More on the French Creoles

June 11, 2012, 10:06 am

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While making arrangements for financial support for the re-publication of the Historical Digest, a would-be sponsor said to me, "I hope you're not putting in a lot about French creoles."

I was not especially surprised about at this remark. The people of French descent, mostly of European extraction, have been held in opprobrium in Trinidad and Tobago since the 1950s. This occurred during the politicising of the country by Dr. Eric Williams, who declared "Massa day done" and went on to explain in a series of public lectures that the French creoles were responsible for the lack of progress in the fields of education, upward mobility and financial and social progress experienced by the black masses in Trinidad.

As a politician he conveniently overlooked the fact that most of his constituents came from other islands. Having no revolutionary goals, there was the necessity to find an enemy within Trinidad. Racism, which had been endemic under colonialism, was re-invented with the independence movement. This time, instead of it being directed from white people, both foreign and locally assembled, to everybody who did not look like them, it was directed from the newly independent blacks to both foreigners and to the local white community.

Like most things that came into existence in Trinidad and Tobago during the 1950s and 60s, what was said by Williams appeared to be cast in stone. Anti-French creole sentiment became institutionalised to the degree that it was not seen as racism, and, if it was, it was viewed as justified!

My response to my sponsor when he made that remark about French creoles was simply, "How could they be written out of history?" I went on to say that it would be like, in as much as we presently have a government made up of mostly Trinidadians of East Indian descent, that we started to deny the contribution of the African presence to national life over the last 200 years.

The extent to which the independence experience served to further segment the society of Trinidad and Tobago has yet to be dealt with by academics, politicians, calypsonians, trade unionists, the religious orders and of course us ourselves.

Notwithstanding and with the sincere hope of continued sponsorship, we are going to feature the French creoles of Trinidad. Of the very many different racial groups who have come to this island of ours over the last 200 years, the French stand out in an interesting manner. Their arrival in Trinidad was most consequential with regard to our economic, cultural and social development, and as such, we will strive to alleviate their being written out of history.

The Question of Nobility

As a group, they were comprised mostly of families of the French nobility. This has been denied by various people over the years, including members of the French creole community (the same sort of people who claim that no Brahmins came here with the East Indian immigration). It has been said that this was sheer romance and unsubstantiated legend. So before we go further, let us define the term "noble".

"During the "ancient regime" in France, a noble was one who had the sole right to describe himself as "ecuyer" or "chevalier", to wear a sword and to bear arms," writes Michael Pocock in his paper "Outline of duties and privileges of ancient noblesse". He continues, "He had precedence over all commoners and was alone qualified to use the titles of ecuyer, chevalier, vicomte, count and marquis."

As a class, the nobles benefited from a variety of exemptions, e.g. certain taxes, compulsory military service, and they did not come under the jurisdiction of the local provost. A nobleman was not compelled to contribute to local or community economies and could claim to be tried by the "grand chambre du parlement" (viz), which was comprised of his peers or equals and not by civil courts.

On the other hand, a French noble might not without demeaning himself—that is, lose his status—engage himself in commerce, except marine commerce, nor practice a profession, except that of a soldier, as a member of a foreign royal court, a lawyer, a notary in Paris, a glass maker or a sword maker. He was obliged to serve the King when called upon in any capacity. Noble family in Europe on the whole fell into several categories. Noblesse immemorial (those which had always been known to be noble and accepted as such without being able to trace any King awarding nobility to them) was from the feudal nobility and be known as such from approximately the year 900 AD. The well-known Trinidadian family Maingot de Surgères were vicomtes of noblesse immemorial, at least since as early as the 10th century.

During the first decades of the 14th century, the 1310s, many families received ennoblement to confirm their station. Some were previously noble, some were newly ennobled. Others became "noblesse d'extraction" or "lettres patents" or by "chargés" or function. Many of these come from common origins, but because of brains, good luck, good looks or courage were elevated to the nobility. A King of France ennobled his barber—it might have been as insurance to having his throat cut.

These titles of ecuyer or chevalier would be inherited. The particular "de", "du", "de la", and "des" never implied nobility necessarily, but serve to designate the land possessed or the village from which a noble family  comes. The noble family of Jacques de Jacque, for example, comes from a fortified hill town known as a bastide. Their illustrious ancestor was knighted on a battlefield in the Holy Land by the King in 1214. Hence, we know Jacques de la Bastide in Trinidad.

A person of ordinary background could buy land and be a "seigneur" de la whatever and still be common. Gentleman was not a title, but an attribute of either noble or common birth, hence the saying that a king can create a noble but not a gentleman.

The nobility might be described as being "grande" or "petite". The great dukes, some of them being of the royal blood, fell into a special category. Then, there were the "peers of the realm" (equals amongst themselves), some bearing titles such as marquis or comte, but others, because of the recorded age of their families, which may already have existed and achieved significance while France was little more than a small vicinity around the city of Paris 500-800 AD, would also fall under the category of "grande noblesse". In Trinidad, the Pantin de la Guerre and the de Montrichards fall under this order. So too do the de Gannes de la Chancelleries, who were descended from a cadet (junior) branch of the independent dukes of Britanny.

Broadly speaking, the other French creole families in Trinidad come from the "petite noblesse" of the provinces. Entitled to describe themselves as ecuyer (from the Latin word "equis", horse) they were horsemen or knights. This knightly class provided the personal aids, servants, attendants and soldiers for the kings, the princes of the blood and the great ducal households.

In olden days, the nobility was basically illiterate. Education was in the hands of the church men and women, clerics. The knightly class was also very destructive because of the hierarchical nature of the feudal system. A knight served his baron, who served his count, who served a marquis or duke, who served the king. As a result, petty wars and general brigandry devastated the countryside on a regular basis. As such, the church tended to avoid them. It was not until the 12th century that knighthood was given a religious overtone with the introduction of the military orders, such as the Knights Templar, the Knights of St. John and the Teutonic Knights.

Most of the nobles who found their way to the west came from fairly modest "chateaux", small castles that were hardly more than fortified farms. But whether great and illustrious or poor and uneducated, they basically all belonged to the same class and subscribed to a belief system that instilled in them the absolute conviction that they were of superior make. This view, founded in prehitory, came to be supported by the church and imposed upon the peasants. They had a right to dominate all.

This idea of caste or class of superior people was not purely a European concept. It existed in China, Africa, amongst tribal people living in the jungle, India, Japan and Arabia. It seems to be a part of the human condition.

The French come to Trinidad

From the early 1600s, French people, led by nobles, set out for the New World. They made their homes in the northern hemisphere in a place they called Arcadia, later to be called Canada. Almost 200 years later, with the fall of Quebec to the English, many of the Arcadians left to join their fellows in the southern United States in Louisiana, which was still a French colony. By that time, Saint Domingue (Haiti) had become a thriving slave colony, driving a massive economy based on the production of sugar.

The French also had established themselves on several islands in the Lesser Antilles and from the early 17th century, the 1600s, on through to the 1790s to the present, a strong French influence was to pervade islands such as Guadeloupe, Martinique (still "departements" of France), St. Lucia, St Vincent, Dominica, Grenada, Haiti of course, French Guiana, and for a short while the French held Tobago at the end of the protracted war between England and France at the beginning of the 19th century.

The western hemisphere, in so far as the French influence is concerned, is as we see it today. The 1790s were, however, the crucial time for the French. In the Old World, the revolution had destroyed the monarchical system in France and had removed the nobles from power. Then, to their dismay, the Revolution was transported to the New World. From Haiti to Grenada, down the chain of islands, the French establishment, owned and operated by the "ancient regime", was destroyed by the revolution organised and directed by Victor Hugues. Tens of thousands, perhaps more than 100,000 royalists, many of the aristocrats, were slaughtered. Trinidad became a safe haven because of Roume de St. Laurent's inspired move of ten years before, when under a Spanish government a Cedula of Population (1783) made it easy for French-speaking Free Black people, French colonists and others, to come to this island, the main stipulation being that they be Catholic. And come they did.

From far away as New Orleans and Haiti on through all the French-held islands of the Caribbean they came, but mostly from Grenada. Some of these French were just out of France, young adventurers from good families and a little money, seeking to cash in on the sugar plantation business. Some were serving in the British army. Many, perhaps the majority, were established colonists of three or four generations in the Caribbean, long accustomed to running large plantations with slave labour. Owning slaves meant getting more land, so too, arriving as a family, the more members, the more land. With a strong sense of being pioneers, with an even stronger sense of being the master of all he surveyed, but with a degree of trepidation, the French of the Caribbean came to this island. In the short span of 15 years, they were to create and economy and establish the basis of a society, both of which has continued to exist.

It has been speculated that the majority of slaves brought to Trinidad in the 1780s were "well seasoned", that is, they were not newly out of Africa (those would come in the next few years). They had been born on plantations in the islands and were, like their "owners", Caribbean of more than two generations. They spoke French, which made communication easy, were to some extent immune from tropical disease, knew how to work to establish an estate, were Catholic and in some instances had had long and familiar relationships with their masters, mistresses and the children on whom they were completely dependent.

Plantation society during the period of slavery was complex. It was, however, not unfamiliar to the French in the sense that as an aristocracy they were accustomed to command. Soldiering was part of their inheritance. Believing that they were superior came naturally. Discipline was fundamental and was instituted through fear, intimidation and violence. Again, none of the above was strange to the French slave owners in that perhaps in a slightly different or modified from this was exactly  what was dished out to the European peasantry that toiled on their fathers' farms somewhere in the Bourbonnais in central France.

The French creoles during and after slavery

Gustave Borde, the historian of Trinidad in the 19th century, says that the planter lived much like the seigneur of France, combining rough justice with generosity. There was much rough justice, floggings, branding, being locked up in stocks, balls chained to the feet of slaves, iron collards, iron masks, all sorts of cruelties. Most cruel was the absolute ownership and total control of master over slave in every personal detail.

In Trinidad, there were laws that governed the punishment of slaves, called the "Code Noir" (black code), which was enforced to a degree. Trinidad was not a slave colony for centuries as say, Jamaica, Barbados or Grenada. Slavery existed on a large scale in Trinidad from the 1780s to 1834, just 50 years. The violence of slavery on the scale of other islands was not our experience. Slaves were also very valuable in monetary terms, costing, in some instnaces, a couple hundred dollars a head, and slaves were not easily killed or made infirm any more than a farmer would destroy a tractor just because it won't start on a morning.

After Emancipation came immigration from other islands with longer memories of slavery, which have become our memories [the memories of the French creoles] as well.

With Emancipation, the plantation society folded. Some have speculated that the freeing of the slaves had to do with the destroying of the West Indian planter interest, many of whom were French in the newly captured islands, in favour of new sugar interest in India and West Africa, where the land mass was greater and the labour present.

The ruined French planters of Trinidad had in any event nowhere to go. The France they knew didn't exist any more, and that country was no longer home. Their relatives had been decapitated by the million. Property had been confiscated. They had not choice but to become Trinidadians and make the best of it with their traditional enemy England now the owner of the island.

The retention of French culture in Trinidad

The challenge was to remain French, retain the cultural identity, religion and a sense of who they once were in terms of class. The retention of French as a language was not too difficult in that although the island was English after 1797, everything else was French, and was to remain so for almost 100 years. The  vast majority of the people, black, white and mixed, spoke French, the newspapers were in French, and the courts of law, all spoke French. Patois or creole was the common tongue as English is today.

French was the style of cuisine, the style of dress, French culture in music, song and dance impressed itself upon the society of Trinidad indelibly up until this time.

Carnival and its product calypso are French children. The Afro-French culture of this island, despite it being an English colony, was enormous and was to remain that way for some 170 years.

French culture, emanating from no more than perhaps 1,300 people, at any point in time defined this island, making it different from Barbados or Tobago. This French creole culture withstood the arrival of thousands of immigrants from English/Protestant islands, absorbing them and creolising them.

The quality of life as lived by the French planters coming, as they did, from the old aristocracy of Europe, was remarked upon by visitors to Trinidad. L. M. Fraser wrote:

"Families belonging to the old noblesse formed the nucleus of that refined society for which the island has always been celebrated and which constitutes one of its most distinctive features."

Throughout the 19th and 20th century, Trinidad possessed a high upper class of white people that was not matched with ease either in the United States, the islands of the Caribbean or South America. High class, that is, in that so long as European mores were used as a yardstick to define stations in life and accepting the concept of an aristocracy at the top. High class in the sense of more than just good manners, but courtly behaviour, gentlemanly and ladylike attitudes in terms of the virtues, a generosity of spirit beyond mere hospitality. The French noble families imported to all a sense of "noblesse oblige" [- not for nothing is that sentence usually used in its original French pronunciation!], which made this island remarkable. They gave it style. They also gave it an economy, first sugar, built upon slavery, until emancipation in 1834, then cocoa, from the 1870s on through to its ruin in the 1960s.

Economics of the French creole families

The cocoa economy generated wealth on all levels of society and served to re-establish the fallen fortunes of the earlier French colonists. It revived aristocratic dreams and pretensions, and breathed new life into illusions of grandeur that were on the point of becoming lost.

Cocoa made money for the French families and allowed for education. The white people of French descent could not hope to get the topmost jobs in British colonial Trinidad, which were for the British expatriates, but they manned the upper levels of the civil service. They were administrators, wardens, justices of the peace. They were top doctors, lawyers and surveyors. They owned the export-import businesses to some considerable extent, and sat on the nominated benches of the Legislative Council. In some families, they supported reform of colonial rule, such as the Rostants and Ciprianis. Most of all, they were cocoa estate proprietors.

Some of these families were civil servants virtually from one generation to the next, as well as cocoa planters. There was a time when you could find a de Verteuil in every government department, from the top to the mail room. The de Verteuils were also priests and nuns, teachers and medical doctors (they still are). Of all the French creoles, one could say that although they were not of the "grande noblesse" of France, this family came to be regarded as the epitome of the community in Trinidad. Their illustrious ancestor came  as a soldier with the British army in 1797. They first appear in recorded history in 1080.

Others, like the Ganteaume de Monteau family, ennobled in the 14th century, were washed ashore on the east coast of Trinidad by a ferocious storm. Their founder married twice, producing some 23 children. As such, just about every French creole family is related to them. They were to some considerable extent responsible for the proliferation of coconuts in Mayaro. The nuts, too, had been washed shore in a previous century.

The Valleton de Boissière were Protestant and, although of the nobility, supported the more humane elements of the revolution. They were also moneylenders and by the 1820s were the owners of Champs Elysées estate in Maraval. They produced legislators, writers, social commentators and politicians. They first appeared in records in 1036 and were ennobled in 1336.

Others, like the Rostant, Leotaud, Quesnel, Pasea, Vessigny, Lefer, Lange, Besson, Sellier, Pollonais, Pampelonne, de la Bastide, de la Peyrouse, d'Abadie, La Cardre, Aché, André, Giraud, Blanc, Gransaull, Anduze, de Verteuil, La Barnet, de Boissière, Cornillac, de Meillac, de Crenu, de Deshayes, de Loudré, Roger, de Belloquet, together with the Corsican Agostini, Giuseppi, Cipriani, Gianetti, and the Spanish Sorzano, Basanta, Gomez, Llanos and Garcia and many others, some whose names have died out in Trinidad, are all essentially of the "petite noblesse" of the ecuyer or chevalier class. There were other French people who came to Trinidad, tradesmen, republicans, sailors, artisans, various. They would be regarded as peasants and, like the Portuguese, were not "socially white" or of the upper classes. Notwithstanding, they were amongst the French families, such as the Tardier, Begorrat, Didier, Ambard, Jaffon, Conpariolle, Rigaud and others who were of the middle classes. Over time, these married into the French creole matrix. In fact, French creoles could marry Irish, German, English and Corsican, as long as they were to "the manor" born, had money, owned land, were white and Catholic. This is why there are so many people in Trinidad who are called French creoles and have names that denote other European nationalities. One could become a French creole by assimilation. A French creole could be called Devenish, O'Connor, Kenny, O'Brian, Cipriani, Agostini or Gianetti, Boos, Urich, Wupperman, Herrera, Garcia or Gomez.
The French creoles were mostly royalists—a handful are to the present—although there were a few who subscribed to the views of the enlightenment and supported certain aspects of the revolution. The majority were loyal to the House of Bourbon for several generations, even after it had ceased to exist in France.

Victims of tribalism

The basic criteria for membership to the community were, first of all, ethnicity. The possession of African ancestors, no matter how remote, would mean disbarment. Marriage to a coloured person meant expulsion. Kinship also played a role, that is, to be known to belong to certain extended families by marriage or by birth. People had to know who you are, not just in the Caribbean but back in France. It was easy to assume the poses of gentility, however, out here in the bush, it was very rare to possess courtly manners. thus, it was not difficult to spot the bounders. The result of all this meant that only a limited number of families could fit the bill. As a result , familial incest became increasingly common, even seen as a virtue. The extent of intermarriage between the fifteen or twenty families made all French creoles, born after the 1880s, related to each other.

It is important to bear in mind that the French creole community in Trinidad are not Europeans living in the tropics anymore than the "Syrians" in Trinidad are Syriatics living out here, or that the "Africans" in Trinidad are surgeoning on this island, or are somehow more Trinidadian than the "Indians". We are all Trinidadians. Racial segmentation is a curse, it is, in fact, where the process that took us into independence failed us totally.

The term "tribalism" is a negative, insidious remark, used by some for their own personal gain. French creoles may have the physical characteristics of the "white race", but in sociological terms they are marginal, not to their own Trinidad society, but to European society. The same applies to Trinidadians and Tobagonians of African, Indian or other descent. It is high time that French creoles of European descent come "out of the cold", which they must do for themselves.

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Albuquerque

June 20, 2012, 2:07 pm

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It was during the administration of Don E.S. de Liñan, governor of the island of Trinidad, that in April of 1749 a remarkable earthquake occurred. I had just entered the town of San José de Oruña, being on my way to pay my respects to Doña Marie Beatrice Bay. My mule Florencia seemed to stumble, while all around there could be heard such a rumble as the road appeared to undulate in a manner not dissimilar to ripples on a pond. I saw the steeple on the church move from side to side, thatch falling from its roof, while a large crack appeared in the adobe walls above the door. Within moments, it was over. Much damage was also done to the Government House. Florencia seemed rooted to the spot, and in her terror, she would not budge.

Permit me to introduce myself. I am Jacques d'Albuquerque, a direct descendant of the great d'Albuquerque who explored the coast of Africa in the days when Christofero Colon was experimenting with transatlantic navigation. Being possessed with the urge to travel, I ventured to this island from my native Lisbon, where, as a member of the nobility, I enjoyed from my childhood the privileges of that rank.

So impoverished are all the inhabitants of La Trinidad, who live in lowly estate in the mountains round San José, that their Cabildo called a special meeting to form a committee to tax the inhabitants in proportion to their means in order to thatch with palm leaf (carata) the Cabildo hall. A census of the inhabitants has been taken, and every free man's name was entered into the books of the Cabildo. It appears by this that there are 162 adult males on the island, out of these only 28 were white. The naturals, called Indians, are not considered inhabitants. No account is taken of the slaves. There are a few of them on the island. From these inhabitants, a revenue of 231 dollars was raised.

The earthquake has brought out the town's inhabitants. The sergeant Manuel Ximines is differing with the priest as to its cause, maintaining that is of natural consequence. The priest is convinced that, like the failure of cocoa crop a few years prior, the accumulated sins of the populace is to blame.

I, myself, am for Doña Beatrice Bay's house, a worthy widow, whose previous husbands practice of medicine I am about to assume. I am pleased that the town council were impressed by my certificates, which they were unable to read , and have appointed me "because he seemed to be a physician". both the Sergeant and the padre halt their heated argument on the vicissitudes of the weather and the merits of the confessional, as she opens her front window for me to climb through.

Her door, as a result of the weather or of the sins no longer opens.

I am here to collect a hammer, chisel and a ten-inch saw belonging to her former husband, in that I am to remove by amputation Señor Lezama's left leg, and as such I must also build a table. The medicinal services on this island are primitive.

