Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate Part 2

But there was one fellow who made such trouble that the police began to chafe beneath the public criticism. To impugn their honor did not hurt them much, though they ruffled a good deal under it, but to threaten them with reduction of pay or removal was a serious matter; so the chief of the San Juan constabulary bestirred himself, after a particularly daring robbery had occurred in his bailiwick, the rogue making off with six thousand dollars' worth of jewelry. He got safely away from town and was traced to Humacao, where his footprints were found leading to the door of a small, tumble-down, deserted house, and none of these prints could be seen with toes pointing away from it. The chief dismissed his men and prepared to conduct a siege. He had a dagger, a machete, two pistols, and a gun, with a box of ammunition. Thus equipped he went to the front door, gave it a sounding whack with the flat of his machete, and bawled, "Open, in the name of the law!"

There was no response, so he struck his weapon impatiently against the panels two or three times and called on the bandit to emerge and give himself up. Again there was no reply. A bolder move was necessary. He pushed open the window, crouching down outside, that he might not become a target for the fellow, who was probably lurking in the dark interior, and after calling on him for a third time to appear and go to jail, he thrust his firearms in and began to blaze in all directions over the floor.

After emptying the pistols and gun he shouted, "If you don't come out I'll blow you to the bad place, for I have one hundred and fifty cartridges here, and I can surely shoot you."

All this time the robber had been lying on the floor, just below the window, very flat and very still. As the chief did not show himself to take aim, but reached up from his kneeling position and fired at random, the bold, bad man in-doors began to feel a return of confidence. He waited until a second fusillade was over, when he slipped softly through the back door, went around to the front, waited until a third volley had been fired, when he pounced on the chief from behind, and in a trice had a stout rope around him. In a few seconds more he had the astonished and indignant functionary tied securely to one of the posts of the veranda. Then, calmly taking possession of the weapons, he lifted his hat, wished the officer a very good day and a pleasant siesta, and sauntered off to some other town where the police were still less active.

The Church in Porto Rico

If the Spanish colonies have been immoral, it must be granted that they have been religious. This fact has made them easier to govern, for the words of the priests and friars have been accepted as divinely inspired at times when, as a matter of fact, they have been inspired only by the governor or the garrison colonel. The church in the colonies is nothing like the modern and American inst.i.tution that we know. It is a survival from the Middle Ages. Yet it has shown shrewdness in Porto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines, its prosperity proving that the Spaniard can be a thrifty mortal whether he wears a monkish cowl or a military uniform. Much money has been demanded by the church, but much of it has been honestly spent in the beautifying of altars and the dressing of the statues. Our Lady of the Remedies, in the Church of La Providencia, San Juan, for example, wears a cloak worth fifteen hundred dollars, and is emblazoned with twenty thousand dollars' worth of jewels; but then, she is the patron of the island. The priests have been quick to see an advantage in benefits or disasters and have often impressed the natives by lessons drawn from natural phenomena. Thus, in 1867, a conspiracy for the overthrow of Spanish rule had been organized, and violence was hourly expected: but on the eve of an uprising the island was shaken by an earthquake. The priests made the most of this, a.s.suring the natives that it was a warning from heaven never to interfere with Spaniards; so the insurrectos stealthily laid down their arms and stole away to their various subst.i.tutes for employment, leaving their Lexington unfought.

In one way this willingness to keep out of fights has been a bad thing for the island, because insurrection became a matter of business with some of the natives. They used it as a mode of blackmail. These insurrectos would throw a wealthy planter into a state of alarm by pretending to hold meetings on his premises. He knew that if the authorities got wind of this it might go hard with him, for if he were suspected of being a member of a lodge of the White Saber or the Red Hand, it could mean imprisonment, perhaps death; so he paid the revolution something to move on and occur on some other man's land. By levying thus on fear and policy a few members of an alleged junta managed to live quite comfortably without work, and it is whispered that the padres of certain villages received their share of the reluctant tributes.

