New Spain

The Spanish started their colonization experiments in the Caribbean on islands like Hispaniola, but as they decimated the native populations-and as stories from men like Cortes, De Soto, and Pizarro circulated-the Spanish moved their exploitation to the mainland. They created mines, plantations, and cattle ranches, which all required labor. The encomienda system, essentially a tribute system that included forced labor from natives, soon led to abuses by the encomenderos. The Crown failed to reign in the abuses, and as the native population dwindles, the Spanish capitalized on the slave trade the Portuguese had already tapped into. The asiento was a contract the Crown granted to companies to provide the colonies with enslaved Africans. As enslaved Africans and, on a smaller scale, Spaniards flooded into New Spain, the casta system developed to address the growing population of mixed offspring.

The Spanish also established missions both in Mexico and in the southwestern parts of North America with the intention of converting native populations. Native converts never completely forsook their traditional religious customs and beliefs, so syncretic traditions (like the Virgin of Guadalupe) soon developed. The missionaries were also not completely benevolent. The Franciscans, for example, could be particularly demanding, leading to conflict with the Pueblo people.

By 1700, the Spanish had a vast and wealthy empire, attracting both envy and rivalry from other European colonizers.

Life in New Spain

Hard Times on Hispaniola, 1499

Instructions for the Governance of Hispaniola

A Letter Home From Mexico City, 1571

A Description of Mexico City, Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, 1554

Antonio Mateos, a farmer in Puebla, to his wife in Spain, 1558

Reports on the City of Potosi to the Council of the Indies, 1550, Spaniards Domingo de Santo Tomás, Rodrigo de Loaisa, and Alfonso Messia

“Story of Cities: Potosi,” The Guardian, 2016 (secondary)

Annual Silver Production in Mexico

Spanish Missions

Friar Alonso de Benavides, Letter to King Philip IV of Spain on the Indians missions of New Mexico, 1626

Slavery in the Spanish Colonies

Dwindling Native Populations in the Bahamas

From Encomienda to Enslaved Africans on Hispaniola

Regulating Free and Enslaved Africans in Spanish Cuba, 1574

Gold Mining in Spanish Panama, late 16th century

Sugar Production in Hispaniola

Maroon Communities in Guatemala

Maroons in Hispaniola

Rivalry with the English

English Pirates in the Spanish Caribbean

On the right of nations to establish colonies in the New World, 1580

Treaty of Madrid, aka Godolphin Treaty between Spain and England

Life in New Spain

Hard Times on Hispaniola, 1499

Hispaniola did have an auspicious start. As in Jamestown, there were "starving times" and conflicts with natives. Compare this report from Hispaniola with the early reports from Jamestown, Virginia. You can read the full text here.

Magnificent Lord: This letter is to inform Your Reverend Lordship of the things that have happened in the Indies up to the present date, and in the hope of serving you, I humbly beseech you to hear what I have to say. Your Lordship knows that when the Admiral [Columbus] left this island of Hispaniola, he left his brother the Adelantado in his place as Governor...while the said Adelantado was Governor, he began to act with such severity that he caused the people to fear and hate him...

At this time most of the Christians were sick with the general illness that exists here, and at the same time there was a drought that created a great scarcity of food. For this reason, the people were scattered in many areas in order to maintain themselves, which they could not do all together. When the Indians saw this, they realized that they had never had such an opportunity to kill us off, and they conspired to put this into effect.

After this, I returned to the fortress, and the hunger was so extreme that the thirty of us who were there could not sustain ourselves...a great number of Indians came upon us, besieging us continually for three days and nights and bombarding us with sticks and stones; we fought with them and managed to kill many. Finally they went away and left us alone, and we managed to survive for several days with great difficulty.

There are still many things of which Your Lordship should be informed, but I leave them unsaid so that I not appear to have written in anger. Besides, Your Lordship will see this from the indictment that has been drawn up again the Admiral (Columbus) and his brothers, and later, in more detail, from the inquiry that will follow.

Instructions for the Governance of Hispaniola

Instructions to Commander Nicolás de Ovando, Third Governor of Hispaniola, from King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain [Excerpts] 1501

Because it is our will that the Indians be converted to Our Holy Catholic Faith and their souls be saved . . . you are to take care, without using any force against them, that the priests who are there teach and admonish them for this purpose with much love, so that they are converted as quickly as possible . . .

