Jamaica: 1494-1661
From Jamaica: Its History, Constitution, and Topographical Description: With Geological and Meteorological Notes by John Jarrett Wood, 1884.
From: 1494 C.E. To: 1661 C.E.
Location: Jamaica
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From Jamaica: Its History, Constitution, and Topographical Description: With Geological and Meteorological Notes by John Jarrett Wood, 1884.
Chapter 1.— From 1494 to 1661.
Jamaica, an island in the Caribbean Sea, is situated between 17° 43' and 18° 32' N. lat, and 76° 11' and 78° 20' 60" W. long., about 5,000 miles south-west of England; 100 miles west of Hayti or St Domingo, and 90 miles south of Cuba; 445 miles north of Carthagena; 540 miles from Colon; and 310 from Cape Gracios à Dios in the Mosquito Territory.
Jamaica was discovered by Columbus on the morning of the 3rd of May, 1494, during his second expedition to the Western Hemisphere, otherwise called the New World. The island was found to be densely peopled with Indians, resembling in appearance and language the inhabitants of the contiguous mainland. Numerous canoes put off from the shore to meet Columbus, and resistance was offered by a large party of armed Indians when the Spanish boats proceeded to obtain soundings in the haven, now called Port Maria.
The voyagers then entered another harbour, named by them Ora Cabessa, and on experiencing a similar demonstration of opposition, several arbaletes were discharged at the Indians, who fled on witnessing the slaughter of their companions, and permitted the quiet landing of Columbus, who took formal possession of the island for his sovereign, Ferdinand of Spain.
Columbus named the island St Jago (pronounced Santiago=santeahgo) In honour of St James, the patron saint of Spain; but it has retained its original Indian name of Xaymaca, signifying, in the language of Florida, abundance of wood and water—hence it is often referred to as the Isle of Springs.
The Admiral remained ten days among the astonished natives, and then, on the 18th May, 1494, sailed for Cuba. On the 22nd June he again approached Jamaica, off Rio Bueno, and surveyed the coast (without landing) till the 20th August, when he reached San Miguel, now Cape Tiburon.
For eight years from this period nothing more was heard of Jamaica, and the peaceful Indians were yet a little while left in the tranquil occupation of their happy home. On the 14th July, 1502, Columbus, then on his fourth voyage, sailed from Hispaniola (Hayti) for Jamaica, but contrary and boisterous winds compelled his sheltering at Guanaja, or the isle of Pines.
The succeeding year saw the first European settlement on our present colony, the result of necessity rather than choice. Be turning from the disastrous expedition to Veragua, Columbus (with his son and brother in two ships) was driven for shelter to Maxaca, on the S. coast of Cuba; whence, after imperfectly repairing his vessels, he again put to sea, but was forced by stress of weather, and in a sinking state, on an uninhabited part of the N. coast of Jamaica, where neither water nor provisions were procurable.
Once more the intrepid navigator turned his shattered prows to the faithless deep: the trade wind drove him down the coast to the westward, and at St Ann's Bay, (called by the devout and weather-beaten mariner Santa Gloria), the sinking vessels were run on shore for the purpose of preserving the lives of the almost exhausted adventurers, who, protected by a reef of rocks, lashed the wrecks together, and beneath a canvas awning, found present shelter and repose.
Friendly communications were opened with the unsuspecting Indians, who supplied the shipwrecked seamen with abundance of provisions in exchange for beads, bells, or other trifles. Columbus acted on the fears of the Indians by threatening them with the Divine vengeance unless his wants were all complied with; and told them that an eclipse, which he knew was on the point of taking place, would be the signal of destruction.
Columbus despatched Diego Mendez, the secretary to the squadron, in company with a Genoese named Fieski, in two canoes (each furnished with six Castilians and ten Indians) to Ovando, the Governor of Hispaniola, then the capital of the Spanish western isles, distant 200 leagues from Jamaica, and with a strong adverse wind in their course.
