The NegroDu Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt)
History
The Negro
Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt)
Africa -- History; Black race
Before 1530 there were enough Negroes in Mexico to lead to an
insurrection, where the Negroes fought desperately, but were overcome and
their ringleaders executed. Later the followers of another Negro
insurgent, Bayano, were captured and sent back to Spain. Negroes founded
the town of Santiago del Principe in 1570, and in 1540 a Negro slave of
Hernandez de Alarcon was the only one of the party to carry a message
across the country to the Zunis of New Mexico. A Negro, Stephen Dorantes,
discovered New Mexico. This Stephen or "Estevanico" was sent ahead by
certain Spanish friars to the "Seven Cities of Cibola." "As soon as
Stephen had left said friars, he determined to earn all the reputation and
honor for himself, and that the boldness and daring of having alone
discovered those villages of high stories so much spoken of throughout
that country should be attributed to him; and carrying along with him the
people who followed him, he endeavored to cross the wilderness which is
between Cibola and the country he had gone through, and he was so far
ahead of the friars that when they arrived at Chichilticalli, which is on
the edge of the wilderness, he was already at Cibola, which is eighty
leagues of wilderness beyond." But the Indians of the new and strange
country took alarm and concluded that Stephen "must be a spy or guide for
some nations who intended to come and conquer them, because it seemed to
them unreasonable for him to say that the people were white in the country
from which he came, being black himself and being sent by them."[76]
Slaves imported under the Asiento treaties went to all parts of the
Americas. Spanish America had by the close of the eighteenth century ten
thousand in Santo Domingo, eighty-four thousand in Cuba, fifty thousand in
Porto Rico, sixty thousand in Louisiana and Florida, and sixty thousand in
Central and South America.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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