That was a wonderful century, the fifteenth, when men realized that beyond
the scowling waste of western waters were dreams come true. Curious and
yet crassly human it is that, with all this poetry and romance, arose at
once the filthiest institution of the modern world and the costliest. For
on Negro slavery in America was built, not simply the abortive cotton
kingdom, but the foundations of that modern imperialism which is based on
the despising of backward men.
According to some accounts Alonzo, "the Negro," piloted one of the ships
of Columbus, and certainly there was Negro blood among his sailors. As
early as 1528 there were nearly ten thousand Negroes in the new world. We
hear of them in all parts. In Honduras, for instance, a Negro is sent to
burn a native village; in 1555 the town council of Santiago de Chile voted
to allow an enfranchised Negro possession of land in the town, and
evidently treated him just as white applicants were treated. D'Allyon, who
explored the coast of Virginia in the first quarter of the sixteenth
century, used Negro slaves (who afterward revolted) to build his ships and
help in exploration; Balboa had with him thirty Negroes, who, in 1513,
helped to build the first ships on the Pacific coast; Cortez had three
hundred Negro porters in 1522.
Before 1530 there were enough Negroes in Mexico to lead to an
insurrection, where the Negroes fought desperately, but were overcome and
their ringleaders executed. Later the followers of another Negro
insurgent, Bayano, were captured and sent back to Spain. Negroes founded
the town of Santiago del Principe in 1570, and in 1540 a Negro slave of
Hernandez de Alarcon was the only one of the party to carry a message
across the country to the Zunis of New Mexico. A Negro, Stephen Dorantes,
discovered New Mexico. This Stephen or "Estevanico" was sent ahead by
certain Spanish friars to the "Seven Cities of Cibola." "As soon as
Stephen had left said friars, he determined to earn all the reputation and
honor for himself, and that the boldness and daring of having alone
discovered those villages of high stories so much spoken of throughout
that country should be attributed to him; and carrying along with him the
people who followed him, he endeavored to cross the wilderness which is
between Cibola and the country he had gone through, and he was so far
ahead of the friars that when they arrived at Chichilticalli, which is on
the edge of the wilderness, he was already at Cibola, which is eighty
leagues of wilderness beyond." But the Indians of the new and strange
country took alarm and concluded that Stephen "must be a spy or guide for
some nations who intended to come and conquer them, because it seemed to
them unreasonable for him to say that the people were white in the country
from which he came, being black himself and being sent by them."[76]
Slaves imported under the Asiento treaties went to all parts of the
Americas. Spanish America had by the close of the eighteenth century ten
thousand in Santo Domingo, eighty-four thousand in Cuba, fifty thousand in
Porto Rico, sixty thousand in Louisiana and Florida, and sixty thousand in
Central and South America.
The history of the Negro in Spanish America centered in Cuba, Venezuela,
and Central America. In the sixteenth century slaves began to arrive in
Cuba and Negroes joined many of the exploring expeditions from there to
various parts of America. The slave trade greatly increased in the latter
part of the eighteenth century, and after the revolution in Hayti large
numbers of French emigrants from that island settled in Cuba. This and
Spanish greed increased the harshness of slavery and eventually led to
revolt among the Negroes. In 1844 Governor O'Donnell began a cruel
persecution of the blacks on account of a plot discovered among them.
Finally in 1866 the Ten Years' War broke out in which Negro and white
rebels joined. They demanded the abolition of slavery and equal political
rights for natives and foreigners, whites and blacks. The war was cruel
and bloody but ended in 1878 with the abolition of slavery, while a
further uprising the following year secured civil rights for Negroes.
Spanish economic oppression continued, however, and the leading chiefs of
the Ten Years' War including such leaders as the mulatto, Antonio Maceo,
with large numbers of Negro soldiers, took the field again in 1895. The
result was the freeing of Cuba by the intervention of the United States.
