30.8 America: a.d. 1501 to 1600  (Page 8/12)

Columbus initiated further explorations among the Caribbean islands. At Bonacca he intercepted natives in a large, 8 feet wide dugout canoe, carrying 25 men and numerous women and children - all wearing dyed cotton coverings and shirts. The women had colored shawls and the men carried long, flint-edged, wooden swords and copper hatchets. It has since become obvious that these Indians were trading between Bonocca and Honduras. The fleet went on to the mainland, anchoring in a harbor where later the city of Trujillo, Honduras was to be founded and there encountered the Jicaque Indians, dressed as those he had seen in the canoe. This was apparently the remnant of a Mayan Honduran kingdom.

The fleet then sailed south along the coast of Central America, encountering terrible storms, with Columbus quite ill and eventually they passed present day Nicaragua and Costa Rica, where they anchored and traded some with the Talamanca Indians. The Spaniards were impressed with the local fauna, which included deer, pumas and wild turkey. On farther south in Panama they encountered Guaymies Indians, who painted their faces white, black and red and these men even had some real gold. The possibility of mines in that region enticed Columbus into starting a settlement there. When 10 or 12 houses had been built, it stopped raining and the river mouth, where the caravels had been anchored, dried up to the point where the ships were stranded. This was followed by savage Indian attacks which eventually resulted in the loss of 10 men and abandonment of the village. When the rains returned the little fleet took off again for Hispaniola, abandoning one ship, which had been afloat for a year. Two more vessels were leaking badly and when Jamaica was finally reached these were intentionally run aground for the remaining 116 men to use as houseboats, as they were no - longer seaworthy. Two dugout canoes were sent to Santo Domingo for help from Columbus' old enemy, Governor Ovando; half of the remaining men mutinied and tried to leave; the Jamaican Indians quit feeding the Spaniards and relented only when Columbus awed them by predicting the eclipse of the moon of February 29, 1504. The mutineers were finally defeated and- ultimately, after more than a year, all were rescued by a ship from Santo Domingo. Part of the rescued men stayed in the Caribbean to eventually help to settle Puerto Rico, while the others returned to Spain with Columbus. The old Spanish queen was dying and Columbus received no glory.

We have already noted the decimation provoked in the West Indies by small-pox in 1519. Some type of plague, perhaps typhus or influenza, hit the islands again in 1567 with some becoming completely depopulated. (Ref. 260 ) Early in the century the Spanish abducted the native Arawak Indians from the Bahamas for slave labor and those islands also remained uninhabited for more than a century. (Ref. 274 ) In addition, Spaniards transported somewhere in the range of 2,000 to 5,000 Indians from the United States to the West Indies. But the Cuban governor's report of 1530 showed that 1/3 of the island's natives died during the year and this was the excuse for the importation of African slaves. The viruses brought by these blacks helped to decimate the Indian natives. Both before and after Menendez founded St. Augustine, Florida Indians (particularly the Calyusas) had gone by canoe to Cuba either voluntarily or against their will, but in any case they died off as fast there as the native Cubans. Menendez married the daughter of Chief Carlos and when she made a trip to Cuba with her court, most of them soon died. In 1570, about 100 years after the arrival of Europeans, the population of Hispaniola had been reduced to 125 people. By the end of the century blacks and whites, along with Indians imported from elsewhere in the New World, had replaced the aboriginal populace of the Greater Antilles.