There Happened About This Time A Very Singular And Melancholy Event, Which
I Find Recorded In Many Spanish Historians, Which Shews To What A Height
Corruption Had Grown In So Short A Time Among The Spanish Settlements In
The West Indies.
Reports had reached Spain of the harsh and cruel manner
in which the natives were treated by the Spaniards, being distributed
among the proprietors of land as if they had been cattle.
This moved some
religious men of the Dominican order to go over to the new world, to try
what progress they could make in converting the Indians by spiritual means
only. Three of these fathers landed in the island of Porto Rico, where one
of them fell sick and was unable to proceed. The other two procured a
vessel to carry them over to the main, where they were landed at no great
distance from the Indian town which Hojeda and Vespucius had seen in their
first voyage, standing in the water, and which therefore they had named
Venezuela or little Venice. The fathers found the natives at this place
very docile and tractable, and were in a fair way of making them converts
to the Christian religion; when unluckily a Spanish pirate, whose only
employment was to steal Indians to sell them as slaves to the colonists,
anchored on the coast. The poor natives, confident of being well treated
by Christians, went freely on board along with their cacique, and the
pirate immediately weighed anchor, and made all sail for Hispaniola,
carrying them all away into slavery. This naturally raised a great ferment
among the remaining natives, who were on the point of sacrificing the two
Dominicans to their resentment, when another Spanish ship arrived in the
harbour, commanded by a man of honour. He pacified the Indians for the
present as well as he possibly could, and receiving letters from the
Dominicans with a true statement of the transaction, he promised to send
back their cacique and the rest of their countrymen in four months. As he
really intended to perform his promise, he immediately made application to
the supreme tribunal at St Domingo, called the royal audience, setting
forth the particulars of the case, and the imminent danger to which the
two fathers were exposed, unless these Indians were sent back in due time.
But it so happened that these very people had been purchased as slaves by
some of the members of the royal audience, and these members of the
supreme tribunal were not so much in love with justice as to release them.
The consequence of this was, that at the end of the four months, the
Indians murdered the two Dominicans, Francisco de Cordova and Juan Garcias,
in revenge for the loss of their prince and relations.
SECTION XI.
Discoveries on the Continent of America by command of Velasquez, under
the conduct of Francis Hernandez de Cordova.
After James de Velasquez had reduced the greatest part of the island of
Cuba, and had settled colonies of Spaniards in many districts of the
island, he became desirous of shaking off the authority of the Admiral
James Columbus, by whom he was appointed to the command, and setting up
for himself.
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