Maria Beatrice, as the granddaughter of the last marquis de Soto y Xaraza, has the blood of the conquistador de Berrio. Possessing large tracks of land in the interior of the island. Maria Beatrice came to my attention at the governor's garden party, where she had appeared enlightened as the result of the thousands lightning bugs, or as they call them on this island, candle flies, sewed into the lace appliqués of her gown. There is a sense of levity about the place, absent in other Spanish colonies down the main. I suppose it is because the inquisition never sat in Trinidad.

This I read in a record book of the Illustrious Cabildo, as they call it. Governor Martin Mendoza de la Hoz y Berrio around 1641 refused permission to Padre Dionysio Misland, a French Jesuit, to introduce the inquisition in Trinidad. He had done this mainly because the powers of the colonial governors were circumscribed in colonies in which the inquisition operated.

His reason given was that the English and the Dutch Protestant settlers had little influence over the Caribs in Trinidad, and the inquisition was not needed. He urged Padre Misland to go to Guiana, where the English and Dutch were operating. Such are the origins of nations. I presume events as these shape and dictate the destinies of people yet unborn.

As we sample some of Doña Beatrice's rum, we discuss the consequence of the unborn. Florencia has come to watch us. The following day, I attend a general meeting of the inhabitants in my role as surgeon general. This meeting is to prevent the introduction of the smallpox, then raging on the continent. A "strong guard" is to be posted at the Bocas so as to prevent illegal immigrants from entering the country, as if this has ever worked.  Contraband, alive and dead, move in and out of this island with impunity. But then we live in a barbaric age in a frontier environment. It is, after all, 1743. Who knows what the future will bring?

Notwithstanding, this dreadful malady has come to visit this island and is committing terrible ravages amongst the poor Indians—all this despite the vigilance of the strong guard. I have bathed Doña Maria Beatrice in a solution of chamomile, braced with lavender, with a teaspoon of rum. Much to her benefit. It is not clear whether the contagion was imported, wafted here by air, or finally whether it rose spontaneously.

The smallpox has also thinned the  monkeys to an astonishing degree. There is to be a petition so as to protect the island, and for other purposes that His Majesty would be pleased to send a guard of fifty men, in addition to the twenty stationed at the Caroni River: further that he should be pleased to pay in coin, the same as in Puerto Rico and at San Domingo, in order that it may circulate amongst the inhabitants. Such is the origin of commerce in these distant islands.

Again, as the number of women greatly exceed that of men, the former might choose husbands amongst the soldiers, whom His Majesty should be please to send, so that the practice of family planning may be commenced among the inhabitants. It is embarrassing to relate, but at this time the Cabildo had but one pair of small clothes between the whole of the members. This petition is signed by J.E. Farfan, Diego Arriesta, Josef M. Farfan and J. Ximenes, members of the Cabildo

It was during a period of digestion that Doña Maria Beatrice and I heard the report of a violent dispute between the Cabildo and the military commander. It appears that the governor had left the island for Cumana without formally announcing his intention to the Cabildo, as by the law required. The military commander wishes to make himself governor. This is opposed by the Cabildo. As much as I have little interest in this, Doña Maria Beatrice, her immediate dependencies and myself repair to live in a rustic manner at her "Palisio" overlooking Las Cuevas.

Upon our return to San José, I hear that a stormy meeting has taken place, at which was debated whether the military commandant, Major Espinoza, or the Alcaldes, Dons J. Lazado and H. Soto, should take command. It was decided that in the absence of the governor, the Alcaldes ought to represent him and therefore had a right not only to the civil but to the military command. The major dissented from this decision and ordered all the inhabitants to assemble at Port of Spain with their arms at the firing of the cannon. I myself enjoy an entirely different point of view with regard to a call to arms. Doña Maria Beatrice and I await the return of the inhabitants of San José. It would appear that the civil authority has carried the day. In fact, the Cabildo seemed to have carried all things with a high hand over the military. The soldiers appeared to have done nothing but smoke cigars. At a further meeting, the members of the Illustrious Cabildo evoking "the laws of the Indies", remonstrated the military commander.

Upon the return to the colony of the governor, they carry their audacity much further. By raising a general outcry against him, they allege that the governor has abused his authority by oppressing and ill-treating them. The little colony was now amusing itself with revolt on a small scale.

As we can all attest, amusement is a most necessary diversion in that it dispels monotony, banishes boredom and fires the imagination. Doña Maria Beatrice and I were disturbed to hear that the inhabitants, whose exasperation has been raised against the governor, have risen upon him and placed him in the Casa Real in Port of Spain. They have put him in chains with two pairs of irons on his feet. Kept two sentinels over him night and day, in order that he might be narrowly watched and at the same time laid an embargo on his property.

Such is the manner that the inhabitants of Trinidad treat their governors. He was to stay in confinement for the next six months.

This revolt, it would appear, was carried on with the full support of the soldiers. The inhabitants in general and the Cabildo in particular have decided that the governor was an "intruder". They first declared him no governor, and then ordered him to be suspended as governor. Doña Maria Beatrice remarked to me during siesta that it was astounding what a group of men who had but one pair of drawers between them could do.

The governor appears to have remained chained and imprisoned until the 4th December, when the viceroy of the new kingdom of Granada sent here Don Felix Espinosa de la Monteros with sufficient force to quell the insurrection. He released the governor, whose health had suffered from his long and severe confinement. He therefore solicited and obtained permission to leave the colony—he has left de la Monteros as his successor.

Dons J. M. Farfan, A. Ramaro and G. Infant were banished for ten years. They went to Havana. A large proportion of the male population have fled the island in order to avoid being prosecuted for their revolt. It has been a bloodless revolt, but one that has affected the economy in that there are now so few men.

The treasury of the island, counted by the proper official, has been found to contain $ 1,216. Yet, strange to say, this year the church at San José was ordered to be thatched and the Cabildo said they had no funds to do it. The way the treasury of this island is managed has always been singular.

The illustrious Cabildo has petitioned the Kind on the worn-out subject of the failure of the cocoa crop and, can you imagine, the scarcity of fish. They should have said, their sheer laziness to take it! They say that the recent troubles have so reduced the population that they pray that His Majesty would be pleased to pardon all those implicated, so that they may return to the bosom of their families.

Doña Maria Beatrice and I enjoy a delicious paella, the recipe for which is as follows: fry some chicken, wild meat and rabbit in some good oil, add thyme and garlic and some carrot and tomato, add some water and bring to a boil. When the broth is nicely cooked, add fish, fish heads and tails, and seafood. Let the broth simmer for a moment and cool overnight. The following day, fry some rice in some good oil, add the broth and the meats, sprinkle with saffron, add some little green peas and pour into a pan. Sprinkle with olive oil and bake in the oven until the rice is golden and tender.

On the 11th April, 1751, many of the late insurgents were allowed to return. The governor de la Monteros has been struck with palsy. The Cabildo has assumed the government. The governor has asked permission to leave the island for Cumana for the benefit of his health. This the contentious Cabildo has refused to grant. A legal battle ensues, where the law of the Indies is both quoted and misquoted. In the end, the governor escapes. The vicar general wrote privately to the Cabildo, requesting permission to deport the island on a visit to the mainland. He was forbidden to do so and a long war against the priests was commenced by way of variety.

The dilapidation and the lack of population in the city of San José de Oruña has forced many of the inhabitants to remove themselves to Port of Spain. The Cabildo is presently amusing itself by preventing Don Gabriel Infanta to leave the island on the grounds of his charitable disposition.

Doña Maria Beatrice has pointed out that for more than 100 years, there never was a Cabildo without one person, at least, of the name of Farfan. Don Pedro de la Moneda, the new governor, has proposed a new government house at Port of Spain, and the filing of the holes and ditches at San José. On this, the inhabitants remonstrated in the most lugubrious manner, stating that they had no time, that they had to mount a guard at the Caroni, there being but ten soldiers on the island. They declared that it would take all the inhabitants one entire year to fill all the holes in San José, that so unsuccessful was the fishing that they were often obliged to go without food for a whole day. They further alleged that the house could not be built because there is but one carpenter in the island. He, upon attempting to leave, was captured and returned. The dispute with the priests continues. The vicar apostolic is once more under fire, because it was recollected that he had been in the island several years without showing his credentials. excommunication and representations, anathema and protests, were banded about for a long time. The church was closed, and the inhabitants kept in a state of disorder, for which they appeared to have had a particular taste.

The Illustrious Cabildo, after receiving a representation of the procurator syndic Farfan that a schoolmaster be appointed to instruct the children of the island at the following rates of remuneration: teaching the alphabet 1/2 real per month, reading 1 real, writing and arithmetic 1 1/2 reals. As such, the marvels of the educated mind is introduced to this island for the first time.

In an effort to put the medieval times behind them, the Illustrious Cabildo has ordered that all the inhabitants of the colony come out of the bush, woods and high forest, where they have been living "au natural" for want of proper clothes and other amenities. They are now required to build houses in San José, live in them and plant gardens near. All this in an attempt to make the city habitable.

The one aspect of these new mandates that is of special interest to both myself and Doña Maria Beatrice is that rum is now forbidden to be made by hand mills. The method being that a hole is made in a tree and a lever is introduced in this hole; the cane is put in and expressed by means of the lever. Of course, the liquor so expressed must undergo a process of fermentation before it could be distiller.

I must now close this correspondence with heartfelt felicitations from Port of Spain, La Trinidad, 1750. Jacques d'Albuquerque.

Don José Maria Chacon

June 26, 2012, 6:32 am

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The foregoing article, which is sourced in its entirety from E.L. Joseph's "History of Trinidad", written in 1883, serves to provide an excellent description of life in Spanish Trinidad in the 1750s and 60s. The extent to which the island existed in total poverty, almost without any population, was the degree to which one family, indeed sometimes one individual, controlled the island. The steps taken to introduce schooling for the young or coins into circulation so as to implement commerce were tentative. It can only be imagined how the island would have fared, had the rigours of the inquisition been applied.

Within twenty-five years of laws being passed to compel the inhabitants to stop living in seclusion in the high woods, a new and enlightened government took office in the new capital at Port of Spain on the 1st September, 1783, in the person of Don José Maria Chacon, a rear admiral of the Spanish royal navy, a knight of the order of Calatrava, obviously educated.

Chacon faced during his tenure as governor of Trinidad several crises, starting with the recaltriance of the entrenched interest as personified in the governing body, the "Illustrious Cabildo", who in the recent past did not hesitate to imprison governors, putting them into irons and to forbid them their leaving of the colony. Also, he had to deal with the influx of a large quantity of French people under the Cedula of Population. E.L. Joseph mentions 12,000. The Spanish establishment, that is, the officials, were "few".

Chacon undertook large public works, such as diverting the St. Ann's river, whose course once took it across Park Street, going west, then down to, more or less, where Frederick Street and Chacon Street are now, into the Gulf of Paria. He paid about one third of this project from his own pocket. Chacon established the village of San Juan and the town of San Fernando. Port of Spain began to assume a respectable appearance.

This city was never an easy place to run. His Excellency had to deal with an influx of riotous French republicans, revolutionaries bent on overthrowing his government by force of arms and to murder the island's royalist inhabitants. He had to contend with violent riots in the city with a handful of trusted men, and with looters who broke into the state armory and stole guns and ammunition.

The British navy landed. This precipitated another round of riots in the city. The French revolutionary leader, Victor Hugues, was a very serious threat to the government of Trinidad, in that insurgents acting on Hugues' behalf were operating in the colony. The threat of slave uprisings in the style of Haiti and of mass poisonings on the estates instilled fear and suspicion on a large scale. Unruly blacks – "masterless men" – threatened disorder. The rule of law was slipping out of Chacon's hands. The island was a Spanish colony, but the population was almost entirely French. But even this was a divided population. On the one hand, royalists, well armed, swept the islands of the Caribbean. With the monarchy overthrown in France, they had nowhere to go. On the other hand, a republican menace made up of slaves who had freed themselves, free blacks looking for the opportunity for vengeance ("I will kill your white father, you killed mine") and republican French seeking their fortunes.

Governor Chacon might just have welcomed his next great crisis, the invasion of his island by a British army and his ultimate surrender. His return to Spain was under a dark cloud. The subsequent court marshall condemned him to exile. His reprieve arrived to find him on his death bed and he is remembered today in Trinidad by a city street which bears his name, and a wild forest flower which is our national flower. A fitting tribute for the last Spanish governor of Trinidad!

The Company Villages

July 9, 2012, 6:31 am

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People of African descent came to Trinidad and Tobago in various ways. Some arrived in Spanish times as slaves; however, because there was hardly any industry, these early arrivals were distinguishable from their owners only by their colour and lack of freedom, in that all were more or less equally impoverished.

With the French colonists came some 10,000 slaves. It has been said that the majority of these were creoles, that is, born in the Caribbean. Slaves out of Africa came in considerable numbers from 1783 to 1807. During this period, free black people with wealth, education and slaves of their own arrived as well. Under the aegis of the Cedula of Population, they enjoyed significant rights and privileges unknown to blacks in other islands in the Caribbean. Other freed men came to this island: men from disbanded West India regiments who had served in the Ashanti wars and in the Gambia were given lands at Manzanilla and Sangre Grande.

During the period between the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and emancipation in 1834, disbanded regiments from the American Wars arrived here. However, tens of thousands of West Indians, by far the majority of any other group of Africans, came to Trinidad from the first decade after emancipation down to the present. The other interesting migration of people of African descent came about as the result of the British taking slaves off of Portuguese slavers in the mid-Atlantic in the 1850s and bringing them to Trinidad and Tobago, where they lived in freedom. The subject of this article is the penultimate category, the Americans.

Heading along the swift highway, the Northern Range, behind you fading to a paler shade of blue. Going beyond San Fernando always makes one feel that Trinidad is larger than it is. Over to the east, the Montserrat Hill with Mount Pleasant and Mount Kelvin. See it 185 years ago, thick virgin forest, as impenetrable as the Amazon's, crowded with wildlife, a world unknown. In the world outside, significant events were taking place. In Europe, Napoleon's doomed army was invading Russia. The Duke of Wellington, Britain's greatest general, was at the start of the Peninsular Wars to liberate Spain and Portugal from the French stranglehold. On the other side of the Atlantic, the young nation of the United States of America declared war on Britain and had invaded Canada. The war at sea saw three American frigates, the "Constitution", the "United States" and the "President", designed to outclass all other frigates and to outrun England's ships of the line, for a time get the upper hand. On land, the British army marched into Washington, which was defended only by a small force of militia, some of the British officers arriving in time to eat a dinner at the White House that had been prepared for the President and Mrs. Madison.

In the south, an army of frontiersmen, led by tall, long-haired Andrew Jackson, wearing his old leather cap and patched blue cloak and oversized unpolished boots, defeated the British army under General Pakenham at New Orleans, giving rise to the song:

"We fired one round and the British kept a'coming,

there wasn't as many as they were a while ago,

we fired another and they began a'running

from the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico".

Perhaps the most extraordinary feature of this extraordinary and unnecessary war was that the peace treaty between England and the United States was signed in Europe before the Americans signing the treaty got the news of Andrew Jackson's victory at New Orleans.

During this was, as in the previous war for independence, many men of African descent fought for the British and many also fought for the Union. Their pay was always the same, freedom. As this war in America wound down, black soldiers in British regiments were offered the opportunity of settlement in Trinidad. Several companies set out to an unknown island in the distant west.

The island was passing through a difficult period of adjustment. Its laws and institutions were Spanish. The British military administrators had imposed martial law for some 18 years. The landowners were a mixed group of Spanish, English and French. There were black families who had very big estates run by slave labour. These formed a separate establishment. All these people had very mixed loyalties. When we see huge crowds today filling the stadium of thronging the streets at Carnival time, it is difficult to believe that in 1811 there were only 8,455 free people, white and coloured, in Trinidad, and the total population, slaves included, was only 30,742, about the size of a crowd at the Oval when it is filled to capacity.

The sugar cane had been introduced by refugees from Santo Domingo; the Otaheite variety by M. St. Hilaire Begorrat who owned a plantation in Diego Martin.

The soil was fertile. Governor Woodford, the first British civil governor who took office in 1813, declared in a dispatch in 1824 that "in other islands, the planting of canes is attended with great bodily exertion to the labourer—with all this trouble, the canes do not rattoon or sprout afresh for above one or two seasons after the first plantation, when the land must be again enriched and replanted.  In the new lands of Trinidad, it is sufficient to clear the surface and to lay the cane in the soil where it will for 18 or 20 year throw out fresh canes. The cultivation of cocoa, of which there are 101 plantations established with 1,622 slaves of all ages producing 1,166,224 lbs of cocoa or 719 lbs per negro, forms a very distinguished feature in the agriculture of the colony".

But only a small part of the land mass was under cultivation, only about 44,000 acres out of the 1.5 million! The island was short of people. Indeed, shortages of labour is one of the salient features of the history of Trinidad throughout the whole of the 19th century. Such is the background. Now we must link the war between the United States of America and England with the newly conquered British colony of Trinidad, which was short of people.

Some of the free Africans in the United States joined the British forces and fought for them against the Americans. At the end of the war, groups of these people were brought to Trinidad. A party of fifty arrived in 1815 and in the following year, 34 men, 15 women and 17 children were brought in. Other followed. All of these "Americans" were finally settled round about Savanna Grande (now Princes Town). They did not want to become tradesmen. Land was to them a symbol of security and of liberty. They all wanted to settle on the land to own it, cultivate it and be independent.

By and large, the "Americans" were members of the Baptist church, and so in 1843, a Baptist missionary began to work among the men and women who settled around Savanna Grande. Other mission stations were established as well at the first Company Village, at Mount Kelvin and in the third village at Mount Pleasant, where the settlers were part cultivators and part hunters.

It is said that the second Company Village was never founded because the settlers were lost at sea. The descendants of these brave men and women are now woven into the colourful quilt of this the most cosmopolitan island of the Caribbean. They have become another element of the overall African diaspora in the Western World.

Mama Glo's Gift

July 10, 2012, 1:58 pm

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From the time of her earliest memories, she always entered the forest quietly, silently stepping, slowly moving through the dew-wet underbrush, trying not to tread too hard.

She paused, not so much to listen but to learn, to learn the feel of the day, for every day was different in her forest. Her forest—it lay along a steep valley through which rushed a river called “Shark”, halting only in selected places to make pools deep and sure with eddies that swirled backwards in their own placid repose, slick on the surface, secret in their tumultuous depths, where enormous, ancient trees stood sentinel. All fast asleep in ageless repose, same height, same girth, same breadth as though created simultaneously by some mighty hand that reached out from eternity and sowed their dreams in unison so long ago, before words like day or night were made to punctuate the passage of time.

Time had been invented by one of her ancestors, she was sure. Before she entered her forest, she left it, together with her shoes, down by the road. Papita had told her about the Caribs of long ago, their family, the old people who owned all the land. She had told her about the river and of the Oriyu, the water spirits. She always felt that she had just missed them and that, had she come a little earlier, she would have seen them. But she was always just in time to see the ripples they left on the water fade away into placidity. Sometimes, she heard a loud slap upon the surface of the pool. Once, she saw an enormous shape turn around and around in the water like a wheel. Today, she saw the face. A shimmer just beneath the surface of the pool, it seemed to call out with open mouth. A song, she thought. Now she knew for certain that there was a Maman Dlo living in Shark River.

After that, she would bring flowers and pretty buttons, a buckle from a shoe, a dolly’s head, quite pink, with staring eyes of blue and tiny holes where hair would have been implanted. She brought little gems made of red and green glass, pins and pretty bow clips. One morning, as she slipped in silence throught the woods, the river, coursing with a roar through the rocks and bolders, gray and striped with white lines, she saw something glimmer in the water. It was a lovely comb made of shell and silver, gold-tipped. She stood there entranced, the river foam, a lacy frock around her legs. She picked up the comb and ran it through her hair. At once, she heard music, a song, sighing, which filled her heart with yearning—for what? She had no idea. She knew she must keep this gift a secret.

