32 BULLETIN^ 14 7, UNITED STATES NATION" AL MUSEUM 



During his second voyage Columbus began the practice of sending 

 natives of the island to Spain to be sold into slavery. Tribute was 

 exacted from the remainder. The tribute levied was to be in gold, 

 but an arroba of cotton — that is, 25 pounds — was later substituted 

 as the quarterly tribute levied upon all adults over 14 years of age. 

 As cotton was not grown throughout the island, and as it was practi- 

 cally impossible to obtain gold elscAvhere except in the central moun- 

 tains of Cibao, service Avas accepted instead of gold or cotton. This 

 v/as in the year 1496 and was the beginning of the repartimiento, 

 later to be expanded into the encomienda sj^stem, under which natives 

 of the conquered island were divided among the Spanish soldiery 

 for administrative purposes, principally for collecting the tribute. 



Under this arrangement the Indian population of the island rapidly 

 decreased. It is probable that to-day not one piire-blood descend- 

 ant survives of the comparatively dense native population at the time 

 of the discovery. Native language survives in the names of rivers, 

 places, trees, and fruits. A sufficiently large vocabulary has been 

 preserved to identify their early connection with the Arawak of 

 South America. 



SOURCE MATERIAL FOR STUDY OF ETHNOLOGY OF SAMANA 



The several publications of the Hakluyt Society, the narratives 

 collected in Churchhill's collections of Voyages and Travels, and the 

 writings of early Spanish authors of varying merit — all have been 

 fetudiecl by modern historians and ethnologists, as Washington Irving, 

 Dr. J. Walter Fewkes, and others. Washington Irving's Life of 

 Columbus, first published in 1827, was inspired by the publication by 

 Martin Fernandez de Navarrete of previously undiscovered docu- 

 mentary source material. Select Letters of C. Columbus, published 

 by the Halduyt Society in 1847, is valuable principally because of 

 the letter of Doctor Chanca describing Columbus's second voyage. 

 Selections from the will of Diego Mendez, in which are related events 

 which occurred during the fourth voyage of Columbus, are also 

 valuable. The narrative of Ferdinand Columbus in the nature of 

 a biography of Christopher Columbus, appears in the second volume 

 of Churchill's Collections of Voyages and Travels. This account 

 is particularly useful with regard to the ethnology of the Ciguayan 

 Indians of Samana. In the same volume of Churchill's Voyages 

 appears the excellent monograph of Friar Eamon Pane, a Franciscan 

 monk, who accompanied Columbus on his second voyage and was 

 detailed by him to describe native religious and ceremonial life. 



Peter Martyr's Eight Decades, or De Orbe Novo, is best available 

 in Francis Augustus MacNutt's translation from the Latin and ap- 



