The reason the Spaniards never attempted the conquest of the Caribs is clear. There was no gold in their islands. They defended their homes foot by foot, and if, by chance, they were taken prisoners, they preferred suicide to slavery. Toward the end of the eighteenth century there still existed a few hundred of the race in the island of St. Vincent. They were known as the black Caribs, because they were largely mixed with fugitive negro slaves from other islands and with the people of a slave-ship wrecked on their coast in 1685. They lived there tranquil and isolated till 1795, when the island was settled by French colonists, and they were finally absorbed by them. They were the last representatives in the Antilles of a race which, during five centuries, had ruled both on land and sea. On the continent, along the Esequibo and its affluents, they are numerous still; but in their contact with the European settlers in those regions they have lost the strength and the virtues of their former state without acquiring those of the higher civilization. Like all aboriginals under similar conditions, they are slowly disappearing.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 89: Revista Puertoriqueña, Tomo I, Año I, 1887.]
[Footnote 90: The word "cannibal" is but a corruption of guaribó, is, "brave or strong," changed into Caribó, Caríba, and finally that Carib. The name Galibi, also applied to the Caribs, means equally strong or brave.]
[Footnote 91: The author visited this region and sketched some of the ruins of these Jesuit-Guarani missions, of which scarcely one stone has remained on the other. They were destroyed by the Brazilians after the suppression of the Society of Jesus by Pope Clement XIV in 1773; the defenseless Indians were cruelly butchered or carried off as slaves. The sculptured remains of temples, of gardens and orchards grown into jungles still attest the high degree of development attained by these missions under the guidance of the Jesuit fathers.]
[Footnote 92: Voyage aux Regions Equinoctiales du Nouveau Continent,
Paris, 1826.]
[Footnote 93: "Kleyn pleysterhuisye," small plaster house.]
[Footnote 94: As an example of the credulity of the people of the period, see Theodore Bry's work in the library of Congress in Washington, in which there is a map of Guiana, published in Frankfort in 1599. On it are depicted with short descriptions the lake of Parmié and the city of Manáo, which represent El Dorado, in search of which hundreds of Spaniards and thousands of Indians lost their lives. There is a picture of one of the Amazons, with a short notice of their habits and customs, and there is the portrait of one of the inhabitants of the country Twai-Panoma, who were born without heads, but had eyes, nose, and mouth conveniently located in their breast.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY The history of Puerto Rico has long since been a subject of study and research by native writers and others, to whose works we owe many of the data contained in this book. Their names, in alphabetical order, are:
ABBAD, FRAY IÑIGO.—Historia geográfica, civil y natural de San Juan
Bautista de Puerto Rico. Madrid, 1788.