Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/67

Rh body of the natives, perhaps over-estimated at a hundred thousand.

Here for the first time, as an example to be followed all along the course of the hostilities between the Europeans of every nationality and the natives, we find the white men artfully engaging the help as allies of one tribe of savages against other hostile tribes, — a dismal aggravation of all the iniquities and atrocities of a wild warfare. In the subsequent swoops of Spanish marauders and invaders in South America and in Mexico, it is safe to affirm that there were instances in which the victory was won for them by their savage allies, numbering hundreds to each one of the foreign soldiery, without whose aid, with the consequent discord and despair which it caused to the wild foe, the Spaniards would have been vanquished or starved. Columbus availed himself of the former friendship of the cacique Guacanagari, to engage his tribe against the conspiring chieftains; and, by thus fomenting animosities among the enemy, won his triumph. The horse had been a most terrific spectacle to the natives; but the bloodhound, who sprang with his unrelaxing fangs to the neck of his victim, and then disembowelled him, proved to be a deadlier instrumentality. The wild hordes quailed before their tormentors; and after they had yielded in the palsy of an abject despair, they were allowed to make their peace only by submitting to a severe quarterly tribute to be paid to the Spanish crown. In this opening act of an ever deepening and lengthening tragedy, appeared the first in the line of successive nobles and patriots, of wise and great men, who have asserted themselves at intervals as organizers and heroes for the people of the woods, to resist the outrages of the white man. Caonabo was the lofty-souled patriot of Hispaniola. A captive with unsubdued and scornful spirit, he died on his voyage to Spain.

In a voyage made by Alonzo de Ojeda from Seville, in 1499, — in which he was accompanied by the Florentine