Because We have been informed that some Christians in the abovesaid islands, and especially in Hispaniola, have taken the Indians’ wives and other things from them against their will, you shall give orders, as soon as you arrive, that everything taken from the Indians against their will be returned . . . and if Spaniards should wish to marry Indian women, the marriages should be entered into willingly by both parties and not made by force. Because it is Our will that the Indians pay the tributes and dues they owe Us as subject in Our Kingdoms and Lordships . . . you are to speak with the caciques and principales [Indian leaders and headmen] and whatever Indians you think necessary, negotiating with them the tribute to be paid each year . . .

Because it will be necessary to use Indian labor in mining gold and other tasks We have ordered done, you are to require the Indians to work in the things of Our service, paying to each the salary that seems just to you . . .

Since there is the possibility of much deceit in the collection and smelting of gold and We may be defrauded in the share that We should receive, you will give orders that the extraction of gold be done by cuadrillas of ten persons . . . and for each cuadrilla, you shall appoint a trustworthy person to be present when they gather the gold and to accompany them when they take it to the smelting house. . . .

Because it benefits Our service that those who are foreign to Our Kingdoms and Realms not live in the above said islands, you are not to allow such foreigners to settle in the said islands and mainland . . .

In order that Christians and Indians shall live together in peace, friendship, and harmony, and that there be no fights or quarrels among them, you shall order that no one give or sell offensive or defensive weapons to the Indians nor exchange such weapons with them . . .

A Letter Home From Mexico City, 1571

Andrés García, tratante (dealer) in Mexico City, writes home to his nephew in New Castile, Spain. García's letter shows that despite initial hardships, New Mexico grew into a thriving city. García also exemplifies how colonists in New Spain faced the shortage of Spanish women in the colony. Read the full text here.

Nephew, I live in Mexico City in the tiánguiz of San Juan, among the shops of Tegada. I deal in Campeche wood and cotton blankets and wax, and I also have a certain business in cacao in Soconusco. But now, nephew, I am advanced in years and can no longer take care of all this. I wish, if it please God, that you would come to this land, as I have written you in other letters, so that I could rest and you would remain in the business. I am married here to a woman very much to my taste. And though there in Spain it might shock you that I have married an Indian woman, here one loses nothing of his honor, because the Indians are a nation held in much esteem...she is of the opinion that if God our Lord brings you to this land, we should leave you our property, what we have, as to a legitimate son and heir, because after the end of our days we want to have someone here to do good for our souls. . . . Nephew, I entreat you again to come, because it is a matter of great importance to you; don’t imagine remote regions far from your native land, or the hardships that are usually met on the way, but rather the ease you will have here.

Biombo (painted screen) View of Mexico City, Late 1600s

A Description of Mexico City, Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, 1554

Built on the site of the destroyed Aztec city of Tenochtitlan as the capital of New Spain, Mexico City grew in a few decades into a metropolitan center of trade, religion, and government, the largest city in North America with thousands of residents. In this dialogue, written in Latin by a Spanish scholar in Mexico City for teaching language, a visitor is taken on a tour of Mexico City in the mid 1550s "that he may view the magnitude of so great a city" with its boulevards, grand plaza, churches, canals, homes of the elite, hospitals and orphanages, and its diverse ethnic population.

How the view of this street exhilarates the mind and refreshes the eyes! How long it is, how wide! How straight, how level it is! And the whole street is paved with stones to prevent its becoming muddy and filthy in the rainy season. Through its middle, water flows in an open canal, which adds to its beauty and its usefulness to the people, and gives them more pleasure.

[The houses] are all magnificent and elaborate, and appropriate to the wealthiest and noblest citizens. Each is so well constructed that one would call it a fortress, not a house. On this street which, as you see, crosses the wide Tacuba Street, live the workmen and artisans of every kind of mechanical and common skills, such as carpenters, blacksmiths, locksmiths, weavers, barbers, bakers, painters, armorers, candle-makers, bow makers, sword cutlers, biscuit makers, innkeepers, lathe-turners, and others. They live on both sides of the street, clear up to the market-place, and no man of any other trade or skill has been admitted to the street.

