The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II)

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Notwithstanding all this kindness, and notwithstanding her uniform
integrity of conduct, and open generosity of character, Ovando was
persuaded that Anacaoua was secretly meditating a massacre of himself and
his followers. Historians tell us nothing of the grounds for such a
belief. It was too probably produced by the misrepresentations of the
unprincipled adventurers who infested the province. Ovando should have
paused and reflected before he acted upon it. He should have considered
the improbability of such an attempt by naked Indians against so large a
force of steel-clad troops, armed with European weapons: and he should
have reflected upon the general character and conduct of Anacaona. At any
rate, the example set repeatedly by Columbus and his brother the
Adelantado, should have convinced him that it was a sufficient safeguard
against the machinations of the natives, to seize upon their caciques and
detain them as hostages. The policy of Ovando, however, was of a more rash
and sanguinary nature; he acted upon suspicion as upon conviction. He
determined to anticipate the alleged plot by a counter-artifice, and to
overwhelm this defenceless people in an indiscriminate and bloody
vengeance.

As the Indians had entertained their guests with various national games,
Ovando invited them in return to witness certain games of his country.
Among these was a tilting match or joust with reeds; a chivalrous game
which the Spaniards had learnt from the Moors of Granada. The Spanish
cavalry, in those days, were as remarkable for the skillful management, as
for the ostentatious caparison of their horses. Among the troops brought
out from Spain by Ovando, one horseman had disciplined his horse to prance
and curvet in time to the music of a viol. [208] The joust was appointed
to take place of a Sunday after dinner, in the public square, before the
house where Ovando was quartered. The cavalry and foot-soldiers had their
secret instructions. The former were to parade, not merely with reeds or
blunted tilting lances, but with weapons of a more deadly character. The
foot-soldiers were to come apparently as mere spectators, but likewise
armed and ready for action at a concerted signal.

At the appointed time the square was crowded with the Indians, waiting to
see this military spectacle. The caciques were assembled in the house of
Ovando, which looked upon the square. None were armed; an unreserved
confidence prevailed among them, totally incompatible with the dark
treachery of which they were accused. To prevent all suspicion, and take
off all appearance of sinister design, Ovando, after dinner, was playing
at quoits with some of his principal officers, when the cavalry having
arrived in the square, the caciques begged the governor to order the joust
to commence. [209] Anacaona, and her beautiful daughter Higuenamota, with
several of her female attendants, were present and joined in the request.

Ovando left his game and came forward to a conspicuous place. When he saw
that every thing was disposed according to his orders, he gave the fatal
signal. Some say it was by taking hold of a piece of gold which was
suspended about his neck; [210] others by laying his hand on the cross of
Alcantara, which was embroidered on his habit. [211] A trumpet was
immediately sounded. The house in which Anacaona and all the principal
caciques were assembled was surrounded by soldiery, commanded by Diego
Velasquez and Rodrigo Mexiatrillo, and no one was permitted to escape.
They entered, and seizing upon the caciques, bound them to the posts which
supported the roof. Anacaona was led forth a prisoner. The unhappy
caciques were then put to horrible tortures, until some of them, in the
extremity of anguish, were made to accuse their queen and themselves of
the plot with which they were charged. When this cruel mockery of
judicial form had been executed, instead of preserving them for
after-examination, fire was set to the house, and all the caciques
perished miserably in the flames.

While these barbarities were practised upon the chieftains, a horrible
massacre took place among the populace. At the signal of Ovando, the
horsemen rushed into the midst of the naked and defenceless throng,
trampling them under the hoofs of their steeds, cutting them down with
their swords, and transfixing them with their spears. No mercy was shown
to age or sex; it was a savage and indiscriminate butchery. Now and then a
Spanish horseman, either through an emotion of pity, or an impulse of
avarice, caught up a child, to bear it off in safety; but it was
barbarously pierced by the lances of his companions. Humanity turns with
horror from such atrocities, and would fain discredit them; but they are
circumstantially and still more minutely recorded by the venerable bishop
Las Casas, who was resident in the island at the time, and conversant with
the principal actors in this tragedy. He may have colored the picture
strongly, in his usual indignation when the wrongs of the Indians are in
question; yet, from all concurring accounts, and from many precise facts
which speak for themselves, the scene must have been most sanguinary and
atrocious. Oviedo, who is loud in extolling the justice, and devotion, and
charity, and meekness of Ovando, and his kind treatment of the Indians;
and who visited the province of Xaragua a few years afterwards, records
several of the preceding circumstances; especially the cold-blooded game
of quoits played by the governor on the verge of such a horrible scene,
and the burning of the caciques, to the number, he says, of more than
forty. Diego Mendez, who was at Xaragua at the time, and doubtless present
on such an important occasion, says incidentally, in his last will and
testament, that there were eighty-four caciques either burnt or hanged.
[212] Las Casas says, that there were eighty who entered the house with
Anacaona. The slaughter of the multitude must have been great; and this
was inflicted on an unarmed and unresisting throng. Several who escaped
from the massacre fled in their canoes to an island about eight leagues
distant, called Guanabo. They were pursued and taken, and condemned to
slavery.

As to the princess Anacaona, she was carried in chains to San Domingo. The
mockery of a trial was given her, in which she was found guilty on the
confessions wrung by tortures from her subjects, and on the testimony of
their butchers; and she was ignominiously hanged in the presence of the
people whom she had so long and so signally befriended. [213] Oviedo has
sought to throw a stigma on the character of this unfortunate princess,
accusing her of great licentiousness; but he was prone to criminate the
character of the native princes, who fell victims to the ingratitude and
injustice of his countrymen. Contemporary writers of greater authority
have concurred in representing Anacaona as remarkable for her native
propriety and dignity. She was adored by her subjects, so as to hold a
kind of dominion over them even during the lifetime of her brother; she
is said to have been skilled in composing the areytos, or legendary
ballads of her nation, and may have conduced much towards producing that
superior degree of refinement remarked among her people. Her grace and
beauty had made her renowned throughout the island, and had excited the
admiration both of the savage and the Spaniard. Her magnanimous spirit
was evinced in her amicable treatment of the white men, although her
husband, the brave Caonabo, had perished a prisoner in their hands; and
defenceless parties of them had been repeatedly in her power, and lived
at large in her dominions. After having, for several years, neglected
all safe opportunities of vengeance, she fell a victim to the absurd
charge of having conspired against an armed body of nearly four hundred
men, seventy of them horsemen; a force sufficient to have subjugated
large armies of naked Indians.

After the massacre of Xaragua, the destruction of its inhabitants still
continued. The favorite nephew of Anacaona, the cacique Guaora, who had
fled to the mountains, was hunted like a wild beast, until he was taken,
and likewise hanged. For six months the Spaniards continued ravaging the
country with horse and foot, under pretext of quelling insurrections; for,
wherever the affrighted natives took refuge in their despair, herding in
dismal caverns and in the fastnesses of the mountains, they were
represented as assembling in arms to make a head of rebellion. Having at
length hunted them out of their retreats, destroyed many, and reduced the
survivors to the most deplorable misery and abject submission, the whole
of that part of the island was considered as restored to good order; and
in commemoration of this great triumph, Ovando founded a town near to the
lake, which he called Santa Maria de la Verdadera Paz (St. Mary of the
True Peace). [214]

Such is the tragical history of the delightful region of Xaragua, and of
its amiable and hospitable people. A place which the Europeans, by their
own account, found a perfect paradise, but which, by their vile passions,
they filled with horror and desolation.

Chapter III.

War with the Natives of Higuey.

[1504.]

The subjugation of four of the Indian sovereignties of Hispaniola, and the
disastrous fate of their caciques, have been already related. Under the
administration of Ovando, was also accomplished the downfall of Higuey,
the last of those independent districts; a fertile province which
comprised the eastern extremity of the island.

The people of Higuey were of a more warlike spirit than those of the other
provinces, having learned the effectual use of their weapons, from
frequent contests with their Carib invaders. They were governed by a
cacique named Cotabanama. Las Casas describes this chieftain from actual
observation, and draws the picture of a native hero. He was, he says, the
strongest of his tribe, and more perfectly formed than one man in a
thousand of any nation whatever. He was taller in stature than the tallest
of his countrymen, a yard in breadth from shoulder to shoulder, and the
rest of his body in admirable proportion. His aspect was not handsome, but
grave and courageous. His bow was not easily bent by a common man; his
arrows were three-pronged, tipped with the bones of fishes, and his
weapons appeared to be intended for a giant. In a word, he was so nobly
proportioned, as to be the admiration even of the Spaniards.

