Uncle Sam Trustee Author:John Kendrick Bangs Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Chapter III INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY—HISTORY OF CUBAN SLAVE TRADE—A PORTUGUESE DESCRIPTION—PRIVATEERS —ATTACKS UPON HAVANA—FERNANDO DE SOTO— FORTIFICATIONS—LA F... more »UERZA—MORRO CASTLE—LA PUNTA—TWO CENTURIES OF UNREST—SIR HENRY MORGAN—TRIES TO ESTABLISH HEADQUARTERS IN CUBAN WATERS—ESQUEMELING'S DESCRIPTION OF CUBA, AND THE SACKING OF PUERTO PRINCIPE. UT it was not alone the rapacious rulers sent by Spain to wring blood money from the veins of the natives and settlers that constituted the greatest of Cuba's woes. The gradual extinction of the aboriginal, and the prime necessity of the Spanish pioneer to have someone else do his work for. him—for these sons of Castille were not of that strenuous cast that settled upon the forbidding coasts of rock- bound New England—resulted in the importation of negro slaves into Cuba. In a letter from Ferdinand to Ovando, Governor of San Domingo, in 1501, it was prohibited to admit Jews, Moors and new converts into the Indies " but an exception was made in the case of the negro slaves, who were allowed to pass, the officers of the royal revenue to receive the money paid for their permits." The negro was known already by the Spaniard as a good worker and when the latter found that his systems of repartimiento and encomienda were working the INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY extinction of the red-man who tilled his fields, and delved in his mines, and in otherwise released him from the necessity for individual toil, face to face with a proposition which required a personal physical exertion he naturally turned to the consideration of available labor. Negro slavery solved this difficult problem for him, and in 1517 the first license to import negroes into the West Indies was given by Charles V. This provided for the importation of 8,000 slaves in eight yea...« less