Cuba Past and Present

by Richard Davey

Suddenly, one day, the weather changed; the sky, hitherto as blue as a turquoise, grew dark and heavy, torrents of rain began to fall, and Columbus was obliged to relinquish all further pursuit of adventure in the heart of the island, and to confine his operations to the coast.

There is nothing more pathetic in the "Journal" of Columbus than those passages which deal with the discovery of Cuba. Illusion after illusion fades away. To-day there are reports of gold and silver mines; to-morrow someone has heard of cinnamon and nutmeg trees, and even of the humble rhubarb, but, on examination, gold and silver, cinnamon, nutmeg, and rhubarb, all prove delusions. The Spaniards showed the natives pearls, at which they merely smiled,—to them they were naught but pretty white beads. Gold did not impress them as being of any particular value or beauty; and they were understood to say that, in the more distant parts of the country, the people wore ornaments made of that precious metal about their necks, arms, and ankles. Then came an old native who announced that further on dwelt men who had but one eye, and that below their shoulders; others who had dogs' heads; and others, again, who were vampires, and sucked their prisoners' blood until they died of exhaustion, and thereby confirmed Othello's account of his adventures—

"In lands where dwell cannibals that each other eat,

The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads

Do grow beneath their shoulders."

Everything, in a word, was new and wonderful, and everything tended to make the Discoverer think he was approaching that object of his dreams, "the city of the Khan."

In November he was still wandering down the coast of the magnificent island, which he believed to be part of the Continent,—an error in which he continued until his death. Yet, had he but sailed three days further, he would have touched the main coast of Florida. Certain writers assert that he landed in British Honduras, without, however, realizing that, by so doing, he had discovered the real Continent of America.

Here we must take our leave of the illustrious Discoverer and his adventures. If I have dwelt so long upon them, it has been simply in order to impress my readers with the fact that, when Columbus reached Cuba, he discovered a country, the inhabitants of which were evidently at peace among themselves and their neighbours. Yet, almost from the day of his arrival to the present time, the unhappy island has been stained by incessant tragedy. The illustrious Italian firmly believed he had brought a blessing to the natives. His arrival, alas! only signified the beginning of their extermination.

The early inhabitants, not only of Cuba, but of all the other islands, were certainly of common origin, spoke the same language, practised the same customs, and held similar superstitions. They bore a distinct resemblance to certain tribes of Indians on the main Continent, to the Arrowauk in particular. They were well made, of dark brown complexion, with goodly features and long straight hair. They went by the generic name of Charaibes or Caribees. Several distinct tribes may have existed, but the evidence is that they were all of one family, which had in all probability swarmed out of the great hive of the Mexican empire. Juan de Grijalva, a Spanish navigator, declared, in 1518, that he found a people on the coast of Yucatan who spoke the same language as the natives of the island. According to Las Casas, and to Peter Martyr, who wrote on the authority of Columbus himself, there were about 1,200,000 souls in Cuba at the time of its discovery. This was possibly the result of some rough calculation made upon the large number of people noticed as living upon the immediate sea-board. It is certain that not Cuba only, but all the neighbouring islands, were thickly populated at the time of their discovery, and also that the aborigines were exceedingly gentle in character. They almost invariably received the European adventurers as beings of a superior order, who had alighted from some spirit world, evidently with the intention of doing them good—a conviction strengthened by the graceful courtesy which still distinguishes their descendants in Spain and Italy. This conviction was, ere long, to be cruelly shaken! The islanders, in spite of many virtues, had a moral code of the loosest description, and, if we may believe Ovando, Europe owes them its first acquaintance with one of the most terrible penalties exacted by Nature from the too fervent worshipper of Venus. Labour and cultivation appear to have been little practised by the Caribbees, who found the great fertility of their country sufficient to enable them to lead a life of delightful indolence. Their fashions never changed—since they had none to change—and their wives' milliner's bills troubled them not. They spent their time in athletic exercises, in dancing, hunting, fishing, and in fact, according to contemporary Spanish evidence, the aboriginal Cubans would seem to have discovered the real secret of life, and to have been far more philosophical than their restless and over-ambitious conquerors.

