While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
Indians Of Jamaica. Cruise Along The Southern Coast Of
Cuba. Speech Of An Indian Counselor.
Difficulties At The Fortress Of St. Thomas. Its Siege By Caonabo. Efforts Of
Columbus To Restore Order. Great Rising Of The Indians Of Hispaniola. Their
Defeat. Tribute Imposed.
Visit Of Bartholomew To Xaragua. Further Insurrection In The Vega. Bobadilla As
Viceroy.
Cruelties Practiced On The Indians. Las Casas. Incidents Related By Purchas.
Administration Of Ovando. Expedition Against Xaragua. Reduction Of Higuey.
In the month of May 1494, the island of
Jamaica was first discovered by Columbus.
The native inhabitants appeared to be of a
very different character from the timid and
gentle islanders with whom former
intercourse had been held. A crowd of
canoes, filled with savages gaudily adorned
with plumes and paint, opposed the landing
of the Spaniards. These were pacified by the
Indian interpreters on board; but upon
landing, the next day, the throng of natives
on shore exhibited such decidedly hostile
intentions, that it became necessary to
intimidate them. A few discharges from the
Spanish cross-bows sufficed to put them to
flight. The ferocity of a savage dog,
brought on shore by the whites, added
greatly to their terror.
There was no difficulty in allaying the
apprehensions of these Indians, and the
usual friendly intercourse was soon
established. During a cruise along the
southern coast of Cuba, which occupied the
succeeding months of June and July, the
islanders seen were as gentle and tract able
as those upon the northern shores of the
island. The means of communication now
afforded by the Indian interpreters gave new
interest to every conference. The wondering
crowd of natives would gather with the most
eager interest around these their
fellow-countrymen, to listen to the tales of
gorgeous spectacles and unheard-of wonders
witnessed by themselves in the distant
country of the whites. There was enough of
the novel and wonderful before the eyes of
the ignorant islanders, in the ships,
appearance, conduct, and costume of the
Spaniards, to prevent incredulity, as they
listened to the narrations of the
interpreters. The performance of the
religious ser vices of the Catholic Church,
struck the natives with awe, particularly
when the purport of these ceremonials was
explained to them. In testimony of their
natural intelligence and perceptions of
right and wrong, Mr. Irving gives us, from
Herrera, the following speech of an aged
counselor of one of the Cuban caciques,
after witnessing the celebration of the
mass:
"When the service was ended, the old man of
fourscore, who had contemplated it with
profound attention, approached Columbus, and
made him an oration in the Indian manner.
"This which thou hast been doing, said he,
is well; for it appears to be thy manner of
giving thanks to God. I am told that thou
hast lately come to these lands with a
mighty force, and hast subdued many
countries, spreading great fear among the
people;* but be not therefore vain glorious.
Know that, according to our belief, the
souls of men have two journeys to perform
after they have de parted from the body; one
to a place dismal and foul, and covered with
darkness, prepared for those who have been
unjust and cruel to their fellow-men; the
other pleasant and full of delight, for such
who have promoted peace on earth. If then
thou art mortal, and dost expect to die, and
dost believe that each one shall be rewarded
according to his deeds, beware that thou
wrongfully hurt no man, nor do harm to those
who have done no harm to thee. "
From Cuba the admiral visited the southern
shores of Jamaica. All the first distrust
and opposition of the in habitants had
vanished, and nothing but gentleness and
kindness characterized their demeanor. At
one place a cacique came out to the ship
with his whole family, "consisting of his
wife, two daughters, two sons, and five
brothers. One of the daughters was eighteen
years of age," beautiful in form and
countenance; her sister was some what
younger; both were naked, according to the
custom of the islands, but were of modest
demeanor."
This chief professed himself ready to go,
with all his train, in the Spanish vessels,
to visit the king and queen of Spain, and
acknowledge himself their vassal, if by so
doing he could preserve his kingdom.
