On the American Indians

Introduction

Vitoria delivered the Relectio de Indis at Salamanca in 1539, a few years after the conquest of Peru, which had disturbed him deeply. The lecture asks by what right the Indigenous peoples of the Americas came under Spanish rule. A first part argues that before the Spaniards arrived they held true dominion, public and private; neither unbelief, nor sin, nor a supposed lack of reason took it from them. A second part rejects seven titles then in use, among them the emperor’s lordship of the world, the pope’s temporal power, the right of discovery and the refusal of the faith. A third part names eight titles that might be legitimate, above all the natural right of travel, trade and preaching and the protection of innocents against tyranny and human sacrifice; an eighth, the possibility that the Indians could not govern themselves, he left in doubt. Printed in 1557, the text became a founding document of the law of nations and of the debate on its colonial use.

Connections

Taken up in

• On the Law of War1539 · Francisco de Vitoria
• The Free Sea1609 · Hugo Grotius

More works by Francisco de Vitoria

• 1539On the Law of War