Lecture 23: Spanish Invasions of the Caribbean
Introduction
Highly structured chiefdoms of agricultural peoples occupied the Antilles and the coast of
the mainland when the Spanish arrived in the Caribbean. The Arawaks, Caribs, and Cunas, who
were among the first groups contacted, practiced a mixture of farming, fishing, and hunting.
Many of the tribes had a well-defined social order and developed religious and military systems.
After the Spaniards arrived, however, their desire for gold and slaves and the disease that they
brought with them disrupted the Indians’ lives to such an extent that by the time the Spanish
crown took action to protect the Indians during the 1520s and 1530s, there were few left.
The Indians’ experiences on Hispaniola were a preview of what was to follow during
Spanish expansion in the Caribbean. Although the crew tried to bargain for gold during
Columbus’s second voyage, revolts by the Tainos and quarreling among the Spaniards led the
Spanish to exact tribute and finally to institute repartimiento, the distribution of the Indians to the
Spaniards as laborers. When the Indians resisted, they were attacked. Epidemics further reduced
the Indian population, and when the labor pool shrank, the Spanish resorted to raiding tribes on
other islands for slaves for the mines and fields.
The Spanish’s attempts to expand into Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Cuba, Panama, Columbia
and Venezuela met with mixed success. The fighting efforts of some tribes, particularly those of
the Caribs, were sometimes effective in holding off the Spanish, forcing them to rely more on
less warlike tribes for slaves. At the same time that the slavers were making raids, the
Franciscans and Dominicans were trying to establish missions. By the 1540s, despite their efforts
to resist, most of the remaining Indians in the Caribbean are had been subdued.
Lecture 23: Spanish Invasions of the Caribbean
I.
Indian Tribes of the Caribbean: The Arawaks, Caribs, and Cunas were among the first
groups contacted by the Spanish.
A.
Arawaks (Parry and Sherlock, pp. 1-3; Josephy, pp. 224, 226-27, 230-31, 276;
Steward, pp. 23-25)
1.
Territory: The Arawaks had migrated around the great arc of the Antilles
several hundred years before 1492. At the time of Columbus, they held all
of the Greater Antilles and the Bahamas, with the exception of a small
portion of western Cuba still held by the Ciboneys, the earlier occupants
of the island, and a portion of eastern Puerto Rico occupied by Caribs, and
the Guianas and in the interiors of eastern Colombia and northwestern
Brazil.
2.
Religion: The people worshiped zemis, idols representing plant, animal,
and human spirits. Celebrations were held in honor of the zemis, which
were made of natural materials such as stone, wood, or plant fiber,
3.
Economy: The Arawaks depended more on farming than fishing and
tended to live away from the seacoast.
a.
Irrigation was used to grow manioc, potatoes, beans, peanuts,
cassava, arrowroot, and tobacco.
b.
Although the Arawaks grew a variety of maize, they apparently
lacked the hard types from which bread flour could be made.
c.
4.
5.
B.
Fishing was more important than hunting. The Arawaks made
large dugout boats from silk-cotton trees.
Tribal and Social Structure: The Arawaks lived in carefully planned
villages of as many as three thousand individuals.
a.
A cacique ruled a province that was divided into as many as 30
districts, each with its own subchief. A district included up to
70 or 80 villages. Each of which had a headman.
b.
The cacique had considerable power, controlling civil, military,
and religious affairs.
c.
Below the cacique society was divided into three classes: the
nobles, the commoners, and the slaves. The cacique occupied a
special house; commoners occupied communal houses.
Material Culture
a.
The Arawaks made baskets, incised pottery, and high quality,
polished stone tools.
b.
Gold was hammered into jewelry for personal adornment.
c.
The commoners slept in hammocks made either of woven
cotton or string; the chiefs slept on sleeping platforms.
d.
Weapons included spear throwers and bejuco cane, used as a
cord for strangulation. The Arawaks did not possess the bow
and arrow.
e.
Each village enclosed a ball court.
Caribs (Josephy, pp 226, 264; Steward, pp. 25-26)
1.
Territory: The Caribs held all of the Lesser Antilles and eastern Puerto
Rico, large parts of the Guianas and the Venezuelan coast, and areas of
forest as far south as the Amazon. They had been migrating through the
Antilles for a century or so before Columbus arrived, pushing the
Arawaks in front of them.
2.
Religion: Like the Arawaks the Caribs worshiped guardian spirits. They
did not represent them with idols, however.
3.