Porto Rico has been the place of abode of some noted fathers of the church, including two martyrs who were canonized by Pius IX. as saints: Charles Spinola and Jerome de Angelis. They left Portugal for Goa in 1596, but having been blown far out of their course, they put in at this island to repair their ship, and there for two months they preached with success. On their return to Lisbon they were captured by English pirates, who treated them kindly, however, and set them safely down in London. They reached Portugal eventually, and ended their work in j.a.pan, where the people killed them. These and other saints receive the prayers of the people on stated occasions, for in Porto Rico the saints have not only their special days, but their special crops, and guard them from special injuries. Thus, the farmer prays to St. James, it is said, when he asks for deliverance from tobacco-worms, while he must address St. Martial if he wants to free his field from ants.

Of the holy hermits who have resided on the island, several have dwelt in the caves where Caribs or Arawaks buried their dead, but the best-known shrine is that of Hormigueros. The Church of Our Lady of Monserrate, which crowns a hill and is a conspicuous landmark, is said to have been copied from the chapel of a Benedictine monastery in Barcelona, which is famous in Spain for its statue of the Virgin, carved by St. Luke and carried to Barcelona in the year 50 by St. Peter. The Monserrate church was founded in 1640 by a poor farmer. He had been ploughing over the hill-top, though weak with fever, and before he could finish his work he fell to the ground exhausted. After he had partly recovered, and had gone back to the plough, he turned a tile up from the earth, on which was engraved a portrait of the Virgin, and no sooner had he taken this object into his hands than his pain, his fever, his la.s.situde disappeared. Convinced that the relic was sacred, he carried it to his priest, and on that very day he gave the land he had ploughed for a votive church. It has become the best known sanctuary in Porto Rico, for the large painting of the Virgin, copied from the smaller portrait on the tile, is just as potent as the original in curing diseases. In the last half-century a hundred miracles have been performed, and the silver and golden arms, legs, ears, eyes, fingers, feet, livers, and hearts that have been given to the church, in thanks and testimony, amount in value to sixty thousand dollars; for a patient who has been cured or helped is expected to send a little model, in precious metal, of the part of him that needed mending. At intervals these offerings are melted up for the altar service and decorations, and few churches in America have such resplendent candlesticks, chalices, draperies and vestments. The altar is of silver plates, and the gold cross upon it weighs thirteen pounds. Pilgrims to Hormigueros go from all parts of the West Indies. They are lodged, free of charge, in an old house behind the church, each cripple or invalid receiving a bed and chair, but no food. The pilgrims must supply their own sustenance. On entering the church, in procession, they are sprinkled with water from the Jordan, and then kneel before the cross, where the cures are worked.

The Mermaids

In dime museums and county fairs one may still find among the "attractions" a mermaid, dried and stuffed, consisting of the upper half of a monkey artlessly joined to the lower half or two-thirds of a codfish, the monkey's head usually adorned with a handful of oak.u.m or horse-hair. When this kind of thing was first exhibited by the lamented P. T. Barnum, it is just possible that some b.u.mpkin really believed it to be a mermaid, but the invention has become so common of late that it is found in the curio-shops of every town, and as an eye-catching device is often put into show-cases by some merchant who deals in anything rather than mermaids. Trite and ridiculous as this patchwork appears, it symbolizes a belief of full three thousand years. Men have always been p.r.o.ne to fill with imaginations what they have never sounded with their senses, and it is to this tendency we owe poetry and the arts. The sea was a mystery, and is so still. It was easy to people its twilight depths with forms of grace and beauty and power, for surely the denizens taken from it were strange enough to warrant strange beliefs.

And so the old faith in men and women who lived beneath the water was pa.s.sed down from generation to generation, and from race to race, changing but little from age to age. Ulysses stopped the ears of his crew with wax that they should not hear the sirens luring them toward the rocks as his ship sailed by, and knowing the magic of their song had himself bound to the mast, so, hearing the ravishing music, he might not escape if he would. In a later day we hear of the Lorelei singing on her rock, striking chords on her golden harp, and, as the raptured fisherman steered close, with eyes filled by her beauty and ears by her music, he had a moment's consciousness of a skull leering at him and harsh laughter clattering in echoes along the sh.o.r.e; then his boat struck and filled, and the dark flood curtained off the sky. Wagner has made familiar the legend of the Rhine daughters, singing impossibly under the river as they swim about the reef of gold,--the treasure stolen by the gnome, Alberich, who in that act brought envy, strife, greed, and injustice into the world, and accomplished the destruction of the G.o.ds themselves. The wild tales of Britain and Brittany, of thefts and revenges by the sea-creatures, are among the oldest of their myths, and when we cross to our side of the sea, the ocean people are close in our wake and they follow us through the fresh waters and far out in the Pacific.