She would spend her days sitting in the sunshine where the water fell from high up to crash upon the rocks, its spray a brilliant rainbow irridescent about her, combing her long, black hair and listening to Maman Dlo’s comb. She learnt that Amana was her true name and that she had a sister who was called Yara, “beautiful river”, which flew into a bay not too far away. Others were called Marianne, Madamas and Paria. She heard the sirens’ song of sailors who had been dashed to death upon the rocks at Saut d’Eau, and learned not to dread the deafening silence of the forest.

She saw the stranger come into her forest. He grew afraid at her sight, his eyes were startled. She did not smile but combed her hair, listening to the melody of Maman Dlo’s song. The river’s spray made iridescent colours swirl about her. He ran away. They laughed at him. He would return.

In the time that followed, whenever she combed her hair with the magic comb, she heard a voice that warned her of her curiosity for the stranger and cautioned her to dismiss him from her memory. Maman Dlo’s voice came to her like a mother’s plea to remain pure and not fall victim to curiosity. But she longed to meet the stranger and would dream him with her in the river.

One day, Maman Dlo rose up from the water to tell her “no”. She saw her terrible beauty, her feminine form conjoint with that of a massive anaconda that swirled about and slapped the water with its tail, making a sound like the cracking of huge branches. “No,” Maman Dlo breathed, “don’t go.” But go she did and as time went by, her comb no longer sang its silent song. Mr. Borde and herself would build a house at Cachepa Point and live a happy life.

Close upon a century later, as a very old woman, she sat to the back of a pirogue which was plunging through a turbulent sea towards Yara bay in the hope of beaching at the river’s mouth. The outboard engine wined and coughed, and the huge waves threatened to swamp the overcrowded boat. She sensed the terror in the group and took an old, broken comb with an unusual shape out of her pocket. Standing up in the plunging boat and steadying herself, she called to the tillerman to point the bow at the river’s mouth and asked the passengers to pray. In a voice at first old and frail, then strong and commanding, she began to sing:

“Maman Dlo, oh Maman Dlo, save us from this terror sea. Be calm, be calm,” she told the waves, “Be slow, lie low.”

The swirling waters seemed to pause and flatten into an insulent roll that fell away at her call.

“Ma Dolly calmed the sea,” they would later say. “She calmed the sea at Yara Bay.”

By Rail to San Fernando

July 12, 2012, 7:30 am

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by J.H. Collens (abridged), 1886

When hundreds of wild cows roamed Caripichaima

The different estates and objects of interest on the line between Port of Spain and St. Joseph junction have already been enumerated in the previous chapter (published in last month's digest). It will therefore be necessary to take up the journey only from the point where the line branches off, viz., at the signal box between St. Joseph and Tunapuna. Here, you will turn sharply round in a southerly direction, leaving St. Augustine estate works on your left and passing through the estate. After crossing the iron bridge over the Caroni, you reach the station, which is named, like the district, after the river. To the right are the hospital and factory  Frederick estate (Mr. Gregor Turnbull). On the public road to the west of Frederick is another substantial iron bridge spanning the river. The road from the back of the station leads to St. Clair estate (Mr. Zurcher), Mon Jaloux (Mr. Q. Kelly), and several cacao estates along the bank of the river. Beyond these is St. Helena estate (Messrs. G. Turnbull & Co.), where is the very fine new iron bridge alluded to in the former chapter as being on the road from Golden Grove. Still farther is an Indian settlement, with several more cacao estates, the principal being those of Mr. Centeno.

It was originally proposed to extend the railway system to Cumuto. Three and a half miles of embankment were thrown up, bridges constructed, and a mile and a quarter of rails laid down at a cost of £5,000, when the work was abandoned, I believe by order of the then Secretary of State. The first station would have been St. Helena, and from Cumuto in all probability the line would have eventually reached Mayaro.

Parties bent on alligator shooting frequently have their boat sent from town up the Caroni to meet them here or at the adjacent estate of Mc Leod Pain. Still better sport, however, is to be obtained at a small lake about two miles inland, known as the Bejucal. Here alligators, wild birds, and the queer armour-coated cascadoura positively swarm.

Following the rail again from Caroni station on the right is Wilderness estate (Mr. J.W. Warren); Mr. F. Zurcher's Mon Plaisir faces the Cunupia station. This part of the country is becoming famous for the cultivation of tobacco and limes by Mr. C. Fabien, who has been successful both with regard to the growth and the manufacture of the fragrant weed. Apropos of tobacco, His Excellency has just published a smart little brochure advocating the growing of this plant, and certainly the recent experiments have clearly shown that there is no earthly reason why we must either pay an exorbitant price for the Havana article, or else as an alternative have badly made up cabbage-leaf foisted upon us. Mr. Fabien's best cigars at the recent exhibition were of very good quality. Mr. Anderson, who has had some experience in that line, is also going in for the cultivation and manufacture of tobacco and cigars.

Leaving Cunupia station, Reform estate (Messrs. Coryat and E. Cipriani) is the next estate on the right, and beyond it Léonice (Mr. Cornilliac). I omitted to state the rather interesting fact that the site of the little Anglican Chapel at Cunupia was given by a wealthy heathen Indian living in the quarter.

St. Charles, a small estate belonging to Mr. C. Smith, is on the right near Chaguanas, while beyond it on the left is Endeavour (Mr. René de Verteuil). Opposite the latter is Woodford Lodge, the property of the Hon. G. Fitt and Mr. S. Henderson. The oscillated centrifugal sugar system, adopted first on Messrs. Tennant's estate, Inverness, has been improved upon here, with highly satisfactory results. The soil of Chaguanas, especially in the vicinity of the sea, is of the description commonly known as "crab-land", from the innumerable holes in the surface made by the land crabs.

Chaguanas has generally the reputation of being a dreary kill-joy sort of place, suggestive of muddy roads and legions of mosquitoes and sand flies. So it may be, but the forests and high woods are full of hidden treasures that the keen and vigilant eye of the naturalist will spy out and gloat over. The Noel Baptist Chapel in McDonald valley of this district is interesting as having been built partly by subscriptions of the neighbouring planters, but mainly by contributions form the Sunday School Children of John Street Church, Bedford Row, London.

You cross the Chaguanas Road immediately before entering the station. To the east lies the Montrose cacao estate (Hon. G. Fitt), and Mr. Latour's sugar estate, Edinburgh. Beyond these is the convict depot. To the west lies Perseverance (Messrs. T. Daniell & Sons), and Chaguanas village with its Roman Catholic and Anglican churches. A new church is being built for the former denomination quite close to the line. Beyond the village are Trafalgar (Messrs. Cadet and Ambard), Petersfield (Mr. Burgos), Adela (Mr. J. Coryat), and near the bay Messrs. Daniell's large estate Felicité. The proprietors of the last named generously gave a site for a new Wesleyan Chapel, erected in 1878.

Taking up the route again from the railway, you pass through unopened lands, the huge trees, with their burden of parasites, not having yet succumbed to the woodman's ax. When nearing Carapichaima, on the right you catch a glimpse of the fine Waterloo works (Mr. J. Cumming), furnished with the Brush Electric Light. Opposite these is a road leading to the village and to Orange Field (Mr. L. Preau).

From Carapichaima, Mr. Cumming, who is the largest resident proprietor in the island, and one of the most liberally disposed, owns a series of estates, extending a distance of fully seven miles. A part of his property is as yet uncultivated, and is to all appearance high woods, but it is tenanted by a herd of wild oxen. Some twelve or fourteen years ago, about fifteen head of cattle escaped from Felicité estate, Chaguanas, and took to the woods. There must be now not less than two hundred of them, and noble beasts some of them are! Occasionally, sportsmen and hunters come across a drove them, when they immediately do a stampede.

Passing another of Mr. Cumming's estate, Exchange, on the right, and crossing the road, we enter the Couva station. Here in a cluster are the post office, warden's and savings bank offices, Roman Catholic church and school, and police station. The last is a creditable building of concrete, containing also the magistrate's court. Couva is a fast-growing flourishing district, comprising four villages—Exchange, California, Spring and Freeport. The eastern direction of the road lately crossed leads to the new Presbyterian church and school now in course of erection, near which is an excellent manse; the site for all these have been generously given by Mr. Cumming from the lands of Camden estate; then Spring village, Spring and Caracas estates (Mr. J. Henderson),  and finally Montserrat. It is proposed to lay a tramway between Couva station and the junction of the two roads to Gran Couva and Mayo. This is very much needed, as it will open up the way to what is practically an unknown region to a great many even of the residents in Trinidad.

But the train has started again; rolling over the muddy Couva river by the longest iron bridge in the island, you see on the right the fine works of Brechin Castle estate (Mr. G. Turnbull) in the Savonetta part of Couva (Savonetta—little savanna). These were the first vacuum pans worked erected in Trinidad, and the fine crystals made here took the first prize at the local exhibition in February this year (1886). On the left is Sevilla, worked in connection with Brechin Castle. the first building is the estate hospital; a little further, on the rising ground, is the residence of Mr. John S. Wilson, planting attorney of Messrs. Turnbull, Stewart & Co. There is a telephonic communication between Brechin castle and Sevilla, and from the former to the shipping place. Behind Sevilla, in the direction of Montserrat, are Milton estate (Messrs. C. Tennant, Son & Co.) and Rivulet (Mr. G. Turnbull).

Leaving California station, on the left is the residence of Mr. Bernard Kenny, a genial son of Erin,  who has charge of Mr. W. F. Burnley's Couva estates, Esperanza, Phœnix Park and Providence. Phœnix Park is easily recognisable by the avenue of coco palms on the left. On the opposite side are Providence works and about a quarter of a mile beyond the distillery.

Nearing Claxton's bay village and school, you cross the road just before entering the station. The eastern direction of this road leads through the village and on to the four estates of Mr. Abel Devenish—Mount Pleasant, Forest Park, cedar Hill and Diamond, in the direction of Montserrat.

The westerly direction of this same road brings one almost immediately to the Gulf, and to the jetty, 1,300 feet in length and ten feet in breadth. This is now the property of the Mr. Devenish just mentioned, and was built in 1871 by his uncle, Mr. Le Roy, at a cost of nearly £2,000. It stands on cast iron screw piles, with runners and decking of balata, one of our most durable native woods. Being connected with the estates by a tram line, Mr. Devenish thus avoids much of the expense of carting, the sugar being conveyed to the extreme end of the jetty, where the lighters lie alongside to receive it.

Claxton's bay railway station is grimy-looking, like all the rest of them for want of clean new paint, but the collector, all honour to him, does his best to improve it by planting creepers, and attaching orchids to the woodwork. I have not the pleasure of his acquaintance, but I feel convinced he must be a good man. Would it be a liberty to suggest to the authorities that this horticulturist should be removed to each station in turn along the line, say for six months at a spell, so that he may continue the work of reformation at each, and show what nature can do when she is helped a little?

Leaving Claxton's bay, you approach Plaisance estate (Messrs. C. Tennant) on the left. Here is one of the most interesting curiosities in the island, the thermal spring, or rather springs, for there are at least two distinct ones. A bath house has been put up, covering two good-sized concrete baths. The clear spring water, apparently like other water till you become cogniscant of its warmth, flows directly into the baths from the hillside, in just such a stream as might be poured from a bucket. The temperature of the water is from 100º to 105º Fahrenheit. On the occasion of my visit, by the courtesy of the manager, I was allowed to take a bath, which I found particularly pleasant an soothing, after the first strangeness of the unusual warmth had subsided. It is curious that hi water cools more rapidly than ordinary water would if heated artificially to the same pitch.

Rolling over the viaduct, near which is the government school, you see Pointe-à-Pierre R.C. church on the hill, commanding a fine view. The building, a wooden one, is of good size; over the altar are two large figures of St. Peter and St. Joseph. The Pointe-à-Pierre railway station is the merest apology for anything of the kind that I ever saw. Near it is Mr. Le Gay Johnstone's Plein Palais estate. The cutting a quarter of a mile long through the Pointe-à-Pierre hill was one of the chief engineering difficulties in the construction of the line, owing to the tendency to landslips.

At Marabella junction, passengers going towards Princes Town change to the Guaracara railway, which here branches off. As our destination is San Fernando, we keep our seats, and crossing the Guaracara we have a good view of the Gulf on the right and Marabella works (Mr. A.P Marryat) opposite on the eminence. The pasture, with its trees dotted about, strike one as resembling an English orchard. You will see plenty of pelicans flying busily about the Gulf, sometimes suddenly swooping down straight as an arrow for the unwary fish they have spotted during their flight. The white egrets, too, look very pretty wading through the shallow water, or stalking along the muddy banks. Passing and abandoned estate, Vista Bella (Mrs. J. Lambie), and skirting the Naparima Hill, you come to San Fernando.

Where the Belmont Tram went

July 16, 2012, 12:52 pm

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The Belmont tram was probably the most important of the Port of Spain tram lines, as Belmont was the city's first suburb, densely populated. Belmont was initially an area of coffee and sugar estates, but, like most other estates surrounding the capital, those at Belmont had to be abandoned after the emancipation of the slaves, when the former labourers turned to find work in the city and shunned the estates. However, people still had to live somewhere, and soon shacks and settlements began to spring up on the no longer cultivated fields. Town planning was completely absent, and many of the curving streets criss-crossing Belmont and the narrow little lanes where hardly a car can pass date from the mid-19th century.

The boundaries of Belmont are the Circular Road in the north, Observatory Street and the East Dry River in the south, the Laventille hills in the east, and the Queen's Park Savannah and St. Ann's River on the west.

But even before the abolition of slavery in 1834, Belmont had an interesting history of African settlement—here for once the term "African" is to be taken literally and not as the lowest common denominator for political purposes. As described in the article about the Company Villages in this edition of the Digest, the British had abolished the slave trade in 1807. What ensued was that the British Royal Navy proceded to patrol the west coast of Africa to prevent slaves being taken to the New World by other nations or by illegal British ships. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Africans were freed by these patrols on the high seas, and some of them were brought to Trinidad. Coming from various tribes—Yoruba, Rada, Mandingo, Ibo, Krumen and others—they were given land at Belmont to settle. These Africans had never known slavery, were free people and came with the whole cultural spectrm of village life, priests, chiefs, tribal leaders, and often families. For a while, an area in Belmont became known as Freetown, named for these African settlers, and street names still commemorate those first men who lived there: Sampty Lande, La Rue Rada, Mayock Place. Freetown extended from the East Dry River, at the north end of Circular Road, and up into the Belmont Valley Road. In 1852 and 1866, other liberated Africans were given land to settle beyond Erthig Road, and many of the families living there are descendants of those.

In his "Reminiscences of Old Trinidad", written by L.O. Innis in 1932, he says about Belmont:

"In the 1860s, Belmont was mostly unoccupied land, belonging to white Warner and black Warner. The land over the Dry river known as Piccadilloy was called Grand Jardin (great garden); further north in teh same direction was Mango Rose; and more north, Belle Eau Road was known as Shapotie. The sugar factory stoo on lands now occupied by St. Margaret's Church and a house of Erthig Road, still existing and occupied, is thought to have been the estate manager's house. This area, known as lands of White Warner, was bounded on the north and east by Circular Road, on the west by the St. Ann's River, and on the south by Erthig Road, with the exception of a small area around Industry Lane which was known as black Warner's land. The old building of Mike's Taxi and Car Rentals is thought to have been the house of black Warner."

Olga Mavrogordato, in her book "Voices in the Street", quotes Sir Pelham Warner from his book 'Long Innings':

"In the fifties of the last cnetury, my father bought some twenty acres of land at Belmont—within a quarter of a mile from Government House—and he left four acres of these on which to build a church."

In fact, the church records of St. Margaret's show that Mr. Charles W. Warner, the then Attorney General of the island, gave two lots of land to build the church. These two lots of land are on what is now the eastern part of the church property. The Warner family was immortalised in the street names of that area, e.g. Cadiz Road (Mr. Warner's wife was Ellen Rose Cadiz); Archer Street (which should be Aucher, named after Aucher Warner, another Attorney General of the island); and Pelham Street (after Sir Pelham Warner, the distinguished cricketer quoted above). Charles W. Warner, whose grave you can visit in the Botanical Gardens cemetery, was the person instrumental in making Angostura Trinidadian: he facilitated the move of the Siegert family from Angostura in Venezuela to Trinidad.

Before 1904, there existed the Belmont Asylum, which now has moved to St. Ann's and became the "Mental Hospital". The Belmont Asylum had been founded in 1851 on the Circular Road, opposite to where the secondary school is now. Some of the street names around where the asylum most likely was commemorate planation owners of long ago, such as Smart Place and Weir Street.

Belmont in the latter part of the 19th century also saw a large influx of West Indian immigrants, namely from Barbados. Olga Mavrogordato links the wave of immigration after 1879 to the failure of the French Panama canal scheme. Belmont started to become a part of Port of Spain, which in those years was very overcrowded. The suburb's streets were straightened and widened as much as possible, but their winding character often remained. They were properly paved. The old shacks were replaced by proper little wooden houses. Only very few of these still stand in their quaint, picturesque gingerbread style; most of them have been replaced by more or less ugly concrete structures (yours truly was born and raised in one of the nostalgic wooden ones on Hermitage Road, which probably had been built around the 1860s, when there were only two houses in our street, the de Boissière's and the Henderson's).

In connection with the Belmont tram, mention should be made of a Belmont character named "Arthur Tramcar". The Belmont or blue tram started from the railway station, went up Almond Walk, along Frederick Street, turning east at Keate Street, up Charlotte Street and Queen’s Park East as far as the café and the big silk cotton tree (which fell this year) at the corner of Belmont Circular Road to return by the same route.

The fare for each journey was 5 cents. Tickets could be purchased at six for one shilling (24 cents). In 1895, the mules went into retirement and the trams were electrified. The new trams, imported from Philadelphia, were painted red, blue and green. They had seats that could be reversed by swinging round their backs. It was forbidden to speak to the motorman, and one was warned to wait until the car stopped before getting on or off. This did not prevent the famous city personality ‘Arthur Tramcar’ from performing spectacular feats of acrobatics on, in and around tramcars. He, to the delight of both passengers and onlookers, would rush a tram, leap on to the running board, and perform several cartwheels along the board that ran the length of the car, to jump off with the flourish of an Olympic star.

A lunatic rivalry commenced between Arthur and the motormen. Arthur took a bet one time that he could run right through a tram as it passed the crossroads of Erthig Road and Norfolk Street in Belmont, waited poised on Erthig Road, facing east. His brand-new, white watchekongs gleamed in the sunlight. The tram, traveling south on Norfolk, had picked up maximum speed from as far away north as Clifford Street. Arthur pounced as the tram bolted past and emerged triumphant on the other side of Erthig Road. For those of you who wondered, the word ‘watchekongs’ is derived from an advertisement that described canvas shoes as “Watch Your Corns”. 

The East Indians in Trinidad

July 25, 2012, 6:45 am

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by Jean de Boissière

Full of the typical anti-colonial sentiment of the times, the young author looks at the conditions of East Indian indentured life in Trinidad. Written in 1937.

After 1834, the slaves, given the liberty to work for a shilling a day or starve, thought freedom meant freedom and scorned the wages offered by the sugar companies. They went into the hills of Trinidad where they formed primitive communities that were entirely self-supporting.

Instead of solving the labour problem, emancipation merely proved to be the progenitor of a host of future problems. To solve the immediate difflculty, the ever-resourceful British government hit upon the plan of importing indentured labour from British India.

The Indians recruited in Bombay and Calcutta were even more greatly deceived than the "freed" slaves. They were cruelly misinformed about the great possibilities of Trinidad by the recruiting officers and immigration touts, who associated that backward, almost feudal, island with the fabulous development then going on in the United States. With this portrait of paradise across the seas painted for them, they signed labour contracts that sold them into an even worse slavery than the Africans had had to endure.

With the African, in ordinary cases, the value of a strong body in the open market had made the physical well-being of the slave a matter of concern to the owner. His old age usually was secure in a hut on the master's estate. The East Indian, after serving his term of indenture, which gave him wages just barely sufficient to keep him alive, was released just when the useful period of his life was over and his need of security had begun.

Under the terms of these infamous contracts, they received one shilling a day for their labour. What was the actual value of this shilling and its purchasing power was not told to them. They were housed in what proved to be overcrowded, filthy barracks. At the expiration of their contracts, they were friven the choice of remaining free citizens in the land or being repatriated at the expense of the government.

