In no part of the world where slavery prevails is emancipation so frequent as in the island of Cuba. The Spanish legislature favours liberty, instead of opposing it, like the English and French legislatures. The right of every slave to choose his own master, or set himself free, if he can pay the purchase-money, the religious feeling which disposes many masters in easy circumstances to liberate some of their slaves, the habit of keeping a multitude of blacks for domestic service, the attachments which arise from this intercourse with the whites, the facility with which slaves who are mechanics accumulate money, and pay their masters a certain sum daily, in order to work on their own account—such are the principal causes which in the towns convert so many slaves into free men of colour. I might add the chances of the lottery, and games of hazard, but that too much confidence in those means often produces the most fatal effects.
The primitive population of the West India Islands having entirely disappeared (the Zambo Caribs, a mixture of natives and negroes, having been transported in 1796, from St. Vincent to the island of Ratan), the present population of the islands (2,850,000) must be considered as composed of European and African blood. The negroes of pure race form nearly two-thirds; the whites one-fifth; and the mixed race one-seventh. In the Spanish colonies of the continent, we find the descendants of the Indians who disappear among the mestizos and zambos, a mixture of Indians with whites and negroes. The archipelago of the West Indies suggests no such consolatory idea. The state of society was there such, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, that, with some rare exceptions, the new planters paid as little attention to the natives as the English now do in Canada. The Indians of Cuba have disappeared like the Guanches of the Canaries, although at Guanabacoa and Teneriffe false pretensions were renewed forty years ago, by several families, who obtained small pensions from the government on pretext of having in their veins some drops of Indian or Guanche blood. It is impossible now to form an accurate judgment of the population of Cuba or Hayti in the time of Columbus. How can we admit, with some, that the island of Cuba, at its conquest in 1511, had a million of inhabitants, and that there remained of that million, in 1517, only 14,000! The statistic statements in the writings of the bishop of Chiapa are full of contradictions. It is related that the Dominican monk, Fray Luys Bertram, who was persecuted* by the encomenderos, as the Methodists now are by some English planters, predicted that the 200,000 Indians which Cuba contained, would perish the victims of the cruelty of Europeans. (* See the curious revelations in Juan de Marieta, Hist. de todos los Santos de Espana libro 7 page 174.) If this be true, we may at least conclude that the native race was far from being extinct between the years 1555 and 1569; but according to Gomara (such is the confusion among the historians of those times) there were no longer any Indians on the island of Cuba in 1553. To form an idea of the vagueness of the estimates made by the first Spanish travellers, at a period when the population of no province of the peninsula was ascertained, we have but to recollect that the number of inhabitants which Captain Cook and other navigators assigned to Otaheite and the Sandwich Islands, at a time when statistics furnished the most exact comparisons, varied from one to five. We may conceive that the island of Cuba, surrounded with coasts adapted for fishing, might, from the great fertility of its soil, afford sustenance for several millions of those Indians who have no desire for animal food, and who cultivate maize, manioc, and other nourishing roots; but had there been that amount of population, would it not have been manifest by a more advanced degree of civilization than the narrative of Columbus describes? Would the people of Cuba have remained more backward in civilization than the inhabitants of the Lucayes Islands? Whatever activity may be attributed to causes of destruction, such as the tyranny of the conquistadores, the faults of governors, the too severe labours of the gold-washings, the small-pox and the frequency of suicides,* it would be difficult to conceive how in thirty or forty years three or four hundred thousand Indians could entirely disappear. (* The rage of hanging themselves by whole families, in huts and caverns, as related by Garcilasso, was no doubt the effect of despair; yet instead of lamenting the barbarism of the sixteenth century, it was attempted to exculpate the conquistadores, by attributing the disappearance of the natives to their taste for suicide. See Patriota tome 2 page 50. Numerous sophisms of this kind are found in a work published by M. Nuix on the humanity of the Spaniards in the conquest of America. This work is entitled Reflexiones imparciales sobre la humanidad de los Epanoles contra los pretendidos filosofos y politicos, para illustrar las historias de Raynal y Robertson; escrito en Italiano por el Abate Don Juan Nuix, y traducido al castellano par Don Pedro Varela y Ulloa, del Consejo de S.M. 1752. [Impartial reflections on the humanity of the Spaniards, intended