Colonization of the Greater Antilles, Gold, Cattle and Sugarcane, the Genocide of the Lucayan and Taíno People, and the Emergence of the African Slave Trade 1493 - 1600
A Representation of the Sugarcane and the Art of Making Sugar
Engraving, hand colored, John Hinton, publisher (1749) shows sugarcane processing, probably in the West Indies, with a white overseer directing Natives at a press and boiling operation. This image and description were reproduced from the digital file from black and white copy negative from the Geography & Map Division, Library of Congress, Washington D.C., November 26, 2024. https://lccn.loc.gov/2004670227
Author’s notes
All quotes from Columbus’s daily log for his first voyage to the New World are attributed to Robert H. Fuson, trans., The Log of Christopher Columbus, International Marine Publishing Co., a division of Highmark Publishing Ltd. (1987). The dates cited here are the dates of the log entry rather than the pages of the translation. Columbus was referring to the Julian calendar, the calendar used by Western Europe at that time. The Gregorian calendar came into effect in the Catholic world in October 1582. The Gregorian calendar went into effect in the Protestant world, including the countries in the British Empire and its American colonies, in 1752, and in Sweden in 1753.
For more about Columbus, including extensive excerpts from his ships’ logs, see Columbus’s Unrealistic Voyage to the East Indies.
The Colonization o the Greater Antilles
During Columbus’s first of his four trans-Atlantic expeditions, he sailed from the southern port of Palos, Castile, with three ships, the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa María and landed at an island in the Bahamas that he named San Salvador. After spending two weeks in the Bahamas, he sailed to the northwest coast of Cuba and then to the northern coast of Hispaniola. At 2:00 a.m. on Christmas day 1492, the Santa María ran aground and became stuck in the soft bank. Unable to be refloated, it was disassembled and its timbers were used to build a fort and tower that he named La Navidad. Columbus left thirty-nine crewmen and three officers to tend to the fort and search for gold. The plan was that Columbus would return for them the following year.
Columbus and the Niña and the Pinta returned to Palos on March 15, 1493.
As he was returning, Columbus composed a letter to Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand announcing his discovery of what he thought was the East Indies and describing the islands he visited, including Cuba and Hispaniola. He described the native people he met, labeled them “indians,” and suggested that they were docile and could easily be converted to Catholicism. A copy of his letter that was translated into Latin reached the pope in Rome. The copying of the letter took advantage of the new invention, the printing press, and the letter was reprinted in a number of cities and circulated throughout Western Europe. Three thousand copies were circulated in the first ten years after Columbus’s return to Castile
When Columbus returned from his first voyage, he brought the following to show Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand: small samples of gold and gold jewelry from the natives, a tobacco plant, a pineapple, a turkey, native birds, flowers, a hammock and a few Taíno people that he had kidnapped.
On his first voyage, Columbus claimed the Bahamas, Cuba and Hispaniola for Queen Isabella’s kingdom of Castile thereby creating a conflict with the 1481 papal bull Aeterni regis that affirmed Portugal’s claim to all the non-Christian lands south of the Canary Islands.
Castile, by sailing west, and Portugal, by sailing south, did not have irreconcilable competing interests in land bordering on the Atlantic Oceans. On May 4, 1493, Pope Alexander VI issued papal bull Inter caetera that granted Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand all lands to the west and south of a line from pole-to-pole down the Atlantic Oceans 100 leagues west and south of any of the islands of the Azores or the Cape Verde Islands. [As a side note, Pope Alexander VI was born Rodigo de Borja in the kingdom of Valencia, crown of Aragon. He was a member of the prominent political and religious Borja family. His uncle had been Pope Callixtus III.]
While Columbus was on his second voyage, the two Catholic kingdoms of Castile and Portugal agreed to divide the world by drawing a line from pole-to-pole down the Atlantic Oceans along a meridian 370 leagues, revised from the 100 leagues of the papal bull Inter caetera, west of the Cape Verde Islands, islands off the west coast of Africa. The treaty also divided trading and colonization rights. The kingdom of Castile received the exclusive right to lands west of this line (the Americas less eastern Brazil); the kingdom of Portugal received the exclusive right to lands east of this line (West Africa and eastern Brazil). The formalities became the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494).
On September 25, 1493, Columbus sailed from Cádiz for his second voyage to the New World. His mission was to establish a colony and to convert the Taíno people to Christianity. He sailed with seventeen ships and about 1,300 colonists, all men, that included a group of friars and a small troop of cavalry along with enough supplies to last the colonists a year. Rather than enter the Caribbean from the Bahamas, he approached from the south and worked his way up the Lesser Antilles — Dominica, Guadalupe, Montserrat, Redondo, and Antigua — before reaching Puerto Rico and finally Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles.
The Bahamas
For his first voyage, Columbus’s plan was to sail south to the Canary Islands and then west across the Atlantic Ocean until he arrived in the East Indies where he would search for the spice islands. But when he landed in the Bahamas instead of the East Indies, he saw the natives wearing small bits of gold in their noses. He seemed taken with the gold and he changed the focus of his search to discovering the source of the gold.
It should be noted that Columbus had a vested interest in what he discovered. Before he sailed on his first voyage, Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand had signed a document entitled The Capitulations of Santa Fe in which they promised Columbus that he would acquire the title of admiral of the Ocean Sea, the appointment as governor of the newly claimed and colonized land, and, if he was successful, ten-percent of all revenues from the new lands in perpetuity.
Ten per-cent of all the gold from the new lands in perpetuity certainly was an incentive to find the gold mines, especially when he came face-to-face with natives wearing gold as jewelry.
The following are comments from Columbus’s daily log for his first voyage.
Wednesday, October 17, 1492 (Bahamas)
These islands are very green and fertile and the air is balmy. There are many things that I will probably never know because I cannot stay long enough to see everything. I must move on to discover others and to find gold. Since these people know what gold is, I know that with our Lord’s help I cannot fail to find its source.
Fernandina is very large and I have determined to sail around it. Although I know that Japan is to the south or SW, and that I am about to take a detour, I understand that there is a mine of gold either in Fernandina or near it. . . . [Fernandina was the third island Columbus visited in the Bahamas and he named the island after King Ferdinand of Aragon.]
