Manuscript No. 045 - First Blacks in The Americas

Date: 1528, February 15. Burgos, Spain
Theme: The Spanish Crown requested information from La Española on the enslaved Blacks reportedly sent already “to those islands as well as to Tierra Firme” under the contract with the Governor of Bresa, and acknowledged receiving requests from the colonists to send the totality of the 4,000 slaves contracted. The king approved a ban reportedly established by the colonial officials against the importing of “free Blacks” and “ladinos” since they were considered inciters of rebellions and “other damaging things.” He also nullified a prior order to allow enslaved Blacks to buy their freedom. And he complained that his own royal bureaucrats in La Española were intentionally underpricing the slaves imported into the colony as a way to pay less almojarifazgo or import tax to the Crown itself.
Source: Portal de Archivos Españoles, Archivo General de Indias, Indiferente,421, L.13, f.7r-10v.

[fo. 7r.] Response to the oidores and / officers /		[…] The King / Our oidores of our royal audiencia y cancillería / Of the Indies that reside in the Española island /
[fo. 7v.] vi	r	and our officers of the said island. I saw your letter of / august fifth of last year and I consider it a service / the care you took to alert me in such a lengthy and particular manner about the things of those regions and so / I entrust to do always / […] the Report that, according to what you were told / to order, you received from the denizens of that island /
[fo. 8r.]		and about the quality of each of them, in regards to the distribution / that is to be done of the slaves that have / corresponded to that island from the four thousand for which we have / given license to be transferred to those regions, was / received. And since, in view of what that city and the other / islands have written to me imploring for an order to be given / so that they ship the four thousand Blacks that / have been distributed for those regions, I have mandated / that it be dealt with and soon an order will be given so that / they arrive to the largest advantage possible for the denizens / of that island. And the Report about the slaves that / have been shipped by virtue of the license of the governor / of Bresa both to those islands as well as to the Tierra Firme / and New Spain, you will send it to me on the first / dispatch as I have written to you many times. If / by the time you receive this one you have not done / […]
[fo. 8v.] ix	r	[…] it has seemed well to me what you say that has been / decided in that island so that there are in it / no free Blacks nor ladinos because these are the ones / who alter the land and induce the others / to run away and do other things that damage / the land, and so that you suspend what I order / to be mandated that you discussed whether it would be good that, / by giving twenty marcos of gold, a Black man and his children / may become free, because of the inconveniences that in / your letter you mention. Also I order you to enforce / what has been ordered by that audiencia / regarding the safety of the said Blacks / […]
[fo. 9r.] xiii	r	[…] The Report and appraisal that I ordered they write to you / for you to send me about the farms and cattle / and mares and houses and slaves that we have in that / island was received, and with another courier I will / mandate that they order you what to do with the said / properties and houses that we have in that / city of Santo Domingo / […]
[fo. 9v.] xix	r	[…] I have been informed that in appraising and evaluating / the Blacks, merchandises and things that / are carried to that island in order to collect from them / the duties that belong to us from our / almojarifazgo the appropriate care and diligence / is missing, especially as to the merchandizes / and the things belonging to persons who are friends and / relatives of us [1] my officers who conduct / the said appraisal and for other reasons /
[fo. 10r.]		appraise the said merchandizes in much / less than what they are worth, and others are hidden / and covered by the persons who carry them / of out of which we receive much disservice / and our treasury much damage. And since despite that/ I have already written to you about this you do not / mention in your letters the order you follow in this, / therefore, whenever an appraisal were to be done / of merchandises and things that go to the port / of Santo Domingo of that island, one of you / the oidores must be charged with getting together with / [crossed out: one of ] the said our officers and one of the / city council members, and all [of you] will do the appraisal./ And we mandate that you the said officers of ours / do not do it without all being present to it, / and the same order you will keep in the naming of the / guard that there must be for the merchandises / until they have paid our duties and everything / you must do before a notary public. And you will send to / my Counsil of the Indies proof of the appraisal/ of what every ship is worth in [ ] so that / the value of the Revenues is known /. […] /
[fo. 10v.]		Forward nothing be entered without being / recorded as it is mandated by us, and that / whatever is entered off the Record be taken / for us as lost. In Burgos, on fifteen days of the / month of February of one thousand and five hundred and twenty eight / years. I the King. Per mandate of his majesty, Francisco / de los Covos. Signed by the afore said ones. […]

