No More Negotiation: Slavery and

The Destabilization of Colonial

Hispaniola's Encomienda System

Lynne Guitar

The importation to Hispaniola of massive numbers of enslaved Native

Americans from other regions and non-Hispanicized African slaves,
in the first, second, and third decades of the sixteenth century, was a significant
factor in the destabilization of the island's encomienda system—a system
already in peril because of the precipitous decline of the island’s native Taínos
(also called Island Arawaks). This article will examine the transition from
encomienda to slavery, focusing on some little explored socio-cultural aspects of
Hispaniola’s early encomienda system, the relocation of commended Indians in
1514, and the various methods that the Crown employed to supplement the
island’s labor supply. Case studies of rebellions, including that of the cacique.1
Enriquillo in 1519, and of the New World’s first African slave rebellion in 1521
will be used to help illustrate the destabilization of the island’s carefully
negotiated and delicately balanced encomienda system, a system that had
maintained a remnant of the Taíno caciques' traditional authority and prestige
while fulfilling Spanish needs for manual labor.
Many scholars maintain that the Spaniards on Hispaniola looked upon the
encomienda system the same way they did slavery, not distinguishing between
the two extractive labor systems. Lesly Byrd Simpson, for example, says 'In'
Reality, the encomienda, at least in the first fifty years of its existence, was looked
upon by its beneficiaries as a subterfuge for slavery.2Carlos Esteban Deive

1
Cacique is the term that the native inhabitants of Hispaniola used to designate their
The Spaniards adopted the Taíno word 'chief' and used it for the leaders of native.
peoples throughout the Americas. See Ricardo E. Alegría, 'Origin and Diffusion of the '
Term 'Cacique,' in Sol Tax, ed., Acculturation in the Americas: Selected Papers of the
XXIXth International Congress of Americanists, 1949 (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press)
1952), Vol. 2, 313-5.
2
Lesley Byrd Simpson, The Encomienda in New Spain: The Beginning of Spanish-
Mexico (Los Angeles, CA: U. of California Press, 1966), xiii. Simpson defines the
encomienda system in the Antilles as '[T]he delegation of the royal power to collect the
tribute from, and to use the personal services of [emphasis Simpson's] the King’s
vassals [the indians]. The encomendero undertook to look after the welfare of his
agrees, attributing abuses of the system to “the greediness of the colonists and
of the king himself.3Throughout the colonial era, however, the Spanish Crown
continually attempted to define and distinguish commended Indians as distinct
and separate from enslaved peoples. The encomenderos did not legally own the
Indians who were commended to them by the Crown could not legally rent.
them out, and, particularly after the Laws of Burgos were implemented in
December 1512 (amended July 1513), owed carefully spelled-out reciprocal
responsibilities to "their" Indians in exchange for labor tribute, including the
payment of wages (albeit the standard wage paid to commended Indians was
only one to one-and-a-half gold pesos annually 4Furthermore, commended
Indians, even those who worked for Spaniards in the gold mines, were legally
worked for only a portion of the year called the demora;5initially they lived the
balance of the year in their own villages.
The Spanish Crown could and did remove the Indians from encomenderos
who abused the 'vassals' entrusted to them or who otherwise defied the
system’s multitude of rules and regulations; the abused Indians would be
commended to other Spaniards. The threat of removal curbed some of the

