Columbus, Slavery, & Class War

[Iolchan]

Keep in mind…

One small item that so far has not intruded into this discussion on race & racism, is an analysis of the economic basis & root of the whole equation & field…

I submit for your consideration the fact that Race is used by the plutocracy to divide us all, and set we, the people, at odds, and keep us divided, the better to rule us {divide & rule} and the better to loot & fleece us of our energy, money, time...

This has been going on since 1492, when the European exploitation of the west African slave trade began, as a bi-product of the Columbian intrusion into the new world. The Spanish, upon discovering the Caribbean isles, also discovered a certain shiny substance that glittered in the sands on all the beaches. Hitherto, the simple Island folk had not paid much attention to it. Immediately, needless to say, los Espagnols plunged into a frantic search for Gold.

Most of the original Caribbean natives who forthwith found themselves bound in Servitude were dead in a few years, because of two factors:

a) extremely brutal treatment by their new slave-masters… &
b) diseases imported from Europe, to which they had no immunity…

Because the work-force of Caribbean slave labor was soon extinct, the Spanish began the Slave trade from the Gold Coast & Senegal, so that they could continue to render the Gold of the New World. Gold.

Slaves were soon used, throughout the new world, in North and South America, as the primary source for cheap labor : surplus value exploitation. Money.

The Slave Trade, begun by the Spanish and the Portuguese, turned out to be such a very profitable business for those who engaged in it as slavers {even though about four fifths of all the black Africans who were bound in chains and stuffed into the holds of the cargo ships that transported them from the Gold Coast, died in transit due to the worse-than-wretched conditions that pertained in the hulls of the slave-ships,} that the Dutch and the English soon jumped in. Money.

African Slaves were used throughout the American South until 1865, as a source of exploited labor, to augment the wealth of Plantation owners in the southern states, and cotton mill capitalists in Manchester and Birmingham, England. Money.

Even when the slaves were “freed” at the time of the Emancipation Proclamation, industrial capitalists in the north had a less than altruistic motive for getting on the band-wagon behind this move: they knew that the freed slaves, upon entering the labor pool would eventually drive wages down for workers in the industrialized north. Money.

Ever since in America, Race has been used as a wedge to keep the workers confused, so that they will remain divided & conquered {to use Frantz Fanon’s phrase, “colonized,” in their minds…} Money.

Recent examples of economically-orchestrated ethnic strife where there is no reasonable or rational explanation, other than the greedy exploitation and manipulation of subject populations, exposed to barrages of vicious propaganda to foment wars, used to augment the greedy plans for gain by first world capitalists:

The former Yugoslavia and Rwanda come to mind. Both were recent theatres of “ethnic conflicts” which were actually driven and fomented by ‘intelligence agents' from the first world, so that first-world capitalists could clean up; in the case of Bosnia, Croatia, & Serbia, on markets, real estate, and debt-bondage; in the case of Rwanda, on beaucoup diamonds. Money.

In both cases, however, the populations manipulated to engage in those blood-lettings were, racially, actually pretty much from the same gene-pools:

Bosnians have a little more Turkish blood than other Southern Slavs, since, as Muslim converts, they were the buffer class; utilized as the civil servants in the old Ottoman Empire – but otherwise, Bosnians, Croats and Serbs all fall under the category of “Southern Slavs.”

Hutus and Tutsis are even closer, and until quite recently were of the Same tribe - until their Belgian overlords artificially sorted, designated and graded them according to the lightness of their skins; and set them into two categories, in the late nineteenth century.

The bloody conflicts that tore up Yugoslavia during the 1990’s, and the genocide that wracked Rwanda, were both orchestrated from London, Langley, and Zurich. The ethnic warfare was all a smokescreen for economic warfare.

It was All about Money.

= Peace, Pax, Shalom, Salaam =

- Mark Walter Evans

[daynurse]

It doesn't stop there. The intentional 'dumbing down of the masses" intentionally turns those not in the aristocracy into peasants. Take away education, adequate healthcare , finances, free communication in the form of public television and radio, take control of the internet (google is a leader in this) and you render the peasantry powerless.
That is, unless the masses unite. Egypt, Madison, etc. come to mind.
I just have to add that the peasantry includes the members of the military and police as well.

Peggy

I submit for your consideration the fact that

Race is used by the plutocracy to divide us all, and set we, the people, at odds, and keep us divided, the better to rule us {divide & rule} and the better to loot & fleece us of our energy, money, time...

[anathstryx]

Keep in mind…

One small item that so far has not intruded into this discussion on race & racism, is an analysis of the economic basis & root of the whole equation & field…

- Mark Walter Evans

You might want to reconsider the date of 1492 for when slave trade began. Slavery has been going on since, at least, Sumaria (Code of Hammurabi, ca. 1760 BCE) and practiced by peoples all over the planet since antiquity for more reasons than just economics. To name a very few, there were the Tlingit on the northwest coast of the U.S., the ancient Egyptians and Nubians, Greeks, Celts, Norse, Mayan civilization, pre-modern China, pre-modern Hawaiians, etc. To the victor goes the spoils.

Anathstryx

[Iolchan]

You might want to reconsider the date of 1492 for when slave trade began. Slavery has been going on since, at least, Sumaria (Code of Hammurabi, ca. 1760 BCE) and practiced by peoples all over the planet since antiquity for more reasons than just economics. To name a very few, there were the Tlingit on the northwest coast of the U.S., the ancient Egyptians and Nubians, Greeks, Celts, Norse, Mayan civilization, pre-modern China, pre-modern Hawaiians, etc. To the victor goes the spoils.

Anathstryx

Totally so; Slavery as a Social Institution goes way, way back; back to Ur, before Babylon. But slavery as a matter of State policy, "legally" practiced and "licensed" by the up-and-coming, sea-going Renaissance kingdoms of Europe : Portugal, Spain, Britain and the Netherlands, began after 1492. A very significant date, and for several reasons. That is the benchmark of when European exploitation of the West-African Slave Trade began...

Prior to that time, there had always been plenty of slavery - even in Europe - and it had been going on for many Millennia; but Europeans were not "buying and selling" and transporting west Africans anywhere, before the year 1492.

Hope this helps clarify things...
- Mark

[Dixon]

You might want to reconsider the date of 1492 for when slave trade began. Slavery has been going on since, at least, Sumaria (Code of Hammurabi, ca. 1760 BCE) and practiced by peoples all over the planet since antiquity for more reasons than just economics. To name a very few, there were the Tlingit on the northwest coast of the U.S., the ancient Egyptians and Nubians, Greeks, Celts, Norse, Mayan civilization, pre-modern China, pre-modern Hawaiians, etc. To the victor goes the spoils.

FWIW, I certainly endorse your overview of the widespread (but not universal) history of slavery. But I trust (hope) that, in spite of your seemingly flippant "To the victor goes the spoils", you don't endorse or even justify slavery of anyone by anyone.

Just sayin'.

[anathstryx]

FWIW, I certainly endorse your overview of the widespread (but not universal) history of slavery. But I trust (hope) that, in spite of your seemingly flippant "To the victor goes the spoils", you don't endorse or even justify slavery of anyone by anyone.

Just sayin'.

Oh, hell no!! Geez, Dixon! I was merely pointing out that slavery has also been about conquest and not just economics. Wow. I have ancestors who were slaves in the south. I destest the subjugation of any people. Holy crap.

Anathstryx

[Dixon]

Oh, hell no!! Geez, Dixon! I was merely pointing out that slavery has also been about conquest and not just economics. Wow. I have ancestors who were slaves in the south. I destest the subjugation of any people. Holy crap.

Yeah, I figured that was where you were coming from. I'm just even more sensitive to this issue than usual lately because I've recently been involved in a dialogue with a friend who's attempting to pretty much justify slavery and other atrocities by Christopher Columbus on the basis of his being "a man of his time" who I shouldn't judge on the basis of my moral standards (my unreasonable notion that it's wrong to enslave, torture, murder, rape, etc., no matter what's "socially acceptable" in any particular time or place). Also, a couple of years ago, I was involved in a thread here on WaccoBB in which I could hardly find anyone who was willing to agree that the USA was founded on genocide and that that should never have happened. So you can see how I might be a bit sensitive about these issues!

[natalie]

Yeah, I figured that was where you were coming from. I'm just even more sensitive to this issue than usual lately because I've recently been involved in a dialogue with a friend who's attempting to pretty much justify slavery and other atrocities by Christopher Columbus on the basis of his being "a man of his time" who I shouldn't judge on the basis of my moral standards (my unreasonable notion that it's wrong to enslave, torture, murder, rape, etc., no matter what's "socially acceptable" in any particular time or place). Also, a couple of years ago, I was involved in a thread here on WaccoBB in which I could hardly find anyone who was willing to agree that the USA was founded on genocide and that that should never have happened. So you can see how I might be a bit sensitive about these issues!

Yep. Indian land and African labor, and anyone who won't face that is deluding him/herself

["Mad" Miles]

Dixon,

For the view of a "Man of Colon's" time (or nearly after) on the treatment of the indigenous Americans by the Spanish Conquistadores see the work of Bartolome De Las Casas. For a view of Columbus in his own words, Conquest of America, by Tzvetan Todorov is quite enlightening. Eduardo Galeano's trilogy, Memory of Fire gives a good and complete view of the experience from the Indian point of view. Your friend is an idiot.

[pbrinton]

Your friend is an idiot.

Miles, with all respect I do not think you have sufficent information upon which to base this conclusion. You have only heard a summary of his assertions provided by someoene who strongly disagrees with him, and was his adversary in the discussion; hardly a source likely to present his case in the best light. Furthermore you have not heard or considered his arguments, which might be intelligently conceived for all you know, just not persuasive to Dixon. You may well disagree with his assertion on its face, but you have no grounds upon which to call him an idiot.

Patrick Brinton

[Dixon]

For the view of a "Man of Colon's" time (or nearly after) on the treatment of the indigenous Americans by the Spanish Conquistadores see the work of Bartolome De Las Casas. For a view of Columbus in his own words, Conquest of America, by Tzvetan Todorov is quite enlightening. Eduardo Galeano's trilogy, Memory of Fire gives a good and complete view of the experience from the Indian point of view.

Much of what I know of the atrocities of Columbus is from an excellent book called Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen. He compares the (relatively) real stories of American history from original sources (such as Las Casas) to the drooling, nationalistic, whitewashed twaddle that fills our high school textbooks. An essential book; I recommend it to everyone.

Your friend is an idiot.

My friend Frank is far from an idiot. My ongoing dialogue with him is happening in the pages of the local Mensa magazine. He's a smart guy, but unfortunately there's little if any correlation between intelligence and morality. But I can understand how you'd want to call him names. I'm so horrified from hearing otherwise likable people in our "conscious" (LOL!) community justify atrocities that I too want to slap some sense into them. Just recently a friend of mine, an otherwise intelligent and pleasant fellow, tried to tell me that it's understandable that Columbus gave Indian women to his men to rape, because they'd been deprived for a long time, were perhaps getting mutinous, and therefore he had to mollify them somehow (or words to that effect)!

[natalie]

...
My friend Frank is far from an idiot. My ongoing dialogue with him is happening in the pages of the local Mensa magazine. He's a smart guy, but unfortunately there's little if any correlation between intelligence and morality. ...

Lots of people in Mensa who test well, but that doesn't mean they're smart.

["Mad" Miles]

Patrick, Dixon,

I made the sweeping claim that anyone who asserts that Cristobal Colon and his ilk were merely acting according to the norms of behavior for their time, and are therefore not subject to the moral judgments and imperatives of our time is an idiot (a claim I stand by) because I am familiar with the argument. It's one I've had numerous times.

It tends to be couched in a false argument that to do so (hold them morally accountable for their brutal and odious actions) is a form of Presentism. That I can produce contemporaneous accounts from reliable and respected sources who condemned such actions, puts pay to the argument. It's like arguing that Abu Ghraib and the Black Cells are justified because it was ordered from on high and therefore was acceptable by contemporary standards.

All kinds of horrific things have been done throughout history. None of them right. Condemned by moral standards contemporary to the times in which they were done, and according to our standards. Those who assert that rape, torture, enslavement, slaughter, expropriation and exploitation were considered "OK" at some point in the past, are idiots. Idiots who lack a basic understanding of history, yet pose as if they do.

Patrick,

If Olembe wasn't a suspect, why was he stopped?

