RACES. 



235 



causes to have been, the cruelty of the conquerors, 

 the brutality of the governors, the too severe labors 

 of the gold washings, the ravages of the small pox, 

 and the frequency of suicide, we can hardly con- 

 ceive how, in thirty or forty years, I will not say a 

 million, but even three or four hundred thousand 

 Indians could become entirely extinct. The war 

 with the cacique Hatuey was of short duration, 

 and confined entirely to the eastern part of the 

 "4and. Few complaints were made against the 

 administration of the first two Spanish governors, 

 Diego Velasquez and Pedro de Barba. The oppres- 

 sion of the natives began in the year 1539, with the 

 arrival of the cruel Hernando de Soto. 1 Supposing 

 Gomara to be correct in stating that there were no 

 Indians fifteen years later, when Diego de Majarie- 

 gos was governor (1554-1564), we must suppose 

 that those who escaped to Florida in their pirogues, 



1 The researches of Don Juan Bantista de Munoz, in the archives 

 of Seville, have shown that cruelty to the Indians began very soon 

 after the conquest. The revolting atrocities committed by Vasco 

 Porcalla, in 1521, are cited by Sagra, and as early as 1534, the 

 Cuban officials, in their letters to the emperor, asked for "7,000 

 negroes, that they might become inured to labor before the Indians 

 ceased to exist." The mania of suicide to escape the labor imposed 

 upon them, was common among the Indians long before the time of 

 Hernando de Soto. — (See Sagra, Historia Fisica, Politico, y JVatural f 

 large 8vo. Apend. pp. 8-26.) 



