The importation of negroes naturally increased with the gradual extermination of the native Indians, and it was favored by the very men who most strongly inveighed against the enslavement of the Indians. Even La Casas himself, with all his fervor in behalf of the natives, acquiesced in negro slavery; favored it, indeed, as a means of saving the Indians from such a fate. During the second administration of Guzman, the restrictions which had been placed upon the slave trade were removed, and free importations, without payment of a royalty, were thereafter permitted. Indeed, a further step than this was contemplated. It was urged that if the King wished the Indians to be emancipated, he should supply their places with negroes. This extraordinary argument prevailed, and for at least one year all the King's revenues from Cuba were ordered to be invested in negroes, who were then to be distributed among the colonists of the island in place of the Indians who were set free. These were not, however, to be free gifts, but were to be paid for by the colonists in the course of a term of years. The revenues for that year amounted to about 7,000 pesos, and it was reckoned that at the prices then prevailing in the slave market at least 700 slaves could be purchased. But at the last moment the King, or else the Council for the Indies, reconsidered the matter, and the slaves were never purchased. At the same time the enfranchisement of the Indians was postponed.
The early industries of Cuba were, in the order of their importance, gold mining, stock raising, and agriculture. The last named was practised by the Spanish settlers only to an extent sufficient to supply their own needs for food. Stock raising, both horses and cattle, was engaged in much more extensively, not only to supply local needs but also to supply the needs of Spanish explorers and gold-seekers in Mexico and Central and South America, who had no time nor opportunity in their strenuous quest there to attend to such matters. But the first thought of the first settlers in Cuba was for gold, and for many years the mining of that metal was the most profitable occupation. Within the first twenty years of Spanish settlement more than 500,000 pesos in gold were secured. Indeed in a single year, 1531, the mines at Cuyeba produced 50,000 pesos. There were paying mines at Savanna, at Savanna de Guaimaro, at Puerto Principe, at Portillo, and elsewhere throughout the central districts of the island; some of them being ore veins in the mountains and some placers in the river beds. But in the course of twenty-five years the mines began to fail and new ones were not discovered, so that by De Soto's time the output of gold had become insignificant. This was doubtless one of the strong contributing causes of the migration of so many settlers from the island, the eagerness of men to seek new fields in Florida, and the general decline which Cuba then suffered.
There was some compensation for the decline of gold mining in the discovery of rich copper mines, though the full value of them was not at first realized. It was during the first administration of Guzman that copper was discovered at Cobre, near Santiago. (This was the place where, as formerly related, Alonzo de Ojeda, in gratitude for his restoration to health, presented a statue of the Holy Virgin to the native chief, Comendador, who had been his host and nurse and who had embraced Christianity. The statue was long famous as Our Lady of Cobre.) There is reason for believing that the Cuban natives had formerly worked those mines to a considerable extent, for traffic with other lands, though they themselves apparently did not make use of the metal in their own arts. The governor, Guzman, learning of the discovery, urged the development of the mines as the property of the discoverers, while the royal treasurer claimed that they should belong to the crown. A controversy was maintained for some time, with the result that the crown, lightly esteeming the value of the find, permitted private exploitation of the mines on a basis of ten per cent royalty. An assayer was sent from Spain to superintend the refining of the copper from the ore, and suitable works were erected. But little or nothing was done for several years. Then, after the administration of De Soto, and while the alcalde mayor, Ortiz, was acting governor, a great demand for copper arose, for the casting of cannon, in Spain, and interest in the mines was revived. A German engineer made an agreement with the local authorities to extract the copper and did so with great success. The ore was found to be very rich in copper and also to contain so much gold and silver that it would be worth working for those metals entirely apart from the copper. Under this expert management the mines became highly profitable.
In the administration of Angulo the German engineer had two mines assigned to him as his own, in return for which he instructed all comers—chiefly slaves who were sent to him for the purpose by the settlers—in the art of smelting and refining copper. Large quantities of the copper were at that time sent to Spain, and the first cannon mounted on La Fuerza, in Havana, were made of it, being cast at the royal foundry at Seville. It is related that one of these cannon, a small falconet, burst in the casting, and so badly injured the superintendent of the works that he had to be taken to a hospital, where he expressed a bad opinion of Cuban copper. This was the origin of the really unfounded belief which long prevailed, and which was recorded in technological works, that Cuban copper had some peculiar quality which rendered it difficult and even dangerous to work.
The first essays toward the growing of sugar, which has become one of the greatest industries of the island and in which Cuba surpasses any other equal area of the earth's surface, were made as already related in the closing years of Velasquez's administration. They did not at that time prove important, and nothing more was done until the first administration of Guzman. That enterprising governor, always ready to do anything to enrich himself, asked permission to import negro slaves free of royalty, in order to establish the sugar industry, promising under penalty to begin the construction of a sugar mill within two years and to complete it within four years. The crown considered that too long a time, and refused to waive the royalty on slaves for his benefit, whereupon he abandoned the scheme. Then Hernando de Castro made a similar proposal, reducing the time of completion of the mill to three years. The crown was more favorably impressed by his offer, and agreed to it, only to have him withdraw it. Juan de Avila and his brother Alfonso reported strongly in favor of establishing the industry in Cuba, and asked for a loan of capital from the royal treasury to finance the undertaking; but nothing was done. Chaves and Angulo also successively reported that Cuba was admirably adapted to the industry, and it was known that at that very time sugar growing was enormously successful in Hispaniola, Porto Rico and other islands. Yet by some strange fatality nothing practical was done, and the actual establishment of the great industry was postponed until near the end of the century.
The fiscal policy of the Spanish government was in early years not unfavorable to Cuba. Apart from a royalty of from five to ten per cent on precious metals mined, and on copper, and the royalty already described on the importation of negro slaves, and a customs duty of seven and a half per cent ad valorem on all imports, the island was free from taxation. The royalties in question were certainly not oppressive, and the fact that the Seville government imposed the same customs duty on all goods imported into Spain from Cuba made the tariff seem entirely just. Indeed, Cuba was favored above all other islands In the West Indies for many years. Thus after the middle of the sixteenth century one-third of what had been the import duty on goods received in Spain from the West Indies was required to be paid in the Indies as an export tax; but Cuba alone of all the islands was exempted from this arrangement. It was not, indeed, until the decline of Spain herself set in, with increasing expenses for maintaining an inefficient and often corrupt bureaucracy, and with sorely diminishing resources and revenues, that Cuba began to be detrimentally exploited for the sake of the Mother Country.
CHAPTER XV
We have said that the administration of Angulo marked the nadir of early Cuban history. It also marked the turning point, and the entrance of the island into international affairs. Not yet had the great duel between Spain and England begun; which in the next century was to have so momentous results. France was the enemy. Francis I became King of that country in 1515, when Velasquez was beginning the settlement of Cuba, and Charles I (Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire) became King of Spain in the following year; and in 1521, while Velasquez was still governor of Cuba, those two monarchs began the first of their series of six wars. Adopting the policy which was afterward pursued by England against Spain and against France, and by France against England, France struck