Chapter 3

Some of the tools and implements of stone found on the island are so strange that one cannot even guess their purpose. Of the heavy stone collars that have been preserved, a priest holds that they were placed about the necks of the dead, that the devil might not lift them out of their graves, but this sounds like an invention of the church, for there is no proof that a belief in the devil existed among these people. They had a god, as well as minor spirits, and sang hymns to them; they had some crafts and arts, for they made canoes, huts, chairs, nets, hammocks, pottery, weapons, and implements, and, although the fierce Caribs vexed them now and again, they were accounted as the gentlest and most advanced of the native people in the Antilles. Speaking of the hammock, that is one of their devices that the world has generally adopted, and the name is one of the few Indian words that have survived the Spanish oppressions, though there are many geographic titles. Other familiar survivals are the words hurricane, canoe, tobacco, potato, banana, and a few other botanical names.

It is probable that these Boriqueños were allied in speech and custom, as well as in blood, to their neighbors the Haytiens, of whom saith Peter Martyr, "The land among these people is common as sun and water. 'Mine' and 'thine,' the seeds of all mischief, have no place among them. They are content with so little that in this large country they have more than plenty. They live in a golden world without toil, in open gardens, not intrenched, defended, or divided. They deal truly with one another, without laws, judges, or books. He that will hurt another is an evil man, and while they take no pleasure in superfluity, they take means to increase the roots that are their food--diet so simple that their health is assured." Still, it is known that in their defence against the marauding Caribs the Porto Ricans were courageous, and had become adept with arrow and club, and it was believed by some of the first explorers that they ate their captives.

The aborigines of Porto Rico probably differed little, if at all, from the Haytiens in their faith in an all-powerful, deathless god, who had a mother but no father, who lived in the sky and was represented on earth by zemes or messengers. Every chief had his zemi, carved in stone or wood, as a tutelary genius, to whom he addressed his prayers and who had a temple of his own. Zemes directed the wind, waves, rains, rivers, floods, and crops, gave success or failure in the hunt, and gave visions to or spoke with priests who had worked themselves into a rhapsodic state by the use of a drug (it may have been tobacco), in order to receive the message, which often concerned the health of a person or of a whole village. The Spaniards regarded these manitous as images of the devil, and in order to keep them the natives hid the little effigies from the friars and the troops. In the festivals of these gods there were dances, music, and an offering of flower-decorated cakes.

Hayti was the first created, the sun and moon came from the cave near Cape Haytien known as _la voute a Minguet_, through a round hole in the roof. Men came from another cave, the big ones through a large door, the little men from a smaller one. They were without women for a long time, because the latter lived in trees and were slippery; but some men with rough hands finally pulled four of them down from the branches, and the world was peopled. At first, the men dared to leave their cave only at night, for the sun was so strong it turned them to stone, though one man who was caught at his fishing by the sun became a bird that still sings at night, lamenting his fate. When a chief was dying in pain he was mercifully strangled,--though the common people were allowed to linger to their end,--and his deeds were rehearsed in ballads sung to the drum. There was a belief in ghosts, albeit they could not be seen in the light, unless in a lonely place, nor by many persons. When they did mingle with the people it was easy to distinguish them from the living, as they had no navel. What became of the wicked after death we do not know, but the good went to a happy place where they met those whom they loved, and lived among women, flowers, and fruits. During the day the departed souls hid among the mountains, but peopled the fairest valleys at night, and in order that they should not suffer from hunger the living were careful to leave fruit on the trees.

From these quaint and simple faiths the people were roused by the professors of a more enlightened one, who made their teaching useless, however, if not odious, to the brown people by their practises. It was an old belief, at least among the Haytiens, that a race of strangers, with bodies clad, would cross the sea and would reduce the people to servitude. This prophecy may have made them the more unwilling to yield to the Spaniards, in respect of religious faith, despite the signs and wonders that were shown to them. When chief Guarionex raided a Spanish chapel and destroyed the sacred images within, the shattered statues were buried in a garden, and the turnips and radishes planted there came up in the form of the cross. But even this did not convince the savages, whom it became necessary to burn, in order to smooth the way to reform.

