Capitulation for Don Pedro Fernandez de Lugo

THE CAPITULATIONS Capitulation for Don Pedro Fernandez de Lugo to go and conquer Santa Marta Whereas you, Don Alonso Luis de Lugo, in the name of Don Pedro Hernandez de Lugo, Adelantado of the Canary Islands, our governor and chief justice of the islands of Tenerife and La Palma, your father, and by virtue of his special and sufficient power which you presented for this purpose in our Council of the Indies, that you made a report that by the will of the said Adelantado to serve us and the increase of the Royal Crown of Castile, you offer to go and conquer and populate the lands and provinces of Santa Marta, which extends from where the limits that we have indicated to the province of Cartagena end, whose governorship we have entrusted to Pedro de Heredia, to the extent of which the limits of the province of Venezuela and Cabo de la Vela are terminated, the conquest and government of which we have entrusted to Bartolomé and Antonio Belzar, Germans, from sea to sea, and to place everything under our obedience and dominion, always keeping the said limits, and that for this purpose you will take from these our kingdoms of Castile and the Canary Islands one thousand and five hundred men on foot, shotgunners and arquebusiers and crossbowmen and artillerymen, and two hundred horsemen with horses and mares in saddles, and that both those on foot and those on horseback will be well armed and equipped with the necessaries, all at their expense and mission, without being obliged at any time to pay them or satisfy the expenses they may incur in doing so, more than what will be granted to him in this capitulation, and you begged and asked me for mercy, in the said name and by virtue of the said power, to grant to the said Adelantado of the conquest of the said province; upon which I command the said Alonso Luis de Lugo, in his name, to take with you, the following seat and capitulation: 1. First of all, I give license and faculty to the said Don Pedro Hernández de Lugo, Adelantado of the Canary Islands, so that by us and in our name and in the name of the Royal Crown of Castile, he may conquer, pacify and populate the lands and provinces that are to be conquered and pacified and populated in the said province of Santa Marta, which extends from, as it is said, the limits of the said province of Cartagena, whose conquest and governorship we have entrusted to Pedro de Heredia, to the limits of the province of Venezuela and Cabo de la Vela, whose conquest and governorship we have entrusted to Bartolomé and Antonio Belzar, Germans, and from there until we reach the South Sea, provided that you do not enter into the boundaries or boundaries of the other provinces which are entrusted to other governors. 2. Item, understanding that he is fulfilling our service and to honor the person of the said adelantado, we promise to make him our governor and captain-general of the said province and towns thereof within the said limits, for all the days of his life, with a bill of maravedies of salary in each year, which he shall enjoy from the day that the said adelantado sets sail in any of the ports of the Canary Islands, with the people that he is to take to make the said conquest, who are to be paid to him from the rents and rights belonging to us in the said land, which he is thus to populate and conquer, during the time that the said governorship and captaincy general may have. And since there are no such things at the said time, let us not be obliged to pay you anything. 3. On the other hand, we desire and command that when God, our lord, shall be pleased to carry the said adelantado Don Pedro Hernandez de Lugo of this present life, you, the said Don Alonso Luis de Lugo, shall have the governorship and captaincy general of the said province for all the days of your life, with the said salary of one tale of maravedis in each year, according to and in the manner in which the said adelantado, your father, has it. 4. Again, if we grant to the said adelantado Don Pedro Hernández de Lugo the title of our adelantado of the said lands and provinces that he shall thus discover and populate, which said title shall succeed to you, the said Don Alonso Luis, de Lugo, after the days and life of the said adelantado, your father. 5. On the other hand, I give him permission, with the opinion and agreement of our officers of the said province, to build in the said lands and provinces that he shall thus discover and populate within the said limits, two fortresses in the parts and places that are most convenient, it appearing to him and to the said our officers to be necessary for the protection and pacification of the said lands and provinces, and to grant him the possession of them with a salary of seventy-five thousand maravedis in each year in each of them, which he must do at his own expense, without us or the kings who come after us being obliged to pay them. And from the wages of each of the said fortresses which shall be finished in the sight of our officers, you are to enjoy the fruits of the said land, as it is said. 6. Further, inasmuch as you, the said Alonso Luis de Lugo, in the name of the said adelantado Don Pedro Hernandez de Lugo, your father, begged me to grant him the mercy of some vassals in the said lands and provinces which you