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Two years later he sailed for the Peninsula and anchored in Bayona in April, 1514. King Ferdinand received him graciously and conferred on him the titles of Adelantado of Bemini and la Florida, with civil and criminal jurisdiction on land and sea. The fleet for the destruction of the Caribs consisted of three caravels.
A command is given to these dogs who form the vanguard, and the natives at the mere sight of these formidable Molossians and the unaccustomed sound of their baying, break their ranks and flee as though horrified and stupefied by some unheard-of prodigy. This does not occur in fighting against the natives of Caramaira or the Caribs, who are braver and understand more about war.
Next a swarm of Caribs began to load upon lighters the thousands of bunches of bananas heaped upon the shore and row them out to the steamer. The Karlsefin had no passenger list, and was soon done with the attention of the authorities. The purser declared that the steamer would remain at anchor until morning, taking on her fruit during the night.
We place no more value on rough gold than on a lump of clay, before it has been transformed by the workman's hand into a vase which pleases our taste or serves our need. These Caribs also make artistic potteries which we obtain in exchange for the products of our harvests, as for example our prisoners of war, whom they buy for food, or our stuffs and different articles of furniture.
Polygamy exists among most of the tribes, and is the great bane of Indian domestic life. Among the Caribs, especially, the woman is always in bondage to her male relations. To her father, brother, or husband she is a slave, and seldom has any power in the disposal of herself. Among the Macusis, the custom of selling even their near relations prevails.
In his ignorant zeal for promulgating that faith, he proposed to establish an exchange of the cannibal pagans as slaves, against live stock to be furnished to the colony, fancying that these slaves would be thus converted to the Catholic faith. The sovereigns, however, did not agree with his ideas, but ordered that the Caribs should be converted like the rest of the islanders.
It is what we now call Porto Rico. He was not able to communicate with any of the inhabitants, as they lived in such fear of the Caribs that they all fled. All these islands were new to the Admiral and all "very beautiful and of very good land, but this one seemed better than all of them."
Their bloody harryings of the cities of the Main were not more barbarous than the inroads of Spain upon the Netherlands or upon the Caribs in these same American lands.
The term Brown Indians has been proposed to distinguish the races of Mexico, Central and South America, from the Red Indians of the north; but it is a too general term, as it includes not only the highly-civilised Aztecs, Mayas, and Peruvians, but the much ruder Caribs of the eastern coasts of South America and the Antilles, who were widely removed from them in race and language.
Toward the end of the eighteenth century there still existed a few hundred of the race in the island of St. Vincent. They were known as the black Caribs, because they were largely mixed with fugitive negro slaves from other islands and with the people of a slave-ship wrecked on their coast in 1685.