Part 18 (1/2)
The Pearl Coast
Paria, and the Island of Trinidad
1. Great and notorious have been the destruction that the Spaniards have worked along the Coast of Paria, (97) extending for two hundred leagues as far as the Gulf of Venezuela, a.s.sa.s.sinating the inhabitants and capturing as many as they could alive, to sell them as slaves.
2.2. They frequently took them by violating their pledged word and friends.h.i.+p, the Spaniards failing to keep faith, while the Indians received them in their houses, like fathers receive their children, giving them all they possessed and serving them to the best of their ability.
3.3. Certainly it would not be easy to relate, or describe minutely the variety and number of the injustices, wrongs, oppressions, and injury practised upon the people of this coast by the Spaniards from the year 1510 up to the present day. I will relate but two or three instances from which the villany and number of the others, worthy of punishment by every torment and fire may be judged.
4.4. In the island of Trinidad which joins the continent at Paria, and is much larger and more prosperous than Sicily, there are as good and virtuous people as in all the Indies; an a.s.sa.s.sin going there in the year 1516, with sixty or seventy other habitual robbers, gave the Indians to understand that they had come to dwell and live in that island along with them.
5.5. The Indians received them as though they were children of their own flesh and blood, the lords and their subjects serving them with the greatest affection and joy, bringing them every day double the amount of food required; for it is the usual disposition and liberality of all the Indians of this new world to give the Spaniards in excess of all they need and as much as they themselves possess.
6.6. In accordance with the Spaniards' wish, they built one great house of timber, where all might live: they needed no more than one in order to carry out what they had in mind and afterwards accomplished.
7.7. When they were putting the straw over the timbers and had covered about the height of two paces so that those inside no longer saw those without, the Spaniards, under pretence of hurrying on the completion of the house, induced many people to go inside; meanwhile they divided, some surrounding the house outside, with their weapons ready for the Indians who should come out, and the others stationing themselves inside the house. The latter drew their swords and threatening the naked Indians with death if they moved, they began to bind them, while some who ran out seeking to escape were cut to pieces with swords.
8.8. Some who got out, wounded, and others sound, joined with one or two hundred natives who had not entered the house, and arming themselves with bows and arrows they retired to another house of the community's to defend themselves; while they defended the door however, the Spaniards set fire to the house, and burnt them alive; they then took the prey they had captured, amounting to perhaps a hundred and eighty or two hundred men, and carried them bound to their s.h.i.+p. Hoisting sail they departed for the island of San Juan, where they sold one half as slaves, and afterwards to Hispaniola, where they sold the remainder.
9.9. When I at the time reproved the captain in the same island of San Juan for such infamous treachery and malice, he replied ”Go to, Senor, thus was I commanded, and instructions were given me by those who sent me, that if I could not capture them in war, I should take them under pretext of peace.”
10.10. And in truth he told me that in all his life he had found neither father nor mother, if not in the island of Trinidad; such were the good services the Indians had rendered him. This he said to his greater shame and the aggravation of his sins.
11.11. Numberless times have they done these things on this continent, capturing people and making them slaves under promise of safe conduct. Let it be seen what sort of acts these are: and whether those Indians taken in such a way, are justly made slaves.
12.12. Another time the friars of our Order of St. Dominic determined to go and preach to those people and convert them, for they were without the hope or the light of doctrine by which to save their souls, as they still are to-day in the Indies; they sent a monk, who was a theological scholar of great virtue and sanct.i.ty, accompanied by a serving friar as his companion; his object was to see the country, become intimate with the people, and seek convenient sites to build monasteries.
13.13. When the monks arrived, the Indians received them as angels from heaven, and listened with great affection, attention, and joy to those words which they could make them understand more by signs than speech, as they did not know the language.
14.14. It happened that after the departure of the vessel that had brought the monks, another s.h.i.+p arrived there; the Spaniards on board of it practising their infernal custom, deceitfully enticed the lord of that land, named Don Alonso, on board without the monks perceiving it; either the friars or some other Spaniards, had given him this name, for the Indians like and desire Christian names and at once ask to have them, even before they know enough to be baptised. So they deceived the said Don Alonso, to make him come aboard their s.h.i.+p, with his wife and certain other persons, by telling him they would prepare a feast there for him.
15.15. At last seventeen persons went on board with the lord and his wife, confident that as the monks were in the country, out of respect for them, the Spaniards would not do anything wicked; because otherwise they would not have trusted them. Once the Indians were on the s.h.i.+p, the traitors set sail and were off to Hispaniola, where they sold them for slaves.
16.16. On seeing their lord and his wife carried off, all the Indians came to the friars intending to kill them. The friars were like to die for sorrow on beholding such great villany, and it may be believed they would have rather given their lives than that such injustice should have been done; especially as it impeded those souls from ever hearing or believing the word of G.o.d.
17.17. They called the Indians as best they could and told them that by the first s.h.i.+p that pa.s.sed there, they would write to Hispaniola and bring about the restoration of their lord and of the others who were with him. For the greater confirmation of the d.a.m.nation of those who were governing, G.o.d caused a s.h.i.+p to come at once to hand. The monks wrote to their brethren in Hispaniola lamenting and protesting repeatedly. The auditors never would do justice, because they themselves had divided a share of the Indians so barbarously and unjustly carried off by the tyrants.
