A conditional royal order for mine laborFerdinand II of Aragon · January 22, 1510
Historia de las Indias, Book III: the cleric’s regretBartolomé de las Casas · 1527–1561
Zuazo advocates more enslaved African laborAlonso de Zuazo · January 26, 1518
License to Lorenzo de Gorrevod to carry four thousand enslaved Africans to the IndiesCharles I of Spain (later Emperor Charles V) · August 18, 1518
What the Atlantic trade evidence supportsFerdinand; Charles I; Afonso I; Bartolomé de las Casas; editorial comparison · 1503–1526 records
Letter to King João III of PortugalAfonso I (Mvemba a Nzinga), king of Kongo · July 6, 1526
Letter to King João III of PortugalAfonso I (Mvemba a Nzinga), king of Kongo · July 6, 1526
IV · Enriquillo's Peace 1519–1533
Enriquillo’s grievance in Las Casas’s accountOur adaptation of Bartolomé de las Casas · Events c. 1519
The four-shirts promise in the oidores’ letterOidores of Santo Domingo, quoted by Esteban Mira Caballos · September 1, 1533
Enriquillo and Barrionuevo — reported peaceGonzalo Fernández de Oviedo; our adaptation · 1533 events
V · Silver 1521–c. 1615
The New Laws (Leyes Nuevas)Charles V · November 20, 1542
A mouth of hellDomingo de Santo Tomás · July 1, 1550
The Charcas lords challenge unequal recruitmentTwenty-four kurakas signing the collective Memorial de Charcas · 1582
Monday — composite kuraka and communityOur writers, based on Capoche, Vázquez, Guaman Poma and Cole · Composite c. 1600
Guaman Poma writes the king’s questionsFelipe Guaman Poma de Ayala · c. 1615
VI · Her Own Hands c. 1536–1594
Puebla’s marketplace ordinance — penalties and alterationPuebla cabildo, translated and discussed by Pablo Miguel Sierra Silva · February 28, 1536
Santiago’s explanation of the saleAlonso Hernández de Santiago, translated by Chloe L. Ireton · 1588 / 1594
Margarita’s work-and-sweat claimMargarita de Sossa and witnesses, through legal records and Chloe L. Ireton · 1588 / 1594
VII · The File August–September 1594
Santiago rejects the accusationAlonso Hernández de Santiago, translated by Chloe L. Ireton · 1588 / 1594
VIII · Whose Hands 1600
Isabel de Olvera demands protection of her rightsIsabel de Olvera, through a notarial record and published translation · Querétaro, 1600
Encomienda and Pueblo tribute in New MexicoNational Park Service, historical synthesis · 1595
Exam Room only
Royal instruction to Governor Nicolás de Ovando on Taíno laborIsabella I of Castile (in the name of the Crown) · December 20, 1503
The Laws of Burgos, law XXIVCrown of Castile (King Ferdinand, for Queen Joanna) · December 27, 1512
El Requerimiento (The Requirement)Juan López de Palacios Rubios · 1513
Letter to the king of KongoJoão III of Portugal · c. 1529
License to Lorenzo de Gorrevod to carry four thousand enslaved Africans to the IndiesCharles I of Spain (later Emperor Charles V) · August 18, 1518
Compendium and Description of the West Indies: PotosíAntonio Vázquez de Espinosa · c. 1628
Guaman Poma writes the king’s questionsFelipe Guaman Poma de Ayala · c. 1615
Background
Relación del cerro de Potosí y su descubrimiento: Diego Huallpa's sworn statementDiego Huallpa (his words recorded by Spanish officials; the Relación spells his name Gualpa) · December 31, 1572
Relación general de la Villa Imperial de PotosíLuis Capoche · 1585
Historia de las Indias, Book III: the 1514 sermonBartolomé de las Casas · 1527–1561
Historia natural y moral de las Indias, Book IV, chapter 8: the mines of PotosíJosé de Acosta · 1590
Potosí’s coat of arms, drawn by Guamán Poma for El primer nueva corónica y buen gobiernoFelipe Guamán Poma de Ayala · c. 1615
Directorio para confesores: “Lords who hold temporal government over vassals”Third Mexican Provincial Council · 1585
Probanza (petition of services) of Juan GarridoJuan Garrido · September 27, 1538
The Mass of St. Gregory (feather mosaic on wood)Nahua featherworkers, school of Pedro de Gante, under don Diego de Alvarado Huanitzin · 1539
De Español y Torna atrás, Tente en el aire: casta painting no. 8 by Miguel CabreraMiguel Cabrera · 1763
Letter to Charles V on a conspiracy of enslaved AfricansAntonio de Mendoza, viceroy of New Spain · December 10, 1537
Las Siete Partidas, Partida IV, titles 5, 21 and 22Alfonso X of Castile · c. 1265
Royal reply to Governor Ovando on enslaved Africans fleeing on HispaniolaFerdinand and Isabella · March 1503
Codex Osuna: the painted complaint of the Native government of Mexico CityNahua officials of Mexico City · 1565
Compelled work by legally free people — our translationIsabella I of Castile · December 20, 1503
Margarita de Sossa, black, native of the city of Oporto… of approximately fifty-eight years of age.
Sourcing
Historical situation
A 1594 Inquisition case preserves Margarita’s testimony and her earlier 1588 marital litigation.
Intended audience
Ecclesiastical and inquisitorial officials, with conflicting witnesses.
Purpose
Defend freedom, earnings and reputation, or challenge those claims.
Point of view
The record is mediated by scribes, legal strategy and Ireton’s English. Ancestry, gender, property and reputation intersect; no one label determines every right.
Chloe L. Ireton, “Margarita de Sossa, Sixteenth-Century Puebla de los Ángeles, New Spain (Mexico),” in Erica L. Ball, Tatiana Seijas and Terri L. Snyder, eds., As If She Were Free: A Collective Biography of Women and Emancipation in the Americas (Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp.27–42, DOI 10.1017/9781108623957; AGN, Inquisición, vol.208, exp.3. Printed p.29 n.4; AGN ff.80–82. Ireton’s English excerpt; parenthetical Spanish and intermediate clauses omitted. This description is not all the court knew about her.
Francisco Gallardo, through a Puebla deposition translated by Chloe L. Ireton · 1588 / 1594
Verbatim. The original words, unchanged.
On screen: I · What She Is
English translation by Chloe L. Ireton
Portuguese and mulata, who is not entirely black… and with some letters on her face…
Sourcing
Historical situation
A 1594 Inquisition case preserves Margarita’s testimony and her earlier 1588 marital litigation.
Intended audience
Ecclesiastical and inquisitorial officials, with conflicting witnesses.
Purpose
Defend freedom, earnings and reputation, or challenge those claims.
Point of view
The record is mediated by scribes, legal strategy and Ireton’s English. Ancestry, gender, property and reputation intersect; no one label determines every right.
Chloe L. Ireton, “Margarita de Sossa, Sixteenth-Century Puebla de los Ángeles, New Spain (Mexico),” in Erica L. Ball, Tatiana Seijas and Terri L. Snyder, eds., As If She Were Free: A Collective Biography of Women and Emancipation in the Americas (Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp.27–42, DOI 10.1017/9781108623957; AGN, Inquisición, vol.208, exp.3. Printed p.29 n.5; AGN ff.31–32. Ireton’s English, cuts marked; the earlier Puebla deposition is staged on screen, not a proven confrontation at one hearing. The omitted remainder explicitly calls her free.
Compelled work by legally free people — our translation
Isabella I of Castile · December 20, 1503
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: II · As Free Persons
English translation
Spanish anchors: el dia que trabajare, el jornal y mantenimiento; lo cual hagan é cumplan como personas libres, como lo son, y no como siervos.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Hispaniola’s colonists sought Native labor while the Crown described Native people as free vassals.
Intended audience
Governor Nicolás de Ovando.
Purpose
Compel remunerated labor and Christian instruction.
Point of view
A royal prescription, not evidence of voluntary consent or actual payment.
Isabella to Nicolás de Ovando, Medina del Campo, 20 December 1503; transcribed in Bartolomé de las Casas, Historia de las Indias II.14, vol. 3 (Madrid: Miguel Ginesta, 1875), pp. 81–83. English is our translation and abridgment, not Parry and Keith’s wording.
Compelled work by legally free people — our translation
Isabella I of Castile · December 20, 1503
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: II · As Free Persons
English translation
Spanish anchors: el dia que trabajare, el jornal y mantenimiento; lo cual hagan é cumplan como personas libres, como lo son, y no como siervos.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Hispaniola’s colonists sought Native labor while the Crown described Native people as free vassals.
Intended audience
Governor Nicolás de Ovando.
Purpose
Compel remunerated labor and Christian instruction.
Point of view
A royal prescription, not evidence of voluntary consent or actual payment.
Isabella to Nicolás de Ovando, Medina del Campo, 20 December 1503; transcribed in Bartolomé de las Casas, Historia de las Indias II.14, vol. 3 (Madrid: Miguel Ginesta, 1875), pp. 81–83. English is our translation and abridgment, not Parry and Keith’s wording.
[Data summary.] About 60,000 (1508); 33,523 (1510); 26,334 (1514). These concern Taíno under Spanish control, not everyone alive on Hispaniola. Death, flight and changes in enumeration affect comparisons. Documented smallpox followed in late 1518.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Early colonization reduced and displaced Native communities before the documented smallpox epidemic.
Intended audience
Historians interpreting colonial enumeration.
Purpose
Reconstruct the population visible to colonial administration.
Point of view
Administrative categories exclude fugitives. The series is not an exact island population census or a death tally.
Frank Moya Pons, “Datos para el estudio de la demografía aborigen,” Jahrbuch für Geschichte Lateinamerikas 16 (1979), DOI 10.7788/jbla-1979-0103; Frank Moya Pons, “La población taína y su desaparición,” in Moya Pons, ed., Historia de la República Dominicana, vol.2 (Madrid: CSIC / Doce Calles, 2010), pp.20–22, cuadro 1, citing Moya Pons 1992a and AGI Patronato 172, R.4. The earlier 1979 cut gives 25,503 for 1514; the later fuller table gives 26,334. Massimo Livi-Bacci, “Return to Hispaniola,” HAHR 83(1) (2003): 3–51; David Henige, “When Did Smallpox Reach the New World (and Why Does It Matter)?,” in Africans in Bondage (1986), pp. 11–26. Independently corroborated by Ida Altman, “The Revolt of Enriquillo,” The Americas 63(4) (2007), p.593 n.15, which gives 60,000 / 33,523 / 26,334 and notes that mountain refugees may be excluded.
[CUNY translation, excerpt.] …because it is said that the Indians find it very hard to break the rocks where that gold is found…
Sourcing
Historical situation
The Crown sought greater gold output on Hispaniola.
Intended audience
Diego Colón and royal treasury officials.
Purpose
Expand the workforce for royal mines.
Point of view
The king’s report of Native difficulty supports a demand for enslaved labor; it is not a statement by workers.
Ferdinand to Diego Colón, Valladolid, 22 January 1510, AGI Indiferente 418, L.2, ff.98r–98v. CUNY Dominican Studies Institute, First Blacks in the Americas, Manuscript 041, English translation. The sending clause is conditional on Miguel de Pasamonte’s judgment. CUNY commentary identifies African slaves; the quoted clause itself says slaves.
English translation by John-Charles Duffy (1875 edition)
That he had counseled this, the cleric later repented, judging himself guilty by inadvertence, because he afterward saw and discovered, as will be seen, that the captivity of the blacks is as unjust as that of the Indians, and therefore his counsel that blacks be brought so that the Indians could be freed was not a wise remedy; and although he had believed, at the time, that they were justly captive, he feared that neither his ignorance in this nor his good intention would excuse him before the judgment of God.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Written late in Las Casas’s life, between about 1527 and 1561, about the 1510s, when Spain first licensed Africans to be shipped to the Caribbean and he had urged it as a remedy for Native suffering.