[theindependenteye]

>>>I made the sweeping claim that anyone who asserts that Cristobal Colon and his ilk were merely acting according to the norms of behavior for their time, and are therefore not subject to the moral judgments and imperatives of our time is an idiot (a claim I stand by) because I am familiar with the argument. It's one I've had numerous times.
>>>It tends to be couched in a false argument that to do so (hold them morally accountable for their brutal and odious actions) is a form of Presentism. That I can produce contemporaneous accounts from reliable and respected sources who condemned such actions, puts pay to the argument.
>>>All kinds of horrific things have been done throughout history. None of them right. Condemned by moral standards contemporary to the times in which they were done, and according to our standards.

I agree with your last statement, certainly. What confuses me is what it means to hold Columbus "accountable." Dig up his bones & piss on them? Take down his statues? Post bad things on Columbus Day? I might go along with all those things, but I don't think it'd have any practical purpose besides pissing off a lot of Italians.

It seems to me we can hold multiple views of any historical figure. Hagiography is one absurd end of the spectrum, but the blanket condemnation of historical figures on the basis of their insufficient enlightenment, or even of their major crimes, is equally absurd. We don't need "role models," we need rounded understandings of human beings. I think it's essential to see them in their own social context, or it's impossible to understand them or that context. But obviously understanding the context doesn't equate with "excusing" slavery, racism, genocide, or emailing your crotch to the world.

Cheers--
Conrad

[inezalea]

[QUOTE=traindays;136838]A

.....but I understand how racism kind of sticks in the groves for a long time....


Yes, for a lifetime, generation after generation, embedded in those feisty little grooves.

American as apple pie; as the most humble, pale-faced immigrant to our shores learns with alacrity.







,

[Dixon]

Lots of people in Mensa who test well, but that doesn't mean they're smart.

Uh, actually it does mean they're smart. Keep in mind that the set of skills we call "testing well"--pattern recognition, etc.-- has a lot to do with intelligence. Having said that, it's also true that IQ tests are, of course, far from perfect, and they don't measure all types (emotional, social, kinetic, etc.) intelligence. Re: Mensa in particular--it's one of the easiest of the high-IQ societies to get into. The top 2% (in IQ score) of the population is eligible; that's 1 out of 50. There are more than 8000 Mensa-eligible folks in Sonoma County. So the commonly held notion that Mensa is a club for geniuses is wrong.

[Dixon]

It tends to be couched in a false argument that to do so (hold them morally accountable for their brutal and odious actions) is a form of Presentism. That I can produce contemporaneous accounts from reliable and respected sources who condemned such actions, puts pay to the argument. It's like arguing that Abu Ghraib and the Black Cells are justified because it was ordered from on high and therefore was acceptable by contemporary standards.

Yeah, Miles. My friend Frank is accusing me of the historian's fallacy and presentism, though he hasn't explicitly used the latter term. And his argument is fallacious for the reason you cite, among others. Same old sociocentric, nationalistic, imperialistic, hypocritical, fallacious, verging-on-sociopathic shit.

All kinds of horrific things have been done throughout history. None of them right. Condemned by moral standards contemporary to the times in which they were done, and according to our standards. Those who assert that rape, torture, enslavement, slaughter, expropriation and exploitation were considered "OK" at some point in the past, are idiots. Idiots who lack a basic understanding of history, yet pose as if they do.

Miles, it's both inaccurate and too kind to call people who seek to justify things like Columbus's atrocities "idiots". Real idiots have an excuse--they're really really stupid, by definition. The kind of fallacies we hear from folks like my friend Frank are not due to stupidity--they're chosen.

My study of critical thinking for all these years has shown me that most logical fallacy is from people who are smart enough to know better. It's not from idiocy, it's from self-centeredness, hypocrisy and dishonesty. People who are smart enough to avoid elementary fallacies consistently choose them anyway so they can believe what they want and avoid believing what they don't want. That's what we're dealing with here.

[Iolchan]

Got Class Analysis, Class ?

daynurse wrote:

"It doesn't stop there. The intentional 'dumbing down of the masses" intentionally turns those not in the aristocracy into peasants. Take away education, adequate healthcare , finances, free communication in the form of public television and radio, take control of the internet (google is a leader in this) and you render the peasantry powerless.

That is, unless the masses unite. Egypt, Madison, etc. come to mind...

I just have to add that the peasantry includes the members of the military and police as well.

Peggy

iolchan wrote:

I submit for your consideration the fact that ...

Race is used by the plutocracy to divide us all, and set we, the people, at odds, and keep us divided, the better to rule us {divide & rule} and the better to loot & fleece us of our energy, money, time...

Very Good Points, Peggy = How about a little Class Analysis, Class?

"It doesn't stop there. The intentional "dumbing down of the masses" intentionally turns those not in the aristocracy into peasants."

"The intentional dumbing down of the masses" takes many forms these days: qualudes, valium, ridalin, stellazine, thorazine, prolixin, etc., etc., come to mind - as well as a host of lesser "free market" evils & diversions like heroin, methedrine, cocaine, jack daniels, beer, fast foods, pornography, MTV, Sitcoms, Soap Operas, Television, in general - as well as these damned computer monitors that we are all addicted to staring at - and Monday night football...

There is also a continuous pressure that manifests it self in many forms - much of it very subliminal - to keep every one of us atomized and separate, each in his or her own isolated sandbox of poverty.

" ...intentionally turns those not in the aristocracy into peasants."

Every human on earth who is not a member of the “Bond-holding class” – which is an hereditary class, has been listed among the "peasantry" ever since the year 1694 {a very important date to remember, class - because 1694 was the year that the rules of the road were changed forever } - the year that marked the final transition from the old Feudalism, based on ground rents, and Fealty, to the New Feudalism, aka the New Order, which brought in the hegemony of Finance Capitalism, kids.

Ever since, instead of owing Ground Rent, because of Fealty to the Laird in the castle on the hill, there is something known as a Mortgage. Finance Capitalism, is, in essence, a very sophisticated form of Paper - and now, electronic - Feudalism; put simply: Universal Debt-Slavery, through Credit & Usury.

1694 was the year that the British East India Company diversified its portfolio and, cleverly engaging in a little mitosis, formed a twin Corporation = the Bank of England. In that year, the Aristocracy of the Future was born. In the act of creating the Bank of England, a New Class was created. It was known as the Whig Ascendancy. The members of this new Class were known as Whigs.

The Whigs : a fusion of British East India Company, Mercantile elements from the old, landed Nobility, with the Bankers & Stockholders of the rising Bourgeoisie. The families of the old landed Nobility who did not make the move to invest in this new Central Bank Corporation, on the ground floor, { either because they were somewhat dim or had not previously been among the Stockholders invested in the East India Company,} lost out on the opportunity to enter in to the New Aristocracy.

From 1694 on, the slow boys among the House O' Lairds, Inc., @ Westminster, came to be to be known as Tories. To be a Tory in the post 1694 World in England, was to be a downwardly mobile, castle & land-poor, member of the benighted old Nobility in England. These are the ones who can’t afford to keep the rooms of their castles heated in the winter Now, and have to allow the Commons in, on guided castle-tours, in order to stay afloat.

= On The Other Hand, the descendants and heirs of the Whig Ascendancy = the New Aristocracy that was formed in 1694, rule the Planet today. They also own it – or soon will - after this present wave of Foreclosure & Assizement is over. They are, essentially the heirs of the families who inherited - and thus "own" the Consoles of the Bank of England, and they are the privileged – and hereditary owners - of the "preferred" =OR= “CLASS A” stock of the Prime Banks in America, too.

THEY {that’s THEM, Inc., kids} are a Class, who have inherited the right stock, in the right Banks. In America, they own the controlling stock of the Federal Reserve Bank, via their ownership of the Money Market Wall Street Banks: Bankers' Trust, Chase-Manhattan, Chemical, Manufacturers-Hanover, Morgan Guaranty Trust, etc... On the other side of the Atlantic, in exactly the same manner, THEY own the controlling stock in the Prime Banks of the rest of the G7, which in turn, own the controlling stock in the Central Bank Corporations of all the G7 Nations: Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States. At this point in Time, children, it is one big, incestuous Corporation.

The Chairmen of the Boards of these Seven Central Banks meet once a month, at the spiffy Global Headquarters of the Bank for International Settlements, in Basel Switzerland, to attend to the Business of their Subsidiary holding companies, the Prime Banks of the First World, and to attend to the fiduciary benefit of all of their Stockholders, who constitute the "bond-holding class."

Thus we see, the Aristocracy is also known as the “bond-holding class,” class - and everyone who is not a member of the families who own said stock, is an alien to them, and a poor lumpanized peasant. We are all peasants on this bus. Race is just another tool in their box; that they use to divide & conquer us. {It is a state of continual division, that they must maintain.} And there are Many, many other wedge issues out there, too, which also serve to keep us divided very well...

= For all of which, i do not thank you, O you clever, scheming, Oligarchs. =

"Take away education, adequate healthcare, finances, free communication in the form of public television and radio, take control of the internet (google is a leader in this) and you render the peasantry powerless."

Good points, Peggy. O yez...

"That is, unless the masses unite. Egypt, Madison, etc. come to mind..."

How about, Graton, Sebastopol?

"I just have to add that the peasantry includes the members of the military and police as well." - Peggy

Amen. The "peasantry" includes All of the parties involved in this little escapade - including the mortgage-paying peasant who called the police station, the police officer who stopped Olembe, the chief o' police of Sebastopol, and Sabrina herself, too; Bless her.

Mark Walter Evans

www.paleoprogressives.org

["Mad" Miles]

Replying to Conrad and Dixon here.

Conrad,

I don't recall explicitly calling for Columbus being held "accountable" by us. I was commenting on the opinion of others about him. But since you ask, the way we hold others from the past accountable for their actions is to tell the truth about them, all sides and aspects as much as possible, and refute those who candy coat on the one side, or completely dismiss, condemn and do not provide a full account on the other. And to justify our account by using specific references and evidence, and not just sweeping claims (whatever they may be, pro or con). In other words, we do good history.

Dixon,

I was giving your friend the benefit of the doubt. You know him better than me, obviously. Dismissing his drivel as sociopathic choice, would have been overreaching for me, given that all I know about his claims regarding Columbus was your brief summary of them.

As I said in my previous response, the argument is one I'm familiar with. It gets made here on waccobb.net once and a while. Most recently about the origins of slavery in the North American colonies.

Jared Diamond does a sophisticated version of it, although in his case he's too good a historian to give many openings for a critique of him as a "normalizing" apologist for European Colonialism and Imperialism. His argument is sort of, "we did it first because of the accidents of history, and if not us, others would have if they could." While there is some truth in that, it leaves out moral culpability, something I'm unwilling to do. (I should also add that I've only seen his PBS documentary. I have not read his books. He may have addressed this very question, and I just don't know it.)

It goes like this, "Everybody was doing it, so nobody thought it was wrong." The moral logic of the school yard.

How about, "Everybody knew it was wrong, it was often said so, but they did it anyway since it was profitable."


Regarding the issue of intelligence, I distinctly recall during the 1973 gas crisis, sitting in a line in my car with the High School valedictorian, the top athlete and scholar, a neighbor of mine on Redstone Arsenal, another Army Brat, and discovering that he had no clue as to what was going on in the world. Didn't know diddly about OPEC and their embargo, or what was being done in response by our president and his administration, or the West in general.

The guy got good grades (I wondered how many "automatic A's" he got as captain of the football team and as the quarterback. I'd already seen that system at work in earlier years.) but he didn't know shit. After graduation he went to West Point, where I heard he was expelled for fighting. I would propose that being expelled from the top military academy in such a bellicose nation as ours, for fighting, takes a special kind of stupidity.

Many of my contemporaries in High School were in the Honor Society. I didn't make the cut, partly because I didn't care about grades (as long as they were B's or A's in subjects I liked, and at least a C in those I didn't) considered them a poor measurement of quality, so my GPA was just under the number required.

When those students were listed, I found it interesting that while they were pleasant enough people, as a group they tended to be the obsessed grinds who lacked certain dimensions to their personalities. And who I could out-argue on most any topic, if the occasion arose. (Many of them were far more impressive intellectually than the doofus valedictorian by the way.)

Since then I've been far more impressed by demonstrated ability and not by recorded honors. The phrase "tunnel vision" seems apropos.

