The Chiribichi Incident
In 1513, the Dominicans persuaded King Fernando to allow them to go to the mainland to peacefully convert the natives there. Montesinos was supposed to lead the mission, but he became ill and the task fell to Francisco de Córdoba and a lay brother, Juan Garcés. The Dominicans set up in the Chiribichi Valley in present-day Venezuela where they were well-received by local chieftain “Alonso” who had been baptized years before. According to the royal grant, slavers and settlers were to give the Dominicans a wide berth.
A few months later, however, Gómez de Ribera, a mid-level but well-connected colonial bureaucrat, went looking for slaves and plunder. He visited the settlement and invited “Alonso,” his wife and several more members of the tribe on board his ship. When the natives were on board, Ribera’s men raised anchor and set sail for Hispaniola, leaving the two bewildered missionaries behind with the enraged natives. Alonso and the others were split up and enslaved once Ribera returned to Santo Domingo.
The two missionaries sent word that they were now hostages and would be killed if Alonso and the others were not returned. Montesinos led a frantic effort to track down and return Alonso and the others, but failed: after four months, the two missionaries were killed. Ribera, meanwhile, was protected by a relative, who happened to be an important judge.
There was an inquest in regard to the incident and colonial officials reached the extremely bizarre conclusion that since the missionaries had been executed, the leaders of the tribe – i.e. Alonso and the others – were obviously hostiles and could therefore continue to be enslaved. In addition, it was said that the Dominicans were themselves at fault for being in such unsavory company in the first place.
Exploits on the Mainland
There is evidence to suggest that Montesinos accompanied the expedition of Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón, which set out with some 600 colonists from Santo Domingo in 1526. They founded a settlement in present-day South Carolina named San Miguel de Guadalupe. The settlement lasted only three months, as many became ill and died and local natives repeatedly attacked them. When Vázquez died, the remaining colonists returned to Santo Domingo.
In 1528, Montesinos went to Venezuela with a mission along with other Dominicans, and little more is known of the rest of his life except that he died “martyred” sometime around 1545.
Legacy
Although Montesinos led a long life in which he continually struggled for better conditions for New World natives, he will forever be known mostly for that one blistering sermon delivered in 1511. It was his courage in speaking out what many had been silently thinking that changed the course of indigenous rights in the Spanish territories. His sermon ignited a fierce debate over native rights, identity and nature that was still raging one hundred years later.
In the audience that day was Bartolomé de Las Casas, himself a slaveholder at the time. The words of Montesinos were a revelation to him, and by 1514 he had divested himself of all of his slaves, believing that he would not go to heaven if he kept them. Las Casas eventually went on to become the great Defender of the Indians, and did more than any man to ensure their fair treatment.
Source: Thomas, Hugh: Rivers of Gold: The Rise of the Spanish Empire, from Columbus to Magellan. New York: Random House, 2003.
