James Burney - History of the Buccaneers of America

The Grand Antilles. The Islands of the West Indies have been classed into three divisions, which chiefly regard their situations; but they are distinguished also by other peculiar circumstances. The four largest Islands, Cuba , Hayti , Jamaica , and Porto Rico , have been called the Grand Antilles . When first discovered by Europeans, they were inhabited by people whose similarity of language, of customs, and character, bespoke them the offspring of one common stock. Small Antilles, or Caribbee Islands. The second division is a chain of small Islands Eastward of these, and extending South to the coast of Paria on the Continent of South America . They have been called sometimes the Small Antilles ; sometimes after the native inhabitants, the Caribbee Islands ; and not less frequently by a subdivision, the Windward and Leeward Islands. The inhabitants on these Islands were a different race from the inhabitants of the Grand Antilles . They spoke a different language, were robust in person; and in disposition fierce, active, and warlike. Some have conjectured them to be of Tartar extraction, which corresponds with the belief that they emigrated from North America to the West Indies . It is supposed they drove out the original inhabitants from the Small Antilles , to establish themselves there; but they had not gained footing in the large Islands. Lucayas, or Bahama Islands. The third division of the Islands is the cluster which are situated to the North of Cuba , and near East Florida , and are called the Lucayas , of whose inhabitants mention will shortly be made.

The Spanish Government participated largely in the wickedness practised to procure labourers for the mines of Hispaniola . Pretending great concern for the cause of humanity, they declared it legal, and gave general license, for any individual to make war against, and enslave, people who were cannibals; under which pretext every nation, both of the American Continent and of the Islands, was exposed to their enterprises. Spanish adventurers made attempts to take people from the small Antilles , sometimes with success; but they were not obtained without danger, and in several expeditions of the kind, the Spaniards were repulsed with loss. This made them turn their attention to the Lucayas Islands .

1508. The inhabitants of the Lucayas , an unsuspicious and credulous people, did not escape the snares laid for them. Ovando, in his dispatches to Spain , represented the benefit it would be to the holy faith, to have the inhabitants of the Lucayas instructed in the Christian religion; for which purpose, he said, 'it would be necessary they should be transported to Hispaniola , as Missionaries could not be spared to every place, and there was no other way in which this abandoned people could be converted.' The Natives of the Lucayas betrayed to the Mines; King Ferdinand and the Council of the Indies were themselves so abandoned and destitute of all goodness, as to pretend to give credit to Ovando's representation, and lent him their authority to sacrifice the Lucayans, under the pretext of advancing religion. Spanish ships were sent to the Islands on this business, and the natives were at first inveigled on board by the foulest hypocrisy and treachery. Among the artifices used by the Spaniards, they pretended that they came from a delicious country, where rested the souls of the deceased fathers, kinsmen, and friends, of the Lucayans, who had sent to invite them. and the Islands wholly unpeopled. The innocent Islanders so seduced to follow the Spaniards, when, on arriving at Hispaniola , they found how much they had been abused, died in great numbers of chagrin and grief. Afterwards, when these impious pretences of the Spaniards were no longer believed, they dragged away the natives by force, as long as any could be found, till they wholly unpeopled the Lucayas Islands . The Buccaneers of America , whose adventures and misdeeds are about to be related, may be esteemed saints in comparison with the men whose names have been celebrated as the Conquerors of the New World.

In the same manner as at the Lucayas , other Islands of the West Indies , and different parts of the Continent, were resorted to for recruits. A pearl fishery was established, in which the Indians were not more spared as divers, than on the land as miners.

Porto Rico was conquered at this time. Fate of the native Inhabitants of Porto Rico. Ore had been brought thence, which was not so pure as that of Hayti ; but it was of sufficient value to determine Ovando to the conquest of the Island. The Islanders were terrified by the carnage which the Spaniards with their dogs made in the commencement of the war, and, from the fear of irritating them by further resistance, they yielded wholly at discretion, and were immediately sent to the mines, where in a short time they all perished. In the same year with Porto Rico , the Island of Jamaica was taken possession of by the Spaniards.

1509. D. Diego Columbus, Governor of Hispaniola. Ovando was at length recalled, and was succeeded in the government of Hispaniola by Don Diego Columbus, the eldest son and inheritor of the rights and titles of the Admiral Christopher. To conclude with Ovando, it is related that he was regretted by his countrymen in the Indies , and was well received at Court.

Don Diego did not make any alteration in the repartimientos , except that some of them changed hands in favour of his own adherents. During his government, some fathers of the Dominican Order had the courage to inveigh from the pulpit against the enormity of the repartimientos , and were so persevering in their representations, that the Court of Spain found it necessary, to avoid scandal, to order an enquiry into the condition of the Indians. In this enquiry it was seriously disputed, whether it was just or unjust to make them slaves.

1511. Increase of Cattle in Hayti. The Histories of Hispaniola first notice about this time a great increase in the number of cattle in the Island. As the human race disappeared, less and less land was occupied in husbandry, till almost the whole country became pasturage for cattle, by far the greater part of which were wild. An ordonnance, issued in the year 1511, specified, that as beasts of burthen were so much multiplied, the Indians should not be made to carry or drag heavy loads.

Cuba. In 1511, the conquest of Cuba was undertaken and completed. The terror conceived of the Spaniards is not to be expressed. The story of the conquest is related in a Spanish history in the following terms: 'A leader was chosen, who had acquitted himself in high employments with fortune and good conduct. He had in other respects amiable qualities, and was esteemed a man of honour and rectitude. He went from S. Domingo with regular troops and above 300 volunteers. He landed in Cuba , not without opposition from the natives. In a few days, he surprised and took the principal Cacique, named Hatuey, prisoner, and made him expiate in the flames the fault he had been guilty of in not submitting with a good grace to the conqueror .' This Cacique, when at the stake, being importuned by a Spanish priest to become a Christian, that he might go to Heaven, replied, that if any Spaniard was to be met in Heaven, he hoped not to go there.

1514. The Reader will be detained a very little longer with these irksome scenes. In 1514, the number of the inhabitants of Hayti was reckoned 14,000. A distributor of Indians was appointed, with powers independent of the Governor, with intention to save the few remaining natives of Hayti . The new distributor began the exercise of his office by a general revocation of all the encomiendas , except those which had been granted by the King; and almost immediately afterwards, in the most open and shameless manner, he made new grants, and sold them to the highest bidder. 1515. He was speedily recalled; and another (the Licentiate Ybarra) was sent to supply his place, who had a high character for probity and resolution; but he died immediately on his arrival at Santo Domingo , and not without suspicion that he was poisoned.