I've attended two prestigious university's; UCI (in the mid seventies it wasn't quite there yet, but by the early eighties it was considered one the best schools for Literary Theory and Critical Social Theory, on the planet. My field was the latter.) and the U of C (which I characterize as "Nerd/Grind Central" when it comes to its campus culture.). I've met, been friends with, or at least known well, many a smarty. They vary like any other group, some are cool and interesting, many are self-involved dicks with little or no practical life experience.

For a short hand reference I call some of the more egregiously irritating of the latter group, "idiots", no matter how well they test on paper. I'm not going to play the definition game, but I will assert there is such a thing as an "educated idiot". ("Educated Fool"?) And someone who justifies horrific behavior as justified by "community standards of the day", well, idiot is the nicest thing I can say, on this board.

Creep, asshole, perverted sick unredeemable human excreta may also apply, but I'm trying to apply the community standards of Waccoville, so I tend not to go there, here.

If someone is intellectually talented, well educated and well informed and they take an odious position such as your friends' then the crime is actually worse, than if they have the excuse that they are misinformed or otherwise ignorant, or somehow lack the needed perspicacity in some specific instance.

I guess I'm trying to say that the greatest stupidity of all, is that displayed by the intelligent and well educated. But we both can come up with plenty of examples of that in the course of human folly? Can't we?

[Sabrina]

Replying to Conrad and Dixon here. (Barry, if you want the Columbus discussion separated from the police conduct discussion, feel free. But it's come up on this thread, so I'm replying on this thread. I'm not a file clerk.)

While in some aspects the two thread could be interrelated, you could start another one about the "dumming down of the new world / history of racism in the new world" or something.

[Iolchan]

Replying to Conrad and Dixon here. (Barry, if you want the Columbus discussion separated from the police conduct discussion, feel free. But it's come up on this thread, so I'm replying on this thread. I'm not a file clerk.)

sabrina wrote:
While in some aspects the two threads could be interrelated, you could start another one about the "dumming down of the new world / history of racism in the new world" or something.

Nah. But thanks, Sabrina, for all your good work, truly. =Stay with us= Methinks the Subject Title of this New thread, "Columbus, Slavery & Class War" is Lng enough, and Brad enough, and Deep Enugh, to cover all our bases... And thank you, Barry, for changing the Title, allowing for a broader border for our Field... So, class, are we ready to Roll?

- Mark

[Iolchan]

O.K. , kids, School is In Session;

Hey! Will you miscreants
back there in the back
of the Class room,
just shut up!
& pay attention?

you've got a:

Homework

&

Reading Assignment:





THE HISTORY OF MONEY IN AMERICA
FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CONSTITUTION

BY

ALEXANDER DEL MAR

FORMERLY DIRECTOR OF THE BUREAU OF STATISTICS
OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ;

MINING COMMISSIONER
TO THE MONETARY COMMISSION OF 1876 ;
AUTHOR
OF
" A HISTORY OF MONETARY SYSTEMS,"
"THE SCIENCE OF MONEY,"
et cetera,
et cetera,
...
"


NEW YORK

THE CAMBRIDGE ENCYCLOPEDIA COMPANY

62 Reade Street

1899




COPYRIGHT



BY ALEX, DEL MAR

1899.



3q.



INTRODUCTION.


THE monetary systems of the present day are an historical
development; they descend from the principles enunciated in the
great Mixt Moneys case of 1604, the circumstances connected with
the Spanish Conquest of America; the Spanish Free Coinage Act
of 1608, the British Free Coinage Act of 1666,
and the invention of the coinage and printing presses.
It would therefore seem necessary that writers on the subject
should possess some familiarity with these topics.

But though the author of the present work has consulted many treatises
relating to monetary systems he has never yet met with one
which evinced the least grasp of these various historical elements.
Some of them contain information relative to the details of monetary issues.
These, when carefully collated,
are of value to the historian and commentator.
But for the most part books on money
are filled with doctrines,
or worse yet, mere dilutions of doctrines,
without history or experience to support them;
doctrines based on words, on definitions,
on figments of the mind, false, worthless,
misleading, mischievous and hurtful.

The legal, political and social character of Money;
its influence upon the public welfare;
the prominent place it has occupied in the annals
of the past;
the countless experiments that have been made
in the fabrication and emission of its symbols;
the civic struggles that have centred upon its control;
and the learning that has been devoted to its principles
by philosophers, legislators and jurists,
surely claim for its historical treatment
some better preparation than doctrines.

The Father {i.e. René Descartes - French
Philosopher and Scientist -} of the Inductive method
was born more than three centuries ago;
yet it is only now that his method
is being applied to the study
of
Money.

I. —

The Mixt Moneys case decided that Money was a Public Measure,
a measure of value, and that, like other measures, it was necessary
in the public welfare that its dimensions or volume should be limited,
defined and regulated by the State.

The whole body of learning
left us by the ancient and renascent world
was invoked in this celebrated dictum:
Aristotle, Paulus, Bodin and Budelius
were summoned to its support;
the Roman law, the common law
and the statutes all upheld it;

"the State alone had the right to issue money
and to decide of what substances its symbols

should be made, whether of gold, silver, brass,
or paper."

"Whatever the State declared to be money,
was money."

That was the gist of it.
(For a full account of this famous case,
see the author's "Science of Money," ch. iv.)

This decision greatly alarmed the merchants of London,
and for more than half a century after it was enunciated
they were occupied with efforts to defeat its operation.
In 1639 they succeeded in getting the matter before
the Star Chamber; but their plans were rejected.
The Revolution of 1648 postponed their projects.
The Restoration of 1660 revived them.
Their final success dates from 1666.
Meanwhile other things had happened.

II. —

In the contracts which it made with Columbus,
Cortes, Pizarro, De Soto and the other commanders
whom it sent forth to discover or plunder America,
the Crown of Spain always stipulated that
the Quinto — one-fifth — of the spoil
should be reserved for the king.

The remainder, if of gold or silver,
might then be melted down and stamped
with its weight by public officials
and then shipped to Spain for coinage.

At each step of these operations the Crown
exacted a fresh tax, seigniorage, derecho, haberia, etc.,
so that by the time the plunderer or miner got back his metal,
one-third to one-half of it had found its way into the royal coffers.
The delay and risk of shipment to Spain supported a clamour
for Colonial coinage and Colonial coinage resulted in an agitation
to abolish all coinage fees except the Crown's Quinto: an agitation
which ended in securing the "free" coinage edict of 1608.

Under this edict all gold and silver which had paid the Quinto
on acquisition or production, was required to be coined
by the Royal officials for private individuals
free of charge and without limit.
The granting of such a privilege bespeaks
the employment of coining machinery,
for the Crown could hardly have afforded it
so long as coins had to be made by hand.

As a matter of fact coining machinery was employed
in Italy and Spain
about themiddle of the 16th century.

III. —

Before the Crown of Spain
proclaimed "free" coinage
for Quinto-paid metal in America,
much of the metal plundered from the natives
or acquired through the repartimentosystem,
}of which more anon,{
was smuggled out of the Colonies
and found its way to Holland, France and England.

With "free" coinage in Spanish America
this movement slackened,
and this cessation of the illicit trade
in the precious metals
furnished a pretext
to the London merchants
for renewing their demands upon the Crown
for gratuitous and unlimited coinage.
But their main argument
was supplied by the East India Company,
who were anxious to ship silver to India in exchange
for
gold,
a transaction that at that time afforded a profit of cent per cent.
Behind this argument there was bribery of the court officials,
of the king's mistress, Barbara Villiers, and even of the king
(Charles II.,) himself. After several years of intrigue, the merchants
finally succeeded; and in 1666 was enacted that "free" coinage law
which practically altered the monetary systems of the world and laid
the foundation of the Metallic theory of money. The specific effect
of this law was to destroy the Royal prerogative of coinage, nullify
the decision in the Mixt Moneys case and inaugurate a future series of
commercial panics and disasters which down to that time were totally
unknown.

IV. —

The Spanish Crown rewarded its Conquistadores and their followers
not with grants of land in America but with grants of Indians, nominally
as vassals, but practically as slaves. These grants were called
repartimientos, afterwards encomiendas. They virtually
awarded to the grantee the right to seize upon a specified number of
the natives and compel them to produce gold and silver for nothing.
Millions of lives were thus granted away and millions of ducats were
the result; but besides the lives they cost, these millions cost nothing
to the Spaniards, whose acquisitions of the precious metals, whether
by plunder or through their repartimientos, had therefore no relation
to that "cost of production " which forms the fallacious basis
of the Metallic theory.

V. —

It has been already intimated that coining machinery
was employed in Italy and Spain during the 16th century.
Evelyn, in his work on Medals, asserts that Jerome Cardon,
who died in 1576, described a coining press used in the Venetian mint,
"which both stamped, cut and rounded money by one operation only."
This device is also mentioned by Benevenuto Cellini, who died in 1570.
Previous to the invention of coining machinery, an ordinary workman
could turn out not more than 40 or 50 coins a day.

With the laminating-mill and screw-press, which was employed in Spain
so early as 1548, he could turn out several thousand coins a day.
These labour-saving machines entirely changed the relations of Money
to exchange and society; a revolution which was still further advanced
by the application of the printing press to the issues of Money,
the earliest examples of which,
within the scope of the author's researches,
were the pasteboard (embossed) dollars of Leyden
issued in 1572.

VI. —

The invention of coining machinery had still another important
consequence: it multiplied counterfeits, not necessarily base
coins, but forged coins containing as much or more fine metal than
the genuine ones; but metal that had not paid the Quinto.
In 1569 Phillip Mastrelle, who brought a coining press
from France into England, was detected in making coins
on his own account, an offense for which he was executed.

Fenelon states that in 1574 certain
Germans, Hollanders and Frenchmen,
in England,
were detected in forging a million crowns
of the coins of France, Spain and Flanders;
and that this was done as a political measure,
with the connivance of some of the ministers
of Queen Elizabeth.

The Marquis de Tavannes assures us that Salcede,
who was executed at Paris in 1582
had grown rich from the profits
of what he termed forgery,
>but what, according to the Metallic school,
was really only justifiable private coinage;
because the forged coins contained
more silver than the genuine.

These offenses could only have been profitable
when committed with the aid of coining machinery,
whose influence upon exchange and society
must have become in this manner greatly augmented.
("Barbara Villiers, Or a History of Monetary Crimes" p. 18.)

With this brief Introduction the author commends
his book to the indulgent public.
Should his health permit,
it will be followed
by the
"History of Money in America,
from the Adoption of the Constitution
to the present time," and this will form the last of a series
of monetary histories, which, commencing with a History of the
Precious Metals, and followed by a History of Monetary Systems,
now embraces all the principal States of the world, both ancient
and modern.


Alexander Del Mar,


Washington, D.C., 1899

O.K. kids, get to work.

Marko,
smart alec,
wise guy

[Iolchan]

THE HISTORY OF MONEY IN AMERICA
FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CONSTITUTION

by


Alexander Del Mar,

CHAPTER I


THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA

Brief review of the financial condition of Europe at the period of the Discovery — Dearth of metallic money — Motive of Columbus' expedition: to discover and obtain gold - Expeditions of Cortes and Pizarro — Expedition of De Soto — This was essentially a charter to murder, torture and enslave the natives of America, in order to obtain gold for the Crown of Spain — Opinions of Baron von Humboldt and Sir Arthur Helps.


The History of Monetary Systems in America can best be told after clearing the ground with a brief review of the monetary condition and circumstances of the states of Europe at the time when America was discovered. Strictly speaking, these circumstances would carry us back quite to the beginning of metallic money in Greece; but of this event a full account will be found in the author's previous works. Suffice it to say in this place that after many experiments with coins of gold and silver in the Greek and Roman republics, these metals had been so far abandoned as money that the measure of value in those states was eventually made to depend less upon the quantity of metal contained in the coins, than upon the number of coins emitted and kept in circulation by the state. The integer of these systems was called in Greek, nomisma, in Latin, numisma, both of which terms relate to that prescription of law which conserved and emphasized the numerical feature of the system in each state.

Such integer consisted of the whole sum of money; not upon any fraction of it. Upon the relinquishment of these systems, both the Greek states and the republic of Rome again committed themselves to metallic systems, this time with open mints or private coinage ; the consequence of which was the gradual concentration of wealth in the hands of a few persons, a circumstance which powerfully assisted the downfall of the state. Upon the assumption of imperial power over the European world by Julius Caesar and especially by Augustus, private coinage, or the issuance of "gentes" coins, was at once forbidden and the state once more assumed the control of money, which, although the pieces were still made of the precious metals, was so regulated as to constitute a more or less equitable measure of value: the principal means employed in this regulation being the imposition of mine-royalties and a seigniorage or "retinue" upon coinage, coupled with a localization of the bronze and sometimes also of the silver issues.