During the absence of Columbus, the
dissolute and unprincipled Spaniards at the
fortress of St. Thomas, so grossly abused
their power among the natives, that an
extensive spirit of hostility was roused up
against them. Caonabo was unwearied in his
efforts to excite the other island caciques
to a union against the intruders, and the
faithful Guacanagari alone seems to have
been proof against his persuasions, in
revenge for which non-compliance, the Carib
and his brother-in-law, Behechio, committed
numberless indignities and injuries upon him
and his people. Serious difficulties soon
arose; a number of Spaniards were put to
death by Guatiguana, a subordinate cacique
under the celebrated Guarionex, in
punishment for outrages committed upon his
people; and Caonabo besieged the garrison at
St. Thomas with a force of many thousands of
his warriors. After thirty days of
ineffectual attempts to re duce the place,
he gave up the undertaking, and drew off his
army. The stratagem, by which the person of
this noted chief and warrior was secured by
the commandant at St. Thomas s, will be
detailed hereafter. Columbus, upon his
return to Hispaniola, made use of every
effort to check the ruinous disorders, which
had become prevalent. He punished Guatiguana
by an invasion of his dominions and the
destruction of no small number of his
people. An interview was then brought about
with his superior, Guarionex, a peaceable
and well-disposed chief, who readily
consented to the establishment of a Spanish
fort in the very ^heart of his domains.
The crushing system of oppression had now
fairly commenced, and was promptly followed
up by the shipment of five hundred Indians
to be sold as slaves in Spain. This was
directly the act of Columbus himself, and
historians only offer, as his excuse, the
argument that such was the ordinary custom
of his age in all wars with savages or
infidels. The interposition of the
kind-hearted Isabella prevented the
consummation of this proposed sale. By her
orders, the prisoners were sent back to
their homes, but, unfortunately, not until
the state of affairs upon the islands was
such that the poor Indians might have been
better situated as slaves in Spain.
A general combination of the island
chieftains against the Spaniards finally
induced Columbus to commence an active
campaign against them. In the dominions of
the captive, Caonabo, his brother,
Manicaotex, his brother-in-law, Behechio,
and his beautiful wife, Anacaona, were the
most prominent in authority, and the most
active in rousing up hostilities. The
Spanish force consisted of a little over two
hundred men, twenty of whom were mounted,
and twenty blood-hounds, an enemy as novel
as terrible to the naked savages.
Guacanagari lent his feeble aid, with that
of his followers. Of the number of the
hostile Indians in the district of the Vega,
the historians of the time gave exaggerated
accounts. They speak of an array of one
hundred thousand hostile savages. Manicaotex
was leader of the united tribes. Near the
site of the present town of St. Jago, a
decisive battle was fought, in which the
vast army of the Indians was utterly routed.
The Spanish commander did not hesitate to
divide his little battalion into several
detachments, which fell upon the enemy
simultaneously, from different quarters.
Torn to pieces by the savage dogs, trampled
down by the cavalry, and unable to affect
any thing in turn against the mail-clad
whites, the poor Indians were overwhelmed
with confusion and terror. The rout was as
complete, although the massacre was not so
cruel, as when Pizarro attacked the Peruvian
Inca, with an almost equally
disproportionate force.
"The Indians," says Mr. Irving, "fled in
every direction, with yells and howling;
some clambered to the top of rocks and
precipices, from whence they made piteous
supplications and offers of complete
submission; many were killed, many made
prisoners, and the confederacy was, for the
time, completely broken up and dispersed."
Nearly the whole of Hispaniola was speedily
reduced to subjection; Behechio and his
sister, Anacaona, alone of all the natives
in authority, secluded themselves among the
unsettled wilds at the western extremity of
the island. All the other caciques made
conciliatory overtures, and submitted to the
imposition of a heavy and grievous tribute
upon them and their subjects. A hawks-bell
filled with gold-dust, or twenty-five pounds
of cotton, was quarterly required at the
hands of every Indian over the age of
fourteen; from the chiefs a vastly larger
amount was collected. The contrast between
the former easy and luxurious life of the
islanders, their gayety and content, their
simple pleasures, and unfettered liberty,
with the galling servitude and wearisome
tasks now imposed, is most touchingly and
eloquently described by Irving. Unable to
endure the unwonted toil and hopeless labor,
the Indians vainly endeavored to escape to
the mountains, and, subsisting upon the
crude products of the forest, to evade the
cruelty of their enslavers. They were hunted
out, and compelled to return to their homes
and to their labors. The unfortunate
Guacanagari, receiving no favor from the
suspicious Spaniards, and being an object of
the deepest hatred to his countrymen for the
part he had taken in their struggle for
freedom, died in neglect and wretchedness
among the mountains.