Ovando, the Governor of Hispaniola, was the inveterate enemy of Columbus, and availed himself of the occasion of his rival's misfortune to heap insult and injury on the unfortunate Admiral; a vessel was despatched from Hispaniola to mock the sufferers with condolence and ironical regrets of inability to afford assistance, the commander of the reconnoitering ship (which purposely lay outside the reefs of Santa Gloria) having been expressly selected on account of his being the personal enemy of Columbus.
The suffering Spaniards, under the impression that they were neglected by the Viceregal and Home Authorities by reason of their fidelity to Columbus, mutinied, at the instigation of the brothers Pooras (one a commander, and the other a military treasurer). Columbus was accused of witchcraft, and several attempts to assassinate him as he lay confined to his bed with the gout were only frustrated by the bravery and presence of mind of his brother Bartholomew.
The mutineers seized on ten canoes which the Admiral had been preparing, plundered the natives of provisions wherever they could be found, forced several to accompany them in their efforts to cross the sea to Hispaniola, and then threw the islanders overboard with their baggage, to lighten the fragile barques in which they several times endeavoured to gain the seat of supreme government
When compelled to return by the storm to Jamaica, it was but to lay waste and destroy the unoffending Indians, and to make fresh attacks on Columbus and his faithful followers. At length, after losing several of their comrades in a battle with the Admiral's friends, headed by Diego Columbus, the renegades sued for permission to return to their allegiance.
A month later (28th June 1504), Columbus bade a final adieu to the Jamaica shores, in vessels prepared for his relief by Mendez and Fieski, whom he had despatched from Sauta Gloria to Hispaniola and Spain (as before stated) soon after the shipwreck of his vessels.
The peaceful Indians were now left for a brief period in the quiet possession of their lovely isle, but in three years after the death of Christopher Columbus—i.e. in 1509—the Spanish Court divided the Darien Government between Alfonso d'Ojeda, and Diego Nicnesa, authorizing them jointly and severally to make what use they pleased of the unoccupied island of Jamaica, as a garden whence provisions might be obtained, and as a nursery whence slaves might be procured to work in the mines.
The result of such orders, in such times, may be easily imagined. A contest arose between the provincial governors who should make the most of the unfortunate islanders and their country; towns and villages were laid waste and burned; the slightest resistance was revenged with indiscriminate slaughter; the caciques, or chiefs, murdered in cold blood; the women, who tempted the lust of the invaders, became victims to their sensuality; tortures of the most infernal nature were resorted to for the purpose of forcing a discovery of that which the Spaniards eagerly thirsted for—gold; and the adults and children of Jamaica who were not fortunate enough to escape to the recesses of the mountains, there to perish, or suffer from lingering famine, were borne away into captivity, to wear out a brief existence in the rayless mines, where their merciless oppressors sought wealth at an incalculable sacrifice of human life and misery.
While the rival governors, Diego and Nicnesa, were disputing about the adjudication of Jamaica, Diego Columbus (the son of the great navigator) stepped in to assert his prior claim, and accordingly despatched, in 1509, Don Juan d'Esquimel, with seventy men, to take possession of the island, and form a settlement at Santa Gloria (now Port Maria), a spot sacred to his filial affections, by reason of the shipwreck and sufferings of his father.
The seat of government was fixed on the banks of a small rivulet, termed Sevilla Nueva, to commemorate the successful termination of his suit against the crown, as recently decided by the Council of the Indies; and Ferdinand, another son of Columbus, was despatched from Spain to establish a monastery, and assist in the extension of the new colony.
The unwarlike Indians did not long offer resistance to the government which they found disposed to settle amongst them; they sank by degrees into the condition of serfs and slaves, and were regarded as mere ministers to the pleasures of their white brethren, who had now become the sole possessors of the soil
San Domingo, then in all its glory, graced by the presence of royal blood, and many of the nobility of Castile, and the seat of fashion in the New World, communicated its luxuriousness and taste to Sevilla Nueva (now called Sevilla d'Oro, from the gold brought thither by the natives), and a splendid city arose, rivalling in magnificence the towns of the mother country, but of which not a vestige remains, save the memory of the name,—the sugar estate, on the site of the former capital, being still termed Seville.