Thousands of them, unable to save a penny out of their miserable wage, returned to their native land, with which they had completely lost touch, penniless, old and broken irreparably. Those who stayed did so only because they had children who had established roots in the island. To these children belongs the credit for laying the foundation of the power of the East Indian community in Trinidad.

These young East Indians worked on the sugar estates alongside the newly arrived contract labourers from India. Here they saw the conditions under which their parents had worked. They would see a party of white and mulatto overseers hide in the canefields to ambush a recent arrival who had revolted against the unexpectedly harsh conditions by refusing to work. The pain inflicted upon the backs of their brown brothers was not.hing to the hatred each stroke of the tortuous leather cut into the souls of these East Indians of the second generation.

They buried their hatred in their hearts and worked and saved. Born agriculturists, they performed miracles of thrift to purchase small holdings of land. On these, they made every inch produce all it was capable of doing. With all the disadvantages they faced, in two generations they became the largest group of peasant proprietors in the island.

The full story of the settlement of the East Indians on the land will no doubt one day be told. It is already written indelibly in the events of the past half-century. The swamps of Oropouche and the fever holes of Fyzabad, all its settings, and then in the backwoods the struggle curved. The government remained indifferent to the questions of a water supply, roads, public health, education and indeed of every sort of public service—which alone justifies the imposition of taxes.

Oil with historic precedent helped to break this indifference. The impenetrable lands were promising an importance that can only be gauged by the dishonesty, secrecy and cunning in  which the situation was allowed to develop.

As the third generation was growing up, much to everybody's surprise, petroleum oil was discovered in Trinidad. Oil in such quantities that it was destined to make the island the richest of the West Indies; but the mineral rights were theirs.

Local and English companies were formed for exploitation. In advance of their geologists came a non-conformist minister. He saw opportunity knocking at his door and set out to win leases and lands from the unsuspecting peasants. With the aid of a pious mein and some soul-saving meetings, innumerable blocks of land in the richest oil-bearing districts shortly appeared as the property of the minister. A system of expropriation, common under capitalism, was at work in deadly earnest.

Because he had to work alone, the minister missed a lot of valuable pieces he might otherwise have swindled from th unsuspecting peasants. Those peasants whom he had missed, and some who had been cunning enough to wonder what lay back of all these efforts to secure lands and leases, were in a few years to make fortunes almost overnight.

Meanwhile, the expropriated ones soon lost the small sums they had received for their land (and oil) in an island where mad commercial scramble was rapidly replacing the former stable agriculture. These unfortunates would invariably end up sleeping, almost naked, in the streets of Port-of-Spain, waiting for a ship to carry them back to India that was merelt a figment of their imagination.

Others lapsed into the position of under-paid labourers on the sugar estates, taking  place of the contract labour that had been stopped during the war vears. They were undornourished while every ounce of energy thev possessed was used up in the broiling sun of the canefields. In the night, many took refuge in tho illusory world created for them by the smoke of the ganja leaf.

By l 920, oil had got over company-forming, land-filching stage and was flowing from the numerous derricks by the millions of barrels. The East Indians who had held their land against all effrorts of law and religion to dislodge them, now began to cash in. With the oil gushed their royalties. A definite era of prosperity lay ahead.

As usual, it all went to their heards with the rapidity of imbibing. They imported and raced highly-bred horses. They built large, uncomfortable houses and furnished them with red plush sofas and sea grass chairs.

With practical experience they soon learnt that life as lived by the West Indian ruling class was not all it was cracked up to be. And the difficulty of winning races (with horses, no matter how highly-bred), without having sufficient experience of the turf, was not long in becoming obvious to them.

When eventually to their Eastern eyes the incongruity of red plush and sea grass became a painful sight, they abandoned these childlike efforts to follow the ways of a people they had looked up to in their ignorance and turned their attention to educating their children in the philosophies of the East and consolidating their fortunes.

In attempting the latter, they found that the principle that kept them from winning races on the turf was the same as that which prevented them from making any headway against what was crystalising into a rigid monopoly of all trade by a small group of British and creole men, all working for the overdrafts thev had at the English and Canadian banks.

The chief difficulties put in their way was getting credit from the banks, exclusion from the higher councils of government and most unjust partiality in favour of monopoly in the administration of the laws governing commerce. With all this against them they still continued to hold their own against the entrenched interests.

If the East Indian community had heen comprised solely of a class of suddenly wealthy individuals, it would have met the same fate as its French prototype. But the prolific breeding capacity of all Eastern peoples had been at work and they were now more than one-third of the island's population.

The largest pure racial unit. Although unaware of it themselves, it was the down-trodden masses of the race that had saved it from extinction as a class.

Continuously stale-mated in commerce and dissatisfied with the second-rate social position offered them, they turned their attention to the one line of action opened to them. They entered the political arena.

Here the solidarity of their race made them more successful than any other subject people in the island. While the solitary French of Captain Cipriani had had to assemble a heterogeneous mass of followers, the numerous East Indian politicians had their mass following already formed and hungry for leadership.

This leadership was at first divided hetween the old business men and the younger generation. The older ones, weary and satisfied with the status quo, which left them barely hanging on to their fortunes, sat on the benches of the stacked legislature like frizzled fire-crackers. The younger ones, mainly muzzled by the third-class civil service positions they held, dissipated their discontent by creating a Moslem-Hindu controversy,

This storm over nothing (on the whole the race was more or less apathetic to the religion of their forebears) was cleary nurtured in the Indian section of the local press. There would be columns of Hindu anti-Moslem propaganda and vice versa. This was reaching the stage of splitting the East Indian community when their race threw up the leader who was to show them the true course.

This young man shows them that they should neither waste their energies squabbling over problems that belonged to oId India ,or accept the defeat of "inferior success" as meted out to their elders. He teaches them to consider themselves now as West lndlians and in a merging unity with the peoples of the other islands seek to break the bonds of class and race which binds them to most of their agonies.

---

White servants in the Caribbean

July 30, 2012, 2:12 pm

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When we think of emancipation, we know we are thinking of a time when human bondage was an economic reality. Driven by avarice and greed, the New World was "opened up" on the backs of those who laboured. But it was not only Africans who were brought here and sold as slaves.

The Spaniards, the first Europeans in this part of the world, tried to meet their need for labour by enslaving the native tribespeople. They needed them to clear the forest so as to establish villages, farms and ranches. They needed them to search the rivers for gold and to dive for pearls. The native tribal people, possessing no concept of work or being made to work, drifted away. They were hunted down in the forest and killed. Others, losing interest in life, sat down and died. Thousands were tricked or kidnapped and taken away to other islands or to the main. Some rose in rebellion and were wiped out. Whole villages committed suicide. Within a short space of 100 years or so, most of the Arawak population in many islands had fallen victim to genocide. The settlements could not prosper without people. Food had to be grown, fields tilled, houses built. These new settlements in St. Kitts and Nevis, Barbados, Antigua, in Virginia and New England, all tried to obtain the workers they needed from the British isles.

There were many poor folk there who wished to try their luck overseas. Some were tired of the harsh laws of tenancy which put great power into the hands of the landlords and left them little better than the slaves. Many Germans were anxious to get away from a religious war between Protestants and Catholics that had gone on for thirty years, producing terror and suffering. The New World offered a chance of betterment. It seemed well worthwhile to sign a contract and serve a master for five or seven years. At the end of that time, one would be free and have a grant of land and some cash. Between 1654 and 1685, more than 10,000 people sailed from the port of Bristol alone. This was a large number, bearing in mind that the population of England was then only around 5 million. A steady trade developed in bond servants and when the supply of willing men and women fell off, kidnapping, child stealing and the transportation of prisoners became the order of the day.

Kidnapping increased, especially the kidnapping of children. The "spirits", as the kidnappers were called, frequented the streets of the sea ports and "spirited away" people, causing that term to come into common usage.

Dr. Eric Williams, in his account of this business, describes how "the captain of a ship trading with the West Indies would visit Clarkenwell House of Correction, ply with drink the girls who had been imprisoned there as disorderly, and invite them to go to the West Indies..."

Then, there were the convicts. At that time, a man who committed a trivial offense might be sentenced to death. He could be hung for stealing a horse or sheep, or for picking of pockets. We read a petition that a wife who had been sentenced to hanging for stealing goods worth 3/4 of one penny might be transported overseas instead.

In the wake of one of England's many wars with Scotland, a judge by the name of Jeffreys sentenced hundred of innocent men and women to be transported to the islands to work in the fields. So many were sentenced to be transported to Barbados, that the phrase "to Barbados a man" came into use. To this day, there are the remnants of two classes of people of European descent on that island, the descendants of the masters and those of the servants. Hence the term "bacra".

It is said that in slavery days on that island, the masters and their wives sat in the front rows of the church on a Sunday, the white servants and overseers in the back rows, and the slaves stood around outside. As the service came to an end, the masters left the church first, and the slaves of course took off their hats in deference, but as the servants and overseers started to come out, the word went round, "Back rows, back rows," and hats were replaced...

The condition on board the ships were bad, even for the captains, and horrible in extreme for the indentured servants. Up to 100 people were packed into small compartments. The hatchway was guarded by armed men who prevented them from coming up on deck for air or easement. The water was stinking and the rations were small. Dirt, excrement and urine transformed the ship into a pest house. Smallpox, fever and the plague killed many. Others were devoured by lice until they almost died.

When the indentured white servant arrived in these islands, he or she was sold. A man by the name of Ligon, who lived in Barbados from 1647 to 1650, said that the African slaves were better treated than the white servants, because the owner knew he had a bond servant only for five or seven years, and so drove him hard during that time. Those owners who were merciful treated the bond servants well, but "if the masters be cruel, the servants have very wearisome and miserable lives... Upon the arrival of the ship that brings servants to the island, the planters go aboard. Having bought such of them as they like, they send them with a guide to the Plantation. Being home, he commands them instantly to make their cabins. The next day, they are rung out with a bell to work at 6 a.m. with a severe overseer to command them... I have seen such cruelty there done to servants as I did not think one Christian could have done to another."

So as we mark emancipation, let us remember all of those who laboured in the fields of the Caribbean. 

Roume's last moments

August 2, 2012, 11:22 am

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His breath came in small, rapid gasps. His once sweetly handsome face now decimated by pain. Sunken cheeks, his lips propped up from beneath by teeth grown large from the shrinking of their foundations. Wisps of consciousness floated in and out like cobweb gently blowing in a shaft of sunlight, sometimes visible, sometimes not. Anchoring memories that had not entirely lost their flavour. He tried not to let the phlegm rattle in his throat, as he knew that that would make her feel that he was going. He was going.

He braced himself, assuming in his mind a more dignified way of lying, and tilted up his chin, glancing along his cheek towards where his official uniform was thrown across the back of a chaise longue. Gold brocade, handsome with the dark blue twill, the hilt of his ceremonial sword bringing a regality to it. The emperor's golden eagle shimmered, his eyes were moist. He thought to raise his hand to wipe away a tear. He decided not to, as it would alarm her. The cobwebs of his mind floated upwards and shimmered in the sunlight of recollection.

He saw himself and her and the child boarding the frigate Isle de France, 84 guns, at the dock at Port-au-Prince. They had said good-bye to Toussaint, whom he knew was the only person capable of keeping Haiti for France, if treated well, with reason and intelligence. Before he left, he had written a letter to Napoleon, advising against an expedition. It was ignored.

It was aboard the Isle de France that the first signs of illness had occurred, had occurred to him. A wrenching pain, so sharp, so surprising in its intensity that it made him crouch and grab the gunwale for support as the ship settled in the bosom of a long Atlantic roller to rise up, her bow breaking free. His face was cold with sweat.

New York was behind them, France ahead. He had been 22 when he first went to France, a place strange, yet familiar. He loved it, cushioned it with inherited memories, bathed with day dreams, dreamt while lying on the white sand at Grand Anse, the sky just a shade lighter than the sea. St. George's, a medieval skyline in miniature. This land of his forefathers.

He was at home in Paris, his father's House on the Rue de la Concorde was modest. They used it in the way that people used townhouses when they really lived in the country or on islands. He was rich. They were well connected. He met a girl in an enchanted circle of gaiety, charm and Mozart. Her name was Francis Wilhelmine. She was the daughter of Sir John Lambert Bart. and his wife Anne Holmes. They married in 1765 and returned to Grenada to a house newly built on a knoll, overlooking great beauty in the parish of Grand Pauvre, where their daughter Elizabeth was born in 1766 and where other babies were born only to die, tiny things to be buried quickly beneath the huge eucalyptus trees, inaugurating the family's graveyard on the estate.

His wife and daughter travelled with him to Trinidad in 1777, after his father's death. His mother had remarried a dandy, a sailor with a lean on a title, just a few months older than he. His adventures into finance had produced reversals. He now adventured to the nearby Spanish island, hardly populated, rich in potential. He would become its colonist with the inauguration of a celebrated cedula. He would become so many things. His marriage to Francis Wilhelmine not so much failed as it withered. His mother thought her extravagant. He knew she was faithless. 22 years later, when she was living in Trinidad, by then a British colony, he cited in his divorce petition in Haiti her liaisons with "two retired lifeguardsmen among others...". By then, his politics had changed; gone was his royalist past. Now he was republican, soon to be imperialist.  "She openly professed the most extreme and anti-revolutionary principles. She only associates with the enemies of the French people...". Port of Spain, in spite of being British, was populated by many royalists and noble Frenchmen. 

The vision fled, as the opiate faded and the pain returned. He awoke before dawn. She had climbed into bed with him for the warmth. There was almost no money. His daughter died at age 20, in 1786, during his Tobago years when he had served with Arthur Dillon. He as Ordinateur, Count Dillon as governor. He reported directly to the Marechal de Castries. The Parisian street sounds rose up with the melting mists, shouts and whistles. Bells chiming, the thump of a broom on a carpet, the clatter and rattle of horse-drawn traffic. She stirred. He realised that the little one was between them, Rosette, named in memory of his mother, Rose de Gannes, the Marquise de Charras, the Chatelaine of Champs Elysées on the island of Trinidad. His own plantation at Diego Martin. His first wife's estate at Ariapita just west of the town. Such a long, long way away from home. What home? Home in Grenada? Home in Haiti? Home in Tobago? Home in Tobago. He dreamt he had closed his eyes. He saw her plainly, dressed in white, in someone else's clothes, in the style of the previous century. She appeared to be in costume. He had almost laughed out loud. Dillon's glance contained him. A long-legged quadroon, auburn hair, bright blue eyes, her skin the colour of dark honey, young, 16, high-breasted, big-bottomed, her toes splayed apart from walking barefooted all her young life, strode past them without a glance in the market at Port Louis, now called Scarborough.

He made inquiries. She had been born in Grenada, her name Marianne Elizabeth Rochard, the natural daughter of Thomas Daniel Rochard Lepine and of Genevieve Katronice. That night, he and Dillon in court dress paced the front gallery of Government House in anticipation of the arrival of the Marechal. He saw her passing through the garden in the company of a group of young girls, who were ogling the officers as they sat smoking or playing at whist in the gallery. A carriage turned into the drive, two young slaves with torches ran before it, the girls had run away. Not her. The brilliance illuminated her features, enflamed them, he noticed her slightly flaring nostrils, he thought them endearing.

The officers rose to attention. The governor descended to greet the Marechal. Their eyes remained locked as significant events started to unfold. They became lovers at that moment and remained so for the rest of their lives. A daughter was born to them in Scarborough on the 6th July, 1788. Many years later, while acting French agent and commissioner in Spanish Santo Domingo, in a ceremony in Port Republicain, now Port au Prince, in 1799, in the presence of Toussaint L'Ouverture, the Divisional General commanding forces in French St. Domingue, Louis Beauvais, Christophe Mornet and Paul L'Ouverture, he divorced Fanny Lambert and married Mlle. Rochard, legitimising their daughter. He was 56 and she 38.

The Spanish crown had granted a Cedula of Population, through his endeavour. This created modern Trinidad. The French crown had appointed him Ordinateur of Tobago, where he and Arthur Count Dillon had been so successful in carrying out the objectives set them by the French government. Under orders from Napoleon Bonaparte, he went to Haiti, then the most valuable colony in the world, providing about two thirds of the overseas trade of France, which had risen in revolt, overthrown its government and defeated the armies sent to subdue it. 

He was dispatched to exercise his talents with its leadership to win it back. He gained the friendship and the trust of the island's liberator, Toussaint L'Ouverture. He administered the Spanish half of the island, power passed between his hands, battles unrecorded were fought, won, lost, whatever.

Haiti was a genie that would never return to its bottle. General Leclerc, the emperor's brother-in-law, came with an army in 1803. This ended in complete defeat, Leclerc's death and final victory for the Blacks. Napoleon walked away from the western hemisphere. He even sold Louisiana to the newly made Republic of the United States. The great days of the French were over in the west. Roume's outstanding career was now over, too. The emperor had granted him a pension of 3,500 francs a year on 18 Germinal, an. XI (or 8th April, 1803). This ceased on his death that day in Paris, as he lay in the arms of Marianne; his daughter asleep beside them.

She had great difficulty in obtaining a pittance for herself and the child. She made several appeals to the Navy Ministry. At one point, Napoleon was reminded "Your majesty has refused this application because this woman is coloured". The note however continued "but she dies from hunger and a pension of 400 or 500 francs is recommended". Napoleon ordered that a pension of 600 francs a year be paid to her from the Naval Pensioners' Fund. He initialled the decree himself. Philippe Rose Roume de St. Laurent is hardly remembered by history.

Tobago

August 10, 2012, 6:37 am

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A historian, whose name I cannot bring to mind, wrote that the Lesser Antilles, that curving island chain facing the rolling Atlantic breakers, are the "orphans of three centuries of sea power".

To get an idea of the development of Tobago is to begin to understand the manner in which it has been adopted and orphaned, abandoned and colonised, annexed and amalgamated over the centuries. David Niddrie, writing on Tobago, remarked:

"Once Columbus had broken his way into the Caribbean Sea, the Lesser Antilles became strategic defense and supply bases, vulnerable to all who sought to displace one naval power by another. From Puerto Rico southward, as far as Trinidad, the Spanish therefore sought to prevent any other maritime nation from settling these islands, so that the treasure galleons might have free passage between El Dorado and Cadiz."

Of all the European sea-going powers, it was only the Portuguese who did not challenge Spain in these waters. The Courlanders, the Dutch, the English, and the French, fiercely fought each other and Spain on an ongoing basis for more than two hundred years from the end of the 15th century on to the end of the 18th. Absurd wars commencing out of petty rivalries between autocratic rulers who were elaborately and intimately related to each other. These wars, starting out as set piece battles, where companies of men were moved about the countryside like tin soldiers on distant European battle fields, found frightful reflections of themselves in the Caribbean on remote islands that were previously known only to the migrating birds and the native Amerindians, engaged in perpetually following the tides' currents and the setting sun in search of unrecorded destinies.

Between the islands of Tobago and Trinidad lies a body of water known as the Galleons Passage, through which the huge lumbering treasure-laden ships, sailing from the silver mines of the Argentine and bound for the mints of Cartagena, passed. As such, Tobago became a key island amongst these contending powers. To the eye of the 17th century marauders, the beauty of Tobago lay along its leeward coast with its well-concealed, deep, safe harbours from which attacks upon Spanish shipping could be launched with impunity. To the cartographers of previous centuries, the Guyana coast was known as the Wild Coast, and although a Spanish possession, as just about everything was in the western hemisphere, it was not really held in strength by Spain. Both the British and the Dutch were attracted to this formidable wilderness. They would sometimes think of Tobago as a base camp for adventures, forays up into the great river systems, often to vanish without a trace.

By the mid-17th century, the French too sought to influence events. Tobago as a consequence was often caught up in these conflicts of interest. Did Columbus discover Tobago? Did he see it at all? This is in serious doubt. It is more than likely that it was stumbled upon by Amerigo Vespucci several years later.