Negro regiments from the United States played here a leading role. A
number of leaders in Cuba in political, industrial, and literary lines
have been men of Negro descent.
Slavery was abolished by Guatemala in 1824 and by Mexico in 1829.
Argentine, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Paraguay ceased to recognize it about
1825. Between 1840 and 1845 it came to an end in Colombia, Venezuela, and
Ecquador. Bolivar, Paez, Sucre, and other South American leaders used
Negro soldiers in fighting for freedom (1814-16), and Hayti twice at
critical times rendered assistance and received Bolivar twice as a
refugee.
Brazil was the center of Portuguese slavery, but slaves were not
introduced in large numbers until about 1720, when diamonds were
discovered in the territory above Rio Janeiro. Gradually the seaboard from
Pernambuco to Rio Janeiro and beyond became filled with Negroes, and
although the slave trade north of the equator was theoretically abolished
by Portugal in 1815 and south of the equator in 1830, and by Brazil in
these regions in 1826 and 1830, nevertheless between 1825 and 1850 over a
million and a quarter of Negroes were introduced. Not until Brazil
abolished slavery in 1888 did the importation wholly cease. Brazilian
slavery allowed the slave to purchase his freedom, and the color line was
not strict. Even in the eighteenth century there were black clergy and
bishops; indeed the Negro clergy seem to have been on a higher moral level
than the whites.
Insurrection was often attempted, especially among the Mohammedan Negroes
around Bahia. In 1695 a tribe of revolted slaves held out for a long time.
In 1719 a widespread conspiracy failed, but many of the leaders fled to
the forest. In 1828 a thousand rose in revolt at Bahia, and again in 1830.
From 1831 to 1837 revolt was in the air, and in 1835 came the great revolt
of the Mohammedans, who attempted to enthrone a queen. The Negroes fought
with furious bravery, but were finally defeated.
By 1872 the number of free Negroes had very greatly increased, so that
emancipation did not come as a shock. While Mohammedan Negroes still gave
trouble and were in some cases sent back to Africa, yet on the whole
emancipation was peaceful, and whites, Negroes, and Indians are to-day
amalgamating into a new race. "At the present moment there is scarcely a
lowly or a highly placed federal or provincial official at the head of or
within any of the great departments of state that has not more or less
Negro or Amer-Indian blood in his veins."[77]
Lord Bryce says, "It is hardly too much to say that along the coast from
Rio to Bahia and Pernambuco, as well as in parts of the interior behind
these two cities, the black population predominates.... The Brazilian
lower class intermarries freely with the black people; the Brazilian
middle class intermarries with mulattoes and Quadroons. Brazil is the one
country in the world, besides the Portuguese colonies on the east and west
coasts of Africa, in which a fusion of the European and African races is
proceeding unchecked by law or custom. The doctrines of human equality and
human solidarity have here their perfect work. The result is so far
satisfactory that there is little or no class friction. The white man does
not lynch or maltreat the Negro; indeed I have never heard of a lynching
anywhere in South America except occasionally as part of a political
convulsion. The Negro is not accused of insolence and does not seem to
develop any more criminality than naturally belongs to any ignorant
population with loose notions of morality and property.