The Deluge

Like many unschooled peoples, the Antillean tribes had their legend of a time when the earth was covered by a flood. The island of St. Thomas was one of the first to rise out of the sea. The Haytiens said that the deluge did not subside and that the present islands are the summits of mountains that formerly towered to a great height above the plains. Far back in the days when people lived more simply, and white men, with their abominable contrivings for work, had not even been invented, a _cacique_ or chief of their island killed his son, who had tried to harm him, albeit when the lad was dead a natural affection prompted the father to clean his bones and conceal them in a gourd. Some time afterwards the _cacique_ and his wife opened this vegetable tomb, to look on the mortal relics of their child, when a number of fish jumped out. Believing that he now had in the gourd a magic receptacle, from which he could take food at any time, the chief placed it on his roof, where mischief-makers might not reach it. While absent on a hunting-trip his four surviving sons took down the gourd to see what peculiar properties it had, and why it had been thus set apart. In passing it from one to the other it fell and was broken into little pieces. Instantly a vast quantity of water gushed from it, increasing in volume every instant. The water arose so that it reached their knees, and they had to climb the hills. Whales, sharks, porpoises, dolphins, and smaller creatures came swimming forth, and the flow of the water never ceased until the whole world was flooded, as we see it now, for the ocean came from that gourd.

How Spaniards were Found to be Mortal

The first Spaniards to reach the American islands were everywhere greeted as heavenly visitors, and the natives would not have been astonished had the caravels spread their sails--their wings, as they first were called--and flown into the clouds, carrying Columbus and his wrangling, jealous, sensual, gold-greedy company with him. Afterward they would have been more astonished than sorry. When the white men discovered this simple faith among the savages they encouraged it, for it induced the Indians to give up their wives, daughters, houses, weapons, and, above all else, their gold, to the strangers. The little bells and beads they gave in return were treasured because of their celestial origin and adored as fervently as the bones of saints are adored in some of the European churches. Everywhere and always the demand was for gold, and in the belief that the supply was going to last forever, Spain began to ruin herself with more industry than she had ever shown in peaceful callings. Her wars, her splendors, her vanities, her neglect of education and morality, bore their fruit when she pulled her flag down from the staff on Havana's Moro, and gave up her claims to the last foot of land in the Western world.

Ponce de Leon permitted the fiction that the Spaniards were angels--save the mark!--for it smoothed his progress in stripping the Porto Ricans of their poor little possessions, taking their lands for settlement, foraging over the island, forcing his religion upon them, and compelling them to serve him as miners, carriers, farmers, fishermen, and laborers. Many died because it was thought to be cheaper to work them to death and get fresh ones than to feed them. After a time the Indians began to have doubts, and when the friars enlarged on the glories of heaven, and described it as the abode of Spaniards, more of them than Hatuey were anxious to be allowed to go to the other place. They did not at first dare to attack the intruders, for what could men avail against gods, and of what use were spears and clubs against their thunderous arms and smashing missiles?

As the aggressions increased and became less and less endurable, Chief Agueynaba resolved, out of the soreness of his heart, to test this reputed immortality of his guests. A messenger, one Salzedo, was to be sent away from San Juan on some official errand, with a little company of natives as freighters and servants. This was Agueynaba's chance. He ordered his men to slip Salzedo into a river and hold him under water for a time. If he was an immortal this would not hurt him, and if he died, why--they would try very hard to bear up under the loss. While crossing the river--the spot is still shown--the men who bore Salzedo on their shoulders pitched him off and detained him beneath the surface for a couple of hours; then, fearing that he might be still alive and vicious, they put him on a bank and howled apologies to his remains for three days. By that time there was no longer a doubt about his deadness. Reports of this discovery traversed the island with the speed of a South American mail service, so that within a week people even forty miles away had heard about it. Thus encouraged to resistance by the discovery that white men were mortal, the populace fell upon their persecutors and troubled them, although after one defeat the Spaniards rallied and drove the Indians back to the mines.

Ponce

When Ponce de Leon visited and conquered Porto Rico he heard of the elixir of life. It may not have been among the springs of that island, but the natives had a faith in it and some of them referred it to the Bahamas. Their possible reason for this was to persuade the white men to go there and look for it, for they were not popular in Porto Rico, and this was the more to be regretted in Ponce's case, because he was far from popular at home. At the court of Ferdinand and Isabella was a page who was handsome, spirited, and saucy. One of the daughters of the royal pair, wearied with the forms and ceremonies of her state, which, in the most punctilious court in Europe, were especially trying, found means to converse with this well-appearing, quick-witted scamp. A tattling courtier, recalling a _faux pas_ of the last queen, and desiring no more scandals, reported that the princess had been seen to smile on the youngster. No guilt was proven upon him, but handsome pages were ill-chosen company for young women of blue blood.