The priest Bartolomeo de las Casas thought that Columbus called it Belaforma. Others said that its first name was Assumption, or Asuncion. But at last, it was called Tobago, after the shape of a tubed instrument called "tavaco" by the naturals, in which they smoked a herb that they called "cohiba" (tobacco). Sir Walter Raleigh may be given the dubious credit of introducing the herb now known as tobacco to the world after his visit to these islands. Today, both the French and the Dutch still spell Tobago, Tavaco.

A favourite of Queen Elizabeth I was the Earl of Leicester, Robert Dudley. He crossed the Atlantic, having in mind to explore the Wild Coast, and visited Tobago using it for "a place of arms". A Spaniard by the name of Juan Rodriguez created a homestead and made an attempt at the cultivation of tobacco for the purpose of export to Europe. This might have taken place around 1614. King James I of the United Kingdom, gave away Tobago several times. First he gave it to James Hay, Earl of Carlisle, in 1625, then, a few years later, he gave it to Philip Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke. Then, at the christening of his godson Jakob, the son of the Duke of Courland (Latvia), he presented it to the boy. This might well be the most controversial birthday present ever given, in that this gift was to bedevil the West Indies and various European nations for centuries!

It must be borne in mind that Tobago was not James' to give away at all. In fact, the Dutch, breaking away from the hegemony of Spanish domination, were to make a concerted effort to make the island their own. They too wanted the island as a base camp for their excursions to the Wild Coast. To the adventurers, sailing slowly with the night breeze beneath a brilliant, star-studded sky, the mountains of Tobago may have appeared intrusive shadows disturbing the gorgeous geometry of the constellations. With the dawn, the pastel skyscape would slowly give away to a view of lush tropical beauty, most attractive for cash crop farming.

Tobago, although small, compared to other islands, has such a variety of natural regions, each well suited to some specific crop. Tobago did not evolve as a monoculture as other islands, such as Barbados, whose economy has been dominated by sugar cane. In Tobago, the Europeans planted sugar cane, cocoa, cotton, indigo, cinnamon, peppers and tobacco. This was a very desirable feature, in that as prices for various commodities altered, with a bit of luck and careful planning, one could always have something to take to the market that would fetch a good price.

White people made money in Tobago. By the 18th century, the island began to be increasingly British, although France still had a hand to play. Notwithstanding, by 1773, there were 84 mills grinding cane, to which some 5,000 acres were devoted. 15,000 acres were under cotton. The cotton producers of Manchester sought the very fine yarn spun from cotton grown by a Mr. Robley of Tobago. Slavery came to Tobago with the Courlanders, who owned a slave-buying station on the west coast of Africa. It came with the Dutch as well. But it was with the English that Africans were to arrive in great numbers. With a high mortality rate, the slaves were replaced with a startling regularity, and quite literally worked to death.

There were revolts where white people were killed and there were of course reprisals. Slaves, however, were expensive, and there is a case recorded where 19 slave insurrectionists, tried and sentenced to be hung, were taken to the fort above Scarborough. Instead of hanging them all, the frugal Tobagonian planters hung one man nineteen times, giving the impression to the crowd of Africans beyond the walls that justice was taking its course!

In the period after emancipation, when the salubrious effects of Christianity, as interpreted by first the Moravians and then the Methodists, tended to whittle away retained African concepts and religious beliefs, Tobago was to receive several hundred freed Africans taken from Portuguese slave ships in the mid-Atlantic. David Niddrie recounts in his book "Tobago":

"One old man, aged 76 years, in the Scarborough market was able to relate his grandparents' account of the arrival of these new Africans who on their first free day, a Sunday, hollowed out the trunk of a silk cotton tree, stretched a hide over it and proceeded to beat out a wild dance rhythm in front of the Methodist church. While within three years those selfsame Africans had taken English and Scottish surnames and were going to church as avowed Christians, they undoubtedly reinforced African customs which were falling into disuse."

When one looks at the list of names of the Europeans who have owned lands in Tobago in the 18th and 19th centuries, it is remarkable that there are no white people there any more with a long and established ancestry. Their names, however, do survive this as the result of the female slaves who shared their beds, their lives and their misfortunes. Several old family names survive from 1764 settlements.

"Those whites who exploited the island in the 19th century had long since bankrupted themselves and disappeared into obscurity, yet many of their names remain with black people," writes Niddrie.

Some families still have stories handed down over the generations. There are even a few mementos that have survived in families. Attached is a photograph of a piece of needle work collected by Tom Cambridge while warden of Tobago, and a reproduction of Betty Creton's will.

Cocoa - a New World Product

August 15, 2012, 6:43 am

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The impact of the New World on the old is hard to grasp in these times of globalisation, but may be glimpsed in the appreciation of the sweet potato as being highly praised. It was precious a delicacy that when Falstaff in Shakespeare's play thinks of the wonderful treat that he will give to the ladies of Windsor, he cries "Let the sky rain potatoes" and he meant sweet potatoes, the rare delicacy from the Americas.

Historians and social scientists often talk of the debt of the New World to the Old; of the crops that were brought in to supplement the cassava and the maize of the Amerindians: rice, oranges, lemons, bananas, the grapefruit and the sugar cane. But the New World also gave many new things to Europe. New words entered European literature, such as tobacco, potato, maize, hammock, savannah, cannibal, hurricane, pirogue, manatee, tomato, quinine, alpaca, guano and cocoa.

The metals that come from Mexico and Peru were the cause of a price revolution that took place in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, and you will find countless references in English literature of the period to the silver, gold and jewels of the Americas. During this period, several references were made to gold, the bright red gold of the Guianas, and to the jewels and birds, the strange foods and fruit of the New World.

Some years ago, I went to Gran Couva to visit Mr. Louis de Verteuil, who had been in his time one of the great cocoa planters of Trinidad. Acres upon acres of cocoa trees surrounded the estate house, shaded by enormous immortelles, blazing a remarkable vermillion. He sat in his gallery, a wide-brimmed straw hat slightly tilted over his forehead. At first, I thought he was asleep. but as it turned out, he was listening to his cocoa growing. Later on, he told me about the "golden bean". He said that it was one of the really great gifts to the world. Europe, he said, knew nothing of the cocoa until the early years of the 16th century. Perhaps its first home was in the basins of the Orinoco and Amazon, but by the time that Columbus came to the Caribbean, it was known in Mexico and other parts of America. The tribes of Mexico thought that it was of divine origin, a plant from heaven. They used the beans as money, so that a province might pay some of its tribute to the chief in cocoa beans, and a man might pay ten beans for a rabbit and 100 beans for a slave.

He said that in South America long ago, in the time of Christopher Columbus and Herman Cortes, cocoa was prepared by boiling it with a mixture of ground corn and flavouring it with red pepper. The Emperor Montezuma is said to have been very fond of this drink and when his palace was taken, the Spaniards found vast amounts of cocoa.

The Spaniards, however, did not take to drinking cocoa until some nuns in Guanaco began to prepare it with sugar, vanilla and cinnamon. Louis de Verteuil said that by the beginning of the 17th century, chocolate was a popular drink with the Europeans. Chocolate houses were opened in Oxford and London, one of the most famous being White's Chocolate House, which became a famous London club.

You would have found some of these early recipes a little too rich, and certainly costly. One recipe called for 100 cocoa beans, two heads of chili, a handful of anise or vanilla, a dozen almonds and some hazelnuts, some cinnamon, half a pound of sugar and a little annatto (ruccou) for colouring.

Most of the cocoa for Europe at first came from Venezuela, but slowly Trinidad gained some of the trade. cocoa seems to have been grown in the island quite early, for the Spaniards reported finding it in 1617, but it does not seem to have been cultivated on any scale before the end of the 17th century.

By 1710, however, it was the staple crop of the island.  Cocoa groves began to spread through the fertile Santa Cruz valley and in the Maraval valley, and money began to flow into Trinidad. Up to that time, this island had no staple crop. It had been a stopping place for foreign traders and pirates, raiding the coast of the mainland to the south. It had been a base for adventurers like Don Antonio de Berrio and Sir Walter Raleigh, who used it as a forward camp for exploring the Orinoco in and attempt to find El Dorado. Now, the golden bean gave Trinidad a crop that was valuable.

Barbados had its sugarcane, Trinidad had its cocoa, and we were told that cocoa grown in Trinidad was of a much better quality than the cocoa grown in Caracas and other parts of the mainland. It fetched a good price. Settlers began to move into the island and the Catholic missions did much to pacify the cannibals so as to encourage the industry. But as soon as man begins to grow any crop on a large scale, he provides some pest or disease with opportunity. In 1727, a "blast" hit the cocoa industry in Trinidad and wiped it out. The cocoa planters were ruined. Those who could manage to do so moved to the mainland. The Amerindians who had been growing cocoa under the guidance of the missions went back to their subsistence crops of cassava and maize—the result was that in 1735, the total population of Trinidad exclusive of the Amerindians stood at 162.

What was the disease? One can only guess. We are told that "the trees were apparently healthy and vigorous, flowering abundantly, giving fruits". None of them came to maturity, as young pods dried up before the full fruits. Different reasons were given for the outbreak of the disease. One planter said it was caused by the north wind. Another thought that it was due to the long spell of dry weather, another that it was caused by the appearance of a comet. One of the priests, Father Gumilla, was quite sure that it was an act of God, a punishment sent on the planters who had not paid their church dues.

Some thirty years later, a new variety of cocoa was brought into Trinidad, the "forastero". However, the cocoa industry did not really begin to flourish again until the Spanish government published its famous cedula of 1783, offering very generous terms to those who would like to come to Trinidad to settle, providing they were Catholic and took an oath of loyalty to the King of Spain.
This opened the door to significant development and later prosperity. Cocoa became, especially from the 1860s, a source of wealth for Trinidadians of all classes, conditions and colours. From small farmers to very large estates, the demand for Trinidad-grown cocoa created a trickle-down of wealth. Everyone got something. Money from the cocoa economy allowed middle and lower class people to provide an education for their children, enabling a generation to become teachers, doctors, lawyers, engineers and surveyors, and as such leave behind the prison of poverty and ignorance.

The cocoa economy provided disposable income which benefited the traders and commission agents who imported goods. This in turn provided employment to thousands of sales people, clerks and book keepers. It stimulated shipping, banking and insurance, and jobs in the growing government bureaucracy of this, the most prosperous island of the Lesser Antilles. Those were the good old days!

The Mayoral Election at Port of Spain

August 17, 2012, 6:21 am

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by Jean de Boissière

First published in 1937 in Boissière's book "Trinidad - Land of the Rising Inflection".

Before eight in the morning, the meager two benches provided for the public were filled with people to witness the election of a Mayor for Port of Spain. They were mostly women, all well over forty and more like lazy housewives, come for a morning's entertainment than a group politically conscious females. The men had the beaten, defeated look of most British West Indian workers, who after a lifetime of toil under the most grueling conditions grasp at whatever outlet offered the remains of their emotions

At nine, the Mayor took the chair and started what the public had believed would be an historical occasion. The first thing on the agenda was the swearing-in of the newly elected councillors. There were five of them. Two were former councillors of the party machine that kept the present Mayor in power. One was a new addition to that machine, and the other two were the new, trade union-supported councillors, whose votes were supposed to give the necessary majority to the anti-Mayor group.

As the councillors rose to take the oath, a very striking picture formed itself. In the center was an enormous baize-covered oval table: around it stood the councillors, aldermen and Mayor. Behind them a conglomeration of the dispossessed of all classes of Port of Spain stood pressing against the wall formed by the backs of the city fathers. The vast expense of table obviously stood for the private property rights of Port of Spain. The solid wall of capitalist-politicians protected the table from any encroachment by the assorted rabble at their backs.

The swearing over, the Mayor, who had climbed to political power by representing himself as the spokesman of the dispossessed, congratulated the newly-elected councillors in a speech that was notable only for an intimation to one of two trade union councillors, a barrister, of possible patronage, when he reminded him that despite the sinister reputation of lawyers in the community, the council very often found use for them. His empty praise, threats and promises delivered, he proceeded to the re-election of himself as Mayor of the city of Port of Spain.

The system of election theoretically was a process of the elimination of possible candidates until a division of the house was called to decide on the final two candidates. In practise, the chairman absolutely controlled the whole process of elimination by presuming to be the sole power for interpreting the ambiguous rules of procedure. Someone would propose a candidate and another an opponent. By a showing of hands they would select the substantiative candidate. They would be nine for McCarthy and six for Ambard, the rest abstaining. A little later in the proceedings someone would propose Cabral to oppose McCarthy who had remained the substantiative candidate. At the showing of hands there were seven for Cabral and six for McCarthy.

It did not suit the Mayor's party to have McCarthy eliminated at that particular stage with a possible build-up of Cabral as the eventual opponent. Whether or not that had anything to do with the apparent miscount by many of the councillors present could not be clear to the onlooker, but there was a great deal of confusion and the Mayor called for another showing of hands. This time it was six-six. According to previous procedures this meant that the substantiative candidate was eliminated and Cabral take his place. The Mayor immediately ruled that as McCarthv had nine votes in a previous contest against another opponent, in spite of the fact that every individual elimination contest left the right to abstain or change their candidate to the councillors, he still was the substantiative candidate.

Many councillors rose in protest at this high-handed interpretation of procedure by the Mayor. The councillors at Port of Spain hurled abuse at one anothers' head with vehemence that delighted the idle women and job-seeking men in the crowd, who understood naught of the politics of their city, but were delighted at being entertained in the manner they were accustomed to. The Mayor sat smiling at his well-managed circus that was behaving exactly as he wished it to: his rabble were being amused, and the councillors themselves were losing themselves and their dignity in a mirage that completely obscured the real issues at stake.

He called for yet another showing of hands. Some protested. He ignored them, and at the showing someone forgot who he had held up his hand for the first, and second times, and the result was six for Cabral and seven for McCarthy. The Mayor had got it as he wished, even if he had to trample the dignity of the civil body of Port of Spain in the gutter to do so.

Before any one councillor could catch his breath to give voice to a coherent protest, one of the Mayor's party proposed the Mayor as a candidate. It was now necessary for the Mayor to leave the chair. Two councillors of the opposing camp proposed a new chairman and were seconded. The Mayor announced the one that suited him as the new chairman, and ignored the other proposal as if it had never been made. Pandemonium let loose for the second time. The historic meeting went on without a chairman at all for fully fifteen minutes, while the opposition struggled for a hearing. In the meantime, three of the Mayor's party shrieked at one another from opposite side of the table about the interpretation of this procedure. It meant little, except as a very effective way of keeping the opposition from expressing itself. For even the most naive onlooker could see by now that the man who sat in the chair elected who he wanted as Mayor. Johnston made an offer to take the chair and appealed to the councillors to keep his right to sit there. But the opposition thoroughly rankled refused to support him. This also meant little, because if he was not entitled to it, neither was the candidate of the opposition, and the only alternative was the Mayor's henchman and deputy Pujadas. He took the chair.

The newly elected supporter of the Mayor rose to make a speech on the candidate he was voting for. He spoke in the manner of a school teacher whose self-taught diction is at best in the backroom of a rumshop. His string of elaborated catchwords lasted over 10 minutes. The chairman did not intervene while the opposition waited patiently.

There was another showing of hands at the conclusion of this boring interlude. Again the chairman seemed incapable of simply counting the number of raised hands. They bawled and screamed while one of the opposition leaders, Gomes, literally bursting with anger at the whole disgraceful affair, threatened to take the matter of the abuse of procedure to court at his own expense. The Mayor edged nearer to him and shrieked that if Gomes hit him, he would sock him on the jaw. With this, several of the Mayor's adherents of the bruiser type aggressively thrust themselves close to the Mayor and stood in a threatening attitude. This bit of gangster intimidation may have been the cause of the sudden subsidence of a storm that had broken several ink pots and at one point threatened to break up the meeting.

Calm again, Councillor Gomes rose to support his candidate against the Mayor. He began logically and clearly to deal with the years of administration or mal-administration. He spoke with a fine clear style, too fine, for the chairman ruled that he must not make a speech or at most not talk for more than five minutes. Gomes referred to the long speech of the schoolmaster. The chairman ignored him. Gomes sat down with an assured resignation.

A decision was called for and taken. Still nobody could count the hands correctly. So each name was put down and stated as candidate. One by one the councillors gave their vote until they came to Sinanan, the newly-elected, who had returned through the instrumentality of the trade unions. For weeks he had been sitting in the councils of the anti-Mayor opposition. Without a trace of embarrassment he voted against the people who had put him there and whose trust he had betrayed by sitting in on their plan of campaign. It gave the final disgraceful note to the whole sordid affair.

His vote gave the Mayor the chair for another year. It should not have been so as according to the procedure followed up to then. The opposition could have rallied their forces and proposed another candidate to oppose the Mayor who was only the substantiative candidate. But the chairman and the mob conspired to declare the new Mayor. The wildly enthusiastic populace, who had shown what mass action can do, danced up the street to the Mayor's office where they would celebrate the triumph of capitalist re-action with the few pence spared to buy rum. Thus ended a scene that would have outraged any self-respecting citizen of Port of Spain. But then there was very little room for such people in the council chamber on the morning the Mayor was elected.

The Arrival of Fruits and Veggies

August 21, 2012, 2:01 pm

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That not only people crossed the Atlantic to find new homes for themselves in these islands, but also a variety of fruits and plants, also made that crossing and like the people are now taken quite for granted as being of this place. These introductions began quite early.

The tribal people would have brought plants from "down the main," perhaps fruit trees like paw paw and pineapple and custard apple. We can only guess at these, but we do know that the Spaniards brought in a wide range of plants.

The sugar cane which had its home in the far east, came with them by way of Egypt, Sicily, Malta and the Canary islands. It was first planted in the Americas in Santa Domingo in 1520. The banana also arrived with the Spaniards. A priest first planted it in Santa Domingo in 1516 but it did not become a plant of great economic importance until after 1835. In that year a Martinique planter called Jean Francois Pouyatt, first planted the Gras Michel Banana at his property in the Jamaican parish of St. Andrew.

A year later, he exhibited some bunches of the banana at a fair and was given a prize of one doubloon worth about 12 dollars. Later the English and the French took a hand at brining in plants. the mango for example was taken from a French ship seized as a prize of war by one of Admiral Rodney's Captains. The Frenchman out of an Indian ocean island named Isle de Bourbon contained several varieties of mango which were being shipped to Martinique. These mangoes eventually found themselves all over these islands. A British governor of Jamaica, Sir John Peter Grant, around 1865, introduced several new varieties of mango. Cinnamon found its way to these islands aboard the same boat that had the first mangoes. Another significant import was of course the breadfruit, which is linked with the famous Captain Bligh and the mutiny of the "Bounty".

Bligh made a second voyage after his disastrous first attempt, and brought from the Pacific islands in H.M.S. Providence such valuable plants as the Jew Plum or Governor plum and the Otaheite Apple which we call Pommerac as well as the breadfruit. The ackee more famous in Jamaica was also brought by Bligh from the West coast of Africa. Citrus fruit crossed the Atlantic as did rice with the Spaniards. they experimented with grapes. They also brought nutmeg and almond trees, camphor the oil palm, rubber trees and Guinea grass may have made its own way. Ornamental plants like the oleander, the arum lily and honey suckle and violets which were all brought between 1770 and 1790. Water cress also arrived around this time as did the tamarind tree which came from India and the Kola nut from West Africa. The Casuarina from far off Australia. The bamboo found through out the West Indies first arrived from the far East. Para grass came from Venezuela. Very important was coffee which has its first home in Ethiopia and which was first used as a beverage in Egypt and the Mediterranean a long time ago. HenryVIII enjoyed it. There were coffee houses in London in 1625. It was first planted in Jamaica in 1728 and arrived in Trinidad a few years later.

As we know the coconut came on the wings of a storm to plant itself on the Mayaro beach. Now let us look at the other side of the picture. The Caribbean islands are a part of the Americas and the Americas gave as well as received.

When Columbus returned to Europe from his voyages of discovery he was greeted as 'discoverer of the New World', but the world which he discovered was not new. It had been settled by man for thousands of years from the far off period, some 25,000 or more years ago, when parties of Mongolian people crossing over by way of Siberia into North America. The process of wondering and settling took thousands of years. Generations of these early Americans spread out over the wide plains of North America, worked their way down the continent into central America and settled there, others moved through Panama into South America and fanned out across its great river basins and down the long spine of the Andes.