to controvert pretended philosophers and politicians, and to illustrate the histories of Raynal and Robertson; written in Italian by the Abate Don Juan Nuix and translated into Castilian by Don Pedro Varela y Ulloa, member of His Majesty's Council.] The author, who calls the expulsion of the Moors under Philip III a meritorious and religious act, terminates his work by congratulating the Indians of America "on having fallen into the hands of the Spaniards, whose conduct has been at all times the most humane, and their government the wisest." Several pages of this book recall the salutary rigour of the Dragonades; and that odious passage, in which a man distinguished for his talents and his private virtues, the Count de Maistre (Soirees de St. Petersbourg tome 2 page 121) justifies the Inquisition of Portugal "which he observes has only caused some drops of guilty blood to flow." To what sophisms must they have recourse, who would defend religion, national honour or the stability of governments, by exculpating all that is offensive to humanity in the actions of the clergy, the people, or kings! It is vain to seek to destroy the power most firmly established on earth, namely, the testimony of history.) The war with the Cacique Hatuey was short and was confined to the most eastern part of the island. Few complaints arose against the administration of the two first Spanish governors, Diego Velasquez and Pedro de Barba. The oppression of the natives dates from the arrival of the cruel Hernando de Soto about the year 1539. Supposing, with Gomara, that fifteen years later, under the government of Diego de Majariegos (1554 to 1564), there were no longer any Indians in Cuba, we must necessarily admit that considerable remains of that people saved themselves by means of canoes in Florida, believing, according to ancient traditions, that they were returning to the country of their ancestors. The mortality of the negro slaves, observed in our days in the West Indies, can alone throw some light on these numerous contradictions. To Columbus and Velasquez the island of Cuba must have appeared well peopled,* if, for instance, it contained as many inhabitants as were found there by the English in 1762. (* Columbus relates that the island of Hayti was sometimes attacked by a race of black men (gente negra), who lived more to the south or south-west. He hoped to visit them in his third voyage because those black men possessed a metal of which the admiral had procured some pieces in his second voyage. These pieces were sent to Spain and found to be composed of 0.63 of gold, 0.14 of silver and 0.19 of copper. In fact, Balboa discovered this black tribe in the Isthmus of Darien. "That conquistador," says Gomara, "entered the province of Quareca: he found no gold, but some blacks, who were slaves of the lord of the place. He asked this lord whence he had received them; who replied, that men of that colour lived near the place, with whom they were constantly at war…These negroes," adds Gomara, "exactly resemble those of Guinea; and no others have since been seen in America (en las Indios yo pienso que no se han visto negros despues.") The passage is very remarkable. Hypotheses were formed in the sixteenth century, as now; and Petrus Martyr imagined that these men seen by Balboa (the Quarecas), were Ethiopian blacks who, as pirates, infested the seas, and had been shipwrecked on the coast of America. But the negroes of Soudan are not pirates; and it is easier to conceive that Esquimaux, in their boats of skins, may have gone to Europe, than the Africans to Darien. Those learned speculators who believe in a mixture of the Polynesians with the Americans rather consider the Quarecas as of the race of Papuans, similar to the negritos of the Philippines. Tropical migrations from west to east, from the most western part of Polynesia to the Isthmus of Darien, present great difficulties, although the winds blow during whole weeks from the west. Above all, it is essential to know whether the Quarecas were really like the negroes of Soudan, as Gomara asserts, or whether they were only a race of very dark Indians (with smooth and glossy hair), who from time to time, before 1492, infested the coasts of the island of Hayti which has become in our days the domain of Ethiopians.) The first travellers were easily deceived by the crowds which the appearance of European vessels brought together on some points of the coast. Now, the island of Cuba, with the same ciudades and villas which it possesses at present, had not in 1762 more than 200,000 inhabitants; and yet, among a people treated like slaves, exposed to the violence and brutality of their masters, to excess of labour, want of nourishment, and the ravages of the small-pox—forty-two years would not suffice to obliterate all but the remembrance of their misfortunes on the earth. In several of the Lesser Antilles the population diminishes under English domination five and six per cent annually; at Cuba, more than eight per cent; but the annihilation of 200,000 in forty-two years supposes an annual loss of twenty-six per cent, a loss scarcely credible, although we may suppose that the mortality of the natives of Cuba was much greater than that of negroes bought at a very high price.