Among the Antilles, as in the South Seas, the tritons blow their conchs and shake their s.h.a.ggy heads, while the daughters of the deep gather, at certain seasons, on the water, or about some favorite rock, and sing. Always, in Eastern versions of the myth, there is music, save in the case of Melusina, who became a half fish only on Sat.u.r.days, when her husband was supposed not to be watching, and this music follows the myth around the world. Among the vague traditions of certain Alaskan Indians is one of an immigration from Asia, under lead of "a creature resembling a man, with long, green hair and beard, whose lower part was a fish; or, rather, each leg a fish." He charmed them so with his singing that they followed him, unconsciously, and reached America. We find in Canada the tale of a dusky Undine, a soulless water sprite, who, through love of a mortal, became human. Some of the beings of the sea were of more than human power and authority,--G.o.ds, in fact; barbarian Neptunes. Such was the Pacific G.o.d, Rau Raku, who, being entangled in a fishing-net, was lugged to the surface, sputtering tremendously. Yet he had no grudge against the fisherman. That trembling unfortunate was too small for his revenge. He would devastate the whole earth to which he had been thus unceremoniously dragged, and, bidding his captor take himself away while he made trouble, he deluged the globe until all upon it had perished, except the fish, the fisherman, and a few land animals that the sole human survivor had taken to a lofty island with him.

The mermaid of story was a damsel fair to view, until she had risen from the waves so as to show her fish-like ending. It was her habit to sit on sunny beaches, comb her golden hair with a golden comb, and sing delightfully, though her wilder sisters would perch on juts of rock on lonely islands and scream in frightening ways when a gale was coming. When the sea-maidens went ash.o.r.e they sometimes met sailors and fishermen, and if they liked these strangers a frank avowal of love was made; for it is always leap year in the ocean. It was a most uncomfortable position for a mortal to be placed in, especially one who had a wife waiting for him at home, because if their addresses were rejected the mermaids were liable to throw stones, and always with fatal results; or they would brew mists, and set loose awful storms; yet, if the man who inspired this affection was not coy, and yielded to one of these slippery denizens, she dragged him under the sea forthwith, unless he could persuade her to compromise on a cave or a lonely rock as a home, for it is reputed that mortals have formally wedded them and raised amphibious families. On the Isle of Man they tell of one caught in a net, who was woman to the waist and fish as to the rest of her. As she sulked in captivity, refusing to eat or speak,--perhaps they forgot to offer raw fish for her supper,--it was decided to let her escape; and as she wriggled over the beach she was heard to tell her people (in Manx?), as they arose to greet her, that the earth-men did nothing wonderful except to throw away water in which they had boiled eggs!

The home of the mermaids was at the bottom of the deep. A diver, who said he had reached it, reported a region of clear water, lighted from below by great, white stones and pyramids of crystal. These haunts contained bowers of coral, gardens of bright sea weeds and mosses, tables and chairs of amber, floors of iridescent sh.e.l.l and pearls, gems strewn about the jasper grottoes,--diamonds, rubies, topazes,--and the sea people had combs and ornaments of gold. Columbus was disappointed in the mermaids that he saw in the Caribbean. They were not, to his eyes, so handsome as the romancers had alleged, nor were their voices sweet. The doubters claim that he was asleep when the mermaids appeared, and that he saw nothing but the sea cow, or manatee, which is neither tuneful nor pretty.

The Aborigines

In following the southern coast of Cuba, Columbus supposed he was working toward India. He died ignorant of the fact that he had discovered a new world, and he gave up the exploration of this island when almost in sight of open water at its western end. Of the first inhabitants of Cuba (called by some Macaca, and by others Caboi, "land of the dead," for the people killed their prisoners), little is known, for they were exterminated as a distinct race, and their few relics were disregarded as worthless or destroyed as idolatrous. It is believed, however, that they had some knowledge of the arts; they worked gold into ornaments, and copper and stone into tools and weapons, and they wore helmets of feathers, like those of the Hawaiian chiefs. Near Bayamo have been found farming tools, painted pottery, and little statuettes supposed to represent G.o.ds. Their houses were hardly more than shelters, frames of bamboo or light boughs, though they were prettily environed by walks and flowers, and their clothing--sometimes of fur, oftener of leaves and coa.r.s.e cloth--was of the scantiest. Heavy dresses in a tropic country, or in a temperate country in tropic weather, are manifestly absurd.