Intended audience
Future readers, to whom he left the manuscript. He wrote of himself in the third person as “the cleric.”
Purpose
To record his own error in recommending African slavery, and to state that it was as unjust as the enslavement of Native people.
Point of view
A priest judging his own past advice. He was an encomendero first, and his change of mind came slowly and left the trade running.
[CUNY translation.] there are blacks that do in a day one hundred and forty montones, and the most manicato (which means strong or man of much strength) indian does not do more than twelve montones.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Colonial officials sought permission to import more enslaved Africans amid Native depopulation.
Intended audience
The Spanish Crown.
Purpose
Persuade the Crown to permit a general slave-import license.
Point of view
This is a colonial advocate’s comparative claim, not measured racial productivity or a biological explanation.
Zuazo to the Crown, Santo Domingo, 26 January 1518, AGI Patronato 174, R.8, f.52r (letter selections ff.50r,52r–52v,55v); CUNY Dominican Studies Institute, First Blacks in the Americas, Translation 056. Montones means cultivated mounds here; replacing it with crop mounds is a gloss/adaptation, not the published English.
License to Lorenzo de Gorrevod to carry four thousand enslaved Africans to the Indies
Charles I of Spain (later Emperor Charles V) · August 18, 1518
Verbatim. The original words, unchanged.
On screen: III · The Remedy
English translation
…to Lorenzo de Gorrevod, governor of Bresa, member of my Council, whereby he, or the person or persons who may have his authority therefor, may proceed to take to the Indies, the islands and the mainland of the ocean sea already discovered or to be discovered, four thousand negro slaves both male and female, provided they be Christians, in whatever proportions he may choose. Until these are all taken and transported no other slaves, male or female, may be transported, except those whom I have given permission [to take] up to the present date.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Issued in 1518, soon after Charles, aged eighteen, arrived in Spain to take the throne. Colonists in the Caribbean were asking for enslaved workers as the Native population collapsed.
Intended audience
Royal officials in Spain and the Indies, who were ordered to let the license holder ship his cargo unhindered.
Purpose
To license a courtier to transport 4,000 enslaved people and control further licenses; existing permissions were excepted. The document requires proof of Christian conversion on arrival. It does not say baptism freed people, prove all 4,000 arrived, or establish a net profit.
Point of view
A young king and his Flemish court, licensing a trade in human beings. The people counted in the license had no voice in it.
Charles I, license to Lorenzo de Gorrevod (August 18, 1518), in Elizabeth Donnan, ed., Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America, vol. 1 (Washington, DC, 1930), no. 2, pp. 41–42. Ellipsis marks our cut. Donnan’s printed translation reads “four thousand negro slaves both male and female, provided they be Christians, in whatever proportions he may choose”. An earlier note here that said the scan reads “provided that they be Christians” was wrong and has been corrected. Our excerpt capitalizes its opening and ends the selected clause with a period (the trailing “in whatever proportions he may choose” is cut); the words are Donnan’s translated clause, verbatim.
Ferdinand; Charles I; Afonso I; Bartolomé de las Casas; editorial comparison · 1503–1526 records
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: III · The Remedy
English translation
[Comparison, not a profit dataset.] A pre-existing trade expanded. Some African rulers and merchants participated while resisting particular seizures. The 1518 license could be sold; Las Casas reports 25,000 ducats. Crown texts and accounts link enslaved labor to mines and sugar. No profits at intermediate links are measured here.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Atlantic commerce connected African sellers, European intermediaries and colonial labor demands through varying routes.
Intended audience
Students comparing licenses, complaints and retrospective accounts.
Purpose
Separate supported connections and reported transaction prices from invented profits or uniform participation.
Point of view
Different authors defended authority, criticized seizures or reviewed their own actions. No single document describes every captive’s route.
Las Casas, Historia de las Indias III.102, vol.4 (Madrid: Miguel Ginesta, 1875), p.381, reported license resale; III.129, vol.5 (1876), pp.28–31, trade and sugar labor. Ferdinand to Diego Colón, 22 January 1510, AGI Indiferente 418, L.2, ff.98r–98v, CUNY First Blacks manuscript 041. Charles I’s license, 18 August 1518, in Elizabeth Donnan, Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America, vol.1 (1930), pp.41–42, especially conversion on arrival, not prior to embarkation. Afonso letters, 6 July and 18 October 1526, in Brásio, Monumenta Missionaria Africana I (1952), docs.142 and 147, Davidson translation. The 1503 royal reply to Ovando already discusses African fugitives; see preserved ovando-complaint-1503 record.
English translation by Basil Davidson (1964 edition)
…since the mentioned merchants are taking every day our natives, sons of the land and the sons of our noblemen and vassals and our relatives, because the thieves and men of bad conscience grab them wishing to have the things and wares of this Kingdom which they are ambitious of, they grab them and get them to be sold; and so great, Sir, is the corruption and licentiousness that our country is being completely depopulated, and Your Highness should not agree with this nor accept it as in your service.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Written in 1526, after Portuguese traders had been buying and seizing people in Kongo for years. Afonso had welcomed Portuguese priests, craftsmen and trade since about 1509.
Intended audience
João III, king of Portugal, whom Afonso addressed as a fellow Christian monarch.
Purpose
To make the Portuguese king stop merchants from taking free Kongolese, including nobles’ children, and to reassert Afonso’s control over trade in his kingdom.
Point of view
A Christian African king. Kongo itself sold war captives to the Portuguese, so his complaint is about the seizure of free people and the merchants’ methods.
Afonso I to João III (July 6, 1526), trans. Basil Davidson, The African Past (London, 1964). Excerpt as reproduced by World History Commons. Ellipsis marks our cut.
Afonso I (Mvemba a Nzinga), king of Kongo · July 6, 1526
Verbatim. The original words, unchanged.
On screen: III · The Remedy
English translation by Basil Davidson (1964 edition)
It is our will that in these Kingdoms there should not be any trade of slaves nor outlet for them.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Written in 1526, after Portuguese traders had been buying and seizing people in Kongo for years. Afonso had welcomed Portuguese priests, craftsmen and trade since about 1509.
Intended audience
João III, king of Portugal, whom Afonso addressed as a fellow Christian monarch.
Purpose
To make the Portuguese king stop merchants from taking free Kongolese, including nobles’ children, and to reassert Afonso’s control over trade in his kingdom.
Point of view
A Christian African king. Kongo itself sold war captives to the Portuguese, so his complaint is about the seizure of free people and the merchants’ methods.
Afonso I to João III, 6 July 1526; Portuguese in António Brásio, ed., Monumenta Missionaria Africana, África Ocidental, vol.1 (Lisbon: Agência Geral do Ultramar, 1952), doc.142, pp.469–470. English: Basil Davidson, The African Past (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1964), translated from Visconde de Paiva Manso, Historia do Congo (1877), as reproduced in Lumen Learning / Humanities LibreTexts, “Primary Source: King Affonso of Congo.” English translation by Basil Davidson, reproduced by Lumen/LibreTexts. We capitalize the opening of the selected clause; our two speech lines continue one sentence.
Our adaptation of Bartolomé de las Casas · Events c. 1519
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: IV · Enriquillo's Peace
[Dramatized first-person adaptation.] Valenzuela, my encomendero, took my mare. He tried to force my wife. I came here for justice.
Sourcing
Historical situation
A Taíno leader sought redress and then resisted colonial rule in the Bahoruco.
Intended audience
Las Casas’s future readers; modern historians reviewing his narrative.
Purpose
Explain resistance through abuses of colonial authority.
Point of view
Las Casas was a critic of conquest and wrote retrospectively; Altman cautions against treating his compressed chronology as an exact sequence.
Bartolomé de las Casas, Historia de las Indias, book III, Enriquillo narrative; Ida Altman, “The Revolt of Enriquillo and the Historiography of Early Spanish America,” The Americas 63(4) (2007): 587–614, especially pp.594–606. The grievances and frustrated appeals are Las Casas’s narrative, not a surviving trial transcript or Enriquillo’s exact words. For the 1514 assignment of Enrique and his people, see Altman p.594 and n.18; she identifies two encomenderos. Current narration deliberately omits an unverified headcount. Altman pp.595–596 attributes the mare, wife and failed appeals to Las Casas, who was absent at the revolt’s inception; we preserve that attribution. We stage only the appeal, not the assault.
Oidores of Santo Domingo, quoted by Esteban Mira Caballos · September 1, 1533
Verbatim. The original words, unchanged.
On screen: IV · Enriquillo's Peace
[Our translation of the short extract.] And for each Black person they bring in, let him be given four linen shirts. Translation, not a published English quotation. The clause does not supply the rate for Indigenous fugitives.
Sourcing
Historical situation
The colonial judges reported the negotiated settlement with Enriquillo.
Intended audience
The emperor.
Purpose
Report terms that would secure obedience and return fugitives.
Point of view
Officials interested in colonial stability. The rate is per Black captive brought in, not per Native captive. A promised rate does not prove a particular payment was made.
Oidores of Santo Domingo to Charles V, 1 September 1533, AGI Santo Domingo 49, R.4, N.28; quoted in Esteban Mira Caballos, “La resistencia a la dominación de los indígenas de La Española (1492–1533),” Ciencia y Sociedad 47(3) (2022): 9–34, p.30 n.63, DOI 10.22206/cys.2022.v47i3.pp9-34, citing Roberto Marte, Santo Domingo en los manuscritos de Juan Bautista Muñoz (1981), pp.363–367. Compare Ida Altman (2007), p.605 n.52. The archival original and Marte pages were not independently opened here.
[Summary/adaptation.] Oviedo reports that Enriquillo asked Barrionuevo to read the imperial letter because his eyes were bad, then kissed it and placed it on his head. The peace included returning African fugitives and gathering Indigenous rebels; a recovery payment was set.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Negotiation followed years of resistance in Hispaniola’s mountains.
Intended audience
Readers of a royal chronicler’s history.
Purpose
Describe restoration of royal obedience and the terms of peace.
Point of view
A colonial chronicler’s account, mediated by participants and imperial interests. It documents an obligation, not every later act attributed to Enriquillo.
Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general y natural de las Indias, ed. José Amador de los Ríos, vol. I (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1851), book V, chapter VII, pp.147–149. Our first-person statements about wanting peace and mistrusting promises are adaptations, not transcribed speech. Oviedo recounts the meeting; he is not established as its eyewitness.
[Summary, not a quotation.] The New Laws restricted Native enslavement and encomienda succession. The Crown revoked the succession provision in 1545. Encomienda tribute, rotating drafts, slavery and wage labor continued in different combinations; no empire-wide end of coerced Native labor followed in 1542.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Issued at Barcelona in 1542 after Las Casas and other reformers pressed the Crown about the encomienda system.
Intended audience
Royal officials and Spanish colonists across the Indies.
Purpose
To limit the power of encomenderos and bring Native labor under closer Crown control.
Point of view
The Crown, balancing reform against its need for colonists’ loyalty and silver. It backed off when Peru’s colonists rebelled.
The New Laws for the Government of the Indies and for the Preservation of the Indians, 1542–1543, ed. Henry Stevens and Fred W. Lucas (London: Chiswick Press, 1893), English text pp. xii–xvi; P. J. Bakewell, Silver Mining and Society in Colonial Mexico: Zacatecas, 1546–1700 (Cambridge University Press, 1971), chapter 6. Editorial summary, including the 1545 repeal of the succession clause.
…there was discovered a mouth of hell, into which have entered…a great quantity of people…
Sourcing
Historical situation
Native labor supported Potosí extraction before Toledo’s later mita reforms.