[1] The original in Spanish says “nos” meaning “us”, which alludes to the king himself who is writing this letter. Yet, this could be a mistake by the notary or scribe making this copy of the original document. It is possible that the original document meant to say “vos” meaning “you”, referring to the king’s officers to whom the document is addressed and who are obviously been accused of embezzlement.

Date: 1528, February 15. Burgos, Spain
Themes: The king approved a ban reportedly established by the colonial officials against the importing of “free Blacks” and “ladinos,” since they were considered inciters of rebellions and “other damaging things.” He also nullified a prior order to allow enslaved Blacks to buy their freedom. And he complained that his own royal bureaucrats in La Española were intentionally underpricing the slaves imported into the colony as a way to pay less almojarifazgo or import tax to the Crown itself.
Source: Portal de Archivos Españoles, Archivo General de Indias, Indiferente,421, L.13, f.7r-10v.

The 1520s were the decade of the spreading of the cane-sugar business in La Española, which was conceived and launched as a replication of the well-tried Black-slavery based plantation system in place in the Canary and Madeira islands. In a local context of a plummeting of the previously enslaved Indian labor force, the expansion of that model of sugar-cane fields implied an expansion of the importing of enslaved Black Africans, since no Spaniards would subject themselves to the grueling and dehumanizing experience of field hands of a plantation. The decade marked as well the occurrence of the first recorded collective rebellions by Blacks in the colony.

As shown in this document, by 1528 the Spanish Crown was trying to respond to the insisting demands from the colonists of La Española for enslaved Blacks, referring to theasiento or contract established with the Governor of Bresa for the sending and selling of 4,000 slaves to the entire Caribbean region, which was expected to supply the demanded labor force.

It seems the Crown had asked for, and received already, some kind of written description of the kinds of colonists that would be receiving slaves in La Española, but at the same time the King was complaining that his own colonial authorities were not reporting clearly on their handling of the arriving slaves that were being distributed in the island as well as in Tierra Firme, indicating that he had received information that they were incurring in widespread tax evasion by declaring slave prices at arrival that were lower than the real ones, so that less taxes had to be paid to the Crown by all of their local associates. There was also, said the king, plain smuggling of slaves taking place as well. As an attempt to curtail the fraudulent practice incurred by his own designated officials, the king ordered representatives of both the Audiencia, the local Treasury Office and the City Council of Santo Domingo to mandatorily participate together in the supervision of the tax collecting pertaining to the selling and purchasing of the incoming slaves.

Another interesting element in the document is the approval expressed by the king for a previous prohibition by the City Council of Santo Domingo banning the arrival of free andladino enslaved Blacks, both openly accused of being responsible for inciting and inducing other enslaved Blacks to rebel and to engage in “other things damaging to the land.” This concern about the subversive behavior of those Blacks that knew Spanish or were free appears in other sources from this early period of La Española’s society, like the ordinances for Blacks of 1528, and indirectly it tells us about solidarities taking place between Blacks of different legal statuses and different degrees of acculturation into creole colonial society.

A similar social fear against the activism or agency of enslaved as well as free Blacks is obvious in the prohibition by the City Council of the purchase of freedom by enslaved Blacks for a payment of twenty marcos of gold. The freedom-purchasing had been until recently, according to this document, promoted by the Crown itself –possibly with the original intention of encouraging slaves to stick with their subjection status for some time, at least during the number of years that presumably were necessary for them to acquire and save enough money– but in this 1528 document the king decided to pull back from his previous initiative and support instead Santo Domingo’s colonists’ decision on the contrary. Which means that, when the practice was allowed or encouraged, enslaved Blacks took advantage of it to attain freedom.

Los PRIMEROS NEGROS eN LAS AMERICAS

La Presencia Africana en la República Dominicana