The wind was SW and south, and I wanted to follow the coast of this island to the SE because it all runs NNW-SSE, and the Indians whom I had aboard told me that a southerly course leads to the island they call Samoet, where the gold is. . . .
In less than two weeks, Columbus had decided that the Bahamas was not the source of the gold and prepared to sail southwest on to Cuba. On the fifth day after preparing to sail, the winds finally cooperated and he and his fleet left the Bahamas.
Although Columbus made three more voyages to the West Indies, he never returned to the Bahamas.
The Greater Antilles
Beginning with Columbus’s second voyage, the kingdom of Castile proceeded to settle the four largest islands in the Caribbean Sea. These are the islands of the Greater Antilles and they were settled in this order — Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Jamaica and Cuba.
Sunday, November 4, 1492 (Cuba)
I showed them gold and pearls, and certain old men replied that in a place they call Bohío there was an infinite amount of gold. They said that people there wore it around the neck, in the ears, and on the arms and the legs, and that they also had pearls. [Bohio referred to Hispaniola and has been called by many names over the years, including Haiti, Hayti, Santo Domingo and Saint-Dominique.]
Hispaniola
As Columbus was preparing to sail back to Castile from Hispaniola, he wrote in his daily log what he claimed was his reason for sailing.
Wednesday, December 26, 1492 (Hispaniola)
I hope to God that when I come back here from Castile, which I intend on doing, that I will find a barrel of gold, for which these people I am leaving will have traded, and that they will have found the gold mine, and the spices, and in such quantities that within three years the Sovereigns will prepare for and undertake the conquest of the Holy Land. I have already petitioned our Highnesses to see that all the profits of this, my enterprise, should be spent on the conquest of Jerusalem, and Your Highnesses smiled and said that the idea pleased them, and that even without this expedition they had the inclination to do it.
Queen Isabella had learned about the islands to the west across the Atlantic Ocean from Columbus’s first voyage. She entrusted Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, her royal chaplain and archbishop of Burgos, to organize a second voyage for Columbus.
When Columbus finally returned to Hispaniola, he discovered that the fort and tower of La Navidad that he and his men had constructed from the timbers of the Santa María had been destroyed and his thirty-nine crew and three officers had been killed.
One story that emerged was that the men of La Navidad had quarreled among themselves and had enslaved the Taíno men and stole their wives and daughters and mistreated them. Two of the officers whom Columbus had left in charge of the fort, Pedro Gutiérrez and Rodrigo de Escobedo, had left for the mines at the Cibao region with nine others along with their women.
Caonabo, the cacique (chief) of the Maguana chiefdom (kingdom), and his forces had killed the eleven. They then made their way to La Navidad where they set fire to the fort and tower forcing the Castilians to flee into the sea. Eight drowned and another three were killed onshore.
Not wanting to build a settlement where his men had been killed, Columbus moved further east along the northern coast of Hispaniola. Finding an acceptable location on the east bank of the Bajabonico River, Columbus had his colonists build the first permanent Castilian settlement in the New World. He named it La Isabela, in honor of the queen of Castile. This marked the beginning of the Castilian colonization of the New World.
In January 1494, Columbus sent a small armed party led by Alonso de Ojeda to search for gold in a mountainous region of Hispaniola known as The Cibao (El Cibao). El Cibao is a 145-mile long valley in northeastern Hispaniola. El Cibao extends from Manzanillo Bay in the west to Samaná Bay in the east and is bracketed by the Cordillera Septentrional and the Cordillera Central Mountains. Ojeda returned bringing a few gold nuggets and reporting there was gold in the region.
This discovery of gold focused Columbus’s attention on El Cibao. In March, he led around 500 men to explore the region. Although his hunt for gold was unsuccessful, the local Taíno brought him gold to trade. Columbus established a fort, Santo Tomas, to serve both as a trading post and as a base for further prospecting.
In April, Columbus sent Ojeda with about 350 soldiers to Santo Thomas with a three-fold mission: to search for gold, to seize food from the natives, and to capture Caonabo, the cacique of the Maguana chiefdom. At a river crossing controlled by a friendly tribe, Ojeda arrested the local cacique and other officials, cut the ears off one captive and sent the others to La Isabela in chains. Columbus then ordered their beheading. Columbus and Ojeda’s brutal treatment of the natives turned the Taíno against the Castilians.
Following Ojeda’s mistreatment of the Taíno at the river, a fort was built to protect the river crossing. Late in 1494, the first Taíno rebellion took place there. The fort was destroyed and ten Castilians were killed. Ojeda led 500 men to retaliate and 1,500 Taínos were taken as slaves. Six hundred were shipped to Castile.
The Taíno were not the only people that Columbus abused. It was said that he had Castilian colonists executed for minor crimes and others suffered dismemberment such as severing a hand, nose, ear or tongue. Disease and famine claimed others.
By late 1494, complaints against Columbus and his brother, Bartholomew, were reaching the court in Castile.
On March 27, 1495, a decisive battle, the Battle of Vega Real, also called the Battle of the Holy Hill or the Battle of Jáquimo, was fought between 220 Castilians led by Columbus, Bartholomew, Ojeda and the followers of Guacanagarix, the cacique of the chiefdom of Marién, a Taíno kingdom in the northwest of Hispaniola, against the indigenous alliance of the other four Taíno chiefdoms — Maguá (northeast), Jaragua (southwest), Higüey (southeast), and Maguana (south central). The Taíno alliance was defeated and the Taíno leader, Caonabo, was captured thereby ending the Taíno resistance to the Castilians on the island of Hispaniola.
Columbus sailed from La Isabela on March 10, 1496, leaving Bartholomew in charge of Hispaniola. Columbus arrived in Cádiz on June 11th. His third voyage would not begin for two years.
On August 5, 1496, Bartholomew established the settlement of La Nueva Isabela, on the southern, rather than on the northern, coast of Hispaniola. It was named after Queen Isabella but was soon renamed Santo Domingo du Guzmán. Santo Domingo became the first European city in the New World and was the capital of all Spanish colonies in the Americas. Santo Domingo became known as “the Gateway to the New World.”
Santo Domingo was the site of the first university, the first cathedral, the first castle, the first monastery, and the first fortress in the Americas.
