The History of Cuba, vol. 1Johnson, Willis Fletcher
History
The History of Cuba, vol. 1
Johnson, Willis Fletcher
Cuba -- Economic conditions; Cuba -- History
Unhappily that was not always the rule. At the large town of Caonao,
probably near Manzanillo, a number of Spanish soldiers, as if suddenly
stricken with madness, began a massacre of the natives, killed a great
number, and drove the rest into flight. Narvaez does not seem to have
ordered nor to have taken part in the slaughter, but neither did he
exert himself to prevent it or to stop it. Whereupon Las Casas,
righteously wrathful, bade him to go to the Devil, and thereafter
devoted himself to ministering to the sufferers and to reassuring the
survivors.
From Caonao the expedition moved westward, through the southern part of
the Province of Camaguey, where the natives were so frightened that they
fled to the little islands off the coast which Columbus had named the
Queen's Gardens. Thence it went across the island to the north coast,
and probably in the region of Sagua la Grande, in Santa Clara Province,
found some small deposits of gold. After stopping there for some time,
it continued its progress into Havana Province, where more gold was
found and where, unhappily, serious trouble with the natives was
renewed.
On the way across the island Narvaez had heard of three Spaniards, a man
and two women, who had been shipwrecked on the coast and were living
with the Indians somewhere in the west. He sent word of this report back
to Velasquez, who returned him orders to search for the castaways even
in preference to gold, and who also dispatched a ship along the north
coast to meet Narvaez and his party in the region to which they were
going. In Santa Clara the two women were found, unharmed and well, and
they presently married members of the expedition. Finally, in Havana the
man also was found. He too was unharmed and well, though he had become
in speech and habits more like an Indian than a Spaniard. According to
his story, he and the two women were the sole survivors of a company of
twenty-six. They had fled from Ojeda's ill-starred settlement at Uraba,
on the Gulf of Darien, and were trying to make their way back to
Hispaniola, but had been driven out of their course around the north
coast of Cuba. Not far from Cape San Antonio they had been shipwrecked
and thence had made their way by land, along the north coast. Most of
them had been killed by natives while trying to cross an arm of the sea,
which has been assumed to have been the Bay of Matanzas, which was so
named on that account.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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