CHAPTER II.
MANNERS OF THE HUNTERS.
Derivation of the words Buccaneer and Flibustier—The three classes—Dress of the hunters—West Indian scenery—Method of hunting—Wild dogs—Anecdotes—Wild oxen, wild boars, and wild horses—Buccaneer food—Cow killing—Spanish method—Amusements—Duels—Adventures with the Spanish militia—The hunters driven to sea—The engagés, or apprentices—Hide curing—Hardships of the bush life—The planter's engagés—Cruelties of planters—The matelotage—Huts—Food.
The hunters of the wild cattle in the savannahs of Hispaniola were known under the designation of Buccaneers as early as the year 1630.
They derived this name from boucan,[1] an old Indian word which their luckless predecessors, the Caribs, gave to the hut in which they smoked the flesh of the oxen killed in hunting, or not unfrequently the limbs of their persecutors the Spaniards. They applied the same term, from the poverty of an undeveloped language, to the barbecue, or square wooden frame upon which the meat was dried. In course of time this hunters' food became known as viande boucanée, and the hunters themselves gradually assumed the name of Buccaneers.
[1] Charlevoix's "Histoire de l'Ile Espagnole," p. 6, vol. ii
Their second title of Flibustiers was a mere corruption of the English word freebooters—a German term, imported into England during the Low Country wars of Elizabeth's reign. It has been erroneously traced to the Dutch word flyboat; but the Jesuit traveller, Charlevoix, asserts that, in fact, this species of craft derived its title from being first used by the Flibustiers, and not from its swiftness. This, however, is evidently a mistake, as Drayton and Hakluyt use the word; and it seems to be of even earlier standing in the French language. The derivation from the English word freebooter is at once seen when the s in Flibustier becomes lost in pronunciation.
In 1630, a party of French colonists, who had failed in an attack on St. Christopher's, finding, as we have shown, Hispaniola almost deserted by the Spaniards, who neglected the Antilles to push their conquests on the mainland, landed on the south side and formed a settlement, discovering the woods and the plains to be teeming with wild oxen and wild hogs. The Dutch merchants promised to supply them with every necessary, and to receive the hides and tallow that they collected in exchange for lead, powder, and brandy. These first settlers were chiefly Normans, and the first trading vessels that visited the coast were from Dieppe.
The origin of the Buccaneers, or hunters, and the Flibustiers, or sea rovers, as the Dutch called them, was contemporaneous. From the very beginning many grew weary of the chase and became corsairs, at first turning their arms against all nations but their own, but latterly, as strict privateersmen, revenging their injuries only on the Spaniards, with whom France was frequently at war, and generally under the authority of regular or forged commissions obtained from the Governor of St. Domingo or some other French settlement. Between the Buccaneers and Flibustiers no impassable line was drawn; to chase the wild ox or the Spaniard was the same to the greater part of the colonists, and on sea or land the hunter's musket was an equally deadly weapon.