Castilian expeditions launched from Santo Domingo led to Ponce de León’s colonization of Puerto Rico and Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar’s colonization of Cuba.
Upon Columbus’s return from his second voyage, Queen Isabella entrusted Rodríguez de Fonseca to build a colonial administration. Over time, Rodríguez de Fonseca gained increasing influence over Castilian colonial policy and emerged as the kingdom’s de facto Minister of Colonial Affairs. Early on Rodriguez de Fonseca clashed with Columbus whom he believed was asserting too much independence from royal authority.
The purpose of Columbus’s third voyage was to resupply the settlement and to continue to seek a route to the Far East. On May 30, 1498, Columbus sailed from Sanlúcar de Barrameda with six ships. Three sailed for Hispainiola to bring the colonists supplies; the other three sailed more southerly to continue the search for a sea route to the Far East. Columbus was captain of the latter three ships.
For the first two weeks of August, Columbus explored the Gulf of Paria, a semi-enclosed inland sea that separates the island of Trinidad from the east coast of Venezuela. The gulf is connected in the north to the Caribbean Sea and in the south to the Atlantic Ocean. Columbus visited Trinidad, Margarita and several smaller islands and discovered the mouth of the Orinoco River, one of the longest rivers in South America, a river that flows through Columbia and Venezuela and empties into the Gulf of Paria and the Atlantic Ocean. Columbus was amazed by the vast quantity of fresh-water flowing into the ocean and believed that he must be near The Garden of Eden.
Around this time, Columbus became ill and decided to sail to Hispaniola. Arriving at La Isabela on August 19th after a two-year absence, he found angry colonists.
They were low on supplies and the wealth that Columbus extolled to entice them to join the second voyage never materialized. He also found that Francisco Roldán, the mayor of La Isabella, had staged a revolt against Bartholomew and had established a dissident group within the La Isabella colony. Columbus was able to negotiate a peace with the rebels by granting concessions, including control of native labor.
On May 21, 1499, Queen Isabella, responding to rumors of strife and poor governance on the part of Columbus and his brothers, named Francisco de Bobadilla as a judge with orders to investigate reports from Hispaniola concerning the numerous complaints about Columbus and his brothers. Bobadilla arrived in Hispaniola on August 23, 1500, with 500 men and 14 Taínos who had previously been Columbus’s slaves and who were being returned home.
Queen Isabella, influenced by Rodríguez de Fonseca, her de facto Minister of Colonial Affairs, removed Columbus from the governorship of the viceroyalty of the islands he had claimed for her kingdom and that he had been promised when he negotiated The Capitulations of Santa Fe before his first voyage. Queen Isabella appointed Bobadilla the 3rd Governor of the Viceroyalty of the Indies that would take effect when he arrived in Santo Domingo. Almost immediately upon arrival, he pardoned Roldán of sedition.
After gathering the complaints and having Columbus appear before him in Santo Domingo in September of 1500, Bobadilla ordered Columbus and his brothers, Bartholomew and Giacomo, arrested. After spending several weeks in prison, they were taken to Castile in chains and turned over to Rodriguez de Fonseca, who was becoming the informal head of Castile’s colonial administration and who was a public critic of Columbus. After being in prison for several weeks, Columbus and his brothers were released without a trial by Queen Isabella. She did strip him of his position of governor of the viceroyalty of the Indies and reduced his profits although she did restore most of his lands and wealth.
On September 3, 1501, in response to complaints from Columbus and others about Bobadilla, Queen Isabella appointed Nicolás de Ovando to become the 4th Governor of the Viceroyalty of the Indies. On February 13, 1502, Ovando sailed from Castile with a fleet of 30 ships and 2,500 colonists. This was the largest fleet to sail to the New World. Unlike Columbus’s earlier voyages, this group was a cross-section of Castilian society. Isabella was intending to develop the West Indies economically and to expand Castile’s political, religious, and administrative influence in the region. The fleet reached Santo Domingo in April 1502.
When Ovando arrived in Hispaniola, he found the Taíno people in revolt. He ruthlessly suppressed the rebellion with a series of bloody campaigns, including the Jaragua Massacre and the Higüey Massacre.
Although Columbus’s third voyage was a disaster, Isabella and Ferdinand agreed to finance a fourth voyage on condition that he not stop at Hispaniola. On May 9, 1502, Columbus sailed from Sanlúear with four ships. He was joined by his brothers, Bartholomew and Giacomo, and his sons, Diego and Ferdinand.
After visiting Martinique and Puerto Rico, Columbus sailed to Santo Domingo hoping to trade one of his ships for a faster ship. Ovando, as governor, denied Columbus permission to enter the harbor. He was busy organizing a fleet of 31 ships to sail for Castile. One ship, the Aguja, the most unseaworthy ship of the fleet, was carrying Columbus’s gold to Castile.
Columbus realized that a hurricane was approaching and sent word to Ovando that he should consider delaying his fleet before it set sail for Castile. Ovando ignored Columbus’s warning and the hurricane caught Ovando’s ships while they were in the Moma Passage between Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. Over 20 ships sank and over 500 crew and slaves drowned. Bobadilla and Roldán were aboard and among those who drowned. The Aguja, the one carrying Columbus’s gold to Castile, survived.
Columbus took shelter with his small fleet and while they did suffer significant damage, they weathered the storm and were able to sail for Central America. There they anchored on an island off the coast of Honduras where they made whatever repairs they could and took on supplies.
While anchored on this island, Columbus came in contact with a Mayan trading vessel from the Yucatan. It was a very long, wide canoe full of goods such as copper tools and weapons, swords made of wood and flint, textiles, and beer-like beverages made from fermented corn. This may have been one of the first encounters between a European and the Mayans.
Columbus then sailed south and explored the coasts of Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama.
By early 1503, his ships began to fail structurally. They had suffered through the hurricane and were also facing rot and termites. The warm Caribbean water was taking its toll as well. Columbus set sail for Santo Domingo looking for aid but his fleet made it only so far as Santa Gloria (St. Ann’s Bay), Jamaica. Columbus sent word to Governor Ovando that they needed to be rescued but Ovando was neither inclined to help nor did he have the resources to help. The hurricane had destroyed Santo Domingo and it was now being rebuilt on the opposite side of the Ozama River. Finally in June 1504, after Columbus and his crew had been marooned for a year, Ovando sent two ships.