Intended audience
Council of the Indies.
Purpose
Denounce exploitation and press for protection of Native people.
Point of view
A Dominican reformer’s metaphor; it is not a literal place name or an annual mortality statistic.
Domingo de Santo Tomás to the Council of the Indies, 1 July 1550, in José María Vargas, Fr. Domingo de Santo Tomás, defensor y apóstol de los indios del Perú (Quito, 1937), pp.15–21; trans. Kris Lane, working draft (3 August 2018), Tulane Friends of Potosí. Lane cites AGI Lima 113; Dussel’s separate Spanish transcription cites Charcas 313. Voice is off-camera over a later reconstruction and is not a1550 eyewitness image.
Don Francisco de Toledo, visorrey que fue de estos Reinos, repartió y señaló tan solamente indios para el beneficio y lauor de las minas e ingenios en la Uilla de Potosí a la nación de Los Charcas, Caracaras, Soras, Quillacas y Carangas, reservando como reservó sola [a] la nación de Los Chichas y a la nación de Los Chuis y Amparaes y los mitimaes de Pacona y sus anejos y subditos, en lo cual hemos reciuido notorio agrauio y daño.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Andean leaders petitioned about the allocation of service to Potosí’s mines and mills.
Intended audience
The Spanish Crown and officials able to change obligations.
Purpose
Challenge unequal recruitment and seek a more equal distribution among named communities.
Point of view
Elite Indigenous petitioners were defending particular communities. The excerpt does not establish that all Andean groups owed identical quotas, that petitioners sought abolition of all labor service, or that the composite scene town signed this petition.
Collective Memorial de Charcas (1582), chapter 38, in Edwin Claros Arispe, “El Memorial de Charcas (1582),” Ciencia y Cultura 27 (2011): 25–62, p.43 (PDF p.19), reprinting the transcription associated with Waldemar Espinoza Soriano. Our own literal English with two marked omissions; not a published English translation. Spanish; this integration lane’s direct PDF fetch timed out. Chapter 38 belongs to the collective memorial of 53 chapters, not Ayavire’s separately signed 16-chapter memorial.
Our writers, based on Capoche, Vázquez, Guaman Poma and Cole · Composite c. 1600
Dramatization. Dramatized, based on the record.
On screen: V · Silver
English translation by Charles Upson Clark (1942 edition)
[Dramatization.] The judge, widow, brother, mayordomo and kuraka are composite roles. Their dialogue and outcomes illustrate obligations, substitution, silver payments and community costs. No invented quota, wage or attrition series is a historical measurement.
Sourcing
Historical situation
A constructed muster at Guayna Potosí shows pressure on a Lupaqa town’s kuraka.
Intended audience
The viewer.
Purpose
Explain how labor obligations could shift costs onto families and community resources.
Point of view
Scenes combine records of different dates. Choices are illustrative, not proof every town faced the same rate or every option had one inevitable consequence.
Luis Capoche, Relación general (1585), ed. Lewis Hanke, BAE 122 (Madrid: Atlas, 1959), pp.158–169; Antonio Vázquez de Espinosa, Compendium, trans. Charles Upson Clark, SMC 102 (1942), §§1652–1654, pp.624–625; Guaman Poma, manuscript [529]–[530]; Jeffrey A. Cole, The Potosí Mita, 1573–1700: Compulsory Indian Labor in the Andes (Stanford University Press, 1985). The revised scene also recalls the collective Memorial de Charcas (1582), chapter 38, in Claros Arispe (2011), p.43, registered separately as p103-charcas-memorial-1582. Limaylla’s litigation deaths are not the scene’s mita evidence.
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: V · Silver
English translation (2009 edition)
Spanish anchors: Dime, autor; le haze trauajar de día y de noche y no se le paga; Castilla es Castilla por los yndios. The text adds that when payment occurs, half is stolen. Book completed c.1615; located in Copenhagen by Richard Pietschmann in 1908.
Sourcing
Historical situation
An Andean Christian author composed a large appeal for reform after Toledo’s mining reforms.
Intended audience
Philip III, as intended royal reader.
Purpose
Expose colonial abuses and propose better government.
Point of view
Guaman Poma wrote both questions and answers. This is an authored dialogue, not an actual audience, recorded conversation or proof Philip III read it.
Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno, GKS 2232 4°, author’s p.964, manuscript p.[982], Royal Danish Library digital edition (Rolena Adorno and Ivan Boserup). English here is our translation, not Hamilton (2009), whose abridgment does not reach this dialogue.
Puebla’s marketplace ordinance — penalties and alteration
Puebla cabildo, translated and discussed by Pablo Miguel Sierra Silva · February 28, 1536
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: VI · Her Own Hands
[Summary of the transcribed ordinance.] A Spaniard faced a one-gold-peso fine. An enslaved Black man faced fifty lashes if his owner declined to pay. The manuscript later crossed out references to Spaniards; the timing and effect on proclamation are unknown.
Sourcing
Historical situation
The cabildo regulated a marketplace and represented itself as protecting Indigenous women.
Intended audience
Residents, town crier and local enforcement officials.
Purpose
Regulate access and conduct while differentiating penalties.
Point of view
An elite municipal text that assumes Black men are enslaved; not a rule about all free Black residents. Later deletions complicate what was proclaimed and enforced.
Pablo Miguel Sierra Silva, Urban Slavery in Colonial Mexico: Puebla de los Ángeles, 1531–1706 (Cambridge University Press, 2018), chapter 1, “Early Puebla and the Question of Labor, 1531–1570,” pp.21–44, subsection “Slavery, Power and Vecindad,” nn.29–31. Translation and discussion inspected in publisher HTML.
Alonso Hernández de Santiago, translated by Chloe L. Ireton · 1588 / 1594
Verbatim. The original words, unchanged.
On screen: VI · Her Own Hands
English translation by Chloe L. Ireton
…because she spoke too much and used bad language… even though she was a good servant.
Sourcing
Historical situation
A 1594 Inquisition case preserves Margarita’s testimony and her earlier 1588 marital litigation.
Intended audience
Ecclesiastical and inquisitorial officials, with conflicting witnesses.
Purpose
Defend freedom, earnings and reputation, or challenge those claims.
Point of view
The record is mediated by scribes, legal strategy and Ireton’s English. Ancestry, gender, property and reputation intersect; no one label determines every right.
Chloe L. Ireton, “Margarita de Sossa, Sixteenth-Century Puebla de los Ángeles, New Spain (Mexico),” in Erica L. Ball, Tatiana Seijas and Terri L. Snyder, eds., As If She Were Free: A Collective Biography of Women and Emancipation in the Americas (Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp.27–42, DOI 10.1017/9781108623957; AGN, Inquisición, vol.208, exp.3. Printed p.33 n.14; AGN f.40. Ireton’s translation; omissions marked. A letter is staged as speech. His reason for sale and his rejection of witchcraft testimony are different statements.
The money with which I liberated myself was from my work and sweat and not that of my husband.
Sourcing
Historical situation
A 1594 Inquisition case preserves Margarita’s testimony and her earlier 1588 marital litigation.
Intended audience
Ecclesiastical and inquisitorial officials, with conflicting witnesses.
Purpose
Defend freedom, earnings and reputation, or challenge those claims.
Point of view
The record is mediated by scribes, legal strategy and Ireton’s English. Ancestry, gender, property and reputation intersect; no one label determines every right.
Chloe L. Ireton, “Margarita de Sossa, Sixteenth-Century Puebla de los Ángeles, New Spain (Mexico),” in Erica L. Ball, Tatiana Seijas and Terri L. Snyder, eds., As If She Were Free: A Collective Biography of Women and Emancipation in the Americas (Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp.27–42, DOI 10.1017/9781108623957; AGN, Inquisición, vol.208, exp.3. Printed pp.36–37; AGN ff.102–103v. We convert and shorten Ireton’s account; the original translated claim is that her own earnings paid for manumission. Initial capital supplied. It remains testimony mediated by a notary and a modern translation, not audio of her historical voice.
Alonso Hernández de Santiago, translated by Chloe L. Ireton · 1588 / 1594
Verbatim. The original words, unchanged.
On screen: VII · The File
English translation by Chloe L. Ireton
It was a false testimony, and that is what I declared in the court case.
Sourcing
Historical situation
A 1594 Inquisition case preserves Margarita’s testimony and her earlier 1588 marital litigation.
Intended audience
Ecclesiastical and inquisitorial officials, with conflicting witnesses.
Purpose
Defend freedom, earnings and reputation, or challenge those claims.
Point of view
The record is mediated by scribes, legal strategy and Ireton’s English. Ancestry, gender, property and reputation intersect; no one label determines every right.
Chloe L. Ireton, “Margarita de Sossa, Sixteenth-Century Puebla de los Ángeles, New Spain (Mexico),” in Erica L. Ball, Tatiana Seijas and Terri L. Snyder, eds., As If She Were Free: A Collective Biography of Women and Emancipation in the Americas (Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp.27–42, DOI 10.1017/9781108623957; AGN, Inquisición, vol.208, exp.3. Printed p.41 n.50; AGN f.40. Ireton’s translated letter: the denial concerns the alleged powders/witchcraft testimony, not his reason for selling her. Printed p.40 identifies him as commissary (comisario) for Puebla and Tlaxcala.
The signed declaration requests proof that she is free and unmarried before her expedition to New Mexico. This excerpt preserves Cook’s reproduced wording; other popular transcriptions differ. Government page scan: https://iiif.archive.org/iiif/blm-nm-crs-11$155/full/1600,/0/default.jpg
Sourcing
Historical situation
A free woman of African and Native parentage sought proof of status before joining the 1600 reinforcements for New Mexico.
Intended audience
Querétaro magistrate and officials who might later question her rights.
Purpose
Obtain an authenticated declaration of freedom and unmarried status.
Point of view
Her claim comes through legal formulas and translation. The document shows an effort to defend rights, not a guarantee of safety or equality.
Mary Jean Cook, “Daughters of the Camino Real,” in El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, New Mexico BLM Cultural Resources Series11 (1993), printed p.149. This edition prints some individuals and mulatto; omissions are marked. Its paragraph identifies African father Hernando and Native mother Madalena. The restricted Hammond–Rey1953 volume was not independently opened.
National Park Service, historical synthesis · 1595
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: VIII · Whose Hands
[Summary.] Oñate’s colonization brought encomienda claims on Pueblo tribute into New Mexico. Its persistence on this frontier shows that mid-century reforms had not ended the institution across the empire. Specific tribute rates varied and are not asserted here.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Spanish settlements expanded into Pueblo homelands at the northern frontier.
Intended audience
Readers of colonial records and public history.
Purpose
Explain the continuation of tribute institutions during expansion.
Point of view
Colonial claims were imposed and contested. Neither a free traveler’s arrival nor her legal status established the consent of Pueblo communities.
National Park Service, “San Gabriel del Yunque-Ouinge and San Miguel,” Spanish Colonial Missions of the Southwest Travel Itinerary, section “Beginning of the New Mexico missions and the encomienda system” (updated 15 April 2016), unpaginated. Supports tribute in produce or blankets under Oñate; no claim about Isabel’s later biography or particular tribute rates.
Forasmuch as my Lord the King and Myself have ordered … that the Indians living on the island of Hispaniola be considered free and not subject to slavery … ; since I have now been informed that because of the excessive liberty allowed the said Indians, they run away from the Christians and withdraw from any intercourse and communication with them, … I order you, Our Governor, … to compel the Indians to have dealings with the Christian settlers on the said island, to work on their buildings, to mine and collect gold and other metals, and to work on their farms and crop fields …
Sourcing
Historical situation
Issued at Medina del Campo eleven months before Isabella died, after the Taíno of Hispaniola had been declared free vassals but were fleeing Spanish settlements, leaving the colony short of workers.
