"One of their venerable caziques gave to Columbus, when he came the second time to the island, a basket of luscious fruit, saying to him, as he did so: 'Whether you are divinities or mortal men, we know not. You have come into these countries with a force, against which, were we inclined to resist, it would be folly. We are all, therefore, at your mercy; but if you are men, subject to morality, 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, then, 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.'"
"That old chief was certainly a very wise man for a heathen," remarked Chester.
"And how strange that the Spaniards could treat so shamefully such innocent and friendly people," said Evelyn.
"Yes," exclaimed Lucilla, "I think we may all be thankful that there is no Spanish blood in us."
"Which fact makes us the more to be blamed if we indulge in oppression and cruelty," said her father.
"Papa, did that old king live long enough to see how very cruel the Spaniards were to his people?" asked Elsie.
"That I cannot tell," replied the Captain, "but by the time another ten years had passed by, the natives of Cuba had learned that the love of the Spaniards for gold was too great ever to be satisfied, and that they themselves could not be safe with the Spaniards there; they were so alarmed that when Diego Columbus sent an armed force of three hundred men to begin to colonize Cuba, they resisted their landing. But they, the Indians, were only naked savages with frail spears and wooden swords, while the invading foes were old-world warriors who had been trained on many a hard-fought battlefield, armed with deadly weapons, protected by plate armor, and having bloodhounds to help in their cruel attempt to rob and subjugate the rightful owners of the soil. So they succeeded in their wicked designs; hundreds of those poor Indians were killed in cold blood, others spared to slavery worse than death. From being free men they became slaves to one of the most cruel and tyrannical races of the world. And they were not only abused there on their own island, but hundreds of them were taken to Europe and sold for slaves in the markets of Seville. That was to raise money to pay the expenses of their captors."
"Why," exclaimed Ned, "the Spaniards treated them as if they were just animals, instead of people."
"Papa, were they—the Indians—heathen?" asked Elsie.