Meanwhile in Castile, Queen Isabella was establishing the Casa de Contratacion (House of Trade or Casa de la Contratación de las Indias) in the port of Seville as the crown agency for her Castilian Empire. Its official name was La Casa y Audiencia de Indias. Rodríguez de Fonseca organized and supervised the new Casa de Contratación that assumed major responsibilities over the management of the new overseas settlements. The Casa de Contratacion had broad powers over overseas matters, especially financial matters concerning trade, including collecting the 20 percent tax (the royal fifth) that was levied on all precious metals entering Castile, collecting all colonial taxes and duties, resolving legal disputes arising from trade and administering commercial law. It was responsible for training pilots, licensing captains, creating maps and charts, probating estates of Castilians dying overseas, approving all voyages of exploration and trade, and maintaining secret information on trade routes and new discoveries.
When Columbus returned to Castile on November 7, 1504, he learned that Queen Isabella was dying. She died on November 26, 1504, without seeing Columbus again.
Isabella had married her second cousin, Prince Ferdinand of Aragon in 1469. They both were descended from King John I of Castile. Five years later, 1474, Isabella’s half-brother, King Henry IV of Castile, died and Isabella and her niece, Joanna, Henry’s daughter, fought for the crown of Castile. This became known as the War of the Castilian Succession. With the assistance of Ferdinand, Isabella prevailed and became queen of Castile and León and Ferdinand became her king consort. Upon the death of Ferdinand’s father, he became king of Aragon and Isabella became queen consort. They ruled Castile and Aragon jointly as dynastically unified kingdoms.
Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand had six children: John, the eldest married Archduchess Margaret of Austria, a Habsburg princess; Isabella of Aragon married King Manuel I of Portugal; Joanna (Juana) of Castile married Philip of Habsburg, a Habsburg prince; Maria of Aragon married King Manuel I of Portugal; and Catherine of Aragon married Prince Arthur Tudor of England. Queen Isabella’s two eldest children, John and Isabella, died before her, leaving Joanna of Castile to inherit the crown of Castile and León.
Anticipating death, Queen Isabella had made her will in which she spelled out the succession to the crown of Castile. She affirmed that her daughter, Joanna, would succeed her, followed by Joanna’s son, Charles.
Ferdinand moved quickly after Isabella’s death to continue his role in Castile but was rebuked by Joanna’s husband, Philip, and the Castilian nobility. Neither Philip nor Ferdinand was interested in administering the islands across the Atlantic Ocean so they left Rodríguez de Fonseca with almost unlimited scope in administering the overseas colonies.
Columbus was a broken man after his fourth voyage. He had lost his four ships and many of his crew, was stranded on the island of Jamaica for a year, was barred from visiting his island of Hispaniola, and he never found a sea route to the Far East (even though he believed the West Indies was the East Indies). He was spending his days petitioning the crown for what Isabella and Ferdinand had promised him before his first voyage. He died in Valladolid, Castile, on May 20, 1506, at the age of 55, from HLA-B27-related reactive arthritis precipitated by recurrent infection.
Queen Joanna’s husband, King Philip I, the first Habsburg king of Castile, died in Burgos, Castile, a few months after Columbus died, September 25, 1506.
Philip’s death resolved his conflict with his father-in-law, King Ferdinand of Aragon. Ferdinand now could be the regent for his daughter, Joanna, along with his grandson, Charles, who was six. Ferdinand had already had Joanna ruled mentally unable to rule without a regent.
On July 10, 1509, Diego Columbus, who had already been appointed 2nd Admiral of the Ocean Sea, was appointed the 4th Governor of the Indies and on May 5, 1511, he became the 2nd Viceroy of the Indies. He was recalled by King Ferdinand in 1514 and replaced in late February 1515 by Nicolas de Ovando.
When Ferdinand died in 1516, his grandson, Charles, now sixteen, became king of both the crown of Castile and the crown of Aragon. His title was King Charles I of Castile, León and Aragon and he was co-monarch with his mother. This included the Castilian colonies in the West Indies. Joanna, having been declared mentally unfit to rule, was kept confined and she ruled in name only. Charles in effect ruled by himself. In 1519, Charles became Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, and by necessity delegated much of the decision making in Castile and Aragon to others.
In 1520, Diego Columbus was appointed the 8th Governor of the Indies and restored as Governor of the Viceroyalty of the Indies by Charles acting as King Charles I of Castile and León.
In 1524, King Charles established the Council of the Indies to oversee Castile’s overseas possessions. It was responsible for all aspects of colonial governance, including administration, justice, war, religions and legislation. It did not replace the House of Trade.
Santo Domingo, the gateway to the New World, became a prime target for pirates and privateers. For example, on January 1, 1586, Sir Francius Drake, acting as a privateer of England and sailing with 23 ships and 2,300 soldiers and sailors, captured Santo Domingo. He held the city for a month, ransacking everything in sight and leaving only after a 25,000 ducat ransom was paid. The capture of Santo Domingo became known as the Battle of Santo Domingo (1586) or the Capture of Santo Domingo. Drake’s seizing of Santo Domingo was considered the English’s preemptive strike in the newly declared Anglo-Spanish War.
Drake's successful capture signaled the decline of Castile’s dominion over Hispaniola, which would be accelerated when King Phillip II of Castile ordered all settlers to move to the vicinity of Santo Domingo to avoid the pirate raids in western Hispaniola. This depopulated most of the island outside of the capital and left western Hispaniola open for the French. From there, the pirates would easily move to the island of Tortuga, north of Hispaniola, and make it their safe haven. The depopulation of western Hispaniola ultimately led to the division of Hispaniola into the Castilian Dominican Republic and French Haiti.
Although the Castilian government rebuilt most of the houses and churches, the defense installations of Santo Domingo did not receive the improvements that other strategic points in the Caribbean received. Havana on the northwest coast of Cuba, founded in 1519, ultimately replaced Santo Domingo as the Castilian capital of the islands.