Intended audience
Nicolás de Ovando, governor of Hispaniola, and the Spanish settlers he governed.
Purpose
To keep the Taíno legally free while forcing them to work for Spanish settlers and mine gold, for wages the governor sets.
Point of view
The Crown, writing from Spain to protect the colony’s income. The Taíno had no say in the order that governed their lives.
Queen Isabella, instruction to Governor Ovando (Medina del Campo, December 20, 1503), as excerpted in J. H. Parry and Robert G. Keith, eds., New Iberian World (1984), and reproduced by Lehigh University’s History on Trial site. Ellipses are the editors’ and ours. The former nine-days wage wording was erroneous and has been removed: Las Casas, Historia II.14, vol. 3 (Madrid, 1875), pp. 81–83, reads el dia que trabajare, each day worked. Our separate translation record supplies the free-person clause.
XXIV. Also, we order and command that no person or persons shall dare to beat any Indians with sticks, or whip him, or call him dog, or address him by any name other than his proper name alone; and if an Indian should deserve to be punished for something he has done, the said person having him in charge shall bring him to the visitor for punishment, on pain that the person who violates this article shall pay, for every time he beats or whips an Indian or Indians, five pesos gold; …
Sourcing
Historical situation
Issued in Burgos in December 1512, a year after Dominican friars on Hispaniola publicly condemned the colonists’ treatment of the Taíno.
Intended audience
Spanish colonists, officials and visitors (inspectors) on Hispaniola and the other Caribbean islands.
Purpose
To keep the encomienda and forced labor in place while limiting its worst abuses, so the Crown could answer its critics and keep its income.
Point of view
Jurists and theologians in Spain writing for the Crown. Native people did not shape the law, and the law still required their labor.
Laws of Burgos (December 27, 1512), law XXIV. English text as reproduced in Peter Bakewell’s SMU course readings; probably Lesley Byrd Simpson’s translation (1960), but the translator credit is not confirmed against the printed book.
English translation by Arthur Helps (1855 edition)
But, if you do not do this, and maliciously make delay in it, I certify to you that, with the help of God, we shall powerfully enter into your country, and shall make war against you in all ways and manners that we can, and shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and of their Highnesses; we shall take you and your wives and your children, and shall make slaves of them, and as such shall sell and dispose of them as their Highnesses may command; and we shall take away your goods, and shall do you all the mischief and damage that we can, as to vassals who do not obey, and refuse to receive their lord, and resist and contradict him; and we protest that the deaths and losses which shall accrue from this are your fault, and not that of their Highnesses, or ours, nor of these cavaliers who come with us.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Drafted in 1513 by a Crown jurist for the expeditions leaving Spain for the Caribbean and mainland. It was meant to be read aloud to Native people before Spanish forces attacked them.
Intended audience
Native people who heard it in Spanish, often without an interpreter and sometimes from a ship or from a distance. In practice the audience was also the Crown’s lawyers and conscience.
Purpose
To give Spain legal cover for conquest and enslavement: anyone who refused to accept Spanish and papal authority could be called at fault for the war that followed.
Point of view
A Spanish jurist serving the Crown. The text assumes Native people had already been told the Christian and papal claims it recites.
Juan López de Palacios Rubios, El Requerimiento (1513), trans. Arthur Helps, The Spanish Conquest in America, vol. 1 (London, 1855). Text as reproduced by Encyclopedia Virginia and Teaching American History.
English translation by Malyn Newitt (2010 edition)
…If this seems good to you, it shall be so. However, it does not seem to me to be to the honour of you or your kingdom because it would be more praiseworthy to draw each year from the Kongo 10,000 slaves and 10,000 manilhas [brass bracelets] and as many tusks of ivory. If there is now to be no trade in the Kongo at all, and only one ship a year is to come there, this and more shall be as you desire.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Written about 1529 in reply to Afonso I’s complaints that Portuguese trade in people was emptying Kongo. Portugal’s crown profited from that trade.
Intended audience
Afonso I, king of Kongo, and Portuguese officials who kept the letter on record.
Purpose
To keep the trade open by arguing it would honor Kongo, while offering, as a rhetorical point, to end it entirely if Afonso insisted.
Point of view
The king of Portugal, whose crown gained from the trade. He argues that a Kongo able to send 10,000 people a year is a Kongo to be honored.
João III to Afonso I (c. 1529), trans. Malyn Newitt, in Newitt, ed., The Portuguese in West Africa, 1415–1670 (Cambridge University Press, 2010), doc. 36, pp. 152–153. Text as quoted by the Regensburg Forum; Newitt’s bracketed gloss is kept.
…to Lorenzo de Gorrevod, governor of Bresa, member of my Council, whereby he, or the person or persons who may have his authority therefor, may proceed to take to the Indies, the islands and the mainland of the ocean sea already discovered or to be discovered, four thousand negro slaves both male and female, provided they be Christians, in whatever proportions he may choose. Until these are all taken and transported no other slaves, male or female, may be transported, except those whom I have given permission [to take] up to the present date.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Issued in 1518, soon after Charles, aged eighteen, arrived in Spain to take the throne. Colonists in the Caribbean were asking for enslaved workers as the Native population collapsed.
Intended audience
Royal officials in Spain and the Indies, who were ordered to let the license holder ship his cargo unhindered.
Purpose
To license a courtier to transport 4,000 enslaved people and control further licenses; existing permissions were excepted. The document requires proof of Christian conversion on arrival. It does not say baptism freed people, prove all 4,000 arrived, or establish a net profit.
Point of view
A young king and his Flemish court, licensing a trade in human beings. The people counted in the license had no voice in it.
Charles I, license to Lorenzo de Gorrevod (August 18, 1518), in Elizabeth Donnan, ed., Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America, vol. 1 (Washington, DC, 1930), no. 2, pp. 41–42. Ellipsis marks our cut. Donnan’s printed translation reads “four thousand negro slaves both male and female, provided they be Christians, in whatever proportions he may choose”. An earlier note here that said the scan reads “provided that they be Christians” was wrong and has been corrected.
English translation by Charles Upson Clark (1942 edition)
They and the mita Indians go up every Monday morning to the locality of Guayna Potosí which is at the foot of the range … staying there from that hour until Saturday evening without coming out of the mine; their wives bring them food, but they stay constantly underground … They all have tallow candles, lighted day and night
Sourcing
Historical situation
Written about 1628 by a Spanish friar who had traveled through Peru in the 1610s, about a generation after the mita began.
Intended audience
The Spanish Crown and the Council of the Indies. The manuscript was addressed to the king.
Purpose
To describe Spain’s American possessions, their wealth and their government, for the Crown’s use.
Point of view
A Carmelite friar and loyal subject of the Crown. He records the mita’s harshness as a fact of the system, and does not argue for ending it.
Antonio Vázquez de Espinosa, Compendium and Description of the West Indies, trans. Charles Upson Clark, Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections vol. 102 (Washington, DC, 1942), ¶¶ 1652–1653, pp. 624–625. Ellipses mark our cuts. Potosí accent retained; omissions marked. The opening they refers to the hired mingados described immediately before this sentence. The narration contrasts pay separately.
Spanish anchors: Dime, autor; le haze trauajar de día y de noche y no se le paga; Castilla es Castilla por los yndios. The text adds that when payment occurs, half is stolen. Book completed c.1615; located in Copenhagen by Richard Pietschmann in 1908.
Sourcing
Historical situation
An Andean Christian author composed a large appeal for reform after Toledo’s mining reforms.
Intended audience
Philip III, as intended royal reader.
Purpose
Expose colonial abuses and propose better government.
Point of view
Guaman Poma wrote both questions and answers. This is an authored dialogue, not an actual audience, recorded conversation or proof Philip III read it.
Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno, GKS 2232 4°, author’s p.964, manuscript p.[982], Royal Danish Library digital edition (Rolena Adorno and Ivan Boserup). English here is our translation, not Hamilton (2009), whose abridgment does not reach this dialogue.
Relación del cerro de Potosí y su descubrimiento: Diego Huallpa's sworn statement
Diego Huallpa (his words recorded by Spanish officials; the Relación spells his name Gualpa) · December 31, 1572
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
English translation
He said that as he came down from the highest part of the hill, a great wind threw him to the ground, where he lost his senses and lay some time, unable to rise. … Coming to himself, he put his hands on the ground … and he recognized the metal under his hands as silver, because he had seen a metal like it at Porco.
Spanish original: Dijo que bajando de lo más alto del cerro, vino un viento tan grande, que dió con él en tierra, … donde perdió el sentido y estuvo espacio de tiempo después de lo haber cobrado sin se poder levantar. … Tornando sobre sí para se levantar, puso las manos sobre la tierra, las cuales hicieron en ella señal a manera de la que se suele hacer cuando se ponen sobre barro bien pisado, y señaló en ella las manos; … y conoció ser metal de plata sobre lo que había puesto las manos, por haber visto en el asiento de Porco otro metal como éste, y cogió dél cantidad como ocho o diez marcos y se bajó del cerro…
Sourcing
Historical situation
Recorded in December 1572, about twenty-seven years after the find, while Viceroy Toledo was reorganizing Potosí. Huallpa was about seventy and died the next month. He dated the find to 1544; the mine registry Capoche cites is dated April 21, 1545.
Intended audience
Spanish officials collecting an account of how Potosí began, for the viceroy and the Crown.
Purpose
To record who found the mountain's silver and how. The scribe also frames the find as God's will, to turn Andean people from their own religion.
Point of view
Spanish scribes writing down an old Andean miner’s testimony in Spanish. We cannot tell how much of the wording is his.
Relación del cerro de Potosí y su descubrimiento (statement of Diego Huallpa, December 31, 1572), in Marcos Jiménez de la Espada, ed., Relaciones geográficas de Indias, vol. 1 (Madrid, 1881), pp. 357–361. English excerpt is our abridged translation; the Spanish original is in the full text.
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
English translation
The first to give notice of it, with a declaration and public registry, was a Guanca Indian of Jauja, a yanacona of Villarroel, a Spaniard at the Porco mines. Before him, the one who discovered it and took silver from its veins was an Indian named Gualpa, of the Chumbivilca nation … the registry was made at Porco on the twenty-first day of April, 1545.
Spanish original: El primero que dio noticia de él, con manifestación y registro público, fué un indio guanca natural de Jauja, yanacona de Villarroel, que era un español que residía en las minas de Porco. Y antes de éste, el que lo descubrió y sacó plata de sus minas fué un indio llamado Gualpa, de nación chumbivillca … cuyo registro se hizo en Porco en veinte y un días del mes de abril de mil y quinientos y cuarenta y cinco años.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Written in 1585, forty years after the discovery, when Potosí was the largest silver producer in the Americas and its mines and mills had passed through Viceroy Toledo’s reforms.
Intended audience
The viceroy of Peru, the Count of Villar, and through him the Crown.
Purpose
To describe Potosí’s mines, mills, workers and government, and to tell the viceroy how to keep the silver flowing.
Point of view
Capoche was a Spanish mine and mill owner in Potosí. He wrote as a man whose income depended on the mita labor he describes.
Luis Capoche, Relación general de la Villa Imperial de Potosí (1585), ed. Lewis Hanke, Biblioteca de Autores Españoles 122 (Madrid: Atlas, 1959), pp. 77–78. English excerpt is our translation, lightly abridged; spelling and scan errors in the Spanish were normalized (“guanca” for the scan’s “guanea”).
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
[Summary, not a quotation. Las Casas says that in 1514, at Sancti Spíritus in Cuba, preparing a sermon for Pentecost, he read Ecclesiasticus 34:18–22. In the Douay Bible the passage includes: “He that taketh away the bread gotten by sweat, is like him that killeth his neighbour.”]
