THE NEGRO AND THE SPANISH PIONEER IN THE NEW WORLD
Negro slaves probably made their first appearance in the New World in 1502. Those who came in the beginning were Christians and personal servants of masters who had acquired them in Spain, but soon afterwards, thanks to the influence of the religious order of Predicatores and of the more famous Las Casas, they began to be introduced directly from Africa, in order that the sufferings of the Indians who were dying out under the Spanish system of forced labor might be alleviated.[1] By the close of the second decade of the sixteenth century no inconsiderable number had been brought over, and a perusal of the early accounts of the exploits of the Conquistadores will reveal the fact that the Negro participated in the exploration and occupation of nearly every important region from New Mexico to Chile. As personal attendants of the Spanish Pioneers, as burden-bearers and drudges connected with exploration and the founding of colonies, they played an indispensable though inconspicuous rôle in one of the greatest achievements which history records. Such accounts of their service as have been preserved are, for the most part, accidental: only when he performed an act of unusual heroism or connected himself with a strange or humorous occurrence was the Negro's name placed alongside of that of his Spanish master where it is destined to remain for all time.
When Balboa set out from Darién on the tour of exploration which resulted in the discovery of the South Sea, at least one Negro, Nufio de Olano, was numbered in his party. Three years later, when the timbers for the four boats with which he intended to explore the Pacific had been prepared, thirty Negroes were among those who carried them piece by piece over mountain and jungle from Acla to San Miguel. Moreover, when Balboa's successor constructed the first highway from ocean to ocean he made use of Negro labor along with that of the Indian.[2]
Hernán Cortés carried with him from Cuba not only Indian servants but Negro slaves who helped to drag along the artillery which he used to strike mortal terror into the Indians of Mexico. There has been preserved a list of those who set out on this famous expedition, and among the names are those of two Negroes, one of whom Saco claims to have been the first to sow and reap small grain in Mexico. Moreover, two Negroes were among the company sent out by Velásquez in 1520 to punish Cortés for his insubordination. One of these has the unenviable distinction of having introduced smallpox among the Mexican Indians. The other, who seems to have observed the fight between the men of the agent of Velásquez (Narváez) from the safe and comfortable distance of a neighboring tree, has, because of some witty and flattering remarks which he made to Cortés, received the honor of a paragraph in the Decades of Herrera.[3]
It is not definitely known whether Pedro de Alvarado, one of the bravest and most gallant lieutenants of Cortés, carried Negroes with him into Guatemala in 1523, but it is certain that eleven years later, when his ambition and love of gain led him to fit out that ill-fated expedition to Quito, he saw fit to include in the company two hundred black slaves, most of whom perished while making their way through the blinding snows of the Andes.[4]
It is certain, moreover, that several Negroes were along with the Conquistadores of Perú and Chile. The contract of Francisco Pizarro permitted him to introduce fifty Negroes into Perú free of duty; and even before this, Negroes had accompanied those who had spied out the land. In 1525, when Diego de Almagro effected a landing near the port of Quemado, on the west coast of South America, and attempted to penetrate the adjacent country, he encountered rather severe opposition from the Indians of the section. During the resulting skirmish one of his eyes was crushed by a dart and he was saved from captivity and death only by the valiant succor of his Negro slave. A year later, the debarkation of a Spaniard and his slave at Tumbez resulted in an amusing occurrence which once more gave the Negro a few brief sentences in the Decades. Astonished at the color of his face, the natives of the region had him wash time after time in order to see if the black would disappear; and the Negro, true to his good nature and love of a joke, complied willingly while he grinned so as to display his pearly white teeth.[5]
Several Negroes assisted the Yanaconas Indians in carrying the baggage of Diego de Almagro and Rodrigo Orgoñez during their perilous journey along the frozen Andes from Cuzco to Chile; and many of them perished on the way.[6] Moreover, upon at least one occasion the forces of the great conqueror of Chile, Pedro Valdivia himself, would probably have been destroyed, had it not been for the cool-headed alertness of Captain Gonzalo de los Rios and a Negro who managed to procure the saddle-horses of the Spaniards as soon as they saw a band of Indians dart from their hiding places.[7]
Numerous African slaves were along with the Spanish pioneers in Venezuela. Ortal, Sedeño, and Heredia each had permission to introduce one hundred Negroes to build fortresses and search for mines; and in 1537, when the licentiate Vadillo came to Cartagena to hold the residencia of Heredia, he brought down a large number who later accompanied him on the luckless excursions which he undertook apparently in the hope of finding the mines of Perú.[8]
But of all the members of the colored race who accompanied the Spaniards upon their explorations in the New World, it may be doubted whether any played so conspicuous a part as did Estevánico, or Estévan, an Arabian black from Azamor, in Morocco, and the slave of Andrés Dorantes de Carrança. He was a member and one of the survivors of the ill-fated expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez which went to pieces somewhere on the southern coast of the United States, (1528). For six years he was a captive and slave among the Indians of Texas where, in company with others of the expedition who had escaped with their lives, he effected miraculous cures. He was one of the three companions of Cabeza de Vaca on his historic journey across the continent from the Gulf of Mexico to Culiacán. From Culiacán he accompanied De Vaca and his companions to Mexico City, where he was honored by being made the slave of the viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza.