The History of Cuba Volume I Part 22

"It is certain the Spaniards owe the rapidity of their conquest of America to the sudden (and almost miraculous) fear with which the Indians were seized at the approach of the new enemy. It seems that without it we would have had much more trouble; but artillery was unknown to these Americans, so was military discipline, which we understood better than they, so they with extraordinary rapidity cleared for us the roads to the South Sea and on to Chili and the Straits of Magellan. This facility of our conquest made for carelessness, which from that time through the luxury and idleness of our people increased, until it became almost inconceivable. As our people rather scorned the Indians and considered them almost a sort of intermediary creature between man and beast, it was believed that lands so easily conquered could not be as easily lost; and there was some reason for this belief, for at that time Spain had no rival on the sea, there was nothing to fear from the Indians themselves, who could not hold out against us conquerors. Later we had even less fear, for the Spanish monarchy became a formidable power to all Europe and when it ceased to be so, interests and politics had so changed that one was obliged to leave us in peaceful ownership of a possession which could have been taken from us as easily as we had conquered it.

"This is according to my opinion the main cause of the decline of Spanish power in America. There are others which are no less real. As soon as one has set foot in the New World, you are confronted with an endless lot of plunderers and marauders, who call themselves soldiers, ravage the beautiful country, pillage the treasures of the Indians, torture the inhabitants and rob them of their property and freedom, under a thousand pretences unworthy of Christianity and of Spanish generosity. So that several of these nations which at the beginning favored the Spaniards, became in time their most mortal enemies. These plunderers, I cannot call them anything else, ruined at the outset the authority of the King and by their wickedness hindered all the good that one could have expected from the friendship of native residents.

Royal authority being poorly upheld by these bad subjects of the King, and the facile abundance which they had found, having plunged them into all sorts of vice, their pride made them look upon the Indians as their slaves and even as property acquired by the sword, which succeeded in spoiling our position with the natives. It is quite certain that these people would not wish for more than to throw off the yoke of servitude under which they sigh to-day as did their ancestors before them."

The author of the book printed by Gervais Glouzier, "Relation de ce qui s'est pa.s.se dans les iles et la Terra Firma de l'Amerique pendant la derniere guerre avec l'Angleterre, etc." also dwells upon the policy pursued by certain Spanish adventurers and officials towards the natives of the islands:

"The Spaniards pretended to have recognized the natives of these islands as being anthropophagous, and asked the king of Castile permission to capture them, i.e., to take and make them slaves (which they did elsewhere without permission), so they did not approach the Antilles except armed, and in the character of enemies; and the Indians who inhabited them prepared to make upon them the most cruel war, as soon as they saw vessels off their coasts, be it openly or from ambush in the woods, or by surprise attacks, when the strangers wanted to take water or leave the vessels, which irritated these people and many a Spaniard regretted having obliged them to go to such extremities.

"Things of this kind happened in the Antilles during the fifteenth century when the Spaniards were busy making other discoveries, wherever gold or silver attracted them and for the conservation of which and the exploitation of mines they could not furnish a sufficient number of men.

They had no idea of settling down to cultivate the soil of these lands, and waiting only to procure the convenience of taking on water or leaving their invalids to recuperate on St. Christopher island, they made peace with the Indians who inhabited this island, and continued to treat as enemies all those of other islands.

"When at the end of this century and the beginning of the sixteenth, the English and French sailed on the seas of America, the first with more considerable forces like those conducted by Drake, Walter Raleigh, Kenits and others, and the French with less armaments, the voyages of the ones and the others in those little frequented climates made some other compatriots conceive the idea of establishing themselves on American soil and found colonies, which would furnish subsistence to a considerable number of their nation and serve as retreat to those vessels where they could renew their supplies. In this way in 1625 two adventurers, the one French, named d'Enemene 'de la maison de Duil en Normandie,' the other also a gentleman, an Englishman named V. Varnard, moved by the same desire landed on the same day on St. Christopher's, which they had chosen for their purpose and from there all the French and British settlements in the Antilles radiated."