In 1496, Bartholomew, a brother of Columbus,
then exercising the office of adelantado at
Hispaniola, visited Behechio at his remote
western province of Xaraguay. He was
received with hospitality and kindness by
this chief and his sister Anacaona, and
entertained in the best manner the country
could afford. The object of the expedition
was to induce the cacique to comply
peaceably with the Spanish requisitions of
tribute. Behechio had learned by sad
experience the power of the European arms,
and, as the adelantado agreed to receive the
tribute in such articles as his country
produced, instead of gold, he readily
consented. Bartholomew s judicious policy
towards these illustrious islanders gained
him their highest esteem. Behechio and his
sister paid the tribute required cheerfully
and promptly; and upon the occasion of a
visit from the adelantado to receive it,
they both took occasion to visit the caravel
in which he had arrived. Anacaona,
especially, was filled with delight at the
sight of the vessel, and at witnessing the
ease and certainty with which its movements
were controlled.
The females of Xaraguay were of most
remarkable beauty, but preeminent among them
was the widow of Caonabo. Her queenly
demeanor, grace, and courtesy, won the
admiration of the Spaniards.
In the following year (1497) another
insurrection broke out among tribes of the
Vega and the vicinity. The immediate cause
of this outbreak was the execution, at the
stake, in accordance with the barbarity and
bigotry of the age, of a number of Indians,
for the offence of sacrilege.
Guarionex, the principal cacique, had been
an object of special interest with the
ecclesiastics to whom was committed the work
of converting the islanders. His easy and
pliable disposition caused him to listen
patiently to their instructions, and to
comply with numerous forms of their
enjoining. Some one of the Spaniards having
committed an outrage upon his wife,
Guarionex refused to listen further to the
doctrines of a religion whose professors
were guilty of such villanies. Shortly after
this, a chapel was broken open, and images
enshrined within it were destroyed by a
number of the natives. For this offence,
those implicated were burned alive, as
above-mentioned. The adelantado suppressed
the consequent uprising by a prompt and
energetic seizure of the leading chiefs. Two
of these were put to death, but Guarionex
and the others were pardoned.
By the persuasions and influence of the
rebellious Roldan, the unfortunate cacique
was, in 1498, drawn into a second conspiracy
of the natives. The plot was prematurely
developed, and Guarionex fled from the
plains of the Vega into the mountains of
Ciguay, and joined his fortunes to those of
the cacique Mayonabex. This generous and
noble chief received him, with his family
and a few followers, under his protection.
From this retreat, with the assistance of
Ciguayan warriors, the fugitive was enabled
to molest the Spanish settlements of the low
country with impunity, until the Adelantado
Bartholomew invaded the mountain district,
dispersed the armies of Mayonabex, and took
both him and his guest prisoners. The
conqueror was more placable towards a fallen
foe than most of his countrymen, and, upon
the sub mission of the Ciguayans, was ready
to accord them protection and favor.
Guarionex perished, in 1502, on his passage
for Spain, in the same vessel with Bobadilla
and Roldan. The ship foundered at sea in a
terrible hurricane, which arose immediately
after the departure from Hispaniola.
It was under the administration of Bobadilla
that the Indians of Hispaniola were reduced
to a more complete and systematic condition
of slavery than before. They were regularly
parceled out to the Spanish proprietors of
the mines, by whom they were compelled to
labor far beyond their powers of endurance,
and whose wanton cruelties excited the
strongest indignation in the mind of the
benevolent Las Casas one of the few
historians of his age and nation, who
possessed the inclination or courage to
paint the cruelties of his countrymen in
their true colors. This truly benevolent man
devoted the greater portion of his life to
efforts for ameliorating the condition of
the natives of the New World, but in his
sympathy with their sufferings and
oppressions, he unfortunately lost sight of
what was due to another scarcely less
unfortunate race. He was among the earliest
to advocate the substitution of Negro
slavery for that of the Indians, under the
impression doubtless in itself just that a
state of servitude was less intolerable to
the one than the other. It is to Las Casas
that we are indebted for the most frightful
detail of wrong and cruelty in the
settlement of the West Indies that ever
disgraced human nature. His descriptions of
the manner in which the native population
was annihilated to minister to the luxury
and avarice nay, far worse, to the depraved
and wanton cruelty of the Spaniards are
frightful in the extreme. We can share in
the honest indignation of old Purchas, from
whose "Pilgrimage" we cite the following
items:
"In the Island Hispaniola the Spaniards had
their first Indian habitations, where their
cruelties drove the Indians to their shifts,
and to their weak defense, which caused
those enraged lions to spare neither man,
woman, nor child. They set up gibbets, and
in honor of Christ and his twelve apostles
(as they said, and could the devil say
worse?) they would both hang and burn them.
The nobles and commanders they broiled on
gridirons, they had dogs to hunt them out of
their coverts, which devoured the poor
souls: and because sometimes the Indians,
thus provoked, would kill a Spaniard, if
they found opportunity, they made a law that
an hundred of them should for one Spaniard
be slain."
