The community of buccaneers was first organized upon the small island of Tortuga, situated on the north side of St. Domingo, at the distance of about two leagues from the latter. It was upon this island that the first European colony was planted in the New World, in the year and month of its discovery. But although the colony became considerable, and flourished so long as the natives remained in sufficient numbers to cultivate the plantations of the Spaniards, yet it did not take vigorous root. The numbers of the natives were greatly reduced by the arms of their conquerors, and were afterward still more rapidly diminished by oppression; and although an attempt was made to supply their places by a forced importation of forty thousand Indians from the Bahamas, the experiment was of little avail. In less than half a century, the aboriginal race was extinct. The country was beautiful beyond description: rich in its mines, and its soil of unexceeded fertility. But the Spaniard, if not by nature indolent, is prone to luxury. The earth producing by handfuls, the colonists saw little necessity of laborious exertion. They accordingly degenerated from the spirit and enterprise of their ancestors, and fell into habits of voluptuous idleness. Agriculture was neglected, and the mines deserted. Contenting themselves with a bare supply of the wants of nature, they sank into such a state of indolence, that many of their slaves had no other employment than to swing them in their hammocks the livelong day. No colony could nourish composed of such a people. During the first half century of its existence, it had indeed become considerable; but for a century afterward it dwindled away, neglected and apparently forgotten by the parent country, until even the remembrance of its former greatness was lost.
At length, about the middle of the seventeenth century, the Spaniards were roused from their repose. So early as the year 1630, the severity of the French colonial system had driven many of the most resolute of the colonists from the islands belonging to that nation, especially from St. Christopher's. Numbers of these men, in order to an unrestrained enjoyment of liberty, took refuge in the western division of St. Domingo, supporting themselves with game, and by hunting wild cattle, for which they continued to find a market, either in the Spanish settlements, or by trading with vessels visiting the western coast for that object. Meanwhile the exactions upon the colonists of St. Christopher's and the submission required of them to exclusive privileges, induced a further and greater number to abandon the island, and join the adventures of their own countrymen in the forests of St. Domingo. Those adventurers—many of whom had already been roaming the St. Domingo forest for nearly half a century, increasing in numbers by accessions from time to time—had, in 1630, established a social and political system of their own, peculiar to their own community. Their original calling was the hunting of wild boars and cattle, which abounded in the island. To this was added, to a small extent, the business of planting, and to this again the more adventurous profession of sea-roving and piracy. Their vessels were at first nothing larger than boats, or rather canoes, constructed from the trunks of trees—excavations after the manner of the ordinary light canoes of our own aboriginals. But from the size of some descriptions of trees growing in that climate, these canoes were capable of carrying crews of from thirty to fifty and seventy-five men, with the necessary supplies for short voyages among the Antilles. As they had no women among them, nor other consequent responsibilities, it was their custom to associate in partnerships of two, called comrades, who lived together, and assisted each other in the chase and in the domestic duties of their huts or cabins. Their goods were thrown into common stock; and when one of a partnership died, the survivor became the absolute heir of the joint stock—unless the deceased, by previous stipulation, bequeathed his goods to his relatives, perchance a wife and children in another land. They were frequently absent from their lodges on their hunting excursions for twelve months and two years at a time; but their lodges with their goods were left in perfect safety, for the crime of theft was unknown among them.
Differences seldom arose among them, and when they did occur, they were usually adjusted without much difficulty. In obstinate and aggravated cases, however, their disputes were decided by firearms, in the use of which the nicest principles of fairness and honor were observed. A ball entering the back or the side of a party, afforded evidence that he had fallen by treachery, and the assassin was immediately put to death. The former laws of their own country were disregarded; and by the usual sea baptism received in passing the tropic, they considered themselves expatriated from their native land, and at liberty to change their family names, which many of them did—borrowing terms from the character of the profession which they had chosen, as suited their fancy. Their dress was a shirt and drawers dipped in the blood of the animals they killed, shoes without stockings, a leathern girdle by which their knife and a short sabre were suspended, and a hat or cap without a brim. Their common food was the choicest pieces of bullock's flesh, seasoned with orange juice and pimento, and cured by smoke; of bread they lost the use, and, until the trade of piracy was adopted, water was their only drink. The term buccaneers, by which the hunters were first known, was derived from a tribe of the Caribs, who were called thus from the manner in which they prepared meats for their food, whether flesh of beasts or of men. For this purpose they constructed a sort of grate or hurdle, consisting of twenty bars of Brazil wood, laid crosswise half a foot from each other, upon which the flesh of prisoners of war or of game was laid in pieces, and a thick smoke raised beneath from properly selected combustibles, which gave to the meat the vermil color and a delightful smell. These fixtures, thus adjusted, were called buccans, and the process of curing the meat buccaning. The hunters, having adopted this process from the savages, were like them called buccaneers. In process of time the name was applied to the sea robbers as well as to the hunters; and when piracy became the general profession as a substitute for planting and the chase, all were called buccaneers indiscriminately.
