Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/62

42 among them from the skies, he succeeded in repressing every insult and wrong, and for a time deferred violence and the shedding of blood. The first impression which the Spaniards received of the inhabitants of those islands earliest visited was, that their docility and feminine qualities wholly disabled them even of resentment, and would make all aggression on their part an impossibility. This impression continued, and was for a time strengthened on the second voyage, opening other islands, — with an exception, however, soon to be stated. Those fair and luxuriant regions, free of wild beasts, spontaneously yielding the supplies of life to the indolent and happy natives, suggested the image of Paradise to the care-worn and passionate rovers from the Old World. It was natural that the unorthodox fancy should present itself, even to the minds of ecclesiastics, that these favored beings, though in human form, might possibly not be of the lineage of Adam, nor sharers in the primeval curse, as they seemed so innocent and guileless, and needed not to win their bread by the sweat of their brow. When the prow of Columbus was headed for his return to Spain, as he stopped on his way at the eastern end of Hispaniola, a party of the natives, whom he describes as armed and ferocious in aspect and treacherous in their manifestations, presented themselves on the shore and provoked hostilities. Here the first acts of violence occurred, and the first blood was shed on both sides. But Columbus, so far as he could understand the communications made to him in answer to his questions as to the regions where gold abounded, received information of other neighboring islands, — afterwards known as the Caribbean, or Antilles, — where the natives were predatory, piratical, and warlike, invading their neighbors for slaughter and captives, and addicted to cannibalism. Of these more brave and savage natives he was afterwards to have dire experience. We may therefore rest with the grateful conclusion, that the first intercourse between the representatives of the two