Secret Enemies in the Hills
The brutalities of the Spaniards who first occupied the West Indies would seem incredible if so many of them had not continued to our own day. It is estimated that half of the natives of Porto Rico were killed, and within sixty or seventy years after the seizure of Cuba its populace of three hundred thousand had been destroyed or removed by war, murder, slavery, hunting with blood-hounds, imported vices and diseases, flight and forced emigration. These natives are said to have been a peaceful and happy race, practised in the simpler arts, observing the moralities better than their oppressors, holding a faith in one god—a god of goodness, not of hate—and in the immortality of the soul, and abstaining from useless forms and ceremonies. They held that when the soul had left the body it went into the woods and hills or abode in caves, and took its food and drink as in the flesh. When a man calls out in a solitary place among the mountains and an answering voice comes back, it is not an echo, but a wandering soul that speaks.
Even the relics of these folk—the Cubans or Siboneyes—have vanished, save in the instance of the temple remains near Cobre, and an occasional caney or mound of the dead, a truncated cone of earth and broken stones. Some fossil skeletons found in caves, and of an alleged age of fifty thousand years, denote an ancient race of large, strong people. There are other skeletons of Siboneyes, Chinese, and negroes in the caves,—victims of herding, slavery, fever, cruelty, and suicide. There is little doubt that of the aboriginal stock not a man remains. Yet there are stories of strange people who were seen by hunters and explorers among the mountains, or who peered out of the jungle at the villagers and planters and were gone again, without track or sound,—people with swarthy faces, sinewy forms, long black hair, decorations of coral shells and feathers, and bracelets, armlets, and anklets of gold. Almost from the first, the conduct of the Spaniard toward his enemies and dependents was such as to earn for him a permanent hate; so, when his cruelty had been practised, and the futility of opposing arms against his heavy weapons and his coat of steel had been proved, it was natural that those who escaped him should keep as far from reach as possible, and it is idle to suppose that he traversed the seven hundred and thirty miles of Cuba’s length, whipping every forest and climbing every mountain, for no more than the pleasure of killing. Negro slavery was introduced into the New World before its existence had been known in Spain for a century, and although the black men have usually been tractable, the severities of their masters led to many revolts and to the organization of bands for retaliation. These bands often degenerated, and during this century the Spanish Antilles have been troubled by companies of beggars and outlaws, mostly blacks and half-breeds, who have robbed and murdered in the dark, run off stock from the farms, burned houses and shops, and because of their secret and cowardly methods have been feared as much as the Spaniards were hated.
The Nañigos originally formed a secret order of negroes, banded for protection against unkind slave-owners and overseers, but feeling their power, and being swayed by passion and superstition, they constituted, after a time, a body correspondent to the voodoos, or wizards, of our Gulf States. With hideous incantations, with mad dances, with obscene songs, with the slaughter of animals, with oaths on an altar and crucifix, they invoked illness, ruin, and death on their enemies. In time they gained accessions to their fraternity from Spanish residents,—thieves, vagrants, deserters from the army, the half-witted and wrong-hearted outcasts from the towns,—and the fantastic ceremonies of the jungle came to mean something more to the purpose of mischief, for the newer Nañigos had more skill and courage than the slaves, and were familiar with more sins. To enter this order it was required of the candidate that he steal a cock, kill it, and drink the warm blood. A darker tale is that they were required to drink human blood. In Havana this part of the initiation was performed on the Campo Marti. The man’s right nostril was pierced, and a skull and crossbones branded on his chest. It was then expected of him that within fifteen days he would kill an official or a policeman, a white, black, or yellow marble, drawn by chance from a globe, deciding whether he was to slay a white man, negro, or mulatto. When he had, by this crime, attained to full membership, a little shield was given to him which he might wear beneath his coat, and which was decorated with the device of a skull and bones. For every murder he committed a red stitch was put in at the edge of the skull. Once a month, in the dark of the moon, the Nañigos paraded the streets of the towns, their naked forms painted fantastically, their faces ghastly with flour, tramping and leaping to the thud of drums and clash of cymbals, yelling defiance to the military, brandishing knives and firing pistols. It was a kind of thing that in an American city could have happened for one consecutive time, but no more. In Havana the Spaniards were terrorized. The police refused to make arrests, lest they should fall victims to the outlaws. One judge who refused to liberate an assassin was slain in his own house by his servant.
As a partial revenge on the Cubans for wishing liberty the Spanish captains-general have at times pardoned some hundreds of these rascals and set them free to prey on the people; while, in retaliation, the insurgents adopted some of the methods of the Nañigos and carried on a guerilla warfare that neither troops nor trochas could abate. Many are these more or less bold spirits of the hills who are celebrated in inland stories: aborigines, Frenchmen, Creoles, mulattoes, who have gathered bands of reckless fellows about them from time to time and raided the Spaniard, flouting him in his strongholds, pillaging from his farms, striking him, hip and thigh, and making off to the woods before he knew how or by whom he had been struck. Sometimes even the name of the guerilla has been forgotten, but the tradition remains of a predecessor of Lopez, Gomez, and Garcia, who aided the English before Havana in 1762. In that year Lord Albemarle took the town with two hundred ships and fourteen thousand soldiers, beating a Spanish army of almost double that size, though it was covered by heavy walls and well provided with artillery. It took two months to reduce the city.
During one of the land operations the red-coats lost themselves in a dense wood, and were in considerable peril from bodies of Spaniards who were almost within speaking distance. To advance or to retreat was an equal risk. As the column was halted, pending a debate and a reconnoissance, there was a rustle in a clump of bushes beside which the colonel was standing; then, as every sword was drawn and a row of muskets held ready, a tall man bounded into the space, laid his finger on his lip to enforce silence, and, beckoning all to follow, crept on stealthily through the chaparral. He was a man advanced in years, a long white beard flowed over his chest, yet he was lithe and quick, and his look and manner were those of one who lives in the open and in frequent danger. He spoke not a word, but after a time drew himself erect and pointed before him. He had led the English to the rear of one of the Spanish batteries. The colonel, who had at first regarded him with doubt, as a lunatic or a false guide, ordered his men to attack, and after a short fight he returned to his lines with prisoners and trophies of victory. He sought in all directions for the old man, to thank him, but the jungle had swallowed him, and he was never seen again.