This highly artificial system, though it lasted several centuries, gave way when the subject kingdoms and provinces of Rome revolted from her control and established themselves as independent or partly independent states; a movement that began with the so-called Barbarian uprisings of the fifth century and was completely consummated when Constantinople fell in 1204.

At this period the quantity of money in circulation, outside of the Moslem states, was extremely small; according to Mr. William Jacob, the vast acquisitions of the Empire had disappeared chiefly through wear and tear, coupled with the lack of fresh supplies of the precious metals from the mines. Much of these metals had been taken as spoil by the Moslems and transported to their various empires in the Orient; much had been absorbed and sequestered by the temples and religious houses of the West; and much had also been hidden and lost in secret receptacles. It was estimated by Gregory King in 1685 that the whole stock of the precious metals, in coin and plate, in Europe, at the period of the Discovery of America in 1492 did not exceed 3,000,000 in value; and to this estimate Mr. Jacob, after the most careful researches, lent his full support.

The population of Europe at that period could hardly have exceeded thirty millions; so that the quantity of coin and plate did not much exceed in value 1 £i, or say $5 per Capita. Of this amount it could hardly be supposed that more than one-half consisted of coins. The low level of prices at this period fully corroborates this view. Moreover, there was nothing to alleviate the scarcity of money; no means of accelerating its movement from hand to hand, and so of increasing its velocity or efficiency; no substitutes for coins; no negotiable instruments; no banks except those of the Italian republics; few or no good roads; no rapid means of communication; little peace or security; and no credit.

Since the fall of the Roman Empire every device by means of which this inadequate and always sinking Measure of Value could be enlarged had been tried, but in vain. The ratio of value between gold and silver in the coins had been altered by the kings of the western states with a frequency that almost defies belief. The coins had been repeatedly degraded and debased; clipping and counter-feiting were offenses so common that notwithstanding the severest penalties, they were often committed by persons of the highest respectability, by prelates, by feudal noblemen and even by sovereign kings. The emission of leather moneys had been repeatedly attempted, but the general insecurity was too great and the condition of credit too low to admit of any extensive issues of this kind of money.

Bills of exchange known to the East Indians as hoondees and familiar to the Greeks and Romans of the republican periods, had from the same cause almost entirely fallen into disuse. The cause was the low state of credit. The social state itself, so far as it depended upon that exchange of labour and its products which is impossible without the use of money, was upon the point of dissolution, when Columbus offered to the Crown of Castile his project for approaching the rich countries of the Orient by sailing westward.

What was the object of thus seeking Cathay and Japan? To discover them? They had long been discovered and were well known both to the Moslems, who had established subject states in the Orient, and to the Norsemen, who traded eastward with Tartary and India, and had even voyaged westward to the coasts of Labrador and Massachusetts. The Italians had long traded with the Orient through Alexandria and had even sent Marco Polo into China. No. The voyage of Columbus was not to discover Cathay, but to plunder it; to plunder it of those precious metals, to the use of which the Roman empire had committed all Europe and from the absence of which its various states were now suffering the throes of social decay and dissolution.

The terms which Columbus demanded and the Crown conceded in its contract with him, is a proof of this position. He demanded one- eighth of all the profits of the voyage. To this the Crown consented, after making a better provision for itself, by requiring that in the first place one-fifth of all the treasure found or captured in the lands approached should be reserved for the king. The terms of this contract are given more fully in the author's "History of the Precious Metals" and therefore they need not be repeated here. From beginning to end it was essentially a business bargain; its object was not geographical discovery, but gold and silver; its aim was not the dissemination of the Christian religion, but the acquisition of plunder and especially that kind of plunder of which the Spanish states at that period stood in the sorest need.

Said the illustrious Von Humboldt: "America was discovered, not as has been so long falsely pretended, because Columbus predicted another Continent, but because he sought by the west a nearer way to the gold mines of Japan and the spice countries in the southeast
of Asia,"* { “Fluctuations of Gold," Berlin, 1838. American edition, 1899, p. 10.}

The expeditions of Cortes and Pizarro had precisely the same objects: to discover and acquire the precious metals, without permitting any considerations of religion or humanity to stand in the way of these objects. Forty-five years after the Discovery of America the Crown of Spain made a contract with De Soto similar to that with Columbus. It will be instructive to examine its details. This document is dated Valladolid, April 20, 1537.

It provides that De Soto shall be paid a salary of 1500 ducats (each, of the weight of about a half-sovereign or quarter-eagle of the present day,) and 100,000 maravedis for each one of three fortresses which he is to erect in the " Indies." To the alcade of the expedition it awards a salary of 200 gold pesos. De Soto may take with him free of duty (almojarifazgo) negro slaves to work the mines. All salaries except that of the alcade are to be paid from the proceeds of the enterprise, so that in case of its failure, there will be nothing to pay. Of gold obtained from mines, the king is to receive during the first year one-tenth, during the second year one-ninth, and so on until the proportion is increased to one-fifth; but of gold obtained by traffic or plunder, he is always to receive a fifth.

De Soto shall not be required to pay any taxes. He shall have the entire disposal of the Indians. There shall be reserved 100,000 maravedis a year for a hospital for the Spaniards, which shall be free from taxes. No priests or attorneys shall accompany the expedition, except the alcade and such priests as may be appointed by the Crown.

After the king's fifth is laid aside from the spoils of war, and the ransom of caciques, etc., then one-sixth shall go to De Soto and the remainder divided among the men. In case of the death of a cacique, whether by murder, public execution, or disease, one-fifth of his property shall go to the king, then one-half of the remainder also to the king, leaving four-tenths to the expedition. Of "treasure taken in battle or by traffic, one-fifth shall go to the king; of treasure plundered from native temples, graves, houses or grounds, one-half to the king without discount, the remainder to the discoverer."
Signed,
Charles, The King

Here is a charter to murder, torture and enslave human beings, to despoil temples and to desecrate graves. It is signed by the King of Spain who was also the Emperor of Germany; it is committed to a swash-buckler who by the most infamous means had made his fortune with Pizarro in Peru; it is as sordid a document as ever was penned ; a disgrace to Spain, to Christianity, to civilization. It plainly and unequivocally lays bare the motive of this expedition. This was not to discover or explore North America, but to plunder it of gold and silver, to replenish the coffers of the king, to provide those blood-stained metals out of which man, in retrogressive periods, is obliged, through his own degeneracy and distrust of his fellow-men, to fabricate his Measure of Value. Said Sir Arthur Helps, the accomplished historian of the Spanish Conquest of America: "The blood-cemented walls of the Alcazar of Madrid might boast of being raised upon a complication of human suffering hitherto unparalleled in the annals of mankind. . . . Each ducat spent upon these palaces, was, at a moderate computation, freighted with ten human lives."*

Let us be still more moderate and say one human life to the ducat: even this was sufficiently atrocious.

' This document appears in full in the New York Historical Magazine for February, 1861. (Br. Mu. Press mark, P. P. 6323.)

* "The Conquerors of America and their Bondsmen," London, 1857, in, 215.

[Speak2Truth]

[FONT=Georgia][SIZE=3]It doesn't stop there. The intentional 'dumbing down of the masses" intentionally turns those not in the aristocracy into peasants. Take away education, adequate healthcare , finances, free communication in the form of public television and radio, take control of the internet (google is a leader in this) and you render the peasantry powerless.

There is another perspective on this.

Give them education (in politically correct ideas), adequate healthcare, free handouts of food and subsistence materials and the masses become cattle. Sure, let them freely communicate and make noise about what they want - cattle moo about things all the time. However, as long as the ruling elite PROVIDE for them, then the ruling elite have taken away their freedom and ability to direct their own lives.

A Socialist agitator actually used that term when explaining the top-down control of the masses to me - "cattle".

Obama's science czar, Cass Sunstein, put it a little differently: "Once we know that people are human and have some Homer Simpson in them, then there's a lot that can be done to manipulate them."

I also think it is useful to point out that healthcare, education, internet, public access TV and so on are not things that are "taken away". They are things that are "given" at the expense of others.

What is "taken away" is what we do or earn for ourselves - then have taken from us by other people who want something "given" to them.

[Speak2Truth]

This is fascinating stuff. I'm highly interested in anthropology and history.

Have you read a book called "Salt" by Kurlansky? Fascinating history of the importance of salt, more than money, in shaping human civilization. It has also inspired me to try some foods that I would not have ordinarily considered.

[Iolchan]

No; but am looking into it...

[Iolchan]

CHAPTER II.

THE CONQUEST

Gold the first inquiry of Columbus — Its fatal significance to the natives — Columbus' second voyage — The mines of Cibao — Columbus proposes to ship the natives as slaves to Spain — Sufferings of the colonists — Their search for gold — Their disappointment and cruelty — Columbus ships four cargoes of natives to Spain as slaves — He hunts the natives with bloodhounds — Despair of the natives — Columbus reduces them all to vassalage — Their rapid exhaustion and extinction — Story of the cacique Hatuey — The golden calf — Cruelty of Ovando — Death of Queen Isabella — Her terrible legacy to Ferdinand — Columbus dies in poverty and debt — Forty thousand natives dragged from the Bahamas and condemned to the mines — Character of the gold-seekers.

* * *

NO sooner had Columbus taken formal possession of the island of Hispaniola than he asked the wondering natives for gold. This fatal word, so fraught with misfortune to the aborigines that it might fittingly furnish an epitaph for their race, and so tainted with dishonour to their conquerors that four centuries of time have not sufficed to remove its stigma, seems to have been literally the first verbal communication from the Old World to the New.

Some of the islanders had a few gold ornaments about them. “Poor wretches" (says Navarette) "if they had possessed the slightest gift of prophecy, they would have thrown these baubles into the deepest sea!" They pointed south and answered, " Cubanacan," meaning the middle of Cuba.

Shortly after the discovery, Columbus was wrecked on the coast of Cuba, and he sent to the neighbouring cacique, Guacanagari, to in-form him of his misfortune. The good chief was moved to tears by the sad accident, and with the labour of his people lightened the wrecked vessel, removed the effects to a place of safety, stationed guards around them for their better security, and then offered Columbus all of his own property to make good any loss which the latter had sustained.

Touched by this unparalleled kindness, Columbus thus expressed himself of these Indies: "They are a loving uncovetous people, so docile in all things that, I assure your Highnesses, I believe in all the world there is not a better people or a better country ; they love their neighbours as themselves, and they have the sweetest way in the world of talking, and always with a smile."

In return for their hospitality and loving kindness, the Spanish captain resolved to establish a colony among them, having found such goodwill and such signs of gold. He built a fort, called it La Navidad, left forty adventurers in it, among them an Irishman and an Englishman, and sailed to Spain.

The first thing done, after his return home — the recital of his wondrous story, his reception at the Court of Spain, and the Te Deum — was to obtain a grant of the newly- found domain and all its contents, animate and inanimate, from the Pope of Rome. These objects were effected by a Bull, dated May, 1499.

In September, 1493, Columbus set forth again, this time with seventeen vessels and 1500 men. He found La Navidad destroyed, and his forty colonists missing. According to the cacique, Guacanagari, the Spaniards had made a raid, probably for gold, upon a tribe of the interior, and notwithstanding the advantages of their arms, had been defeated and killed to a man. Columbus built another fort in another part of the island, called it Isabella, and at once gave his attention to the subject of gold.

" Hearing of the mines of Cibao, he sent to reconnoitre them ; and the Indios, little foreseeing what was to come of it, gave gold to the Spanish messengers. Columbus accordingly resolved to found a colony at Cibao."

In January, 1494, Columbus sent to the joint sovereigns of Spain, by the hands of Antonio de Torres, the Receiver of the colony, an account of his second voyage, with recommendations for the consideration and approval of Los Reyes. After the complimentary address, it begins with the reasons why the admiral had not been able to send home more gold. His people have been ill; it was necessary to keep guard, etc. "It has done well,'" is written in the margin by order of Los Reyes.

