CHAPTER I. CUBA DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUS.-COLONIZED UNDER VELASQUEZ. -FATE OF THE CACIQUE HATUEY.-EXPEDITION OF NARVAEZ AND LAS CASAS. -MASSACRE AT CAONAO AND ITS CONSE QUENCES. TOWNS FOUNDED IN CUBA BY VELASQUEZ. CHAPTER I. CUBA DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUS.-COLONIZED UNDER VELASQUEZ.-FATE OF THE CACIQUE HATUEY.-EXPEDITION OF NARVAEZ AND LAS CASAS.-MASSACRE OF CAONAO AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.—TOWNS FOUNDED IN CUBA BY VELASQUEZ. THE HE next difficulty, after discovering and adopting a general rule, is to know when to break through it. It is from not mastering this difficulty that three of the principal historians who have written on the subject of the Spanish conquests have, as I venture to think, fallen into considerable error, and made books which none but those who have a love for history will read. PETER MARTYR, LAS CASAS, and HERRERA endeavored in their histories to maintain chronological order: a very desirable thing, no doubt, as a general rule, but absolutely incompatible with a clear understanding of the various complicated and place-shifting events which these historians had to chronicle. If a single drama may be bound down by the Unities, the course of history certainly will not allow itself to be restricted by any such nice rules, and the attempt to make it exact and undeviating in one respect often lets in a flood of confusion in others. The historian, it is true, may be unimpeachable as regards the unbroken sequence of his dates, but this is no gain if the reader's apprehension is to be entirely confused by a narrative which requires his imagination to fly from place to place, or to be nearly ubiquitous, and his memory to retain before it at the same moment several independent trains of fact and reasoning. I make the foregoing remarks to explain why, though in general striving to maintain the order of time, I have nevertheless related, without any break, the principal circumstances connected with the first occupation of the Terra-firma. The reader may now, to a certain extent, dismiss that course of events from his mind, remembering the main outlines of the story, namely, that the northern coast of South America has been investigated and traversed; the great South Sea discovered; the neighboring Indians subjugated, enslaved, or driven away from the coast; two or three cities founded; and a very large proportion of the Spaniards destroyed by disease, famine, hardship, and the assaults of the natives. The occupation of Cuba by the Spaniards is the next great stepping-stone in this history. It was from Cuba that two or three of the most important expeditions, such as that of Francisco de Córdova to Yucatan, of Juan Grijalva to Panuco, and of Cortez to Mexico, were directed. It was at Cuba that Las Casas commenced his career of humanity; and the settlement of the Spaniards in that island affords a memorable example of their general policy and conduct toward the Indians. Cuba was discovered by Columbus in the course of his first voyage, but it seems not to have been much regarded by the Spaniards for some years. They were doubtful, indeed, whether it was an island until King Ferdinand directed Ovando to investigate the fact, when he dispatched a certain commander, named Ocampo, to coast about Cuba, who ascertained that it was an island. The disposition of the inhabitants was similar to that of the Indians in Hispaniola, and hitherto those Spaniards who had been thrown upon the coast of Cuba had for the most part experienced nothing but kind treatment from the natives. One of the caciques was called Comendador, having been baptized by some Spaniards, and having chosen this name from the title of Ovando, the Governor of Hispaniola, who was a Comendador of the order of Alcántara. It chanced that a Spanish vessel, passing by that part of the coast which is near to the Cape de la Cruz, left there a young mariner who was ill, but who afterward recovered. This mariner placed an image of the Virgin Mary in one of the houses of the Cacique Comendador, and taught the people to come there every evening, and on their knees to say the Ave Maria and the Salve Regina. The neighboring caciques were very angry because this cacique and his people had deserted the idol they had all been accustomed to worship, and which was called, in the language of that country, their Cemi. Many battles took place about the matter in dispute, but the victory was ever with the Christian cacique. The others said that neither Comendador nor his men gained the battles, but a beautiful woman clad in white, with a wand in her hand. Both parties at last came to an agreement to try the relative merits of the Cemi and of the Virgin Mary in this fashion, namely, that the infidel caciques should take an Indian of Comendador's party, and should bind him as they pleased, and that Comendador should take an Indian from their party and bind him as he pleased, and that the two should be left alone, by night, in a field; then, if the Cemi was more powerful than the Virgin Mary, he would come and set free his worshiper; but if the Virgin Mary was more powerful than the Cemi, she would come and unbind her worshiper. Guards were appointed to see what should happen. The men being bound and left, as agreed upon, at midnight came the Cemi to unbind his man, and while he was unbinding him, the Virgin Mary, clothed entirely in white, and very beautiful, with a wand in her hand, appeared, upon which the Cemi fled. But she touched her worshiper with the wand, and as she touched him he was loosed, and all his bonds went upon the other Indian, in addition to those which he had before. The caciques said that it was some deceit, and they resolved to try the thing again, and see whether it were true or not. Again the witnesses told the same story. The caciques themselves resolved to watch; and as they too saw the miracle, they said that the Virgin Mary was a good cacique, and that Comendador might take the Virgin |