charges and to educate them in proper norms of conduct, as well as to

discharge the usual feudal obligation of bearing arms in the King’s defense.
For the initial development of the encomienda system, see Robert S. Chamberlain,
Castilian Background of the Repartimiento-Encomienda System (Washington, DC:
Carnegie Institute, 1939). Among the best studies of encomienda in the New World are:
Luis Arranz Márquez, Distributions and Encomiendas in Hispaniola (The
repartimiento of Albuquerque of 1514)(Santo Domingo: García-Arévalo Foundation,
1991); Carlos Esteban Deive, The Spanish and the Slavery of the Indian (Santo Domingo:
García-Arévalo Foundation, 1995); Lewis Hanke, The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the
Conquest of America (Philadelphia, PA: U. of Pennsylvania Press, 1949) and The First
Social Experiments in America: A Study in the Development of Spanish Indian Policy in
the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. Press, 1935); Esteban Mira Caballos,
The Caribbean Indian: Repartimiento, encomienda, and slavery (1492-1542) (Seville, Spain:
Muñoz Moya, 1997); Julián B. Ruis Rivera & Horst Pietschmann, eds., Encomiendas,
Indians and Spaniards (Münster, W. Germany: Lit. Verlag, 1996); Emilio Rodríguez
Demorizi, The Dominicos and the Indian encomiendas of the island of Hispaniola (Saint)
Sunday: Caribbean Press, 1971); and José Antonio Saco, History of Slavery of
The Indians in the New World (Havana, Cuba: Cultural, 1932).
3
Deive, "The voracity of the colonists and the king himself...," La Española and the
slavery of the Indian, 87.
4
Such a salary could have purchased a locally made suit of clothes, perhaps, but not
an imported European. An imported 'fancy linen shirt' circa 1503 cost one-and-a-half
gold pesos, a pair of silk stockings another one-and-a-half, and a pair of kid shoes three
Tomines, or one-third of a peso. A single large nail cost one peso. Charles E. Nowell.
trans. and ed., A Letter to Ferdinand and Isabella, 1503 (Minneapolis, MN: U. of
Minnesota Press, 1965), 49-50.
5
The length of the demoralization is debatable, somewhere between five and nine months.
See Esteban Mira Caballos, "The indigenous labor system in the Antilles," in Ruis Rivera
& Pietschmann, Encomiendas, Indians and Spaniards, 20-21.
system's abuses, but both the reward of encomiendas and the threat of their
removal were primarily used to keep power centralized in the Crown and Crown
administrators.
The Indian wars6on Hispaniola were over in the early years of the reign
of governor Nicolás de Ovando (1502-1509), after which most of the island’s
remaining Taínos submitted to the encomienda system: "Although they submit
to this restraint with impatience, they do put up with it,” wrote Peter Martyr
D'Anghiera.7The question that is seldom asked is: why? Luis Arranz Márques
contends that the encomienda system was one of sheer domination of Spaniards
over Indians.8Not all scholars agree, for there may have been some perceived
benefits in the encomienda system for the remaining Taínos. Submitting to
encomienda does not necessarily imply collaboration or collusion—it may
instead demonstrate evidence of indigenous adaptation to the Spanish system.
It must be understood that the Taínos, although not as intricately stratified
nor as rigidly organized as the Aztecs or the Incas, had at least two distinct
social classes. The nobles called themselves nitaínos, comprising
chiefs—some of whom were “paramount” chiefs with authority over others
lesser caciques—and behiques (priests/healers), plus their extended families.
Commoners were known as naborías. Spaniards on Hispaniola adopted the
the term 'naborías' to designate both Taíno 'workers' and other related Indians
who were brought from nearby islands, such as the Bahamas. (The imported
naborías were not slaves, for they could not legally be sold.9
The conquistadors on the island recognized the authority, prestige and
privileges of the caciques from the beginning of the encounter. For example,

6
The 'wars' were pogroms to eliminate the island's most powerful chieftains and
their counsellors.
7
Peter Martyr D'Anghiera, On the New World, The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr
D'Anghiera, trans. and ed. Francis Augustus MacNutt (New York, NY: Burt Franklin,
1970 reprint of 1912 edition; originally published in Spain in 1517 and 1526), Vol. 1,
182.
8
Arranz Márques, Distribution of lands and encomiendas on the island of Hispaniola.
9
Mira Caballos, "The Indigenous Labor System," 20-27; and Roberto Cassá, History
social and economic of the Dominican Republic (Santo Domingo: Editorial Alfa and
Omega, 1992), Volume 1, 53. For more details on the Taínos and the early encounter era in
the Caribbean, see Deive, The Slavery of the Indian.; Peter Hulme, Colonial Encounters:
Europe and the Native Caribbean, 1492-1797 (London & New York: Clarendon Press)
and Oxford U. Press, 1992); William F. Keegan, The People Who Discovered Columbus:
The Prehistory of the Bahamas (Gainesville, FL: U. of Florida Press, 1992); Francisco
Moscoso, Tribe and classes in ancient Caribbean (San Pedro de Macoris, Dominican Republic:
U. Central del Este, 1986); Irving Rouse, The Taínos: Rise and Decline of the People
Who Greeted Columbus (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 1992); Jalil Sued-
Badillo, The Indigenous Woman and Her Society (San Juan, PR: Editorial Cultural, 1989); and
Samuel M. Wilson, Hispaniola: Caribbean Chiefdoms in the Age of Columbus
(Tuscaloosa & London: University of Alabama Press, 1990).
Christopher Columbus wrote glowingly about the richness of the estate of
"king" Guacanagarí, the prestige accorded to him, and about how many people
he commanded to carry and store Columbus's supplies off the 'Santa Maria,'
which wrecked on a reef near the cacique’s principal village on Christmas Eve,
1492. Columbus treated Guacanagarí with the same kind of deference he would
have shown to any foreign monarch, giving him gifts and entertaining him
aboard ship. Columbus’s “friendship” with the cacique profited him immensely,
for Guacanagarí not only safeguarded Columbus’s goods, he gave Columbus
gifts in return, several of which were objects decorated with gold.10
Guacanagarí most likely gained prestige among his own people and among others
chieftains through his friendship with the exotic strangers from a distant land,
strangers who might even have been considered gods,11at least at first. As
Anthropologist Bruce Trigger notes:

The Indians’ increasing familiarity with Europeans led to a

"cognitive reorganization" in which the rational component
inherent in the mental processes of every human being began to
play the dominant role in guiding the native relations with
Europeans, while religious beliefs ceased to play the important part
that in many cases they had done in the early stages of the
encounter. The key factor in bringing about this transformation
was the Indians’ observation and rational evaluation of European
behavior.12

