Discovery of Central America

A part of D'Allyon's company had landed and prepared to lay the foundation of a town, when a deputation came from the sachem of the Combahee and invited the Spaniards to a great feast at his village at the mouth of that river. About two hundred of them went to the banquet, and were treated with the most friendly hospitalities. For three days and three nights the feast went on, and at the end of it, whilst the guests were soundly sleeping, the Indians fell upon and massacred the whole of them. They had fully matched the treachery of the pale-faces, but they were not satisfied. Hastening to the site of the projected town, they slew many there. Some of the Spaniards escaped to the ships. Among them was D'Allyon, who, badly wounded, died soon afterward. Retributive justice had over-taken him on the theatre of his great crime. So perished the first germ of a settlement of Europeans that was planted in the soil of our present domain.

In the meantime the Spaniards had been making explorations and conquests westward of Hispaniola or Hayti. In the year 1502, as we have already observed, Columbus had sailed from Cadiz with four ships, to search for a passage to the Indian Seas through the Gulf of Mexico, accompanied by his brother Bartholomew and his young son Fernando. He arrived in the Caribbean Sea in June and soon afterward he discovered the coast of Central America, which he explored from the Isthmus of Darien far up the shores of Nicaragua.

The region of Central America King Ferdinand divided into two provinces, in 1509, and prepared to plant colonies there. One of these provinces he placed under the command of the navigator Ojeda, and the other under Diego de Nicuesa. Late in the autumn Ojeda sailed from Hayti, accompanied by Pizarro, who afterward became the energetic and cruel conqueror of Peru. Hernando Cortez, who was afterward the savage conqueror of Mexico, would have sailed with Ojeda, had not a violently inflamed eye prevented. Ojeda was also accompanied by some friars whose chief business at the outset seems to have been the reading aloud to the natives, in the Latin language, a proclamation by the Spanish leader which had been prepared by learned divines in Spain. It declared that God who made them all, had given in charge of one man, named Saint Peter, who had his seat at Rome, all the nations of the earth with all the lands and seas on the globe; that his successors at Rome called Popes, were endowed in the same way by God; that one of them had given to the Spanish monarchs all the islands and continents in the Western Ocean; that all natives yet found had given cheerful submission to whatever the soldiers and priests required of them, and that the natives of the land before him were expected to do the same. In the event of their willing submission, he promised them many favors. "If you do not this," he said, "or wickedly and intentionally delay to do so, I certify to you, that, by the aid of God, I will powerfully invade and make war upon you in all parts and modes that I can, and will subdue you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and his majesty; and I will take your wives and children and make slaves of them, and sell them as such, and dispose of them as his majesty may command; and I will take your effects, and will do you all the harm and injury in my power, as vassals who will not obey or receive their sovereign, and who resist and oppose him. And I protest that the deaths and disasters which may in this manner be occasioned, will be the fault of yourselves, and not of his majesty, nor of me, nor of these cavaliers who accompany me."

This infamous proclamation which justified murder and robbery under the sanction of that religion the chief attributes of which are justice, benevolence and mercy, was adopted as the formula, and indicated the spirit of the Spanish invaders of America afterwards. Although read aloud by the friars, the pagans could not understand a word of it. The Christians did not expect them to understand it. Their offices were fulfilled when the Latin words had gone into the ears of their dusky listeners. The consequences must be borne by the wondering heathen!

Delay in making a willing submission was speedily followed by violence. The natives were attacked by the intruders and some of them were killed. Some were sent captive to the ships. Ojeda, apprehending no danger, permitted his followers who were on shore to roam in quest of booty. He was mistaken. The outraged Indians gathered stealthily and attacked the Spaniards furiously with poisoned arrows. Ojeda and a few soldiers took refuge in a small cabin, where all but himself were slain. He was a small man and found shelter from a shower of arrows, under his buckler, for awhile, when he sprang from his covert like a tiger and cutting his way through the multitude uninjured, he found shelter and concealment among the matted roots of mango trees at the wooded base of a mountain. There he was found by his followers, almost dead with fatigue and hunger, and was carried to his ship.