These records of visits to the West Indies by Dutch, English, French and other travellers following in the wake of the great discoverers and explorers, rise almost to the importance of doc.u.mentary evidence, when they attempt to deal with such questions as the att.i.tude of the Spaniards towards the natives of the New World. But mainly they are narratives, setting down simply and unpretentiously the impressions made upon European visitors by the bigness of dimensions and proportions and the abundance of natural products of all sorts. There is a spirit of wonderment at the riches so profusely bestowed upon this Western world; but there is not yet a trace of the jealousy so apparent in later writings, when commercial rivalry had divided the nations of Europe into hostile camps and finally arrayed all of them against Spain. Though not always written by men who had set out in pursuit of adventure, they convey to the reader a breath of the oldtime romance of travel in countries the plants and animals and native residents of which are so many objects of curious interest. But viewed as a whole, these books are full of information, at times strangely quickened by an individual human touch, and read at leisure in a certain order, reconstruct the panorama of West Indian life in a period which had no parallel in the history of the world.

CHAPTER XXVIII

It was the inscrutable irony of fate that Cuba should remain so negligible a quant.i.ty during one of the most momentous and progressive periods of human history. No other era since man began his career had been on the whole so marked with greatness. Discovery and exploration had doubled the known area of the globe, and the intellectual achievements of the race had even more than kept pace with the material.

The era of which we have been writing in this volume saw the completion of Columbus's work in his fourth voyage, the exploits of Magellan, Balboa and Cabot, the enterprises of Cortez and Pizarro, of Cartier and Raleigh. It saw the rise of religious liberty, and of modern philosophy and science. It saw the art of printing, invented in the preceding century, developed into world-wide significance.

This was the era of genius. Its annals were adorned with the names of Shakespeare and Cervantes, of Rafael and t.i.tian and Michael Angelo, of Holbein and Durer, of Luther and Erasmus, of Ariosto and Rabelais, of Tyndale and Knox, of Calvin, Loyola and Xavier, of Copernicus and Vesalius, of Montaigne and Camoens, of Tycho Brahe and Kepler, of Ta.s.so and Spenser, of Bacon and Jonson, of Sidney and Lope de Vega. It was a wondrous company that pa.s.sed along the world's highway while Cuba was struggling in obscurity to lay the foundations of a future state.

Nor did Spain herself lag behind her neighbor nations. The sixteenth century saw her swift rise to the greatest estate she has ever known, and her development of many of the greatest names in her history. She began the century a newly-formed kingdom uncertain of herself and timorously essaying an ambitious career; and she reached its close one of the most extensive and most powerful empires in the world. We commonly think of her chiefly as a conquering power. But in fact that century of her marvellous conquests of empire was also her golden age in intellect. We may imagine that the swiftness of her rise to primacy among the nations, and the dazzling splendor of her conquests, stimulated and inspired the minds of her people to comparable achievements in the intellectual world. The sixteenth century was indeed to Spain what the Augustan Age was to Rome, and what the Elizabethan and Victorian ages were to England, and for some of the same reasons.

It was then that three great universities were founded: Salamanca, Alcala for science, Valladolid for law; and a noteworthy school of navigation at Seville. There flourished the philosopher Luis Vives, the tutor of Mary Stuart. In jurisprudence there were Victoria and Vazquez, from whom Grotius received his inspiration; and Solorzano, with his monumental work of the Government of the Indies. The drama was adorned by Lope de Rueda, Lope de Vega, Gabriel Tellez, and Juan del Enzina. The greatest name of all in literature was that of Miguel Cervantes y Saavedra. There were the poets Garcilaso de Vega, and Luis de Argote y Gongora. There were the painters Ribera, and Domenico Theotocopuli, who inspired Velazquez.

Above all, there was one of the most remarkable groups of historians of any land or age. Paez de Castro was more than any other man the founder of history as a philosophical study as distinguished from mere polite letters; the forerunner of Voltaire and Hume. There were Florian de Ocampo, Jeronimo Zurita, Ambrosio de Morales, and the famous Jesuit Mariana. Then there was a remarkable company of historians inspired by the American conquests of Spain, who gave their attention to writing of the lands thus added to her empire: Oviedo, Gomara, Bernal Diaz, Lopez de Velasco, Las Casas, and many more. Cortez, Pizarro, Velasquez and others might conquer lands for Spain. These others would see to it that their deeds were fittingly chronicled.

There was something more, still more significant. There arose distinguished writers, producing notable works, in the countries of Spanish America; some born there, some travelling thither from the peninsula. It was in 1558 that the University of Santo Domingo was founded, which for a time served all the Spanish Indies and was a great centre of learning. How many poets and dramatists, not to mention historians and other writers, there were in America in that century, we are reminded in Cervantes's "Viaje de Parnaso" and Lope de Vega's "Laurel de Apolo." These writers were chiefly in Mexico and Peru, for obvious reasons. Those were Spain's chief colonies, and they were those which had themselves the most noteworthy past, a past marked with a high degree of civilization. The first book ever printed in the Western Hemisphere was the "Breve y Compendiosa Doctrina Cristiana," published by Juan de Zumarraga, the first Bishop of Mexico, in Mexico in 1539.

It was about the middle of the century that there appeared the first American book of real literary merit. This was "La Araucana," a Chilean epic poem, by Alonso de Ercilla y Zuniga. Another epic, with Hernando Cortez for its hero, was "Cortez Valeroso," by Gabriel La.s.so de la Vega, in 1588. The next year saw Juan de Castellanos's prodigious historical and biographical poem of 150,000 lines, "Elegias de Varones Il.u.s.tres de Indias." Another epic of Cortez was Antonio de Saavedra Guzman's "Peregrino Indiano," in 1599.

In all these things Cuba had no part. In later centuries that island could boast of poets and other writers worthy to rank with their best contemporaries of other lands. But in that marvellous sixteenth century she seems to have produced not a single name worthy of remembrance. In the rich productivity of Spanish intellect Cuba remained unrepresented.

In Oriente, in Camaguey and in Havana there may be found legends and ballads of unknown but ancient origin, which are a.s.sumed to have been composed perhaps in the days of Velasquez, and to have been pa.s.sed down orally from generation to generation. _Quien sabe?_ It is quite probable that such was their origin; but it is quite certain that their authors are unknown.

For this lack of intellectual productivity in the first century of Cuba's history, and indeed the lack of any noteworthy achievements, the reason is not difficult to perceive. As we observed at the beginning of this volume, Cuba, at the advent of Europeans, was a country without a civilization and without a past. Mexico, Yucatan and Peru had enjoyed civilizations not unworthy of comparison with those of Europe and Asia, the remains of which attracted thither the intellects of Spain, and inspired them. But Cuba had nothing of the sort. Again, the vast wealth of Mexico and Peru attracted to those countries many more explorers, conquerors and colonists than Cuba could draw to herself. And there was also the partiality which was shown to them by royal favor and in royal interest. We shall have reviewed the annals of the first Cuban century to little purpose if we do not perceive that during the greater part of that time the "Queen of the Antilles," the "Pearl of the West Indies,"

as she was even then occasionally and afterward habitually called, was the Cinderella of the Spanish Empire; a Cinderella destined, however, one day to meet her Fairy Prince and thus to be wakened into splendor not surpa.s.sed by the finest of her sisters.

The close of the sixteenth century marked, then, approximately a great turning point in Cuban history. Thitherto she had been exclusively identified with Spain. She had developed no individuality and had exercised no influence upon other lands and their relationships, or indeed upon the empire of which she was a part. It was left for later years to make her an important factor in international affairs and to develop in her an individuality worthy of an independent sovereign among the nations of the world.

