In 1592, Columbus discovered Cuba at the same time as the Americas, when there were more than 60,000 indigenous Indians on the island. However, just over 40 years later, the Cuban Indians were largely extinct under the massacre and plague of the Spaniards.
The extinction of the Cuban Indians was a tragedy, but ironically, the King of Spain even ordered the "good treatment and protection of the Indians." How did this contradictory and absurd history happen?
A colonial armed gang of three hundred people
When Columbus discovered America, Spanish explorers followed. In 1508, the Spanish navigator Sebastián Ocampo spent 8 months circling Cuba, proving that it was a large island. Not only that, but Ocampo also keenly discovered Cuba's economic value – excellent seaports, abundant offshore fish, fertile land, and a variety of ores. After returning to Hispaniola, one of the first West Indian islands colonized by Spain, Ocampo began to trumpet the colonization of Cuba.
However, the Spanish crown was not very enthusiastic about conquering Cuba, and the Royal Assembly did not even raise the issue of armed expeditions, and adventurers entrenched in the West Indies flocked to it. Hispaniola soon formed a semi-official Cuban armed colonial force, led by Diego Velasquez de Cuellar, the deputy governor of Hispaniola.
Diego Velázquez was born in 1464 into a noble family in the Spanish town of Cuillar. Many of the aristocratic families served in the army or served in the Inquisition, and Diego Velázquez also served in the army, but did not achieve anything. Until 1493, he participated in Columbus's voyage to discover the Americas, and quickly began to make a mark.
Velázquez first mined gold on the island of Hispaniola and became the local deputy governor (the chief was Diego Columbus, son of Columbus). After learning about Ocampo's deeds, he was driven by ambition to fund the establishment of the colonial team with a large amount of money, and was elected captain for it.
The number of armed colonists who were called up soon numbered more than 300, including mercenaries, Franciscans, petty officials, plantation owners, and many others. One of them was Hernán Cortés, the famous Cortés who later conquered the Aztec Empire.
In 1511, an armed Spanish colony led by Diego Velázquez landed on a small peninsula northeast of Cuba. Thus began, the end of the island's indigenous Indians came.
Fire, crosses and swords
After the colonization landed in Cuba, it first established a small stronghold, named San Asunción de Baracoa, and the leader of the team, Velázquez, naturally became the first colonial governor of Cuba.
Over the next four years, Velázquez commanded the establishment of the strongholds of Baracoa, Bayamo, Santiago and Havana, all of which later developed into important Cuban towns. However, the establishment of these strongholds was accompanied by the slaughter of local indigenous people.
While establishing his first stronghold, St. Asunción de Baracoa, Velázquez quickly "cleared" the periphery of Indian tribes and captured the local chieftain, Casik Hathaway.
While executing the chief, the Spaniards pretended to suggest that Casik Hathaway convert to Christianity in order to receive a "death and burial with the same dignity as a Christian," thereby embodying the "humanity" of civilized society.
Chief Kasiq Hathaway's answer was very brief - if conversion to Christianity meant "eternal life in another world accompanied by Spaniards", it is absolutely impossible! So, the Spaniards burned the leader of the Indians alive at the stake.
Narwaz advance team
After establishing the initial colonial stronghold, armed colonies began to expand rapidly to the island. After a brief military meeting, Velázquez sent Narvaz to lead an advance party, including a team of arquebusiers and a dozen cavalry (about a hundred men in all) to reconnoiter the southwestern part of the island. Here, the advance party again discovered a large Indian settlement, estimated at the size of several thousand.
This time, the Spaniards once again played "peaceful means". Narwaz negotiated with the locals, declaring that they were only seafaring travelers and did not want to fight. But Narvaz "kindly advised" the Indians to convert to Christianity and swore on to become subjects of the King of Spain.
Faced with this "neurotic" way of communication, the Indians were naturally not interested. But one thing that was clear to the indigenous people was that the Spaniards tried to enslave them, so the inhabitants rebelled in armed resistance. However, the Spaniards suppressed these revolts with superior weapons, and the indigenous population was killed in large numbers and the survivors were forced to flee their homes.
Subsequently, the advance party of Narvaz continued its armed reconnaissance and recruited a thousand indigenous Indians as servants in the perimeter. Without any resistance, the sizable motley army soon reached the central island of Cuba and established another stronghold near Camaguey.
