Historic Tales: The Romance of Reality. Vol. 03 (of 15), Spanish AmericanMorris, Charles
History
Historic Tales: The Romance of Reality. Vol. 03 (of 15), Spanish American
Morris, Charles
Latin America -- History
As for the natives themselves, what few privileges they had retained were
taken from them, their meetings and festivals were forbidden, and for any
one to assume the name of Inca was declared criminal. These severe
measures were thought sufficient to intimidate the Indians, but they only
exasperated them, and they took a terrible revenge. Andres, a cousin of
Amaru, who had escaped capture, and another chief named Catari, led them
in a campaign of revenge in which they fought with the fury of despair.
The lives of five hundred Spaniards, it is said, paid the penalty for each
of the victims of that dread execution in Cuzco.
Andres besieged the city of Sorata, in which all the white families of the
vicinity had taken refuge with their treasures. The artillery of the
fortifications seemed an invulnerable defence against the poorly armed
besiegers, but Andres succeeded in making a breach by turning the mountain
streams against the walls. Once within, the exasperated Indians took a
terrible revenge, a single priest being, as we are told, the sole survivor
of the twenty thousand inhabitants. In the end the Spaniards put down the
insurrection by treachery and cunning, seized the chiefs, and sent Andres
to Ceuta, in Spain, where he remained in prison till 1820.
We shall only say in addition that the Portuguese of Brazil treated the
natives of that land with a cruelty little less than that shown by the
Spaniards, sending out hunting expeditions to bring in Indians to serve as
slaves. Those who opposed them were shot down without mercy, and it is
said that, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, peasants infected
with the virus of smallpox were sent to the Botocudos, as a convenient
means of getting rid of that hostile tribe. As a result of all this, the
greater part of the tribes of Brazil completely disappeared. The natives
of South America obtained justice and honorable treatment only after the
people of that country had won their liberty.
CUDJOE, THE NEGRO CHIEF, AND THE MAROONS OF JAMAICA.
When the English conquered the island of Jamaica and drove the Spaniards
out of it, they failed to conquer its sable inhabitants, negroes who had
been slaves to the Spaniards, but who now fought for and maintained their
freedom. Such were the Maroons, or mountain-dwelling fugitives of Jamaica,
whose story is well worth telling.
First we must say something about the history of this island, and how it
came into English hands. It was long held by the Spaniards, being
discovered by Columbus in his second voyage, in 1494. In his last voyage
he had a dismal experience there. With his vessels battered and ready to
sink, after running through a severe wind storm, he put into the harbor of
Porto Bueno, in northern Jamaica. He afterwards left this for a small bay,
still known after him as Don Christopher’s Cove, and here, attacked by the
warlike natives, and unable to put to sea, he was kept captive in his
shattered hulks for a whole year.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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