are thus to discover and pacify anew, it is our worship, that while we inform you of what you will thus discover and populate, we provide for it what is in our service and for the amendment and in order to satisfy themselves for their labors and services, let them have the twelfth part of all the profits that we have in each year in the said lands and provinces, which I shall thus reconquer and populate, apart from what has hitherto been discovered and pacified, paying first of all things from them the expenses and salaries that we have in them. 7. On the other hand, we will grant him, as we hereby do it, four thousand gold ducats, which shall be given to him and paid by our officers of the said province from the revenues and profits which we shall not have in the lands and provinces which he shall thus conquer, to help with the expenses which he must make to lead the said people to the said conquest. 8. Item, we grant to the neighbors and inhabitants of the said lands and provinces that you will thus conquer and populate, that you give and distribute to them the plots and lands suitable to their persons, as the other governors of the other provinces of our Indies have done and do. 9. Further, we will give him license, as we hereby give him, so that from our kingdoms or from the kingdom of Portugal or the islands of Cape Verde, where he or whoever his power may have, he wills and for good, he may pass and pass to the said province of Santa Marta one hundred black slaves in which there are at least a third of them females, free from all rights to us belonging to us, provided that if he shall leave all or part of them in the islands of Hispaniola, San Juan and Cuba, and Santiago, or elsewhere, what he shall so leave of them, shall be forfeited and applied to our chamber and treasury. 10. Item, that we will command you to give our provision in form, so that from the vessels that are in the ports of the Canary Islands, you may take up to three of them, of those that are engaged in the treatment of the Indies, or wish to be chartered for them, not being chartered for another arrival, paying the owners of the said vessels the freight that may be just. 11. On condition that in the said pacification, conquest, population and treatment of the Indians of the said province of their persons and goods, the said adelantado, your father, shall be held and obliged to observe in all and by all that is contained in the ordinances and instructions that we have made and will make for that purpose. 12. Item, on condition that when the said adelantado, your father, leaves the said islands of the Canary Islands to make the said conquest and settlement, he shall take and have with him the religious or ecclesiastical persons who shall be appointed by us for the instruction of the native Indians who shall be assigned those lands to our Holy Catholic Faith, with which opinion and not without them he must make the said conquest. To whom religious he is to give and pay the freight and the other necessary maintenance according to the persons, all at their own expense, without carrying them anything during the whole said navigation, which we charge him to do and fulfill as a matter of the service of God and ours. for otherwise we shall consider ourselves unserved. 13 Moreover, according to the law and laws of our kingdoms, when our people and captains of our navies take prisoner any prince or lord of the lands where they make war by our command, the ransom of such lord and chief belongs to us with all the other movable things that were found and that belonged to him; but considering the great labors and dangers that our subjects pass in the conquests of the Indies, in any amendment of them and for the sake of doing them favor, we declare and command that if in your happiness, conquest and government any cacique or lord should be captured and seized, that of all the treasures, gold, silver, or stones or pearls that may be held of him by way of ransom or in any other way, Let us be given the sixth part of it, and the rest be divided among the conquerors, first taking out our fifth. And in case the said cacique or principal lord is killed in battle or afterwards by way of justice or in any other way, that in such case of the aforesaid treasures and goods that have justly been justly obtained from him, let us have one-half, which our officers shall first of all collect, and the other half shall be divided; first taking out our fifth. 14. And because, being informed of the evils and disorders that have been and are being made in the discoveries and new populations, and in order that we, with a good conscience, may give license to do so, for which remedy, with the agreement of those of our Council and our consultation, a general provision of chapters on what you are to keep in the said town and discovery is ordered and dispatched, which we here order to be incorporated, the tenor of which is as follows: Don Carlos, etc. Inasmuch as we are certified, and it is notorious that by the inordinate greed of some of our subjects who passed to our islands and the mainland of the Ocean Sea, by the bad treatment they made of the native Indians of the said islands and the mainland, as well as in the great and excessive labors they gave them, keeping them in the mines to get another and in the