"What ultimate effect the intermixture of blood will have on the European
element in Brazil I will not venture to predict. If one may judge from a
few remarkable cases, it will not necessarily reduce the intellectual
standard. One of the ablest and most refined Brazilians I have known had
some color; and other such cases have been mentioned to me. Assumptions
and preconceptions must be eschewed, however plausible they may
seem."[78]
A Brazilian writer said at the First Races Congress: "The coöperation of
the _metis_[79] in the advance of Brazil is notorious and far from
inconsiderable. They played the chief part during many years in Brazil in
the campaign for the abolition of slavery. I could quote celebrated names
of more than one of these _metis_ who put themselves at the head of the
literary movement. They fought with firmness and intrepidity in the press
and on the platform. They faced with courage the gravest perils to which
they were exposed in their struggle against the powerful slave owners, who
had the protection of a conservative government. They gave evidence of
sentiments of patriotism, self-denial, and appreciation during the long
campaign in Paraguay, fighting heroically at the boarding of the ships in
the naval battle of Riachuelo and in the attacks on the Brazilian army, on
numerous occasions in the course of this long South American war. It was
owing to their support that the republic was erected on the ruins of the
empire."[80]
The Dutch brought the first slaves to the North American continent. John
Rolfe relates that the last of August, 1619, there came to Virginia "a
Dutch man of warre that sold us twenty Negars."[81] This was probably one
of the ships of the numerous private Dutch trading companies which early
entered into the developed and the lucrative African slave trade. Although
the Dutch thus commenced the continental slave trade they did not actually
furnish a very large number of slaves to the English colonies outside the
West Indies. A small trade had by 1698 brought a few thousand to New York
and still fewer to New Jersey.
The Dutch found better scope for slaves in Guiana, which they settled in
1616. Sugar cane became the staple crop, but the Negroes early began to
revolt and the Dutch brought in East Indian coolies. The slaves were badly
treated and the runaways joined the revolted Bush Negroes in the interior.
From 1715 to 1775 there was continuous fighting with the Bush Negroes or
insurrections, until at last in 1749 a formal treaty between sixteen
hundred Negroes and the Dutch was made. Immediately a new group revolted
under a Mohammedan, Arabi, and they obtained land and liberty. In 1763 the
coast Negroes revolted. They were checked, but made terms and settled in
the interior. The Bush Negroes fought against both French and English to
save Guiana to the Dutch, but Guiana was eventually divided between the
three. The Bush Negroes still maintain their independence and vigor.
The French encouraged settlements in the West Indies in the seventeenth
century, but at last, finding that French immigrants would not come, they
began about 1642 to import Negroes. Owing to wars with England, slaves
were supplied by the Dutch and Portuguese, although the Royal Senegal
Company held the coveted Asiento from 1701 to 1713.
It was in the island of Hayti, however, that French slavery centered.
Pirates from many nations, but chiefly French, began to frequent the
island, and in 1663 the French annexed the eastern part, thus dividing the
island between France and Spain. By 1680 there were so many slaves and
mulattoes that Louis XIV issued his celebrated Code Noir, which was
notable in compelling bachelor masters, fathers of slave children, to
marry their concubines. Children followed the condition of the mother as
to slavery or freedom; they could have no property; harsh punishments were
provided for, but families could not be separated by sale except in the
case of grown children; emancipation with full civil rights was made
possible for any slave twenty years of age or more. When Louisiana was
settled and the Alabama coast, slaves were introduced there. Louisiana was
transferred to Spain in 1762, against the resistance of both settlers and
slaves, but Spain took possession in 1769 and introduced more Negroes.
Later, in Hayti, a more liberal policy encouraged trade; war was over and
capital and slaves poured in. Sugar, coffee, chocolate, indigo, dyes, and
spices were raised. There were large numbers of mulattoes, many of whom
were educated in France, and many masters married Negro women who had
inherited large properties, just as in the United States to-day white men
are marrying eagerly the landed Indian women in the West. When white
immigration increased in 1749, however, prejudice arose against these
mulattoes and severe laws were passed depriving them of civil rights,
entrance into the professions, and the right to hold office; severe edicts
were enforced as to clothing, names, and social intercourse. Finally,
after 1777, mulattoes were forbidden to come to France.
When the French Revolution broke out, the Haytians managed to send two
delegates to Paris. Nevertheless the planters maintained the upper hand,
and one of the colored delegates, Oge, on returning, started a small
rebellion. He and his companions were killed with great brutality. This
led the French government to grant full civil rights to free Negroes,
Immediately planters and free Negroes flew to arms against each other and
then, suddenly, August 22, 1791, the black slaves, of whom there were four
hundred and fifty-two thousand, arose in revolt to help the free Negroes.