Yet in these very circ.u.mstances which we have recounted, and which upon the face of them appeared to be and indeed were for the time so unfavorable, there were developed the influences which unerringly led to the subsequent greatness of the island. The earliest settlers were not only of Spanish origin but also of Spanish sympathies. They could not be expected to have any affection for or any pride in the land to which they had come as to a mere "Tom Tiddler's ground," on which to pick up silver and gold. They valued Cuba for only what they could get out of her; many of them glad, after thus gaining wealth, to return to Spain, or to go to Mexico, Venezuela or Peru, there the better to enjoy it and to mingle in social pleasures which the primitive life of Cuba did not yet afford.

There were, however, some even in the first generation who were exceptions to this rule, who loved Cuba for her own sake, who wished to identify themselves permanently with her, and who wished to see her developed to the greatness and the splendor for which her natural endowments seemed to them to have designed her. In the second generation the number of such was of course greatly multiplied, and in succeeding generations their increase proceeded at a constantly increasing ratio.

Thus by the end of the first century of Cuban history the great majority of residents of the island regarded themselves as Cubans rather than as Spaniards. They were Spaniards in race and tongue, and they were ready to stand with the peninsular kingdom and the rest of its world-circling empire against any of other tongues and races. But while thus to the outside world they were Spaniards, to Spain itself and to the people of the peninsula they were Cubans; differentiated from Spain much more than the Catalonian was from the Castilian, or the Andalusian from the Navarrais.

This sentiment of differentiation, and of insular individuality, was naturally strengthened by the treatment which the peninsular government accorded to the island. The Cubans were made to feel that Spain regarded them as apart from her, just as much as they themselves so regarded her.

They felt, too, that she was treating them with injustice and with neglect; that instead of nourishing her young plantation and giving it the support of her wealth and strength she was drawing upon it for her own nourishment and support. They would have been either far more or far less than human if they had not thus been incited to a certain degree of resentment and to an a.s.sertion of independence.

In brief, it was with the Cubans even at that early day as it was with the British colonists in North America a century and a half later; though indeed the Cubans determined upon separation from the mother country at a comparatively earlier date than the people of the Thirteen Colonies, or certainly much longer before their achievement of that independence. We know that the British colonists were dissatisfied and protesting for nearly a score of years before their Declaration of Independence, but that down to within a few months of the latter transcendent event scarcely any of them thought of separation from England. Lexington and Concord, and even Bunker Hill, were fought not for independence but for the securing of the same rights for the colonists that their fellow subjects in the British Isles enjoyed. But the Cubans resolved upon separation from Spain not only years but at least two full generations before they were able to achieve it.

This spirit belongs to a much later date in Cuban history than that of which we are now writing, and to refer to it here is an act of antic.i.p.ation. But it is desirable to some extent to scan the end from the beginning; to see from the outset to what end we shall come as well as to see at the end from what beginning we have come. Moreover, it cannot be too well remembered that even as soon as the latter part of the sixteenth century the people of Cuba regarded themselves as Cubans, and so called themselves, and had begun the cultivation of a social order and a sentiment of patriotism quite distinct from though not yet necessarily antagonistic to that of Spain.

The transition from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century was marked, then, with a significant change in the temper and character of Cuba, especially by a great accession of the spirit of insular integrity and independence. While Spain was great and apparently growing greater, there was a gratifying pride in identification with her. But when her decline began, and showed signs of being as rapid as her rise had been, that pride waned, and there began to arise in its place a pride in Cuba, or perhaps we might say at that early date a determination to develop in Cuba cause for pride. From that time forward Cuba was destined to be more American than European; and though for nearly three centuries she might continue to be a European possession, yet her lot was decided.

Unconsciously, perhaps, but not the less surely she was drawn into the irresistible current which was drawing all the American settlements away from the European planters of them. It was one of the interesting eccentricities of history that the first important land acquired by Spain in the western hemisphere should be the last to leave her sway; and that the first European colonists in America to have cause for complaint against their overlords should be the longest to suffer and the last to secure abatement of their wrongs. Such is the reflection caused by consideration of this first era in the history of the Queen of the Antilles.

THE END OF VOLUME ONE