The reason for the great size of the plaza is to prevent goods from being offered for sale in other places. . . [T]his one market-place is for all the people of the City of Mexico. In this one market-place weekly market days were established; here the auctions are held; here is found whatever there is for sale; and to this place the merchants of the whole province bring and import their wares. To this market-place also, to sum it up, flow in whatever things are most desirable in Spain. . . .

The Spanish-Indians (mestizos) read, write, and better still, they are trained in those matters that pertain to the worship of God...Those endowed with talent apply themselves to the liberal arts; other, not equally endowed, to handicrafts and jobs about the market-place.

Antonio Mateos, a farmer in Puebla, to his wife in Spain, 1558

I was a farmer for a year in company with another farmer there; for the future I had found lands and bought four pair of oxen and everything necessary for our livelihood, since the land is the most luxuriant, and plenteous and abundant in grain, that there is in all New Spain...I will not give a long account of the things of this land. Food provisions are cheap here, and things from Spain are expensive...

Reports on the City of Potosi to the Council of the Indies, 1550, Spaniards Domingo de Santo Tomás, Rodrigo de Loaisa, and Alfonso Messia

Potosi became a main source of Spain's wealth when silver was discovered. To extract the silver, the Spanish forced natives to work in the mines, which were incredibly dangerous. They tapped into the existing mita system of the Inca. Under the Inca, all citizens, no matter their rank, provided a set amount of labor each year for projects like maintaining roads and bridges. But under the Spanish, this system turned into a forced labor system much like the encomienda system. Communities of natives were forced to send men to work in the mines, leaving those communities without significant portions of men for long periods of time. In addition, the work was so dangerous that many died.

Domingo de Santo Tomás: “Some four years ago, to the complete perdition [damnation] of this land, there was discovered a mouth of hell, into which a great mass of people enter every year and are sacrificed by the greed of the Spaniards to their ‘god.’ This is your silver mine called Potosí.”

Rodrigo de Loaisa: “The Indians enter these infernal pits by some leather ropes like staircases ... Once inside, they spend the whole week in there without emerging, working with tallow candles. They are in great danger inside there ... If 20 healthy Indians enter on Monday, half may emerge crippled on Saturday.”

Alfonso Messia: “Indian laborers descended hundreds of feet into the mines, where the night is perpetual. It is always necessary to work by candlelight, with the air thick and evil-smelling, enclosed in the bowels of the earth. The ascent and descent are highly dangerous, for they come up loaded with their sack of metal tied to their backs, taking fully four or five hours step by step, and if they make the slightest false step they may fall seven hundred feet.”

“Story of Cities: Potosi,” The Guardian, 2016 (secondary)

At its peak in the early 17th century, 160,000 native Peruvians, slaves from Africa and Spanish settlers lived in Potosí to work the mines around the city: a population larger than London, Milan or Seville at the time. In the rush to exploit the silver, the first Spanish colonisers occupied the locals’ homes, forgoing the typical colonial urban grid and constructing makeshift accommodation that evolved into a chaotic mismatch of extravagant villas and modest huts, punctuated by gambling houses, theatres, workshops and churches.

High in the dusty red mountains, the city was surrounded by 22 dams powering 140 mills that ground the silver ore before it was moulded into bars and sent to the first Spanish colonial mint in the Americas. The wealth attracted artists, academics, priests, prostitutes and traders, enticed by the Altiplano’s icy mysticism. “I am rich Potosí, treasure of the world, king of all mountains and envy of kings” read the city’s coat of arms, and the pieces of eight that flowed from it helped make Spain the global superpower of the period.

Annual Silver Production in Mexico

The Spanish opened silver mines in Mexico as well. Silver helped catapult Spain into a world power, and silver soon flowed around the world, from Mexico and Peru to Europe, Manila, and Asia.

The Spanish founded missions throughout New Spain starting in the 16th century. The missions originated with a series of papal bulls that announced that the Spanish monarchy had control over the Church in the Americas, giving Spain the responsibility of converting Natives. The Franciscans were first to arrive, following Cortes' expeditions, and soon after the Jesuits had widespread influence. The missionaries felt they were "redeeming" or "saving" the souls of Indigenous Americans, and there were educational and acculturation aspects as well. But Natives were not always willing converts, and even those who converted often retained or adapted indigenous beliefs alongside Catholicism.