As on the other Antilles, the people of Cuba were brown, broad, straight-haired, flat-faced, and decorated with slashes and tattooing. They were singularly mild, honest, and trusting. They were frightened by the Spanish ships, believing them to be great birds that had come down from the sky, bringing the white adventurers in their brave array; but when Columbus had sent a few beads and hawks'

bells to them, they expressed their confidence and delight in a hundred ways, swam and rowed about his caravel offering fish and fruit, not in trade, but as gifts, and when a crowd of hungry sailors ash.o.r.e invited themselves to a feast that had been prepared for a religious ceremony the Indians made no objection, because they could prepare one like it by another night's work. Food, indeed, was free to whoso needed it, like air and water, and no stranger needed to go hungry. While the Spaniards did little to invite their confidence, were insolent to most other people and even to one another, the Indians set an example of charity in conduct and in faith. The dons were intolerant of all religions except their own, whereas the Cubans were quick to realize that the performance of the ma.s.s was of some sacred significance, and they preserved a reverent att.i.tude throughout a ceremony whose details they did not understand. When missionary work had fairly begun it is said that some Spaniards drove Indians into the water, forcibly baptized them, then cut their throats that they might not repent their acceptance of the true faith. In their own belief there appeared to be a purgatory and a paradise, but no h.e.l.l or devil; and, as beliefs reveal the character of the people who hold them, it speaks well for the Cubans that the grewsome images invoked by certain mediaeval theologians had never been created in their more generous imaginations. When a soul left the body it had two journeys before it: one to a dismal place, where the cruel and unjust awaited; the other to a fair land, like the best of earth, where all was pleasant and peaceful; for, in spite of the warlike undertakings made necessary by irruptions of the fierce Caribs, these people held to peace as the highest good.

Of these Indians hardly a dozen are remembered by their names, but the chief Hatuey was revered among them for his courage and his military skill. He had fled from Hayti to Cuba in a vain hope of escaping his white enemy, and counselled the natives to throw all their gold into the sea, that the Spanish might not linger on their coasts. He might have been the one who ordered gold to be melted and poured down the throats of his prisoners, that for one and the last time they might have enough. The Spaniards caught him and burned him to death at Baracoa. As he stood on the logs in chains, just before the flames were applied, the friars pressed about him and earnestly advised him to become a Christian, that he might not be required to roast in h.e.l.l, which would be worse than the torture he was about to endure, and which would last forever. If only he would be baptized he could go direct to heaven. "The white man's heaven?" he asked. "Yes." "Are there any Spaniards in that heaven?" "Oh, yes, many." "Then light the fire."

Columbus was the more convinced that he had reached Asia because the name of one Cuban province, Mangon, he a.s.sumed to be Mangi, a rich district of China. That its people had tails, like monkeys, was nothing against this theory; that footprints of alligators should be the tracks of griffins, which had the bodies of lions and the wings and heads of eagles, was quite in order; but most convincing of all was the discovery by an archer, who had entered a wood in search of game, of thirty men with pale faces, armed with clubs and lances, and habited in white gowns, like friars. The man fled in fear. When his comrades returned with him to find this white company, not a human being appeared to them, and, except for the chatter of birds and the clicking of land-crabs as they scuttled over the stones, the place was still. The coast Indians were understood to say that among the mountains dwelt a chief whom they called a saint, who wore a flowing robe of white and never spoke aloud, ordering his subjects by signs. This was surely Prester John, the shadowy king of a shadowy kingdom, of whom much was said and written a few centuries ago. He was declared by one author to rule a part of India and was reputed to be a Nestorian priest who had made himself king of the Naymans. Other travellers placed him in China, Persia, and Timbuctoo. In a battle with the infidel Tartars Prester John mounted a number of bronze men on horseback, each figure belching clouds of smoke from a fire of punk within, and lashed the horses against the enemy, filling them with such terror, and so veiling in smoke the dash of his flesh and blood cavalry, that his victory was easy. So, it was a great satisfaction to Columbus to think that he had reached the confines of a Christian kingdom.