The chroniclers of the day represent the government of Don Juan d'Esquimel as mild in character towards the natives, and whom he encouraged in the culture of cotton, the introduction of the sugar cane, and the vine (claret was then made in Jamaica), which flourished in the virgin soil, and fruitful valleys and savannahs of the island. The cotton wool was celebrated in commerce for its quality as well as quantity; and the beautiful fabrics woven therefrom by the Indians became a source of wealth to the Spaniards, which, if they had been attended to, would have proved of more lasting value than the precious metals; to the avaricious search for which everything else was sacrificed.
Unhappily for the Indians, the rule of Don Esquimel was brief; he died, and was buried at Sevilla d'Oro, the beautiful bay on the north side of the island (now called St Ann's Bay). Don Esquimel bequeathed to posterity the remembrance of a name whose character offered a bright contrast to that of his sanguinary successors. Francisco de Garay, a Spaniard, who had long been a fortunate partner of the celebrated Diaz in the famed mine of St. Christopher, in Hispaniola, and whose insatiable avarice and cruelty were notorious, succeeded Esquimel as lieutenant of Diego Columbus in the government of Jamaica, which, in 1519 (ten years after its settlement), had risen so rapidly as to have been enabled to fit out three vessels, manned by two hundred and seventy men, to endeavour to take possession of a territory named Panuco, on the mainland.
In 1521, Sevilla d'Oro began to send off branches from the parent stock, and other new towns were founded—one on the Bay of Bluefields, named Oristan, from a place in Sardinia; the other, Melilla (supposed to be on the site where Marthæ-bræ now stands), so called after a small town in Barbary; and Puerto Esquivella, now called Old Harbour, where a ship-building yard had been established. The death of Diego Columbus (who, in 1523, had founded St. Jago de la Vega, or St. Jago of the Plains, to distinguish it from St. Jago de Cuba), in 1526, checked the improvement of the island; and the cruelties of the Governor, Don Pedro d'Esquimel—whom Las Casas declares to have been the greatest destroyer of the Indians—added to the destructive piratical warfare carried on by French corsairs, under the name of Flibustiers—all tended to cloud the rising and prosperity of Jamaica.
The intelligent author of the Annals of Jamaica, the Rev. G. W. Bridges, says that the consequence of such proceedings was, that the settlement of Oristan was destroyed in its infancy, Melilla was abandoned almost as soon as built, and the capital became the repeated prey of a lawless banditti. The erection of its buildings (many of them the creation of monastic munificence) was suspended—its trade interrupted—and such as were not bound by office to the seat of government deserted their half finished walls to seek a safer retreat in the southern districts of the island.
The Jamaica Almanac says that St. Jago de la Vega, or Spanish Town, was founded by Diego Columbus in 1523; but Mr. Bridges states its origin to have been owing to the affrighted Spaniards, who fled over the mountain range in 1538, in order to find a place of security from the plundering attacks of the French flibustiers, or corsairs ; while superstition suggested the name of the capital, under the impression that the patron saint of the island had been offended at the name (St. Jago) given by Columbus having been outlived by the native cognomen, Xaymaca, or Jamaica.
Security of person and property, the mainspring of national wealth and happiness, soon contributed to raise St. Jago de la Vega into a flourishing city: the neighbouring savannahs were quickly cultivated, the manufacture of sugar rapidly extended, and, in sixteen years from its foundation (1555), the capital of Jamaica gave the title of Marquis to the grandson of the extraordinary mariner who may be truly said to have discovered a New World, for the purpose of stimulating into renewed energy the enterprize and intelligence of the Old.
The wars between Charles V. and Henry of France were carried on in America by the latter under piratical leaders; and, after a desperate attack of the flibustiers, in 1554, who massacred all the inhabitants, sculptured arches and bare walls alone remained as evidence of the pristine splendour of the once celebrated city of Sevilla d'Oro. In 1568 it is stated that the native inhabitants of Jamaica bad entirely perished. Gage, writing in 1637, says,—"This island was once very populous, but it is now almost destitute of Indians, for the Spaniards have slain in it more than 60,000; insomuch that women, as well here as on the continent, did kill their children before they had given them birth, that the issues of their bodies might not serve so cruel a nation."