In studying the history of the island we observe that the movement of colonization has been from east to west; and that here, as everywhere in the Spanish colonies, the places first peopled are now the most desert. The first establishment of the whites was in 1511 when, according to the orders of Don Diego Columbus, together with the conquistador and poblador Velasquez, he landed at Puerto de Palmas, near Cape Maysi, then called Alfa y Omega, and subdued the cacique Hatuey who, an emigrant and fugitive from Hayti, had withdrawn to the eastern part of the island of Cuba, and had become the chief of a confederation of petty native princes. The building of the town of Baracoa was begun in 1512; and later, Puerto Principe, Trinidad, the Villa de Santo Espiritu, Santiago de Cuba (1514), San Salvador de Bayamo, and San Cristoval de la Havana. This last town was originally founded in 1515 on the southern coast of the island, in the Partido of Guines, and transferred, four years later, to Puerto de Carenas, the position of which at the entrance of the two channels of Bahama (el Viejo y de Nuevo) appears to be much more favourable to commerce than the coast on the south-west of Batabano.* (* A tree is still shown at the Havannah (at Puerto de Carenas) under the shade of which the Spaniards celebrated their first mass. The island, now called officially The ever-faithful island of Cuba, was after its discovery named successively Juana Fernandina, Isla de Santiago, and Isla del Ave Maria. Its arms date from the year 1516.) The progress of civilization since the sixteenth century has had a powerful influence on the relations of the castes with each other; these relations vary in the districts which contain only farms for cattle, and in those where the soil has been long cleared; in the sea-ports and inland towns, in the spots where colonial produce is cultivated, and in such as produce maize, vegetables and forage.
Until the latter part of the eighteenth century the number of female slaves in the sugar plantations of Cuba was extremely limited; and what may appear surprising is that a prejudice, founded on religious scruples, opposed the introduction of women, whose price at the Havannah was generally one-third less than that of men. The slaves were forced to celibacy on the pretext of avoiding moral disorder. The Jesuits and the Bethlemite monks alone renounced that fatal prejudice, and encouraged negresses in their plantations. If the census, no doubt imperfect, of 1775, yielded 15,562 female, and 29,366 male slaves, we must not forget that that enumeration comprehended the totality of the island, and that the sugar plantations occupy even now but a quarter of the slave population. After the year 1795, the Consulado of the Havannah began to be seriously occupied with the project of rendering the increase of the slave population more independent of the variations of the slave-trade. Don Francisco Arango, whose views were ever characterized by wisdom, proposed a tax on the plantations in which the number of slaves was not comprised of one-third females. He also proposed a tax of six piastres on every negro brought into the island, and from which the women (negras bozales) should be exempt. These measures were not adopted because the colonial assembly refused to employ coercive means; but a desire to promote marriages and to improve the condition of the children of slaves has existed since that period, when a cedula real (of the 22nd April, 1804) recommended those objects "to the conscience and humanity of the planters."
The first introduction of negroes into the eastern part of the island of Cuba took place in 1521 and their number did not exceed 300. The Spaniards were then much less eager for slaves than the Portuguese; for, in 1539, there was a sale of 12,000 negroes at Lisbon, as in our days (to the eternal shame of Christian Europe) the trade in Greek slaves is carried on at Constantinople and Smyrna. In the sixteenth century the slave-trade was not free in Spain; the privilege of trading, which was granted by the Court, was purchased in 1586, for all Spanish America, by Gaspar de Peralta; in 1595, by Gomez Reynel; and in 1615, by Antonio Rodriguez de Elvas. The total importation then amounted to only 3500 negroes annually; and the inhabitants of Cuba, who were wholly engaged in rearing cattle, scarcely received any. During the war of succession, French ships were accustomed to stop at the Havannah and to exchange slaves for tobacco. The Asiento treaty with the English in some degree augmented the introduction of negroes; yet in 1763, although the taking of the Havannah and the sojourn of strangers gave rise to new wants, the number of slaves in the jurisdiction of the Havannah did not amount to 25,000; and in the whole island, not to 32,000. The total number of African negroes imported from 1521 to 1763 was probably 60,000; their descendants survive among the free mulattos, who inhabit for the most part the eastern side of the island. From the year 1763 to 1790, when the negro-trade was declared free, the Havannah received 24,875 (by the Compania de Tobacos 4957, from 1763 to 1766; by the contract of the Marquess de Casa Enrile, 14,132, from 1773 to 1779; by the contract of Baker and Dawson, 5786, from 1786 to 1789). If we estimate the introduction of slaves in the eastern part of the island during those twenty-seven years (1763 to 1790) at 6000, we find from the discovery of the island of Cuba, or rather from 1521 to 1790, a total of 90,875. We shall soon see that by the ever-increasing activity of the slave-trade the fifteen years that followed 1790 furnished more slaves than the two centuries and a half which preceded the period of the free trade. That activity was redoubled when it was stipulated between England and Spain that the slave-trade should be prohibited north of the equator, from November 22nd, 1817, and entirely abolished on the 30th May, 1820. The King of Spain accepted from England (which posterity will one day scarcely believe) a sum of 400,000 pounds sterling, as a compensation for the loss which might result from the cessation of that barbarous commerce.