Spanish Missions

The Socorro Mission, established in New Mexico in 1680

Friar Alonso de Benavides, Letter to King Philip IV of Spain on the Indians missions of New Mexico, 1626

Benavides was a Portuguese missionary who worked in the Spanish missions in New Mexico. Here he is providing his report on the missions to the Spanish king, but it is also apparent that religion is not his only interest.

Ever since the discovery of New Mexico, there have been fights with the Indians...We Spaniards have always emerged victorious through the mercy of Our Lord God. We have attempted wherever possible to convert and pacify these tribes, as much for the good of their souls as to secure the road through their lands.

. . . They are a well-turned out people, nicely featured and robust. Every time we have asked, they have told me that they would be glad to have clerics among them who could teach and baptize them, and that this was important to them...In order to convert and confine other neighboring tribes, something that needs to be done, three or four clerics could be stationed with perhaps fifteen or twenty soldiers as escorts. This might help to avoid all the problems that have cost Your Majesty so much every time someone undertakes a journey to New Mexico. The resulting security would increase the population of the rich mining camps that are scattered all along this road, as well as that of many superb ranch sites with good water and other parcels of very good land.

Well, all this land is full of great treasures namely, very rich and prosperous silver and gold mines. As His affectionate chaplains and vassals, we customarily ask God for things like this. And applying a little diligence, as an intelligent person will do, we did indeed discover these mines. We have Him endless thanks for this in the name of Your Majesty in particular for the range3 near the pueblo of Socorro, which is the principal and primary settlement of this province of the Piros. . . . The ease with which silver may be taken from this range is the greatest in all the Indies. It would be wiser to extract eight ounces of silver here than many more ounces from other places, as elsewhere mining materials and supplies must be hauled from great distances to a source of water, which is certainly necessary to extract silver anywhere. But in these Socorro mines everything needed for the job is right at hand. And although it is true that at the beginning of our conversions we simply tried to get Indian labor for the minds, I now believe that, all things considered, the mines should be administered only by moderately greedy persons. These administrators should treat the Indians well and pay them for their work, paying close attention from the outset to their rather simple capacities and their lackadaisical work habits. Not only should they be gathered up to perform these labors, but they should also be gently guided down the proper road, compelled to follow our way of doing things and our speech. . . .

Slavery in the Spanish Colonies

Dwindling Native Populations in the Bahamas

Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas, Historia de las Indias de Nueva España y islas de Tierra Firme, publ. 1561

Those Spaniards who were exhausting the Indians in the gold mines and in other forms of killing labor saw that their numbers dwindled every day and that they were dying out. Having no thought beyond their own material interests and the loss that the disappearance of the Indians might cause them, they hit on the idea of bringing in people from other islands to take the place of those who perished here, in order to keep the mines and other business enterprises going. . . . When [the Indians] arrived, mostly at Puerto de Plata and Puerto Real on the north opposite the Lucayas, they were disembarked and divided into lots, according to the size of the investment that each of the adventurers had made: the old with the young, the sick with the healthy (for many fell sick at sea, and even died of hunger, thirst, and close confinement below decks in that hot climate). In the lots, no attempt was made to keep together wives and husbands, nor parents and children; for no more account was made of them than if they had been indeed the lowest of animals.

From Encomienda to Enslaved Africans on Hispaniola

Fray Bernardino de Manzanedo, Dispatch to King Charles I of Spain, 1518. As the Spanish exploited native labor and saw the population dwindle, many called for the Spanish to turn to the African slave trade to solve their labor shortage. Here, Manzanedo outlines what he believes were the benefits of ending the encomienda system in favor of slavery, evidence of how many simply regarded both Indigenous Americans and Africans as subhuman commodities.

Some say that Your Highness should command all the Indians of this island to be set free entirely, so that no Spaniard might employ their labor except by their own free will. Their welfare should be entrusted to religious persons who would instruct them in our Holy Catholic Faith and teach them to live according to our customs. . . This policy would also bring great gains, because the Indian population would, within a few years, be greatly increased; and since they would be Christians, and better instructed in our customs than they are at present, they would be more valuable subjects of Your Highness and Your descendants. If this policy is not followed, on the other hand, they will die out, and this will be a serious loss to Your Highness, to say nothing of the inhumanity of leaving Your vassals to die. There can be no doubt that this is what will happen; the present daily decline in numbers is an unmistakable warning. . .

