Local government in the Philippine islands,

SPANISH PERIOD BEFORE MAURA LAW

25

natives were lightly made to feel the necessity of practical
allegiance to the new sovereign; and every "Indian" family
was assessed a tribute of eight "reales". The natives for
this purpose, among others, were settled in encomiendas
with Spanish officers as encomenderos. An encomienda
was practically a grant of Indians, irrespective of the land.
At first the grant expired with the grantee. It was subsequently extended through two or three lives and, in effect,
became perpetual. As a result, the "Indians" were slaves.'t
't Tavera, T. H. Pardo de, The Philippine Census of 1903, I,
p. 312 (n.)
"Closely united in ideas and interests, co-participants in public
power in the colony, so much so that frequently bishops and archbishops were viceroys or governors of provinces, the conquerors and
the clergy helped to establish what, to the shame of Spain and of
mankind, is known in history under the name of Spanish colonial
system, a system unique in the world, which consists simply in the
division among the Spaniards of the lands, mines, and even persons
of the Indians who were forced to work as beasts in the terrible
'encomiendas' of the conquerors, to the exclusive benefit of the
Crown and the Church." Mena, Mendez, The 1Work of the Clergy and
the Religious Persecution in Mexico (Mexico, 1916), p. 5.
Blair and Robertson: The Philippine Islands, I, pp. 38-39.
"While the Spanish conquistadores of the vast empire in America
held the sword in the right hand and the cross in the left, their chief
interest was economic. Millions of unhappy Indians perished around
the shores of the Caribbean to satisfy the Spanish adventurers' last
for wealth, as the good Father las Casas testifies. The Spanish
Viceroy Toledo, in Peru, estimated that in the seventeenth century
there were eight million Incas living; in two hundred years these
had been reduced to eight hundred thousand. Fate was kinder to
the inhabitants of the Philippines. /Here were little gold and no
silver, no precious stones, except pearls, no mines to be worked. To
be sure, the Spanish arms and military organization in the early
days in the Philippines destroyed much of the existing culture;
forced labor was pitilessly imposed in the shipyards and in construction of the monumental churches which still exist; conscript service
in the army for purposes of further conquest broke up thousands
of hemes; the priests in zealous rage against paganism destroyed
all existing records, all writings and works of art, as they did in
Mexico, in the belief that all that was not Christian must be antiChristian. One Spanish priest boasted of having destroyed more than