The Spaniards arrived expecting to find wealth,
and they were ready to take it by force if necessary,
especially as the Spaniards discovered that no one remained of a
handful of men left behind by Columbus; all had fallen to the Taino.
If one accepts the statistic that the Taino population of Hispaniola
at the time of the Europeans' arrival was approximately a half-million,
then the ratio of Spanish males to Taino males was 1:167. The superior
military technology of the Europeans more than made up for
the difference in numbers. Further, the Spanish utilized brutality in
the early stages of conquest to subdue the enemy as quickly as possible.
Some of Las Casas's descriptions of brutality during the early months
of the encounter were likely accurate. Shock led to submission.
But mortality for the Europeans was also very
high; more than half did not survive their first year on Hispaniola.
Taino were soon distributed to
the settlers in the form of an encomienda, an Iberian institution
that had been used during the reconquest of the peninsula. Simply
put, the settler was given a grant of natives,
mostly adult married males, who provided tribute (a head tax) to
the encomendero, who was then responsible for their conversion and civilization.
The Spanish Crown frowned on the direct enslavement of
the Indians; Queen Isabella had freed Indians enslaved by Columbus
to help defray the costs of his second expedition, arguing that the
Indians were her free subjects. The Laws of Burgos (1518)
restated the policy against Indian slavery,
although exceptions were made for Indians who rebelled,
killed missionaries or rejected their efforts, or were cannibals.
Although technically not slavery,
the early encomienda in the Caribbean permitted the Spaniard
to use Indian labor, either in mining or the creation of plantations
for exports to Europe, especially sugar. The institution led to the
abuse and death of tributary workers. Migration, either forced or
voluntary, also contributed to the high rate of mortality, as normal
subsistence patterns were disrupted.
The impact of culture shock as a
technologically more advanced society comes into contact with a less
developed one is hard to measure, but evidence exists that this phenomenon
did play a role in the collapse of Taino social groups. Las Casas
mentions infanticide, which he claimed mothers committed in order
to free their infants from the exploitation of the Spanish. Crops
were torn up and burned, with starvation as the consequence, but
the destruction of crops may have been intentional, carried out by
the local population on purpose to deprive the Spaniards of food.
Villages became deserted as their residents fled to the countryside.
Men and women, too worn out by forced labor, failed
to procreate.
Until recently it was believed that the disappearance
of the Taino did not involve Old World disease,
so important to the collapse of the Amerindian population elsewhere.
But there is new evidence that disease did play a role in the Taino
disaster. A wave of disease broke out simultaneously with the arrival
of the second Spanish expedition in late 1494. Several observers
have suggested the loss of a third to a half of the population within
that short period of time. There has been much debate among
scholars on which disease triggered the huge loss of life; likely
candidates have been typhus, which was present with the fall of Granada
and the Italian campaigns, or swine flu, similar to the epidemic
that occurred at the end of World War I. More recently smallpox has
been suggested. Certainly, the smallpox pandemic of 1518 killed most
of the remaining Taino on the islands before it spread to the mainland.
Slaving expeditions during the early
years of the colony were undertaken to resupply the island's labor
force as the Taino population declined. The brunt of slaving fell
early on nearby islands, especially the Bahamas. Mortality for
enslaved Indians seems exceptionally high.
Slaves purchased in the Old World,
largely of African origin and transported to the
Carribean, ultimately solved the labor
problem for European settlers in the lands of the Taino.
The legality of slavery was not questioned because it had been practiced
in the Mediterranean region for centuries. The long-term demographic
consequence for the Caribbean islands was a population of largely
European or African origin, or a mixture thereof, with little
remnants of the original Aboriginal population,
although the significant cultural legacies of the
Taino persist.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alchon, Susan Austin (2003). A Pest in the Land: New World Epidemics
in a Global Perspective. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Cook, Noble David (1998). Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest,
1492–1650. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rouse, Irving (1992). The Tainos, Rise and Decline of the People Who
Greeted Columbus. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.
Watts, David (1987). The West Indies: Patterns of Development,
Culture and Environmental Change since 1492. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
