The History of Cuba, vol. 1

Cuba; America: America; Cuba. The two names are inseparable. The record of each is in a peculiar sense identified with that of the other. Far more than any other land the Queen of the Antilles is associated with that Columbian enterprise from which the modern and practical history of the Western Hemisphere is dated. In Cuba the annals of America begin.

This island was not, it is true, the first land discovered by Columbus after leaving Spain. It was at least the fifth visited and named by him, and it was perhaps the tenth or twelfth which he saw and at which he touched in passing. But in at least three major respects it had the unquestionable primacy among all the discoveries of his first, second and third voyages, while in his own estimation it was not surpassed in importance by the main land of the continent which he finally reached in his fourth and last expedition. It was the first land visited or seen by him of the identity of which there has never been the slightest question. It was the first considerable land discovered by him, the first which was worth while sailing across the ocean to discover, and it was by far the most important of all found by him in his first three adventures. It was, also, the first and indeed the only land which caused him to believe that the theory of his undertaking had been vindicated and that the supreme object of his quest had been attained. Let us, in order to appreciate the transcendent significance of his discovery of Cuba, briefly consider these three circumstances.

We must remember with respect to the first that the identity of Columbus's first landing place has been much disputed, and indeed has never been determined to universal satisfaction: We know that it was an island of small or moderate size. Columbus himself called it in one place "small" and in another "fairly large." It was level, low-lying, well watered, with a large central lagoon, which may or may not have been a permanent feature, seeing that his visit was in the rainy season, when any depression in the land was likely to be flooded. It was certainly one of the Bahama archipelago. But that extensive group comprises 36 islands, 687 cays, and 2,414 rocks. Which of all these was it upon which the Admiral landed, which was called by the natives Guanahani, and which, with his characteristic religious fervor, Columbus immediately renamed San Salvador, the Island of the Holy Saviour?

The distinction has been claimed, by authorities worthy of respectful consideration, for no fewer than five. Down to the middle of the Nineteenth Century the weight of opinion and tradition favored Cat Island, and upon most maps and charts it was designated as "Guanahani, or San Salvador." It is by far the largest and the northernmost of the five islands in question. Next, to the southeast, lies Watling's Island, to which the distinction of having been the scene of Columbus's landfall has now for half a century been most generally given, and upon maps it is generally named San Salvador. It is the only one of the five which stands out in the Atlantic, beyond the generally uniform line of the Bahamas, as a sort of advance post to greet the voyager from the east. Samana, south by east from Watling's, also called Attwood's Cay, was selected as the true Guanahani by some officers of the United States Coast Survey. Mariguana, further in the same direction, was proclaimed "La Verdadera Guanahani" by F. A. de Varnhagen in a scholarly treatise published in 1864 at Santiago de Chili. Finally, Grand Turk Island, at the southeastern extremity of the Bahama chain, and just north of the coast of Hayti, was designated by Navarrete, in 1825, and by various other authorities, chiefly American, at later dates.

MONUMENT ON SUPPOSED FIRST LANDING PLACE OF COLUMBUS, WATLING'S ISLAND

The chief interest of these speculations for present consideration in this writing is their bearing upon the subsequent course of Columbus, the identity of the next islands which he visited, and finally the point at which he first touched the coast of Cuba. If the original landfall was on Cat or on Watling's Island, then the second land visited, which Columbus called Santa Maria de la Concepcion, was probably either the tiny island now known as Concepcion or the larger Rum Cay; the third, called by him Ferdinandina or Fernandina, was either Great Exuma or Long Island; the fourth, Isabella, may have been either Long Island or Crooked Island, according to whether Fernandina was Great Exuma or Long Island; and the coast of Cuba was reached at some point between Punta Lucrecia and Port Nuevitas. On the other hand, if Grand Turk Island was first reached, the second land would naturally have been, as Navarrete held, at Gran Caico; the third at Little Inagua; the fourth at Great Inagua; and Cuba would have been reached somewhere between Cape Maysi and Sama Point. To me it seems decidedly the more probable that the former course was pursued, and I have accordingly adopted the theory that Columbus first landed in Cuba in the region between Nuevitas and Punta Lucrecia.

The second circumstance which I have mentioned scarcely requires discussion. The first, second and third voyages of Columbus were confined to discoveries and explorations of the West India Islands, and of all of these, even including Hayti and Jamaica, there can be no question of Cuba's primacy, whether in size, in wealth of resources, in political and strategical importance, or in historical interest. It was so recognized by Columbus himself, who indeed in one respect actually esteemed it more highly than it deserved. For after long and careful exploration he became convinced that it was not an island, but was the mainland of the Asian continent-Mangi, or Cathay: that country of the Great Khan of which Marco Polo had written and which Toscanelli had indicated upon his map, and the visiting of which was the supreme object of the Admiral's enterprise.

