 One of the recurring questions with respect to the treatment of indigenous peoples was whether their enslavement as slaves by nature in the traditional Aristotelian sense was justified. As mentioned above, a famous discussion of this issue took place at the Junta of Valladolid, when the Aristotelian Juan Ginés Sepúlveda debated with the Dominican Bartolomé de Las Casas, an ardent defender of the Amerindians and their rights. Sepúlveda argued that the Amerindians, as barbarians, were slaves by nature, more or less on the level of beasts. Las Casas maintained that although there were humans so simple-minded that they could be considered slaves by nature, such people existed in Spain as well as in the Americas (Hanke 1959: 28–74).