QuestionsWhat is a just society?The Indians were the true owners of their lands
What is a just society?Natural rights

The Indians were the true owners of their lands

The Indians as true lords of their goods (De Indis)

Francisco de Vitoria c. 1483 · c. 1546The peoples of America were the true owners of their lands: neither sin, nor unbelief, nor a supposed lack of reason takes that right from them.
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What it claims

Before the Spaniards came, the Indians were true owners of their goods and their countries, in private and in public law, just like Christians; they could not be stripped of them on these grounds.

Why

Neither sin, nor unbelief, nor a supposed lack of reason takes away a people's property: this right comes from nature, not faith.

The same idea through history
Francisco de Vitoria1539A lecture given at the University of Salamanca in 1539, a few years after the conquest of Peru. The text was published after his death, in 1557, from students' notes: it is not a book Vitoria himself prepared for print.
Bartolomé de Las Casas1550At Valladolid, facing Sepúlveda, Las Casas defends the same idea: the Indians are rational human beings, not "natural slaves".
In short

"The Indians were the true owners of their lands" is an argument by Francisco de Vitoria (Relectio de Indis, 1539 (published 1557), question 1, 1539) on the question "What is a just society?" (answer: natural rights). Its claim: Before the Spaniards came, the Indians were true owners of their goods and their countries, in private and in public law, just like Christians; they could not be stripped of them on these grounds. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P5). AskPhilosophy presents 4 objections, 3 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Relectio de Indis, 1539 (published 1557), question 1
Valid with an implicit premise

The Spaniards have just taken immense lands in America. Can they rightfully keep them? Vitoria, a theologian at Salamanca, starts with a simpler question: before the Spaniards came, did these peoples truly own their goods and truly govern their countries? His opponents said no, for three possible reasons: they are sinners, they are unbelievers, or they lack enough reason. Vitoria examines them one by one. For him, property and rule come from human nature (being rational, the image of God), not from faith or virtue. The peoples of America therefore have a real right over their lands, like Christians. Note: Vitoria does not conclude that the conquest is wholly unjust. Later in the lecture he looks for titles that could justify it (the right to travel and trade, to preach), and some critics think they take back with one hand what the first part gives with the other. The argument presented here is the first part, the one that recognises the right.

P1The power to be master of one's goods ("dominium") is a right. It rests on being in the image of God, that is, on being a rational being. So it is not lost by sin.
P2Unbelief destroys neither natural law nor human law. Property and rule rest on one or the other. So a people that does not know the Christian faith keeps its goods and its rulers.
P3The Indians do not lack reason: they have, "according to their kind", the use of reason. Their affairs are orderly: cities, marriage, magistrates, laws, trades, exchange, a form of religion.
P4When Aristotle speaks of men who are "slaves by nature", he means they need guidance, like a child. He does not say their goods may be taken, nor that they can own nothing. Legal slavery does not exist by nature.
P5 · implicit premiseThere is no other reason to deny a people ownership than sin, unbelief, lack of reason or natural slavery: if none applies, it is master of what it holds. And one does not strip a legitimate owner who has done no wrong.
So before the Spaniards came, the Indians were true owners of their goods and their countries, in private and in public law, just like Christians; they could not be stripped of them on these grounds.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P5, the computer finds a case where the people is rational, without sin or slavery, yet still loses ownership for a fifth reason the argument has not ruled out (for instance a decision of the pope or the emperor).
The argument is valid with the hidden premise P5. If reason grounds the right to own (P1), and if this right can only be removed by sin, unbelief, lack of reason or natural slavery (P5), then, since sin and unbelief are ruled out (P2), lack of reason too (P3) and natural slavery as well (P4), the people remains master of its goods. The objections mainly target P3 and P4 (do the Indians lack reason?) and P1 (does grace ground rule?).
Analogy. A neighbour arrives on your street and says: "you cannot run your house, it is mine". For Vitoria, he would have to prove that you are not a capable adult, or that you lost your rights by wronging someone. Not being like him, not thinking like him, is not enough.