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico was the second island to be colonized. In 1508, Juan Ponce de León, who first came to the Caribbean as a “gentleman volunteer" with Columbus’s second voyage in 1493, founded the first settlement in Puerto Rico, the smallest of the four islands of the Greater Antilles. A year later, the settlement was moved to a site then called Puerto Rico, Spanish for “rich port” or “good port” after the similar geographical features to the town of Puerto Rico de Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands. Its full name was Ciudad de Puerto Rico de San Juan Bautista.
San Juan was used by merchants and military ships traveling from Castile as the first stopover in the Americas. Because of its prominence in the Caribbean, a network of fortifications was built to protect the fleets that transported gold and silver from the New World to Castile.
Because of these rich cargoes, San Juan became a target of foreign powers. In 1595, Queen Elizabeth of England and Ireland sent Sir Francis Drake and John Hawkins with 27 ships and 2,500 men to disrupt the flow of Castilian gold and silver.
The story goes this way. On March 10, 1595, General Sancho Pardo Osorio and his Castilian West Indian treasure fleet sailed from Havana with 2,000,000 pesos in gold and silver, bound for Castile. Five days after setting sail, his fleet was damaged by a storm in the Bermuda Channel. Unable to complete their voyage without repair, they set their course for Puerto Rico.
Admiral Pedro Tello de Guzmán and his five-frigate fleet were sent from San Juan to retrieve the treasure. On his way to intercept the treasure fleet, Admiral Tello captured one of Drake’s ships, the Francis, near Guadeloupe and learned that Queen Elizabeth had sent Drake and Hawkins to disrupt the flow of Castilian gold and silver shipments.
The treasure fleet arrived in Puerto Rico on April 9th, well ahead of Drake. Hawking had died at sea while on the way to Puerto Rico. Drake was now in full command.
The gold and silver were unloaded and placed in La Fortaleza for safe keeping while repairs to the ships were being made. Anticipating an attack, General Sancho assumed command of the shore defenses. Admiral Gonzalo Mendez de Cauzo took command of the fort and General Tello and his frigates assumed positions to prevent Drake and Hawkins from entering the harbor.
Drake’s forces were met by fierce resistance. After suffering significant losses, he was forced to abandon his attack. This episode became known as the Battle of San Juan (1595).
Jamaica
Jamaica was the third of the Greater Antilles islands to be colonized. In 1509, Sevilla la Nueva (New Saville) in Saint Ann’s Bay was settled on the northern coast of the island.
The settlement of Villa de la Vega on the southeastern corner of the island about thirteen miles up the Rio Cobre from Hunts Bay that feeds into Kingston Harbour, was founded in 1534 and became the capital of the colony. Villa de la Vega was renamed Santiago de la Vega or St. Jago de la Vega. In 1655, the English captured Jamaica and Santiago de la Vega was renamed Spanish Town.
Jamaica was never heavily populated during the 144 years it was under Castilian control. What plantations it did have were established to supply food for the Castilians ships that sailed between Castile and the New World.
Cuba
During Columbus’s first voyage, he explored the northeastern coast of Cuba before sailing on to Hispaniola. During his second voyage, Columbus sailed along the southern coast of Cuba, stopping at a number of inlets including Guantánamo Bay.
In 1508, Sebastian de Ocampo fully mapped the Cuban coast. Three years later, 1511, Diego Valázquezde Cuéllar led the first settlement at Baracoa near the eastern tip of Cuba. It became the first capital of Cuba. The new settlers were greeted with stiff resistance from the Taíno led by Hatuey, a cacique who had relocated from Hispaniola to escape the Castilian rule. After an extended campaign, Hatuey and successive chieftains were captured and burned alive. Within three years, the island of Cuba was under Castilian control. In 1514, Cuéllar founded a settlement on the southern coast. That settlement failed. Between 1514 and 1519, two settlements were founded on the northwest coast. After a change of location to a natural bay, one of the settlements became what is now Havana.
The location of Havana on the northwest coast of Cuba placed it near the Gulf Stream that flows north up the east coast of Florida and becomes the North Atlantic Current that flows across the North Atlantic to Europe. This North Atlantic gyre propels sailing ships on their return to the Iberian Peninsula.
The location of Havana was also well located for the conquistadors as they sailed for the Spanish Main. In 1517, Francisco Hernández de Córdoba sailed along the coast of Yucatán to explore and to search for slaves. In 1519, Hernán Cortés sailed from Havana with a stop in Trinidad, Cuba, to hire more soldiers and obtain more horses, on his way to conquer the Aztec Empire.
In 1521, Charles I, as king of Castile, created the Viceroyalty of New Spain and had it located in Mexico City. In 1535, its name was changed to the Viceroyalty of the Spanish Empire. Mexico City became the base for exploration and conquest in the New World, thereby shifting those activities away from Havana. Although Havana was under the Viceroyalty of New Spain, it remained an administrative hub for the Caribbean and a major port for trade between the Spanish Main, the Caribbean islands, and Castile.
In 1542, the Viceroyalty of Peru was established to govern most of South America with the exception of Panama and Venezuela.
In 1545, the discovery of silver in the Cerro Rico de Potosi mountains at Potosi, Bolivia, was about to make Castile the richest kingdom in Europe. For the next 150 years, the mine at Potosi produced 80% of the world’s silver supply. The Potosi discovery was followed by the discovery of large silver deposits in Zacatecas and Guanajuato, Mexico.
Cuba was an easy target for pirates and privateers. In 1554, François Le Clerc, also known as Jambe de Bois (“Peg Leg”), a French privateer, and his fleet sacked Santiago de Cuba, the first capital of Cuba, held it for a month, and left with an 80,000 peso ransom.
In 1555, Jacques de Sores, a French pirate and corsair, attacked Havana, destroying the fortress of La Fuerza Vieja, burning most of the town and the ships in the harbor, and laying waste to much of the countryside. The ease with which de Sores captured Havana led Castile to engage in a massive fortification program.
In 1564, Castile created a convoy system to safely carry its silver to Castile. Every year, two fleets would leave Castile, one sailing for the port of Veracruz, Mexico, and the other for Portobello, Panama, and Cartagena, Columbia. The two fleets would sail together down the west coast of Africa to the Castilian controlled islands of the Canary Island to receive provisions.