For many years runaway slaves had hidden in the mountains under their own
chiefs. One of the earliest of these chiefs was Polydor, in 1724, who was
succeeded by Macandal. The great chief of these runaways or "Maroons" at
the time of the slave revolt was Jean François, who was soon succeeded by
Biassou.
Pierre Dominic Toussaint, known as Toussaint L'Ouverture, joined these
Maroon bands, where he was called "the doctor of the armies of the king,"
and soon became chief aid to Jean François and Biassou. Upon their deaths
Toussaint rose to the chief command. He acquired complete control over the
blacks, not only in military matters, but in politics and social
organization; "the soldiers regarded him as a superior being, and the
farmers prostrated themselves before him. All his generals trembled before
him (Dessalines did not dare to look in his face), and all the world
trembled before his generals."[82]
The revolt once started, blacks and mulattoes murdered whites without
mercy and the whites retaliated. Commissioners were sent from France, who
asked simply civil rights for freedmen, and not emancipation. Indeed that
was all that Toussaint himself had as yet demanded. The planters intrigued
with the British and this, together with the beheading of the king (an
impious act in the eyes of Negroes), induced Toussaint to join the
Spaniards. In 1793 British troops were landed and the French commissioners
in desperation declared the slaves emancipated. This at once won back
Toussaint from the Spaniards. He became supreme in the north, while
Rigaud, leader of the mulattoes, held the south and the west. By 1798 the
British, having lost most of their forces by yellow fever, surrendered
Mole St. Nicholas to Toussaint and departed. Rigaud finally left for
France, and Toussaint in 1800 was master of Hayti. He promulgated a
constitution under which Hayti was to be a self-governing colony; all men
were equal before the law, and trade was practically free. Toussaint was
to be president for life, with the power to name his successor.
Napoleon Bonaparte, master of France, had at this time dreams of a great
American empire, and replied to Toussaint's new government by sending
twenty-five thousand men under his brother-in-law to subdue the
presumptuous Negroes, as a preliminary step to his occupation and
development of the Mississippi valley. Fierce fighting and yellow fever
decimated the French, but matters went hard with the Negroes too, and
Toussaint finally offered to yield. He was courteously received with
military honors and then, as soon as possible, treacherously seized,
bound, and sent to France. He was imprisoned at Fort Joux and died,
perhaps of poison, after studied humiliations, April 7, 1803.
Thus perished the greatest of American Negroes and one of the great men of
all time, at the age of fifty-six. A French planter said, "God in his
terrestrial globe did not commune with a purer spirit."[83] Wendell
Phillips said, "Some doubt the courage of the Negro. Go to Hayti and stand
on those fifty thousand graves of the best soldiers France ever had and
ask them what they think of the Negro's sword. I would call him Napoleon,
but Napoleon made his way to empire over broken oaths and through a sea of
blood. This man never broke his word. I would call him Cromwell, but
Cromwell was only a soldier, and the state he founded went down with him
into his grave. I would call him Washington, but the great Virginian held
slaves. This man risked his empire rather than permit the slave trade in
the humblest village of his dominions. You think me a fanatic, for you
read history, not with your eyes, but with your prejudices. But fifty
years hence, when Truth gets a hearing, the Muse of history will put
Phocion for the Greek, Brutus for the Roman, Hampden for the English, La
Fayette for France, choose Washington as the bright, consummate flower of
our earlier civilization, then, dipping her pen in the sunlight, will
write in the clear blue, above them all, the name of the soldier, the
statesman, the martyr, Toussaint L'Ouverture."
The treacherous killing of Toussaint did not conquer Hayti. In 1802 and
1803 some forty thousand French soldiers died of war and fever. A new
colored leader, Dessalines, arose and all the eight thousand remaining
French surrendered to the blockading British fleet.