He suggests the building of a fortress near the place where gold can be got. Their Highnesses approve: " This is well, and so it must be done. " He then suggests to make slaves of the Indios, and to ship some of them to Spain, to help pay for the expenses of the expedition. The answer to this atrocious project is evasive, as though Los Reyes did not wish to wound so valued a servant by a point blank refusal. It is '' Suspended for the present. "

Money was very welcome at the Spanish Court, where there was more show than maravedis; but Los Reyes were not yet prepared to obtain it by sanctioning the enslavement of an innocent and friendly people. On the other hand, Columbus was eager for the measure.

While de Torres was at the Court with these recommendations, Columbus' colony fared badly on the island. The provisions which they had brought with them failed, and white men were threatened with starvation, where the Indios lived without effort. To their great disgust the Spaniards had to go to work, and till the earth for bread, instead of scouring it, as they had expected, for gold.

"The rage and vexation of these men, many of whom had come out with the notion of finding gold ready for them on the sea shore, may be imagined. . . . The colonists, however, were somewhat cheered, after a time, by hearing of goldmines, and seeing specimens of 'ore' brought from thence; and the admiral went himself, and founded the fort of St. Thomas, in the mining district of Cibao."

It is needless to say that, without the establishment of any permanent sources of supplies, the gold hunters failed in their enterprise, and most of them lost their lives. "They went straggling over the country; they consumed the provisions of the poor Indians, astonishing them by their voracious appetites; waste, rapine, injury and insult followed in their steps."

Worn out with their sufferings, the miserable Indios "passed from terror to despair," and threatened the Spanish settlement. Columbus sallies forth, routs the Indios of Macorix, and captures the majority, four shiploads of whom he sends to Spain, February 24, 1495, as slaves. These were the very ships that brought out the evasive reply of Los Reyes to Columbus' request for leave to enslave the natives.

After this, Columbus starts upon another expedition, at the head of 400 cavalry, clad in steel, armed with arquebuses, and attended by bloodhounds. He is opposed by 100,000 Indios. Their soft and naked bodies not being proof against horses, fire-arms, or ferocious dogs, a horrible carnage ensues, and another bloody installment is paid towards the cost of gold. Columbus captures the cacique, Caonabo, through the vilest treachery, and imposes a tribute of gold upon the entire population of Hispaniola.

The tribute is as follows: Every Indio above fourteen years old, who was in the provinces of the mines, or near to these provinces, was to pay every three months a little bellfull of gold; and all other Indios an arroba of cotton.

When this unreasonable tribute was imposed, Guarionex, cacique of the Vega Real, said that his people did not know where to find the gold, and offered in its place to cultivate a huge farm, fifty-five leagues long, covering the whole island, and to produce therefrom enough corn to feed the whole of Castile. Poor Indio! This was, indeed, a suggestion of despair. Hispaniola, at the utmost, did not contain more than 1,200,000 Indies, man, woman, and child. Castile contained a population of 3,000,000 or 4,000,000. An attempt to feed a population so large by one so small, and at a distance of 4,000 miles, could only have ended in failure. But Guarionex might as well have made this as any other proposal.

What their Catholic Majesties wanted was not bread but gold; and this is what, in their names, Columbus was bent upon obtaining. Yet however much he desired it, the gold could not be collected, simply because there were no gold mines of any consequence, only some poor washings, in Hispaniola, from whence it might be got. Columbus was, therefore, obliged to change the nature of his oppressions. This was done by reducing the whole native population to vassalage; and thus, in the year of our Lord 1496, was begun the system of repartimientos in America. ' Such was the reward for the unparalleled kindness of good Guacanagari, and for his loving, uncovetous people, "who always spoke with a smile."

The repartimiento, afterwards the encofnienda, was derived from the feudal tenures of Spain. It was a grant of Indios (not including land) to render fixed tribute, or personal services, or both, during the life of the encomiendero or suzerain. This was afterwards extended to two, three, four, five and six lives, and was greatly abused. {Consult Irving's "Conquest of Granada," vol. i, pp. 145, 164, 173, 197, 198, and iv, p. 353, eq.}

Reduced to a condition of vassalage, infinitely worse than slavery, the Indios fell into the profoundest sadness, and bethought themselves of the desperate remedy of attempting to starve out their masters by refusing to sow or plant anything. The wild scheme reacted upon themselves. The Spaniards did, indeed, suffer from famine; but power, exercised in the crudest manner, enabled them to elude the fate which had been intended for them; whilst the Indios died in great numbers of hunger, sickness and misery.

In the early part of 1496, Columbus discovered a gold mine in the south-eastern part of Hispaniola. On his return to Spain in the same year he sent out orders to his brother Bartholomew to build a fort there. This was done and the place called San Domingo. From this port Bartholomew sailed out to Xaragua, east of the modern Port-au-Prince, the only unconquered portion of the island. He reduced it to vassalage and demanded tribute in gold. The cacique Bohechio pleaded that there was no gold in his dominions; so the tribute had to be commuted in cotton and cassaba-bread. Returning to Fort Isabella, Bartholomew found that 300 of his followers had died from hunger and disease, the first considerable installment of the myriads of Spaniards who subsequently perished in the same criminal search for the precious metals.

In 1498 Columbus again set forth from Spain — this time with eight ships and about 900 men. Upon his arrival at San Domingo he sent five of these ships to Spain laden with 600 slaves. The Court of Spain — at first conditionally, as though it hesitated to thwart its favourite commanders, afterwards absolutely, when it found that none of them were above the practice, and that all evaded the conditions — disapproved of enslaving the Indies. Its objection to this transaction of Columbus was that the captives were not taken in war, and it marked the severity of its displeasure by superseding Columbus in his command and ordering him home.

The officer chosen to replace him was Ovando. In the instructions given to this knight in A. D. 1501, he was ordered to treat the Indios justly, and pay them one golden peso a year for their labour in getting gold. Between subjecting themselves to these conditions and living in a state of slavery, there could have been to the Indios but little choice, even if it had been accorded to them. It is due to the Spanish Crown to say that deceived by the reports of the over-sanguine gold-hunters, it supposed that gold was easy of acquisition in the West Indies, and that a moderate amount of involuntary labour on the part of the natives would suffice to produce what was demanded of them.

Ovando left Spain in 1502 with a score or more vessels, and 2,500 persons. As these vessels neared the shore of San Domingo, the colonists ran down to hear the news from home, and, in return, to narrate that a lump of gold of extraordinary size had recently been obtained on the island. It had been picked up by a native woman and was estimated to have been worth 1,350,000 maravedis. Nothing more clearly reveals the character of these expeditions and the persons who composed them, than a brief relation of the fatal consequences of this announcement. Ovando's people no sooner landed than they ran off to the placers, where, in a short time, more than 1,000 of the 2,500 perished miserably from hunger and disease.

"Here it may be noticed that, in general, those colonists who devoted themselves to mining, remained poor; while the farmers grew rich. When melting time came, which was at stated intervals of eight months, it often happened that after the king's dues were paid, and those who had claims upon the produce for advances already made to the miners, were satisfied, nothing remained for the miner himself. And so all this blood and toil were not paid for ^ even in money; and many still continued to eat their meals from the same wooden platters they had been accustomed to in the old country; only with discontented minds and souls beginning to be imbruted with cruelty." (Helps.)

At this juncture, Columbus, authorized to make further explorations in the New World, suddenly appeared at San Domingo. The orders of the Crown forbade him to disembark at the island, for fear that the course of administration for which he had been rebuked would be persisted in; but a violent hurricane was apprehended, and the safety of his fleet afforded him sufficient excuse to seek a harbor. In this storm, which took place as the admiral had foreseen, the greater part of a large fleet of vessels which had recently set sail for Spain were lost, with all on board — another sacrifice to the thirst for gold.

Shortly after this, a force of 400 men was sent to reduce the Indios of the province of Higuey. These unfortunates were hunted with firearms and bloodhounds. Of the captives taken, those not wanted as slaves had both their hands cut off, many were thrown to the dogs, and several thousand put to the sword.

Ovando, finding that, under the merciful instructions of Los Reyes about dealing with the Indios, he could get no gold — for they shunned the Spaniards " as the sparrow the hawk " and fled to the woods, there to avoid them and die — transmitted to the Court a report to this effect. In a reply dated December, 1503, Ovando was directed “•to compel" the Indios to have dealings with the Spaniards; and thus the slave system begun by Columbus, was re-established by the Court.

* It may not be uninteresting in this place to hear what the Indios themselves thought about the conquest of America and the motives which impelled the Spaniards in its prosecution. Something of this is embodied in the story of Hatuey, cacique of a province of Cuba.

Apprehensive that the Spaniards would come, as they after-wards did come, to his territory, Hatuey called his people together and recounting the cruelties of the white men, said they did all these things for a great God whom they loved much. This God he would show them. Accordingly he produced a small casket filled with gold.

*" Here is the God whom they serve and after whom they go; and, as you have heard, already they are longing to pass over to this place, not pretending more than to seek this God; wherefore let us make to him here a festival and dances, so that when they come, He may tell them to do us no harm." (Herrera.)

The Indios approved this council, and to propitiate the God whom they thought their enemies worshipped, they danced around it until they were exhausted; when the cacique turned to them and said that they should not keep the God of the Christians anywhere, for were it even in their entrails it would be torn out; but that they should throw it in the river that the Christians might not know where it was; "and there," says the account "they threw it."

In 1503, Ovando set out with 70 horsemen and 300 foot-soldiers to visit the friendly Queen Anacaona of Xaragua, who hospitably received him with feasting and rejoicing. In return, Ovando, whose object was to terrify the unhappy natives into submission and slavery, invited the chiefs to a mock tournament, where, at a signal, from himself, the queen and her caciques were all treacherously captured, the former was put to death by hanging and the latter were burnt alive.

Shortly after-wards, in an expedition against the Indios of the province of Higuey, the Spaniards cut off the hands of their captives, hanged thirteen of them "in honour and reverence of Christ our Lord and his twelve Apostles," and used the hanging bodies of their miserable victims as dumb figures to try their swords upon. At another time, the Indios were burnt alive in a sort of wooden cradle.

" Todo esto yo lo vide con mis ojos corporales mortales." All this I saw with my own corporeal mortal eyes. (Las Casas.)

Queen Isabella of Spain died in November, 1504. Could she with her dying eyes have seen into the Far West, she would have "beheld the Indian labouring at the mine under the most cruel buffetings, his family neglected, perishing, or enslaved; she would have marked him on his return, after eight months of dire toil, enter a place which knew him not, or a household that could only sorrow over the gaunt creature who had returned to them, and mingle their sorrows with his; or, still more sad, she would have seen Indians who had been brought from far distant homes, linger at the mines, too hopeless or too careless to return."

Isabella's will contained a bequest which unfortunately removed all restraint from the oppressions visited upon the Indios. She left to her widower, the Regent Ferdinand, one-half of the revenues of the Indies as a life estate. In the methods which were resorted to for the collection of these revenues, this meant one-half of the gold which could be extorted by the sweat and blood of the Indios; and Ferdinand, needy and thus endowed, withheld no license to the adventurers in America, which they alleged was needful in order to swell the Fifths due to the Crown, and the importance of the Queen's legacy.

Upon the death of Isabella, Ferdinand, not being the immediate heir to the crown of Spain, retired to his kingdom of Naples, and was succeeded in the government of Spain by King Philip. This monarch died in 1506, and Ferdinand then became King of Spain. A few months before this, Columbus had died, and, as we shall see of all the Conquistadores, in poverty and debt.

At this period the Indios had become "a sort of money" which was granted in repartimiento to favourites at the Spanish court. "The mania for gold-findmg was now probably at its height, and the sacrifice of Indian life proportionately great. " So few of the Indios remained alive that negro slaves began to be imported from Africa to fill their places at the mines.

The king was told that the Bahama Islands were full of Indios who might be transported to Hispaniola in order that " they might assist in getting gold, and the king be much served." Ferdinand, who was fully as mindful of his interests as the adventurers upon the islands, gave the required license, and the evil work commenced. In five years time, forty thousand of the Bahamians, captured under every circumstance of treachery and cruelty, were transported across the sea, all of them to die lingering deaths at the gold mines.

This was among the last acts of the Ovando administration which closed with the appointment of Diego Columbus in 1509. Only seventeen years had elapsed since the discovery of the island. According to Humboldt's "Fluctuations of Gold," the amount of gold thus far obtained was scarcely more than five million dollars. The cost of its production was several expensive expeditions with their outfits, some thousands of Spanish lives, and at least a million and a half of Indios!