They would change course and sail west together, along with a military escort, across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. There one fleet, the New Spain fleet, would sail to Veracruz to unload its European cargo and receive silver from the mines of Mexico and goods from the Manila Galleon, a ship that sailed annually from Manila in the Philippines to Acapulco, Mexico. Its goods were transported overland by mule to the port in Veracruz. The ships of other fleet, the Terra Firme fleet, would service three ports: Cartagena, Columbia, to load silver from Potosí and other South American products; Portobello, Panama, on the Caribbean coast for silver that had come from Peru that was shipped from the Pacific coast port of Callao, Peru, and transported across the isthmus of Panama by mule; and Margarita, a Caribbean island off the coast of Venezuela, for pearls that had been harvested in Margarita’s offshore oyster beds. Both fleets would meet at Havana and sail together, with military escort, up the east coast of Florida using the Gulf Stream, and then connect with the North Atlantic Current across the Atlantic Ocean to Castile.
Gold Mines, Cattle Ranching and Sugarcane Plantations
When Columbus landed in the Bahamas on his first voyage, he learned there was gold in the West Indies.
Saturday, October 13, 1493 (Columbus’s second day ashore — Bahamas)
I have been very attentive and have tried very hard to find out if there is any gold here. I have seen a few natives who wear a little piece of gold hanging from a hole made in the nose. By signs, if I interpret them correctly, I have learned that by going to the south, or rounding the island to the south, I can find a king who possesses a lot of gold and has great containers of it. I have tried to find some natives who will take me to this great king, but none seemed inclined to make the journey.
On Columbus’s second voyage, he brought sugarcane from the Canary Islands and concluded that sugarcane would do well in the Caribbean. The ships of his second voyage also carried livestock, including cattle.
Gold Mines
Gold was in Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. It could be found in placer deposits and in open pits. A placer deposit is gold mixed with sand and gravel that is found in rivers and creeks. It’s formed when weathering releases the gold from rock.
In 1492, Columbus learned of the gold mine in the Cibao valley in Hispaniola A few years later, 1500, gold was discovered in the Cordillera Central mountain region and that led to a gold rush and a mining boom that lasted for eight years.
In 1506, Ponce de León led an expedition with several hundred men to explore the island of San Juan Baustista, which is now named Puerto Rico. They landed on the west coast and confirmed what he had been told about there being gold. When he returned two years later with about 50 men on the southern coast, they found placer deposits of gold in the western end of the island. Gold was also being mined from open-pit mines in the eastern mountains.
In 1511, soon after Cuba was conquered, gold was discovered in the streams in the central highlands. Prospectors stayed for about a decade and then moved to the Spanish Main where gold and silver appeared to be more plentiful.
Unlike the other three islands of the Greater Antilles, Jamaica lacked gold deposits and as a result was not heavily populated.
For fifty years after Columbus set foot in the New World, more than 100 tons of gold was shipped back to Castile. At first, the gold came from Hispaniola, Puerto Rico and Cuba but with Hernán Cortés’s conquest of the Aztec in Mexico, 1519-1521, it became much easier to melt down Aztec jewelry and ornaments than to mine or pan for gold as was required in the three islands of the Greater Antilles where gold was found. Also slave labor was becoming scarce with the genocide of the Taíno and Lucayan people and before significant numbers of enslaved Africans began to arrive. Finally, the growth of the number of labor intensive sugarcane plantations in the Greater Antilles shifted the use of slave labor away from mined or placer gold.
Cattle Ranching
On September 25, 1493, Columbus sailed from Cádiz with 17 ships and 1,300 salaried men and about 200 private investors and a small troop of cavalry. They sailed with enough supplies to last a year. They landed in Hispaniola and established a settlement Columbus named La Isabela.
The cattle that made the voyage thrived in their new environment, so much so that some escaped, multiplied and became feral. Feral cattle created a problem for the new settlers because they foraged for resources such as food and water and competed for habitat, often placing pressure on the native species and disrupting the ecosystem balance that the colonists depended on to survive.
Cattle from Hispaniola were shared with other islands of the Greater Antilles. The early herds of cattle became the basis for cattle ranching on Hispaniola and Cuba. The cows produced milk and meat for the colonists and their hides became an important export back to Castile.
Sugarcane Plantations
Throughout Columbus’s log that he kept on his first voyage, he continued to comment on how beautiful everything was in Hispaniola.
Friday, December 7, 1492 (Hispaniola)
I took the ship’s boat and entered a small river at the end of the harbor. This river flows through a plain that is cultivated and a beautiful thing to behold. I took a net with me to fish; before I reached land a mullet like those in Spain jumped into the boat. Until this moment no fish had been seen like these in Castile. The sailors caught mullets and soles and other fish like those in Castile. I went a short distance along that river, and all the land is cultivated. I heard nightingales sing and other small birds like those of Castile. I saw five men but they fled. I found myrtle and other trees and grasses like those in Castile, and the mountainous country looks like Castile.
On Columbus’s second voyage, he brought sugarcane from the Canary Islands. Columbus was familiar with the growing of sugarcane because after he arrived in Lisbon from Genoa to work as an assistant in the firm for his Genoese employer, they had sent him to the Madeira Islands to purchase sugar and he had met and married Filipa Moniz Perestrelo and they had resided there with their son, Diego.
Sugarcane plantations require a great deal of land. The best land is flat, fertile and near the coast. The beautifully cultivated Tiáno fields were cleared to make way for the sugarcane plantations. Sugar mills and housing for the field and mill workers needed to be built. Wood needed to be harvested to run the mills and food needed to be grown to feed the workers.
Growing sugarcane on a plantation involves the following:
Planting sections of mature stalks called setts in furrows
Fertilizing to help the setts form a stool of cane
Monitoring and weeding the cane as it grows
Harvesting the sugarcane when it reaches maturity
Processing the harvested sugarcane at sugar mills.
In 1501, the first sugarcane field was planted in Hispaniola and the next year,, Governor Ovando introduced the cultivation of sugarcane with plants imported from the Canary Islands. The first sugar mill was built in Hispaniola in 1504-1505.
