Page:About Mexico - Past and Present.djvu/260

252 Ximenes exclaimed,

"With no justice! What! are they not free? Who doubts about their being free?"

It was while such discussions as these were going on that the planters bethought themselves that the negroes of Africa might replace the Indians. While Charles V. was in Germany he was besieged with petitions to grant licenses for the importation of Africans to till the depopulated soil of the West Indies and of other Spanish colonies. Ximenes protested, and twelve times during fifty years Las Casas crossed the sea on his philanthropic errands, but in vain.

One of the earliest effects of the discovery of America was a division of its lands (repartimientos) among the settlers from the Old World. In 1497 a patent was granted to Christopher Columbus authorizing him to divide the newly-discovered countries among his followers. It was his decision that "the natives should till the soil for the benefit of those who hold them." Little did this good man think of the inheritance of shame and sorrow he was preparing for his countrymen and their victims in lands he had never seen.

At first the Spaniards had only a life-estate in the serfs; next, the owner had the right to the service of a man and his son, and finally the natives were doomed to unending servitude. They could be taken from place to place at their master's pleasure, with such wages as he chose to give or with none at all. These removals were the sorest trial the village Indians could endure. To be torn from the lands their forefathers had tilled, to work in mines for life, and to be compelled to labor on farms when they had been trained at the loom, were alike irksome to these creatures of custom. Not only toil, but tribute,