Such was the cruelty of the gold-hunters, and the terror they inspired in the natives, that according to the Abbe Raynal, when Drake captured San Domingo in 1586, he learned from the few survivors of what had once been a populous country that, rather than become the fathers of children who might be subjected to the treatment which they had endured, they had unanimously refrained from conjugal intercourse.

It must not be supposed that these atrocities were peculiar to the Spaniards: rather was it peculiar to the class of adventurers to be found in all countries who, in the hope of rapidly and easily acquired fortunes, coupled with the fascination of a career of adventure, license, and rapine, are the first to brave the dangers and seek the profits of a miner's life. Similar cruelties have been related of the ancients, who were not Spaniards. Similar ones can also be told of the Portugese, the English, the French, as well as the Americans. They are narrated here of the Spaniards simply because these instances are connected with the greatest supply of the precious metals known to history.

" I swear that numbers of men have gone to the Indies who did not deserve water from God or man," wrote Columbus to the home government, and it was the same with those who went from other countries than Spain.

The vilest scoundrels in Europe were let loose upon the un-offending aborigines of America, and the darkest and most detestable crimes were committed in the sacred name of Jesus Christ.

To these cruelties the necessities of the Crown opened the door. A letter of King Ferdinand to the colonists of Hispaniola is thus fairly paraphrased: "Get gold: humanely if you can; but at all hazards get gold; and here are facilities for you."

[Iolchan]

CHAPTER III.

EL DORADO.

The legend of Dorado — Religious ceremony of the Muiska ladiaas of New Granada — Version of Martinez — Simon — Orellana — Sir Walter Raleigh — Vain searches for the Golden Country of the legend — The real gold country of South America found by the Portuguese in Brazil — Terra Firma mistaken for Dorado — The former an earthly paradise — Gold money and trinkets of the natives — Desolation caused by the European gold hunters — The pearl fishery — Slave hunting — Las Casas — His despair and retirement — Cruelties of the Spaniards — The actual gold region of Terra Firma, or Venezuela — Its present condition.

EL DORADO means '*The Golden," or "The Gilded." It was applied by the Spaniards to that country of limitless gold which their avid imagination had located in South America, some of them fixing it in the Valley of the Essequibo, others in that of the Orinoco, and others again among the Muiska Indians of Bogota, whose high-priest, it was said, clothed himself during a religious ceremony, with the dust of the metal so much coveted by the Spaniards. Martinez saw El Dorado in Manoa, a city of Guiana, whose buildings were roofed with gold; while in 1540, Orellana recognized it in the valley of the Amazon, whither Raleigh afterwards went to seek it, but found it not. In truth, it never existed at all. It was a myth created by cupidity and nourished by credulity, the search for which cost the lives of myriads of natives and not a few adventurers, both Spanish, English and others.

One of the legends of El Dorado is given by a Spanish monk named Simon, who says that a Spanish captain named Sebastiano Belalcazar having invaded the district of Lake Guatavita near Bogota, questioned the natives about gold, asking the spokesman if there was any such metal in his country. "He answered that there was abundance of it, together with many emeralds, which he called green-stones," and added that "there was a lake in the land of his over-lord which the latter entered several times a year, upon a raft, advancing to its centre, he being naked, except that his entire body was covered from head to foot with an adhesive gum, upon which was sprinkled a great quantity of gold dust. This dust sticking to the gum became a coating of gold, which upon a clear day shone resplendently in the rising sun; such being the hour selected for the ceremony. He then made sacrifices and offerings, throwing into the water some pieces of gold and emeralds. Then he caused himself to be washed with saponaceous herbs, when all the gold upon his person fell into the lake and was lost to view. The ceremony being concluded, he came ashore and resumed his ordinary vestments. This news was so welcome to Belalcazar and his followers that they determined to penetrate this golden country, which they called La Provincia del Dorado — that is to say, the Golden province, where the cacique gilds his body before offering sacrifices. Such is the root and branch of the story that has gone out into the world under so many different forms by the name of El Dorado."

Another version of the Dorado appears to have originated with Francisco Orellana, a companion of Pizarro in Peru. When in 1540 Gonzalo Pizarro started to hunt for gold and slaves east of the Andes, Orellana was second in command of the expedition, which comprised 350 Spaniards, 4,000 Indian porters, and 1,000 bloodhounds for hunting down the natives. After crossing the mountains, the Spaniards discovered the Napo, one of the upper affluents of the Amazon. Despairing, for lack of provisions, of being able to return by the route they had taken, the adventurers constructed a "brigantine" large enough to hold a portion of their numbers and the baggage.



The command of this vessel was given by Pizarro to Orellana, with instructions to keep in touch with those who intended to follow the course of the stream afoot. Their provisions becoming at length entirely exhausted, Orellana was instructed to drop down the stream with 50 soldiers, to a village reputed to be some leagues below and return with such provisions as he could secure. In three days Orellana reached the Amazon, which here flowed through a wilderness destitute of human food. To return was difficult; to abandon his commander and continue down the stream, was a course that promised many advantages. This course he adopted. Starting from the confluence of the Napo and Amazon, in February, 1541, Orellana reached the ocean in the following August, thence he sailed to Cubagua and afterwards to Spain.



Broken in fortune, health and reputation, Orellana had still a card left to play; this he found in his fertile imagination. He reported that he had voyaged through a country only inhabited by women, and where gold was so plentiful that houses were roofed with it. In Manoa, the capital, the temples were built with the same costly material. Nothing was too extravagant to be believed by the greedy ears of cupidity. His tale spread so fast and received such wide belief that several expeditions were organized, some within the same year, to subdue the fair huntresses of South America and carry home to Spain the sheathing of their golden temples and dwellings. One of these expeditions was headed by Philip de Hutten, a German knight, who started late in 1541 from Caro, on the Pearl Coast, with a small band of Spaniards. After a brief ab-sence he returned to the coast with the story that he had penetrated to the capital of the Omegas, that the roofs of the houses shone like gold, but that he had been driven away by the natives and therefore required a larger force and "more capital" to prosecute the adventure. There was no tribe of Omegas in South America. There was a tribe of Amaguas on the banks of the Amazon, but it does not appear that Hutten had traversed so great a distance. Should it be admitted that this gold hunting "noble " was capable of drawing the long-bow, his story might be explained without discussing this objection. However, he succeeded in obtaining what he wanted — more men and more capital; but while preparing his second expedition, he perished by the hand of one of his associates. (Malouet's "Guyane.")

In 1545 Orellana, having procured sufficient capital for the purpose, set sail from Spain with a large and well equipped force, to conquer the haughty Amazons and pillage their imaginary Dorado. He was fortunate in dying peaceably on the voyage; for his companions would assuredly have murdered him when they came face to face with the dismal truth. It is needless to say that the expedition miserably failed; but though Orellana died and his expedition perished, his lie lived a long life; and it is possibly not quite dead yet.

The most famous of the numerous expeditions to discover and pillage this figment of Orellana's brain was organized by Sir Walter Raleigh. After massacreing the Spaniards who aided Desmond in Ireland, seizing for himself twenty thousand acres of Desmond's lands and debauching one of Queen Elizabeth's maids of honor, and thus rendering himself quite eligible for an enterprise of this character, he prepared for a voyage to the land of gold. In 1595 he set sail with five ships. After spending several months in roaming the country between the Amazon and Orinoco, he returned to England with Orellana's tale embellished. In his "Discovery of the Large, Rich and Beautiful Empire of Guiana," he describes the gilded King of this favored country (el rey Dorado) whose chamberlains, every morning, after rubbing his naked body with aromatic oils, blew powdered gold over it, through long sarbacans! It has been shown ina previous work that Raleigh never had the least intention to prospect or mine for gold; and that he was not even equipped with the picks and shovels which would form the most elementary tools needed for such purposes; in short, that the expedition was designed to plunder and enslave the natives and not to prosecute any legitimate industry. But indeed Raleigh was not the only adventurer of this type. In the Spanish records and in Rodway's volume we find whole catalogues of ruffians who had no word but "gold " upon their lips, no thought but of greed and murder in their heads. Juan Corteso, Caspar de Sylva, Jeronimo Ortal, Father Alala, Alonzo de Herrera, above all, that prince of monsters Lope de Aquirre, colour the pages with the darkest hues of bloody emprise. As for Aquirre, there is no more terrible story in all the history of the Spanish Main. A companion of the dashing Pedro de Ursua, he set out in the year 1560 to search the Amazon for treasure cities, and within a month he had murdered his captain and all those who stood by him. Two days later he cut the throat of the beautiful Donna Inez de Altienza, who had followed Pedro from Spain to share the dangers and hardships of his undertaking.

Aquirre was about fifty years of age, short of stature and sparsely built, ill-featured, his face small and lean, his beard black, and his eyes as piercing as those of a hawk. When he looked at any one he fixed his gaze sternly, particularly when annoyed; he was a noisy talker and boaster, and when well supported, very bold and determined, but otherwise a coward. . . . He was never without one or two coats of mail or a steel breastplate, and always carried a sword, dagger, arquebuse, or lance. His sleep was mostly taken in the day, as he was afraid to rest at night, although he never took off his armour altogether, nor put away his weapons.

It is a curious fact that those who searched for El Dorado never found it; whilst those who never searched for it, found not indeed El Dorado, but the only great gold bearing districts of America south of California. These were neither in New Granada, Terra Firma, the West India islands, nor New Spain, nor indeed in any part of America invaded by the Spaniards; but in Brazil. After the Spaniards had plundered the Indians of their trinkets, after they had worn them out in the petty gold placers of Hispaniola, Mexico, the Isthmus, New Granada and Peru, after they had dug into the ancient graves of the Indians and robbed the dead of the ornaments which had been devoted by the hands of piety, they came to a halt. ^ [The Peruvian and Central American graves were classified by those who dishonoured them into " Huacas de Pilares " and " Huacas Tapadas," or graves without tombstones, the former being richer than the latter and commanding a higher price in the Spanish markets!]

There 'was evidently no more gold to be got; and but for the adventitious discovery of the silver of Potosi, they would probably have abandoned the countries they had ruined and permitted the remains of the native races to recover from their devastating presence. But Potosi, together with the subsequent discoveries of rich silver mines in Mexico, sealed the fate of the Indians.

Meanwhile, something resembling a Dorado had been discovered by the Portuguese in Brazil. This was in 1573, when the placers of Minhas Geraes were discovered by Sebastiao Fernandes Tourinho. A quarter of a century later, 1595-1605, occurred the great discoveries at Ouro Preto. From first to last these mines produced no less a sum in gold than i8o,ooo,ooo. Dr. Southey's estimate is upwards of 25o,ooo,ooo; but this appears to be excessive. It was estimated in 1880 that, weight for weight, Brazil had produced only a fourth less gold than either California or Australia.

"When it is considered how much less gold there was in the world's stock of the precious metals at the period when Brazil threw her auriferous product into Europe, than there was when California and Australia began to be productive, the importance of the Brazilian mines is seen to have been even greater than that of the great placers of the present century." *{Del Mar's History of the Precious Metals, ed. 1880, p. 124.}

Among the smaller placers of the world whose importance was great enough to exercise some influence upon the history of money in America, were those of the Appalachian Range of North America which yielded from first to last — 1824 to 1849 — about ten million dollars in gold. It was these mines and the Russian placers of the same period which called forth that remarkable but little known treatise of the illustrious Von Humboldt, "The Fluctuations of Gold," than which no more fascinating monograph on the subject has ever been written.{*Originally published in Berlin, 1838; republished in New York by the Cambridge Encyclopedia Company, 1899.} Here it was, in North Carolina, that the writer enjoyed his early experience as a mining engineer. A number of Spanish relics, such as spear-heads, horse-shoes, etc., of ancient types, picked up near the gold placers of Salisbury, testify to the presence of the early gold hunters much farther North than they are commonly supposed to have ventured.

But let us return to the terrible and pathetic history of El Dorado; terrible in respect of the desolation and ruin which, in the pursuit of gold, the Spaniards wrought upon this beautiful land and its innocent inhabitants; pathetic with respect to the hopeless efforts which one good man among them made to avert this ruin and lead the natives by pious methods into the fold of Christianity. Those who would peruse this story in detail should consult Sir Arthur Helps' admirable work. The scope of the present history compels us never to lose sight of the precious metals and their immediate surroundings.

