Treasasury

T HE Spanish Habsburgs liked their treasure tangible, in bars of gold, heavy silver coins, precious stones, chunks of jewel amber, and strings of pearls. By their command, each regional branch of the royal treasury of the Indies (hacienda real de Indias), a part of their patrimony, had a heavily guarded room containing a coffer of solid wood, reinforced at the edges, bottom, and corners with iron, strongly barred, and bearing three or four locks the keys to which were held by different persons. The keepers of the keys, who had to meet to open the coffer, were the king's personal servants, with antecedents in the customs houses of Aragon and the conquests of Castile. They were called the royal officials of the treasury.

In the Indies, individual treasuries grew out of the fiscal arrangements for expeditions of conquest. The crown, as intent on collecting its legitimate revenues as on the propagation of the faith, required every conquistador to take along officers of the exchequer. A factor guarded the king's investment, if any, in weapons and supplies and disposed of tribute in kind. An overseer of barter and trade (veedor de rescates y contrataciones) saw to commercial contacts with the natives and in case of war claimed the king's share of booty. An accountant (contador) recorded income and outgo and was the guardian and interpreter of royal instructions. A treasurer (tesorero) was entrusted with monies and made payments in the king's name. If the expedition resulted in a permanent settlement these officials continued their duties there, protecting the interests of the crown in a new colony.

There was a strongly commercial side to these earliest treasuries, supervised after 1503 by the House of Trade (Casa de Contratación) in Seville. The factor in particular served as the House's representative, watching the movement of merchandise and seeing that the masters of ships enforced the rules against unlicensed passengers and prohibited goods. He also engaged in active and resourceful trading, exchanging the royal tributes and taxes paid in kind for necessary supplies. In 1524 the newly created Council of the Indies (Consejo de Indias) assumed the supervision of overseas treasuries, a duty it retained throughout the Habsburg period except for the brief interval of 1557-62.

By 1565, founding date of the treasury under study, Spanish presence in the Indies was seventy-three years old. The experimental stage of government was past; institutions of administration had taken more or less permanent shape. A network of royal treasuries existed, some subordinate to viceroyalties or presidencies and others fairly independent. Principal treasuries with proprietary officials were located in the capital cities; subordinate treasuries staffed by lieutenants were at seaports, mining centers, or distant outposts. The factor had become a kind of business manager administering tributes and native labor. The overseer's original functions were forgotten as the crown turned its attention from commerce and conquest to the dazzling wealth of mines. As a result of the overriding interest in precious metals, overseers were confined to duty at the mints; in places without a mint their office was subsumed under the factor's. And wherever there was little revenue from tribute the factorship was disappearing as well.

The treasury of Florida had its beginnings in a maritime enterprise. This was no haphazard private adventure, but the carefully organized joint action of a corporate family and the crown. 2 Pedro Menéndez de Avilés was a tough, corsairing Asturian sea captain known to hold the interests of his clan above the regulations of the House of Trade, but the king could not afford to be particular. In response to French settlement at Fort Caroline, Philip II made a three-year contract (capitulación) with Menéndez, naming him Adelantado, or contractual conqueror, of Florida. At his own cost, essentially, Menéndez was to drive out René de Laudonnière and every other interloper from the land between Terra Nova (Newfoundland) and the Ancones (St. Joseph's Bay) on the Gulf of Mexico. Before three years were out he was to establish two or three fortified settlements and populate them. 3 He did all of this, but as the French crisis escalated, the king had to come to his support. 4 During the three years of the contract Menéndez and his supporters invested over 75,000 ducats; the crown, more than 208,000 ducats, counting Florida's share of the 1566Sancho de Archiniega reinforcements of 1,500 men and seventeen ships. 5

Despite the heavy royal interests, the new colony was governed like a patrimonial estate. The adelantado nominated his own men to treasury office: his kinsman Esteban de las Alas as treasurer, his nephew Pedro Menéndez