THE SPANIARDS IN JAMAICA AND OTHER WEST INDIAN ISLANDS.
The story of one West India Island, is the story of all. Whether
Spaniards, French, or English took possession, the slaughter and
oppression of the natives followed. I shall, therefore, quit these
fair islands for the present, with a mere passing glance at a few
characteristic facts.
Herrera says that Jamaica was settled prosperously, because Juan
de Esquival having brought the natives to submission _without any
effusion of blood_, they laboured in planting cotton, and raising
other commodities, which yielded great profit. But Esquival in a very
few years died in his office, and was buried in Sevilla Nueva, a town
which he had built and destined for the seat of government. There is
a dark tradition connected with the destruction of this town, which
would make us infer that the mildness of Esquival’s government was
not imitated by his successors. The Spanish planters assert that the
place was destroyed by a vast army of ants, but the popular tradition
still triumphs over this tradition of the planters. It maintains, that
the injured and oppressed natives rose in their despair and cut off
every one of their tyrants, and laid the place in such utter and awful
ruin that it never was rebuilt, but avoided as a spot of horror. The
city must have been planned with great magnificence, and laid out in
great extent, for Sloane, who visited it in 1688, could discover the
traces or remains of a fort, a splendid cathedral and monastery, the
one inhabited by Peter Martyr, who was abbot and chief missionary of
the island. He found a pavement at two miles distance from the church,
an indication of the extent of the place, and also many materials for
grand arches and noble buildings that had never been erected. The
ruins of this city were now overgrown with wood, and turned black with
age. Sloane saw timber trees growing within the walls of the cathedral
upwards of sixty feet in height; and General Venables in his dispatches
to Cromwell, preserved in Thurlow’s State Papers, vol. iii., speaks of
Seville as a town that had existed _in times past_.
Both ancient tradition, and recent discoveries, says Bryan Edwards,
in his History of the West Indies, give too much room to believe that
the work of destruction proceeded not less rapidly in this island,
after Esquival’s death, than in Hispaniola; for to this day caves are
frequently discovered in the mountains, wherein the ground is covered
almost entirely with human bones; the miserable remains, without all
doubt, of some of the unfortunate aborigines, who, immured in those
recesses, were probably reduced to the sad alternative of perishing
with hunger or bleeding under the swords of their merciless invaders.
That these are the skeletons of Indians is sufficiently attested by
the skulls, which are preternaturally compressed. “When, therefore,”
says Edwards, “we are told of the fate of the Spanish inhabitants of
Seville, it is impossible to feel any other emotion than an indignant
wish that the story were better authenticated, and that heaven, in
mercy, had permitted the poor Indians in the same moment to have
extirpated their oppressors altogether! But unhappily this faint
glimmering of returning light to the wretched natives, was soon lost
in everlasting darkness, since it pleased the Almighty, for reasons
inscrutable to finite wisdom, to permit the total destruction of this
devoted people; who, to the number of 60,000, on the most moderate
estimate, were at length wholly cut off and exterminated by the
Spaniards—not a single descendant of either sex being alive when the
English took the island in 1655, nor I believe for a century before.”
The French historian, Du Tertre, informs us that his countrymen made a
_lawful purchase_ of the island of Grenada from the natives for _some
glass beads, knives and hatchets, and a couple of bottles of brandy
for the chief himself_. The nature of the bargain may be pretty well
understood by the introduction of the brandy for the chief, and by the
general massacre which followed, when Du Tertre himself informs us that
Du Parquet, the very general who made this bargain, gave orders for
extirpating the natives altogether, which was done with circumstances
of the most savage barbarity, even to the women and children. The
same historian assures us that St. Christopher’s, the principal of
the Caribbee Isles, was won by the joint exertions of Thomas Warner,
an Englishman, and D’Esnambuc, the captain of a French privateer, who
both seem to have entered with hearty good-will into the business of
massacre and extermination; by which means, and by excessive labour,
the total aboriginal population of the West Indian islands were
speedily reduced from six millions, at which Las Casas estimated them,
to nothing.