While working through the thousand little islands off the southern coast of Cuba, that he called the Queen's Gardens, Columbus found added reason for believing that this was the Asiatic sh.o.r.e, and he hoped shortly to reach c.i.p.ango, or j.a.pan, where pearls and precious stones abounded, and where the king abode in a palace covered with plates of gold more than an inch thick. The attempts of the Mongols to overrun the Asian islands were defeated, because the c.i.p.angalese were invulnerable, having placed between the skin and the flesh of their right arms a little stone that made them safe against swords, arrows, clubs, and slings. The people of Cuba fell too easy a prey to Spanish blades--of both sorts--to allow a belief like this to last long.

That Columbus thought he was approaching the earthly paradise, the mountain-guarded Eden where our first parents lived, when he neared these lovely sh.o.r.es, inhaled the fragrance of fruits and flowers, heard the cries of birds and saw the flash of bright waters, is probable. That paradise he sought. The serpent of oppression and wrong has left it, and as America comes into her own, that paradise shall be.

The Caribs

Had it not been for the Caribs the Antilleans would have led a placid existence. Those warlike and predacious Indians would not keep the peace, nor would they allow other people to do so. Though they had their capital in Guadaloupe, they extended their military enterprises in every direction, and Cuba, Porto Rico, Hayti, Jamaica, and the lesser islands suffered from their a.s.saults. They were trained to fight from childhood, and attained to great proficiency in arms. Being active voyagers, they had some knowledge of astronomy. When operating in the waters of a hostile country it was their custom to mask their boats with palm leaves, for in this guise they stole upon the enemy the easier. Like the red men of our plains, they painted their faces, and, indeed, they retained many of the practices common to our tribes. In their traditions they came from the North, like other strong races, their old home being among the Alleghanies, and they conquered their way from Florida to Brazil. Their tribe, they say, grew up from stones that their remote ancestors had sowed in the soil. They buried their dead in a sitting posture that they might be ready to leap up when the spirit came for them, and they faced the sunrise that they might see the day of resurrection the quicker.

In their mythology the first men came down from heaven on clouds to purify the world and make it as clean as the moon; but, while they were looking about at this untidy planet, the clouds floated back and they were left in a sorry plight, for they had brought no provisions with them. Their hunger having sharpened so as to become unbearable, they sc.r.a.ped up clay and baked it to make it less tough and more eatable, and were grieved when it came out of the fire as hard as stone. Then the birds and beasts had pity on them, and led them to the groves and fields where they could find fruit, nuts, maize, and yams. One tree was of such size that they chopped it with stone axes for ten months before it fell, and they ate all of it. Beneath its roots, in a cave, lived the Water Mother, who, possibly because she was angered by the destruction of the tree, released a flood that would have covered the earth had not a rock fallen into the throat of the cavern and stopped the flow. This rock had life and speech. It warned the new race that when its founders should grow old they were to expect a deluge. Until that appeared they should find in the atone their best adviser and protector, and if they would pray to it, giving a deaf ear to the wood-devils, it would cure them of illness, gray hair, and age. After a time came the monkey out of the woods, beguiling and wheedling, while at every chance, with a monkey's love of mischief, he worked at the stone, trying to dislodge it from the mouth of the cave. At last he succeeded, and out poured the flood. An old woman ran to a palm that touched the sky with its vast leaves, and climbed with feverish haste, but fright and fatigue brought her to a stop when half-way up, and she hardened to stone, thus blocking the way to all behind her, who, when they touched her, became stone likewise. Some scrambled down, splashed through the rising waters, and reached another palm tree, which they climbed to its top, and so saved their lives.

