The Spanish Government participated largely in the wickedness practised to procure labourers for the mines of Hispaniola. Pretending great concern for the cause of humanity, they
declared it legal, and gave general license, for any individual to make war against, and enslave, people who were cannibals; under which pretext every nation, both of the American Continent and of the Islands, was exposed to their enterprises. Spanish adventurers made attempts to take people from the small Antilles, sometimes with success; but they were not obtained without danger, and in several expeditions of the kind, the Spaniards were repulsed with loss. This made them turn their attention to the Lucayas Islands.
1508. The inhabitants of the Lucayas, an unsuspicious and credulous people, did not escape the snares laid for them. Ovando, in his dispatches to Spain, represented the benefit it would be to the holy faith, to have the inhabitants of the Lucayas instructed in the Christian religion; for which purpose, he said, 'it would be necessary they should be transported to Hispaniola, as Missionaries could not be spared to every place, and there was no other way in which this abandoned people could be converted.' The Natives of the Lucayas betrayed to the Mines; King Ferdinand and the Council of the Indies were themselves so abandoned and destitute of all goodness, as to pretend to give credit to Ovando's representation, and lent him their authority to sacrifice the Lucayans, under the pretext of advancing religion. Spanish ships were sent to the Islands on this business, and the natives were at first inveigled on board by the foulest hypocrisy and treachery. Among the artifices used by the Spaniards, they pretended that they came from a delicious country, where rested the souls of the deceased fathers, kinsmen, and friends, of the Lucayans, who had sent to invite them. and the Islands wholly unpeopled. The innocent Islanders so seduced to follow the Spaniards, when, on arriving at Hispaniola, they found how much they had been abused, died in great numbers of chagrin and grief. Afterwards, when these impious pretences of the Spaniards were no longer believed, they dragged away the
natives by force, as long as any could be found, till they wholly unpeopled the Lucayas Islands. The Buccaneers of America, whose adventures and misdeeds are about to be related, may be esteemed saints in comparison with the men whose names have been celebrated as the Conquerors of the New World.
In the same manner as at the Lucayas, other Islands of the West Indies, and different parts of the Continent, were resorted to for recruits. A pearl fishery was established, in which the Indians were not more spared as divers, than on the land as miners.
Porto Rico was conquered at this time. Fate of the native Inhabitants of Porto Rico. Ore had been brought thence, which was not so pure as that of Hayti; but it was of sufficient value to determine Ovando to the conquest of the Island. The Islanders were terrified by the carnage which the Spaniards with their dogs made in the commencement of the war, and, from the fear of irritating them by further resistance, they yielded wholly at discretion, and were immediately sent to the mines, where in a short time they all perished. In the same year with Porto Rico, the Island of Jamaica was taken possession of by the Spaniards.
1509. D. Diego Columbus, Governor of Hispaniola. Ovando was at length recalled, and was succeeded in the government of Hispaniola by Don Diego Columbus, the eldest son and inheritor of the rights and titles of the Admiral Christopher. To conclude with Ovando, it is related that he was regretted by his countrymen in the Indies, and was well received at Court.
Don Diego did not make any alteration in the repartimientos, except that some of them changed hands in favour of his own adherents. During his government, some fathers of the Dominican Order had the courage to inveigh from the pulpit against the enormity of the repartimientos, and were so persevering in their representations, that the Court of
Spain found it necessary, to avoid scandal, to order an enquiry into the condition of the Indians. In this enquiry it was seriously disputed, whether it was just or unjust to make them slaves.
1511. Increase of Cattle in Hayti. The Histories of Hispaniola first notice about this time a great increase in the number of cattle in the Island. As the human race disappeared, less and less land was occupied in husbandry, till almost the whole country became pasturage for cattle, by far the greater part of which were wild. An ordonnance, issued in the year 1511, specified, that as beasts of burthen were so much multiplied, the Indians should not be made to carry or drag heavy loads.