To understand this aright we must remember that Columbus was not seeking a new continent. He had no thought that one existed. He held, with Isidore of Seville, that all the lands of the world were comprehended in Europe, Africa and Asia, and that there was only one great ocean, the Atlantic, which stretched unbroken save by islands from the western shores of Europe and Africa to the eastern coast of Asia and the East Indies. Moreover, he considerably overestimated the extent of Asia and underestimated the circumference of the earth. Years later, long after the circumnavigation of the globe had been effected, Antonio Galvano, learned historian and geographer though he was, computed the equatorial circumference of the earth at only 23,500 miles, or about 1,400 miles too little; while the best maps of the sixteenth century indicated the Asian continent as extending far into the western hemisphere, and the Pacific Ocean as a narrow strip not nearly comparable with the Atlantic in extent. Schoener's globe, of 1520, which is still to be seen at Nuremberg, represents the "Terra de Cuba" as integral with the whole North American continent, with its western coast only five degrees of longitude or 300 miles from the shore of Zipangu or Japan, and only 30 degrees or 1,800 miles from the mainland of Asia.

Columbus therefore expected to find the coast of Asia in about the longitude in which he actually found America. When he reached the Bahamas he confidently assumed them to be the group of islands which Toscanelli had indicated as lying off the coast of Cathay; and when he learned from the natives of a much larger island lying to the south, which they called Colba, Cuba, or Cubanacan, he believed it to be none other than Cipango, or Zipangu, which Toscanelli had shown as by far the largest of the East Indian islands. It has been commonly assumed, apparently with little dispute or attempt at investigation, that Cipango was Japan. But the distance-1,500 miles-at which it was said to lie from the coast of China, the southerly latitude assigned to it, and the multitude of small islands which were clustered about and near it, are circumstances which suggest that instead of Japan the island meant may have been Luzon, the northernmost and largest of the Philippines. However that may be, Columbus promptly decided to steer straight for Cipango, with the result that he reached the northern shore of the eastern part of Cuba.

The third circumstance which I have mentioned was then developed. It was a great triumph, and a vindication of his enterprise, that he had reached Cipango. But even that was not enough. He was in quest of the mainland of Mangi or Cathay, the land of the Great Khan. He found in Cuba no traces of the opulence and splendor of which Marco Polo had written. Yet the natives frequently referred to "Cuba-nacan" as a great place somewhere in the interior. The phrase merely meant the central part of the island, but the final syllable was identified by Columbus with "Khan," and, with the wish as father of the thought, he presently conceived the notion that it was not the island of Cipango upon which he had landed, but the shore of Cathay itself. Further explorations, including coasting along the northern shore to within a few miles of the western extremity, confirmed him in this belief, which became absolute conviction. To the end of his life, therefore, he believed that Cuba was the eastern extremity of the Asian continent, which indeed Toscanelli had delineated upon his map as terminating in a long, narrow cape; and it was upon the strength of this belief and report of Columbus that Schoener in 1520 and Muenster in 1532 identified Cuba with the whole North American continent, while various other cartographers of that time made it integral with Cathay itself. The maps of La Cosa and Ruysch, in 1508, hinted at this. The Nancy Globe, and a notable map in the Sloane MSS. in the British Museum, dated 1530, do, it is true, indicate Cuba to be an island, but they also make India Superior and Tibet contiguous with Mexico at the northwest, with the latter country fronting directly upon the Indian Ocean. We know, of course, that during his second voyage, in 1494, while off the southern coast of Cuba, Columbus required his companions to sign with him a formal declaration that they were off the coast of Asia. Such, then, was the Admiral's estimate of Cuba, in which there is no reason to doubt he persisted to the end of his life. He had achieved the object of his great adventure: He had reached the country of the Great Khan.

Despite these delusions and vagaries, however, the facts remain that he did discover and partly explore Cuba, and that it was the first land in the Western Hemisphere of which that can confidently be said. Cuba is therefore the starting point of the history of the Columbian discovery and exploration and the subsequent colonization and civilization of America. With Cuba the history of the New World begins.

Similarly, and with equal truth, we may say that the history of Cuba begins with the Columbian discovery of America. That is not true of all parts of the American continents. Some of them had already had important histories. The northeastern coast of North America had been visited and temporarily colonized by the Norsemen, and the northwestern coast by the Chinese; and both of those peoples had left enduring traces of their enterprise. The Iroquois and Algonquins had for centuries enjoyed a degree of social, political and industrial development, the records of which still survive. The Toltecs, the Mayas and the Incas had risen to a height of culture not unworthy to be compared with that of Egypt, Persia, Greece and Rome, the remains of which to this day command the wonder and admiration of the world. But not so Cuba. Carlyle might well have had this island in mind when he said, "Happy the people whose annals are blank in history books."