Economy: The Caribs’ economic life was much like that of the Arawaks,
including farming, fishing, and some hunting.
4.
Tribal and Social Structure
a.
Caribs tended to live in small villages consisting of extended
matrilineal families.
b.
Caribs were highly individualistic, placing little importance on
rank or chieftainship. Status was based on prestige acquired
through achievement, especially in battle.
c.
Although captive women were treated as slaves, their children
became freemen.
5.
Material Culture
a.
Tools were similar to those of the Arawak, but the Caribs
possessed the bow and arrow.
b.
The Caribs’ large, planked dugout boats were particularly
impressive. These crafts, well navigated by the Caribs, included
2 or 3 masts and sails and could carry up to 50 people.
6.
Warfare
a.
The Caribs were continual raiders whose name gave the word
cannibalism to Europe.
b.
C.
II.
Raiding served two purposes: to take female captives for wives
and to gain prestige by capturing males to cannibalize. The bones
of the male victims were used as ritualistic trophies.
Cunas (Steward, pp. 26, 28-29)
1.
Territory: The Cunas were speakers of a Chibchan language who
occupied Darien, the portion of Panama between the Panama Canal and
Colombia.
2.
Economy: In addition to fishing and hunting, the Cuna grew crops in vast
fields, many of which are now covered with tropical forest.
3.
Tribal and Social Structure: The Cunas lived in palisaded villages
containing as many as 1500 individuals. There were 4 social classes.
a.
The head chief or cacique, who controlled several villages, lived
in a large, many-roomed, well-provisioned house.
b.
Below the chief were the nobles, who captured their retainers in
war or inherited them.
c.
The bulk of society was made up of commoners, who might move
up by marrying nobles.
d.
Slaves joined the Cuna as prisoners of war.
4.
Material Culture: Cunas made beautiful, varied pottery with 3 or 4 color
designs, used tattoos as an insignia of rank, played a ball game in a special
court, and built huge, pearl-inlaid canoes.
5.
Warfare
a.
The Cuna maintained standing armies.
b.
Captives were taken in war and sacrificed to the sun.
Spanish Colonial Beginnings in Hispaniola
A.
Viceroy Columbus and the Indians: The early chroniclers estimated that there
were one million Indians on Hispaniola when Columbus arrived (Bourne, pp. 3353; Kirkpatrick, pp. 23-32; Gibson, pp. 8-11; Parry and Sherlock, pp. 7-9; Fiske,
pp. 41-50; Floyd, pp. 17-47, 132-34).
1.
Columbus returned to Hispaniola in September 1493 with 1500 men and
assorted stock and supplies. His goal was to begin harvesting the gold that
he had seen on his first journey.
a.
The Spanish developed a generally friendly relationship with the
Arawak-speaking Tainos. They devoted their energies to
bartering for gold and food.
b.
The process of intermingling that produced the first mestizos
began when hungry Spaniards wandered into the interior in search
of sustenance, settled in Indian villages, and took Indian wives or
concubines.
2.
Increasing pressure from the intruders led to the revolt of the Tainos in
1494 and 1495. In a series of raids and small battles, Columbus put down
the uprising. He instituted a tribute system that required all male Indians to
deliver 25 ducats of gold every three months.
a.
The Spaniards took hundreds of captives. Columbus sent 500
Indians to Spain as slaves; other Indians were enslaved on the
island.
b.
Columbus felt that his barter system had been destroyed but
believed that the Indians had access to an endless supply of gold.
3.
4.
In late 1497 and early 1498 the Tainos again revolted, this time in
alliance with anti-Columbus Spaniards led by Francisco Roldan.
Columbus finally settled the dispute by instituting a force-labor system.
a.
While Columbus sought to negotiate a settlement, many of the
Roldanistas and others carved out their own fiefdoms of Indians
in alliance with certain caciques.
b.
In the final settlement of the dispute in 1499, Columbus agreed to
institute repartimiento (distribution of Indians to Spaniards as
laborers). Demands fro mine labor led to further distribution of
the already diminishing Indian population. Thus, Spanish
exploitation of the Indians moved from barter to forced labor, the
final step.
Upset by Columbus’s enslavement of Indians, Queen Isabella freed the
500 Indians sent to Spain in 1495 and sent Francisco de Bobadilla to
investigate conditions on the island in 1500. Bobadilla arrested Columbus
and sent him to Spain in irons.
B.
The conquest of the Hispaniola Tainos (Wright, p. 29; Parry and Sherlock, pp. 9;
Fiske, pp. 48-50; Floyd, pp. 51, 132-34)
1.