pearl fisheries and in other work and farming, making them work excessively and immoderately, not giving them the clothing or maintenance necessary for the sustenance of their lives, treating them with cruelty and lack of love, much worse than if they were slaves, which has all been and was the cause of the death of a great number of the said Indians, in such quantity that many of the said islands and parts of the mainland were left barren and without any population of the said native Indians of them, and that others fled and went to the mountains and other places to save their lives and get out of the said subjection and ill-treatment, which was also a great hindrance to the conversion of the said Indians to our Holy Catholic Faith and if there had been All this has come entirely and generally to the true knowledge of it, that God, our Lord, is much disserved. And we are also informed that the captains and other people who by our command and with our license went to discover and populate some of the said Indies and the mainland, being, as it was and in our principal intention and desire to bring the said Indians into true knowledge of God, Our Lord, and of His Holy Faith, with the preaching of it and the example of learned persons and good religious, for doing good works and treating them as neighbors, without receiving any force, reward, damage, or misfortune for their persons and goods; and all this having been so ordered and commanded by us, the said captains and other our officers and people of the said armies carrying it by private command and instruction, moved by the said greed, forgetting the service of God, our Lord, and ours, they made and killed many of the said Indians in the discoveries and conquests and took their goods without the said Indians having given them just cause for it if they had preceded or given just cause for it, nor had they preceded or made the warnings that they were supposed to make, nor had they made any resistance or harm to the Christians for the preaching of our holy faith, which, in addition to having been a great offense to God, our Lord, gave occasion and was a cause that not only the said Indians who received the said forces, But many other people in the region who heard of it and learned of it rose up and joined forces with an armed hand against the Christians, our subjects, and killed many of them and even the religious and ecclesiastical persons who had no fault and suffered as martyrs preaching the Christian Faith. Wherefore we suspend and substitute all matters in granting licenses for the said conquests and discoveries, desiring to provide and discuss, both on the punishment of the past and on the remedy of the future, and to excuse the said damages and inconveniences, and to give orders, that the discoveries and settlements that are to be made hereafter shall go forth without offense to God and without death or robbery of the said Indians and without captivating them by the Indians. The desire that we have had and have is to enlarge our Holy Faith, and that the said Indians and infidels come to know of it, that it be done without charge of our consciences and that our purpose and the intention and work of the Catholic Kings, our lords and grandfathers, be pursued in all those parts of the islands and mainland of the Ocean Sea that are of our conquest and remain to be discovered and populated. Which, having been seen with great deliberation by those of our Council of the Indies and with whom we were consulted, it was agreed that we should order this our charter to be given for the said reason, for which we ordain and command that now and hereafter, both for the remedy of the past and in the discoveries and settlements that by our mandate and in our name shall be made in the said islands and the mainland of the Ocean Sea, discovered and to be discovered, and our limits and demarcations, be kept and complied with, etc. etc.16 Don Pedro Fernández de Lugo should not have been satisfied with his role as Adelantado of the Canary Islands and governor of Tenerife and La Palma and wanted to commit himself to the American enterprise under the protection of the news of the ships that were brought from Seville to the ports of the Canary Islands. His first intention was to go to the area of the Río de la Plata, however, he soon changed his mind moved by the arrival in 1533 of the treasure from Cajamarca that had produced a real megalomania for those who intended or were embarked on enterprises of discovery and conquest.17 In addition, Fernández de Lugo decided to ask for the government of Santa Marta after having been informed about that province through Francisco Lorenzo. who had participated in the conquest of Santa Marta and on his return to Spain, had landed in Tenerife.18 Fernández de Lugo dreamed of encountering a second Atahualpa, up the Magdalena River, until he reached beyond the Equator, beyond Peru. There was also great interest in this expedition in the Canary Islands, on the part of the Florentine and Sienese merchants, who from the Canary Islands connected with Cubagua and were eager to extend their action to the other side of Cabo de la Vela, whose oysters were at the disposal of the Welter monopoly.19 In fact, Fernández de Lugo's expedition was mounted with the financial support of Italian merchants.