The reason why the colonists slaughtered the village was simply because they were not allowed to enter a room
It was at this time that the Narvaz advance party committed a heinous atrocity. The Spanish colonists lived in a large Indian village town where about 3,000 indigenous people lived. At first, the colonists and natives seemed to get along, and the Indians kindly invited guests to eat cassava and roasted meat.
However, at the banquet, a Spaniard had the idea to enter a large, closed house in the town. The local population was firmly opposed, and a dispute broke out between the two sides. Without saying a word, the Spaniard drew his sword and began to slash through the crowd! Subsequently, other Spaniards also pulled out their weapons, and a grand banquet instantly turned into a massacre, and more than 3,000 residents were almost killed.
Later analyzed, this forbidden house may be a place of worship for local people, and it is usually closed to the public. The Spaniards burst into the room without finding anything of value. The priest of the team, Las Casas, was very angry, and he said only to Narvad: "I should send you all to hell." ”
This horrific massacre quickly spread throughout the island. From then on, the Spaniards never encountered organized resistance again. Many of the islanders began to flee Cuba and fled to neighboring islands or the mainland, while the rest did not dare to resist and obeyed the Spanish colonists in fear.
The King of Spain ordered the "protection of the Indians"
From then on, the Spaniards could settle on the island of Cuba as they pleased. The island's original residents of more than 60,000 people have been vacated by large tracts of land after massacres and flights. Spanish immigrants searched the island for gold, but the more valuable business activities were agriculture and animal husbandry.
Spanish immigrants cultivated tropical crops in large quantities, including cassava, sweet potatoes, malanga root and rice, and actively raised cattle and pigs. In Cuba's empty fields, domestic cattle and pigs breed in large numbers with little labor. Among them, the number of pigs has grown to 30,000 in just three years. Cuba became a major food base for the Spanish colonists.
At this time, the remaining Indians on the island of Cuba became a problem. The new Spanish immigrants continued to demand that the governor of Cuba, Diego Velázquez (1511-1524), introduce on the island the customary system of land grants from overseas possessions, that is, unconditionally distributing the land of the indigenous people to the colonizers, and even the indigenous people themselves, that is, as slaves. The main proponents of this "reform" included Hernán Cortés.
Diego Velázquez was still faceless, ostensibly rejecting the proposal, which led to a conflict with Cortez and others, who even wanted to kill the governor on the grounds of "traitor" at one point. Nevertheless, the treatment of Cuban Indians was no different from that of slaves at this time.
With regard to the Indians, the King of Spain also sent a personal letter to Diego Velázquez demanding that the Indians be converted to Christianity and that auditors be appointed to protect the Indians "from abuse" and teach them to "work" for the benefit of their new masters.
According to the king's "goodwill" demand, the Indians were to work for the Spaniards for one month a year without pay, but the Spaniards had to provide food and clothing for the indigenous laborers, including food on the way from the remote villages to the place of work. To avoid this trouble, the Spanish colonists simply forced the indigenous population to move from their homes and to the outskirts of colonial towns.
Finally, the so-called "kindness to the Indians" policy of the King of Spain further accelerated the extinction of the indigenous population. The remaining Indians on the island had to abandon their homes and leave their homes to Spanish cities. The unsuitable living environment, coupled with the spread of European infectious diseases such as smallpox and measles, the population of Indians decreased rapidly in a short period of time.
The final extinction of the Cuban Indians
It is worth mentioning that the smallpox virus not only killed a large number of Indians in Cuba, but also spread to the American continent as the indigenous population of the island fled. So much so that when Cortés and others made expeditions to the Maya and Aztecs, they found that smallpox had arrived earlier than the Spaniards, causing catastrophic mortality.
By around 1540, Cuba's indigenous Indians were almost completely extinct, and only some mixed-race descendants of Europeans survived, and the strictly "indigenous population" had completely disappeared. In modern times, traces of Cuban Indians can only be found in museums.
Ironically, Cuba became a paradise for Europeans. European settlers became increasingly comfortable on the islands, with fertile land, abundant and sparsely populated with little competition for survival, and high-value cash crops such as sugar cane and tobacco that made plantation owners rich.
The only drawback was that the Indians who worked on the plantation died, which caused headaches for the colonists. The King and officials of Spain also regretted that measures to "protect and encourage the labour of the indigenous population" had not been effective.
Soon, the colonists found a solution—black slaves trafficked from Africa began to be transported in large numbers to Cuba and driven to work on plantations. (Author: Tao Mujian)