Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/270

CHAPTER XVI.

Indian and African Slavery in St. Domingo. — The Insurrections.

Discovery and settlement of the island by the Spaniards. — The natives reduced to slavery Cruelty of the Spaniards towards them. — Great mortality in consequence. — Their numbers replenished from the Bahamas. — The Dominicans become interested for them. Las Casas appeals to Cardinal Ximines, who sends commissioners. — They set the natives at liberty. — The colonists remonstrate against the measure, and the Indians again reduced to slavery. — Las Casas seeks a remedy. — The Emperor allows the introduction of Africans. — Guinea slave-trade established. — The buccaneers. — The French Colony. — Its condition in 1789. — Enormous slave-population. — The Mulattoes. — The French Revolution — its effect on the Colonists. — First Insurrection — terrible execution of the leaders. — Second Insurrection — massacre and conflagration — unparallelled horrors. — Burning Port au Prince. — L'Ouverture appears, the spirit and ruler of the storm. — French expedition of 25,000 men sent to suppress the Insurrection. — Toussaint sent prisoner to France — dies in prison. — The slaves establish their freedom. — Independence of Hayti acknowledged by France.

Hispaniola, St. Domingo, or Hayti, is not only one of the largest but also one of the most beautiful and productive of the West India islands. It is 390 miles long, its breadth is from 60 to 150 miles, and its scenery is diversified by lofty mountains, deep valleys and extensive plains, or savannas, dotted with the luxuriant vegetation of a tropical climate. The sea sweeps boldly into the land, here and there forming commodious harbors and extensive bays. The air on the plains is warm and laden with the perfume of flowers; and the sudden changes from drouth to rain, though trying to an unacclimated constitution, are favorable to the growth of the rich products of the soil.

Columbus and his successors having founded a settlement on the island, it became one of the Spanish colonial possessions, to the great misfortune of the unhappy natives, who were almost annihilated by the labor which the colonists imposed upon them. They soon dwindled away to a mere remnant. Of a population of a million found on the island by Columbus, scarcely twenty-four thousand remained at the time of the governorship of the island by his son, Don Diego Columbus, and these were fast sinking into the grave under the destructive influence of cruelty and hardship. In this emergency expeditions were fitted out to the Bahama islands in order to decoy from their homes the gentle and confiding race which inhabited them, to be sold as slaves in Hispaniola. They were but too successful. Availing themselves of the fond superstition of the natives, that the departed spirits of their friends, after an expiation of their sins by a purgatory of cold in the mountains of the north, passed to more sunny realms, under a more tropical sky, where they enjoyed an indolent paradise forever, the crafty Spaniards alleged that they came from this land of their departed relatives, and invited them to go thither and rejoin them.^[1] The simple Indians trusted to the tale and went to inevitable and deadly servitude. Like their predecessors of Hispaniola, they died at their

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1. Peter Martyr.