Previously to the great and sudden augmentation of their forces, by the immigration from St. Christopher's about the year 1660, the buccaneers had taken possession of Tortuga, the geographical position and character of which island was well suited to their commercial and piratical purposes. This little island had been occupied by a few Spaniards as early as 1591; but their numbers were so small as not to interfere with the object of the buccaneers, while its rocky conformation afforded peculiar facilities for defence in the event of attack.
The greatly increasing numbers of the buccaneers at length aroused the colonial voluptuaries of Spain to a sense of their danger. It was perceived that while the colonists were dwindling away, the outlaws were becoming so formidable in their numbers that they soon might be enabled to contest for the mastery of the island of Hispaniola itself. They therefore commenced a war upon them, and not being able to prosecute it with sufficient vigor themselves, they called to their aid troops from the other Spanish islands, and also from the continent. With these auxiliaries the barbarians were hunted with great severity, and many of them massacred. Finding themselves pursued in this manner, the outlaws banded together for mutual defence. Their avocations required them often to separate in the daytime; but they assembled in considerable numbers at night; and if individuals were missing, diligent search was made until their fate was ascertained. If he returned from an extended chase, it was well. If not—if it was discovered that he had fallen a victim to the Spaniards, or had been taken prisoner—his loss was requited with terrible vengeance. Everything Spanish was devoted to destruction, without distinction of age or sex. But in this partisan warfare, the buccaneers maintained a decided advantage. When too hotly pressed, they could fly to their canoes or hoys, as they were called, and escape to Tortuga; and if the Spaniards pursued them thither in numbers too powerful for an open combat, they would return back again to their principal island. Despairing at length of success in this mode of warfare, the Spaniards resolved to conquer the ruffians by destroying their means of subsistence. For this purpose, by a general hunt over the whole island, the wild bulls were killed, and the droves of cattle previously roaming the forests were consequently reduced so rapidly that the buccaneers found it necessary to change their employment—to form settlements and cultivate the lands. More than two thousand of them clustered upon Tortuga, where the business of cultivating sugar and tobacco was begun; but the more general and lucrative employment became that of piracy. They had as yet no larger craft than the boats and canoes already mentioned, but with these they managed to navigate the West India seas, shooting into secure places of refuge among the smaller islands, or keys, at pleasure.
The community had now become so large, in 1660, that something like order and government was seen to be necessary even by the buccaneers themselves; and they accordingly sent to the Governor of St. Christopher's for a governor. The boon was readily granted, and M. le Passeur was commissioned to that office. He repaired promptly to Tortuga with a ship of armed men and stores; assumed the command, and immediately commenced fortifying the island—a work to which nature had largely contributed by the peculiar conformation of some of the rock precipices. There was upon one high rock, inaccessible at all points save by ladders, a cavern large enough for a garrison of a thousand men, with an abundant spring gushing from the rocks. This post was seized and provisioned. Twice the Spaniards invaded them from Hispaniola, but were repulsed—the last time with terrible slaughter. The invaders were eight hundred in number. They had seized a yet higher point of rock than the natural fortress occupied by the buccaneers, upon which they were endeavoring to plant their cannon, in order the better to dislodge the enemy. The time chosen for the invasion was when a large number of the freebooters were at sea. These, however, returning suddenly by night, climbed the mountain upon the heels of the Spaniards, and attacked them with such fury as to compel them by hundreds to throw themselves from the rocky parapets into the valley beneath, by which their bodies were dashed in pieces. Those who were not killed by the fall were put to the sword; and few or none returned to rehearse the bloody story.
This ill-starred expedition was the last sent from St. Domingo against the buccaneers, who thenceforward became the masters and lord proprietaries of Tortuga. Nor were the buccaneers longer exclusively composed of adventurous Frenchmen. Visions of golden cities in the New World had been flitting before the eyes of the English for a century before, and had not even been eclipsed by the signal failures of Sir Walter Raleigh in the reigns of Elizabeth and James. Indeed the expeditions of the gallant knight, however bootless to himself, may have served to stimulate the cupidity of his countrymen for a long time afterward, inasmuch as some of Sir Walter's officers testified that they actually approached within sight of the golden city. Sir Walter's great contemporary, Sir Francis Drake, after committing many depredations upon the Spanish American coast, had returned to England with a vast amount of treasure. The expeditions both of Sir Francis and Sir Walter were of a character bordering closely upon piratical; and in that romantic age, it was not considered as greatly transcending their examples for daring spirits to seek their fortunes in the New World, even by associating themselves with the buccaneers of Tortuga. Be this, however, as it may, England and Holland and other European states respectively furnished many reckless and daring recruits to the army of freebooters; and their piracies increased with their numbers. Ostensibly they directed their operations only against the commerce of Spain, with whom they were directly at war, and whose galleons from the continent, freighted with the produce of the mines, offered golden incentives to bravery. But however virtuous in this respect might have been the intentions of the sea robbers, it was not invariably the merchantmen of Spain which suffered from their depredations, since from 'an imperfection, in the organs of vision,' or from some other cause 'they were not always able to distinguish the flags of different nations.' Others than the Spaniards, were consequently occasional sufferers; and a ready market was found for their plunder in the French, and English islands, especially in Jamaica, which England had conquered from Spain in 1655. This latter island was in fact their principal depot; for although the British Government, both under the Protectorate and afterward, had endeavored to direct the attention of the Jamaica colonists to agricultural pursuits, they had entirely failed, for the reason that the buccaneers, making it their principal resort, poured in such vast treasures, that the inhabitants amassed considerable wealth with little difficulty, and despised the more honest occupations of honest labor. The population rapidly increased, and in a few years amounted to twenty thousand, whose only source of subsistence was derived from the buccaneers.