The operation of a sugar plantation was labor intensive. The planting, fertilizing, weeding, and harvesting were all by hand. A majority of the enslaved women worked the fields. Their very young children worked along-side their mothers in the fields, chasing the birds. The men worked in the sugar mill chopping, grinding, pressing, pounding the sugarcane. It was then soaked to remove the sugar and the liquid boiled in big vats until only the crystals remained.
As the number of sugarcane plantations increased, sugar became the cash crop of the Caribbean.
The average life expectancy of an enslaved African on a sugarcane plantation in the Greater Antilles was seven to nine years. The average life expectancy was under 23 years. They had to endure hard labor over long hours in the hot Caribbean sun. They were often beaten and tortured by their overseer. The first major slave revolt was in 1521 and occurred in Santo Domingo on the sugarcane plantation of Diego Columbus.
The Genocide of the Lucayan and Taíno People
At about 1,000 BCE, Arawakan-speaking people living along the Orinoco River in South America migrated to the Caribbean. They are known to archaeologists as Saladoid and they lived in large settled towns, cultivated manioc and corn, made elaborate painted pottery, and produced elaborate carved stone and shell pendants and figurines.
Between 200-600 BCE, the Saladoid migrated to Puerto Rico. By about 250 BCE, they reached eastern Hispaniola and they developed a new style of cultural expression that is known to archaeologists as Ostionoid. The Ostionoid tradition was characterized by larger populations and the expansion of settlements into a wider range of ecological settings. They practiced agriculture in raised mounds and developed an elaborate and distinctive artistic expression of pottery, bone, shell and stone. In many of their towns, they included planned open space for ball courts and ritual functions.
By about 1100-1200 CE, the Ostionoid cultural tradition in the Greater Antilles evolved into the Taíno. Taíno means “noble” or “good” in the Arawak language. The Taíno had their own language, culture, and government. They lived in communities called “yukayekes” and were led by a cacique. The Taíno were animists who believed that humans, animals, and certain places had souls. They practiced subsistence agriculture, cultivating corn and yucca for “casabe.”
Their villages were larger and more formally arranged, farming was intensified, and a distinctive material culture developed. The Central or “Classic” Taíno occupied Hispaniola and eastern Cuba. The “Western” Taíno lived in central Cuba, Jamaica, and parts of Hispaniola. The Taíno co-existed with other Ostionoid peoples including the Ciboneys and the Guanahatabey both in western Cuba and the Caribs of the Lesser Antilles. The Taíno reported to Columbus that the Caribs were cannibalistic.
The Taíno who lived in the Bahamas evolved into the Lucayan people. They are referred to by archaeologists as the Lucayan Taíno. (Based in part on Taíno Culture History - Historical Archaeology, Florida Museum, En Bas Saline, Haiti)
When Columbus came ashore in the Bahamas, he was greeted by the Lucayan Taíno people. He reported in his daily log that he made shore at an island he named San Salvador.
Friday, October 12, 1492 (Bahamas)
The people here called this island Guanahaní in their language, and their speech is very fluent, although I do not understand any of it. They are friendly and well-dispositioned people who bear no arms except for small spears, and they have no iron. I showed one my sword, and through ignorance he grabbed it by the blade and cut himself. Their spears are made of wood, to which they attach a fish tooth at one end, or some other sharp thing.
I want the natives to develop a friendly attitude toward us because I know that they are a people who can be made free and converted to our Holy Faith more by love than by force. I therefore gave red caps to some and glass beads to others.
Thinking that he had landed in the East Indies, Columbus called the Lucayan and subsequently the Taíno people he met “indians.”
As Columbus sailed along the northern coast of Hispaniola, the land of the Central Taíno, he raved about the Taíno farming practices.
Friday, December 21, 1492 (Hispaniola)
It is 4½ miles from the entrance [of the harbor] to the innermost point. I saw
well-cultivated fields, although they are all like that. I ordered two men to get out of the boats and go climb a hill to see if there was a village since none could be seen from the sea. I know that the area is inhabited with many people because of the extensive fields, moreover, last night, about 10 o’clock, some Indians came to the ship in a canoe to see us, believing that we were supernatural. I gave them some of the articles of barter, with which they were greatly pleased.
Except for a skirmish with a small group of Caribes as he was preparing to leave Hispaniola (Sunday, January 13, 1493), Columbus’s first voyage was non confrontational. He had come as an explorer seeking a sea route to the spice islands in the Far East. He did not come ashore to plant settlements and did not stay in any one location for any length of time. The settlement that he left behind, La Navidad, was by necessity and it would only exist until he returned to pick up his men.
Thursday, December 25, 1492 (Hispaniola)
The village of this King is about 5 miles beyond this bank. My men told me that the King wept when he heard of the disaster. He sent all his people from the village with many large canoes to help us unload the ship. The King displayed great haste and diligence, and everything was unloaded in a very brief space of time. He himself personally assisted the unloading, along with his brothers and relatives, and guarded what was taken ashore in order that everything might be completely secure.
Wednesday, January 2, 1493 (Hispaniola)
I went ashore this morning to take leave of King Guacanagari and to depart in the name of the Lord. I gave the King one of my shirts and showed him the force of the lombards and their effect. For this purpose I ordered one loaded and fired at the side of the Santa María, which was aground. This all came about as a result of a conversation about the Caribes, with whom they were at war. The King saw how far the lombard shot reached and how it passed through the side of the ship. It also had the people from the ship fight a mock battle with their arms, telling the Cacique not to fear the Caribes if they came. I did all this so that the King would consider those I am leaving as friends, and also that he might fear them. The King escorted me and the men with me to his house to eat with him.
At the time when Columbus arrived, the Lacayan people in the Bahamas numbered about 400,000-500,000, the Taíno, Ciboney and Guanahatabey on Cuba between 50,000 to 300,000 and the Taíno on Hispaniola upward of a million.
As Columbus explored the Bahamas, the northeastern coast of Cuba and the northern coast of Hispaniola, he would captured a few natives to bring back Castile to show Queen Isabella.
Sunday, November 11, 1492 (Cuba)
It appears to me that it would be well to take some of these people dwelling by this river to the Sovereigns, in order that they might learn our language and we might learn what there is in this country. Upon return they may speak the language of the Christians and take our customs and Faith to their people. . . .