The secure settlement and conquest of the island began in 1502 with the
arrival of Nicolas de Ovando as governor.
a.
Following the killing of a local cacique by a Spanish dog, Indians
on the eastern end of the island launched attacks against the
Spaniards. Ovando responded with a brutal and bloody campaign
that subdued the Indians and helped solve the Spanish food
problem by forcing the survivors to provide produce.
b.
Ovando followed this up with a campaign on the western end of
the island. A large group of Indians were lured into an enclosure
and captured by Spaniards. Up to 80 caciques were burned alive.
2.
In 1503 Ovando secured a royal decree that gave official sanction to
repartimiento. This was the beginning of the encomienda, whereby the
Spaniards were granted Indians to labor in their mines and fields and in
return the Spaniards were to feed and cloth them and instruct them in the
faith.
3.
In 1507 and 1508, the first serious epidemic struck the Indians. In
reaction to the resulting shortage of labor, the Spaniards concentrated the
Indians near the mines and began raiding areas in the Bahamas and
Venezuela for additional laborers.
a.
A royal decree in 1503 authorized the enslavement of all Indians
considered to be Caribs, and thus cannibals. Fear of the Caribs,
who were excellent warriors, led to the enslavement of peaceful
tribes occupying areas in Venezuela that were believed to be the
haunts of the Caribs.
b.
Although non-cannibalistic Indians such as the Arawak-speaking
Lucayos of the Bahamas were not technically slaves, their forced
labor in the encomiendas made their lives little different from the
Caribs’ existence. Las Casas estimated that 40,000 Lucayos were
removed from the Bahamas before 1515.
C.
The Destruction of the Tainos (Floyd, pp. 151-93)
1.
2.
3.
4.
III.
In December 1511 Friar Antonio de Montesinos delivered a famous
sermon in Santo Domingo denouncing the Spanish treatment of the
Indians, particularly the system of forced labor, and opening what has
been called the “Spanish struggle for justice.” The sermon came too late
to help many of the Indians of Hispaniola.
By 1514 there were only 22,000 Indians left to distribute to
encomienderos with legitimate claims. Many of these Indians had been
brought to Hispaniola from other areas. After the epidemic of 1518 and
1519 further decimated the population, the Spaniards made a serious
effort to regroup the surviving Indians into villages near them.
On May 18, 1520, Las Casas secured a royal decree freeing all the
Indians of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico upon the deaths of the existing
encomienderos. There were at most one thousand Indians left to enjoy the
reprieve.
The last major Indian revolt on Hispaniola occurred in 1519 under the
leadership of Enriquillo, a cacique whose wife had been raped by a
Spaniard. The revolt soon spread to other groups. Enriquillo’s forces
were not finally won over until the 1530s.
Spanish Expansion in the Caribbean: Estimates of Indian deaths in the Antilles, mostly
from disease, have ranged up to six million. Several million more died during the
conquest of the coast.
A.
Puerto Rico (Kirkpatrick, pp. 41-46; Parry and Sherlock, pp. 11-12)
1.
Ponce De Leon made the first official expedition to Puerto Rico in 1508.
Ponce opposed the mistreatment of Indians, especially the breaking up of
tribes. He formed good relations with several caciques and moved slowly,
respecting Indian customs.
2.
In 1509 rivals of Ponce took over temporarily and issued the first
repartimientos. After Ponce returned to power, he maintained the
distribution of Indian laborers but made special efforts to protect the
Indians and their food supply.
3.
Indians in the western part of the island revolted in 1511. The Spaniards
put down the revolt and sold the captives into slavery.
4.
Ponce’s removal from power in 1511 marked the beginning of a new
Spanish policy of searching out Indians, breaking up alliances between
Arawaks and Caribs, and attacking Caribs on nearby islands.
5.
The Caribs stepped up their attacks in 1513, managing to destroy the
former Spanish capital of Caparra.
6.
The Spaniards retaliated, but eastern Puerto Rico remained in the hands
of Caribs and allied Arawaks. As the gold played out and the Indians
increased their resistance, Spanish settlements deteriorated, leaving only a
few small towns. The Indians in Puerto Rico would not be finally
conquered for a number of years.
B.
Jamaica (Floyd, pp. 109-111)
1.
In late 1509 or early 1510, Juan de Esquivel arrived on Jamaica and laid
out a town with the help of Indian labor.
2.
3.