Ponce de Leon was the page, and he was sent to the New World to discover something to the advantage of his own modesty, and incidentally to accumulate for shipment anything that might be useful to the Spanish treasury. He landed in Boriquen, as Porto Rico was then called, and began a general subjugation and slaughter of the natives. Some were slain in battle, but thousands were carried away and made to work in mines and on distant plantations, as slaves, until their health was destroyed, and they, too, were no longer an obstacle to Spanish control, though the lack of their hands was a hindrance to Spanish enterprise. Ponce took his share of the gold and treasure he had forced these unfortunates to supply, and went back to Spain with it. Sea air had spoiled his complexion, fighting had roughened his manners, slave-driving had made his voice coarse. Possibly, also, his princess had recovered from her disappointment. Maybe she had been married off to some nobody of Portugal, or France, or Austria, for state reasons, and had entered on the usual loveless life of royalty. Or she may have beguiled her maidenly solitude by drinking much wine of Oporto, Madeira, and Xeres with her dinner, thereby acquiring that amplitude of girth, that ruddiness of countenance, and that polish of nose, which add so little to romance. At all events, we hear nothing more of the affair.

In the course of years Ponce took to himself the gout, rheumatism, dyspepsia, and a few such matters, and he scolded his dresser more than usual because his clothes did not fit at the waist as they had done, once. He parted his hair with a towel, and it was grizzled where it curled about his neck and temples. Then he recalled the tales the Boriqueños had told of the bright waters that gushed from the earth amid banks of flowers,--waters so sweet that who drank would drink again, and with every draught would throw off years and pain until at last he was a youth once more,--a youth with hot blood, sparkling eyes, lithe muscles; a youth who saw the world full of beauty and adventure. Ah, to be once more as he was when the princess beamed on him; to throw away his cares, his ails, his conscience, his regrets; to sing and dance, to ruffle it with other cavaliers, to dice, to drink, to feast, to win the smiles of ladies! It was a joy worth trying to attain.

He sailed once more, an older, sober man. He discovered Florida, bathed in its springs, drank from its flower-edged streams, but to no avail. Bimini, the place of the living waters, evaded him. Boriquen, renamed Porto Rico, could offer no more. But, though his living presence passed, the first building on the island--the White House, near San Juan--remains, and he left his name in the town that was first among the Antillean cities to raise the flag of a republic that should wave over the continent he had helped to discover and colonize:--the city of Ponce.

Water Caves

As in most of the Spanish American countries, so in Porto Rico, ghosts are common,--so common that in some towns the people hardly turn to look at them; and if on a wild night in the hurricane season they hear them gibbering at their doors, they patter an _ave_ or throw a piece of harness at the disturbance, and sleep again. Ponce, for instance, has a number of these spooks, such as the man who searches for his hidden money, and the child with a snowy face that knocks on the panes, then stares fixedly in, with corpse eyes, at the windows. Best known among these supernatural citizens are two lovers who "spoon" on dark nights, and are faintly outlined on the landscape as figures of quivering, smoky blue. Their favorite haunt is their death-place, eight miles from Ponce, in a hollow among limestone hills, now environed by a coffee plantation. Here are found three basins--results of erosion, most likely--that are described as natural bath-tubs. The middle and largest of these pools is partly filled with silt, probably occluding the entrance to a cavern which formerly opened into it, a fathom or so below the water-surface. This cave was the hiding-place of a native woman whose father had discovered her love for one of Ponce de Leon's soldiers. He forbade her to have anything to do with the enemies of his country, enlarged on their rapacity, cruelty, and treachery, and tried to create in her a sense of shame that she should have chosen a Spaniard, instead of a Boriqueno chief, for a lover. There were no locksmiths in the Antilles for love to laugh at, but there were spears and knives to fear, and the young couple, who seemed to be inspired by genuine affection, met at this lonely spot to do their courting. On the least suspicion of a hostile approach, the maid could slip into the water, enter the cave, and wait for an hour or a day, until the intruder had retired. However it happened nobody could tell,--or would,--but the Spaniard was found drowned one morning in that pool. He may have been found waiting there, by the angry parent, thrown in, on general principles, and held to the bottom by his steel arms and armor; or he may have been trying to find the cave in which his charmer had secreted herself, and while so engaged may have bumped his head against the rocky wall and stunned himself, or he may have been a poor swimmer and lost his wits and his wind. At all events, drowned he was, and the dusky virgin who loved him, seeing his form at the bottom of the water, sang her sorrow chant, dived in, and, holding to his body, perished wilfully at his side. Their love endures, and that is why their luminous shadows sit at the brink of the pool, with locked arms and meeting lips, to the disgust of voting women and confirmed bachelors.

