Note 4 — Chapter II · Population.

Between the years 1512-15 the whole island had been explored, and the aborigines had already disappeared. The poor, timid, harmless creatures offered no resistance to their conquerors. One chief alone, the Cacique Hatuei, tried to escape. He refused baptism lest it might lead to his being condemned to spend eternity in heaven, in the company of his pious persecutors, who consequently tormented him to death. This anecdote, related as it is by the Spaniards themselves, gives the measure of their conception of Christian charity. There are, however, two sides to every question, and I remember to have read in a very old Spanish work, on the West Indies, an assertion that the aborigines of Cuba were afflicted with a certain fell disease which rendered their disappearance imperative. This may account for the persistence with which their extermination was carried out, and also for the recorded fact that in 1554 a number of native families were brought to Havana, and isolated in a Lazaretto built for their reception near Guanabacoa.