The effect of all this was far-reaching. Napoleon gave up his dream of
American empire and sold Louisiana for a song. "Thus, all of Indian
Territory, all of Kansas and Nebraska and Iowa and Wyoming and Montana and
the Dakotas, and most of Colorado and Minnesota, and all of Washington and
Oregon states, came to us as the indirect work of a despised Negro.
Praise, if you will, the work of a Robert Livingstone or a Jefferson, but
to-day let us not forget our debt to Toussaint L'Ouverture, who was
indirectly the means of America's expansion by the Louisiana Purchase of
1803."[84]
With the freedom of Hayti in 1801 came a century of struggle to fit the
people for the freedom they had won. They were yet slaves, crushed by a
cruel servitude, without education or religious instruction. The Haytian
leaders united upon Dessalines to maintain the independence of the
republic. Dessalines, like Toussaint and his lieutenant Christophe, was
noted in slavery days for his severity toward his fellows and the
discipline which he insisted on. He had other characteristics of African
chieftains. "There were seasons when he broke through his natural
sullenness and showed himself open, affable, and even generous. His vanity
was excessive and manifested itself in singular perversities."[85] He was
a man of great personal bravery and succeeded in maintaining the
independence of Hayti, which had already cost the Frenchmen fifty thousand
lives.
On January 1, 1804, at the place whence Toussaint had been treacherously
seized and sent to France, the independence of Hayti was declared by the
military leaders. Dessalines was made governor-general for life and
afterward proclaimed himself emperor. This was not an act of
grandiloquence and mimicry. "It is truer to say that in it both Dessalines
and later Christophe were actuated by a clear insight into the social
history and peculiarities of their people. There was nothing in the
constitution which did not have its companion in Africa, where the
organization of society was despotic, with elective hereditary chiefs,
royal families, polygamic marriages, councils, and regencies."[86]
The population was divided into soldiers and laborers. The territory was
parceled out to chiefs, and the laborers were bound to the soil and worked
under rigorous inspection; part of the products were reserved for their
support, and the rest went to the chiefs, the king, the general
government, and the army. The army was under stern discipline and
military service was compulsory. Women did much of the agricultural labor.
Under Toussaint the administration of this system was committed to
Dessalines, who carried it out with rigor; it was afterward followed by
Christophe. The latter even imported four thousand Negroes from Africa,
from whom he formed a national guard for patrolling the land. These
regulations brought back for a time a large part of the former prosperity
of the island.
The severity with which Dessalines enforced the laws soon began to turn
many against him. The educated mulattoes especially objected to submission
to the savage African _mores_. Dessalines started to suppress their
revolt, but was killed in ambush in October, 1806.
Great Britain now began to intrigue for a protectorate over the island and
the Spanish end of the island threatened attack. These difficulties were
overcome, but at a cost of great internal strain. After the death of
Dessalines it seemed that Hayti was about to dissolve into a number of
petty subdivisions. At one time Christophe was ruling as king in the
north, Petion as president at Port au Prince, Rigaud in the south, and a
semi-brigand, Goman, in the extreme southwest. Very soon, however, the
rivalry narrowed down to Petion and Christophe. Petion was a man of
considerable ability and did much, not simply for Hayti, but for South
America. Already as early as 1779, before the revolution in Hayti, the
Haytian Negroes had helped the United States. The British had captured
Savannah in 1778. The French fleet appeared on the coast of Georgia late
that year and was ordered to recruit men in Hayti. Eight hundred young
freedmen, blacks and mulattoes, offered to take part in the expedition,
and they fought valiantly in the siege and covered themselves with glory.
It was this legion that made the charge on the British and saved the
retreating American army. Among the men who fought there was Christophe.