This legend, with variants, is found in many parts of the world. There are two or three instances of it in the Hawaiian islands, and a tradition pertaining to Hayti is worth quoting here, as it refers to the same period and illustrates the same enmity between the white and native races. Near the city of San Domingo is, or was, a "water cave," so named because the entrance to it was several feet below the lake whose shore it undermines. When the young half-breed, Diaz, returned from Spain to his native island of Hispaniola in 1520, his mother, Zameaca, queen of the Ozamas, had disappeared, possibly killed outright by the Spaniards, or more slowly killed by enslavement at the mines in vainly trying to satisfy the rapacity of the white race for gold. Diaz, though partly of Spanish blood, was allied in his sympathies to the Indians. Hence, they planned to make him ruler. Their conspiracy was quelled for the time being, with such brutality that those natives who escaped death hated their tyrants with a deeper hatred than ever, and fixed them the more strongly in their resolution to be avenged. The leading chiefs and warriors of the Ozamas took refuge in the water cave, spying on their enemies and going about to make converts among the islanders at night. It was not long before the watchful Spaniards discovered that mischief was afoot, and there were reasons for believing that the chiefs had their hiding place not many miles from town. By following various suspects into the country, and noticing the time and way of their return, they became convinced that the leaders of the rebellion were somewhere near the lake.

A young woman, a slave in the family of the Spanish governor, was so often absent on mysterious errands that the authorities at last fixed on her as the one most likely to betray her countrymen. She was won to their purpose through her vanity. Her mistress had a comb of elaborate and curious workmanship, and to have one like it was the principal object in her existence. The governor told her that she should have this priceless treasure itself if she would tell him where the chiefs were meeting. To this act of treachery she finally agreed on condition that her lover, who was one of the chiefs, should be pardoned. That evening she carried bread and fruit to the lake, and sitting on the bank sang loudly for some minutes. The Spanish soldiers, who were watching from the shrubbery, were astonished to see a man rise like a seal from the water, swim to the shore, take the parcel from the girl's hands, exchange a few words with her, and disappear again beneath the surface. The song was a signal for one of the men to come out and receive the food, and it was heard through a crevice in the cave roof. Next day the girl sang again, and the whole company left the cave. They had no sooner gained the shore than the Spaniards sprang from the shrubbery and surrounded them. As they were led away to death, one of the chiefs levelled his finger at the girl and said, "I am going to a land of peace. You will never find the way to it." Her lover cast her off with bitter reproaches. Then, as the murderous volley pealed across the fields, and the rebellion was ended, her heart broke. She still sits at the lakeside in the evening, weeping over her comb.

How a Dutchman Helped the Spaniards

Had any Dutchman been charged with intending a kindness to the dons when his country was smarting under the Spanish scourge he would have offered the life of some distant relative to disprove the accusation. Without a guess that he could be injuring his own land and enriching that of his enemy, an innocent magistrate of Amsterdam did that for which he would afterward have submitted to the abuse of his friends, and if sackcloth and ashes had been in vogue he would have worn them. It all came about through his wish to be pleasant to a Frenchman, the same being Louis XIV. He sent to this monarch a curiosity in the form of a young coffee-tree, thinking, no doubt, that a warm corner could be found for it in the Jardin des Plantes among the orchids and cacti, and little recking that Louis had a Spanish father-in-law. At that time Holland enjoyed, in her colonies, almost a monopoly of the coffee trade of the world, but that one little tree broke her monopoly, just as one little leak in her dikes led to the eating away of miles of earthen wall and an in-rush and devastation of the sea.

For Louis was more clever than some other kings, almost clever enough to have been in trade, or else he had smart advisers. He had slips cut from the coffee tree, and ere many moons had passed a promising dozen of young plants were ready for shipment to Martinique, the new French colony in the Antilles. A botanist was sent in charge of them, it being the purpose of Louis to turn the island into a coffee plantation and be free of obligation to Holland. The voyage was long, because of head winds and storms, and the precious plants were in peril. Long before the American shores were reached the water supply had run low, and there was much suffering; yet the loyal botanist gave up half of his daily allowance in order that his coffee-trees should live. Salt water would have killed them, and in those days ships had no distilling apparatus. Martinique was reached in safety, however, the little trees struck their roots into congenial soil, and thus the seeds, such as first yielded their aroma to a surprised and gratified Abyssinian chief more than a thousand years before, now spring from the strong earth of the Western world. Whether Spaniards stole some of these trees, or bought them, or whether they got away by accident, certes, they reached Porto Rico, and so became a source of pleasure and profit to people whom the Dutchman did not have in mind when he made his little gift to King Louis. It is believed that all the coffee raised in Batavia for the Dutch also grew from a handful of seeds that had been sent from Arabia to Java. And, oh, that ever the time should have come when France had to buy coffee from her own plant in Porto Rico, and send to that same island for logwood to make claret with,--the kind she sells to New York for bohemian tables d'hote!

The Ghost of San Geronimo