Sourcing
Historical situation
Written decades after the events, between about 1527 and 1561. Las Casas looks back on the year he gave up his own encomienda in Cuba.
Intended audience
Future readers and the Spanish Crown. He left the manuscript at a Valladolid college with orders not to publish it for decades.
Purpose
To record the conquest’s crimes and to explain his own change of mind as a matter of conscience.
Point of view
A priest who had held Taíno workers himself and later became their best-known defender. He shaped his own conversion story.
Bartolomé de las Casas, Historia de las Indias, Book III (written 1527–1561), on the 1514 sermon; Douay-Rheims Bible, Ecclesiasticus 34. We paraphrase; we don't quote Las Casas’s wording of the passage.
Historia natural y moral de las Indias, Book IV, chapter 8: the mines of Potosí
José de Acosta · 1590
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
[Summary, not a quotation. The Jesuit Acosta describes miners climbing out of the Potosí mines on ladders made of three twisted cowhide cords with wooden rungs, carrying ore in bags on their backs, with the first climber holding a candle tied to his thumb.]
Sourcing
Historical situation
Published in Seville in 1590. Acosta, a Jesuit, spent years in Peru in the 1570s and 1580s and saw Potosí after Viceroy Toledo organized the mita.
Intended audience
Educated readers in Spain and across Europe, curious about the natural history of the New World.
Purpose
To describe the Indies’ nature and peoples and to explain them to Europeans, including what silver mining cost in labor.
Point of view
A Spanish Jesuit who accepted Spanish rule and the mission to convert, yet wrote as an eyewitness of the miners’ working conditions.
José de Acosta, Historia natural y moral de las Indias (Seville: Juan de León, 1590), IV.8; The Natural & Moral History of the Indies, trans. Edward Grimston (1604), ed. Clements R. Markham, vol.1 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1880), pp.205–208, especially p.208 for the candle and ladder. Our narration is a paraphrase; no new exact English quotation is claimed.
Potosí’s coat of arms, drawn by Guamán Poma for El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno
Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala · c. 1615
Facsimile. A reproduction of the source image. The accompanying description is editorial.
Background: not shown on screen.
Guamán Poma’s Potosí · drawing 376 · page [1066] Royal Danish Library, GKS 2232 4°, p. [1066] · public domain
[Guamán Poma’s pen drawing of the coat of arms of Potosí: a cross stands on the Cerro Rico, six Andean furnaces burn on the smaller hill, and a crowned double-headed eagle holds two columns between the peaks. Castles and lions fill the shield below. Under it he wrote EGO FVLCIO COLLVMNAS EIVS, “I strengthen its columns.”]
Sourcing
Historical situation
Drawn about 1615, near the end of some thirty years of work on a book of about 1,190 pages and about 400 drawings, in the decades after Viceroy Toledo organized the mita.
Intended audience
King Philip III of Spain, to whom the book is addressed. There is no sign the king ever read it.
Purpose
To show the king how Spanish officials, priests and mine owners treated Andean people, and to argue for “good government” that would restore Andean lords’ authority.
Point of view
An Andean nobleman and a Christian who wrote in Spanish and Quechua. He claims high status and blames Spanish officials, not the king.
Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala, El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno (c. 1615), Royal Danish Library, Copenhagen, GKS 2232 4°, drawing 376, “The coat of arms of Potosí, ‘Ego fulcio collumnas eius’,” modern page [1066]. The leaf was added to the manuscript later and left unnumbered by the author; his explanation follows on page [1067] (Royal Danish Library digital edition). Image: the library’s own scan, public domain.
Directorio para confesores: “Lords who hold temporal government over vassals”
Third Mexican Provincial Council · 1585
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
[Summary, not a quotation. The council’s guide for confessors has a section on lords who hold temporal government over vassals. It tells confessors to question them about whether they took more tribute or labor from their Native vassals than the law allowed.]
Sourcing
Historical situation
Issued in Mexico City in 1585 by the Church’s Third Provincial Council, a generation after the New Laws and the end of most personal-service labor for encomenderos.
Intended audience
Priests hearing the confessions of Spanish encomenderos and other lords over Native towns.
Purpose
To teach confessors what to ask and what to require of men who held Native people’s tribute and labor.
Point of view
The colonial Church hierarchy. It set limits on Spanish landholders while depending on them, and it spoke for Native people rather than with them.
Directorio para confesores (Third Mexican Provincial Council, 1585), section “Lords Who Hold Temporal Government over Vassals,” in Richard Boyer and Geoffrey Spurling, eds., Colonial Lives (Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 35–36. Summary by us; the printed page was not re-read word for word.
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
English translation by Matthew Restall (2000 edition)
I, Juan Garrido, black resident [de color negro vecino] of this city [Mexico], appear before Your Mercy … all of which I did at my own expense without being given either salary or allotment of natives [repartimiento de indios] or anything else. … I was the first to have the inspiration to sow wheat here in New Spain and to see if it took; I did this and experimented at my own expense.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Filed in Mexico City in 1538, about seventeen years after the fall of Tenochtitlan, by a free Black man who had fought in the conquest and was then about fifty-eight.
Intended audience
Spanish officials in Mexico City who could grant rewards for service, and the Crown behind them.
Purpose
To put his services on record and claim the rewards Spanish conquerors expected, such as an allotment or a grant.
Point of view
A free African conquistador, formerly of Lisbon, who stresses his loyalty and his own expense. He also worked gold with enslaved people of his own.
Juan Garrido, probanza of September 27, 1538 (Archivo General de Indias, México 204, f. 1), trans. Matthew Restall, “Black Conquistadors,” The Americas 57:2 (2000), p. 171; the wheat line as corrected in Restall, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest (2003). Life details from Peter Gerhard, “A Black Conquistador in Mexico,” HAHR 58:3 (1978). Status correction: the wheat sentence combines the first-person framing of Restall 2000 with the correction quoted in third person in Seven Myths (2003), p. 56. That hybrid is an adaptation, not a verbatim published translation; the petition opening and no-allotment clause remain exact excerpts.
Nahua featherworkers, school of Pedro de Gante, under don Diego de Alvarado Huanitzin · 1539
Photograph. An image of the source. The accompanying description is editorial.
Background: not shown on screen.
The Mass of St. Gregory · feathers on wood, Mexico City, 1539 · Musée des Amériques, Auch Musée des Amériques – Auch · photo Didier Descouens, CC BY-SA 4.0
[Feather mosaic on wood, The Mass of St. Gregory: Christ rises from the tomb on the altar above the kneeling pope, ringed by the instruments of the Passion, every color made of glued feathers. Its Latin border names Pope Paul III, “lord Diego, the governor” (DOMINO DIDACO GUBERNATORE), and the year 1539.]
Sourcing
Historical situation
Made in Mexico City in 1539, when don Diego de Alvarado Huanitzin, a Nahua noble, governed the Native city under the Spanish viceroy.
Intended audience
Pope Paul III, to whom the border dedicates it. It probably never reached him.
Purpose
To present a Christian image in a Nahua craft, made with rare feathers, as a gift for the pope.
Point of view
Nahua artists working under a Native governor and a Franciscan friar, showing Nahua skill in Europe’s religious imagery. No words of Huanitzin’s survive.
The Mass of St. Gregory, feather mosaic on wood (Mexico City, 1539), 68 × 56 cm, Musée des Amériques – Auch, inv. 013.06.001; the border reads to Pope Paul III and “lord Diego, governor,” 1539. Makers and patron as identified by our research notes. Photo: Didier Descouens (2025), CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons, File:(Auch) Messe de saint Grégoire - Musée des Amériques – Auch.jpg.
De Español y Torna atrás, Tente en el aire: casta painting no. 8 by Miguel Cabrera
Miguel Cabrera · 1763
Facsimile. A reproduction of the source image. The accompanying description is editorial.
Background: not shown on screen.
Miguel Cabrera · no. 8 of 16 · Mexico City, 1763 Wikimedia Commons · public domain
[Miguel Cabrera’s casta painting no. 8, from his set of sixteen made in Mexico City in 1763: a Spanish father in a red cape and the mother hold their small son, and a boy carries in a plate of bread. The label across the top reads “De Español, y Torna atras, Tente en el ayre”: from a Spaniard and a torna atrás, a tente en el aire.]
Sourcing
Historical situation
Painted in Mexico City in 1763, two centuries after the plaza scene, when casta paintings were a genre for Spanish and creole patrons.
Intended audience
Wealthy colonial and European buyers who wanted a tidy picture of Mexico’s peoples.
Purpose
To rank every mixture of Spanish, Native and African ancestry, box by box, and to show a neat social order.
Point of view
A painter working for elite patrons. The people in the pictures did not make them, and real life was far less tidy than the labels.
Miguel Cabrera, “De Español, y Torna atras, Tente en el ayre,” no. 8 of his set of sixteen casta paintings (Mexico City, 1763), oil on canvas. Image: Wikimedia Commons, File:Castas 08tentenelaire max.jpg, public domain. We don't use the genre as evidence of how the 1538 plaza worked.
Letter to Charles V on a conspiracy of enslaved Africans
Antonio de Mendoza, viceroy of New Spain · December 10, 1537
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
[Summary, not a quotation. The viceroy tells the emperor of a plot by Black people in Mexico City who, he says, had chosen a king. About two dozen were put to death in Mexico City and at the Amatepec mines. The plot was never proved.]
Sourcing
Historical situation
Written in December 1537 about an alleged plot the viceroy said he learned of in September.
Intended audience
Emperor Charles V and the Council of the Indies.
Purpose
To show the Crown that the viceroy had acted to keep order in New Spain.
Point of view
A Spanish viceroy justifying executions. The accused left no account, and the plot was never proved.
Antonio de Mendoza to Charles V (December 10, 1537), Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organización de las antiguas posesiones españolas de América y Oceanía, 1st series, vol. 2 (Madrid, 1864), pp. 198–199. Summary by us.
Las Siete Partidas, Partida IV, titles 5, 21 and 22
Alfonso X of Castile · c. 1265
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
[Summary, not a quotation. Partida IV says enslaved Christians may marry even against their owners’ will, and that a married couple with one owner may not be sold to different regions. A child follows the mother’s status. An enslaved person treated with extreme cruelty may complain to a judge. Freedom for a price needs the owner’s agreement.]
Sourcing
Historical situation
Compiled in Castile in the thirteenth century and still the base of Spanish law on slavery when Spain’s empire began in the Americas.
Intended audience
Judges, officials and owners in Castile and, later, its colonies.
Purpose
To set rules on marriage, slavery and freedom in one legal code.
Point of view
A medieval king’s law code. It gives enslaved people some rights while treating them as property, and it was written long before Spain’s Atlantic slave trade.
Las Siete Partidas, Partida IV, titles 5, 21 and 22 (c. 1265), trans. Samuel Parsons Scott, ed. Robert I. Burns (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001). Summary by us; the printed text was not re-read word for word.
Royal reply to Governor Ovando on enslaved Africans fleeing on Hispaniola
Ferdinand and Isabella · March 1503
Verbatim. The original words, unchanged.
Background: not shown on screen.
English translation
Concerning the black slaves that you say should not be sent there [to Hispaniola], because there they have escaped, regarding this issue we command that what you say be done.
Spanish original: … en quanto a los de los negros esclavos que dizes que no se enbien allá porque los que allá auia se han huydo en esto nos mandaremos se faga como lo dezis.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Written in March 1503, soon after the first enslaved Africans arrived on Hispaniola and some escaped into the mountains. Ovando asked that no more be sent.
Intended audience
Nicolás de Ovando, governor of Hispaniola.
Purpose
To answer his request by agreeing to stop sending enslaved Africans for now.
Point of view
The Crown replying to its governor. The escaped people left no record; by 1505 Ovando himself was asking for more.
Ferdinand and Isabella to Nicolás de Ovando (March 1503), Archivo General de Indias; translation as printed by the Lowcountry Digital History Initiative, “African Laborers for a New Empire,” from the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute’s “First Blacks in the Americas” archive. The catalogs disagree on the day.
Codex Osuna: the painted complaint of the Native government of Mexico City
Nahua officials of Mexico City · 1565
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
[Summary, not a quotation. A long painted paper in the Nahua manner shows men hauling and cutting stone and other labor demanded of Native towns. It records unpaid work and goods, with Nahuatl and Spanish glosses added by Spanish officials.]
Sourcing
Historical situation
Made in 1565 during a royal inspection (visita) of New Spain led by Jerónimo de Valderrama, which took Native complaints against the viceroy’s government.
Intended audience
The royal inspector and, behind him, the Crown.
Purpose
To press claims for unpaid labor and goods that Native officials say the colonial government owed their towns.
Point of view
Nahua town officials using painted pictures in the courts of the colonial system. Spanish scribes added glosses, so the record passed through Spanish hands.
Compelled work by legally free people — our translation
Isabella I of Castile · December 20, 1503
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
English translation
Spanish anchors: el dia que trabajare, el jornal y mantenimiento; lo cual hagan é cumplan como personas libres, como lo son, y no como siervos.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Hispaniola’s colonists sought Native labor while the Crown described Native people as free vassals.
Intended audience
Governor Nicolás de Ovando.
Purpose
Compel remunerated labor and Christian instruction.
Point of view
A royal prescription, not evidence of voluntary consent or actual payment.
Isabella to Nicolás de Ovando, Medina del Campo, 20 December 1503; transcribed in Bartolomé de las Casas, Historia de las Indias II.14, vol. 3 (Madrid: Miguel Ginesta, 1875), pp. 81–83. English is our translation and abridgment, not Parry and Keith’s wording.
Frank Moya Pons, reconstructing colonial counts · 1508–1514
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
[Data summary.] About 60,000 (1508); 33,523 (1510); 26,334 (1514). These concern Taíno under Spanish control, not everyone alive on Hispaniola. Death, flight and changes in enumeration affect comparisons. Documented smallpox followed in late 1518.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Early colonization reduced and displaced Native communities before the documented smallpox epidemic.
Intended audience
Historians interpreting colonial enumeration.
Purpose
Reconstruct the population visible to colonial administration.
Point of view
Administrative categories exclude fugitives. The series is not an exact island population census or a death tally.
Frank Moya Pons, “Datos para el estudio de la demografía aborigen,” Jahrbuch für Geschichte Lateinamerikas 16 (1979), DOI 10.7788/jbla-1979-0103; Frank Moya Pons, “La población taína y su desaparición,” in Moya Pons, ed., Historia de la República Dominicana, vol.2 (Madrid: CSIC / Doce Calles, 2010), pp.20–22, cuadro 1, citing Moya Pons 1992a and AGI Patronato 172, R.4. The earlier 1979 cut gives 25,503 for 1514; the later fuller table gives 26,334. Massimo Livi-Bacci, “Return to Hispaniola,” HAHR 83(1) (2003): 3–51; David Henige, “When Did Smallpox Reach the New World (and Why Does It Matter)?,” in Africans in Bondage (1986), pp. 11–26. Independently corroborated by Ida Altman, “The Revolt of Enriquillo,” The Americas 63(4) (2007), p.593 n.15, which gives 60,000 / 33,523 / 26,334 and notes that mountain refugees may be excluded.
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
[Summary of the translated letter.] Three trusted royal officers were to distinguish captives from free people before approving embarkation. Afonso sought to protect free subjects and royal authority while permitting sales he regarded as lawful.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Portuguese merchants and local suppliers seized people whom Afonso considered free.
Intended audience
João III of Portugal.
Purpose
Control sales and prevent unlawful enslavement of the king’s subjects.
Point of view
A Christian African ruler who also held and traded captives; neither powerless nor an opponent of every form of slavery.
Afonso I to João III, 18 October 1526, in Basil Davidson, The African Past (Boston: Little, Brown, 1964), pp.191–193; Portuguese in António Brásio, Monumenta Missionaria Africana, ser. I, vol. I (Lisbon, 1952), doc.147, p.490. Read alongside the distinct letter of 6 July 1526.
Margarita de Sossa and witnesses, through legal records and Chloe L. Ireton · 1588 / 1594
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
[First-person adaptation.] My father was Juan de Cáceres, a merchant of Oporto. My mother was Lucía, a Black woman of Madeira.
Sourcing
Historical situation
A 1594 Inquisition case preserves Margarita’s testimony and her earlier 1588 marital litigation.
Intended audience
Ecclesiastical and inquisitorial officials, with conflicting witnesses.
Purpose
Defend freedom, earnings and reputation, or challenge those claims.
Point of view
The record is mediated by scribes, legal strategy and Ireton’s English. Ancestry, gender, property and reputation intersect; no one label determines every right.
Chloe L. Ireton, “Margarita de Sossa, Sixteenth-Century Puebla de los Ángeles, New Spain (Mexico),” in Erica L. Ball, Tatiana Seijas and Terri L. Snyder, eds., As If She Were Free: A Collective Biography of Women and Emancipation in the Americas (Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp.27–42, DOI 10.1017/9781108623957; AGN, Inquisición, vol.208, exp.3. Printed p.29 n.7; AGN ff.80–82. Parentage comes through third-person narration; first-person English is authored by us, not a verbatim deposition. Her mother’s birthplace does not establish that she worked in Madeira’s cane fields.
Our reconstruction of inquisitorial procedure · 1588 / 1594
Dramatization. Dramatized, based on the record.
Background: not shown on screen.
[Dramatization.] Questions about ancestry, life history, the arrest and accusations reconstruct the procedure. These are not transcribed words of a particular inquisitor.
Sourcing
Historical situation
A 1594 Inquisition case preserves Margarita’s testimony and her earlier 1588 marital litigation.
Intended audience
Ecclesiastical and inquisitorial officials, with conflicting witnesses.
Purpose
Defend freedom, earnings and reputation, or challenge those claims.
Point of view
The record is mediated by scribes, legal strategy and Ireton’s English. Ancestry, gender, property and reputation intersect; no one label determines every right.
Chloe L. Ireton, “Margarita de Sossa, Sixteenth-Century Puebla de los Ángeles, New Spain (Mexico),” in Erica L. Ball, Tatiana Seijas and Terri L. Snyder, eds., As If She Were Free: A Collective Biography of Women and Emancipation in the Americas (Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp.27–42, DOI 10.1017/9781108623957; AGN, Inquisición, vol.208, exp.3. Printed pp.28–29,40. Discurso de vida is described by Ireton; connective questions and encounter staging are invented.
Margarita de Sossa and witnesses, through legal records and Chloe L. Ireton · 1588 / 1594
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
[Summary.] Hired out as a healer, Margarita retained part of her earnings and said they financed her manumission. Later she owned an enslaved woman. Individual freedom did not end the slavery of others.
Sourcing
Historical situation
A 1594 Inquisition case preserves Margarita’s testimony and her earlier 1588 marital litigation.
Intended audience
Ecclesiastical and inquisitorial officials, with conflicting witnesses.
Purpose
Defend freedom, earnings and reputation, or challenge those claims.
Point of view
The record is mediated by scribes, legal strategy and Ireton’s English. Ancestry, gender, property and reputation intersect; no one label determines every right.
Chloe L. Ireton, “Margarita de Sossa, Sixteenth-Century Puebla de los Ángeles, New Spain (Mexico),” in Erica L. Ball, Tatiana Seijas and Terri L. Snyder, eds., As If She Were Free: A Collective Biography of Women and Emancipation in the Americas (Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp.27–42, DOI 10.1017/9781108623957; AGN, Inquisición, vol.208, exp.3. Printed pp.28,33–37; self-purchase assertion p.37 n.34, AGN ff.102–103v; slaveholding pp.34–35. Her former owner Ribas corroborated earnings from healing (p.38). Neither exact purchase price nor universal right to buy freedom is supplied.
Margarita de Sossa and witnesses, through legal records and Chloe L. Ireton · 1588 / 1594
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
English translation
[First-person adaptation.] From my work.
Sourcing
Historical situation
A 1594 Inquisition case preserves Margarita’s testimony and her earlier 1588 marital litigation.
Intended audience
Ecclesiastical and inquisitorial officials, with conflicting witnesses.
Purpose
Defend freedom, earnings and reputation, or challenge those claims.
Point of view
The record is mediated by scribes, legal strategy and Ireton’s English. Ancestry, gender, property and reputation intersect; no one label determines every right.
Chloe L. Ireton, “Margarita de Sossa, Sixteenth-Century Puebla de los Ángeles, New Spain (Mexico),” in Erica L. Ball, Tatiana Seijas and Terri L. Snyder, eds., As If She Were Free: A Collective Biography of Women and Emancipation in the Americas (Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp.27–42, DOI 10.1017/9781108623957; AGN, Inquisición, vol.208, exp.3. Printed p.37 n.34; AGN ff.102–103v. This is a shortened adaptation, not the complete translated declaration.
Margarita de Sossa and witnesses, through legal records and Chloe L. Ireton · 1588 / 1594
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
[First-person adaptation.] Let me live apart from him. Stop him from hurting me. Require him to provide my food.
Sourcing
Historical situation
A 1594 Inquisition case preserves Margarita’s testimony and her earlier 1588 marital litigation.
Intended audience
Ecclesiastical and inquisitorial officials, with conflicting witnesses.
Purpose
Defend freedom, earnings and reputation, or challenge those claims.
Point of view
The record is mediated by scribes, legal strategy and Ireton’s English. Ancestry, gender, property and reputation intersect; no one label determines every right.
Chloe L. Ireton, “Margarita de Sossa, Sixteenth-Century Puebla de los Ángeles, New Spain (Mexico),” in Erica L. Ball, Tatiana Seijas and Terri L. Snyder, eds., As If She Were Free: A Collective Biography of Women and Emancipation in the Americas (Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp.27–42, DOI 10.1017/9781108623957; AGN, Inquisición, vol.208, exp.3. Printed pp.35–39; AGN ff.97–97v,102–103v. Ecclesiastical divorce meant separation, not dissolution permitting remarriage. Interim protection and maintenance are documented; final decree uncertain.
Antonio Álvarez, through his complaint and our adaptation · 1588 / 1594
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
[Adaptation.] She is out all day with Juana Limpias, a free Black woman. I cannot keep her in the house.
Sourcing
Historical situation
A 1594 Inquisition case preserves Margarita’s testimony and her earlier 1588 marital litigation.
Intended audience
Ecclesiastical and inquisitorial officials, with conflicting witnesses.
Purpose
Defend freedom, earnings and reputation, or challenge those claims.
Point of view
The record is mediated by scribes, legal strategy and Ireton’s English. Ancestry, gender, property and reputation intersect; no one label determines every right.
Chloe L. Ireton, “Margarita de Sossa, Sixteenth-Century Puebla de los Ángeles, New Spain (Mexico),” in Erica L. Ball, Tatiana Seijas and Terri L. Snyder, eds., As If She Were Free: A Collective Biography of Women and Emancipation in the Americas (Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp.27–42, DOI 10.1017/9781108623957; AGN, Inquisición, vol.208, exp.3. Printed p.39 n.43; AGN ff.218–219v. The first statement paraphrases his complaint; the last is dramatic interpretation, not Ireton’s quotation. His earlier testimony is recalled; he had left New Spain by the 1594 hearing.
Margarita de Sossa and witnesses, through legal records and Chloe L. Ireton · 1588 / 1594
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
[Adaptation.] Send to Puebla for the earlier case. Read what my enemies swore there.