In the course of this long period of time, many of them passed from the first primitive state of being gathers and hunters of food to more advanced stage of being growers of food. They mastered the art of agriculture. Significantly, they produced societies capable of very advanced forms of mathematical calculation and scientific observation achieving the capacity to study processional astronomy. It is unknown whether they brought there capacities with them or whether these evolved on the continent.

"By the time Columbus arrived, the American Indian had learnt to cultivate more food and plants than all the rest of the world put together," wrote Prof. Phillip Sherlock. So though the West Indies and the mainland received so much , they were able to give. Amongst these gifts were maize, various varieties of potato, hard woods, imperishable, as they were called a quantity of herbs and plants from which important medicines and drugs are made, and, as Prof. Sherlock remarks, "a bird which people all over the world call the turkey, its not from Turkey at all, but from North America."

A Ride on the Bus

August 24, 2012, 7:24 am

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A hundred or more people rushed to get the bus. It is supposed to carry 28 and no more according to law, but nobody on that bus seems to have much regard for the law.

The seats go to the victors in the battle of the doorway; though a couple have, as usual, cheated and scrambled through the window. Then the aisle fills up, while those seated have to keep ducking their heads lest they get decapitated by the bags and boxes being slung about as if it were an empty warehouse instead of a public conveyance full of seated passengers.

At last, there are 35 people in the bus and it is a physical impossibility for anyone else to get in without bursting the steep side of the body. Then the conductor arrives on the scene with a palet in his mouth, to announce that the bus they are in is no longer going. All out! And take the bus behind. Irate, having fought and won a battle to be robbed as easily of the fruits of victory, the passengers abuse the government, the railway, the driver, the conductor and then each other and each other's parents.

Now the scramble to get out instead of getting in takes place. While this is going on, the seats and windows get damaged and the passengers emerge to find their clothes torn. The other bus is already nearly full, so only ten out of the thirty-five get a passage to their home, thirty miles away.

At last, the bus starts. In the aisle, there is a woman who has settled herself on the floor, clucking like a hen as she does so. She gradually diverts herself of clothing as if she were home and prepared for bed; first comes off the stocking and shoe. Then she loosens her bodice and pulls her skirt up around her waist.

As she makes herself "comfortable", she naturally encroaches upon the space occupied by her tightly packed fellow passengers. When they try to assert their rights to the few inches they are sitting, lying or standing on, she rises, clucking furiously. She looks so formidable that everyone is silenced and she subdues, bristling her feathers as she does so.

She is the terror of the trip, that is, until two urchins get in and take up position on either side of her. They lean on her, press on her head and step on her outstretched nude legs. When she starts to cackle, they giggle and pay her no mind. At last, she can bear it no longer, rises with a titanic effort and throws them off, exclaiming, "Crise! You all want to stifle me!"

As the bus approaches within five miles of her destination, she starts to re-dress and make her toilet for arrival. Her stockings are pulled on and then begins the hunt between everybody's legs for the missing shoe that has got shoved around in the mêlées until it has found itself behind the tool box next to the chauffeur's seat. She makes such a noise and accuses so many people of stealing her almost heel-less shoe that everyone joins the search until it is recovered. The chauffeur, who eventually picks it up and returns it to her, gets roundly abused for his pains. But he is the only person in the bus that is her match. In fact, he surpasses her. In the city's tramcar is written: "It is forbidden for the chauffeur to talk to the passengers while the bus is in motion", for from the time the bus has left its starting place, the chauffeur has harangued the bus. Not for a moment has he let up from telling us about his private life, how he'd been to jail and how he liked it there.

At one part of his story, he was describing how he beat a fellow. To lend emphasis to the tale, he would let go the wheel and turn around to describe to the passengers with his hands how he did it. In the middle of one of his gestures, a jitney swung around a corner unexpectedly, and the chauffeur just missed having to describe to the court how it happened, with or without gesture.

Gradually, the passengers thinned out somewhat, as each village passed claimed a few, until there is actually a seat vacant. But to the amazement of the uninitiated, women waiting at the roadside are ignored when they frantically signal the bus. The chauffeur explains to his audience: "She alright, oui, let she get the next one."

The next one, as everyone knows, is four hours away. But the real explanation comes when on approaching the terminus at the other end, the chauffeur starts stopping every few hundred yards to pick up one or two men, who, from their conversation, are obviously friends. Together they sit and stand in the front of the bus, smoking away with their friend, the chauffeur, while the passengers behind look cynically at the sign right over the chauffeur's head, which warns that smoking, except on the rear seat, is strictly forbidden.

At last, the bus arrives at the last stop. The conductor, who has no further business, as the chauffeur is supposed to collect the tickets, now stands astride the doorway, making it difficult for passengers to leave. The passengers themselves have by now become so much a part of the environment created by the chauffeur and his conductor that they fight one another to get out of the bus, into the village, which is devoid of anything except for a few stray pouches slinking around the empty butcher's stall. The bus then turns around and begins another of its reluctant efforts to transport people.

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The Story of the Government House

August 27, 2012, 7:42 am

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 It will be interesting to record some of the facts regarding the construction of this old building as well as some information concerning it given by the late Mr. Thomas James St. Hill, six months before his death at the age of 90 in the 1930s, who, as a boy, had played around it and had frequent opportunities of roaming about its rooms. 

In describing it he said the house had no pretensions to architectural beauty, but the interior was nicely furnished. The ceiling and sides were of plaster of Paris; the walls were of tapia made from black pick-mock roseau, grown in the forest, split into three, with the pith scooped out and tapia laid between. 

The tapia was covered with white lime plaster, and plaster of Paris was laid over all. There was a chandelier in each of the two large rooms, the drawing room and the ballroom. Stucco work was around the chandeliers, while a gilt frieze ran around the rooms at the top. The doors were of cedar and nicely worked in design; the locks were brass ones about eight or nine inches wide, the staircase was six feet wide, the balustrade of which was of mahogany with turned rails. 

A marble stair ran from the ground floor to the landing, comprising twelve steps of black and white. There was a front gallery twelve feet wide, and, apart from the two large rooms described above the interior, was not otherwise large, so this gallery was often used as a dining verandah for balls and other purposes. The principal doors were of glass; there were no jalousie windows, but glass sashes; the reception room was marble-tiled and the staircase to the west, leading from the dining room to the garden was of red tiles. The upper part that ran to the north was two-storied, otherwise it was a one-storey building.

Mr. St. Hill further stated that this building, which had at one time been used as a Government House, was occupied for a good many years by the Hon. Ashton Warner, Chief Judge of the Colony, until his decease in 1830. Mr. Warner was the last occupier of this building, and from that time it fell into decay and ruin. On being asked why it was never tenanted subsequently, he remarked that it was supposed to be situated in an unhealthy locality, being greatly exposed to the north winds and that someone had died there of a malignant type of fever.

When giving the information recorded above, he also drew the ground plan of the building from memory. These measurements were duly checked by a local architect and found to be correct in every detail. This plan, however, has unfortunately been misplaced by the architect. It would have been interesting to reproduce it along with this photograph and the description of the interior. It would also be of interest to find out from what point this view was originally sketched. Mr. St. Hill further stated that when the Prince's Building was being built in 1861, this old property was demolished in order to obtain bricks to be used in the construction of the new building.

From parliamentary papers relating to the island of Trinidad of 18th February, 1823, we gather that the Belmont lands were leased to the government from January 1803 and that these were the lands "on which the Government House and buildings and the negro houses are erected". And further "at the time of the original contract for lease of land by colonial government there was only a small house 36 ft. x 18 ft. built of American timber, shingled and floored and a small hut covered with straw upon the said lands: the former building was newly shingled and repaired by the government previous to its occupation of the property".

As 'Paradise Estate' was bought by the government in 1825 and the great house thereon used as Government House, we think it could safely be averred that the governors who occupied this house were governors Hislop, Munro and Woodford from 1803—1825.

We are glad to be able to place on record these important facts regarding this historic building about which, until now, little has been publicly known. Indeed, there is one common theory about this place that this document explodes and that is that, the building on the Belmont Hill was never a Government House. There is abundant evidence to disprove this. Trinidad is thus greatly indebted to Sir Normal Lamont and the late Mr. T.J. St. Hill.

We are further indebted to Mr. T.I. Potter for the information regarding this property and the section taken at law by claimants to the land, as subjoined:

The old 'Government Cottage' on Belmont Hill.

The history of the old ruins to be seen on the crest of the hill which overlooks the city and the harbour of Port of Spain from what is now called Belmont Pasture is interesting.

The Belmont Estate, which apparently did not comprise much more than the present pasture and the ridge to the north-east of it, although the whole district to the south has taken the name, was a very old occupancy held by a Spaniard whose name is not recorded, because very probably, he was a squatter. In 1780 this man sold his holding to one Riviere, an immigrant to this island from St. Vincent. Riviere, in his turn, sold the occupancy to Don Francis Pasqual de Soler, who conveyed it to Edward Barry (a member of the firm of Barry & Black) on the 16th December, 1784, for the sum of "$900 of eight bits", (whatever that may be).

Edward Barry died some time after the purchase and the representative of his estate leased the lands and buildings, the cultivation (only 'provisions and plantains') having been abandoned, to the governor of the island as a site for a country residence, at a yearly rental of $1,200, and gave him a preferential option of purchasing the property at a fair valuation whenever the heirs of Barry could give a legal title to the lands. The residence was erected the same year, and Governor Hislop was the first tenant of it.

In the year 1811, the heirs of Barry got into financial difficulties, and Messrs. Park and Heywood took the Belmont property in execution. The court ordered an appraisement to be made, and the governor, Major General Monro, was notified of it. He objected to the inclusion of the governor's residence in the appraisement, and it appears that nothing was done until the 30th April, 1814, when notice of the order for appraisement was served on the new governor, Sir Ralph Woodford, who at once referred the matter to the attorney-general (Henry Fuller) in order that the interest of the crown in the property might be represented in the suit. On the 24th May, 1814, he directed the attorney-general to limit his objection to the valuation of the buildings.

The title of Belmont Estate was then raised, and the matter came into the court of first instance before the chief judge (John T. Bigge), who, after hearing the arguments of the attorney-general and the representatives of the heirs of Barry, dismissed the claim of the crown, and held that this title of the heirs of Barry to Belmont Estate was good, and he warranted it.

The attorney-general appealed against this decision to the court of civil appeal, which, at that time, was the court of intendant as regards matters relating to lands of the colony. This court had very large powers there.

The governor was the president of this court, and he had as his legal assistant a judge of the colony, who was called the 'assessor'.

After hearing both sides, the president reversed the decision of the chief justice, and decreed that the act of a servant cannot forfeit the right of the lord paramount, that no grant had been issued to any one, of the lands forming the Belmont Estate, and that there was no prescription against the crown in the colony, therefore His Majesty had never been divested of the ownership of the lands which formed Belmont Estate; but that the heirs of Barry could sue for compensation under a recent British proclamation dealing with crown lands and lands occupied in the island, which gave compensation in land to occupiers, in certain cases, where lands were resumed from them for public purposes; and that the rent received by the heirs of Barry would be taken into account in considering the question of compensation.

The representative of the heirs of Barry applied for leave to appeal to the Privy Council, which was granted, and the vexed question was submitted for final decision to that tribunal.

The case of the claim of the crown to the lands of Belmont, and the alleged arbitrary action of Sir Ralph Woodford in the matter formed one of the many grievances of the Committee of Landholders of Trinidad, headed by the late Joseph Marryat, M.P., in their petition in 1816 to the Secretary of State against what they considered to be the aggressive and tyrannical administration of the government of the colony by that governor.

Belmont Estate eventually became crown land, and the 'Government Cottage' was occupied by the governors of the colony until the 'Great House' of the 'Paradise Estate,' (which property had been purchased from the Peschier family and was converted into the Botanical Gardens and Queen's Park) was fixed up as a govenor's residence. It was then apparently abandoned and fell into decay. It is today the site of the Hilton Hotel.

Colour Prejudice

August 29, 2012, 7:03 am

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Just over 120 years ago, the late 1870s, life in Trinidad reflected the ups and downs and overall uncertainties of the colonial experience.

All in all, the island was prosperous. Sugar was making money for those with money. Cocoa was on a sound footing, providing a trickle-down economy whereby many benefited. The indentured Indians laboured in the hope of either repatriation or in resignation to being consigned forever to this island.

Already, the central plains were acquiring the look of India that they would never see again, or which their children would never know. Jhandis fluttered over backyard shrines, dedicated to Lord Shiva as devotees murmured mantras, maintaining a transcendental connection to half-forgotten ashrams on the banks of Gangama; all these frozen in memory, evoked with ganja, specially imported by the British authorities as a solace and as a relatively safe alternative to the demon of rum.

Already there was an organised importation of West Indians negroes, mostly from the island of Barbados, who were more self-possessed than their local equivalents. They provided inexpensive labour and filled the ranks of the nascent civil service. They were also Protestant, which served to swell the numbers of that denomination favoured by the British. In those days, the real politic took place not between rich or poor or even black or white, but between Catholics and Protestants. This really meant between the British establishment, the governor and high officials, business people and professionals, and the local French whites and their coloured adherents. At the end of the day, what mattered was the cost of labour. Indians from India, negroes from the impoverished smaller islands, ensured that the price of raw materials for export was kept as low as possible. colonial rule was simple. The Indians in the cane, the negroes in the slums.

Where the real social action took place was in the murky, slightly out-of-focus interface between the people of African descent, from dark to light complexions, local or from other British territories, who were moving upward by dint of education and that most nebulous criterion of all, respectability. Nice manners, well-made clothes, a good grasp on the distinction between servility and graciousness or perhaps gratefulness—these educated people of colour had their champions who put up a show whenever obvious racial discrimination was dished out. Black editors complained:

"One class is protected blindly, without regard even to decency and propriety; and other classes degraded with a similar disregard to prudence, common sense and even safety ... The authorities show a lamentable want of discretion and judgment by irritating so often, so determinedly, and so unnecessarily, a sensitive race ... The dominant race enjoys to the top of its bent everything it can desire—power, place, emoluments, social position. It lives, it luxuriates, on the fat of the land. Why does it not enjoy itself quietly? And not every now and then insult the Children of the Sun by acts of gross injustice..." (from contemporary newspapers, as quoted in Prof. B. Brereton's "Race Relations").

Some made it as in the case of  a Mr. O'Brien, whose recommendation by his boss went, "he is a coloured man, and it is difficult to find appointments for men of his class," but, "the fact that he is annually chosen as secretary of the [Horse] Race Meeting shows the sort of consideration in which he is held by the community generally".

O'Brien was acceptable to the whites and so could work in the upper middle ranks of the service. It was regarded as scandalous in 1894 when a registrar of the supreme court, Ralph Monier-Williams, wrote a letter to the governor, requesting him to appoint to a clerkship "a person with as little coloured blood as possible and, if practicable, with no coloured blood at all, as these have given considerable trouble in the department within the last two years".

Trinidad, being as it is, the letter became a topic of discussion even before it got to the governor. The "Long Tom Cigar-Smoking Club of Almond Walk", made up of "a collection of rogues, intellectuals, chantwells, mystic-masons, gentlemen of leisure", to name a few, who met every morning to sit outside Mouttet's dry goods store on Almond Walk, now Broadway, to smoke cigars, take coffee and discuss the events of the day, condemned the occurrence. There was talk that he the official in question should be "tarred and feathered".

It was arranged for posters to be put up all over town, asking "what shall we do with Monier-Williams?" A police constable was ordered to protect him. The reaction of the governor was to appoint a "jet-black" man to the post. Many of the commentators of the day felt that Monier-Williams had been set up by the prejudice of people in his department who had attempted to use him to make a point and "to further their own notions about race". At a Long Tom meeting, held one rainy morning in August 1899, the Hon. Maxwell Philip observed "the coloured and black class in the West Indies occupy an intermediate position". "Marginal men" he called the educated, genteel, well-dressed, hopeful applicants to positions they could hardly imagine. They, the club members, knew what he meant. The English thought them treacherous, fickle and unstable, clever, yes, but lacking in moral worth.

Louis Fabien, raising to avoid a leak dripping from the ceiling in the old shop, said, "Insecurity, my dear, is the root of ambivalence on the one hand. We want to be like everybody else." "You mean you want to be accepted at the Union Club?" "Yes, I don't see why not!"

They laughed, knowing full well that the bags of cocoa that filled Jean Mouttet's store rooms, in fact what they were sitting on, belonged to Louis Fabien. Maxwell Philip proposed having a ball, and proceeded to organise it, at which, because of his prestige and wealth, he brought together what was in their opinion the best of the coloureds and the most acceptable of the whites.

They were not many actually "black" people at the ball. It was held at the Princes Building and was considered a success. Isolated as an event, it however caused comment. The "New Era", a newspaper owned by a coloured man, wrote in his editorial, "Europeans arriving in the West Indies believed that the natives were savages and cannibals". Educated non-whites had a strong sense of their moral and intellectual worthiness to move in the "best" circles. They felt that society was divided into "those who justly deem themselves entitled to a social position in the island consistent with their means and general behaviour, and those who believe that they have a prescriptive right to dictate who shall or shall not, be received into the ranks of the colonial society."

In the weeks that followed Philip's ball, two young men entered Monier-Williams' office in the Red House one evening and, to his surprise, emptied a pail of warm tar over his head and then the contents of a large pillow case. It is of interest to note that they were both white...

Some sixty years later, in the 1930s, C.L.R. James wrote, speaking of his own time, "There are the nearly whites hanging on tooth and nail to the fringes of white society and these hate contact with the darker skin far more than some of the broader-minded whites. Then, there are the browns, intermediates, who cannot by any stretch of the imagination pass as white, but who will not go one inch towards mixing with people darker than themselves."

The society tortured itself, "writhing in the confines of the racist ideology of local and metropolitan whites," writes Prof. Bridget Brereton. Quoting historian Donald Wood, she notes, "the whole intricate experience of the Afro-European encounter since the renaissance, the stereotypes formed by slavery, the legacy of the master and slave relationship, the complex of prejudices and judgments which formed the white view of the 'negro character' during slavery a mixture of affection and contempt, patronage and fear was carried into the post-emancipation adjustment."

The people of mixed race, who had risen from poverty or, in some cases, never were there, they bought into the white attitudes while taking on board various European mores, styles and points of view as they could manage. They tried to disassociate themselves from the working class blacks. Writing letters to the press, asking government "to act more stringently against immoral drum dances, for the sake of the respectable coloured sector which, being coloured, was sometimes classed with the scum that took part in the dances".

The colonial experience created a definition of self-hate that was remarkable, profoundly segmenting the society. Calypso, ever the mirror of society, went:

"Dan is the devil, the devil is dan,

brown nigger more bad than baccraman

but black is the baddest in the land."

J.J.Thomas, a black educator who expressed strong racial pride, spoke out against the extent to which self-contempt and self-hatred existed in his fellow blacks. He condemned the internalising of European values with regard to their superiority. he wrote, "colour prejudice is a ladder with almost endless rungs. It is a system of social aggression and retaliation."

J.J. Thomas was insightful with regard to his concept of Afro-America. He recognised that there were common links binding all blacks in the New World, realising that it was and is in fact the black presence that defined the New World.

His writing influenced many of his contemporaries. One of them was Edward Blyden, the founder of "African Nationalism" and "Négritude". As Prof. Brereton points out:

"Many Trinidadians saw that race prejudices were not the monopoly of any one group. It was not, said J.J. Thomas, a matter of oppressing whites and oppressed blacks. Race prejudice and discrimination were practiced by all sectors, and the coloured and black middle class was the most shade-conscious of all."

The equation of whiteness with superiority had been thoroughly internalised by many educated coloureds and blacks and the consequences of this indoctrination were easily noticed. There were those self-styled whites who desperately tried to conceal their 'negro blood'. According to the radical coloured activist Edgar Maresse-Smith, Philip Rostant was one of those. He wrote to the press:

"Mr. Rostant, in defiance of his crisped hair and the copper colour of his skin, has elected to be a white man. This would be harmless folly if Mr. Rostant would persuade himself of his bequéism and allow others to think as they please. But he feels that he dupes no-one and therefore falls into convulsions as soon as the word 'African' is pronounced, for fear that a hyphen will be placed between himself and the detestable African race."

