FEWKEs] MENTAL AND MORAL CHARACTERISTICS 31 



and the hair on other parts of the body. ... . They compressed 

 the skulls of the new-born infants, . . . dyeing their Itodies with 

 roucou, which makes them red all over."" 



MENTAL AND MORAL CHARACTERISTICS 



Natives of the different islands, and even those of different parts of 

 the same island, differed somewhat in disposition and character. Some 

 were peaceful and guileless and received the Spaniards with feelings 

 of reverence, believing they had descended from heaven. In other 

 islands they fled, and in some they contested the landing of Columbus.- 

 In certain pai'ts of Haiti, as in the province of Ciguex, the whole 

 territory was devastated and the people were almost exterminated 

 before they were subjugated. In the Cibao and Higuez provinces 

 likewise the natives resisted with desperation. Henricjuillo, the " last 

 cacique" of Santo Domingo, was never subdued, but was given the 

 pueblo Boya, north of the capital, where the descendants of the earlj'^ 

 natives still live. The aboriginal Porto Ricans also fought bravely 

 for the possession of their island until overpowered by their foes. 



Of the mental and moral traits of the ancient Borinquefios we may 

 form a good judgment from early records. A sense of justice and 

 traits of heroism, admirable in any race, were strong among these 

 people and widely spread. No one who reads the Spanish records, 

 which can hardly be called prejudiced in favor of the aborigines, can 

 den}' that these Indians were both hospital)le and generous. Regard- 

 ing the Europeans as a race of supernatural beings, the}' received them 

 with kindness, until forced to do otherwise in order to defend their 

 own lives and those of their families. Several accounts tell how theft 

 was regarded as a crime and severel}" punished. If we find their lives 

 sometimes spoken of as bestial we must bear in mind that these state- 

 ments come from people who enslaved them. They were certainly 

 not more cruel than those who oppressed them, nor less truthful than 

 those who, under false promises, transported them from their homes 

 into slavery. Benzoni states that some of the natives were called 

 great thieves by the Spaniards, but he regarded the Indians in the 

 main as honest. Columbus saj'S that they stole idols (zernis) from one 

 another; Oviedo declares that thieves were spitted on trees and left to 

 die. The girls were not regarded as chaste bj' the Europeans, some 

 of whom could hardlv be called chaste themselves if judged by their 

 treatment of Indian women. Incest was unknown, but men were some- 

 times used to gratify lust, in which case they were dressed as women. 



Many of the natives exhibited fine traits of character, no one more 



njohn Davies, History of the Caribby Islands, pp. 1-35, London, 1666. For the character of this 

 work see Buckingham Smith, Wiusor, Field, and Mooney (Myths of the Cherokee, 19th Report nj 

 Bureau of American Ethnolofjii, p, 202). According to Field (Indian Vocabulary, p. 95). "It is a 

 nearly faithful translation of H. Rochefort's Histoire Naturelle et Morale des lies Antille do I'Amer- 

 ique, Rotterdam, 16.38." Field says of this work that it is "fictitious in every part which was not 

 purloined from authors w hose knowledge furnished liim with all in his treatise which was true." 



