the part of the greater number, in any country,
against the smaller. The scheme reacted upon themselves. They had intended
to gain a secure though scanty sustenance in the forests and upon the
mountains; but though the Spaniards suffered bitterly from famine, they
were only driven by it to further pursuit and molestation of the Indians,
who died in great numbers, of hunger, sickness, and misery.


SPANISH COMMISSIONER.