Pupils in Piracy
After the discoveries of Columbus, the Spanish mind seems to have been
filled with the idea that the whole undiscovered world, wherever it
might be, belonged to Spain, and that no other nation had any right
whatever to discover anything on the other side of the Atlantic, or to
make any use whatever of lands which had been discovered. In fact, the
natives of the new countries, and the inhabitants of all old countries
except her own, were considered by Spain as possessing no rights
whatever. If the natives refused to pay tribute, or to spend their days
toiling for gold for their masters, or if vessels from England or France
touched at one of their settlements for purposes of trade, it was all
the same to the Spaniards; a war of attempted extermination was waged
alike against the peaceful inhabitants of Hispaniola, now Hayti, and
upon the bearded and hardy seamen from Northern Europe. Under this
treatment the natives weakened and gradually disappeared; but the
buccaneers became more and more numerous and powerful.
The buccaneers were not unlike that class of men known in our western
country as cowboys. Young fellows of good families from England and
France often determined to embrace a life of adventure, and possibly
profit, and sailed out to the West Indies to get gold and hides, and to
fight Spaniards. Frequently they dropped their family names and assumed
others more suitable to roving freebooters, and, like the bold young
fellows who ride over our western plains, driving cattle and shooting
Indians, they adopted a style of dress as free and easy, but probably
not quite so picturesque, as that of the cowboy. They soon became a very
rough set of fellows, in appearance as well as action, endeavoring in
every way to let the people of the western world understand that they
were absolutely free and independent of the manners and customs, as well
as of the laws of their native countries.
So well was this independence understood, that when the buccaneers
became strong enough to inflict some serious injury upon the settlements
in the West Indies, and the Spanish court remonstrated with Queen
Elizabeth on account of what had been done by some of her subjects, she
replied that she had nothing to do with these buccaneers, who, although
they had been born in England, had ceased for the time to be her
subjects, and the Spaniards must defend themselves against them just as
if they were an independent nation.
But it is impossible for men who have been brought up in civilized
society, and who have been accustomed to obey laws, to rid themselves
entirely of all ideas of propriety and morality, as soon as they begin a
life of lawlessness. So it happened that many of the buccaneers could
not divest themselves of the notions of good behavior to which they had
been accustomed from youth. For instance, we are told of a captain of
buccaneers, who, landing at a settlement on a Sunday, took his crew to
church. As it is not at all probable that any of the buccaneering
vessels carried chaplains, opportunities of attending services must have
been rare. This captain seems to have wished to show that pirates in
church know what they ought to do just as well as other people; it was
for this reason that, when one of his men behaved himself in an improper
and disorderly manner during the service, this proper-minded captain
arose from his seat and shot the offender dead.
There was a Frenchman of that period who must have been a warm-hearted
philanthropist, because, having read accounts of the terrible atrocities
of the Spaniards in the western lands, he determined to leave his home
and his family, and become a buccaneer, in order that he might do what
he could for the suffering natives in the Spanish possessions. He
entered into the great work which he had planned for himself with such
enthusiasm and zeal, that in the course of time he came to be known as
"The Exterminator," and if there had been more people of his
philanthropic turn of mind, there would soon have been no inhabitants
whatever upon the islands from which the Spaniards had driven out the
Indians.
There was another person of that day,--also a Frenchman,--who became
deeply involved in debt in his own country, and feeling that the
principles of honor forbade him to live upon and enjoy what was really
the property of others, he made up his mind to sail across the Atlantic,
and become a buccaneer. He hoped that if he should be successful in his
new profession, and should be enabled to rob Spaniards for a term of
years, he could return to France, pay off all his debts, and afterward
live the life of a man of honor and respectability.
Other ideas which the buccaneers brought with them from their native
countries soon showed themselves when these daring sailors began their
lives as regular pirates; among these, the idea of organization was very
prominent. Of course it was hard to get a number of free and
untrammelled crews to unite and obey the commands of a few officers. But
in time the buccaneers had recognized leaders, and laws were made for
concerted action. In consequence of this the buccaneers became a
formidable body of men, sometimes superior to the Spanish naval and
military forces.
It must be remembered that the buccaneers lived in a very peculiar age.
So far as the history of America is concerned, it might be called the
age of blood and gold. In the newly discovered countries there were no
laws which European nations or individuals cared to observe. In the West
Indies and the adjacent mainlands there were gold and silver, and there
were also valuable products of other kinds, and when the Spaniards
sailed to their part of the new world, these treasures were the things
for which they came. The natives were weak and not able to defend
themselves. All the Spaniards had to do was to take what they could
find, and when they could not find enough they made the poor Indians
find it for them. Here was a part of the world, and an age of the world,
wherein it was the custom for men to do what they pleased, provided they
felt themselves strong enough, and it was not to be supposed that any
one European nation could expect a monopoly of this state of mind.
Therefore it was that while the Spaniards robbed and ruined the natives
of the lands they discovered, the English, French, and Dutch buccaneers
robbed the robbers. Great vessels were sent out from Spain, carrying
nothing in the way of merchandise to America, but returning with all the
precious metals and valuable products of the newly discovered regions,
which could in any way be taken from the unfortunate natives. The gold
mines of the new world had long been worked, and yielded handsome
revenues, but the native method of operating them did not satisfy the
Spaniards, who forced the poor Indians to labor incessantly at the
difficult task of digging out the precious metals, until many of them
died under the cruel oppression. Sometimes the Indians were kept six
months under ground, working in the mines; and at one time, when it was
found that the natives had died off, or had fled from the neighborhood
of some of the rich gold deposits, it was proposed to send to Africa and
get a cargo of negroes to work the mines.
Now it is easy to see that all this made buccaneering a very tempting
occupation. To capture a great treasure ship, after the Spaniards had
been at so much trouble to load it, was a grand thing, according to the
pirate's point of view, and although it often required reckless bravery
and almost superhuman energy to accomplish the feats necessary in this
dangerous vocation, these were qualities which were possessed by nearly
all the sea-robbers of our coast; the stories of some of the most
interesting of these wild and desperate fellows,--men who did not
combine piracy with discoveries and explorations, but who were
out-and-out sea-robbers, and gained in that way all the reputation they
ever possessed,--will be told in subsequent chapters.