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The alcalde and his secretary, who came out in the street to see what the noise was about, were made prisoners and placed in the stocks, where they were soon joined by a number of Spaniards who lived in the town. The next day the Republic of Boriquén was proclaimed.
The news spread like wildfire, and from that day the Indians were in open rebellion and began to take the offensive, shooting their arrows and otherwise molesting every Spaniard they happened to meet alone or off his guard. The following episode related by Oviedo illustrates the mental disposition of the natives of Boriquén at this period.
He landed in Boriquen, as Porto Rico was then called, and began a general subjugation and slaughter of the natives.
She was from Boriquen she would return in a canoe if she were free! Better drown than live with the utterly un-understandable only that they ate and drank and laid hold of women whether these would or would not, and were understandable that far! Gods! At first she thought them gods; now she doubted. They were magicians. If she were free if she were free if she were free! Home Boriquen!
The attacks seemed to grow bolder, and not till Governor Mendoza himself led an expedition to Vieques, in which the cacique Yaureibó was killed, did the Indians move southeastward to Santa Cruz. That the Caribs inhabiting the islands Guadeloupe and Dominica made common cause with the fugitives from Boriquén is not to be doubted.
The ambassador of Philip III in London negotiated a treaty of peace with James I, which was signed and ratified in the early part of 1604. So ended the sixteenth century in Boriquén.
Guacanagari made a violent gesture as though he would break a spell. "Where could they come from with all that they have except from heaven? Who can plan against gods? It is sin to think of it! El Almirante will make you happy, Boriquen woman!" We left the women.
There were in Boriquén, as there are among all primitive races, certain individuals, the embryos of future church functionaries, who were medicine-man, priest, prophet, and general director of the moral and intellectual affairs of the benighted masses, but that is all we know of them.
Friar Abbad, in the fourth chapter of his history, gives us a description of the character and customs of the people of Boriquén taken wholly from the works of Oviedo, Herrera, Robertson, Raynal, and others. Like most of the aboriginal inhabitants of America, the natives of Boriquén were copper-colored, but somewhat darker than the inhabitants of the neighboring islands.
San Martin, Dominica, Guadaloupe, San Juan the Boriquen whence had come, long ago, that Catalina whom Guacanagari aided and untouched at, or under the horizon, many another that the Admiral had named; Santa Maria la Antigua, Santa Cruz, Santa Ursula, Montserrat, Eleven Thousand Virgins, Marigalante and all beside. What a world! Plato his Atlantis. How truly old we are God only knows!
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