598 ARTS AND CRAFTS OF GUIANA INDIANS [BTH, ANN. 38 
natives we facilitate their conversion” (AVH, u, 219). At San 
Fernando de Atabapo the president of the Jesuit mission gave us, 
says Humboldt, an animated account of his incursions on the Rio 
Guaviare. He related to us how much these journeys “ for the con- 
quest of souls” are desired by the Indians of the missions. All, 
even women and old men, take part in them. Under the pretext of 
recovering neophytes, who have deserted the village, children above 
8 or 10 years of age are carried off and distributed among the In- 
dians of the missions as serfs or poitos (AVH, 1, 337). The story 
of the Piedra de la Madre (Mother’s Rock) given by Humboldt 
(AVH, uw, 346) affords a good illustration of the subtle cruelties 
practiced by some of these old Jesuits. Barthelemy de las Casas, a 
priest and afterwards Bishop of Chiapa, presented himself in 1517 
before Charles V in order to plead the cause of the natives. From 
the general principle of the natural liberty of man he drew the 
strange conclusion that the slavery of the Indian was a crime while 
that of the Africans was dictated by necessity. ... As the result of 
his representations the Government was induced to purchase 4,000 of 
those unfortunate beings, whom they landed on the islands of Santo 
Domingo, Cuba, Jamaica, and Porto Rico. Thus Negro slavery was 
first established in America (FD, 44). Judging from the accounts 
left us by this good bishop concerning the outrages committed by his 
own countrymen on the hapless Indians elsewhere in the West Indies 
(LaC, 99, 58, 55), one is only surprised that with such examples 
before them the conduct above described of the Spanish Jesuits in 
the Guianas was not even many times worse than has been actually 
recorded. 
The Dutch made no secret of their slave raids among the natives, 
and openly pursued the trade, either directly or indirectly, through 
other Indians, notably the Carib. In Gumilla’s time the price which 
Dutchmen paid the Carib for a slave, whom they called /toto, was a 
chest with key, and in it 10 axes, 10 choppers, 12 knives, 10 strings of 
glass beads, a piece of linen for a guayaco [loin cloth], a looking- 
glass, scissors, and, in addition, a gun, powder, and balls, a flask of 
brandy, and other trifles—needles, pins, fishhooks (G, u, 77). The 
price had evidently risen since the days of the first discoverers, be- 
cause Francis Sparrow, whom Sir Walter Raleigh had left to explore 
the country, bought, to the southward of the Orinoco, eight beautiful 
young women, the eldest not 18 years of age, for a red-handled knife, 
the value of which in England at that time was but one halfpenny 
(Br, 49). It was not only the nations of the upper Orinoco and Rio 
Negro who furnished slaves (poitos) to the Dutch (AVH, um, 333), 
but also the upper reaches of the Essequibo and its tributaries. Thus 
Schomburgk at Tomatai, on the Dutch side of the Corentyn, ex- 