18.18. The two monks who had promised the Indians that their lord, Don Alonso, together with the others, should return in four months'
time, seeing that they did not come, neither in four, nor in eight months prepared for death, and to give their lives to those to whom they had consecrated them before they left. And so the Indians took vengeance upon them, killing them justly, although they were innocent: because it was believed that the monks had been the cause of that treachery, and because they saw that what had been faithfully promised them within four months was not fulfilled; and also because up to that time and up to the present day they neither knew, nor know, that there is a difference between the friars and the Spanish tyrants, bandits, and a.s.sa.s.sins of all that country.
19.19. The blessed friars suffered unjustly, and by that injustice there is no doubt that, according to our holy faith, they are true martyrs, and reign blissfully to-day with G.o.d in the heavens; for they were sent to that land under obedience, and their intention was to preach and spread the holy faith, to save all those souls and to suffer every kind of affliction and death that might be offered them for Jesus Christ crucified.
20.20. Another time, through the great tyranny and execrable works of the wicked Spaniards, the Indians killed two monks of St. Dominic and one of St. Francis, of which I myself am a witness, for I escaped the same death by divine miracle; so serious and horrible was the case I might have much to say that would amaze mankind, but on account of the length of the narration I will not relate it here nor until the time comes. The last day will disclose all more clearly, for G.o.d will then avenge such horrible and abominable outrages as are done in the Indies by those who bear the name of Christians.
21.21. Another time there was a town in the provinces called Capo della Codera, the lord of which was called Nigoroto; this is either a personal name or else one common to all the lords of that country.
22.22. He was so kind and his people so virtuous, that when the Spanish s.h.i.+ps pa.s.sed there the Spaniards found comforts, provisions, rest, and every consolation and refreshment, and many did he deliver from death, who, wasted with hunger, took refuge there from other provinces where they had a.s.sa.s.sinated, and practised evil and tyranny. He gave them food and sent them safe to the Pearl Island [Cubagua], where some Christians dwelt, whom he could have slain, without any one knowing it, and did not: all the Christians finally called Nigoroto's town the mansion and home of everybody.
23.23. An ill-starred tyrant deliberated within himself to attack this place, as the people felt so safe: so he went there with a s.h.i.+p and invited many people to come on board, as they were used to, trusting the Spaniards. When many men, women, and children were gathered in the s.h.i.+p, he set sail and came to the island of San Juan, where he sold them all as slaves. And I arrived just then at the said island and saw that tyrant and heard what he had done.
24.24. He left all that country ruined; and all those Spanish tyrants, who robbed and a.s.sa.s.sinated along those coasts took it ill, and detested so dreadful a deed because they lost the asylum and dwelling place they had had there as though in their own houses.
25.25. To abbreviate, I omit the narration of the tremendous wickedness and fearful deeds that have been committed, and are committed to-day in these countries.
26.26. They have taken more than two million ruined souls from that populous seacoast to the island of Hispaniola, and to that of San Juan, where they have likewise caused their death in the mines and other works, of which there were many, as has been said above. And it excites great compa.s.sion and sorrow to see all that most delightful coast deserted and depopulated.
27.27. It is certainly true, that never does a s.h.i.+p sail loaded with kidnapped and ruined Indians (as I have told) without the third part of those that embarked, being thrown dead into the sea, besides those that they kill in effecting their capture.
28.28. The reason of this is, that as they need many men to accomplish their aim of making more money from a greater number of slaves, they carry but little food and water, so as to save expense to the tyrants, who call themselves privateers; they have enough for only a few more people than the Spaniards who man the s.h.i.+ps to make the raids; as these miserable Indians are in want and die of hunger and thirst, the remedy is to throw them in the sea.
29.29. And in truth, one of them told me, that from the Lucayan Islands, where very great havoc of this sort was made, to the Island of Hispaniola, which is more than sixty or seventy leagues, a s.h.i.+p is supposed to have gone without compa.s.s or nautical chart, finding its course by the trail of dead Indians who had been thrown out of s.h.i.+ps and left in the sea.
30.30. When they are afterwards disembarked at the island where they are taken to be sold, it is enough to break the heart of whomsoever has some spark of compa.s.sion to see naked, starving children, old people, men, and women falling, faint from hunger.
31.31. They then divide them like so many lambs, the fathers separated from the children, and the wives from the husbands, making droves of ten or twenty persons and casting lots for them, so that each of the unhappy privateers who contributed to fit out a fleet of two or three vessels, and the tyrant villains who go to capture and prey upon the natives in their homes, receives his share.
32.32. And when the lot falls on a drove in which there is some old or ill person, the tyrant who gets it, says: ”Why in the devil do you give this old man to me? That I shall bury him? Why should I take this ill one? To nurse him?” It may be seen how the Spaniards despise the Indians and whether they carry out the precept of divine love to one's neighbour, upon which rest the law and the prophets.
33.33. The tyranny exercised by the Spaniards upon the Indians in fis.h.i.+ng pearls, is as cruel, and reprehensible a thing as there can be in the world. Upon the land there is no life so infernal and hopeless as to be compared to it, although that of digging gold in the mines is the hardest and worst.
34.34. They let them down into the sea three and four and five fathoms deep, from the morning till sunset. They are always swimming under water without respite, gathering the oysters, in which the pearls grow.
35.35. They come up to breathe bringing little nets full of them; there is a hangman Spaniard in a boat and if they linger resting, he beats them with his fists, and, taking them by the hair, throws them in the water to go on fis.h.i.+ng.
36.36. Their food is fish and the fish that contain the pearls, and a little cazabi or maize bread, which are the kinds of native bread: the one gives very little sustenance and the other is very difficult to make, so with such food they are never sufficiently nourished.
Instead of giving them beds at night, they put them in stocks on the ground, to prevent them from escaping.