Let any one read the following account from Herrera and Peter
Martyr, of the manner in which the Spaniards were received in these
islands:—“When any of the Spaniards came near to a village, the most
ancient and venerable of the Indians, or the cazique himself, if
present, came out to meet them, and gently conducting them into their
habitations, seated them on stools of ebony curiously ornamented. These
benches seemed to be seats of honour reserved for their guests, for
the Indians threw themselves on the ground, and kissing the hands and
feet of the Spaniards, offered them fruits and the choicest of their
viands, entreating them to prolong their stay with such solicitude
and reverence as demonstrated that they considered them as beings of
a superior nature, whose presence consecrated their dwellings, and
brought a blessing with it. One old man, a native of Cuba, approaching
Columbus with great reverence, and presenting a basket of fruit, thus
addressed him:—‘Whether you are divinities or mortal men we know
not. You come into these countries with a force, against which, were
we inclined to resist it, resistance would be a folly. We are all
therefore at your mercy: but if you are men subject to mortality like
ourselves, you cannot be unapprised that after this life there is
another, wherein a very different portion is allotted to good and bad
men. If, therefore, you expect to die, and believe with us that every
one is to be rewarded in a future state according to his conduct in
the present, you will do no hurt to those who do none to you.’”
Let the reader also, after listening to these exalted sentiments
addressed by a _savage_, as we are pleased to term him, to a
_Christian_, a term likewise used with as little propriety, read
this account of the reception of Bartholomew Columbus by Behechio,
a powerful cazique of Hispaniola. “As they approached the king’s
dwelling, they were met by his wives to the number of thirty, carrying
branches of the palm-tree in their hands, who first saluted the
Spaniards with a solemn dance, accompanied with a song. These matrons
were succeeded by a train of virgins, distinguished as such by their
appearance; the former wearing aprons of cotton cloth, while the
latter were arrayed only in the innocence of pure nature. Their hair
was tied simply with a fillet over their foreheads, or suffered to
flow gracefully on their shoulders and bosoms. Their limbs were finely
proportioned, and their complexions though brown, were smooth, shining
and lovely. The Spaniards were struck with admiration, believing that
they beheld the dryads of the woods, and the nymphs of the fountains
realizing ancient fable. The branches which they bore in their
hands, they now delivered with lowly obeisance to the lieutenant,
who, entering the palace, found a plentiful, and according to the
Indian mode of living, a splendid repast already provided. As night
approached, the Spaniards were conducted to separate cottages, wherein
each was accommodated with a cotton hammock, and the next morning they
were again entertained with dancing and singing. This was followed by
matches of wrestling and running for prizes; after which two great
bodies of armed Indians suddenly appeared, and a mock engagement
ensued, exhibiting their modes of warfare with the Charaibes. For three
days were the Spaniards thus royally entertained, and on the fourth the
affectionate Indians regretted their departure.”
What beautiful pictures of a primitive age! what a more than
realization of the age of gold! and what a dismal fall to that actual
_age of gold_ which was coming upon them! To turn from these delightful
scenes to the massacres and oppressions of millions of these gentle and
kind people, and then to the groans of millions of wretched Africans,
which through three long centuries have succeeded them, is one of the
most melancholy and amazing things in the criminal history of the
earth; nor can we wonder at the feelings with which Bryan Edwards
reviews this awful subject:—“All the murders and desolations of the
most pitiless tyrants that ever diverted themselves with the pangs and
convulsions of their fellow-creatures, fall infinitely short of the
bloody enormities committed by the Spanish nation in the conquest of
the New World—a conquest, on a low estimate, effected by the murder of
ten millions of the species! After reading these accounts, who can help
forming an indignant wish that the hand of Heaven, by some miraculous
interposition, had swept these European tyrants from the face of the
earth, who like so many beasts of prey, roamed round the world only to
desolate and destroy; and more remorseless than the fiercest savage,
thirsted for human blood without having the impulse of natural appetite
to plead in their defence!”