All the settlers of Hispaniola beg Your Highness to give them permission to import Negro slaves, because they say that the Indians do not provide them with enough labor to be able to support themselves there. . . . [I]t seemed to all of us [three monks who served as the island’s governors] that it would be good for them to be imported, on condition that there be as many or more women as men and that they are brought straight from Africa, rather than being raised in Castile [Spain] or other places because those who are turn out great rogues. This will be a great benefit for Your Highness’s revenues, which will otherwise decrease steadily, and it will relieve the Indians of much of their labor if they remain in encomiendas [government created Indian settlements assigned to Spanish settlers]; also, the settlers will be more firmly rooted when they find that they have their own property, which cannot be taken away from them. If Your Highness decides that this should be conceded, it should be commanded that the blacks be brought from certain lands where their customs and conditions are known to be better and not from the others where they are usually bad.

Regulating Free and Enslaved Africans in Spanish Cuba, 1574

Not long after the Spanish began importing enslaved Africans, they felt the need to control both enslaved and free Africans and regulate slave owners who inflicted cruel punishments. These Black Codes would be duplicated, in varying forms, throughout the French and English colonies as well.

No Negro slave may carry swords, knives or other weapons, even though he is in the company of his master, except when he accompanies his master at night . . . or goes to the field with him during the day . . . The hooked knives, points, stripping knives and other weapons which the Negro herdsmen and field Negroes carry may not be taken away from them, not will they be punished for carrying them if they are on their way either home from the field or to the field from home.

Free Negroes of whom there are many in this town who are citizens and officials, and, because this is a port, if it is their turn to keep watch, are authorized to own and carry arms, unless for some reason the authorities forbid any of them to carry them.

Many citizens hire Negroes to work for wages. Such Negroes are employed in different occupations, and go about like free men, working at what they please, and at the end of the week or month they hand over their wages to their masters. Others run lodging houses to board travellers, and have in such houses their own Negro women. It frequently happens that such Negroes, when they know that a fleet or a ship is leaving, hide and run away with the linen they are given to wash and with other articles given to them for safe keeping, until the departure of the fleet or ship, knowing that the passenger cannot stay on shore but must depart, and they keep these articles. Others keep the tools which are given to them for their work. There are other problems as well. We therefore order that no one may hire out a Negro man or woman, or set them up in a house to earn their own keep, or to take in lodgers . . . without first notifying the Municipal Council which must issue a license for it. . . .

No Negro slave may have a hut of his own to sleep in, even though he is hired out for wages; he will sleep in his master’s house. The huts cannot be rented out, nor can their master give them to the Negroes, . . . Confiscation of the hut unless the master has a license from the Municipal Council

No Negro slave may stay outside the home of his master or of the person whom he is serving at night after curfew, unless he is sent on an errand by his master or by the person whom he is serving; . . .

No white person or Negro may allow a Negro slave to spend the night in his house, . . .

Some persons shelter fugitive and runaway slaves on their plantations or ranches, give them food, employ them for several days, and frequently buy them from their masters saying that they are ready to buy them at their own risk, if they find them, and the owners, since the slaves have run away and they do not know where they are, sell them for less than they are worth, and there are other frauds and deceits.

We therefore order that no person may shelter and feed a runaway slave on his plantation or ranch, nor may any planter or overseer shelter, feed or employ him, on pain of being proceeded against as a receiver or concealer of stolen goods, and of being obliged to pay the slave’s master all the wages that the slave may have earned from the day he employed him until he is restored to his master, even though he escapes; and if the slave is not recovered, he must pay the owner the price of the slave. And . . . it must be understood that a runaway is any slave who stays on any plantation or ranch for more than one day. . . .

Any planter and overseer may and must apprehend any fugitive or runaway Negro, without penalty or slander, and then take him to the judge; and if he does not have the means of doing this, he must inform the slave’s master and the authorities that he has imprisoned the slave in the stocks which are required to be kept on the plantations or ranches.

Many people avail themselves of the services of their slaves and do not feed and dress them. The result is that such slaves go and steal food from the neighboring plantations and, due to such ill-treatment, rise up in revolt and run away. We accordingly order all those who have Negroes on their plantations, ranches, pig farms, or other places, to give them enough to eat for the work they perform, and, in addition, two pairs of trousers or coarse undershirts, at least once every year, and not to punish them excessively or cruelly.

