Discovery of South Carolina-Cruel Treatment of Natives and their Revenge

At this juncture Nicuesa appeared with his squadron. The two governors soon agreed upon a plan of operations. Four hundred men and some horses were landed, and all started for the village of the Indians, which they desolated with fire and sword. No quarter was given to age or sex. Men, women and children were slain with weapons or perished in the burning cabins. Having gathered much spoil, the governors parted, Nicuesa for his prescribed province, and Ojeda for another part of his, for he would not attempt to plant a colony on the scene of his disaster.

The wants of his followers caused Ojeda to sail for Hayti for supplies. His crew rebelled and put him in irons, but when a great storm arose, they released him for the sake of mutual safety. The vessel stranded on the southern shores of Cuba which was then under native rule, and a place of refuge for the unhappy inhabitants of Hispaniola. The shipwrecked mariners suffered dreadfully in morasses, and more than half of them perished. They feared the natives and tried to avoid them; but hunger made the survivors bold, and a part of them, led by Ojeda, followed a path into an Indian village. The pagans there treated the suffering Christians with the most tender care and unstinted hospitality. The cacique sent men with provisions to hunt up survivors in the morasses; and when Ojeda departed, he sent guides and servants to conduct the Spaniard and his companions to a part of the island nearest Jamaica, on which his countrymen had lately settled. To that island Ojeda was taken, and thence to Hispaniola, where he died. At his own request his body was buried at the portal of the Cathedral of San Francisco. He chose that spot that every one who passed the portal might "tread upon his grave." So he sought to expiate his crimes by such post-mortem or after-death humiliation.

The natural kindness of the Cubans was requited the following year (1510) in the usual way. The Spaniards of Hayti, inflamed by Ojeda's account of the wealth of Cuba, conquered it, and there established the horrid social and political system which had made Hispaniola a land of mourning for its native inhabitants. The pious Ojeda had planted a germ of the Church in Cuba, and so gave the pagans there, as he believed, an equivalent for any disabilities which they might suffer under Spanish rule. In his distress he had made a vow to the Virgin, that if she should deliver him from the great peril, he would build a chapel in the first Indian village he might find, and over its altar place a precious little Flemish painting of the Sacred Mother, which he carried with him, and leave it there. He did so. The character and attributes of the Virgin, as the mother of God who rules the universe, he explained to the simple-minded cacique and his people, who, at the outset, were taught to revere the picture as a blessing from the skies. They kept the chapel swept clean; made votive offerings; composed couplets to the Virgin and sang them with accompaniments of instrumental music, as they danced in the groves around the sacred place; and in other similar ways they commended themselves to their pious conquerors as hopeful converts to Christianity. So it was that the Christian religion was introduced into Cuba more than three centuries and a half ago.