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They died of disease, sarampion, rheum, smallpox, and ill-usage, or escaped to other islands with the Caribs. The few that remain are scattered here and there among the Spaniards on their little plantations. Some serve as soldiers. They do not speak their language, because they are mostly born in the island, and they are good Christians." This is the last we read of the Boriquén Indians.
It is surmised that they occupied them at the time of the advent of the Phoenicians in this hemisphere, and Dr. Calixto Romero, in an interesting article on Lucúo, the god of the Boriquéns, mentions a tradition referring to the arrival of these ancient navigators, and traces some of the Boriquén religious customs to them.
It stands in the plaza of San José in the capital and was cast from the brass cannon left behind by the English after the siege of 1797. The conquest of Boriquén was far from being completed with the death of Guaybána.
Having rejoined the other caravels, they all sailed over to the eastern part of Hispaniola, and thence to a little island called Mona by the Indians, which lies between Hispaniola and St John de Boriquen.
Pinzón transferred his rights and titles in the appointment to Martin Garcia de Salazar, in company with whom he stocked the island with cattle; but it seems that Boriquén did not offer sufficient scope for the gallant pilot's ambition, for we find him between the years 1506 and 1508 engaged in seeking new conquests on the continent.
After Esquivél's departure on the conquest of Jamaica, Ponce was advanced to the rank of captain, and it was while he was in the Higüey province that he learned from the Boriquén natives, who occasionally visited the coast, that there was gold in the rivers of their as yet unexplored island.
"Guaybána," he says, "had been able, after long preparation, to bring together between 5,000 and 6,000 warriors of these 200 had been slain, and an equal number, perhaps, wounded and made prisoners, so that, to make up the number of 11,000, at least as many Caribs as the entire warrior force of Boriquén must have come to the island in the short space of time elapsed since the first battle.
After the death of Guaybána no other cacique ever attempted an organized resistance, and the partial uprisings that took place for years afterward were easily suppressed. The report of the arquebus that laid Guaybána low was the death-knell of the whole Boriquén race.
Oviedo and Navarro, whose narratives of these events are repeated by Abbad, state that the Boriquén Indians, despairing of being able to vanquish the Spaniards, called the Caribs of the neighboring islands to their aid; that the latter arrived in groups to make common cause with them, and that some time after the battle of Coayúco, between Caribs and Boriqueños, 11,000 men had congregated in the Aymacó district.
It was Nemesis, therefore, and not the mere lust of plunder, that guided the Boriquén Indians and their Carib allies on their invasions of Puerto Rico. Diego Columbus during his visit in 1514 had founded a settlement with 50 colonists along the borders of the Daguáo and Macáo rivers on the eastern coast.
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