Sourcing
Historical situation
A 1594 Inquisition case preserves Margarita’s testimony and her earlier 1588 marital litigation.
Intended audience
Ecclesiastical and inquisitorial officials, with conflicting witnesses.
Purpose
Defend freedom, earnings and reputation, or challenge those claims.
Point of view
The record is mediated by scribes, legal strategy and Ireton’s English. Ancestry, gender, property and reputation intersect; no one label determines every right.
Chloe L. Ireton, “Margarita de Sossa, Sixteenth-Century Puebla de los Ángeles, New Spain (Mexico),” in Erica L. Ball, Tatiana Seijas and Terri L. Snyder, eds., As If She Were Free: A Collective Biography of Women and Emancipation in the Americas (Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp.27–42, DOI 10.1017/9781108623957. AGN, Inquisición, vol.208, exp.3. Printed p.40 explicitly reports her demand, and p.41 the officials’ request. AGN ff.81–97,40,91–91v. Exact first-person words are not supplied.
Alonso Hernández de Santiago, translated by Chloe L. Ireton · 1588 / 1594
Verbatim. The original words, unchanged.
Background: not shown on screen.
English translation by Chloe L. Ireton
It was a false testimony, and that is what I declared in the court case.
Sourcing
Historical situation
A 1594 Inquisition case preserves Margarita’s testimony and her earlier 1588 marital litigation.
Intended audience
Ecclesiastical and inquisitorial officials, with conflicting witnesses.
Purpose
Defend freedom, earnings and reputation, or challenge those claims.
Point of view
The record is mediated by scribes, legal strategy and Ireton’s English. Ancestry, gender, property and reputation intersect; no one label determines every right.
Chloe L. Ireton, “Margarita de Sossa, Sixteenth-Century Puebla de los Ángeles, New Spain (Mexico),” in Erica L. Ball, Tatiana Seijas and Terri L. Snyder, eds., As If She Were Free: A Collective Biography of Women and Emancipation in the Americas (Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp.27–42, DOI 10.1017/9781108623957; AGN, Inquisición, vol.208, exp.3. Printed p.41 n.50; AGN f.40. Ireton’s translated letter: the denial concerns the alleged powders/witchcraft testimony, not his reason for selling her. Printed p.40 identifies him as commissary (comisario) for Puebla and Tlaxcala.
Margarita de Sossa and witnesses, through legal records and Chloe L. Ireton · 1588 / 1594
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
[Summary.] On 26 September 1594 the inquisitors allowed Margarita to return to Puebla unless new evidence arose. Her earlier case helped discredit Gallardo. No final closure is established.
Sourcing
Historical situation
A 1594 Inquisition case preserves Margarita’s testimony and her earlier 1588 marital litigation.
Intended audience
Ecclesiastical and inquisitorial officials, with conflicting witnesses.
Purpose
Defend freedom, earnings and reputation, or challenge those claims.
Point of view
The record is mediated by scribes, legal strategy and Ireton’s English. Ancestry, gender, property and reputation intersect; no one label determines every right.
Chloe L. Ireton, “Margarita de Sossa, Sixteenth-Century Puebla de los Ángeles, New Spain (Mexico),” in Erica L. Ball, Tatiana Seijas and Terri L. Snyder, eds., As If She Were Free: A Collective Biography of Women and Emancipation in the Americas (Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp.27–42, DOI 10.1017/9781108623957; AGN, Inquisición, vol.208, exp.3. Printed pp.40–42, particularly p.41 nn.50–52; AGN f.40,90,91–91v. Ireton’s conclusion also uses acquittal, but the specific conditional order is narrower. The prior divorce record survived within the Inquisition file.
Our writers, based on Ireton’s account · 1588 / 1594
Dramatization. Dramatized, based on the record.
Background: not shown on screen.
[Dramatization.] The scene combines earlier depositions, a letter and 1594 hearings. First-person replies, simultaneous witnesses and the confession branch are authored choices, not one historical transcript or a sentence actually imposed on Margarita.
Sourcing
Historical situation
A 1594 Inquisition case preserves Margarita’s testimony and her earlier 1588 marital litigation.
Intended audience
Ecclesiastical and inquisitorial officials, with conflicting witnesses.
Purpose
Defend freedom, earnings and reputation, or challenge those claims.
Point of view
The record is mediated by scribes, legal strategy and Ireton’s English. Ancestry, gender, property and reputation intersect; no one label determines every right.
Chloe L. Ireton, “Margarita de Sossa, Sixteenth-Century Puebla de los Ángeles, New Spain (Mexico),” in Erica L. Ball, Tatiana Seijas and Terri L. Snyder, eds., As If She Were Free: A Collective Biography of Women and Emancipation in the Americas (Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp.27–42, DOI 10.1017/9781108623957; AGN, Inquisición, vol.208, exp.3. Printed pp.27–42, especially p.42 for possible punishments after conviction. The 1588 husband testimony and Santiago’s letter are staged as encounters. No punishment follows automatically from any chosen reply.
Letter in the name of don Enrique (Enriquillo) · June 6, 1534
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
Spanish anchor: despues de yo aver ydo asegurar algunos cimarrones. [Our translation.] After I had gone to secure some cimarrones. The letter does not mention four shirts.
Sourcing
Historical situation
After his peace with the Crown, Enriquillo reported service to the emperor.
Intended audience
Charles V and the imperial administration.
Purpose
Present himself as a loyal vassal contributing to peace.
Point of view
A self-presentational letter mediated by writing and later transcription. Asegurar does not alone prove hunting, capture, African identity or payment.
Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi, “Una Carta de Enriquillo,” Clío 114 (1959), pp.15–17, transcription of letter dated Santo Domingo, 6 June 1534. The damaged signature survives only in part. No archival call number was confirmed on these pages.
P. J. Bakewell; editorial synthesis · study published 1971
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
[Scholarly summary.] Zacatecas, founded after the 1546 silver strike, drew hired Indigenous workers and enslaved Africans. Elsewhere in New Spain, rotating drafts supplied labor. Encomienda tribute, repartimiento, wage work and slavery overlapped; reforms did not create one uniform replacement system.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Silver towns developed different recruitment patterns from central Mexican towns.
Intended audience
Readers of colonial economic and social history.
Purpose
Explain labor supply in a specific mining region.
Point of view
Regional scholarship cannot establish a uniform empire-wide sequence. Paid labor could coexist with coercion.
P. J. Bakewell, Silver Mining and Society in Colonial Mexico: Zacatecas, 1546–1700 (Cambridge University Press, 1971), chapter 6, “The Circumstances of Mining,” pp.114–149, DOI 10.1017/CBO9780511572692.008; Charles Gibson, The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule (Stanford University Press, 1964), labor chapters.
The missing-mita pretext — prose beside drawing 211
Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala · c. 1615
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
Spanish: Toda la dicha molestia y afrenta lo haze con color de que falta algunos yndios de la mita.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Mine authorities imposed obligations on Native leaders and communities.
Intended audience
The Spanish king.
Purpose
Denounce punishment and the pretexts used to enforce the draft.
Point of view
An Andean author’s critique written after 1600. Supports a reported pattern, not an eyewitness record of the fictional Monday scene.
Guaman Poma, Nueva corónica, author’s p.526, manuscript [530], following drawing 211 on [529]. Royal Danish Library, GKS 2232 4°. The missing-mita wording is in prose, not the drawing caption.
Limaylla’s litigation count, not a Potosí death tally
Don Carlos Limaylla, through interpreter and notary · November 1570
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
[Our translation, abridged.] During the eight months of that lawsuit, forty-nine Indians died traveling between Lima and the repartimiento and in Lima, including five caciques.
Sourcing
Historical situation
A Jauja leader accounted for costs of litigation after an accusation of making lances.
Intended audience
Viceroy Toledo’s officials.
Purpose
Document community losses using testimony and khipu accounting.
Point of view
Mediated Indigenous testimony. Forty-nine includes deaths in Lima and travel; these are not Potosí mita deaths or a measured 1570 annual mortality rate.
Mónica Medelius and José Carlos de la Puente Luna, “Curacas, bienes y quipus en un documento toledano (Jauja, 1570),” Histórica 28(2) (2004): 35–82, pp.65–66 (manuscript f.3v), DOI 10.18800/historica.200402.002. AGI Lima 28A, 63Q, as identified by the editors; testimony via Pedro Xuárez de Carvajal before scribe Melchor Pérez de Maridiena.
Las Casas recalls refusing fifteen days to reconsider
Bartolomé de las Casas · 1514 event
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
[Our translation of reported speech.] Sir, count the fifteen days as passed.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Las Casas relinquished his claim to Native labor in Cuba.
Intended audience
Readers of his later historical account.
Purpose
Recount his change of position and refusal to reconsider.
Point of view
Retrospective self-report, not a contemporaneous transcript. Our English is a new translation; no published English wording is claimed.
Bartolomé de las Casas, Historia de las Indias, book III, chapter 79, vol.4 (Madrid: Miguel Ginesta, 1875), digitized as Project Gutenberg 56283. Spanish: haced, señor, cuenta que los quince dias son pasados. The private exchange preceded the public Assumption sermon of 15 August 1514; the Indians were not thereby manumitted.
Las Casas judges his former remedy — abridged translation
Our adaptation of Bartolomé de las Casas · c. 1561
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
English translation
Spanish anchor: ser tan injusto el captiverio de los negros como el de los indios, no fué discreto remedio. English spoken adaptation: The captivity of the Blacks is as unjust as that of the Indians. It was no wise remedy.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Late in life Las Casas reconsidered recommending enslaved Africans as relief for Native laborers.
Intended audience
Future readers of his history.
Purpose
Acknowledge his error and the injustice of African captivity.
Point of view
A former encomendero assessing his own responsibility. He did not initiate African slavery or end it by repenting.
Bartolomé de las Casas, Historia de las Indias III.129, vol.V (Madrid1876),p30; Project Gutenberg53131. Our abridged English translation of ser tan injusto el captiverio de los negros como el de los indios, no fué discreto remedio. Original refers to Las Casas in the third person as the cleric.
Luis Capoche; Jeffrey A. Cole; editorial synthesis · 1570s reforms
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
[Summary.] Toledo adapted an Andean rotational labor institution to colonial extraction. Capoche described an annual contingent of 13,340 men, with provincial shares varying around one in seven tributary men. Families accompanied workers. Annual contingent and simultaneous working shift are different quantities.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Silver production expanded under Toledo’s administrative and refining reforms.
Intended audience
Viceroy and administrators; later historians.
Purpose
Describe recruitment and the costs of colonial mining.
Point of view
Capoche owned mining/refining interests. Quantities require date and denominator.
Luis Capoche, Relación general de la Villa Imperial de Potosí (1585), ed. Lewis Hanke, BAE 122 (Madrid: Atlas, 1959), account of the draft and provincial tables; Jeffrey A. Cole, The Potosí Mita, 1573–1700 (Stanford University Press, 1985). Capoche’s total is not Toledo’s initial 1573 quota, which changed in the 1570s. One in seven is an approximate summary, not an identical rate imposed in every province.
Fixed demand and a changing denominator — illustration
Our writers
Dramatization. Dramatized, based on the record.
Background: not shown on screen.
English translation by Clark (1942 edition)
[Invented arithmetic illustration.] Model A: 700 eligible men, demand 100. Model B: 350 eligible men, demand 100. The demands per 100 eligible men are 14.3 and 28.6. A separate scenario supposes B supplies 50 men and pays for 50 missing places. These are alternatives, not a measured historical decline, mortality series, price or personal selection probability.
Sourcing
Historical situation
The model illustrates pressure on communities responsible for labor obligations.
Intended audience
Students practicing quantitative reasoning.
Purpose
Distinguish a fixed demand from the changing number eligible to meet it.
