These words he translated: teitoca be quiet, técheta much, cynato angry, guamechyna the Lord, guaibba go, machabuca what is it to me. But they are either very incorrectly spelled, or are not Arawack.
The proper names of localities in Cuba, Hayti and the Bahamas, furnish additional evidence that their original inhabitants were Arawacks. Hayti, I have already shown has now the same meaning in Arawack which Peter Martyr ascribed to it at the discovery. Cubanacan, a province in the interior of Cuba, is compounded of kuba and annakan, in the center;[27] Baracoa, the name of province on the coast, is from Ar. bara sea, koan to be there, “the sea is there;” in Barajagua the bara again appears; Guaymaya is Ar. waya clay, mara there is none; Marien is from Ar. maran to be small or poor; Guaniguanico, a province on the narrow western extremity of the island, with the sea on either side, is probably Ar. wuini wuini koa, water, water is there. The names of tribes such as Siboneyes, Guantaneyes, owe their termination to the island Arawack, eyeri men, in the modern dialect hiaeru, captives, slaves. The Siboneyes are said by Las Casas, to have been the original inhabitants of Cuba.[28] The name is evidently from Ar. siba, rock, eyeri men, “men of the rocks.” The rocky shores of Cuba gave them this appellation. On the other hand the natives of the islets of the Bahamas were called lukku kairi, abbreviated to lukkairi, and lucayos, from lukku, man, kairi an island, “men of the islands;” and the archipelago itself was called by the first explorers “las islas de los Lucayos,” “isole delle Lucaí.”[29] The province in the western angle of Haiti was styled Guacaiarima, which Peter Martyr translates “insulae podex;” dropping the article, caiarima is sufficiently like the Ar. kairuina, which signifies podex, Sp. culata, and is used geographically in the same manner as the latter word.
The word Maya frequently found in the names of places in Cuba and Haiti, as Mayaba, Mayanabo, Mayajigua, Cajimaya, Jaimayabon, is doubtless the Ar. negative ma, mân, mara. Some writers have thought it indicative of the extension of the Maya language of Yucatan over the Antilles. Prichard, Squier, Waitz, Brasseur de Bourbourg, Bastian and other ethnologists have felt no hesitation in assigning a large portion of Cuba and Haiti to the Mayas. It is true the first explorers heard in Cuba and Jamaica, vague rumors of the Yucatecan peninsula, and found wax and other products brought from there.[30] This shows that there was some communication between the two races, but all authorities agree that there was but one language over the whole of Cuba. The expressions which would lead to a different opinion are found in Peter Martyr. He relates that in one place on the southern shore of Cuba, the interpreter whom Columbus had with him, a native of San Salvador, was at fault. But the account of the occurrence given by Las Casas, indicates that the native with whom the interpreter tried to converse simply refused to talk at all.[31] Again, in Martyr’s account of Grijalva’s voyage to Yucatan in 1517, he relates that this captain took with him a native to serve as an interpreter; and to explain how this could be, he adds that this interpreter was one of the Cuban natives “quorum idioma, si non idem, consanguineum tamen,” to that of Yucatan. This is a mere fabrication, as the chaplain of Grijalva on this expedition states explicitly in the narrative of it which he wrote, that the interpreter was a native of Yucatan, who had been captured a year before.[32]
Not only is there a very great dissimilarity in sound, words, and structure, between the Arawack and Maya, but the nations were also far asunder in culture. The Mayas were the most civilized on the continent, while the Arawacks possessed little besides the most primitive arts, and precisely that tribe which lived on the extremity of Cuba nearest Yucatan, the Guanataneyes, were the most barbarous on the island.[33]
The natives of the greater Antilles and Bahamas differed little in culture. They cultivated maize, manioc, yams, potatoes, corn, and cotton. The latter they wove into what scanty apparel they required. Their arms were bows with reed arrows, pointed with fish teeth or stones, stone axes, spears, and a war club armed with sharp stones called a macana. They were a simple hearted, peaceful, contented race, “all of one language and all friends,” says Columbus; “not given to wandering, naked, and satisfied with little,” says Peter Martyr; “a people very poor in all things,” says Las Casas.
Yet they had some arts. Statues and masks in wood and stone were found, some of them in the opinion of Bishop Las Casas, “very skilfully carved.” They hammered the native gold into ornaments, and their rude sculptures on the face of the rocks are still visible in parts of Cuba and Haiti. Their boats were formed of single trunks of trees often of large size, and they managed them adroitly; their houses were of reeds covered with palm leaves, and usually accommodated a large number of families; and in their holy places, they set up rows of large stones like the ancient cromlechs, one of which is still preserved in Hayti, and is known as la cercada de los Indios.
Physically they were undersized, less muscular than the Spaniards, light in color, with thick hair and scanty beards. Their foreheads were naturally low and retreating, and they artificially flattened the skull by pressure on the forehead or the occiput.[34]
Three social grades seem to have prevailed, the common herd, the petty chiefs who ruled villages, and the independent chiefs who governed provinces. Of the latter there were in Cuba twenty-nine; in Haiti five, as near as can be now ascertained.[35] Some of those in Cuba had shortly before the arrival of the Spaniards moved there from Haiti, and at the conquest one of the principal chiefs of Haiti was a native of the Lucayos.[36]
The fate of these Indians is something terrible to contemplate. At the discovery there were probably 150,000 on Cuba, Haiti, and the Bahamas.[37] Those on the latter were carried as slaves to Haiti to work in the mines, and all of the Lucayos exterminated in three or four years (1508-1512).[38] The sufferings of the Haitians have been told in a graphic manner by Las Casas in an oft-quoted work.[39] His statements have frequently been condemned as grossly exaggerated, but the official documents of the early history of Cuba prove but too conclusively that the worthy missionary reports correctly what terrible cruelties the Spaniards committed. Cuba was conquered in 1514, and was then quite densely populated. Fourteen years afterwards we find the Governor, Gonzalo de Guzman, complaining that while troops of hunters were formerly traversing the island constantly, asking no other pay than the right of keeping as slaves the natives whom they captured, he now has to pay patrolmen, as the Indians are so scarce.[40] The next year (1529) the treasurer, Lope de Hurtado, writes that the Indians are in such despair that they are hanging themselves twenty and thirty at a time.[41] In 1530 the king is petitioned to relinquish his royalty on the produce of the mines, because nearly all the Indians on the island are dead.[42] And in 1532 the licentiate, Vadillo, estimates the total number of Indians on the island, including the large percentage brought from the mainland by the slavers, at only 4,500.[43]
As a specimen of what the treatment of the Indians was, we have an accusation in 1522 against Vasco Porcallo, afterwards one of the companions of Hernando de Soto. He captured several Indians, cut off their genitals, and forced them to eat them, cramming them down their throats when they could not swallow. When asked for his defence, Porcallo replied that he did it to prevent his own Indians from committing suicide, as he had already lost two-thirds of his slaves in that way. The defence was apparently deemed valid, for he was released![44]