The Taínos had ample opportunity to observe and evaluate European

behavior when Francisco Roldan and the other Spaniards who rebelled with him
against the Columbus brothers in the mid-1490s spread out across Jaragua in the
western half of the island and “married” the daughters of the region's caciques in
order to profit from their kinship with the nobles. Perhaps, in this first decade of
the encounter, noble Taínos allied themselves in kinship with Spaniards
in order to observe them and evaluate them more closely, and in order to learn
from them how to negotiate and deal with the Spaniards to improve and
maintain their elite status or to better protect their people and their traditions, or
both. Unfortunately, we will never know for certain because, although many of

10
Oliver Dunn & James E. Kelley, Jr., trans. and eds., The Diary of Christopher
Columbus's First Voyage to America, 1492-1493: Abstracted by Fray Bartolomé de las
Houses (Norman & London: U. of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 276-303.
11
See Mary W. Helms, Ulysses' Sail: An Ethnographic Odyssey of Power,
Knowledge and Geographic Distance (NJ: Princeton U. Press, 1988).
12
Bruce G. Trigger, “Early Native North American Responses to European Contact:
Romantic versus Rationalistic Interpretations, The Journal of American History (March
1991): 1210.
the sons of the noble Taínos were taught to read and write by Spaniards, only
one left written evidence.13
Many encomenderos married into Taíno noble families. Some of these
unions were sanctified by the Church. Queen Isabel encouraged intermarriage
from the earliest years of the encounter, and royal license for intermarriage was
reinforced by King Ferdinand after her death in various letters and cedulas
Ovando and Viceroy Diego Colón.14More often unions between Spaniards and
Indians were in concubinage relationships, although the couple probably went
through a native ritual, which would have legitimated the Spaniard as a member
of the noble family, hence noble himself in the eyes of the Taínos. Marriage
into the family of a cacique, or to acacica, a female who had inherited the ruling
position herself, would have made a Spanish encomendero’s labor demands
more acceptable, not only to the workers but also to the nobles.
Francisco Moscoso argues that the Taínos not only had a stratified social
hierarchy, but also had a well established tribute system and that it was this
traditional system of tribute—which included labor tribute—that the Spanish
encomenderos tapped into.15The royal cédulas granting encomiendas use
language indicating that he is correct, that the encomenderos' authority over
their commended Indians was filtered through the caciques, who were to be 'the'

13
That one piece of written evidence is a letter from 'Don Enrique Yndio' written to
Emperor Charles in 1534, in which the cacique agrees, henceforth, to be a model and
obedient vassal. It has been preserved at the General Archive of the Indies (hereinafter
AGI), Audience of Santo Domingo, File 77. Transcribed by Emilio Rodríguez
Demorizi in Fr. Cipriano de Utrera, Controversy of Enriquillo (Santo Domingo: Publisher of
Caribbean, 1973), 487-8.
The Crown went to considerable trouble and expense to educate the caciques and
their sons so that they would be 'model vassals.' Both clergymen and lay teachers were
sent to the island, such as bachellor Fernán Suárez, who “consented to teach the sons of
the caciques on Hispaniola," for which he was to be paid 33,000 maravedís annually,
beginning in 1513 (AGI, General Indifferent 419, L4, ffl27r-127v). See also L4, fl24v;
L5, ff467v-468; 1961, L2, ffl5v-16, and fl6. The Crown also paid the expenses to send
caciques and their sons to Spain, to be educated in the established monasteries there, then
sent home to serve as model Christians. One of the earliest notices to this effect was
dated March 5, 1505 (AGI, Indiferente General 418, L1, ffl50v-151). Learning to read
and write like the Europeans would have been an excellent 'tool' for the caciques and
their families, one with which they could better understand and negotiate with the
Spaniards. See Patricia Seed, ‘Failing to Marvel’: Atahualpa's Encounter with the
Word, Latin American Research Review 26/1 (1991): 7-32.
14
For example, in a royal letter to Ovando dated October 6, 1508 (AGI, Indiferente
General 1961, L1, ff78v-81) and in a cédula to Colón and the oidores of the Audiencia of
Santo Domingo dated September 27, 1514 (AGI, Indiferente General 419, L5, ff270v-
27lr).
15
Moscoso, Tribe and classes in ancient Caribbean.
better treated16Furthermore, royal
decrees granting commended Indians were issued through the caciques, as, for
example, a certificate dated June 11, 1513, directed to Colón and the theologians
(judges) and other officials of Hispaniola, which ordered them to commend
eighty Indians to Francisco de Arbolancha 'in the chief Diego Colón of the
Maguana.17Another indication that Spaniards were negotiating labor by
manipulating the traditional privileges accorded to the Taíno nobility is
suggested by the word 'casyco,' one of the earliest terms used by Spaniards on
Hispaniola for what later was consistently called repartimiento or encomienda.
Casyco appears to be a variant of the Taíno word 'cacicazgo,' which designated
the geographical extent of a cacique's authority.18
Documents as late as 1547 contain orders from the Royal Crown that
Spaniards were to rule through the caciques throughout the American colonies.
A provision dated August 26, 1547, orders all the local mayors 'not to meddle'
nor deprive the caciques of their cacicazgos, under expressed penalties,
which were detailed in the writ.19Susan Kellogg has come up with a compelling
explanation of why the Spanish Crown was so insistent upon at least a front of
upholding the traditional privileges of the caciques: 'Hegemony develops not
because people have agreed to their own subjugation but because the dominating
power has been able to institute or substitute practices and beliefs which
eventually appear normal and natural.” She continues with the observation that
hegemony is not simply imposed; it is a product of complex processes of
conflict, negotiation, dialogue, and accommodation, even in colonial
situations.20
Just so, the caciques and cacicas of Hispaniola who appear to have been
acting as "agents of Christian values" and as "middlemen" for their Spanish
encomenderos, who needed mine laborers, agriculturalists, fishermen,
construction workers and domestic servants, no doubt did so because it seemed
to be a natural extension of their traditional privileges and prestige. Cooperating
with Spaniards through the encomienda system was not collusion, per se,
between elites, but it did require a delicately balanced, ongoing series of
negotiations that often tipped over from adaptation and accommodation to
resistance and, at times, to outright rebellion. In July of 1512, for example, the