Objections

4

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Supporters of "natural" slavery (after Aristotle, as cited by Vitoria) 1539 · attacks premise 3

According to Aristotle, some men are made to serve rather than to rule. The Indians seem "little different from brute animals" and unable to govern themselves: it is better for them to be ruled by others. A slave owns nothing, so neither do they; and if they had no master before the Spaniards, they can be taken like an abandoned thing.

a defender replies
Vitoria defender of the argument · 1539
Vitoria answers that this is not what Aristotle says. He means some need guidance, not that they may be stripped or sold. And even if the Indians were as limited as claimed, they would keep their rights. He blames their "stupid" look on a bad upbringing: in Spain too, many peasants differ little from brutes.
J
Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda 1544
Sepúlveda, a humanist and the king's historian, wrote a dialogue to argue that peoples judged crude and inferior in reason must be ruled by more civilised peoples, as the weaker part of the soul by reason. He draws the conclusion that war on the Indians is just and that their rule by the Spaniards is a good for them.
See the rest of the debate (1)
Bartolomé de Las Casas defender of the argument · 1550
Las Casas answers Sepúlveda at Valladolid (1550-1551): the Indians have cities, laws and a religion, so they are rational, and Aristotle's word "barbarian" does not fit them in the strict sense that would ground natural slavery. Sepúlveda's first title (natural slavery) therefore falls; Las Casas also contests his other reasons for war.
John Wycliffe and the Waldensians (as Vitoria reports them) 1376 · attacks premise 1

Some hold that it is God's grace that gives the right to own and to rule. Whoever is in mortal sin then has no real power over anything. The God who gave goods would take them back from those who disobey him, as a prince takes a castle back from rebels. Vitoria recalls that a thesis of Wycliffe's along these lines ("no one is a civil owner while he is in mortal sin") was condemned by the Council of Constance.

a defender replies
Vitoria defender of the argument · 1539
Vitoria turns the argument around. Even if power comes from the image of God in man, that image consists in his reason, which stays intact in the sinner. So sin does not remove power. He adds that the Bible calls wicked and sinful rulers "kings", like Solomon or Ahab, and that David called Saul his king even while Saul persecuted him.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: Wycliffe's thesis was condemned at Constance, and Vitoria fights it with his opponents' own weapons. Historians note that on this point Vitoria mostly follows Saint Thomas Aquinas and Cardinal Cajetan.
A
Antony Anghie 2005 · attacks the conclusion

For this contemporary jurist, Vitoria's lecture recognises the Indians' rights, but in order to subject them to a "universal" law that the Spaniards define. The Spaniards have the right to travel, trade and preach among the Indians. If the Indians resist, they commit a wrong and war becomes just. Recognising their ownership then serves to justify the conquest instead of stopping it.

a defender replies
Vitoria (same lecture, section III) defender of the argument · 1539
Vitoria sets clear limits. The Spaniards' right holds only "provided they do no harm to the natives". If the Indians, frightened, try to drive them out, the Spaniards may defend themselves, but without killing, without seizing goods or cities: the Indians are innocent and are right to be afraid.
A
Antony Anghie 2005
Our summary of his view: for Anghie, these limits do not change the structure: it is the law defined by the Spaniards that decides who is in the wrong. Vitoria himself writes that when the Indians deny the Spaniards their rights, "they do them a wrong", which opens the door to war.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: the disagreement no longer concerns Vitoria's premise (the Indians own their lands) but what he draws from it next. Scholars remain divided between those who see him as a defender of the peoples of America and those who see him as a founder of colonial international law.
Vitoria himself (same lecture, section III) 1539 · attacks premise 3

At the end of his lecture Vitoria considers another title, which he says he dares neither to assert nor wholly to condemn: the Indians would be "not wholly unintelligent" but little short of it, unable to run a State in the way of European peoples. The kings of Spain might then take charge of their government, for their own good, as one does for children. This idea seems in tension with P3.

no reply
We have not yet found a direct reply by Vitoria in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: Vitoria does not dispel this tension himself. In the same passage he sets two safeguards: it would apply only if clearly for their benefit, and he refuses to assert it, while saying the idea has "some force".