The physical history of Cuba indicates that in some remote period the two mountainous ends of the island were two separate and distinctly different islands, separated by a considerable stretch of sea, and that they were afterward united by a rising of the bottom of the sea, to form the central plain of Cuba. It is observed that the two ends are unlike each other on geological structure and composition, in soil, and in indigenous flora. Indeed, they have ever differed from each other radically in their cultivated crops. At what date the union of them occurred, and by what means it was effected, we can only guess. But it is a reasonable assumption that the raising of the sea-floor to form the central plain of the island was caused by one of the seismic disturbances to which this general region of the earth's surface has from time immemorial been subject. There are, moreover, reasons for suspecting that this occurred at a time subsequent to the creation of man, and indeed after both of the original islands had become inhabited. That is because the two ends of the island appear, in Columbus's day, to have been occupied by different races. Of the inhabitants of the western end we know comparatively little, save that they were more warlike and adventurous than those at the east, and several authorities have likened them either to the Caribs or to the Mayas of Yucatan. That they were Mayas seems, however, doubtful, since they left no traces of the high degree of civilization which formerly prevailed among that distinguished race in Yucatan.

The people of the eastern end of Cuba, when the island was discovered by Columbus, were doubtless of Antillan stock, or "Tainan" as some have called them, with possibly a slight admixture of Carib, though not sufficient materially to affect them in any respect. They were physically a handsome, stalwart people, of a light reddish brown color, somewhat lighter than the North American Indians. They wore no clothing, with the exception of the married women, who wore breech clouts, and confined their adornments to slight necklaces and bracelets. They lived in neatly constructed cabins of cane or bamboo and thatch, rectangular or circular in form and generally of two or three rooms each; equipped with furniture of cane or of handsomely carved wood. For beds, however, they used hammocks, of woven cotton or plaited grass; the name, hammock, being of Antillan or Carib origin. These houses were, according to early Spanish testimony, kept scrupulously clean and neat. They were grouped in villages, around a central square which served as a market place and playground.

They were agriculturists, tilling the ground with considerable skill and producing yuca, corn, beans, peanuts, squashes, peppers and various other crops, besides fruits and tobacco. They were singularly expert fishermen, and for the purpose of that pursuit they constructed fine canoes, of the hollowed boles of large trees, but unlike the Caribs they do not seem to have resorted to navigation for any other purpose. They also hunted game on the land, solely for food, but their hunting was much restricted, since there were no large animals of any kind on the island. Their manufactures were confined to primitive cotton weaving, wood carving, basketry, pottery-of a pretty good quality of decorated ware-and various stoneware implements.

In disposition and manners they were friendly, hospitable, courteous, and confiding. Despite their nudity they had the unconscious modesty of nature, and their morals were superior to those of most primitive peoples. The tradition that venereal diseases prevailed among them and were thus first made known to European peoples through their having been acquired from the natives by Columbus's men, seems to be quite void of foundation; indubitable proof exists of the prevalence of those diseases in both Europe and Asia at an earlier date than Columbus's time. They practised but recognized domestic, social and civic equality of the sexes. They were almost universal tobacco smokers, and it was from them that the use of that plant was first learned. They were pleasure loving, much given to dancing, to games of ball, and to swimming.

Their form of government was patriarchal, though there seem to have been chiefs of some sort over whole villages or even districts. The laws were, however, mild and humane. In religion they presented a striking and most grateful contrast to the Toltecs, Aztecs and other peoples of the continent, having none of the human sacrifices and atrocious tortures that disfigured their worship. They believed in a Supreme Being and a future and immortal life. They had a form of worship in which the use of idols as symbols, and the smoking of tobacco, largely figured. They had a regularly constituted priest-hood, the members of which they credited with powers of divination and of healing. There were none of the revolting practises and superstitions, however, which have been common to many primitive peoples. They were not warlike, and had no military organization, but they certainly were not cowards, as some of the early Spanish conquistadors had cause to know.

They had, it is obvious, nothing which could survive them as a memorial of their existence. Their architecture, if so it may be called, was most perishable. They had no art, save in pottery, and that was not highly developed. They had no literature. The result was that when they perished through unfavorable contact with a more powerful and aggressive race they left scarcely a trace of themselves behind, save in the records and testimony of their conquerors and destroyers. Some specimens of their pottery have been preserved: the words "hammock" and "canoe" come to us from them; and the use of tobacco is their universal memorial.

Such were the aborigines, if not the absolute autochthones, of Cuba. Their only history lives in the brief and scanty records of them made by their destroyers. They left no enduring impress upon the island, save its name. How many they were is unknown, and estimates which are mere guesses differ widely. In a single generation they disappeared, partly through slaughter and partly through such diseases as small pox and measles, which were introduced to the island-of course, not intentionally-by the Spaniards, and which the natives were unable to resist. The only significant history of Cuba begins, therefore, with the landfall of Christopher Columbus upon its shores.