While Cloumbus was engaged in his fourth voyage, and shortly after the
accession of Ovando to office, there was an insurrection of this cacique
and his people. A shallop, with eight Spaniards, was surprised at the
small island of Saona, adjacent to Higuey, and all the crew slaughtered.
This was in revenge for the death of a cacique, torn to pieces by a dog
wantonly set upon him by a Spaniard, and for which the natives had in vain
sued for redress.

Ovando immediately dispatched Juan de Esquibel, a courageous officer, at
the head of four hundred men, to quell the insurrection, and punish the
massacre. Cotabanama assembled his warriors, and prepared for vigorous
resistance. Distrustful of the mercy of the Spaniards, the chieftain
rejected all overtures of peace, and the war was prosecuted with some
advantage to the natives. The Indians had now overcome their superstitious
awe of the white men as supernatural beings, and though they could ill
withstand the superiority of European arms, they manifested a courage and
dexterity that rendered them enemies not to be despised. Las Casas and
other historians relate a bold and romantic encounter between a single
Indian and two mounted cavaliers named Valtenebro and Portevedra, in which
the Indian, though pierced through the body by the lances and swords of
both his assailants, retained his fierceness, and continued the combat,
until he fell dead in the possession of all their weapons. [215] This
gallant action, says Las Casas, was public and notorious.

The Indians were soon defeated and driven to their mountain retreats. The
Spaniards pursued them into their recesses, discovered their wives and
children, wreaked on them the most indiscriminate slaughter, and committed
their chieftains to the flames. An aged female cacique of great
distinction, named Higuanama, being taken prisoner, was hanged.

A detachment was sent in a caravel to the island of Saona, to take
particular vengeance for the destruction of the shallop and its crew. The
natives made a desperate defence and fled. The island was mountainous, and
full of caverns, in which the Indians vainly sought for refuge. Six or
seven hundred were imprisoned in a dwelling, and all put to the sword or
poniarded. Those of the inhabitants who were spared were carried off as
slaves; and the island was left desolate and deserted.

The natives of Higuey were driven to despair, seeing that there was no
escape for them even in the bowels of the earth: [216] they sued for
peace, which was granted them, and protection promised on condition of
their cultivating a large tract of land, and paying a great quantity of
bread in tribute. The peace being concluded, Cotabanama visited the
Spanish camp, where his gigantic proportions and martial demeanor made
him an object of curiosity and admiration. He was received with great
distinction by Esquibel, and they exchanged names; an Indian league of
fraternity and perpetual friendship. The natives thenceforward called the
cacique Juan de Esquibel, and the Spanish commander Cotabanama. Esquibel
then built a wooden fortress in an Indian village near the sea, and left
in it nine men, with a captain named Martin de Villaman. After this, the
troops dispersed, every man returning home, with his proportion of slaves
gained in this expedition.

The pacification was not of long continuance, About the time that succors
were sent to Columbus, to rescue him from the wrecks of his vessels at
Jamaica, a new revolt broke out in Higuey, in consequence of the
oppressions of the Spaniards, and a violation of the treaty made by
Esquibel. Martin de Villaman demanded that the natives should not only
raise the grain stipulated for by the treaty, but convey it to San
Domingo, and he treated them with the greatest severity on their refusal.
He connived also at the licentious conduct of his men towards the Indian
women; the Spaniards often taking from the natives their daughters and
sisters, and even their wives. [217] The Indians, roused at last to fury,
rose on their tyrants, slaughtered them, and burnt their wooden fortress
to the ground. Only one of the Spaniards escaped, and bore the tidings
of this catastrophe to the city of San Domingo.

