The King acted promptly. Chaves had been appointed governor in October, 1545, for a term of four years, at a salary of a thousand ducats a year. He had now, at the end of 1548, been in office three years and more; though he claimed that his term ran for four years from June, 1546, when he actually took office. However, there was no tenure of office law to keep him in his place beyond the royal pleasure; certainly not to protect him from removal for cause. So the supreme court of Hispaniola was directed to investigate him, and Gonzalo Perez de Angulo was appointed governor in his stead. The court of Hispaniola sent Geronimo de Aguayo to Cuba to make a private investigation of the governor's doings; Hurtado agreeing to pay the expenses out of his own pocket. Aguayo came to Santiago in April, 1549, while Chaves was absent at Havana, planning to remove the seat of government to that city. Three months were spent in the investigation, and then Aguayo reported to the court a docket of about three hundred charges against Chaves, some of which were serious enough but many of which were altogether trifling. The court decided to take no action upon them, but to hold them for the new governor, Angulo, to use as the basis of the investigation which he, according to law and precedent, would at once make into his predecessor's administration.

Gonzalo de Angulo had been appointed at the beginning of September, 1548, but did not at once come to the West Indies. He reached Hispaniola in the summer of 1549, shortly after Aguayo had made his report, and he remained there for some time, considering the report and conferring with the members of the supreme court. Finally, at the beginning of November, he proceeded to Santiago and assumed the governorship. He entered upon the investigation, using Aguayo's three hundred charges as the basis of it, despite the protest of Chaves that Aguayo had been a prejudiced investigator, moved by political and even pecuniary considerations and intent not upon discovering the truth but merely upon defaming him (Chaves) to the fullest possible extent.

The result of the new governor's inquest was that at the beginning of July, 1550, Chaves was arrested and sent as a prisoner to Spain, for trial there upon a multitude of accusations. These were partly grave and partly—mostly—frivolous. In the former category was the charge that Chaves had refused or at least failed to enforce royal decrees for the enfranchisement of the natives. That was a very serious matter, apparently, and there was no question that it was true. Indeed, Chaves admitted it. But, he said, some of these decrees had been suspended, there had been pleas for the suspension of others, officials had failed to proclaim some, and the Hispaniola court had interfered with others; so that the whole business was in a hopeless tangle and he really could not determine what he ought to do. This argument impressed the Spanish authorities, and they consequently dismissed that and other like charges against him.

But when it came to other charges, they could not be got rid of so easily. Thus, he had refused to pay an apothecary for a dose of medicine. He had called Hurtado's nephew a Jew! He had called certain citizens "conspirators" because they were forming some sort of a secret organization. He had arrested a priest for acting disrespectfully toward him. These were indeed serious matters; particularly when the irate Hurtado produced voluminous affidavits, from parents, physicians, clergy, and whom not, to prove that his nephew like himself was a good Christian. So for these things Chaves was thrown into prison, and even, it is said, bound with heavy fetters, until he should pay the fines which were imposed upon him.

It must be recorded in Chaves's favor that he was unable to pay these fines. Indeed, he seems not to have had means sufficient to employ a lawyer to defend him, wherefore he was compelled to conduct his own case; which he was quite competent to do, being a licentiate of the bar. There was, then, of course no thought of his being able to influence the course of justice by the use of money, as De Avila was supposed to have done. Whether he was actually so poor, or whether his fortune had been so invested in Cuba that he was unable at once to realize upon it, does not appear. In charity we may accept the former theory, as the more creditable to him. At any rate, after two years of litigation and imprisonment, he secured a final reduction of the fines levied against him to a little more than 100,000 maravedi, which he was required to pay within a year. This trifling amount he contrived to raise and so regained his freedom; going thereafter back to Cuba to settle up his personal affairs there, and thence to Peru, to engage no more in Cuban politics.

Apart from his prosecution of Chaves, the first act of Gonzalo de Angulo on assuming the governorship was to attempt a radical solution of the Indian problem. This he did by proclaiming the full and universal emancipation of all natives, however and by whomsoever held. Seeing how strenuously and vociferously similar action had been resisted only a few years before, as sure to be ruinous to the island, it is worthy of remark that this provoked no remonstrances and caused no economic disturbance. The explanation is simple. The former proposals for emancipation included slaves who had been brought to Cuba from other lands, while this one applied only to natives. Now the latter, through disease, fighting, and other causes, had been steadily decreasing in numbers, until they were now practically a negligible quantity. They probably numbered not more than twenty-five hundred in the entire island. It really mattered little, from an industrial point of view, whether they were enslaved or free. They were in fact set free, in good faith, and then practically disappeared. They did not relapse into primitive barbarism, but they lived in squalor, most of them, and gradually died out.

Not all of them, however, suffered such a fate. Some settled on lands near if not actually among the Spanish colonists, adopted the ways of civilization, and prospered. They acquired freehold of land and houses, kept herds of cattle, built ships and engaged in commerce. Some of them intermarried with Spanish families, and the offspring of such unions often rose to honorable rank in society and the state.

The question of slavery was not by any means disposed of by this emancipation of the native Indians. There was a much larger number of slaves in the island who had been brought thither from other countries, including both insular and continental Indians and African negroes. Governor Angulo was directed to order their emancipation and repatriation at the same time with the others. But he withheld the decree. These foreign slaves were far more numerous than the natives and were consequently more important to industry and commerce. They had not been simply "assigned" to owners, like the Cuban Indians, but had been purchased outright for cash, like any other merchandise, and were legally as much the property of their owners as land, houses or cattle. In view of this circumstance, Angulo declined to proclaim their emancipation.

CHAPTER XIV

The administration of Gonzalo Perez de Angulo marked the lowest point in the early history of Cuba. That was not because of the character of his administration, which was indeed better than some of its predecessors, but because various processes militating against the progress and prosperity of the island then reached their culmination. Foremost among these was the migration to Florida, Mexico, Peru and other lands, which were richer, or were reputed to be richer, than the Pearl of the Antilles. Cuba contained no such cities and treasures as those of Mexico and Peru; no such traditions as that of Florida's Fountain of Youth pertained to her. The island had been explored from end to end, and its resources were known; though by no means appreciated. The adventurers of those days were not inclined to engage in agriculture, even in so fertile a land as Cuba, when the gold and gems of the Incas were within reach. With the decline and practical disappearance of the Indians, and the increasing difficulties of the African or other slave trade, the scarcity of labor disinclined the Spanish settlers even to raise cattle. The middle of the sixteenth century saw, therefore, a menacing emigration from Cuba to other lands which threatened to leave the island uninhabited.