The Spanish were few at first, but there was little need for conquest
because the Indians offered little resistance. The Spanish exported many
of the natives to Hispaniola and Cuba as slaves or auxiliaries.
Since little gold was found, the Jamaican settlements served primarily as
provision centers for expeditions to the mainland and other islands.
Although the island lacked mines, the Indian populations declined rapidly
because of epidemics and the transfer of Indians to other islands.
C.
Cuba (Parry and Sherlock, p. 11; Wright, pp. 21-65, 135-85; Kirkpatrick, pp.
45-46; Floyd, pp.113-21)
1.
Initial Spanish contact with the Cuban Tainos and Ciboneys stemmed
from efforts to obtain Indian laborers from the island.
a.
Governor Ovando transported a few Indians from Hispaniola to
Cuba in hopes of establishing good relations with the Cubans.
b.
Spanish slavers, as well as Indians fleeing from oppression on
Hispaniola, disrupted Ovando’s hopes.
2.
Diego Velasquez’s conquest of the island, which began in 1511, was
over by 1513.
a.
Velasquez’s earliest efforts were directed at the Indians in
eastern Cuba, particularly a group of exiles from Hispaniola
under the cacique Hatuey, who was burnt alive in 1512.
b.
Other eastern Tainos also resisted and occasionally attacked the
invaders, but the Indians were conquered and laboring in the
Spanish mines and fields by 1513.
3.
In 1513 Velasquez sent out three expeditions to explore the rest of the
island.
a.
On the central southern coast, 2500 Indians greeted the
expedition led by Panfilo de Narvaez. The nervous Spaniards
launched a surprise attack, killing at least 100 Indians in what
Las Casas termed as one of the worst atrocities in the history of
the islands.
b.
The explorers established several towns around the island, and
Velasquez began issuing encomiendas.
4.
Encomienda labor was used to mine gold in Cuba until the 1520s, when
the Tainos in eastern Cuba revolted. Small bands of Indians continued to
escape capture until 1533, when 10 Indians, remnants of a band of 60,
surrendered.
5.
In the 1530s the crown ordered various half-hearted experiments in
“freeing” Indians from the encomienda. Most were complete failures
because of continuing labor and tribute obligations and Indian deaths.
6.
In the early 1540s, many Indians again revolted, seriously threatening
Cuba’s settlements, whose manpower and resources had been depleted
by the preparations for De Soto’s expedition to Florida. The Indians were
gradually defeated.
7.
Governor Perez de Angulo proclaimed the “entire liberty” of the few
remaining Cuban Indians upon his arrival in 1549.
D.
Panama and the Colombian Coast (Kirkpatrick, pp. 47-59; Floyd, pp. 134-35,
142)
1.
2.
3.
In 1509 the Spanish crown issued a license to Alonso de Ojeda to settle
the northern coast of Colombia and one to Diego de Nicuesa to settle
Castilla de Oro, including the coasts of Panama, Costa Rica, and
Nicaragua.
a.
Ojeda landed near the present city of Cartagena with 300 men.
Ojeda left 60 surviving Spaniards behind when he returned to
Hispaniola.
(1)
The local Indians attacked a group of 70 Spaniards who
were searching for slaves; only Ojeda and one other man
escaped their poisoned arrows.
(2)
After taking revenge, Ojeda moved his men to the Gulf of
Uraba. The Indians continued to resist the invasion.
b.
Diego de Nicuesa’s initial group of 700 people landed on the
isthmus of Panama, where shipwreck, disease, starvation, and
Indian attacks soon thinned the invasion.
After Ojeda’s departure a stowaway named Vasco Nunez de Balboa took
command. Balboa subjugated the Cuna Indians and crossed the isthmus.
a.
Balboa moved Ojeda’s survivors across the Gulf of Uraba to
Darien, in Nicusea’s grant. Nicuesa’s survivors joined him and
sent Nicuesa out to sea.
b.
Balboa used a combination of force and diplomacy to win over the
local Cunas. Marrying the daughter of one cacique, he soon
gained the support of some 30 others. Other groups were enslaved
or tortured into submission.
c.
In 1513 he acted upon information from an Indian and marched
across the isthmus to the Pacific. Along the way he overcame the
resistance of two hostile Indian tribes.
d.
Although many of the Cunas were put to work growing crops and
collecting gold for the conquistadores, Balboa sought to treat them
with humanity.
In 1513 Pedrarias de Avila was nominated over Balboa as governor of
Darien. He was instructed to issue repartimientos.