The Valladolid Debate wrote:In 1550, King Charles, the grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella, called together a group of leading theologians and scholars in Valladolid to determine the criteria by which a just war could be waged against Native Americans. Among the questions which the group was to answer was whether or not Native Americans were capable of self-governance. Some of today’s scholars consider this to be one of the most important debates in history with regard to American Indians.
Bartolomé de Las Casas was a Dominican friar who had been the first resident bishop of Chiapas, Mexico. Among those who entered into the debate about the Indians, he was the only one who had actual first-hand knowledge of them.
Bartolomé de Las Casas presented the idea that
Christianity should be spread by kindness and example rather than by the sword. Las Casas felt that Indians should be governed like any other people in Spain. He argued that
Jesus had power over all people in the world, including those who had never been exposed to the Christian gospel. According to Las Casas, the Spanish had no right to subject the Indians to slavery or war, but rather, Spain’s role in the Americas should be spiritual rather than economic or political.
Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda supported the Spanish colonists, the Spanish Empire’s right of conquest, and the Spanish right of evangelization in the Americas. Sepúlveda, a philosopher and theologian who had never been to the Americas and who had never had any personal contact with Indian people, argued that Indians were brutes who could only become the servants of civilized peoples. Philosophically, Sepúlveda made his argument based on natural law philosophy.
According to Sepúlveda, there were four reasons why the Spanish could wage a just war against the Indians: (1) they were barbarians, (2) they committed crimes against natural law, (3) they oppressed and killed the innocent among themselves, and (
4) they were infidels who needed to be instructed in the Christian faith. Las Casas countered these arguments by showing that the Indians, who he conceded were ignorant and at a different stage of human development, were no less rational than were Europeans.
One of the questions raised was whether or not American Indians were capable of self-governance. Sepúlveda, using Aristotle’s Book I of Politics, claimed that Indians were natural slaves.
Aristotle’s Theory of Natural Slavery put forth the idea that some people born to inferior races were natural slaves and constituted a condition of “animate possession” when held by a superior race. He wrote:
“Those whose condition is such that their function is the use of their bodies and nothing better can be expected of them, those, I say, are slaves of nature. It is better for them to be ruled thus.”
Arguing in favor of a social hierarchy in which the Indians were at the bottom, Sepúlveda wrote:
“You should remember that authority and power are not only of one kind but of several varieties, since in one way and with one kind of law the father commands his children, in another the husband commands his wife, in another the master commands his servants, in another the judge commands the citizens, in another the king commands the peoples and human beings confined to his authority…. Although each jurisdiction may appear different, they all go back to a single principle, as the wise men teach. That is, the perfect should command and rule over the imperfect, the excellent over its opposite….”
Posted: Mon Nov 24, 2014 4:20 pm