Ovando gave immediate orders to carry fire and sword into the province of
Higuey. The Spanish troops mustered from various quarters on the confines
of that province, when Juan de Esquibel took the command, and had a great
number of Indians with him as allies. The towns of Higuey were generally
built among the mountains. Those mountains rose in terraces, from ten to
fifteeen leagues in length and breadth; rough and rocky, interspersed with
glens of a red soil, remarkably fertile, where they raised their cassava
bread. The ascent from terrace to terrace was about fifty feet; steep and
precipitous, formed of the living rock, and resembling a wall wrought with
tools into rough diamond points. Each village had four wide streets, a
stone's throw in length, forming a cross, the trees being cleared away
from them, and from a public square in the centre.

When the Spanish troops arrived on the frontiers, alarm-fires along the
mountains and columns of smoke spread the intelligence by night and day.
The old men, the women, and children, were sent off to the forests and
caverns, and the warriors prepared for battle. The Castilians paused in
one of the plains clear of forests, where their horses could be of use.
They made prisoners of several of the natives, and tried to learn from
them the plans and forces of the enemy. They applied tortures for the
purpose, but in vain, so devoted was the loyalty of these people to their
caciques. The Spaniards penetrated into the interior. They found the
warriors of several towns assembled in one, and drawn up in the streets
with their bows and arrows, but perfectly naked, and without defensive
armor. They uttered tremendous yells, and discharged a shower of arrows;
but from such a distance, that they fell short of their foe. The Spaniards
replied with their cross-bows, and with two or three arquebuses, for at
this time they had but few firearms. When the Indians saw several of their
comrades fall dead, they took to flight, rarely waiting for the attack
with swords: some of the wounded, in whose bodies the arrows from the
cross-bows had penetrated to the very feather, drew them out with their
hands, broke them with their teeth, and hurling them at the Spaniards with
impotent fury, fell dead upon the spot.

The whole force of the Indians was routed and dispersed, each family, or
band of neighbors, fled in its own direction, and concealed itself in the
fastness of the mountains. The Spaniards pursued them, but found the chase
difficult amidst the close forests, and the broken and stony heights. They
took several prisoners as guides, and inflicted incredible torments on
them, to compel them to betray their countrymen. They drove them before
them, secured by cords fastened round their necks; and some of them, as
they passed along the brinks of precipices, suddenly threw themselves
headlong down, in hopes of dragging after them the Spaniards. When at
length the pursuers came upon the unhappy Indians in their concealments,
they spared neither age nor sex; even pregnant women, and mothers with
infants in their arms, fell beneath their merciless swords. The
cold-blooded acts of cruelty which followed this first slaughter would be
shocking to relate.

Hence Esquibel marched to attack the town where Cotabanama resided, and
where that cacique had collected a great force to resist him. He proceeded
direct for the place along the sea-coast, and came to where two roads led
up the mountain to the town. One of the roads was open and inviting; the
branches of the trees being lopped, and all the underwood cleared away.
Here the Indians had stationed an ambuscade to take the Spaniards in the
rear. The other road was almost closed up by trees and bushes cut down and
thrown across each other. Esquibel was wary and distrustful; he suspected
the stratagem, and chose the encumbered road. The town was about a league
and a half from the sea. The Spaniards made their way with great
difficulty for the first half league. The rest of the road was free from
all embarrassment, which confirmed their suspicion of a stratagem. They
now advanced with great rapidity, and, having arrived near the village,
suddenly turned into the other road, took the party in ambush by surprise,
and made great havoc among them with their cross-bows.

The warriors now sallied from their concealment, others rushed out of the
houses into the streets, and discharged flights of arrows, but from such a
distance as generally to fall harmless. They then approached nearer, and
hurled stones with their hands, being unacquainted with the use of slings.
Instead of being dismayed at seeing their companions fall, it rather
increased their fury. An irregular battle, probably little else than wild
skirmishing and bush-fighting, was kept up from two o'clock in the
afternoon until night. Las Casas was present on the occasion, and, from
his account, the Indians must have shown instances of great personal
bravery, though the inferiority of their weapons, and the want of all
defensive armor, rendered their valor totally ineffectual. As the evening
shut in, their hostilities gradually ceased, and they disappeared in the
profound gloom and close thickets of the surrounding forest. A deep
silence succeeded to their yells and war-whoops, and throughout the night
the Spaniards remained in undisturbed possession of the village.

Chapter IV.

Close of the War with Higuey.--Fate of Cotabanama.

[1504.]