Upon returning to Castile, Columbus met with Queen Isaberlla and King Ferdinand and presented them with the six or seven Taíno whot he had captured and who had survived the voyage back to Castile. Because they were captured on land that had been claimed for Isabella’s kingdom, she considered them her chattels. They could become citizens of Castile if they converted to Catholicism. Whether they could be enslaved if they did not convert is unclear.
Some contend that Isabella’s position was only if they were captured at war could they be enslaved. Others disagree that this was her position.
On May 4, 1493, less than two months after Columbus returned from his first voyage, Pope Alexander VI issued papal bull Inter caetera in which he granted Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand all lands to the west and south of a pole-to-pole 100 leagues west and south of any of the islands of the Azores or the Cape Verde islands. It also exhorted them to spread Catholicism west and south of this line. This then gave them the right to conquer the people who lived in these lands and implicitly the right to enslave.
A few months later, Columbus’s set sail on a different mission than that for his first voyage. The second voyage was to conquer and convert those in the New World. He set sail with 17 ships and over 1,300 settlers. Shortly after landing on Hispaniola and discovering that La Navadad had been burnt to the ground and all his crew and officers had been killed, the genocide of the Lucayan and Taíno people began.
The Lacayans in the Bahamas and the Taíno in Hispaniola began to be massacred or enslaved. By 1508, the Lacayans had decreased to around 60,000. By 1535, their numbers had decreased to a few dozen. A few escaped into the mountains while some of the women married the Castilian settlers. Also by 1535, the Taíno culture in Hispaniola had disappeared.
When Ponce de Leon conquered Puerto Rico in 1508, the Taíno was estimated between 20,000 and 50,000. By 1565, the Taíno were extinct.
When Diego Valázquezde Cuéllar led the first Castilian colony to Cuba in 1511, The Taíno, Ciboney and Guanahatabey had disappeared as distinct groups by the end of the 1500s.
The long held belief was that the old world diseases to which the Arawaks had no immunity virtually wiped out the Arawaks but more recent scholarship emphasizes the role played by Castilian violence, brutality, and oppression, including enslavement, led to their demise.
Queen Isabella died shortly after Columbus returned to Castile from his fourth and final voyage to the New World. After 50 days of prayers and processions, Queen Isabella resolved in her own mind that she was about to die. She had been the queen of Castile for 30 years and had ruled jointly as dynastically unified kingdoms with her husband King Ferdinand of Aragon for 25 years.
On November 23, 1504, she added a codicil to her will in which she asked for the Indians in the New World to be kindly treated. She did not want to die with them on her conscience. She died the following day, November 24, 1504, at the age of 53.
By November 24, 1504, colonization of Hispaniola was well underway and the massacres of the Taíno had taken place and many of those who survived were enslaved. Despite the queen’s codicil, the genocide of the Lucayan and Taíno people would be complete in a few short years.
As the Lacayan and Taíno populations were decreasing and as gold mining in the Greater Antilles was becoming less productive, sugarcane production was increasing and it would become the cash crop of the Caribbean. The sugarcane plantations, an industry dependent on enslaved labor became dependent on the African slave trade.
The African Slave Trade
At first, gold was mined from open-pit mines and that was labor intensive. Then came the large sugarcane plantations in Hispaniola and Cuba and they required the labor of enslaved people.
In 1501, nine years after Columbus landed in the Bahamas, Governor Ovando ordered the first importation of Spanish-speaking black slaves into Hispaniola. The next year, Juan de Córdiba of Seville sent several of his enslaved Africans from Castile to Hispaniola. In the following year, more Castilians began bringing enslaved Africans from Castile to Hispaniola to work as servants in their homes.
The first known sugar mills in the Caribbean were in the colony of San Domingo in southeastern Hispaniola in 1506. After exhausting the availability of enslaved labor from the indigenous population and the enslaved people at home, Castile turned its attention to West Africa. The Treaty of Tordesillas impeded Castile’s direct access to the slave markets of West Africa. Portugal had the exclusive right to the west coast of Africa thereby denying Castile a direct supply of enslaved labor. Castile would not to be denied. It created a monopoly contract call “asiento de negroes.” Under this triangular system, a country or company could seek the exclusive right to sell enslaved Africans in the Spanish Caribbean. A ship with the asiento contract would leave a European port with a cargo that could be sold or traded in a West African port for enslaved people. The ship would transport them across the Atlantic and auction them in a Spanish Caribbean port (this leg of the triangle was known as “the middle passage”) and return to the European port with sugar, rum and other commodities from the Caribbean.
In 1517, the first enslaved Africans were sent directly from Africa to the Caribbean and they were put to work in the sugar plantations and in the gold mines.
Soon the number of enslaved Africans outnumbers the Castilian settlers. By 1574, for example, a census listed Hispaniola’s population as 1,000 Castilians and 12,000 enslaved Africans.
Jamaica, on the other hand, had fewer sugar plantations and it existed for its food, hides, and ship repair. The population of Jamaica reflects the different agricultural practices between Jamaica and Hispaniola. In the early 1600s, Jamaica’s population was only between 2,500 and 3,000.
Before the African slave trade came to an end in 1867, 12.5 million Africans were enslaved and transported to the Americas. Around 11 million survived the “middle passage,” a voyage of about 80 days. Over four million enslaved people were sent to the Caribbean and most came from West Africa. Jamaica under the British was a major slave market with almost two million arriving by 1807.
Slavery was abolished in the Caribbean in stages. Haiti, which had been western Hispaniola, abolished slavery in 1804 when Haiti declared its independence from France. The Dominican Republic, eastern Hispaniola, abolished slavery in 1822. British Parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833 which emancipated more than 800,000 enslaved Africans in the Caribbean, including Jamaica but it was not until 1838 when they were fully emancipated. Finally, Puerto Rico abolished slavery in 1873 followed by Cuba in 1886.
Emancipation Day, August 1st, celebrates the end of slavery in the English-speaking Caribbean and honors the hardships of those who were enslaved. The Kambulé Procession in Trinidad and Jonkonnu in Jamaica are just several of the annual celebrations.
Martin A. Frey
November 19, 2024