16
Royal decree dated September 20, 1518 (AGI, Royal Patronage 419, L7, fl10v).
17
AGI, Panama 233, L1, fllv.
18
Three documents from 1509, for example, use 'casyco' as a synonym for
repartimiento. Santiago Montoto, Collection of unpublished documents for history
of Ibero-America (Madrid: Ibero-African-American Publishing, 1927), Vol. 2, Nos. 9,
10, 11.
19
...that the ordinary mayors of the cities
from the Indies do not intervene nor deprive the chiefs of their chieftaincies, under the penalties
"that are expressed" (AGI, Indifferent General 424, L21, ff35v-36).
20
Susan Kellogg, “Hegemony Out of Conquest: The First Two Centuries of
Spanish Rule in Central Mexico, Radical History Review 53 (1992): 27-46.
Cacica Isabel of Azua and her twenty-five, fifty or seventy-five naborías.
used here, the word probably means 'workers'; different documents provide
three different quantities) refused to cooperate with Juan de Serralonga, the
major scribe of the island's mines, 'whom they did not want to go serve'
("that they do not want to go serve"). Serralonga was Isabel's encomendero, but he
had been away in Spain about one year to be cured of an unspecified illness
contracted on Hispaniola, during which time she became attached to a Majorcan
named Pere Martin.21Despite Serralonga's appeal to Colón and the oidores, the
cacica appears to have gotten her way, for another certificate on behalf of
Serralonga, who was still or again complaining of ill health, was sent to Colón
on August 12, 1512, demanding the return of his cacica and her naborías.
The note also mentions that Serralonga had lost a 'large part' of his estate to fire.
but there is no suggestion of foul play. The information seems to have been
added to make him appear more pitiable, more in need of workers.22Serralonga
died sometime later, in 1512. As late as 1544, his heirs (administrators of the
Barcelona General Hospital) were suing for his goods, which
included monetary recompense for the lost Indians.23
Undoubtedly the documents contain data on more cases in which Indians
refused to cooperate with the demands of encomenderos. It is the outright
rebellions, however, that held and continue to hold historical attention. The
Most notable of the era was the rebellion of the Cacique Enriquillo.24
Born around 1498 or 1500, Enriquillo (the diminutive form of his name)
baptismal name Enrique) was the grandnephew of the paramount Cacica
Anacaona. Anacaona was the principal wife of Caonabó, the second most
powerful chief on the island when the Spaniards arrived, and sister to
Behechío, the most powerful chief, who ruled Jaragua in the southwest
Hispaniola (today in the Republic of Haiti). She became Cacica of Jaragua upon
her brother’s death, ruling until 1503, when she was hung by order of Governor
Ovando, who feared her because she was so powerful and so revered by her
people. Enriquillo was one of the first of the nitaíno children to be taught to
read and write by the Franciscans. He became a Christian (some thought he

21
AGI, General Indifferent 418, L3, ffll3r-113v and 334r-334v.
22
AGI, General Indifferent 419, L4, ffllv-12v.
23
AGI, Audience of Santo Domingo 868, L2, f225.
24
For more detail than this article can provide on Enriquillo's background and
rebellion, see José Juan Arrom & Manuel A. García Arévalo, Cimmarón (Santo
Sunday: García Arévalo Foundation, Inc., 1986); Bartolomé de las Casas, History of
the Indies (Madrid: Alianza, 1988), Volume 3, Chapter 12; Manuel de Jesús Galván's historical
novel
of Oviedo and Valdés, General History of the Indies (Madrid: Atlas Editions, 1959)
Library of Authors, Vol. 117, Book 1: 124-139; Manuel Arturo Peña Batlle, The
Rebellion of Bahoruco (Santo Domingo: Dominican Press, 1948); and Utrera,
Enriquillo's controversy.
might become the first native priest) and inherited the cacique title of Jaragua
some time after Anacaona's death.
Enriquillo had a reputation for cooperating with the Spaniards, even when
he and the remaining 109 of his people were moved to the village of San Juan de
Maguana in 1514 to live near his two new encomenderos, Francisco de
Valenzuela and Francisco Hernández, as per the requirements of the Laws of
Burgos.25The Laws of Burgos decreed that the Indians, after 1512, were 'to
dwell near the Spaniards” to whom they were commended. In the preamble to
the new Spanish-Indian legal code, King Ferdinand explains that this was
ordered so that:

By continual association with them [the encomenderos], as well as

by attending church on feast days to hear Mass and the divine
offices, and by observing the conduct of the Spaniards, as well as
the preparation and care that the Spaniards will display in
demonstrating and teaching them, while they are together, the
things of our Holy Catholic Faith, it is that they will the sooner
learn them and, having learned them, will not forget them as they
do now.26

Most scholars concur that the Christian motive presented in the preamble was
meant to quell the protests of the clergy on the island and to ease the royal
conscience. The true motive for the “reductions” was, more likely, to
concentrate Indian workers closer to the gold mines in order to increase profits
for the royal coffers.
There were thirty-five other chiefs and their people relocated to San
Juan de la Maguana junto a Enriquillo en 1514, donde un total de veintisiete
Spaniards were granted 1,529 Taínos in encomienda, and seventeen other
Spanish residents of the village received title to 469 naborías. There was
probably no question, considering his background, that Enriquillo was the

25
The Repartimiento Census of 1514 lists Enriquillo as commended to Valenzuela
with forty-six workers and one child, and to Hernández with thirty-six workers, ten
Indians too old to work, and sixteen children. The details of the distribution for San Juan.
de la Maguana are in Joaquín F. Pacheco, Francisco de Cárdenas and Luis Torres of
Mendoza, eds., Collection of unpublished documents relating to the discovery, conquest
and colonization of the Spanish possessions in America and Oceania (Madrid: M. Bernaldo
de Quirós, 1864), Vol. 1, 196-207; also in Rodríguez Demorizi, op. cit.
26
This translation from Parry and Keith, New Iberian World (New York: Times
Books, 1984), Vol. 1, 337. For a summary description of the Laws of Burgos, see Lynne
Guitar, 'Laws of Burgos (1513),' in Junius P. Rodríguez, ed., Historical Encyclopedia of
World Slavery (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1998), Vol. 1, 113-4. Several slightly
different original versions have been preserved in the AGI (Indiferente General 419, L4,
f83 and Justice 299, for example), evidence of the importance of the Laws of Burgos to
the Crown and to the new Spanish colonies.
paramount cacique over the thirty-six of them in San Juan. In the other thirteen
towns and villages, however, where the rest of the 22,336 of the island's
remaining commended Taínios were redistributed in 1514, tensions must have
arisen when so many chiefs were relocated and reduced together into one
region.27
Why did caciques like Enriquillo allow their people to be relocated, to
leave behind their ancestral lands and sacred places, without rebelling?28The
documents provide no clues, but perhaps demography does. The cacicazgo of
Jaragua had been the most populous on the entire island in 1492,29yet by 1514,
Enriquillo, Jaragua’s paramount cacique, had only 109 people under his direct
jurisdiction, including children and old people. Was this all that remained of
those who had survived the pogroms that killed Anacaona and her counsellors,
and the plagues and famines that had killed so many other Taínos since the
Did Spaniards arrive?30Perhaps Enriquillo and the other commended caciques
deduced that, because of the precipitous demographic decline, regrouping would
benefit the remaining people. Regrouping was, after all, an extension of the
traditional Taíno ways. Five years later, though, in 1519, Enriquillo did rebel,
after the relocation and regrouping proved to be unfavorable for him and his
people. By 1519, the island had experienced the worst and most devastating
wave yet of epidemic disease (smallpox), and the Crown had begun authorizing
the importation of massive numbers of enslaved Indians to supplement the
island's dwindling native labor supply, both of which acted to reduce the status
and leverage of the chieftains.
The chronicler Peter Martyr provides extensive detail on the depopulation.
of the Lucayos, whose people were captured and exported in massive numbers

