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Updated: June 22, 2025
And so died the Cacique Hatuey. Four hundred years later, the Cuban Government named a gunboat Hatuey, in his honor. The Velasquez expedition, in the following year, founded Baracoa, now a small city on the northern coast near the eastern extremity of the island. It is a spot of exceeding scenic charm. It was established as the capital city, but it held that honor for a few years only.
Many died because it was thought to be cheaper to work them to death and get fresh ones than to feed them. After a time the Indians began to have doubts, and when the friars enlarged on the glories of heaven, and described it as the abode of Spaniards, more of them than Hatuey were anxious to be allowed to go to the other place.
Some time before the expedition of Velasquez to Cuba, a cacique of the province of Guatiba, in Hispaniola, named Hatuey, to escape from the tyranny of the Spaniards, went over to the eastern end of Cuba with as many of his people as he could induce to accompany him; the distance between the two islands being only eighteen leagues.
He went out to see for himself, and wrote voluminously of his experiences. He also wrote with exceeding frankness, and often with great indignation. He writes about Hatuey. The inference is that this Cacique, or chieftain, fled from Haiti to escape Spanish brutality, and even in fear of his life.
A party of Spaniards landing upon the island not long after, Hatuey was taken prisoner, and condemned to be burnt alive because he refused to be converted! "Was conduct ever more affronting? With all the ceremony settled! With the towel ready" and all the other apparatus for a first-class baptism, and the annexation to Rome and heaven of a tribe!
James Velasquez set out from Salvatierra de la Zavana in November 1511, and landed at a harbour called Palina, in the territories of Hatuey, who stood on his defence, taking advantage of the woods, where the Spaniards could not use their horses.
A rich and potent Cacique named Hatuey was retired into the Isle of Cuba to avoid that Slavery and Death with which the Spaniards menaced him; and being informed that his persecutors were upon the point of landing in this Island, he assembled all his Subjects and Domestics together, and made a Speech unto them after this manner.
The first establishment of the whites was in 1511 when, according to the orders of Don Diego Columbus, together with the conquistador and poblador Velasquez, he landed at Puerto de Palmas, near Cape Maysi, then called Alfa y Omega, and subdued the cacique Hatuey who, an emigrant and fugitive from Hayti, had withdrawn to the eastern part of the island of Cuba, and had become the chief of a confederation of petty native princes.
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