Hitherto France had disclaimed as her subjects the roving cattle-hunters upon the island of Hispaniola; but after they had formed settlements and established themselves so firmly upon Tortuga, the French West India company took them under the ægis of the lilies for protection; and M. Ogeron, 'a man of probity and understanding,' was sent from the parent country to govern them. With the arrival of the new governor the domestic relations of the buccaneers underwent a material change, for the former brought many women with him—fit persons, from the past profligacy of their lives, to consort with the inhabitants of Tortuga. But the buccaneers were not fastidious in the selection of wives, and history gives us no right to suppose that there was a single forlorn damsel left without a husband. 'I ask nothing of your past life,' would the buccaneer say to the fair one to whom he proposed himself. 'If anybody would have had you where you came from, you would not have come here. But as you did not belong to me then, whatever you may have done was no disgrace to me. Give me your word for the future, and I will acquit you for the past.' Then striking his gun barrel, he would add, 'Shouldst thou prove false to me, this will not.'
Meanwhile, the buccaneers, becoming stronger and stronger every day, extended their designs, and pushed their operations with a degree of audacity and success that rendered them the terror of the seas. As yet their marine consisted only of boats and canoes, but these were, as before stated, of a size to carry from fifty to a hundred men each. They attacked not only merchantmen, but vessels of war, with a degree of intrepidity unexampled in the history of man. No matter for the size of a ship, or for her armament. They paused not to calculate chances. Their invariable practice was to carry their prizes by boarding. Their boats were propelled with the swiftness of an arrow. As certain as they grappled with a vessel, she was sure to be taken; for their onslaughts were desperately furious and irresistible. The Spanish Government complained bitterly, both to England and France, of the outrages upon her commerce by the pirates, a large majority of whom were the born subjects of those nations. The answers, however, of both were the same: that those piratical acts were not committed by the buccaneers as their subjects; and the Spanish ambassador was informed that his master might proceed against them as he saw fit. In consequence of the transactions of the buccaneers with the people of Jamaica, England went farther, and actually removed the governor of that colony. But, whether with the connivance of the civil authorities or not, the intercourse between the pirates and the people continued without serious interruption. Some of the buccaneers, however, pretended to hold commissions both from the French and the Dutch; but it was mere pretext. Their authority was in truth nothing more than what the sailors are wont jocosely to call 'a commission from the Pope.' Yet they affected to consider themselves in lawful war against Spain, for the reason that the Spaniards had debarred them from the privileges of hunting in the forests and fishing in the waters of St. Domingo—thus depriving them of the exercise of what they called their lawful rights. In regard to the cruelties which they frequently inflicted upon the prisoners who fell into their hands, they pleaded in justification those enormities which the conquerors of Spanish America inflicted upon the aborigines there. The horrible cruelties of Cortez and Pizarro are familiar to every student of history. 'I once,' says Las Casas, speaking of the conquest of the New World, 'beheld four or five chief Indians roasted alive at a slow fire; and as the miserable victims poured forth their dreadful yells, it disturbed the commandant in his siesta, and he sent an order that they should be strangled; but the officer on duty would not do it, but, causing their mouths to be gagged that their shrieks might not be heard, he stirred up the fire with his own hands, and roasted them deliberately until they all expired.' The conquerors had resorted to these dreadful executions under the cloak of religious zeal, but in reality to make the poor wretches disclose the secret depositories of their treasures. Instances of the same refined cruelty, at the contemplation of which humanity shudders, marked the history of the buccaneers. Their motives were the same as those which had governed the conduct of Cortez; and they, too, found a salvo for their consciences by persuading themselves that they were commissioned as a court of vengeance—the instruments of retributive justice in the hands of Providence—to punish the Spaniards for the remorseless cruelties practised upon the unoffending Mexicans. And here another extraordinary fact may be noted in the history of the buccaneers. After their community had become consolidated and their government in a manner systematized, strange as it may seem, notwithstanding their murderous profession the observances of the Christian, religion were introduced to sanctify their atrocities. 'They never partook of a repast without solemnly acknowledging their dependence upon the Giver of all good.' In their infatuation, whenever they embarked upon any expedition, they were wont to invoke for its success the blessing of Heaven; and they never returned from a marauding excursion that they did not return thanks to God for their victory. 'On the appearance of a ship which they meant to attack, they offered up a fervent prayer for success; and when the conflict had terminated in their favor, their first care was to express their gratitude to the God of battles for the victory which He had enabled them to gain.'