But when it came to other charges, they could not be got rid of so easily. Thus, he had refused to pay an apothecary for a dose of medicine. He had called Hurtado's nephew a Jew! He had called certain citizens "conspirators" because they were forming some sort of a secret organization. He had arrested a priest for acting disrespectfully toward him. These were indeed serious matters; particularly when the irate Hurtado produced voluminous affidavits, from parents, physicians, clergy, and whom not, to prove that his nephew like himself was a good Christian. So for these things Chaves was thrown into prison, and even, it is said, bound with heavy fetters, until he should pay the fines which were imposed upon him.
It must be recorded in Chaves's favor that he was unable to pay these fines. Indeed, he seems not to have had means sufficient to employ a lawyer to defend him, wherefore he was compelled to conduct his own case; which he was quite competent to do, being a licentiate of the bar. There was, then, of course no thought of his being able to influence the course of justice by the use of money, as De Avila was supposed to have done. Whether he was actually so poor, or whether his fortune had been so invested in Cuba that he was unable at once to realize upon it, does not appear. In charity we may accept the former theory, as the more creditable to him. At any rate, after two years of litigation and imprisonment, he secured a final reduction of the fines levied against him to a little more than 100,000 maravedi, which he was required to pay within a year. This trifling amount he contrived to raise and so regained his freedom; going thereafter back to Cuba to settle up his personal affairs there, and thence to Peru, to engage no more in Cuban politics.
Apart from his prosecution of Chaves, the first act of Gonzalo de Angulo on assuming the governorship was to attempt a radical solution of the Indian problem. This he did by proclaiming the full and universal emancipation of all natives, however and by whomsoever held. Seeing how strenuously and vociferously similar action had been resisted only a few years before, as sure to be ruinous to the island, it is worthy of remark that this provoked no remonstrances and caused no economic disturbance. The explanation is simple. The former proposals for emancipation included slaves who had been brought to Cuba from other lands, while this one applied only to natives. Now the latter, through disease, fighting, and other causes, had been steadily decreasing in numbers, until they were now practically a negligible quantity. They probably numbered not more than twenty-five hundred in the entire island. It really mattered little, from an industrial point of view, whether they were enslaved or free. They were in fact set free, in good faith, and then practically disappeared. They did not relapse into primitive barbarism, but they lived in squalor, most of them, and gradually died out.
Not all of them, however, suffered such a fate. Some settled on lands near if not actually among the Spanish colonists, adopted the ways of civilization, and prospered. They acquired freehold of land and houses, kept herds of cattle, built ships and engaged in commerce. Some of them intermarried with Spanish families, and the offspring of such unions often rose to honorable rank in society and the state.
The question of slavery was not by any means disposed of by this emancipation of the native Indians. There was a much larger number of slaves in the island who had been brought thither from other countries, including both insular and continental Indians and African negroes. Governor Angulo was directed to order their emancipation and repatriation at the same time with the others. But he withheld the decree. These foreign slaves were far more numerous than the natives and were consequently more important to industry and commerce. They had not been simply "assigned" to owners, like the Cuban Indians, but had been purchased outright for cash, like any other merchandise, and were legally as much the property of their owners as land, houses or cattle. In view of this circumstance, Angulo declined to proclaim their emancipation.
CHAPTER XIV
The administration of Gonzalo Perez de Angulo marked the lowest point in the early history of Cuba. That was not because of the character of his administration, which was indeed better than some of its predecessors, but because various processes militating against the progress and prosperity of the island then reached their culmination. Foremost among these was the migration to Florida, Mexico, Peru and other lands, which were richer, or were reputed to be richer, than the Pearl of the Antilles. Cuba contained no such cities and treasures as those of Mexico and Peru; no such traditions as that of Florida's Fountain of Youth pertained to her. The island had been explored from end to end, and its resources were known; though by no means appreciated. The adventurers of those days were not inclined to engage in agriculture, even in so fertile a land as Cuba, when the gold and gems of the Incas were within reach. With the decline and practical disappearance of the Indians, and the increasing difficulties of the African or other slave trade, the scarcity of labor disinclined the Spanish settlers even to raise cattle. The middle of the sixteenth century saw, therefore, a menacing emigration from Cuba to other lands which threatened to leave the island uninhabited.
Statistics of those days are scanty and not altogether trustworthy. It was the custom to report merely the number of householders or land-owners or heads of families in a place, leaving it to be estimated how many members each family contained. An exact census of the island in Angulo's time would astonish the reader of to-day with the meagreness of the settlements which had been effected in the course of forty years.
Of the seven cities which Velasquez had founded—they were called cities, and we must through courtesy retain the name—Santiago was still the largest, and was the capital. It probably contained at the period of which we are writing fewer than five hundred Spaniards and other Europeans. De Avila saw only two hundred assembled to welcome him on his arrival as Governor. The number of houses and other buildings was less than a hundred. The first town hall and church which were built there were structures of logs and thatch, which were burned by a fire which destroyed most of the place in 1528. Four years later the Franciscan monastery and other buildings shared a like fate. The Spanish government then urged the erection of buildings of stone with tiled roofs, and a few such were erected. At the end of Guzman's second administration there were perhaps a dozen such, of which Guzman himself owned two. The harbor boasted a single wharf or pier, of logs and earth, near which for protection two small cannon were placed behind an earthwork.
Such was the Cuban capital in 1550. Three years later, in 1553, a French privateer entered the harbor, silenced the two cannon, and landed a company of four hundred men, who outnumbered the entire population of the place. These freebooters took possession of Santiago and lived there at their ease, at the expense of the people, during the whole month of July. Then, having exacted from the inhabitants a ransom of what would be about $80,000 in modern currency, they departed, leaving the place uninjured save for the depletion of its people's purses. Following this visitation there was a numerous exodus of the inhabitants, to Bayamo and other places; some leaving the island altogether.
Havana was at this time the second city of the island, and was steadily rising toward first place. It had been the last of the seven cities to be founded by Velasquez, and was now occupying its third and final site. It was first planted in July, 1515, near the mouth of the Guines or Mayabeque River, on the south shore of Cuba; that shore then being the favorite part of the island for the sake of trade with Jamaica and the South American continent. But the location was unhealthful, the swarms of mosquitoes particularly being intolerable, and two years later the city was transferred almost directly across the island to the north shore. This second site was near the mouth of the Almendares River, near the present town of Vedado, and was found to be vastly preferable to the former one. It was impossible, however, that the superb harbor on which the city now fronts should be neglected. It had been discovered in 1508 by Sebastian de Ocampo, while circumnavigating the island, and had been called Carenas. Accordingly in 1519 the young city of Havana, bearing the Indian name of that province of the island, was transported thither.
Credible tradition has it that the first meeting of the Municipal Council was held under a huge ceiba tree,