Page:About Mexico - Past and Present.djvu/263

Rh with the Protestants, and had thus offended the pope, who would be sure, unless pacified, to retaliate by stirring up trouble in other quarters. Besides all this, the ravages of pirates in the Mediterranean called for a strong hand to punish these old offenders. In doing this a great Spanish fleet was lost in one of the most awful storms which ever swept the seas, and hundreds of ships were wrecked, with the loss of eight thousand men. It will easily be seen that with all these troubles the emperor could not afford to quarrel just then with his colonists. Favored by these circumstances, and by means of bribery, the Mexican delegation carried their point and went home rejoicing, to rivet still tighter those chains which bound the Indians of New Spain to a life of hopeless slavery. Although a few of the principal Indian families remained who by law were entitled to the privileges enjoyed by the Spanish nobility, they were a conquered people and lived in bondage. It was to the interest of their conquerors that they should be kept in ignorance, counted as minors, shut up in villages by themselves and forbidden to engage in commerce.

The natural taste of the Indians for engraving, embroidery, feather-and mosaic-work, modeling in clay, and other like occupations requiring artistic skill, met with great disapproval from the Council in Spain. They were forbidden to engage in anything but the coarsest work, lest they should become discontented or unfit for menial service. This oppression was at last so evident to the world that the pope, with all his jealousy of Charles V., declared that "the Indians are really and truly men capable of receiving the Christian faith."

But those original proprietors of the soil were often sullen and distrustful, only held in check by the strong