The Spaniards cultivated the lands in the neighbourhood of St Jago de la Vega, by means of the few slaves which they were enabled to purchase. In 1680, owing to the junction of the crowns of Spain and Portugal, the territorial right of Jamaica was vested in the royal house of Braganza, and the Portuguese who emigrated to the island gave new life and vigour to the settlement. In 1687 Jamaica was so overrun with the breed of horned cattle, swine, and horses, originally imported from Hispaniola, that a considerable trade arose in provisions, lard, and hides; the cultivation of sugar, which had been neglected after the destruction of Sevilla d'Oro, was resumed; and ginger, tobacco, and other articles were added to the planter's commercial stock.
In 1605, the famed wealth of Jamaica led to a predatory incursion on the settlement by Sir Anthony Shirley, who was cruising in the neighbourhood with a large fleet, but the invaders retired after plundering only those parts of the island that were most accessible. Colonel or Captain William Jackson made a descent upon Jamaica in 1644, from the Windward Islands, at the head of five hundred men; the Spaniards fought bravely at Passage Fort, but were beaten, and compelled to pay a large sum of money for the preservation of the capital.
Little or indeed nothing authentic is known of the internal history of the island up to the period of the British Conquest in 1655; the acquisitions of Spain on the Continent, and the vast quantity of precious metals thence derived, soon induced the neglect of the insular possessions of the mother country for the sake of the more showy but less substantial advantages derived from the conquest of Peru and Mexico. All accounts, however, agree in representing the Hidalgos of Jamaica as leading a life of slothful luxuriousness; and for the latter fifty years the north side of the island had been abandoned, and allowed to be covered with dense woods.
The population at the time of the British Conquest was stated by Venables to be no more than 1,600 Spaniards and Portuguese, with about an equal number of Mulattoes and negro slaves; and the higher class of inhabitants was composed of only eight families, who may be said to have divided the country between them into eight hatos or districts.
Cromwell, no less with a desire to rid himself of those disaffected towards his government, than with a hope of humbling the power of the Spanish Court, which favoured the restoration of Charles—aided by the popular feeling in England against the Spaniards for the condemnation of six hundred peaceable English settlers at St. Christopher's, to work in subterraneous bondage in the mines of Mexico in 1629—anxious to avenge the murder of a small English Colony who had quietly settled on the unoccupied island of Tortuga eight years after the peace of 1630, and a repetition of the same bloody tragedy twelve years afterwards at Santa Cruz, in which, as at Tortuga, even the women and children were put to the sword—and urged, moreover, by a desire to establish the maritime supremacy of England, by the foundation of colonies, and by putting an end to the exclusive right of navigating the American seas, as claimed by Ferdinand and Isabella—influenced, we say, by these and other motives, Cromwell fitted out a large armament, which he placed under the joint command of General Venables and Admiral Penn, with three controlling Commissioners, for the purpose of seizing on Hispaniola at the moment of declaring hostilities against Spain in Europe.
The expedition was hastily despatched, the ranks of the army filled from the gaols and prisons in England and Ireland, and the fleet so hurried out to sea that the store-ships were left behind. Barbadoes was the rendezvous for the expedition, which, to the number of 3,000 soldiers, including a troop of horse (raised at the expense of the Barbadians), with 30 sail of vessels, one half victuallers, departed from Barbadoes 31st March 1655.
At St. Christopher's the expedition was joined by 1,300 men, making, with those from Barbadoes, 5,000 Volunteers, whose grand aim was the plunder of the Spaniards. The capture of Hispaniola was prevented by the vigilance of the Spaniards, who slew 600 of the English, wounded 300, and drove 200 into the woods. To make amends for this discomfiture, Jamaica was attacked by a force of 6,500 men on the 3rd of May 1655, after being one hundred and forty-six years in the possession of Spain. Little resistance was offered, negotiations were entered into for the British occupation, and skilfully prolonged by the Spaniards until the latter removed all their valuables, so that when St. Jago de la Vega was entered by the British forces, about ten days after the landing, nothing but bare walls was found. The inhabitants carried off all their goods to the mountains, where, aided by their slaves, and by occasional reinforcements from Cuba, they long held out, but after some years were gradually annihilated, pardoned, or permitted to emigrate.