They treated their elders with respect, and their wives with affection; and they were untainted with cannibalism and other objectionable savage practices. The discovery of fragments of ancient pottery, by no means inartistically designed, and other objects indicating a higher civilization than that for which Columbus gave them credit, would lead one to believe that the natives were not devoid of a certain degree of culture. Contemporary testimony is almost universally in favour of their firm belief in the existence of a personal Deity, who had power to reward merit and punish vice, a heaven and a hell. Columbus, according to his own account, seems, between the years 1492-4, to have acquired sufficient knowledge of the Indian language to understand a good deal of what was said to him. He had taken two Indians back with him to Spain, and had studied assiduously with them. However that may be, he declares that on one occasion, in July 1494, during his second visit, an aged Cuban made him the following speech as he presented him with a basket of fruit and flowers: "Whether you are a divinity," said he, "or a mortal man, we know not. You come into these countries with a force which we should be mad to resist, even if we were so inclined. We are all, therefore, at your mercy; but if you and your followers are men like ourselves, subject to mortality, you cannot be unapprised that after this life there is another, wherein a very different portion is allotted to good and bad men. And if you believe you will be rewarded in a future state, you will do us no harm, for we intend none to you."

The fairy-like opening of the dramatic history of Cuba, with all the quaint descriptions of its Eden-like beauty bequeathed to us in its Discoverer's Journal, was soon to degenerate into a horrible tragedy. Not a generation elapsed before the Spaniards were deep in the very tactics which have been disgracing their behaviour in Cuba during this last decade. In the most wanton, senseless, and barbarous fashion, they fell on the wretched natives, with no other object than that of extirpating them, so as to usurp their possessions. They even went so far as to assure the poor wretches that if they would embark with them on their ships they would take them to certain islands where their ancestors resided, and where they would enjoy a state of bliss of which they had no conception. The simple souls listened with wondrous credulity, and, eager to visit their friends in the happy region described, followed the Spaniards with the utmost docility. By these damnable devices over 40,000 human beings were decoyed from their homes and ruthlessly slaughtered. Las Casas and Peter Martyr relate tales by the dozen concerning the frightful cruelty of the men whom they had the misfortune to accompany to the New World. Martyr tells us that some Spaniards made a vow to hang or burn thirteen natives in honour of the Saviour and the Twelve Apostles every morning. Certain monsters, more zealous than the rest, drove their captives into the water, and after forcibly administering the rite of baptism, cut their throats to prevent their apostacy. But I will not harrow the reader with further accounts of the astounding cruelty shown by the Spanish conquerors of Cuba. I will simply repeat with their own historian, Martyr, "that in the whole history of the world such enormities have never before been practised." If any further testimony were needed, we have that of the venerable Las Casas. Even Oviado, who strives to palliate his countrymen's barbarities, confesses that in 1535, only forty-three years after the discovery of the West Indies, and when he himself was on the spot, there were not above 500 of the original natives left alive in the island of Hispaniola.[8]

This wholesale massacre may have been carried out with a view to ensuring the complete Spanish repopulation of the islands. The destruction of the natives naturally led, in course of time, to the importation, on a very large scale, of negro slavery, and the unnatural trade continued until its final abolition, which took place some twelve years ago. Traces of Indian blood are still evident amongst the inhabitants of the wild regions in the eastern part of Cuba, who boast indeed that they are the "Caribbees." The women are especially beautiful, and remarkable for the extraordinary length of their hair, which sometimes touches the ground. A female attendant in the house of a planter whom I visited in this part of the island some years ago, was, I was assured, of undoubted Caribbean descent. She was rather tall, copper-coloured, and her hair, when she let it fall loose, nearly reached her ankles, perfectly straight, and intensely black. She was not a slave, and was treated with respect and kindness by her employers.