When Simon Bolivar, Commodore Aury, and many Venezuelan families were
driven from their country in 1815, they and their ships took temporary
refuge in Hayti. Notwithstanding the embarrassed condition of the
republic, Petion received them and gave them four thousand rifles with
ammunition, provisions, and last and best a printing press. He also
settled some international quarrels among members of the groups, and
Bolivar expressed himself afterward as being "overwhelmed with magnanimous
favors."[87]
Petion died in 1818 and was succeeded by his friend Boyer. Christophe
committed suicide the following year and Boyer became not simply ruler of
western Hayti, but also, by arrangement with the eastern end of the
island, gained the mastery there, where they were afraid of Spanish
aggression. Thus from 1822 to 1843 Boyer, a man of much ability, ruled the
whole of the island and gained the recognition of Haytian independence
from France and other nations.
France, under Charles X, demanded an indemnity of thirty million dollars
to reimburse the planters for confiscated lands and property. This Hayti
tried to pay, but the annual installment was a tremendous burden to the
impoverished country. Further negotiations were entered into. Finally in
1838 France recognized the independence of the republic and the indemnity
was reduced to twelve million dollars. Even this was a large burden for
Hayti, and the payment of it for years crippled the island.
The United States and Great Britain in 1825-26 recognized the independence
of Hayti. A concordat was arranged with the Pope for governing the church
in Hayti, and finally in 1860 the church placed under the French
hierarchy. Thus Boyer did unusually well; but his necessary concessions to
France weakened his influence at home, and finally an earthquake, which
destroyed several towns in 1842, raised the superstitious of the populace
against him. He resigned in 1843, leaving the treasury well filled; but
with his withdrawal the Spanish portion of the island was lost to Hayti.
The subsequent history of Hayti since 1843 has been the struggle of a
small divided country to maintain political independence. The rich
resources of the country called for foreign capital, but outside capital
meant political influence from abroad, which the little nation rightly
feared. Within, the old antagonism between the freedman and the slave
settled into a color line between the mulatto and the black, which for a
time meant the difference between educated liberalism and reactionary
ignorance. This difference has largely disappeared, but some vestiges of
the color line remain. The result has been reaction and savagery under
Soulouque, Dominique, and Nord Alexis, and decided advance under
presidents like Nissage-Saget, Solomon, Legitime, and Hyppolite.
In political life Hayti is still in the sixteenth century; but in
economic life she has succeeded in placing on their own little farms the
happiest and most contented peasantry in the world, after raising them
from a veritable hell of slavery. If modern capitalistic greed can be
restrained from interference until the best elements of Hayti secure
permanent political leadership the triumph of the revolution will be
complete.
In other parts of the French-American dominion the slaves achieved freedom
also by insurrection. In Guadeloupe they helped the French drive out the
British, and thus gained emancipation. In Martinique it took three revolts
and a civil war to bring freedom.
The English slave empire in America centered in the Bermudas, Barbadoes,
Jamaica and the lesser islands, and in the United States. Barbadoes
developed a savage slave code, and the result was attempted slave
insurrections in 1674, 1692, and 1702. These were not successful, but a
rising in 1816 destroyed much property under the leadership of a mulatto,
Washington Franklin, and the repeal of bad laws and eventual
enfranchisement of the colored people followed. One Barbadian mulatto, Sir
Conrad Reeves, has held the position of chief justice in the island and
was knighted. A Negro insurrection in Dominica under Farcel greatly
exercised England in 1791 and 1794 and delayed slave trade abolition; in
1844 and 1847 further uprisings took place, and these continued from 1853
to 1893.
The chief island domain of English slavery was Jamaica. It was Oliver
Cromwell who, in his zeal for God and the slave trade, sent an expedition
to seize Hayti. His fleet, driven off there, took Jamaica in 1655. The
English found the mountains already infested with runaway slaves known as
"Maroons," and more Negroes joined them when the English arrived. In 1663
the freedom of the Maroons was acknowledged, land was given them, and
their leader, Juan de Bolas, was made a colonel in the militia. He was
killed, however, in the following year, and from 1664 to 1738 the three
thousand or more black Maroons fought the British Empire in guerrilla
warfare. Soldiers, Indians, and dogs were sent against them, and finally
in 1738 Captain Cudjo and other chiefs made a formal treaty of peace with
Governor Trelawney. They were granted twenty-five hundred acres and their
freedom was recognized.
