hroughout the island,
provoking hostilities with the natives and had, in consequence, been
killed by a neighbouring chieftain, Caonabo, who also burned the tower the
colonists had built. The first report on the state of the new colony of
Isabella, which Columbus sent to Spain in January, 1494, was in the form
of an instruction to Antonio de Torres, receiver for the colony, whom Las
Casas describes as "a brother of the Governor of the Infante Don Juan, a
notable person, prudent and efficient for such a post."(17) In this
notable document occurs the first mention of slavery in the New World.
The Admiral directs Torres to inform the sovereigns that he has made
slaves of some Indians captured the cannibal islands, and has sent them to
Spain have them taught Spanish in order that they may later serve as
interpreters. The justification he advanced for this measure was that by
taking from their surroundings they would be cured of their cannibalism,
converted to Christianity, and their souls saved; besides which, if the
cannibals were thus converted, the Indians of the neighbouring islands,
who were peaceable and lived in fear of them, would conceive a still
higher regard for the Spaniards.

This reasoning doubtless commended itself to most people, but the
sagacious Queen instantly put her finger upon the flaw in the argument,
and on the margin of Columbus's report is written her answer: "This is all
very well and so it must be done; but let the Admiral see whether it might
not be _there_ arranged to bring them to our Holy Catholic Faith and the
same with the Indians of those islands where he is."

The next suggestion, despite any possible excellence of his motives, was a
frank proposal to establish a thriving trade in human flesh as barefaced
as could be made by the least scrupulous "blackbirder." The Admiral,
always dwelling upon the spiritual welfare of the cannibal natives,
proposed that the more of them that could be captured, the better it would
be, and then, mingling temporal advantages to Spaniards with spiritual
blessings to the natives, he explained that the quantities of live stock
and other necessaries required by the colonists, might be paid for by the
sale of slaves sent back to Spain in the ships which would bring these
supplies several times a year to the colony. The sovereigns are to be
reminded that they may collect duties on this slave-trade, and an early
answer is desired in order that the arrangements f