Many Negroes run away to the mountains and crags, and only occasionally are the deserters and rebels caught by the overseers, planters, and swineherds. We therefore order and command that any planter, overseer, cowherd, or other person who apprehends a runaway Negro within two leagues from this town, shall be paid by the master of the slave four ducats; if the slave is apprehended further away, within twenty to forty leagues, twelve ducats; and if the slave is apprehended more than forty leagues away, fifteen ducats. . . .

Gold Mining in Spanish Panama, late 16th century

"How the Negro slaves work and look for gold in the mines of the region called Veragua [Panama]," by an unidentified artist. This illustration shows a Spaniard and four Blacks (one or two may be women); the Spaniard appears to be weighing the gold dust brought by one of the Blacks, the other Blacks are washing and mining the ore. The accompanying description notes: "This region is very dangerous. The Negroes live there only a short time . . . . The Spaniards do not force nor permit the Indians to work in the mines for fear they should know the value of the gold, for knowing it, they would go to war and chase them out of the country. The Spaniards buy a great number of Negroes from Africa to serve them as slaves and when the Negroes have finished a day's work in a group of eight or ten, there is at the exit of these mines half a barrel filled with water in which they wash the gold."

Sugar Production in Hispaniola

The woodcut, likely by Theodore de Bry, depicts human-powered sugar mill and various phases of sugar manufacture at a very early period. Note the cauldron in the left-hand corner for boiling the sugar, and the pots into which the unrefined sugar was placed. This is one of the earliest known illustrations of sugar making in the New World.

"When the natives of this island (Española) began to be extirpated, the Spaniards provided themselves with blacks (Mori) from Guinea . . . and they have brought great numbers thence. When there were mines, they made them work at the gold and silver; but since those came to an end they have increased the sugar-works…” --Italian traveler, 1595

An 18th century depiction of a maroon

Maroon Communities in Guatemala

Thomas Gage was a Catholic priest from England who lived and traveled in Central America.. In 1648 he published an account of his experiences. In this excerpt, he describes a community of maroons (escaped slaves) in Guatemala. At the end of the excerpt, Gage also provides insight into the knowledge Africans had of other colonies. Read the full text here.

What the Spaniards most fear until they come out of these mountains are some two or three hundred Blackamoors (Africans), cimarrones (maroons/fugitives), who for too much hard usage have fled away from Guatemala and other parts from their masters unto these woods, and there live and bring up their children and increase daily, so that all the power of Guatemala, nay, all the country about (having often attempted it), is not able to bring them under subjection. These often come out to the roadway and set upon the recuas of mules [mule trains] and take of wine, iron, clothing, and weapons from them as much as they need, without doing any harm unto the people or slaves that go with the mules. Rather, these rejoice with them, being of one color, and subject to slavery and misery which the others have shaken off. By their example and encouragement many of these also shake off their misery and join with them to enjoy liberty, though it be but in the woods and mountains. Their weapons are bows and arrows which they use and carry about them, only to defend themselves if the Spaniards set upon them...These have often said that the chief cause of their flying to those mountains is to be in a readiness to join with the English or Hollanders if ever they land in that gulf, for they know from them they may enjoy that liberty which the Spaniards will never grant unto them.

Maroons in Hispaniola

As Africans came to outnumber Spaniards on the island of Hispaniola, and the island’s weakening economy drove white planters to other settlements, many slaves escaped to the interior and formed independent communities (manieles). In 1662 a Catholic priest reported to King Philip IV of Spain on the maroon threat to the Spaniards. Read the full text here.

In the uninhabited regions of this island, some fifty leagues from this city [Santo Domingo], there are some sierras (a place called Maniel) which are very tall and fertile. After all the native Indians of this island disappeared, and the Spanish had to resort to black slaves to work the land, all the fugitive slaves escape to these sierras where they live without any doctrine [Catholic faith] nor priests to teach them. It is a robbers’ cove of barbarians, because every year slaves escape from their owners’ rural farms, and that is one of the main causes for the miserable state of this island.