Jamaica received from Africa in the space of three hundred years 850,000 blacks; or, to fix on a more certain estimate, in one hundred and eight years (from 1700 to 1808) nearly 677,000; and yet that island does not now possess 380,000 blacks, free mulattos and slaves. The island of Cuba furnishes a more consoling result; it has 130,000 free men of colour, whilst Jamaica, on a total population half as great, contains only 35,000.
On comparing the island of Cuba with Jamaica, the result of the comparison seems to be in favour of the Spanish legislation, and the morals of the inhabitants of Cuba. These comparisons demonstrate a state of things in the latter island more favorable to the physical preservation, and to the liberation of the blacks; but what a melancholy spectacle is that of Christian and civilized nations, discussing which of them has caused the fewest Africans to perish during the interval of three centuries, by reducing them to slavery! Much cannot be said in commendation of the treatment of the blacks in the southern parts of the United States; but there are degrees in the sufferings of the human species. The slave who has a hut and a family is less miserable than he who is purchased as if he formed part of a flock. The greater the number of slaves established with their families in dwellings which they believe to be their own property, the more rapidly will their numbers increase.
The annual increase of the last ten years in the United States (without counting the manumission of 100,000), was twenty-six on a thousand, which produces a doubling in twenty-seven years. Now, if the slaves at Jamaica and Cuba had multiplied in the same proportion, those two islands (the former since 1795, and the latter since 1800) would possess almost their present population, without 400,000 blacks having been dragged from the coast of Africa, to Port-Royal and the Havannah.
The mortality of the negroes is very different in the island of Cuba, as in all the West Indies, according to the nature of their treatment, the humanity of masters and overseers, and the number of negresses who can attend to the sick. There are plantations in which fifteen to eighteen per cent perish annually. I have heard it coolly discussed whether it were better for the proprietor not to subject the slaves to excessive labour and consequently to replace them less frequently, or to draw all the advantage possible from them in a few years, and replace them oftener by the acquisition of bozal negroes. Such are the reasonings of cupidity when man employs man as a beast of burden! It would be unjust to entertain a doubt that within fifteen years negro mortality has greatly diminished in the island of Cuba. Several proprietors have made laudable efforts to improve the plantation system.
It has been remarked how much the population of the island of Cuba is susceptible of being augmented in the lapse of ages. As the native of a northern country, little favoured by nature, I may observe that the Mark of Brandebourg, for the most part sandy, contains, under an administration favourable to the progress of agricultural industry, on a surface only one-third of that of Cuba, a population nearly double. The extreme inequality in the distribution of the population, the want of inhabitants on a great part of the coast, and its immense development, render the military defence of the whole island impossible: neither the landing of an enemy nor illicit trade can be prevented. The Havannah is well defended, and its works rival those of the most important fortified towns of Europe; the Torreones, and the fortifications of Cogimar, Jaruco, Matanzas, Mariel, Bahia Honda, Batabano, Xagua and Trinidad might resist for a considerable time the assaults of an enemy; but on the other hand two-thirds of the island are almost without defence, and could scarcely be protected by the best gun-boats.