While lamenting the disappearance of the Indians of
the Antilles, writers of the Columbian period have, for controversial
effect, greatly exaggerated the numbers of these peoples; hence the
number of victims charged to Spanish rule. It is not possible that
Indians constantly warring with each other, and warred upon by an outside
enemy like the Caribs, not given to agriculture except in as far as
women worked the crops, without domestic animals, in an enervating
climate, would have been nearly as numerous as, for instance, Las Casas
asserts.
The extermination of the Antillean Arawaks under Spanish
rule has not yet been impartially written. It is no
worse a page
in history
than many filled with English atrocities, or those which tell
how the North American aborigines have been disposed of in order
to make room
for the white man. The Spanish did not, and could not, yet know
of the nature and the possibilities of the Indian. They could not understand
that a race physically well-endowed, but the men of which had
no conception of work, could not be suddenly changed into hardy tillers
of the soil
and miners.
And yet the Indian had to be made to labor, as the
white population was entirely too small for developing the resources
of the
new-found lands. The European attributed the inaptitude of
the Indian for physical labor to obstinency, and only too often vented
his impatience in acts of cruelty.
The Crown
made the utmost efforts to mitigate,
and
to protect the aborigine, but ere the
period of experiments was over, the latter had almost
vanished.
As already stated, the Arawaks, presumably, held the
lesser Antilles also, until, previous to the Columbian era, the Caribs
expelled them, thus separating the northern branch from the main stock
on the southern continent. Of the latter it has been surmised that
their original homes were on the eastern slope of the Andes, where
the Campas (Chunchos or Antis) represent the Arawak element, together
with the Shipibos, Piros, Conibos and other tribes of the extensive
Pano group. A Spanish officer, Pedro de Candia, first discovered them
in 1538.
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