Note 26 — Chapter I · INTRODUCTORY

It was only a few years after the colonizing of Española when negro slavery was introduced into the island. The motive was, in some measure, a humane one—namely, to spare the Indians the arduous labor in the mines for which they were physically incapacitated. The African was much stronger and had much greater powers of endurance than the native. According to Herrera, “the negroes flourished so well in Española, that it was thought that if a negro was not hanged he would never die, for no one had ever seen one die of disease. Thus the negroes found, like the oranges, a soil in Española better suited to them than their own country, Guinea.”26