Yet there is one more reflection which this history enforces upon us and for which we must beg the reader's indulgence. From the moment when America was discovered by the Spaniards down to the present day, it does not seem to have possessed any further interest for them or for the rest of Europe beyond that of seeing it exploited for the precious metals. The first rude conquerors who visited it from the older world, ravaged it for golden spoil; the race of men who followed afterwards, dug into its mines and gutted them of their precious contents, only to transport these to Europe; the alien financiers who today are permitted to influence so largely the polity of America, exercise their power largely for the sake of the gold it produces. The means employed by the Spaniards was pillage; by the Creoles, slavery; and by the aliens, who are permitted to mold its laws at the present day, a chicanery misnamed "finance."

The object has been the same with all of them, gold; the destination of the gold has always been the same, the mints of Europe ; there to enrich classes who are already rich and keep the remote regions which produced this wealth, in comparative indigence. It is not, as has been falsely claimed, the Catholic religion, which keeps South America poor, nor a republican form of government which subjects the vast resources and energies of North America to the designs of the arch-intriguants who govern the banks and exchanges of Europe. It is that European System of Money, which, whether the coins were made of one metal or two metals, has never failed, so long as those metals were gratuitously coined and free to be melted down on both sides of the Atlantic, to withdraw the bulk of them to Europe and place the American states at the mercy of the European mints and melting houses and the classes who control them.

The native name for that portion of the South American continent which stretches from the Orinoco to Cumana was Paria; whilst from Cumana to the Gulf of Venezuela it was called Cumana. Together, these districts were called by the Spaniards, the Pearl Coast, whilst the interior portion was at a later period called El Dorado. That larger tract of coast which stretches from the Amazon to the Magdalena, was called Terra Firma, and within it are comprised the present States of the three Guianas and Venezuela. It is described by the early voyagers as an earthly heaven; indeed Columbus told his men,when his ship was in the Gulf of Paria, that he thought it must be "a Continent which he had discovered, the same Continent of the East of which he had always been in search; and that the waters, (which we now know to be a branch of the river Orinoco,) formed one of the four great rivers which descended from the garden of Paradise." He added that "they were in the richest country of the world," a remark, which, it seems, however, was not applied to the fertility of its fields, but to his expectations of gold. (Oviedo, History. Gen. Ind., XIX, i.)

The Chimay Indians who inhabited the coasts, were not savages, but agriculturalists, fishermen and hunters. They lived in permanent dwellings, sat upon chairs, dined at tables and, alas, for their own happiness,*{*F. G. Squier, in Century Magazine, 1S90, p. 890.} They wore ornaments of gold and necklaces of pearls. It was these trinkets that attracted the cupidity of the Spaniards and doomed the native races to destruction.

Columbus described these people as "tall, well built, and of very graceful bearing, with long smooth hair, which they covered with a beautiful head dress of worked and coloured handkerchiefs, that appeared at a distance to be made of silk." Everywhere he met with “the kindest reception and hospitality." He found the men, the country and the products, equally admirable. It is somewhat curious that he does not mention his discovery of pearls to the Catholic Monarchs and he afterwards makes a poor excuse for this. The reason I conjecture to have been a wish to preserve this knowledge to himself, that the fruits of his enterprise might not be prematurely snatched from him. His shipmates, however, were sure to disperse the intelligence; and the gains to be made on the Pearl Coast were probably the most tempting bait for future navigators to follow in the tract of Columbus and complete the discovery of “the earthly Paradise."

The natives cultivated maize, cassaba and cotton, weaving the latter into clothing, hammocks, and other articles of utility. They even manufactured a sort of wine, or beer, from the maize." The trees descended to the sea. There were houses and people and very beautiful lands which reminded him (Columbus) from their beauty and their verdure, of the gardens, or huertas, of Valencia in the month of May." Not only this, but the lands were well cultivated, “muy labrada." Farms and populous places were visible above the water as he coasted onwards; and still the trees descended to the sea — a sure sign of the general mildness of the climate, wherever it occurs"…, " The expedition proceeded onwards, anchoring in the various ports and bays which there are on that coast, until it came to a very beautiful spot, near a river, where there were not only houses, but places of fortification. There were also gardens of such beauty that one of the voyagers, afterwards giving evidence in a lawsuit connected with the proceedings on that coast, declared that he had never seen a more delicious spot." (Helps, II, 113.)

Upon this happy shore, at Paria, Columbus landed in 1498, setting upon it that great cross which was the symbol of the sovereignty claimed by him for Ferdinand and Isabella, and should have also been that of hope and salvation for the natives. But from the moment of its erection everything changed for the worse. The first enquiries of the admiral were for gold; the next for pearls. The proceeds of his voyage in these coveted objects did not in the end amount to much, but they served to stimulate other adventurers. In December of the same year the news of his discovery reached Spain; in the following May, Alonso de Ojeda, started with an expedition from Spain with the object to exploit this beautiful land. A few days later another expedition started with the same object, led by Per Alonso Nino and Christobal Guerra. This last one came to the island of Margarita (Pearls) where they procured some pearls in exchange for glass-beads, pins and needles. At Mochima they obtained in an hour 15 ounces of pearls for trumperies that cost in Spain but 200 maravedis. At Curiana, on the Main, they met with "the most gracious reception, as if it were a meeting of parents and children."

The houses were built of wood and thatched with palm leaves. Every kind of food was abundant — fish, flesh, fowls, and bread made of Indian corn. Markets and fairs were held, in which were displayed all the bravery of jars, pitchers, dishes, and porringers of native manufacture. But the Spaniards cared nothing for these, only for those fatal ornaments of "gold made in the form of little birds, frogs and other figures, very well wrought." When the strangers, with affected carelessness, asked where "that yellow dirt" came from, they were told Cauchieto, some forty leagues off. Securing what gold they could obtain at Curiana, the adventurers voyaged to Cauchieto, where they found that pearls were dear and gold was cheap. At Chichiribichi, a place near the present port of La Guayra, Alonso de Ojeda had anticipated them, by attacking and plundering the natives, who did not receive Nino's expedition with the usual amiability.

Returning to Curiana they found such a supply of pearls ready for them, some as big as filberts, that they purchased as much as 150 marks weight, at a cost of not more than ten or 12 ducats worth of trinkets. In February, 1500, this expedition returned to Bayona in Galicia, "the mariners being laden with pearls as if they were carrying bundles of straw." In a few months time the news spread all over Spain and flowed back to Hispaniola. An expedition at once started from that island, which occupied the sterile islet of Cubagua, between Margarita and the Main. There was conducted that pearl fishery which afterwards gave its name to the Coast of Terra Firma.

Thus far there had been comparatively little friction between the Spaniards and Indians, but Hispaniola, now nearly depopulated of the natives by the rigours of the gold mines, was too much in need of new victims and too near to Terra Firma, to induce the Spaniards to forego the advantage of kidnapping the inhabitants of the Main. In 1512 they carried off a cacique, with 17 of his men, to the mines of Hispaniola. This cruel and treacherous act was avenged by the Indians, who, after affording the Spaniards an ample opportunity to return the captives, put to death the unhappy Dominican monks who had erected a pioneer mission on the Main. In 1518 the Franciscans and Dominicans of Hispaniola, nothing daunted by the fate of their brethren, erected two new monasteries on the Pearl Coast, the Indians receiving them kindly. Scarcely had these amicable arrangements been made when a Spaniard named Alonso de Ojeda — not the one previously mentioned — started from Cabagua to kidnap natives on the Main. Four leagues beyond the monasteries, at a place on the coast named Maracapana, Ojeda treacherously attacked a band of 50 Indians, whom he had employed to carry maize; and after slaughtering a number of them, carried the remainder away in slavery. This act roused the natives of the coast to fury. They attacked the monasteries, dispersed its inmates, tore the emblems of their religion into shreds and killed 80 of their companions. Not content with this, they started for Cubagua, where there were 300 Spaniards getting rich with the pearl fishery, put the latter to flight and plundered their mushroom city of New Cadiz. When this news reached St. Domingo a punitive expedition, under Ocampo, was organized to chastise the Indians. Having discharged this mission with cruel fidelity, Ocaropo made use of the occasion to secure a large number of slaves, "carrying his incursions into that mountainous country, the abode of the Tegares," a place south of the present city of Caraccas.

It was in the midst of these scenes that the benevolent Las Casas made that memorable but vain attempt to establish peace and the Christian religion upon Terra Firma. The Indians were docile and willing enough, but the Spaniards wanted gold and slaves, objects which were irreconcilable with either peace or religion. Even the subordinates of the clerigo could not forego these temptations, andtaking advantage of his absence in St. Domingo, his lieutenant, Don Francisco de Soto, "sent away the only two boats the colony had, to traffic for pearls, gold, and even for slaves." The result was another rising of the Indians, the destruction of the mission and the dispersion of the Dominicans. When intelligence of these occurrences reached Las Casas, he lost heart and retiring to a convent, renounced the Christian world forever.

Freed from the restraint which this worthy man and reformer had imposed upon their cupidity, the Spaniards now commenced in earnest that dread work of devastation which eventually rendered this once smiling land a desert. In 1522 Jacome Castellon "fought the Indians, recovered the country, restored the pearl fisheries and filled Cubagua and even St. Domingo with slaves." (Gomara, Historia. Ind., c. 78.)

By the year 1541 the pearl fishery had ceased entirely, or else had ceased to be productive, and we now again hear of El Dorado, which was the name mentioned by the governor of Cubagua as that of an interior province of Terra Firma, where gold and slaves were to be had in plenty. In the same year an expedition with these objects in view was started from Cubagua under the leadership of Ortal, which moved eastward along the coast and there "commenced a hunt, that led the Spaniards through the wildest tract of country which Belzoni, (who was present and writes the story,) thinks that foxes would have hesitated to enter. The cruel hunters, like wild beasts, made their forays more by night than by day, and in the course of a march of a hundred miles they succeeded in capturing 240 Indians, males and females, children and adults." Returning to the coast, the Spaniards adopted another mode of planting religion and civilization in El Dorado. "When the Indians came down to fish, the Spaniards rushed out of their hiding places and generally contrived to capture the fishers, who appear to have been mostly women and children." (Belzoni, Hist. Novi Orbis, I, ii.)

One of these expeditions after traveling 700 miles returned to Maracapdna, bringing no fewer than 4,000 slaves. These represented but a portion of the natives who were torn from their homes; for many of them, who were found to be unequal to the journey, wereput to death on the road. " That miserable band of slaves," wrote Belzoni, "was indeed a foul and melancholy spectacle to those who beheld it; men and women debilitated by hunger and misery, their bodies naked, lacerated and mutilated. You might behold the wretched mothers lost in grief and tears, dragging two or three children after them, or carrying them upon their necks and shoulders, and the whole band connected together by ropes or iron chains around their necks or arms and hands." These unhappy victims were carried to Cubagua, where a fifth of their number was taken for the king of Spain and branded with the initial of his name. King Charles the First of Spain and the Fifth of Germany, both of glorious memory. "The great bulk of the captives were then exchanged for wine, corn and other necessaries; nor did these accursed marauders hesitate to make a saleable commodity of that for which a man should be ready to lay down his own life in defence — namely, the child that is about to be born to him." (Helps, quoting the words of Belzoni.)

Such were the crimes committed in El Dorado to obtain the gold of Hispaniola and St. Domingo. When Columbus first visited the Coast of Terra Firma, namely, in 1498, it was a scene of fertility and happiness. "When I came there," says Belzoni, in 1541, " it was nearly reduced to a solitary desert." Yet less than 300 miles from the scene of this wickedness lay one of the richest gold mines that the world ever saw, the "Callao." But the Spaniards did not visit El Dorado to prospect or dig for gold; they came to plunder gold and to extort it from slavery.

The only region of Terra Firma which, down to the present time, has proved to contain gold in any considerable quantity and accessible to the natives, before the introduction of European arts, that is to say, placer gold, is in Venezuela (or Guiana) in the valley of the Cuyuni, an affluent of the Essequibo. This is the territory in dispute between Venezuela and Great Britain, the origin of the so much vaunted arbitration treaty of 1897. The air is humid, the climate is fatal to whites, and for their labour the Indians demand sixty cents to one dollar, or 2s. 6d. to 4s. per day in gold, beside certain allowances of food and raiment. The total product at the present time is about one million dollars a year, at a cost of about one and a quarter millions.

Whilst exploring the countries of the Upper Orinoco in the early part of the present century. Baron von Humboldt was informed that the placers of that region were " the classical soil of the Dorado of Parima." This is quite possible.