27
For detailed studies of the 1514 repartimiento, see Rodríguez Demorizi, The
Dominicans and the encomiendas of Indians of Hispaniola; and Arranz Márques,
Distribution and encomiendas in Hispaniola. Note, however, that the census that
accompanied the 1514 Repartimiento only counted those Indians who were held in
encomienda or who were officially naborías. It did not count those who were 'living as'
Spaniards,” those living on the peripheries of the “settled” areas, nor those who had run
away to live in Cimarrón communities. Nor did it count slaves. There were even Indians.
under Spanish control who were not counted in the census. Their encomenderos did not
report them so that they could not be taken away and commended to other Spaniards
(AGI, Patronage 172, R4, ffl109-111v; full text in Arranz Márquez, op. cit., 321-5.
28
My sincere thanks to Dr. Jane Landers for posing this question in an e-mail.
communication of January 16, 1997.
29
See Wilson, Hispaniola, 14; and Bartolomé de Las Casas, Apologetic History
summary, Vols. 6, 7 and 8, comp. Paulino Castañeda, Carlos de Rueda, and Carmen
Godínez and Immaculada de la Corte (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1995), Vol. 3-8, 1279.
30
A wide variety of scholars have studied the effects of European exploitation and
disease microbes on the indigenous peoples of the New World. For one of the most
recent, see Noble David Cook, "Disease and the Depopulation of Hispaniola, 1492-"
Colonial Latin American Review 2/1-2 (1993): 213-45.
to Hispaniola as laborers, beginning about 1509, to supplement the dwindling
supply of native workers on Hispaniola.31William F. Keegan estimates that
25,760 persons were imported in 1510, most of them probably taken from the
Bahama [islands];" so many were taken that, based on studies by the geographer
Carl Ortwin Sauer, Keegan agrees that it is likely that the islands were totally
depopulated by 1513.32But the Lucayans were Western Taínos, with a language
and customs, values and beliefs nearly identical to those of the Taínos of
Hispaniola. Rodrigo de Figueroa informed the Crown that the Lucayans, “like
those Indians of this land [Hispaniola], are already almost one people33-so
their arrival did not unduly destabilize the delicate balance between
encomenderos and commended Taínos on Hispaniola. As early as 1503,
however, Queen Isabel authorized the capture of "caribes" (cannibals) on the
islands of the 'Ocean Sea' and on the mainland. These so-called cannibals
could be transported to Hispaniola and sold there as slaves, not as naborías, as
as long as the royal taxes were paid.34That 1503 license permitting the
enslavement and sale of cannibals was granted to the Archdukes of Austria and
the Dukes of Burgundy. In 1509, King Ferdinand issued similar licenses to
Governor Ovando and the Royal Treasurer Miguel de Passamonte, the two
highest officials on Hispaniola.35Then in late 1511, the field was opened up
wide. Royal provisions conceded to neighbors and residents alike of
both Hispaniola (December 23, 1511) and Puerto Rico (December 24, 1511) the
rights to go to the other islands and mainland to make war against the cannibals,
to capture them, and take them as slaves, as long as they were not sold outside
the Indies. The islands of "Trinidad, San Bernardo, Fuerte, Los Barbudos,
Dominica, Matenino, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent, La Asunción, Tabaco, May and
Barú and the port of Cartagena were specifically identified. Furthermore, the
royal provisions conceded Spaniards the rights to these slaves 'without incurring
without incurring any penalties nor paying any taxes
any right).36Shortly thereafter, other islands and mainland regions were
added to the cannibals-available-for-enslavement list, including Florida, Paria,
the coast of Tierra Firme from the Gulf of Venezuela to 'Coquibacoa'
(Cubagua?), the “Giants” (islands of Curaçao, Aruba and Bonaire), as well as

31
Peter Martyr D'Anghiera, On the New World: The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr
D'Anghiera, Vol. 2, 248-55.
32
Keegan, The People Who Discovered Columbus, 221-3.
33
AGI, Patronato 174, R19.
34
AGI, General Indifferent 418, L1, ff116r-116v; orders clarified in a letter dated
November 15, 1505, AGI, General Indifferent 418, L1, ff185v-186. Text of the latter
available in the Royal Academy of History, Collection of unpublished documents relating to
discovery, conquest, and organization of the ancient Spanish possessions in
Ultramar (Madrid: Typographic Establishment, 1885-1932), Vol. 5, 110-3.
35
AGI, General Indifferent 1961, L1, ff117v-118 and fl39v, respectively.
36
AGI, General Indifferent 418, L3, f211v and ff213-214v.
the coasts of Mexico and Yucatán.37By 1520, Indian slaves were also coming
from mainland Brazil, evidenced by a document dated January 9 and issued to the
licensed Antonio Serrano 'to buy Indians from the Portuguese and bring them
to whatever part of the Indies where they were needed.38Where they were
"needed" was gold mining regions like San Juan de la Maguana.
Recently, scholars have demonstrated that the Spanish slavers accused
numerous Indians of being cannibals as an excuse to capture and enslave them
and that even those Indians whom the Taínos called cannibals were culturally
similar to the Taínos; their cannibalism was primarily ritualistic, not for
sustenance39Some scholars even maintain that the so-called Caribs were from
the same biological and cultural stock as the Taínos, simply being a more recent
wave of migrants to the Antilles from the northeastern mainland.40An
An important point to consider, however, is that the Taínos perceived the Caribs as
being quite distinct from themselves, perceived them as enemies. Christopher
Columbus noted this in his Diary only one month after the initial encounter.41
The arrival of Caribs on Hispaniola in massive numbers must have been very
unsettling to the native Taínos. And the Caribs certainly would not have
recognized the authority of the native caciques, which must have affected
relations between them as well as the delicate balance that existed between the
commended Taínios and their encomenderos. More important, perhaps, the
the influx of Indian slaves affected the way that Spaniards on Hispaniola perceived
all Indians. It is from 1512 on that the word 'naboría' is used, more and more
frequently, synonymous with the word 'slave' in royal cédulas and
provisions, and in letters to and from the Crown. For example, two royal
provisions dated February 22, 1512, confirmed that the residents of San Juan
and Hispaniola could go to capture Carib Indians and keep them 'as naborías'