As the waters were subsiding, Amalwaka came sailing across the ocean from the east, ascended the Orinoco, carved the figures found near the head of that river, without leaving his canoe, smoothed the rugged hills and invented the tides, so that men might go from place to place on the current, but, being unable to make the Orinoco flow up stream, he sailed away again into the arch of the rising sun, guided at night by the constant star and by the tapir and Serikoai,--which is another story, told by the Arawaks, to this effect: The bride of Serikoai was seduced by the tapir G.o.d, who had first aroused her curiosity and interest by his attentions, and had finally won her love by promising to put off his swinish shape and reveal himself as a finer being than her husband. If only she would follow him to the edge of the earth, where the sky comes down, she would see that he was a G.o.d. The poor husband was crippled by the wife, that he might not follow, for she chopped off his leg as he descended an avocado pear-tree, in which he had been gathering fruit for her. He nearly bled to death, but a wandering spirit revived him and called his mother, who healed the wound with gums and helped to make a wooden leg, on which he stumped over the earth in search of his runaway wife. It is known that the aborigines performed trepanning with skill, but this is probably the earliest appearance in an American legend of a wooden leg. Though he found no foot-prints, it was easy to trace the couple, because avocados were springing up from seeds that the woman spat out as she journeyed on. At the edge of the earth he caught the tapir and killed him; yet the creature's shadow arose from the body and kept on its flight with the wife. Straightforth she leaped into the blue vast, and there she hangs, only we call her the Pleiades. The brute is the Hyades. He glares and winks with his red eye: Aldebaran. The husband is Orion, who follows the others through the sky.

The Caribs were a handsome people, and one tradition narrates the madness that afflicted a governor of Antigua, because of his jealousy of a native chief. In 1640 this dusky Paris stole the English woman and her child, and carried them to Dominica. The governor pursued. Arrived where Roseau now stands, he learned that a captive woman and her child had been landed there, and had been taken to some stronghold in the forest. Drops of blood, p.r.i.c.ked out by cactus thorns on the march, formed a trail which he was able to follow, and believing that they betokened murder, he killed all the Caribs he encountered. His wife and boy were safe, however, except for their bleeding feet, and he found them in the otherwise deserted cabin of the chief and took them back to Antigua. The affair preyed on his mind. He began to doubt his wife, thinking she had accompanied the savage willingly, and his jealousy so increased that his friends had to secrete her, to save her from his wrath. He probably recovered his senses in time.

The Spaniards chased the Caribs out of several of the islands. That of Grenada terminates on the north in a tall cliff called Le Morne des Sauteurs, over which the white men compelled the flying Indians to leap to their death. Not one Carib was left alive on this island.

Secret Enemies in the Hills

The brutalities of the Spaniards who first occupied the West Indies would seem incredible if so many of them had not continued to our own day. It is estimated that half of the natives of Porto Rico were killed, and within sixty or seventy years after the seizure of Cuba its populace of three hundred thousand had been destroyed or removed by war, murder, slavery, hunting with blood-hounds, imported vices and diseases, flight and forced emigration. These natives are said to have been a peaceful and happy race, practised in the simpler arts, observing the moralities better than their oppressors, holding a faith in one G.o.d--a G.o.d of goodness, not of hate--and in the immortality of the soul, and abstaining from useless forms and ceremonies. They held that when the soul had left the body it went into the woods and hills or abode in caves, and took its food and drink as in the flesh. When a man calls out in a solitary place among the mountains and an answering voice comes back, it is not an echo, but a wandering soul that speaks.

Even the relics of these folk--the Cubans or Siboneyes--have vanished, save in the instance of the temple remains near Cobre, and an occasional caney or mound of the dead, a truncated cone of earth and broken stones. Some fossil skeletons found in caves, and of an alleged age of fifty thousand years, denote an ancient race of large, strong people. There are other skeletons of Siboneyes, Chinese, and negroes in the caves,--victims of herding, slavery, fever, cruelty, and suicide. There is little doubt that of the aboriginal stock not a man remains. Yet there are stories of strange people who were seen by hunters and explorers among the mountains, or who peered out of the jungle at the villagers and planters and were gone again, without track or sound,--people with swarthy faces, sinewy forms, long black hair, decorations of coral sh.e.l.ls and feathers, and bracelets, armlets, and anklets of gold. Almost from the first, the conduct of the Spaniard toward his enemies and dependents was such as to earn for him a permanent hate; so, when his cruelty had been practised, and the futility of opposing arms against his heavy weapons and his coat of steel had been proved, it was natural that those who escaped him should keep as far from reach as possible, and it is idle to suppose that he traversed the seven hundred and thirty miles of Cuba's length, whipping every forest and climbing every mountain, for no more than the pleasure of killing. Negro slavery was introduced into the New World before its existence had been known in Spain for a century, and although the black men have usually been tractable, the severities of their masters led to many revolts and to the organization of bands for retaliation. These bands often degenerated, and during this century the Spanish Antilles have been troubled by companies of beggars and outlaws, mostly blacks and half-breeds, who have robbed and murdered in the dark, run off stock from the farms, burned houses and shops, and because of their secret and cowardly methods have been feared as much as the Spaniards were hated.

