introduction
In 1508 AD, the famous Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León (hereinafter referred to as Juan Ponce) prepared to explore the island of San Juan (Puerto Rico).
San Juan Island is a beautiful island with its majestic mountains, trees, tall trees and huge leaves, and the valleys there are equally vast and fertile, with fresh and evergreen vegetation. This latitude band has showers, many rivers, and no winter frost, so the area is evergreen all year round. No white man had ever explored the interior of the island before, so the Indian villages on the island were dotted with thatched huts, the Indians were numerous, and the Indians on other islands in the Caribbean began to be tortured and oppressed by the Spaniards, and when they began to die in large numbers, the Indians on San Juan Island had not been disturbed too much by the whites, and still lived a free life and enjoyed everything on the island.
But all this will disappear with Juan Ponce's arrival on the island.
After learning from some Indians that the island of San Juan contained a lot of gold, Juan Ponce began to plan an expedition, he found a small expedition ship, and some Spaniards and several Indians as translators and guides, and set out.
When Juan Ponce first landed on San Juan Island, a large chieftain of the island welcomed them very kindly and warmly, and also called out to a large number of his own sons, including mothers, stepfathers and siblings, to meet with Juan Ponce and others, the chief and his family rushed to pay tribute to these strange Spaniards, for a warm reception, all the Indians opened their hearts to Juan Ponce, the chief and his brother also said their names to him, which is in the culture of the Indians. Is the way to guarantee always friendliness.
Juan Ponce was also very happy because of the friendly and warm reception received by the chief, who gave some of the chief's family Christian names and catholic baptisms for them, which made the chief's family very happy.
To this end, the chieftain was bent on pleasing his guests, so he took them to various places on the island. The Spaniards found the interior of the island, as seen from the outside, with undulating mountains and wilderness, but the trees were luxuriant and the clear rivers moistened the fertile deep valleys, which was a rare treasure.
Juan Ponce, on the other hand, was dismissive of the island's natural beauty, and he asked the chief to show him the treasures of the island. The simple chief then took him to the most fertile farmland, to the orchard full of the most delicious fruits, and to the sweetest and purest spring, the clearest river, which in the Indian concept was the most precious thing for him, but the simple people were willing to share all this with outsiders.
But Juan Ponce was equally dismissive of these natural gifts, and when he began to inquire if there was a kind of metal in the area that was "a little soft, and could leave tooth marks when bitten with his teeth," the chief led them to two rivers. There, Juan Pon and others saw what they had dreamed of.
There was a lot of gold in the river, even the pebbles in the water looked rich in gold mines, and through the clear water, you could see the large pieces of gold shining in the sediment at the bottom of the river, which made Juan Ponce and his party breathe quickly.
The chieftain did not know what kind of disaster he would bring to his people by this act, and if he knew what happened later, he believed that he would be remorseful for what he had done on this day.
Seeing that the guests were so interested in these useless stones in the river, the chief was very strange, because the gold did not have any effect on the Indians on the island of San Juan, at most it would be used to make jewelry, usually no one would care about these things, let alone dig for the collection, but seeing that these foreign guests were so interested in this, they let their men go to the river to collect some of the largest gold nuggets, and then gave these gold to Juan Ponce and others.
When Juan Ponce returned to the colony with samples of local gold at the end of his visit, the colonial governor was also agitated and ordered Juan Ponce to begin colonizing San Juan Island. In Juan Ponce's view, the colonization of San Juan Island did not need to make a big fuss at all, he only needed to use his lips to deceive and deceive the local Indians who were straightforward and unsuspecting, and they could seize the island and conquer it in a bloodless way.
In fact, after Juan Ponce was appointed governor of San Juan Island, he led a large number of Spaniards to land on San Juan Island, and soon they established a colonial village near the coast, and after gaining a foothold in the local area, Juan Ponce began to divide the island, establish towns, and divide the local Indians into different groups, force them to work, and extract the fruits of their labor.
The Indians of San Juan Island began to suffer the same fate as the Indians of the neighboring islands, and they were enslaved by the White Race.
The poor Indians soon discovered that the Spaniards, as rulers, behaved very differently than they had previously behaved as guests. The heavy servitude imposed on them overwhelmed them almost breathlessly, and the Spaniards refused to do any heavy work, always taking whips or sticks, beating the Indians to make them work, whether it was building or planting, or panning for gold, anyway, all the heavy physical work was forced to be done by the Indians, making them de facto slaves.
And for the Indians who were free by nature and lived a leisurely life, it was simply better for them to live than to die! Bondage and labor left countless Indians on the island exhausted by the spaniard's whip.
Those Indian chiefs who had warmly and friendly hospitality on the island for the first time by Juan Ponce, when they saw the Spanish hooves trampling on their land in such a way, inflicting violence and oppression on their own people, and suffering from slavery, they stood up and called on the Indians to revolt and kill the Spain on the island, but their strength was too weak, and they were eventually easily suppressed, and it did not take long for them to fall one by one under the high-intensity labor of the Spaniards, and finally disappeared on the island where they had lived for thousands of years. Become history.