Maresse-Smith and Rostant were political enemies, and Dr. Brereton points out, "the accusation may well have been entirely untrue, but the letter describes what was probably a well-known phenomenon."

It is of interest to note that both of these men were ardent nationalists, staunch supporters of greater local representation in elected bodies and justice for the poor. J.J. Thomas pointed out that educated and respectable creoles of all skin tones shared a common love for their country and a common sense of identity. This was a view that was shared by many, as one contributor wrote:

"The descendants of the old French and Spanish families, whether they have preserved their distinctive idiosyncrasies by intermarriages among themselves, or have formed a distinct race by the intermingling of African blood, as well as those who form that portion of intelligent blacks who have of late come to the front, are now known and designated as Creoles. These different sections of the native population are now so well linked to each other by intermarriage and daily intercourse that they form a compact body."

Creole society in the colonial period was dependent on social stratification, both in terms of class and caste. The white upper class excluded those with a "touch of the tar brush", notwithstanding wealth, breeding or the lightness of his or her complexion. They also excluded other Europeans, deemed not socially white, such as the Portuguese or the Syrians for that matter, and many of their own countrymen who did not belong to their social order. On the other hand, the line between the black masses and the non-white middle class was class-consciousness.

A working class, black person from the lower levels of society could, through education and the making of money, move upwards amongst the blacks and coloureds who had acquired respectability, and as such had become teachers, civil servants, or journalists. One could say that there were three significant indications by which a person's class may have been defined. There is by and large a certain yardstick of values in the society in terms of which families may be judged and ranked. In the context of Trinidad, to believe in and subscribe to the idea of superiority in being white, of a command of European culture, and of having a place, real or imagined, in the European ranks of the nobility. Other factors such as land ownership, once having possessed slaves, acceptance as such amongst their peers.

Both the white creoles and the coloured and black educated, land-owning professionals, shared and practiced a broadly similar lifestyle, in that they both modelled themselves on the European upper and middle classes, and subscribed to their cultural and social values. The white creoles with more cash in hand could make a better show of it. For lower-class blacks, the masses, they lived an entirely different life in a world very far removed from their sometimes close neighbours or relatives for that matter.

Thus, the roots of the segmentation of the society were laid. To this day, they run deep, and as such may be manipulated by clever people to support their own ends. One should bear in mind that these prejudices were in the first place artificial and were perpetuated by the colonial power for the purpose of dominating a subject people. "Divide et impere"—divide and rule. We all must now know that those days are past and we must condemn those who would have them return!

The Spanish Dons of La Trinidad

September 4, 2012, 11:34 am

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The house was not very large as estate houses go, neither was it very old. It sat in the contented manner that bungalows do on a quarter of an acre of slightly rolling lawn, surrounded by a startling display of tropical blooms whose names I never learned, but whose vivid, indeed spectacular show I surely will always remember.

She said she was having a lazy morning, her basket filled to overflowing with enormous anthuriums. This told me that she had been working in her anthurium garden. "Come," she said, and I followed. Sitting in the long gallery, sipping lime squash, I had to admire Paulina Sorzano. Well into her late 70s, she possessed a lively mind, witty and very clear. She was also quite lovely and womanly, very feminine, stylish in an old-fashioned, "grande dame" sort of way. She being my father's first cousin, I called her Aunty Polly. I was there to get information on the Sorzanos. This is what she told me:

The Sorzano family has had a long connection with Trinidad for about 220-odd years, the earliest holding of the post of Contador de Real Exercito in the administration of Governor Don José Chacon. After the surrender of the island to the British, it became necessary for him to give an account of his administration of that office. He travelled to Spain with Don Chacon, and was one of the officers mentioned in the last paragraph of the dispatch in which the Spanish governor announced the disaster which had befallen him.

During that time, the Sorzanos owned several plantations on the island, and as such, he made up his mind to return and to take the oath of allegiance to his new sovereign and to regard this new British colony as home. With a view to making his family position perfectly clear, he took occasion whilst in Spain to collect all the necessary documents to prove his descent from a long line of distinguished ancestors.

The family of Don Manuel Thomas Sorzano de Tejada is a very ancient one. Its coat of arms was bestowed upon Don Sancho Martinez Sorzano de Tejada by Alphonso III, King of Austria, for his distinguished gallantry at the battle of Clavijo in the year 872 AD, where he and his thirteen sons gained a great victory over the army of Abdullah, the Arab caliph of Cordoba. The thirteen green pennants which support the shield each have a crescent.

Don Manuel became commandant of Arima under Sir Thomas Hislop in 1803, and served the British government as such for several years. He was given a seat at the Board of Council by Sir Ralph Woodford. An old letter describes that when last he saw Don Chacon as being "in the Fort of San Sebastian outside the walls of Cadiz and for the moment unable to leave it". This was a civil way of saying that the unfortunate governor was a prisoner.

Aunt Polly's grandfather, Thomas Sorzano, had placed on loan at the Royal Victoria Institute 1897 exhibition several interesting exhibits, among these were a pair of very handsome pistols with old-fashioned flintlocks, the nominal roll of slave children on the Torrecilla estate, once owned by the family in 1803, an original printed copy of the Cedula of Population of 23rd November, 1783, and is meant to have been a copy brought out by Don Chacon to whom the working of the Cedula was entrusted, an interesting iron-banded wooden chest, said to have been "the chest of fines" in which the moneys paid to the courts were kept, and a very old flintlock musket.

Because our family is connected to the Ganteaumes and the Pantins, who are in turn connected to the Caracciolos, she was also able to tell me something about the latter. Count Giuseppe Joseph Caracciolo, who died in Trinidad in 1819, was a direct descendant of Domenico Caracciolo, Marchese de Brienza. Count Joseph's father was named Literis, and his name is registered in the Libro d'Oro of Naples. He married Mariana de la Porte Strabia. One of their sons, Joseph, Giuseppe, was born in 1779 and at the age of 18 was named sub-lieutenant in the Royal Cavalry. Impatient to earn military fame, he joined the Russian army under the famous General Suwarov, who was then engaged in aiding the Austrians to fight the French under the Generals Massena and McDonald. Giuseppe served for about a year and then returned to Naples. Subsequently finding his safety, perhaps even his life, endangered in consequence of having taken service with the Russians, he determined to emigrate and arrived in Trinidad in 1801. Four years later, he married Marie Josephine Amphoux by whom he became the father of two sons. His eldest son married Henrietta Pantin de Mouilbert, the other, Alfredo, married Barbara Almandoz.

"Which is the oldest Spanish family in Trinidad in the sense of being here the longest?" I asked.

"Oh, the Farfans of course," Auntie Polly answered. The first by that name had come out in 1644. His name was Don Manuel Farfan de los Godos. He founded the Hermanidad del Santisimo  Sacramento at St. Joseph. From him are descended the Farfans of today. For many years, indeed for more than a century, they dominated the Illustrious Cabildo, the government, wielding great power on the island, imprisoning governors, forbidding others to leave. Their power was not altered until the arrival of Don Jose María Chacon, the last Spanish governor. The distinctive epithet "de los Godos" indicates that they belong to one of the Gothic families at the disastrous battle of Guadaletec in 711 AD, where Rodrigo, the last of the Gothic Kings of Spain, was slain by the victorious Saracens.

In 1566, Don Pedro Huarez Farfan emigrated to New Granada, now Venezuela, and his descendants some 90 years later crossed over to Spanish Trinidad. An interesting connection of the Farfans is the Marquis de Creny whose daughter married a Farfan in the latter part of the 18th century. Another old Spanish family of Trinidad is that of Don Jose Mayan, who at the time of the capitulation in 1797 held the important post of Teniente de Justicia, Mayor of St. Joseph, an office that was created when the seat of government was removed to Port of Spain in 1774.

This move away from St. Joseph to Port of Spain was very upsetting to the old Spanish families. The office of Teniente, a kind of lieutenant governorship, was always held in reserve to be awarded in a special circumstance. Don Jose was the son of Don Matias Mayan who emigrated from the province of Galicia, Spain, in the 1750s. He settled at St. Joseph and married Augustina Prieto de Posada, daughter of Don Antonio Prieto de Posada and his wife Donna Josefa Gonzales, on the 7th April 1777. Jose Mayan married Dona Antonia de Salas, by whom he had issue one daughter, Trinidad de los Angeles. In 1797, Trinidad married Don Pablo Giuseppi. All the Giuseppis of Trinidad come from this union, so too the Ciprianis, Fitts, Frasers, and Monagas.

It was in the house of Don Jose Mayan on the Valsayn estate, St. Joseph, that the articles of capitulation were signed under which Don Chacon surrendered the island to the British crown, this on the 18th February, 1797. The old house was long ago knocked down. It stood in an area just behind where WASA now is in St. Joseph.

In 1880, the Royal Princes, the Duke of York and the Duke of Clarence, visited Trinidad in the H.M.S. Bacchante, honouring with their presence an entertainment given for them by Mr. Paul Giuseppi. His ancestor, Don Pablo Giuseppi, was a native of Corsica. He belonged to a family of considerable wealth and importance. In 1791, when the troubled times of the French Revolution were commencing, he was chosen commandant of the national guard of his district. His father, a staunch royalist, did not approve of his giving any countenance to the revolutionary party, and sent him away to Martinique, from which he subsequently emigrated to Trinidad, where he married the only child of Don Jose Mayan, Trinidad de Los Angeles, and became joint owner with her of Valsayn estate.

Another old Spanish family of Trinidad are the Basantas. Aunt Polly related that Don Valentine de Basanta, at the time of the capitulation to the British held the office of First Commissary of Population, to which he had been appointed by the King of Spain in the year 1792. He was also an officer in the Spanish navy like his friend Don Manuel Sorzano. He too owned property, had married in Trinidad, and decided to remain here after the conquest, taking the oath of allegiance to the King of England.

The name Basanta occurs in the chronicles of the 14th and 15th centuries as taking part in the wars with Navarre under Pedro the Cruel and in those waged by Ferdinand and Isabella against the Moors. Connected to the Lezama and Garcia families, many descendants still live in Trinidad.

"Did Don Jose Chacon leave any mementoes behind?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact, he did. A Mr. Diaz once showed me an embroidered robe, a prayer book, and a group of the Virgin and Child which belonged to his daughter, Maria Chacon. She married M. Henri Joberty and as such the descendants of Chacon still live amongst us."

A little bell tinkled from the dining room of Mausica estate house, calling us to lunch, ending a lovely morning, reminiscing about the old Spanish Dons of Trinidad.

The Arena Massacre of Trinidad Part 1.

September 7, 2012, 12:06 pm

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Documents relating to the massacre of the

Governor, Don Jose de Leon y Echales,

other officials and missionaries at

San Francisco de la Arena, by

Indians, on 1st December, 1699.

Collected and translated by

Father P. J. Buissink, P.P.,

San Rafael, and

published by the

Historical

Society

of

Trinidad and

Tobago, 1938

FOREWORD.

The following documents relate to the judicial proceedings against

the Indians who murdered the Missionaries of San Francisco de la

Arena, the Governor and members of his party. The proceedings are

translated in extenso except where the legal formula and signatures

are repeated with the examination of each witness or prisoner, in

which instances the repetition is summarised and printed in italics.

The Society previously issued, as Publication No. 193, a report

of the massacre by Fr. Mateo de Anguiano, official historian of the

Capuchins, written in 1704.

Testimony in the criminal case which the

Alcaldes-Governors of the Island of Trinidad-

Don Diego de Alaje Tenreiro and Don Tomas

de Lezama made together against the Indians

of Arena, in the rear 1700, to be transmitted

to the King Our Lord.

General Archives of the Indies. Sevilla.

Audience of Sto. Domingo, Bundle 582.

LETTER OF THE FATHER PREFECT.

SENORES, ALCALDES, GOVERNORS, JESUS, MARIA.

         I give advice that yesterday, the first day of the New Year,

the General Don Antonio readied the mission of Savanna

Grande with all his men very tired and exhausted, through

lack of provisions. He brings with him twenty-seven prisoners,

men of twelve years and more; thirty-two adult women;

twenty-five little ones less than twelve years old, and states

that ten Indians with their wives went over to the Caribs of

the reefs, having with them ten women to give them to the

other Caribs in order to hide them or go elsewhere. I have

heard that General Don Antonio has ordered the Indians to

pursue those ten Indians with their wives and other single

women, and among them the old Chief and the Lieutenant

with all the members of his party who are on an Island in the

marsh. And the General Don Antonio would not go there for,

lack of provisions, and because he had with him many

prisoners, he has decided not to take these prisoners with him

to Savanna, until the return of those who have gone to seek

the Chief and his people. I have not approved of this decision

which he has taken with the Second-Lieutenant Diego, and

have insisted that they should bring the prisoners to our

Lordship, and after that should go in search of the others, and

they have answered that the prisoners were kept under good

watch, and that they wished to bring them all together.

That is all I have to tell your Lordship whom God guard

many years.

Naparima, the second of January, 1700.

Chaplain of your Lordship,

GABRIEL de BARCELONA.

ORDINANCE OF THE GENERAL MEETING.

         In the town of San Jose de Oruna, Island of Trinidad, on

the sixth day of the month of January, 1700, the Sergeant-

Major Don Diego de Alaje Tenreiro and the Second Lieutenant

Tomas de Lezama, alcaldes in ordinary, Governors because of

the death of the Camp-Master Don Jose de Leon, Governor

and Captain General of these provinces for His Majesty, for

the desired effect and decision of what must be done in relation

to a paper which they had received from the Reverend Father

Gabriel de Barcelona, Prefect of the missions of this province,

in which he advises them that General Antonio, who is at the

head of the missions of Naparima, and Second Lieutenant

Diego Martinez, Spaniard who assists the said Reverend

Father, after a march which they had made in pursuit of the

criminal Indians of the mission of Arena, had 82 prisoners

men, women and children, and that he expected a part of his

troops which he had sent to pursue some fugitive criminals.

They ordered him to put himself at the head of these

ordinances, and called a general meeting, in which were

present: -Alderman Captain Juan de Lezama, Martin

Alonso Guerrero, the Captain Don Francisco Coronado, and

the Captain Diego Perez de Leon, and the Camp-Master

Don Pedro Fernandez de la Vega, the Sergeant-Major Juan

Martinez de Vengoechea y Esponda, the Captain Diego

Onorato Orval, the Captain Don Vicente de Leon y Urriti,

the Captain Domingo Nieto de Sobrado, the Captain Don

Antonio de Bustamante, the Captain Juan Isidro de Mier,

the Captain Antonio de Robles, the Captain Don Francisco

de Zuniga, the Captain Gaspar Gutierrez de Sandoval. And

when they were assembled in the royal house of the Cabildo,

these men read the said paper, in order to propose what

ought to be done with the said Indians, because the punishment

was executed for the first whom they had taken in the two

marches which they had made And it seemed good to all

members of this meeting that the same judgment should be

pronounced against them which was executed against the

other criminals for all the men of fourteen years of age or

above, because it was evident that they had taken part in such

an atrocious crime and sacrilege, as they had committed, and

that the rest of the children and the women should be

distributed and put in the custody of some persons in this

town for their service, and these persons should take the

obligation to nourish them and to instruct thm in the teaching

of our Holy Catholic faith, until in the meantime they would

give an account of this resolution to his Highness the President

and the Judges of the Royal Audience and the Royal Chancery,

of Santa Fe in the new reign of Granada, so that in view of

this his Highness dispose what must be done with those

children and women. And when the said Alcaldes had heard

and understood this, they asked the Captain Don Antonio

de Bustamante, the general Protector of the Indians of this

province what he thought about this arrangement and

proposal. And he answered that everything was well arranged

and that he relied on his Highness who in view of all this

would order that which would be the most convenient to the

royal service, And the same alcaldes said that they approved

with all which was contained in the said meeting, and that

they would decree accordingly concerning the punishment

and its execution, and the sending of these ordinances to his

Highness, so that in view of them he determine what must

be executed in this matter. And in conformity with this all

those present signed it on the said day, month and year.

The signatures follow.

ORDINANCE.

         In the town of San Jose de Oruna, Island of Trinidad, on

the tenth of the month of January, 1700, we the Sergeant-

Major Diego de Alaje Tenreiro and the Second Lieutenant

Tomas de Lezama, alcaides in ordinary, Governors of this

Island, in the vacancy of a government for the King our Lord,

after the General Antonio had reached this town with the

Indian prisoners, indicated the general meeting which we

held on the sixth day of the present month, and which is

written at the head of these ordinances, for its fulfilment and

the execution of what is resolved there, stop to examine the

judgment which was given and pronounced by the Alcaldes-

Governors our predecessors against the two Indians if the

mission of Arena, concerning their rebellion. And after

having seen and examined those ordinances, for more justifica-

tion of the generality of the sedition, and to see, if all of that

mission were accomplices and co-operators in the said crime,

as one of the accomplices declared during the said judgment,

in the first declaration of those ordinances, and in other

declarations concerning this matter, besides that of the first

declaration, we order that the declarations and avowals be

taken from seven of the accomplices, who were brought here,

and that they be asked, if all the Indians of the said mission

with common accord disposed themselves and resolved to

commit the crime, indicated in those ordinances. And their

oaths and avowals shall be taken with the assistance of the

Captain Antonio de Bustamante who is the Protector of those

Indians, and when this is done, measures shall be taken,

according to what has been resolved in the said general

meeting, against those who shall be found to have co-operated

in this crime. So we dispose, order and sign with the witnesses

with whom we act in the absence of a Notary Public, who

were :- The Captain Lorenzo Mendez de Sotomayor and the

Second Lieutenant Antonio de Montenegro residents of this

town. Diego de Alaje Tenreiro, Tomas de Lezama, Lorenzo

Mendez de Sotomayor, Lorenzo Antonio de Montenegro.

NOTIFICATION.

         In this said town, on the twelfth day of the month of

January of this year 1700, we the said alcaldes-Governors

made known the ordinance written above to the Captain

Don Antonio de Bustamante, Protector of the Indians, and

he said that he had heard it and signed it. Diego de Alaje,

Tomas de Lezama, Antonio de Bustamante.

AVOWAL OF GREGORIO.

         And immediately after we the said alcaldes, in order to

fulfil the ordinance given above, received the declaration of

Gregorio, one of the principal Indians among the aggressors,

mentioned in the said ordinance, through the Captain Martin

de Mendoza, principal Indian of the settlement of the valley

of San Agustin de Arauca, who fulfilled the office of interpreter,

because the said Gregorio did not know the Spanish language,

and to that effect the oath was taken of the said interpreter.

And because he was ladino and knew the value of an oath,

he made it to God our Lord and with a sign of the cross in

due legal form, under the burden of which he promised to

speak the truth and with all faithfulness concerning that

which the said Gregorio would answer to that which would

be asked him. And he was asked, if he was with the others,

when they killed the Reverend Missionary Fathers who were

in the mission of Arena, he said, that he was not, that

Father Estevan had sent him to the ford of the river Aripo,

to bring over the Governor who would come to visit the said

mission. Asked, if he knew that they were resolved to kill

the said Fathers, he said that he knew it. Asked, if he was

present, when they killed the said Governor, he said that

he was present, and that it was he who finished off the

Governor, and helped the others to kill his companions.

Asked, if of the others caught by General Antonio, and

brought to this town, there is one who is not an accomplice,

or who did not have part in these murders, he said that all

were there and took part in these murders, except Ignacio

who was absent from this mission and knew nothing, until he

came back and everything was finished. And the said

interpreter added that all this is the truth, which the said

Gregorio had answered to all what was asked him, under the

weight of the oath which he had made, and which he maintains

and ratifies as a Christian. And he says that he has the age

of a little more or less than seventy years. And the said

Gregorio did not know his age; he seems to be a little more

or less than thirty years. And the said interpreter added that

he had well and faithfully fulfilled his office, under the burden

of his oath. And when this declaration was read to the said

Gregorio and was explained by the said interpreter, he

answered that it was the same which he had made, and

maintains and ratifies it. And the said interpreter did not

sign, because he did not know. We the said Alcaldes sign

with the Protector and the witnesses who were :- Captain

Diego de Torres and Ignacio Pimiento and the Second

Lieutenant Lorenzo Antonio de Montenegro, residents of this

town, Diego do Alaje, Tomas de Lezama, Antonio do

Bustamante, Diego de Torres Vadillo, Lorenzo Antonio

de Montenegro, Juan lgnacio Pimiento.