Spain in 1658 vainly endeavored to recover Jamaica. Some skill and energy would have enabled her to do so, owing to the disaffection and disorganization of the British army and occupants; but the rapid acquirement of wealth without the aid of industry, and almost solely by means of violence and craft, is as fatal to the strength and happiness of a nation as it is to that of an individual, and the Spanish government, after several unsuccessful efforts, abandoned all further prospects of repossessing themselves of the island.
During the early British occupation, much inconvenience and distress (as is the case in all infant settlements) were experienced. Some of the Spaniards and their negroes still occupied the mountains. This was the origin of the Maroons; and martial law was the sole judicature for a series of years, during which period little progress was made in cultivation, the soldiers being disinclined to turn their swords into ploughshares. Colonel D'Oyley, the Governor of Jamaica in 1661, wrote to Secretary Nicholas that a party of soldiers had just brought in from the mountains about 100 negroes, the remainder of some 2,000 who had infested the place since their arrival: he adds, ''the soldiers have received no pay since they came."
It would appear that bloodhounds were now introduced into Jamaica, and not, as was supposed, for the first time by Lord Balcarras. The two following Jamaica orders respecting bloodhounds and Bibles afford a curious picture of the manners of the times:—August 14, 1656, "An order, signed Edward D’Oyley, for the distribution to the army of 1,701 Bibles.'' August 26, 1659, “Order issued this day unto Mr. Peter Pugh, Treasurer, to pay unto John Hoy the sum of twenty pounds sterling, out of the impost-money, to pay for fifteene doggs, brought by him for the hunting of the negroes."
Under the government of Colonel D'Oyley, Jamaica became the headquarters of the pirates, or buccaneers, who infested these seas, and derived inordinate wealth from the plunder of the Spanish colonies, and the fleets laden with the precious metals on their return to Europe. It is stated that the tables and household utensils of the colonists were of silver and gold, and their horses sometimes shod with the former metal, loosely nailed on, to indicate the abundance of riches, and contempt for slight losses of wealth.
Negro slaves appear to have been imported by the British in pursuance of the policy of their predecessors, and in 1659 the population of the island was rated at 4,500 whites, and 1,400 negroes. Of the white population a chief proportion must have been outlaws and soldiers; for, according to the Board of Trade and State Paper Office Becords,—”two hundred of the rebels taken at Sedgemoor were transported to Jamaica." In 1656 the Council of State in England voted that 1000 girls, and as many young men, should be listed in Ireland and sent to Jamaica. The troops in that year were estimated at 4,600 foot and 800 horse. And the military strength of the island in 1662 consisted of five regiments, containing 2,083 men-at-arms.
That emigration from England began early is nevertheless correct Sir Thomas Modyford, in a letter dated Jamaica, January 30th, 1664, mentions the number of settlers recently arrived at 987, of which 855 came from England, and the remainder from Barbadoes. At the Restoration Charles sought to allay the feuds existing between the Republican and Royalist parties in Jamaica; the restraints of martial law were abolished, Courts of Session formed, and a Council of twelve, elected by the inhabitants, convened to aid the government. A partial survey took place; 12 districts were marked out; laws framed by the council for the government of the island; and taxes levied for the maintenance thereof.
Every encouragement was held out to new planters; and the wise regulations of Cromwell, exempting planters or ‘adventurers’ from paying excise or customs on any produce, &c. exported to Jamaica, or imported from thence into the dominions of the Commonwealth, for 10 years, was allowed; together with the abolition of hindrance or impressment on ships or mariners bound for Jamaica.
Wood, John Jarrett. Jamaica: Its History, Constitution, and Topographical Description: With Geological and Meteorological Notes. McCartney & Wood, 1884.
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