The peace lasted until 1795, when they rebelled again and gave the
British a severe drubbing, besides murdering planters. Bloodhounds again
were imported. The Maroons offered to surrender on the express condition
that none of their number should be deported from the island, as the
legislature wished. General Walpole hesitated, but could get peace on no
other terms and gave his word. The Maroons surrendered their arms, and
immediately the whites seized six hundred of the ringleaders and
transported them to the snows of Nova Scotia! The legislature then voted a
sword worth twenty-five hundred dollars to General Walpole, which he
indignantly refused to accept. Eventually these exiled Maroons found their
way to Sierra Leone, West Africa, in time to save that colony to the
British crown.[88]
The pressing desire for peace with the Maroons on the part of the white
planters arose from the new sugar culture introduced in 1673. A greatly
increased demand for slaves followed, and between 1700 and 1786 six
hundred and ten thousand slaves were imported; nevertheless, so severely
were they driven, that there were only three hundred thousand Negroes in
Jamaica in the latter year.
Despite the Moravian missions and other efforts late in the eighteenth
century, unrest among the Jamaica slaves and freedmen grew and was
increased by the anti-slavery agitation in England and the revolt in
Hayti. There was an insurrection in 1796; and in 1831 again the Negroes of
northwest Jamaica, impatient because of the slow progress of the
emancipation, arose in revolt and destroyed nearly three and a half
million dollars' worth of property, well-nigh ruining the planters there.
The next year two hundred and fifty-five thousand slaves were set free,
for which the planters were paid nearly thirty million dollars. There
ensued a discouraging condition of industry. The white officials sent out
in these days were arbitrary and corrupt. Little was done for the mass of
the people and there was outrageous over-taxation. Nevertheless the
backwardness of the colony was attributed to the Negro. Governor Eyre
complained in 1865 that the young and strong were good for nothing and
were filling the jails; but a simultaneous report by a missionary told the
truth concerning the officials. This aroused the colored people, and a
mulatto, George William Gordon, called a meeting. Other meetings were
afterward held, and finally the Negro peasantry began a riot in 1861, in
which eighteen people were killed, only a few of whom were white.
The result was that Governor Eyre tried and executed by court-martial 354
persons, and in addition to this killed without trial 85, a total of 439.
One thousand Negro homes were burned to the ground and thousands of
Negroes flogged or mutilated. Children had their brains dashed out,
pregnant women were murdered, and Gordon was tried by court-martial and
hanged. In fact the punishment was, as the royal commissioners said,
"reckless and positively barbarous."[89]
This high-handed act aroused England. Eyre was not punished, but the
island was made a crown colony in 1866, and given representation in the
legislature in 1886.
In the island of St. Vincent, Indians first sought to enslave the fugitive
Negroes wrecked there, but the Negroes took the Carib women and then drove
the Indian men away. These "black Caribs" fought with Indians, English,
and others for three quarters of a century, until the Indians were
exterminated. The British took possession in 1763. The black Caribs
resisted, and after hard fighting signed a treaty in 1773, receiving
one-third of the island as their property. They afterward helped the
French against the British, and were finally deported to the island of
Ruatan, off Honduras. In Trinidad and British Guiana there have been
mutinies and rioting of slaves and a curious mingling of races.
Other parts of South America must be dismissed briefly, because of
insufficient data. Colombia and Venezuela, with perhaps eight million
people, have at least one-third of their population of Negro and Indian
descent. Here Simon Bolivar with his Negro, mulatto, and Indian forces
began the war that liberated South America. Central America has a smaller
proportion of Negroids, perhaps one hundred thousand in all. Bolivia and
Peru have small amounts of Negro blood, while Argentine and Uruguay have
very little. The Negro population in these lands is everywhere in process
of rapid amalgamation with whites and Indians.