On the morning after the battle, not an Indian was to be seen. Finding
that even their great chief, Cotabanama, was incapable of vying with the
prowess of the white men, they had given up the contest in despair, and
fled to the mountains. The Spaniards, separating into small parties,
hunted them with the utmost diligence; their object was to seize the
caciques, and, above all, Cotabanama. They explored all the glens and
concealed paths leading into the wild recesses where the fugitives had
taken refuge. The Indians were cautious and stealthy in their mode of
retreating, treading in each other's foot-prints, so that twenty would
make no more track than one, and stepping so lightly as scarce to disturb
the herbage; yet there were Spaniards so skilled in hunting Indians, that
they could trace them even by the turn of a withered leaf, and among the
confused tracks of a thousand animals.

They could scent afar off, also, the smoke of the fires which the Indians
made whenever they halted, and thus they would come upon them in their
most secret haunts. Sometimes they would hunt down a straggling Indian,
and compel him, by torments, to betray the hiding-place of his companions,
binding him and driving him before them as a guide. Wherever they
discovered one of these places of refuge, filled with the aged and the
infirm, with feeble women and helpless children, they massacred them
without mercy. They wished to inspire terror throughout the land, and to
frighten the whole tribe into submission. They cut off the hands of those
whom they took roving at large, and sent them, as they said, to deliver
them as letters to their friends, demanding their surrender. Numberless
were those, says Las Casas, whose hands were amputated in this manner, and
many of them sank down and died by the way, through anguish and loss of
blood.

The conquerors delighted in exercising strange and ingenious cruelties.
They mingled horrible levity with their blood-thirstiness. They erected
gibbets long and low, so that the feet of the sufferers might reach the
ground, and their death be lingering. They hanged thirteen together, in
reverence, says the indignant Las Casas, of our blessed Saviour and the
twelve apostles. While their victims were suspended, and still living,
they hacked them with their swords, to prove the strength of their arms
and the edge of their weapons. They wrapped them in dry straw, and setting
fire to it, terminated their existence by the fiercest agony.

These are horrible details, yet a veil is drawn over others still more
detestable. They are related circumstantially by Las Casas, who was an
eye-witness. He was young at the time, but records them in his advanced
years. "All these things," says the venerable Bishop, "and others
revolting to human nature, did my own eyes behold; and now I almost fear
to repeat them, scarce believing myself, or whether I have not dreamt
them." [218]

These details would have been withheld from the present work as
disgraceful to human nature, and from an unwillingness to advance any
thing which might convey a stigma upon a brave and generous nation. But it
would be a departure from historical veracity, having the documents before
my eyes, to pass silently over transactions so atrocious, and vouched for
by witnesses beyond all suspicion of falsehood. Such occurrences show the
extremity to which human cruelty may extend, when stimulated by avidity of
gain; by a thirst of vengeance; or even by a perverted zeal in the holy
cause of religion. Every nation has in turn furnished proofs of this
disgraceful truth. As in the present instance, they are commonly the
crimes of individuals rather than of the nation. Yet it behooves
governments to keep a vigilant eye upon those to whom they delegate power
in remote and helpless colonies. It is the imperious duty of the historian
to place these matters upon record, that they may serve as warning beacons
to future generations.

Juan de Esquibel found that, with all his severities, it would be
impossible to subjugate the tribe of Higuey, as long as the cacique
Cotabanama was at large. That chieftain had retired to the little island
of Saona, about two leagues from the coast of Higuey, in the centre of
which, amidst a labyrinth of rocks and forests, he had taken shelter with
his wife and children in a vast cavern.

A caravel, recently arrived from the city of San Domingo with supplies for
the camp, was employed by Esquibel to entrap the cacique. He knew that the
latter kept a vigilant look-out, stationing scouts upon the lofty rocks of
his island to watch the movements of the caravel. Esquibel departed by
night, therefore, in the vessel, with fifty followers, and keeping under
the deep shadows cast by the land, arrived at Saona unperceived, at the
dawn of morning. Here he anchored close in with the shore, hid by its
cliffs and forests, and landed forty men, before the spies of Cotabanama
had taken their station. Two of these were surprised and brought to
Esquibel, who, having learnt from them that the cacique was at hand,
poniarded one of the spies, and bound the other, making him serve as
guide.