The Nanigos originally formed a secret order of negroes, banded for protection against unkind slave-owners and overseers, but feeling their power, and being swayed by pa.s.sion and superst.i.tion, they const.i.tuted, after a time, a body correspondent to the voodoos, or wizards, of our Gulf States. With hideous incantations, with mad dances, with obscene songs, with the slaughter of animals, with oaths on an altar and crucifix, they invoked illness, ruin, and death on their enemies. In time they gained accessions to their fraternity from Spanish residents,--thieves, vagrants, deserters from the army, the half-witted and wrong-hearted outcasts from the towns,--and the fantastic ceremonies of the jungle came to mean something more to the purpose of mischief, for the newer Nanigos had more skill and courage than the slaves, and were familiar with more sins. To enter this order it was required of the candidate that he steal a c.o.c.k, kill it, and drink the warm blood. A darker tale is that they were required to drink human blood. In Havana this part of the initiation was performed on the Campo Marti. The man's right nostril was pierced, and a skull and crossbones branded on his chest. It was then expected of him that within fifteen days he would kill an official or a policeman, a white, black, or yellow marble, drawn by chance from a globe, deciding whether he was to slay a white man, negro, or mulatto. When he had, by this crime, attained to full membership, a little shield was given to him which he might wear beneath his coat, and which was decorated with the device of a skull and bones. For every murder he committed a red st.i.tch was put in at the edge of the skull. Once a month, in the dark of the moon, the Nanigos paraded the streets of the towns, their naked forms painted fantastically, their faces ghastly with flour, tramping and leaping to the thud of drums and clash of cymbals, yelling defiance to the military, brandishing knives and firing pistols. It was a kind of thing that in an American city could have happened for one consecutive time, but no more. In Havana the Spaniards were terrorized. The police refused to make arrests, lest they should fall victims to the outlaws. One judge who refused to liberate an a.s.sa.s.sin was slain in his own house by his servant.

As a partial revenge on the Cubans for wishing liberty the Spanish captains-general have at times pardoned some hundreds of these rascals and set them free to prey on the people; while, in retaliation, the insurgents adopted some of the methods of the Nanigos and carried on a guerilla warfare that neither troops nor trochas could abate. Many are these more or less bold spirits of the hills who are celebrated in inland stories: aborigines, Frenchmen, Creoles, mulattoes, who have gathered bands of reckless fellows about them from time to time and raided the Spaniard, flouting him in his strongholds, pillaging from his farms, striking him, hip and thigh, and making off to the woods before he knew how or by whom he had been struck. Sometimes even the name of the guerilla has been forgotten, but the tradition remains of a predecessor of Lopez, Gomez, and Garcia, who aided the English before Havana in 1762. In that year Lord Albemarle took the town with two hundred ships and fourteen thousand soldiers, beating a Spanish army of almost double that size, though it was covered by heavy walls and well provided with artillery. It took two months to reduce the city.

During one of the land operations the red-coats lost themselves in a dense wood, and were in considerable peril from bodies of Spaniards who were almost within speaking distance. To advance or to retreat was an equal risk. As the column was halted, pending a debate and a reconnoissance, there was a rustle in a clump of bushes beside which the colonel was standing; then, as every sword was drawn and a row of muskets held ready, a tall man bounded into the s.p.a.ce, laid his finger on his lip to enforce silence, and, beckoning all to follow, crept on stealthily through the chaparral. He was a man advanced in years, a long white beard flowed over his chest, yet he was lithe and quick, and his look and manner were those of one who lives in the open and in frequent danger. He spoke not a word, but after a time drew himself erect and pointed before him. He had led the English to the rear of one of the Spanish batteries. The colonel, who had at first regarded him with doubt, as a lunatic or a false guide, ordered his men to attack, and after a short fight he returned to his lines with prisoners and trophies of victory. He sought in all directions for the old man, to thank him, but the jungle had swallowed him, and he was never seen again.

Sacred Shrines