When missionaries from Europe attempted to convert them they haughtily replied "You have stolen our lands and those of our neighbors; you have massacred our people, desolated our homes, and committed unheard-of cruelties for the sake of gold. How then can you expect from what we have seen of the bad life of you Christians that we should wish to be like you?" So fearful had been the barbarities practiced upon them that the very name of Christian inspired them with horror and to call them Christians never failed to excite them and to make them grind their teeth with rage. A defenceless, subject people who were so intelligent as to understand thoroughly the hypocrisy of their conquerors and who were possessed of the courage to express their contempt boldly were, in those times, inviting greater cruelties, even possible extermination. Taylor, "Leaflets from the West Indies," 108.
[362] Taylor, "Leaflets from the West Indies," 108.
[363] It is said that a relic of the Danish slave trade, the long Danish gun, played an important part in the Ashanti War with England and that up to the present these long-barrelled muskets are prized in remote parts of West Africa.
[364] Knox, "St. Thomas, West Indies," 45, and Taylor, "Leaflets from the Danish West Indies," 2 et seq.
[365] Taylor, "Leaflets from the Danish West Indies," 3.
[366] Sir Harry H. Johnson, "The Negro in the New World," p. 345.
[367] Knox, "St. Thomas, West Indies," 60 et seq.
[368] Labat, "Voyage dans l'Amerique," II, 285; Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, XXII, 101.
[369] Knox, "St. Thomas, West Indies," 35.
[370] We hear nothing of importance of St. Croix after its discovery until 1625. We learn from Bryan Edwards that the Dutch then came to St. Croix. Du Tertre says that for many years prior to 1645 it was in the possession of the Dutch and English. A conflict between the two ensued and by a series of attacks the English forced the Dutch to leave. The Spaniards in Porto Rico, alarmed at this rising English colony so near, exterminated the English in 1650. Soon afterwards the French at St. Christopher took the island with an expedition. Then in 1653 Louis XIV transferred St. Croix with St. Christopher, St. Bartholomew and St. Martin to the Knights of Malta. In 1665 a newly formed West Indian Company purchased the island from the Order of Malta, but the company being dissolved by royal edict, the island again became annexed to the Crown. On account of destructive droughts the island was practically abandoned and the forts were demolished in 1720. The French again took possession of the island in 1727 and held it until 1733 when it was purchased by the Guinea Company and later from that firm by the King of Denmark. See Taylor, "A Few Words about St. Croix," 5-7; and Rochfort, "Histoire naturelle et morale des îles Antilles," 45.