They have no churches nor do they worship images; some who were baptized before escaping put crosses in their homes, yet they do not get baptized nor do they have laws. They are governed by ladino Negroes (slaves born in the colonies) ; their weapons are arrows, which they use with skill; they use short, broad swords they fashion from the iron and steel that they purchase from other Negroes in this city. They cultivate just enough land for their subsistence, because they have an abundance of meats and native fruits. They collect tomines3 of gold and of silver in the rivers, and with this they buy clothes, wine, liquor, and whatever they need, from other Negroes. The militias have launched some attacks against them, in which women and children have been captured, because the rest escape to the heights of the sierras, and so far this robbers’ cove has not been destroyed.

A few days after I arrived in this city, concerned about so many lost souls, and with the colonists who are the interested party — inclined to offer them [the maroons] liberty at the time, and knowing that God’s and Your Majesty’s service was to pacify this people, after communicating the matter to President Don Pedro de Carvajal and others, I resorted to writing them a letter, in which I promised to beg Your Majesty their pardon, and that they all would be free if they left the Maniel and moved their towns to places to be indicated. There, Your Majesty would place them under the rule of justice, and my ministers of the church would teach them, so that thereafter they would live like Christians. And they shall not admit any more fugitive slaves, and if any are missing, they would be in charge of locating and delivering him.

Rivalry with the English

English Pirates in the Spanish Caribbean

Lazaro de Vallejo Aldrate and Hernando Costilla to Philip II, King of Spain, 26 September 1568. England's early colonization efforts were actually launched to provide bases from which they could attack the Spanish treasure galleons laden with gold and silver. Queen ELizabeth I authorized privateers, often called "Sea Dogs," to attack enemy ships.

We entreat your Majesty to remedy the grievous condition prevailing today in the Indies. For every two ships that come [here] from Spain, twenty corsairs [pirate ships] appear. For this reason not a town on all this coast is safe, for whenever they please to do so they take and plunder these settlements. They go so far as to boast that they are lords of the sea and of the land, and as a matter of fact daily we see them seize ships both of the Indies trade and also some that come here from Spain itself. They capture towns, and this so commonly that we see it happen every year. Unless Your Majesty deign to favor all this coast by remedying the situation, all these settlements must necessarily be abandoned, from which will result grave detriment to Your Majesty’s royal patrimony and an end will be put to inter-Indies traffic, trade with the Canaries will suffer, as will also those ships which come out of Spain between fleets.

On the right of nations to establish colonies in the New World, 1580

William Camden, Annals of Affairs in England and Ireland in the reign of Elizabeth, publ. 1615.

Bernardino de Mendoza, Ambassador for Spain in England, made an angry and vehement demand for satisfaction from the Queen, complaining that the [West] Indian Ocean was navigated by the English. The reply that he received was as follows:—That the Spaniards by their unfairness towards the English, whom they had prohibited from commerce, contrary to the right of nations, had brought these troubles upon themselves. . . . Her Majesty does not understand why her subjects and those of other Princes are prohibited from the Indies [the Caribbean], which she could not persuade herself are the rightful property of Spain by donation of the Pope of Rome [1493 decree dividing the New World between Spain and Portugal] . . . . and that only on the ground that Spaniards have touched here and there, have erected shelters, have given names to a river or promontory; acts which cannot confer property. So that this donation of alien property (which be essence of law is void) and this imaginary proprietorship ought not to hinder other princes from carrying on commerce in these regions, and from establishing Colonies where Spaniards are not residing, without the least violation of the law of nations.

Treaty of Madrid, aka Godolphin Treaty between Spain and England

Both countries agreed to limit trading to their own possessions. Spain acknowledged English possessions in the western hemisphere and England agreed to suppress piracy in the Caribbean.

GODOLPHIN TREATY, celebrated between the Crowns of Spain and Great Britain, to reestablish Friendship and good Relations in America. Madrid, July 18, 1670. . . . Moreover, it is agreed, that the Most Serene King of Great Britain, his Heirs and Successors, shall have, hold, keep, and enjoy for ever, with plenary right of Sovereignty, Dominion, Possession, and Propriety, all those Lands, Regions, Islands, Colonies, and places whatsoever, being situated in the West Indies, or in any part of America, which the said King of Great Britain and his Subjects do at present hold and possess, so as that in regard thereof or upon any color or pretense whatsoever, nothing more may or ought to be urged, nor any question or controversy be ever moved, etc.

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