The “Callao” mine is in the Caratal district, department of Roscio, State of Guiana, Republic of Venezuela. The district is about 160 miles E. S. E. of Ciudad Bolivar, or Angostura, on the Orinoco, and it contains, besides the "Callao," numerous other quartz mines, most of which, although productive, have failed to be profitable. The mines, whose surface had long been worked as placers, were opened for quartz about the year 1866. Commencing in that year with a product of 15,000 ounces, this gradually increased in 1880 to 130,000 ounces, about one-half of the whole product (900,000 ounces) having been obtained from the " Callao" alone. According to the Report of the British Consul at Ciudad Bolivar, for 1880, gold is the chief and, it may be said, almost the only industry of the State of Guiana, on which both public and private incomes more or less depend.

"Absorbing, as it does, almost all the labour of the state, by offering superior inducements to labourers, it renders every other enterprise hopeless. Gold-mining is the sole pre- occupation of all minds. In this vice-consular district, as an industry, it only dates, it may be said, from 1866, when companies were formed for working this hitherto undeveloped source of wealth. But whether from the enormous expenses which have been incurred in importing and setting up suitable machinery, the transporting of it to Caratal, a distance
of about 150 miles from Port Las Tablas, by bullock-wagons, or the exceptional dearness of labour, provisions, and fuel, which latter has to be procured from the adjacent forests at great outlay, for the working of steam machinery, the fact is that until now, only one, the Callao Company, has returned dividends to its shareholders." Since the year above mentioned, the produce of the district has greatly declined.

[Iolchan]

CHAPTER IV

MONEYS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN TRIBES

Money’s of the Mound Builders — Engraved or stamped moneys of lignite, bone, terra cotta, gold, silver, lead, copper and other substances — Skin or parchment money — Copper mines of the Mound Builders near Lake Superior — Inscribed copper bars of the Brazilian Guaranis — The venatic tribes of America did not employ money — Mysterious fate of the Mound Builders.



MENTION is elsewhere made of the moneys employed by the Aztecs and other civilized races of Mexico, Central and South America. Races belonging to a scarcely lower civilization than the Aztecs, certainly far more advanced than the venatic tribes of the North and East, must have occupied at some remote time and for a lengthy period, a considerable portion of the Mississippi Basin; for we find their remains scattered all over that vast bed of alluvium, from Ohio to Louisiana and from Ohio and Tennessee to Arkansas.

These remains consist of earth-forts, mounds, tumuli, barrows, irrigation-canals, ditches and mines and their various contents. They are of a character and extent which indicate their constructors to have been an agricultural and commercial people, acquainted amongst other arts with letters and the use of money. The moneys employed by these people at various times may conveniently be arranged under the following principal classes:

I. Lignite and coal money; round; diameter from about 7/8 to 1 1/4inches; and in thickness about 1/4 of an inch. These were generally plain; but many of them were engraved on one side, sometimes with parallel lines; at others with dots; varying in number from four to 16 in the specimens copied by Dr. Dickeson. Others were engraved with scroll-work, figures of men, birds, frogs, etc.

II. Ivory and bone money. Six hundred and fifty pieces, somewhat resembling button-moulds, from 3/8 to 5/8 of an inch in diameter and from the thickness of pasteboard to 1/4 of an inch, were found in Grave Creek Mound, near Wheeling, Va. , whilst in another mound upwards of 1,700 ivory pieces were found. All of these were regarded by Dr. Dickeson as pieces of money.


III. Terra cotta money ; round ; diameter about 1 1/8 to 1 3/4 inches, and in thickness from 1/8 to 1/4 of an inch. They were commonly stamped on one side with parallel lines, dots, triangles, rings, letters, scrolls and other devices.

IV. Stone money; usually of sandstone or slate, diameter from 1/2 an inch to 8 inches. Devices similar to those on classes I and III. The remarkable stone, with an inscription in the "Rock alphabet," alluded to below, has been included in this class.

V. Gold coins about 3/4 of an inch in diameter; round; rough-edged; weight about 48 grains. On one of these coins, found in the hand of a skeleton buried in Ross County, Ohio, the device was four waving parallel lines. A similar specimen was found in a mound at old Fort Rosalie, near Natchez, Miss. A third one was found in Perry County, Ohio, with the device of a man and bird on each side.

VI. Similar coins of silver.

VII. Galena coins. These were lumps of irregular roundish shapes, covered with hieroglyphics.

VIII. Copper coins, similar in size and type to those of gold and silver.

IX. Pieces which may have been used as money composed of various substances, such as lead, mica, shells, pearls, carnelian, chalcedony, agate, jasper, fossil encrinites, or stone lilies, §:c.

X. Scylates, or concavo-convex copper discs. ' (Smithsonian Report, 1876.)


XL Beaver and marten skins, in the Lake regions of North America. The later venatic tribes are known to have used these as commodities for the purposes of barter; and it seems quite likely that the earlier agricultural nations also used skins for money, that is to say, inscribed skins, whose efficacy depended not upon the value of the skins, as such, but upon the credit of the community or state and the limit assigned to their emission; as in China, Novgorod and Wessex, during the ninth century of our era.

The order in which these various moneys are mentioned herein has no ascertained relation to the order of time in which they were actually employed. Of this we know nothing. It may be conjectured that terra cotta and ivory or bone moneys preceded gold, silver and copper coins, and that the irregular supply and increasing scarcity of the latter, compared with the growing demand for them, created such obstacles to trade that the community degenerated to barter, lost its social bond and consequently its military ascendancy, and eventually fell a prey to the surrounding tribes of hostiles; just as Rome, under a metallic system, fell beneath the power of nations whom she had easily repelled when her nummulary system was in vogue. But such a conjecture must go for what it is worth. All we know is that the remains include all these species of money. We have as yet no clue to the history of them. Some of the specimens were formerly in Peale's Museum; others were in the possession of Dr. Dickeson, who published drawings or facsimiles of them; while still others remain in the private collections of archaeologists. They should all be brought together by the government and deposited in the Mint Collection at Washington.

In the early portion of 1897, native copper workings of great antiquity were discovered about 20 miles from the head of Gitchee Gumee, the Big Sea-water of Indian legend and the Lake Superior of to-day. The following is from a professional report on these workings;

"That this region was resorted to by an ancient race for the purpose of producing copper, long before the coming of the white man, is evident from the numerous memorials scattered throughout its extent. Whether these ancient miners belonged to the race who built the mounds on the Upper Mississippi and its affluents, or were the progenitors of the (venatic) Indians, is a matter of conjecture.

"The evidences of early mining consist of numerous excavations in the solid rock ; heaps of rubbish and earth along the courses of the veins; remains of co{)per utensils fashioned into knives and chisels; stone hammers, some of which are of immense size and weight; wooden bowls for bailing water from the mines; and numerous levers of wood, used in raising the masses of copper to the surface.

"The high antiquity of this rude mining is inferred from the fact that the existing race of Indians have no traditions by what people or at what time it was done. The mines were even unknown to the eldest of the band, until they were pointed out by the white man. It is inferred from the character of the trees growing upon the piles of rubbish, between which and those of the surrounding forests no perceptible difference can be detected ; from the mouldering state of the wooden billets and levers; from the nature of the materials with which these excavations are filled, consisting of fine clay enveloped in half-decayed leaves; and from the bones of the bear, the deer and the caribou; that the filling-up resulted not from the action of temporary streamlets, but from the slow accumulation of years.

"These evidences are observed in this location for a distance of two miles. Upon a mound of earth we saw a pine stump, broken fifteen feet from the ground, which was ten feet in circumference, and which must have grown, flourished and died, since the earth in which it had taken root was thrown out. We counted 395 annual rings on a hemlock growing under similar circumstances, which we felled near one of these shafts. Thus it would appear that these mines were worked before Columbus started on his Voyage of Discovery. The amount of ancient hammers in the vicinity exceeded ten car loads.

"Father Allouez, after whom Allouez Bay on Lake Superior is named, a Jesuit missionary, said: 'There are often found beneath the waters of Lake Superior pieces of copper, well formed and of the the weight of 20 pounds. I have seen them in the hands of the Indians; and, as the latter are superstitious, they keep them as so many divinities, or as presents from the gods beneath.' The fact that ingots of copper have been found on the bottom of Lake Superior indicate that this ancient race not only possessed the skill to mine copper but were also a commercial people who navigated the lake." ( Chicago Times-Herald, about July 1, 1897.)

In this connection it might be added that inscribed copper bars about eight inches long and one inch in diameter have been found in Brazil and are there believed to have been used by the Guranis, an agricultural and trading people. A facsimile of one of these was given to the author by the Director of the Mint at Rio Janeiro in 1882. The characters resemble Phoenician. It should also be stated that both in North America and Mexico, copper, before the Spanish Conquest, was more valuable than gold. (^ Sir Arthur Helps, "Conquerors of America;" Smithsonian Report, 1876.) Such may also have been the case in Brazil.

Among the native communities who were found in America at the period of the Discovery, only the Mexicans, Peruvians, Chimays, and Chibchas are known to have used money. In neither case was the current money of gold or silver, although the precious metals existed in their countries in the greatest abundance, and one of them, gold, was produced by the natives and lavishly used for purposes of ornament and even for articles of utility. It is quite possible, and indeed probable, that the Natchez Indians used some sort of money; but we have no positive knowledge of it.

The remaining tribes of America did not employ money until after they came into contact with Europeans. The tribal Indians were not agriculturalists nor traders; there was no division of employment among them; there was no community, no government, no social bond; each man or each family lived and acted independently; the nearest approach to the social state was the family tie, clanship; its sign being the totem. Even this tie was but a frail one and was often ruptured. Yet some writers have gone so far as to assert that the venatic tribes of America did employ money before the arrival of the whites, and that such money was the well known wampum-peag. This is a subject that will be discussed more at length in a future chapter. As to the rings noticed in the Smithsonian Report for 1863, p. 322, these were probably bracelets and not money. There is no communal stamp upon them, no mark of public authority, nor no such peculiarity of shape or design as, in the absence of a stamp, would confer upon them the character of money.

The authorities for regarding the various objects above enumerated as moneys of the aborigines, are Dr. M. W. Dickeson, in his Numismatical Manual; Schoolcraft and Dickeson's descriptions of the North American mounds ; the Smithsonian Reports ; the Southern Magazine ; and Squier's Travels. Dr. Dickeson examined the contents of no less than 1,033 ancient mounds in the Mississippi Valley. The letters on the oval stone found in Grave Creek Mound, alluded to above in Class IV, resemble the Phoenician. * (Dickeson, Num. Man., pi. Ii, fig. 15. )

The remains of the Mound Builders fail to disclose what fate be-fell them, whether, as above surmised, they were weakened by social decay and were annihilated by the savage tribes who surrounded them, or they were driven south to the Deserts of New Mexico, or absorbed in the civilized populations that tenanted the Valley of the Anahuac. In the present state of discovery, we only know that the Mound Builders were once a mighty nation who practiced agriculture, pursued trade, and employed money.

[Iolchan]

CHAPTER V

THE SEVEN CITIES OF CIBOLA.

Marvellous story of Cabeza de Vaca, 1527 — Expedition of Father Marcos, 1539 — It catches sight of Cibola and returns with great news to Mexico — Preparations of Cortes, Mendoza and Alvarado to subdue and plunder Cibola — Expedition of Coronado, 1540 — Tatarrax. The golden cross and the Queen of Heaven — Coronado reports the country a desert and the Seven Cities as worthless.


STRANGE reports reached the City of Mexico, about fifteen years after its conquest by the Spaniards, respecting the unknown countries which lay to the north and northwest. Those as yet undiscovered regions were supposed to abut upon the kingdoms of India, and were said to contain not only rich and populous nations and splendid cities, but also mountains of gold, silver, and precious stones, oceans of pearls, islands of Amazons, mermaids, unicorns, and all the marvels which for centuries had played a part in the fables and romances of Europe. The conquerors, even though in the presence of the glories of Tenochtitlan, believed they had entered merely the threshold of the wealth and splendor of the New World, and that the true Dorado lay in the far North beyond. To their excited imaginations everything assumed a golden hue, the vague accounts of the country given by the Indians grew more and more exaggerated with every repetition as they passed from mouth to mouth, and not only the soldiers, but even the great Cortes himself felt firmly convinced that in the unknown North there were nations whose wealth and splendor as far exceeded that of the Aztecs as those of the Aztecs exceeded Hispaniola and Cuba.

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