37
Respectively: AGI, General Indifferent 419, L5, ff245r-245v; Indifferent
General 420, L8, f69r; L10, ff243r-243v; Enrique Otte, "The Jerónimos and the traffic
Human in the Caribbean: A Rectification, in Yearbook of Hispanic American Studies
(Seville, 1958), 5-6; and Cassá, op. cit., Volume 1, 54.
38
AGI, General Indifferent 420, L8, ff177r-178r.
39
See Rouse, The Taínos, 21-5 and 145-6; Cassá, Social and Economic History,
Tomo 1, 53-4; Keegan, The People Who Discovered Columbus., 8-10 and 226;
Boucher, Cannibal Encounters, 2-5.
40
This was proposed by Jalil Sued-Badillo in Los Caribes: Reality or Fable:
Essay on Historical Rectification (Río Piedras, PR: Antillian Editorial, 1978) and
supported by Peter Hulme in Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean
(London: Methuen, 1986), both of whom have been criticized for the shallowness of
their evidence. See Boucher's discussion of the arguments in Cannibal Encounters, 2-8.
See also the debate over Peter Hulme's Colonial Encounters, 'Making No Bones:' A
Response to Myra Jehlen and Myra Jehlen's Response to Peter Hulme, II, in Critical
Inquiry20 (Autumn 1993): 179-86 and 187-91, respectively.
41
Entry of Friday, November 23, 1492. Dunn and Kelley, The Diario of
Christopher Columbus's First Voyage to America, 166-7.
for their own lifetime and that of their successors
life and that of their successors") without paying the "fifth."42
By 1512, some encomenderos on Hispaniola had possession of hundreds of
Indian slaves. Diego de Nicuesa, for example, had 200 when he died, which his
heir, his brother Alonso de Nicuesa, laid claim to on July 30, 1512.43No
documents indicate how many non-Taíno Indian slaves there might have been in
San Juan de la Maguana by 1519, when Enriquillo staged his rebellion. The
number was probably quite high, however, for San Juan was an important
mining region and one of the first of the Spanish villages to turn to the
commercial production of cane sugar, which began about 1515 on the nearby
Nigua River west of Santo Domingo.44
The chronicles inform us that Enriquillo rebelled because Andrés de
Valenzuela, the son and heir of his original encomendero, seized not only
Enriquillo's prize mare (an Indian owning a horse was a sign of high status) but
also his wife, doña Mencía, to whom he had been married in a sanctified
Catholic ceremony. Enriquillo complained to the town's leading Spaniard,
Pedro de Vadillo, but Vadillo reprimanded him for speaking out against Andrés.
Enriquillo went to the capital and came back with an order from the Audiencia
demanding the return of his wife and horse, but Vadillo refused to comply,
threatening to put Enriquillo in jail or in the stocks if he continued to pursue the
complaint against Andrés. In response, Enriquillo gathered up his wife and an
undisclosed number of Indians and led them to the desolate lands of Bahoruco,
in the region of his old chieftaincy.
It is highly probable that the lack of diplomacy demonstrated by both
Vadillo and Andrés in their dealings with Enriquillo were based on their mistaken
belief, due to the growing intermixture of slaves with naborías and commended
Taínos in the island’s work force, that all Indians were of lowly “slave” status,
thus could be treated with contempt. Vadillo had arrived only recently in
Hispaniola; the date on his permit to immigrate from Seville is January 13,
1513.45And Andrés was young, probably not a seasoned veteran of the
conquest and settlement of Hispaniola like his father, although it is difficult to
ascertain, for there appears to be no documentation on him at the Archive
General of the Indies. Additionally, both Vadillo and Andrés were probably too
recently arrived to have participated in the wars of conquest, thus they
underestimated the potential of the caciques as a 'rallying point or threat,'
thinking them 'tamed,' much as Susan Kellogg found Spaniards had come to
believe in seventeenth-century Mexico.46

42
AGI, General Indifferent 418, L3, ff223-224 and ff226-227v.
43
AGI, General Indifferent 418, L3, ff334r-335.
44
See Sauer, The Early Spanish Main, 209-10.
45
AGI, Passengers 5536, L1, f211.
46
Kellogg, 'Hegemony Out of Conquest,' 28.
 Vadillo and Andrés soon discovered how wrong they were, for both
Spaniards were sent on several expeditions to dislodge the rebellious chief.
from the mountains of Bahoruco, none of which were successful. Enriquillo
terrorized the southwestern region of the island, staging raids against the
Spaniards and successfully eluding them for the next thirteen years. As his fame
spread (or infamy, depending upon your viewpoint), he was joined by many
other rebellious Indians and by runaway African slaves.
Along with an influx of non-Taíno Indian slaves, African slaves had been
arriving on Hispaniola, too, and were put to work side by side with the Indians
working the gold mines and the sugarcane plantations from the
beginning of the island’s colonization. Their growing numbers by the second
and third decades of the sixteenth century, added to those of the growing
numbers of enslaved non-Taíno Indians would have exacerbated the lack of
the deference with which Spaniards treated all forced laborers, including
commended Indians, even chiefs.
In 1519, the Crown granted the first commercial license for the bulk
importation of bozales, slaves direct from Africa, to the Indies to 'Governor'
Bressa, the king's senior steward, through his Genoese
agents Adán de Bivaldo, Tomás de Forne and Lorenzo de Gorvod. The license
gave them a monopoly to bring 4,000 bozales to Hispaniola.47Before that date,
most of the royal cédulas licensing the importation of African slaves to
Hispaniola before 1519 were for one to twenty slaves, primarily for the
personal use of the high-status Spaniards who had requested them, such as
Governor Ovando (three on October 6, 1508), Diego Colón (ten on December
13, 1508), Hernando Colón (one on December 23, 1508), María de Toledo
(eight on May 10, 1509), Juan Ponce de León (four on October 19, 1514), and
Juan Becerra, 'the son of Comendador Bartolomé Becerra' (four on August 2,
1515).48Some were for more, however, such as a license dated July 6, 1508,
allowing Diego de Nicuesa to bring forty African slaves to Hispaniola.49Most
of the African slaves who were legally imported to Hispaniola early in the
sixteenth century were 'ladinos,' slaves of African origin or African descent
who had lived in Spain—many had been born there—who knew the language
and customs, and were Christians. Scattered evidence suggests, however, that
Many bozales were brought in illegally.50

