Benzoni and the New World

Girolamo Benzoni's The History of the New World is a fascinating snapshot of various regions of the Spanish colonial empire in the mid-16th century. Despite his overwhelming anti-Spanish bias and lack of style, Benzoni visited the Antilles, Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Peru, Guatemala and parts of Central America. While much of the regions he visited were depopulated (like Hispaniola) or areas of recent conflict or abandonment, due to the violent greed of the Spanish), Benzoni's perspective is fascinating. For instance, his description of Taino customs of Hispaniola and Indians of Venezuela are, despite occasionally being derivative of early Spanish customs. His description of Indian customs in Hispaniola, for instance, suggests these practices were very much alive, despite the demographic collapse of the indigenous peoples. Benzoni's presence in Hispaniola also provides some descriptions of the real fear the Spanish felt with the large African maroon population on the island. Similarly, the attacks by African runaways in Panama against the Spanish indicates just how fragile this colonial empire was. Indigenous people did not sit idly by and kindly agree to give away all their land, resources and labor. Nor were enslaved Africans eagerly serving their white masters. The state of insecurity, depopulation (partly fueled by Indians abandoning settlements to avoid whites), and conflicts among the Spanish themselves are clearly illustrated by Benzoni's experiences. One only wishes Benzoni provided a little more detail about parts of his travels, such as the caravel carrying Indian slaves from South America to Puerto Rico and Hispaniola.

Devastation of the Indies

Due to our ongoing interest in the history of the indigenous population of the Spanish Caribbean, and their legacy today, we have been endeavoring to read more of the 16th century Spanish source material. While de las Casas may have been poorly translated by Briffault in this text, we think the "gist" of de las Casas can still be useful here for understanding how the Spanish conquest of the mainland fed captives into Hispaniola, Cuba, and Puerto Rico for decades. Sure, de las Casas is unreliable on numbers and the often confusing translation misrepresents or complicates some of his accounts, but there are numerous references to the slave trade of indigenous populations across the region. Indeed, according to our author, several Indian slaves could be traded for a horse, pigs, or other items and then be used as laborers for gold mines, agriculture, or domestics in Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. 

Due to the text's emphasis on Spanish cruelty and the depopulation of the regions conquered by them, de las Casas refers to only 200 "Indian" survivors in Puerto Rico and Jamaica. Since his numbers are often imprecise or unreliable (claiming, for instance, that millions of Indians were sold in the slave trade by the time he was writing in the 1540s), and he repeats some of the same figures, we believe that it is likely that the "surviving" indigenous populations of Hispaniola and Cuba may have been much higher than 200. Particularly when one considers the large numbers of "Indians" brought to Hispaniola and Puerto Rico from the coast of Venezuela, Yucatan, Bahamas, and Florida, there must have been a large number of "Indians" who, at least for some time, maintained and "Indian" population in the Greater Antilles. Since genetic data suggests Puerto Ricans descend, in part, from pre-colonial Caribbean populations, and circum-Caribbean "Indian" populations were brought to the islands as captives, we think the genetic diversity of the Hispanic Caribbean's "Amerindian" component probably also reflects populations from northern South America, the Yucatan, Florida, and the Gulf of Paria. 

In short, de las Casas remains a powerful source on the demographic collapse of "Indies" caused by Spanish expansion and conquest. As for "Indian" survival in the Caribbean, he is weak on details, but testifies to the large-scale slave trade of indigenous populations across the hemisphere. While he turns "Indians" into reasonable beings with few flaws, constant victims of Spanish avariciousness and violence, he also describes how the separation of families, forced relocations, arduous labor regimes, and negative impact on food production must have contributed to the demographic collapse of the hemispheres. While those interested in indigenous survival in the Spanish Caribbean must take this into account, clearly not all "Indians" disappeared by the second half of the 16th century.