Conquest and Indian Slavery in the Spanish Caribbean

For all interested in learning about the origins of enslaved indigenous peoples in the Spanish circum-Caribbean, Woodruff Stone's Captives of Conquest: Slavery in the Early Modern Spanish Caribbean is an enlightening read. Captives of Conquest demonstrates how central Indian labor and the commodification of their very lives was to the process of Spanish colonial expansion from 1492-1550. It also highlights how the Caribbean laid the foundations for Spanish America through the role of slave raiding, slave auxiliaries, and slave trading for Spanish exploration and travel to new parts of the Americas. The often weak authority of the Spanish Crown and the evolving discourse on Indian rights, labor regimes, and "race" can be seen in the pivotal half-century or so in which hundreds of thousands of Indians were, voluntarily or involuntarily, participants in the creation of European colonialism in the western hemisphere. 

Our interest in reading this work was mainly with regard to the degree or extent foreign Indian slaves intermarried and interacted with local indigenous populations of the Caribbean and the increasingly important African population of the Greater Antilles. Citing various colonial records on the trade in Indians from Tierra Firme, Mexico, Brazil, Central America, Florida, and beyond, Woodruff Stone presents clear evidence for a vast scale of slave trading that brought more Indians to Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Jamaica. Thus, despite the dwindling local indigenous population in Hispaniola or Puerto Rico, the slave trade of Indians from throughout the circum-Caribbean introduced thousands more. Their labor was essential for Spanish sugar plantations, gold mining, and domestic service, especially since African slaves were more expensive. Despite their numerical significance, high mortality rates and the lack of sufficient records (after all, many Indians were victims of illegal Spanish slave raids, including against allies of the Spanish in Venezuela), they continued to be important ever after 1542. Indeed, this proves that some of the colonial reports of Hispaniola or Puerto Rico lacking Indian populations after 1550 were partly inspired by officials eager to hide their continued enslavement of indigenous peoples. 

Drawing on pre-contact Caribbean mobility, trade, and cultural networks, Captives of Conquest establishes that the indigenes of the region had long-established connections. However, it appears that the rapid influx of thousands of foreign Indians from places as disparate as Florida and Mexico or the Yucatan and the interior of Venezuela may have further weakened Taino caciques. If local caciques, whose authority was already eroded by the repartimiento of 1514 on Hispaniola and rapid population declines and dislocations caused by the Spanish, were also losing authority because of the introduction of thousands of foreign Indians, then we are inclined to think locals had to reconceive local political and social traditions. Even if foreign Indians were slaves and locals part of an encomienda system, in practice the distinction between a free and an enslaved Indian might not have meant much. Thus, we are inclined to think foreign Indians who survived may have joined local Indian communities and helped create new identities. Evidence of this can be seen in Yucatecan and Taino marriages in colonial Cuba. According to Captives of Conquest, some of these populations also intermarried with Africans, thereby adding more cultural diversity. 

Our guess is that Puerto Rico experienced something similar as local Indians intermarried or formed new communities with those from the Lesser Antilles, the Bahamas, Yucatan, and Tierra Firme. Perhaps this may explain why the cacique of Mona, for instance, was a native of Tierra Firme living in San German during the 1590s. If non-local Indians could rise to positions of authority, and the Taino were always mobile and engaged in long-distance trade, perhaps foreign Indians were more assimilable than we can detect from the Spanish accounts. Thus, perhaps the enslaved Indians enumerated in the de Lando census of 1530, who already outnumbered "free" Indians in Puerto Rico, may have included people who adopted local Indian practices or joined their communities. Or later did so, possibly contributing to the maintenance of Indian communities and practices that were later adopted by all the free peasantry of the island.