47
AGI, General Indifferent 420, L8, ff93r-93v.
48
Respectively: AGI, General Indifferent 1961, L1, f86v; ff107r-107v; f112;
Indifferent General 419, L5, and ff451v-452.
49
AGI, General Indifference 1961, L1, ff71v-72.
50
In a joint letter to the Crown dated May 20, 1519, five of Hispaniola’s high-
ranking citizens observed that so many Africans had been brought in illegally over the
past fifteen years that trying to set things straight 'would cause a thousand lawsuits and
ruin the island." Roberto Marté, ed., Santo Domingo in the manuscripts of Juan Bautista
Muñoz (Santo Domingo: García-Arévalo Foundation, 1981), Vol. 1, 317-8.
 There was a general belief among the colonists on Hispaniola that bozales
were more docile slaves, more stable, than ladinos. But this belief was turned
around when approximately twenty 'Wolof' slaves (from today's Senegambia
region) on an ingenio owned by Diego Colón near Azua, about 100 kilometers
northwest of Santo Domingo, planned and carried out a rebellion on Christmas
Day, 1521.51From that moment onward, the history of the island is peppered
with African slave uprisings, led by such leaders as Juan Vaquero, Diego de
Guzmán, and Diego del Campo, all of whose rebellions took place before
1550.52They and others like them established cimarrón communities across the
southwestern, northern and eastern regions of the island. Terror spread across
Hispaniola due to the many "uncontrolled" Africans who stalked and raided
Spanish colonies and who traded freely with Spain’s enemies along the
unprotected coasts. Fear of African cimarrones was one of the reasons that
Spanish towns in the northern half of the island were abandoned and Spanish
settlement restricted to the part of the island south of San Juan de la Maguana in
the second half of the sixteenth century.
Veterans of the early decades of Hispaniola settlement who were still
around after the 1520s may have yearned nostalgically for the days when Indian
naborías worked the gold mines and the conucos (native agricultural plots) for
their encomenderos under the authority of their own Taíno chiefs.
Spaniards had had to deal diplomatically with the caciques, granting them many
privileged concessions, such as allowing them to own and ride horses, as
Enriquillo had done. This was, no doubt, galling to some Spaniards, as it
obviously was to Pedro de Vadillo and Andrés de Valenzuela. But the Taíno
chieftains, leading their people, organizing and sending out work parties as they
had traditionally done since time immemorial, were more willing to negotiate
y trabajar dentro del sistema español que los esclavos africanos que los reemplazaron
turned out to be. That is, many caciques attempted to work within the Spanish

51
The most common date given for this rebellion is Christmas Day 1522, but Deive
notes in The Black Guerrillas, 33 (full transcription pages 281-9), that the year must
have been 1521, based on AGI, Patronato 295, No. 104 (though he mistakenly identifies
it as document No. 92) (Carlos Esteban Deive, The Black Guerrillas: Slaves
Fugitives and Maroons in Santo Domingo (Santo Domingo: Cultural Foundation)
Dominican Republic, 1989). This document is a set of new ordinances regarding
African slaves and their owners, promulgated by Diego Colón to prevent more rebellions
like the one that has just taken place. The orders are dated January 6, 1522. (Carlos
Esteban Deive, The Black Guerrillas: Fugitive Slaves and Maroons in Santo
Sunday (Santo Domingo: Dominican Cultural Foundation, 1989).
52
For details on these rebellions of African slaves on Hispaniola, see Roberto Cassá
and Genaro Rodríguez Morel, "Alternative considerations regarding the rebellions of
slaves in Santo Domingo,
(Seville) 1(1): 101-31; Deive, The Black Guerrillas; Arrom and García Arévalo,
Cimarrón; and Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, General History of the Indies
(Madrid: Ediciones Atlas), Library of Spanish Authors, Vol. 117, Book 1: 98-100.
system until the mutually beneficial cooperation required by encomienda turned
to hegemony, and Spaniards on Hispaniola stopped negotiating with and
deferring to the chiefs.