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Updated: June 10, 2025
This simile and some probably incorrect data from the Geography of Bayaeete led Friar Iñigo Abbad to estimate the number of aboriginal inhabitants at the time of the discovery at 600,000, a number for which there is no warrant in any of the writings of the Spanish chroniclers, and which Acosto, Brau, and Stahl, the best authorities on matters of Puerto Rican history, reject as extremely exaggerated.
The only difference between them consists in the possession of a little more or less property, and, perhaps, the rank of a subaltern officer in the militia." Abbad makes some suggestions for increasing the population.
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.
Friar Iñigo Abbad, who was in the island at the time, gives the following description of this tempest: "About a quarter to eleven of the night of the 28th of August the storm began to be felt in the capital of the island.
Replied I, "By thy life, I am rich in naught save ignorance! Quoth he, "O Hammad, I am 'Abbad bin Tamim bin Sa'labah and indeed Allah giveth thee thy liberty and leadeth thee to a happy bride and spareth thee confusion."
"These insects," says Abbad, quoting from Herrera, "destroyed the yucca or casabe, of which the natives made their bread, and killed the most robust trees by eating into their roots, so that they turned black, and became so infected that the birds would not alight on them. The fields were left barren and waste as if fire from heaven had descended on them.
On November 16, 1520, Baltazar Castro, in the name of the crown officers of San Juan, reported to the emperor: "The City of Puerto Rico has been transferred to an islet which is in the port where the ships anchor, a very good and healthy location." Among the calamities referred to by Friar Abbad as visitations of Providence was one which the Spaniards had brought upon themselves.
Fray Inigo Abbad, who wrote a work on Porto Rico, published in Madrid in 1878, says that when the Spaniards first came to Porto Rico "it was as thickly populated as a beehive, and so beautiful that it resembled a garden." Fray Inigo says that the color of the Indians of Porto Rico was the copper color known to the aborigines of America, though they were of a sallow and somewhat darker complexion.
Abbad tells us that the Spaniards were victorious, but the buccaneers continued to occupy all the islands which they had occupied before. In 1634 they took possession of Curagao, Aruba, and Bonaíre, near the coast of Venezuela, and established themselves in 1638 in San Eustaquio, Saba, San Martin, and Santa Cruz. In 1640 the Governor of Puerto Rico sought to expel them from the last-named island.
These insects invaded the houses and tormented the inmates night and day. Their bite caused acute pains to adults and endangered the lives of children. The affliction was general," says Abbad, "but God heard the people's vows and the pests disappeared."
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