He elsewhere remarks:
"Here [in Cuba] was a cacique named Hathuey,
which called his subjects about him, and
showing them a box of gold, said that was
the Spaniards God, and made them dance about
it very solemnly; and lest the Spaniards
should have it, he hurled it into the river.
Being taken and condemned to the fire, when
he was bound to the stake, a friar came and
preached heaven to him, and the terrors of
hell. Hathuey asked if there were any
Spaniards in heaven; the friar answered,
yea, such as were good. Hathuey replied, he
would rather go to hell than go where any of
that cruel nation were. I was once present,
saith Casas, when the inhabitants of one
town brought us forth victuals, and met us
with great kindness, and the Spaniards
without any cause slew three thousand of
them, of every age and sex. I, by their
counsel, sent to other towns to meet us,
with promise of good dealing; and two and
twenty caciques met us, which the captain,
against all faith, caused to be burned."
In Hispaniola, under the administration of
Ovando, successor to Bobadilla, the
sufferings and oppressions of the over
tasked natives reached their climax. It
would be but a wearisome repetition of
barbarities to enumerate the wrongs
perpetrated against the submissive
inhabitants in the vicinity of the principal
Spanish settlements, but the expedition
against the province of Xaraguay merits a
more particular attention. This was in the
year 1503. Behechio was dead, but his sister
Anacaona still maintained her influence over
the natives of that district. Upon pretence
of an intended insurrection, Ovando
determined to reduce Xaraguay to a condition
as miserable and hopeless as* that of the
eastern districts. He started upon this
expedition with three hundred well-armed
infantry, and seventy mounted men. The army
entered the dominions of Anacaona with the
appearance of friendship, and the queen,
with her associate caciques, was not
backward in rendering to her visitors all
the hospitalities of the country. Troops of
young girls, dancing and waving branches of
palm, ushered them into the principal
village, where they were received and
entertained with every token of kindness and
good will.
It is impossible to conceive of any adequate
motion on the part of the ferocious Ovando
for the treacherous cruelty of his conduct
towards his hosts. He affected to believe
that a conspiracy was on foot among the
natives, to massacre him and his followers,
but, judging from what we can learn of the
transaction, there existed no possible
ground for such a suspicion. The course
taken to avert the supposed danger was as
follows. All the caciques were invited to
attend, with their people, at a grand
festival or exhibition of Spanish martial
exercises. When the unsuspecting Xaraguans
had gathered in eager curiosity to behold
the scene, at a given signal, the armed
Spaniards fell upon the crowd, and a scene
of horrible carnage en sued. Forty of the
chiefs, it is said, were taken prisoners,
and after being subjected to the most cruel
torments to extort from them a confession of
guilt, the house where they were confined
was set on fire, and the whole number
perished in the flames.
Anacaona was carried to St. Domingo, tried,
adjudged guilty of an attempt at
insurrection, and hanged! Her subjects were
remorselessly persecuted; hunted from their
retreats among the mountains, slain like
wild beasts, or brought into the most
servile and hopeless bondage, they attempted
no resistance, and submitted to the cruel
yoke of their tyrants.
The reduction of the eastern province of
Higuey, and the execution of its noble and
gigantic chief Cotubanama, completed the
Spanish conquests on the island of
Hispaniola. The details of the barbarities
attendant upon this last warfare, as given
by Las Casas, are too horrible and
disgusting for minute recital. It is
sufficient that, not content with the
destruction of the conquered people, without
regard to age and sex, the Spaniards tasked
their ingenuity, to devise the most cruel
and lingering torments in the murder of
their prisoners.
By such a course of atrocities were the
"West India islands depopulated of their
original inhabitants. The summary with which
Purchas concludes his enumeration of various
scenes of Spanish cruelty, is too quaint and
forcible to be omitted. " But why do I
longer trace them in their bloody steps;
seeing our author that relates much more
than I, yet protests that it was a thousand
times worse. How may we admire that
long-suffering of God, that rained not a
flood of waters, as in Noah s time, or of
fire, as in Lot's, or of stones, as in
Joshua's, or some vengeance from heaven upon
these models of hell? And how could hell
forbear swallowing such prepared morsels,
exceeding the beastliness of beasts,
inhumanity of wonted tyrants, and
devilishness, if it were possible, of the
devils."
This site
includes some historical materials that may imply negative stereotypes
reflecting the culture or language of a particular period or place. These
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Indian Races of North and South America, By Charles De Wolf Brownell, 1865
