The legalistic and religious nature of the Spaniards led both to their intense preoccupation with the just basis for their newly discovered overseas territory and with the nature of the Indians whom they were attempting to draw into the Christian world. Francisco de Vitoria, a Dominican professor at the University of Salamanca, discussed these matters with great vision and clarity in his lectures and many of his students later went to America with their attitudes determined by his teachings. Vitoria remarked in one treatise, De Indis: "The Indians are stupid only because they are uneducated and, if they live like beasts, so for the same reason do many Spanish peasants." He also asserted that discovery alone gave Spaniards no more right to American territory than the Indians would have acquired had they "discovered" Spain.

In addressing such fundamental questions raised by Spain's conquest of the New World, Vitoria and like-minded political theorists had little influence on the outcome of the conflict. Without knowing it, however, their arguments laid foundations for international laws introduced four centuries later.

Text excerpt: "The Dawn of Conscience in America: Spanish Experiments and Experiences with Indians in the New World" by Lewis Hanke © April 1963). Reprinted by permission of the American Philosophical Society.