Point of view
All numerical inputs are authored assumptions. The cited historians support the coercive mechanisms, not these quantities. Models A and B are alternative cases, not successive censuses.
Our arithmetic illustration. Historical mechanism contextualized by Luis Capoche, Relación general (1585), ed. Hanke (1959), pp.158–169; Antonio Vázquez de Espinosa, Compendium, trans. Clark (1942), §§1652–1654; Jeffrey A. Cole, The Potosí Mita (1985). No source is claimed for the invented numerical inputs.
Isabel de Olvera, through a notarial record and published translation · Querétaro, 1600
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
English translation
The BLM reproduction ends: I demand justice. Isabel. Our longer first-person wording is a paraphrase. Do not attach unverified witness names to this source.
Sourcing
Historical situation
A free woman of African and Native parentage sought proof of status before joining the 1600 reinforcements for New Mexico.
Intended audience
Querétaro magistrate and officials who might later question her rights.
Purpose
Obtain an authenticated declaration of freedom and unmarried status.
Point of view
Her claim comes through legal formulas and translation. The document shows an effort to defend rights, not a guarantee of safety or equality.
Mary Jean Cook, “Daughters of the Camino Real,” in Gabrielle G. Palmer, compiler, June-el Piper and LouAnn Jacobson, eds., El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, New Mexico BLM Cultural Resources Series 11 (1993), p.149, petition reproduction and discussion. This edition’s text layer was opened; Hammond and Rey, Don Juan de Oñate (1953), was not independently inspected, so its alleged exact pages, precise January day and witness names are not certified here. BLM prints mulatto, whereas other reprints print mulatta. We paraphrase rather than combining translations.
Comparing incorporation, settlement and dispossession
Our synthesis using the College Board course framework · CED effective Fall 2026
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
[Qualified synthesis.] Spanish institutions often incorporated Native communities and Africans into unequal colonial society. Many English settlements expanded through dispossession and separation. Neither empire followed one pattern everywhere, and incorporation did not mean equality or voluntary consent.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Different colonial settlement and extraction strategies developed over time.
Intended audience
AP U.S. History students.
Purpose
Compare broad patterns while retaining variation and Native agency.
Point of view
A curricular synthesis, not a primary observation; neither absolute separation nor universal incorporation follows from it.
College Board, AP U.S. History Course and Exam Description, effective Fall 2026, Topic 1.5, LO E, KC-1.2.II.B–D, and Topic 2.2, KC-2.1.I.A–C. This is a teaching comparison across periods, not a claim that all seventeenth-century English arrangements already existed in 1600.
Frank Moya Pons, reconstructing colonial counts · 1508–1514
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
[Data summary.] About 60,000 (1508); 33,523 (1510); 26,334 (1514). These concern Taíno under Spanish control, not everyone alive on Hispaniola. Death, flight and changes in enumeration affect comparisons. Documented smallpox followed in late 1518.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Early colonization reduced and displaced Native communities before the documented smallpox epidemic.
Intended audience
Historians interpreting colonial enumeration.
Purpose
Reconstruct the population visible to colonial administration.
Point of view
Administrative categories exclude fugitives. The series is not an exact island population census or a death tally.
Frank Moya Pons, “Datos para el estudio de la demografía aborigen,” Jahrbuch für Geschichte Lateinamerikas 16 (1979), DOI 10.7788/jbla-1979-0103; Frank Moya Pons, “La población taína y su desaparición,” in Moya Pons, ed., Historia de la República Dominicana, vol.2 (Madrid: CSIC / Doce Calles, 2010), pp.20–22, cuadro 1, citing Moya Pons 1992a and AGI Patronato 172, R.4. The earlier 1979 cut gives 25,503 for 1514; the later fuller table gives 26,334. Massimo Livi-Bacci, “Return to Hispaniola,” HAHR 83(1) (2003): 3–51; David Henige, “When Did Smallpox Reach the New World (and Why Does It Matter)?,” in Africans in Bondage (1986), pp. 11–26. Independently corroborated by Ida Altman, “The Revolt of Enriquillo,” The Americas 63(4) (2007), p.593 n.15, which gives 60,000 / 33,523 / 26,334 and notes that mountain refugees may be excluded.
Margarita de Sossa and witnesses, through legal records and Chloe L. Ireton · 1588 / 1594
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
[First-person adaptation.] Margarita recalled refusing to continue the coerced sexual relationship imposed by her Lisbon owner. The record does not describe exactly how she resisted or every consequence.
Sourcing
Historical situation
A 1594 Inquisition case preserves Margarita’s testimony and her earlier 1588 marital litigation.
Intended audience
Ecclesiastical and inquisitorial officials, with conflicting witnesses.
Purpose
Defend freedom, earnings and reputation, or challenge those claims.
Point of view
The record is mediated by scribes, legal strategy and Ireton’s English. Ancestry, gender, property and reputation intersect; no one label determines every right.
Chloe L. Ireton, “Margarita de Sossa, Sixteenth-Century Puebla de los Ángeles, New Spain (Mexico),” in Erica L. Ball, Tatiana Seijas and Terri L. Snyder, eds., As If She Were Free: A Collective Biography of Women and Emancipation in the Americas (Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp.27–42, DOI 10.1017/9781108623957; AGN, Inquisición, vol.208, exp.3. Printed pp.29–30; AGN ff.80–82. First-person scene dialogue paraphrases Ireton’s account; it is not verbatim testimony.
Letter in the name of don Enrique (Enriquillo) · June 6, 1534
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
Spanish anchor: despues de yo aver ydo asegurar algunos cimarrones. [Our translation.] After I had gone to secure some cimarrones. The letter does not mention four shirts.
Sourcing
Historical situation
After his peace with the Crown, Enriquillo reported service to the emperor.
Intended audience
Charles V and the imperial administration.
Purpose
Present himself as a loyal vassal contributing to peace.
Point of view
A self-presentational letter mediated by writing and later transcription. Asegurar does not alone prove hunting, capture, African identity or payment.
Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi, “Una Carta de Enriquillo,” Clío 114 (1959), pp.15–17, transcription of letter dated Santo Domingo, 6 June 1534. The damaged signature survives only in part. No archival call number was confirmed on these pages.
Guaman Poma’s explanation of the missing mita workers
Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala · c. 1615
Verbatim. The original words, unchanged.
Background: not shown on screen.
English translation
Toda la dicha molestia y afrenta lo haze con color de que falta algunos yndios de la mita.
Sourcing
Historical situation
An Andean author described abuses by mine officials after our c.1600 composite scene.
Intended audience
Philip III and potential reformers.
Purpose
Expose the coercion imposed on kurakas for missing workers.
Point of view
An authored critique of a pattern, not an eyewitness report of this fictional Monday. The sentence supplies officials’ asserted pretext, not the author’s endorsement.
Guaman Poma, El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno, Royal Danish Library GKS 2232 4°, author p.526, manuscript [530], prose accompanying drawing 211 on [529]. Our own literal translation of falta algunos yndios de la mita, quoted as the official pretext for punishment in Guaman Poma’s argument. Spanish; we introduce the author retrospectively. It is not text in the drawing caption.
Antonio Álvarez, through court testimony translated by Chloe Ireton · 1588–1589
Verbatim. The original words, unchanged.
Background: not shown on screen.
English translation by Chloe Ireton (2020 edition)
The shorter earlier excerpt remains used in the reconstructed scene: from the morning until the night… accompanied by Juana Limpias, a free black woman.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Margarita’s husband opposed her separation petition and independence.
Intended audience
Ecclesiastical judges; subsequently inquisitors reading the older proceedings.
Purpose
Complain about her absences and companionship.
Point of view
A hostile husband’s testimony; it does not establish that independent movement was wrongdoing. The 1594 scene recalls older testimony rather than placing him physically in the hearing.
Chloe L. Ireton, “Margarita de Sossa,” in As If She Were Free (2020), printed p.39 n.43; AGN Inquisición208,exp.3,ff.218–219v. The husband’s name is Antonio (pp.28–29,34), correcting the earlier source-bank typo Diego. Testimony from his appeal is recalled; he had left New Spain by1594. The appeal itself is not securely dated within the proceedings.
Bartolomé de las Casas; Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo; Malyn Newitt; Alberto Vieira; editorial synthesis
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
[Historical synthesis.] Atlantic island sugar cultivation used enslaved Africans before its expansion in the Americas. Africans reached Hispaniola before Las Casas’s proposal. African labor expanded alongside Native labor; captives resisted and fled. Las Casas later described water-powered sugar mills as requiring at least eighty enslaved workers. The 1521 rising is among the earliest documented collective African revolts in the Americas.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Plantation and mining demands connected Atlantic islands, African societies and Spanish colonies.
Intended audience
Chronicle readers and modern historical readers.
Purpose
Explain expansion and resistance without treating people as interchangeable labor inputs.
Point of view
The records combine colonial arguments and retrospective accounts. African sellers and rulers had different interests, while captives’ resistance is not the policy of a single unified African side.
Alberto Vieira, “Sugar Islands: The Sugar Economy of Madeira and the Canaries, 1450–1650,” in Stuart B. Schwartz, ed., Tropical Babylons: Sugar and the Making of the Atlantic World, 1450–1680 (University of North Carolina Press, 2004), chapter 2, DOI 10.5149/9780807895627_schwartz.7; Malyn Newitt, ed., The Portuguese in West Africa, 1415–1670 (Cambridge University Press, 2010), chapter 3, “The Atlantic Islands.” Las Casas, Historia de las Indias III.129, vol.5 (Madrid, 1876), pp.28–31. Oviedo, Historia general y natural de las Indias, ed. Amador de los Ríos, vol.1 (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1851), IV.4, pp.108–111, puts the rising on the second day of Christmas in the year he calls 1522, conventionally converted to 26 December 1521. Other scholarship gives Christmastime or 24/25 December; First Blacks/CUNY’s timeline also dates the early revolt to 1521. Las Casas’s 1516 proposal is associated with his Memorial de remedios; it did not initiate an existing trade.
Margarita de Sossa and witnesses, through legal records and Chloe L. Ireton · 1588 / 1594
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
[Adapted from testimony.] In Oporto, from a child. In Lisbon. In Seville. In Puebla.
Sourcing
Historical situation
A 1594 Inquisition case preserves Margarita’s testimony and her earlier 1588 marital litigation.
Intended audience
Ecclesiastical and inquisitorial officials, with conflicting witnesses.
Purpose
Defend freedom, earnings and reputation, or challenge those claims.
Point of view
The record is mediated by scribes, legal strategy and Ireton’s English. Ancestry, gender, property and reputation intersect; no one label determines every right.
Chloe L. Ireton, “Margarita de Sossa,” in As If She Were Free (2020), printed pp.29–35. Ireton pp.29–30: she grew up enslaved in the Oporto household of her female owner, Lucrecia de Cisna; taken to Lisbon at about twenty; sent to Seville; sent across the Atlantic to New Spain about 1570; then repeated ownership in Puebla (seven owners across four cities). This compressed first-person route is adapted, not an exact surviving answer.
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
English translation
There are blacks that do in a day one hundred and forty montones, and the strongest Indian does not do more than twelve.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Colonial officials sought permission to import more enslaved Africans amid Native depopulation.
Intended audience
The Spanish Crown.
Purpose
Persuade the Crown to permit a general slave-import license.
Point of view
This is a colonial advocate’s comparative claim, not measured racial productivity or a biological explanation.
Zuazo to the Crown, Santo Domingo, 26 January 1518, AGI Patronato 174, R.8, f.52r (letter selections ff.50r,52r–52v,55v); CUNY Dominican Studies Institute, First Blacks in the Americas, Translation 056. Montones means cultivated mounds here; replacing it with crop mounds is a gloss/adaptation, not the published English. This is his argument for slavery, not a biological measurement.
Advanced Placement