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.
CHAPTER II
Sunday, October 28, 1492, was the natal day of Cuba; the day of its advent into the ken of the civilized world. At the island which he called Isabella—either Long Island or Crooked Island—Columbus had heard of a very great land which the natives called Cuba, and which, the wish being father to the thought, he instantly identified with Cipango. Toward it, therefore, his course had thereafter been directed. Progress was slow, because of contrary winds and calms, and there were numerous small islands along the way to engage at least passing attention. Particularly was there a group of seven or eight, lying in a row extending north and south, which he called the Islas de Arena, and which we may confidently identify with the Mucaras. Early on the morning of Saturday, October 27, he had left the last of the Sandy Isles behind, and from a point considerably to the eastward of them, probably near what is now known as Rocky Heads, he had set his course a little west of south for the shore of Cuba. Thus he had passed across the southeastern end of the Great Bahama Bank, since most appropriately called the Columbus Bank, until just at nightfall he had seen looming before him on the southern horizon the mountainous form of a vast land. It was too late, however, to continue the voyage that night, so he lay to, and at earliest daybreak of Sunday morning, leaving