AVOWAL OF AGUSTIN.

         Agustin, an Indian, then gave the following evidence through the

interpreter : Asked if he took part with the others who killed

the said Reverend Fathers Missionaries, he said that he was

present, but that he did not help in the killing. Asked if he

was present with the others, when they killed the Governor

and his companions at the Aripo river, he said that he was

present, but that likewise he killed no one, and wounded only

one horse. Asked, if any one of those who were made prisoner

with him and caught by General Antonio, was not an

accomplice, or was not present at the related crime, he said

that all took part its these murders, except lgnacio who was

absent from the mission, and knew nothing, and when he

came back, everything was finished. Asked, what cause or

motive they had to commit such a crime, he said that, because

the Father had reprimanded them, because they would not

work in the construction of a Church in the said mission, and

that he threatened them with said Governor.

         The above statement was sworn by the interpreter as being correct

and was signed by the Alcaldes and Protector in the presence of

witnesses.

AVOWAL OF JOSE (Age 20).

         Jose, Christian Indian of the said mission who helped the said Fathers

in his office of Sacristan, and is one of the caught criminals took the

oath: And asked if he was with the others in the murders of the

Reverend Fathers Missionaries, he said that he was with them,

and that the night before they had had a meeting to decide these

murders, and that they had invited him to it, but that he

killed no one. Asked, if he was present at the murder of the

Governor and of those who accompanied him, he said that

he was not present, that he had remained in the mission, and

that he had put a surplice to help to drag out the Fathers.

Asked if any of those caught by General Antonio was or was

not guilty of these murders, lie said that all were present and

helped in these murders, and that those who descended to

the river Aripo to kill the Governor and his companions came

back to this mission, glorifying themselves, because of the

murders which they had committed, and that he heard that

Augustin who made his declaration in these ordinances said

that he alone had killed Father Juan Antonio Mazien, Priest

of the Order of Preachers, who was in the company of the

said Governor. Asked if the Indian Ignacio was present

whom the others declared absent, he said that he was not

there, that he knew nothing, because he was not in the said

mission. Asked if an Indian, called Evaristo, and another,

Juan Santos who are prisoners caught by the Spaniards, took

part in the murders, he answered that they took part in them

and that Evaristo descended to the river and glorified himself

as having killed one, and that Juan Santos remained in the

mission. Asked, what cause or motive they had to commit

such an atrocious crime, he said that because they did not

assist at the obligatory devotions, and did not attend the

instruction of our Holy Catholic faith, the Father reprimanded

them, and because they would not work in the construction

of the Church, he threatened them that the Governor would

be obliged to punish them. . . Jose then swore to the truth of

the above statement which was signed by the Alcaldes, Prolector

and witnesses.

AVOWAL OF MATHEO.

         Matheo, an Indian about 40 years old, then gave the following

evidence through the interpreter: Asked if he took part with the

others in the murders of the Reverend Fathers Missionaries,

he answered that he did not, because he had gone to the

river to wait for the Governor, and that he knew that they

had had a meeting to commit those murders the night before.

Asked if he took part with the others in the murder of the

Governor, he said that he did, and for more information he

added that he killed the Notary Public Mateo de Oso with

an arrow of agave and covered him with some leaves. Asked

if those who are prisoners with him, and were caught by

General Antonio, had not taken part in these murders, and

were not in the said mission, he answered that all took part

in them, except Ignacio who was absent and knew nothing,

and when he returned to the said mission, everything was

finished. Asked, if Juan Santos and Evaristo, Indians of the

said mission who are prisoners caught by the Spaniards, took

part in the said murders, he answered that they did, and that

Juan Santos remained at the mission to help to drag the

Fathers out, and that Evaristo went to the river, and knows

who killed Pedro Pacheco, one of those who accompanied

the Governor. Asked what cause or motive they had to

commit such a crime, he said that the Fathers reprimanded

them and warned them, because they did not help in the

construction of the church that they were building, and

threatened them with the Governor, and they decided to

forestall everything.

         The above statement was sworn by the interpreter as being correct

and was signed by the Alcaldes, Protector and witnesses.

AVOWAL OF PABLO.

         Pablo, an Indian about 40 years old, then gave the following

evidence through the interpreter : Asked if he took part in the

murders of the Reverend Fathers Missionaries, he said that

he did, and that he alone killed Father Raimundo de Figuerola,

whom Juan Santos had locked up in a little room, and he

broke the door with an axe to commit the said murder,

which he did with a wooden tool, when he found the said

Father with a Holy Christ in the hand, and that he did not

go to the river and take part in the murder of the Governor,

because he remained in the mission with the others. who

dragged the said Fathers out. Asked, if his fellow prisoners

took part in the said murders, he answered that all took part

in them, except Ignacio who was absent, and when he

returned to the mission, everything was finished. Asked if

the prisoners Evaristo and Juan Santos took part with the

others in these murders, he said that they did and that

Juan Santos remained in the mission with the others to drag

along the Fathers, and that Evaristo went in ambush to kill

the Govenor and his companions. Asked what cause or

motive they had to commit such a foul crime, he said that it

was out of fear that the Governor would punish them.

         The above statement was sworn by the interpreter as being correct

and was signed by the Alcaldes, Protector and witnesses.

AVOWAL OF VENTURA.

         Ventura, a Christian Indian of the mission of Arena, aged about

20 years, took the oath, and gave the following evidence through the

interpreter : Asked if he was present at the murders of the

Reverend Fathers Missionaries, he said that he was present,

and that he was in the kitchen and saw the Fathers killed.

Asked if he went to the ford to wait for the Governor and his

companions, he said that he went and that he took part with

the others in this second crime. Asked, if the other prisoners,

and all the others of the said mission who are fugitives, took

part in these murders and in the other crimes which they

committed, he said that all took part, except Ignacio who was

absent, and when he returned to the mission, they had already

committed the crime. Asked, for what cause or motive they

killed the Fathers, the Governor and the others, he answered

that it was out of fear that with the coming of the Governor

they would be punished for their sorceries and their infrequent

attendance at religious instruction.

         The above statement was sworn by the interpreter as being correct

and was signed by the Alcaldes, Protector and witnesses.

AVOWAL OF EVARISTO.

         Evaristo, Indian of the mission of Arena, gave the following

evidence through the interpreter : Asked if he was present at the

murders of the Reverend Fathers Missionaries, he answered

that he was present in the said mission at a meeting which

took place the night before to kill the Fathers and the Governor,

and he saw them kill the Fathers, but he killed no one.

Asked, if he went to the river Aripo with the others to wait

for the Governor, he said that he did and that he finished off

Pedro Pacheco, a soldier accompanying the said Governor.

Asked if all the Indians of the named mission were accomplices

and took part in the related crime, he answered that all took

part in it, except Ignacio who was absent and knew nothing

of what had happened, until everything was finished. Asked,

what cause or motive they had to commit such atrocities, he

said that they feared that the Governor would punish them

for their transgressions and their neglect to attend religious

instruction.

         The above statement was sworn by the interpreter as being correct

and was signed by the Alcaldes, Protector and witnesses.

AVOWAL OF CALIXTO.

         Calixto, an Indian, gave the following evidence through his

interpreter : Asked if he took part in the murders of the

Reverend Fathers Missionaries, he said that at that time he

was sick and could not walk, and therefore he was not present

at the murders of the Fathers and of the Governor and his

companions. He said that he knew that they had had a

meeting for this purpose. Asked, whether he knew if all the

Indians of the said mission, as well as the prisoners and those

still fugitives, were present to commit such an atrocious crime,

he answer that all were present, except Ignacio who was

absent from the mission. Asked from whom and how he

knows that all the said Indians were present, he answered

that he had seen them from his house, Asked, if he knows for

what cause or motive they committed such an atrocious crime,

he said that they feared that the Governor would punish

them for their abuses and superstitions.

         The above statement was sworn by the interpreter as being correct

and was signed by the Alcaldes, Protector and witnesses.

AVOWAL OF IGNACIO.

         Ignacio, an Indian, gave the following evidence through the

interpreter : Asked, if he was present in the mission of Arena

at the time that they murdered the Fathers Missionaries,

he answered that he was not present. Asked, if he was

present at the ford of the river Aripo, when they killed the

Governor and his companions, he said that he was not present.

Asked, where he was, he answered that with the permission of

the Fathers he had contracted work in the Estates of the

Captain Juan de Lezama in the valley of Cumucarapo, and

that after having fulfilled the time of the contract, he went

back so the said mission the same day that the other Indians

had committed the crime concerning which he was questioned,

and that in ignorance of what had happened and knowing

nothing, he had met the Sergeant-Major Don-Manuel Firmin

who went back to this town wounded, and immediately after

he met three Indians who followed him to finish him off, and

who were recognized by him, and were called Bernardo,

Barnabe and Hilario, who despairing to reach the said

Sergeant-Major, took him to the said mission where they

returned, and that he saw along the road the dead bodies,

and in the said mission he found that they had already buried

the Fathers and committed other sacrileges. Asked, if he

knows whether all the Indians of the said mission took part

in this crime, he answered that he knows that all took part

in it, and that no one failed, because so he heard it said by all,

and he heard it said by the aggressors at the time he was in

their company. Asked if he knows for what reason they

committed such an atrocious crime, he said that he did

not know.

         The above statement was sworn by the interpreter as being correct

and was signed by the Alcaldes, Protector and witnesses.

ORDINANCE.

In the named town, on the thirteenth day of the month of

January of the year indicated, we the said Alcaldes-Governors,

in the absence of a Governor, for the justification of the

innocence of the, said Indian Ignacio, indicated in these

ordinances, order that a declaration be taken of the Captain

Juan de Lezama, and that the declaration of the said Indian

Ignacio be put under his eyes for his contestation. So we

dispose, order and sign, with the witnesses who were:-

The Captain Lorenzo Mendez and the Second Lieutenant

Lorenzo Antonio de Montenegro with whom we act in the

absence of a Notary Public. Diego de Alaje Tenreiro, Tomas

de Lezama, Lorenzo Mendez, Lorenzo Antonio de Montenegro.

AVOWAL OF THE CAPTAIN JUAN DE LEZAMA.

         And immediately after, for the conclusion of this case and

the justification of the declaration made by the Indian Ignacio,

contained in these ordinances, we the said Alcaldes-Governors

with the assistance of the Protector and the witnesses, ordered

to appear before us the Captain Juan de Lezama, resident of

this town, to the effect that he swear and declare concerning

the contents of the declaration which Ignacio made. And his

oath was received in due legal form, and when he had made

it well and completely, under the charge of which he offered

to speak the truth of what he knew and would be asked, and

when the declaration made by the said Ignacio was read to

him, and when he was asked on what day and at what hour the

said Ignacio left his house to return to the said mission, and

how long he worked in his estate, he answered that on Tuesday

the first day of December which was the same day that the

said tragedy happened, the said Ignacio left the valley of

Cumucarapo and reached this town at twelve o'clock, from

where he followed the road to the settlement of Arauca,

where he possessed another estate, and was and spoke with

the family of his house, and when he left the said valley of

Arauca in order to go to the said mission, it was more than

three hours after the Governor and his companions had left

the said valley to go to that mission, and such is in accord

with his words ; and that he worked in his indicated estate

twenty days more or less.

         Captain Juan de Lezama signed this statement with the Alcaldes,

Protector and witnesses.

NOTIFICATION AND ORDINANCE.

         And immediately after, we the said Alcaldes-Governors,

after having seen the declaration made by the Captain Juan

de Lezama which accords with the avowal of the said lgnacio,

and that the other criminals have admitted their crime, we

order, for further proof and to fix without delay that their

avowals made with the assistance of the Protector be ratified.

So we arrange, order and sign, being witnesses the Second

Lieutenant Juan Garcia de Miranda and Lorenzo Marcano,

residents of this town, Diego de Alaje Tenreiro, Tomas

de Lezama, Antonio de Bustamante, Juan Garcia de Miranda,

Lorenzo Marcano. And immediately after we the said

Alcaldes and Governors made known the above written

ordinance to the Captain Don Antonio de Bustamante, general

Protector of the Indians of this Island, and he said that he

had heard it and signed with us :- Diego de Alaje Tenreiro,

Tomas de Lezama, Antonio de Bustamante.

RATIFICATION OF GREGORIO.

         And immediately after we the said Alcaldes-Governors,

with the assistance of the said Protector and the witnesses,

with whom we act in the absence of a Notary Public, ordered

to bring in our presence the Indian Gregorio, one of the

aggressors who gave his declaration in these ordinances, to

the effect that he ratify his declaration. And therefore we

ordered to call the Captain Martin de Mendoza, interpreter

named in these ordinances, so that by his office may be made

understood by the said criminal that which he has declared.

And therefore he made an oath in due legal form, because he

was a Christian and understood its value. After having made

it well and completely,  he offered under the weight of it to

ask and to answer, as he would be ordered and the said

criminal would answer. And in conformity to this, the

declaration of the said criminal was read to the said interpreter,

and he was ordered to declare it, and the said criminal

answered that it was the same which he had made, and he

maintains and ratifies it, and he adds that an Indian of those

who where with him, called Calixto, at the time when they

committed the avowed crime, was sick and it was impossible

for him to go out, and therefore he was not present at any of

the crimes with the others ; that he knew however what they

had resolved in the meeting, and that at the time, that all the

Indians escaped from the said mission, the wife of the said

Catixto, carried him away, because he could not walk, and

that he recalls nothing else other than what he has answered.

Asked it the other Indians of the said mission who are fugitives

took part in the said crimes, he said that all took part in them,

and that is according to the declaration. And the said

interpreter added that he had well and faithfully fulfilled his

office, according to his faithful knowledge and understanding.

And he says that he is of the age indicated, and he does not

sign, because he cannot. We sign with the named Protector

and the witnesses who were:- the Second Lieutenant Juan

Garcia de Miranda and Lorenzo Marcano, residents of this

town. Diego de Alaje Tenreiro, Tomas de Lezama, Antonio

de Bustamante, Juan Garcia de Miranda, Lorenzo Marcano.

RATIFICATION OF AGUSTIN.

  The Indian Agustin similarly ratified his statement, adding :

That he remembers that an Indian among the prisoners with

him, called Calixto, at the time when they committed the

Crimes mentioned in these ordinances was sick and was not

with them, and when they escaped from the said mission

his wife carried him away. Asked if the other Indians who

are fugitives took part in these crimes, he answered that all

were accomplices.

RATIFICATION OF JOSE.

  The Christian Indian, Jose, then ratified his statement on oath,

adding : That he remembered that Calixto, an Indian, and

prisoner in his company, was not present at any of the murders,

and when they took to flight from the said mission, his wife

carried him away, and he knows nothing else. Asked, if the

Indians who escaped took part in the committed crimes, he

said that they did, that all were present.

RATIFICATION OF PABLO.

  The Indian Pablo then ratified his statement through an

interpreter, adding : That he remembered that Calixto, Indian,

prisoner with him, was sick at the time that they committed

the indicated crimes, and was not present at them. Asked, if

the other Indians who are fugitives took part in these crimes,

he answered that all took part in them.

RATIFICATION OF VENTURA.

  The Indian Ventura then ratified his statement through the

interpreter, adding: That Calixto, an Indian made prisoner

with him, was sick at the time they committed the crimes,

and was not present. Asked if the other Indians who are

fugitives took part in those crimes, he answered that all took

part in them.

RATIFICATION OF EVARISTO, CALIXTO, AND lGNACIO.

  The Indians Evaristo, Calixto and Ignacio then ratified their

statements through the interpreter.

EXAMINATION OF THE ORDINANCES BY THE PROTECTOR.

  In this same town, on the day indicated, month and year,

we the said Alcaldes-Governors, having seen in these

ordinances a criminal case against the Indians of the mission

of Arena, order to give them over to the Captain Don Antonio

de Bustamante, Protector, in order that he quote what he

finds in justice, with the provision that he answer within

three hours, because what must be determined, in justice must

be executed urgently, and for this effect those ordinances

must be handed over to the said Protector. So we dispose,

order and sign with the witnesses present with whom we act

in the absence of a Notary Public and who were :- The

Second Lieutenant Juan Garcia de Miranda and Silvestre

Ernandez, residents of this town, Diego de Alaje Tenreiro,

Tomas de Lezama, Juan Garcia de Miranda, Silvestre

Ernandez.

NOTIFICATION.

  And immediately after we the said Alcaldes-Governors

made known the ordinance contained in the preceding sheet

to the Captain Antonio de Bustamante, general Protector of

the Indians of this Island who said that he had heard and

understood it, and that he would answer within the limit of

time given him, and therefore he received the said ordinances

and signed with us :- Diego de Alaje Tenreiro, Tomas

de Lezama, Antonio de Bustamante.

PETITION.

  I, the Captain Antonio de Bustamante, general Protector

of the Indians of this province, after having taken all the

necessary care, appear before your Honour in the criminal

case that by the office of the royal justice has been instituted

against the Indians of the mission of San Francisco de la Arena,

caught and made prisoners by the Second Lieutenant Diego

Martinez de Arrieta, Spaniard, and the General Don Antonio

de la Cruz, Indian of the Naparima tribe, and say that I have

examined the said ordinances and criminal case, and l find

that your Honour in justice must declare free lgnacio and

Calixto, Indians named in these ordinances who gave their

declaration in this case, because no guilt can be found in

these ordinances against them among the guilty charged in

them, because their declarations set them free, and show that

they have not co-operated in the crimes. And for all the

others involved in the said case I entreat your Honours that

their chastisement be exercised with the greatest mercy that

can be found in justice, paying attention to their incapacity

and ignorance, and above all to the royal laws which are in

their favour as such. I ask and entreat your Honours to act

as I have asked and to pronounce the judgment. And in the

necessary case I renounce to whatsoever proof which might

be allowed me, because I find none to the contrary to what

I find in justice. I ask justice. Antonio de Bustamante.

         

DECREE.

         The petition was added to the ordinances, and that they

be presented to us in order to minister justice. So it was

arranged by us the Alcaldes-Governors and the witnesses

present with whom we act in the absence of a Notary Public.

And the witnesses were :- The Captain Juan de Lezama and

the Second Lieutenant Juan Garcia de Miranda, residents of

this town, who signed with us in this town of San Jose de Oruna

on the thirteenth of the month of January of the year 1700.

Diego de Alaje, Tomas de Lezama, Juan Garcia de Miranda

and Juan de Lezama.

ORDINANCE.

         On the day indicated, month and year, we the said

Alcaldes-Governors, having seen these ordinances, order that

the said Protector be cited to-morrow at eight o'clock to hear

the sentence concerning those Indians. So we dispose, order

and sign with the witnesses present who were :- The Second

Lieutenant Juan Garcia de Miranda and Silvestre Ernandez,

residents of this town, Diego de Alaje Tenreiro, Tomas

de Lezama, Juan Garcia de Miranda, Silvestre Ernandez.

NOTIFICATION.

         And immediately after we the said Alcaldes-Governors

made known the ordinance above to the Captain Don Antonio

de Bustamante, Protector of the Indians who said that he had

heard and understood it, and signed with us :- Diego de Alaje

Tenreiro, Tomas de Lezama, Antonio de Bustamante.

SENTENCE.

         In the criminal case that by the office of the royal justice

has been proclaimed against the Naparima Indians of the

mission of San Francisco de la Arena, because they have

committed the crime of lesse-Majesty and sacrilege, for having

rebelled and killed the Religious Apostolic Missionaries and

the Father Instructor and the Governor and Captain General

of these Provinces, in the name of the King our Lord, and

other persons, as it is shown in the first ordinances, and

outrage of the holy and consecrated things and images,

which crime all the Indians of the said mission in common

have committed (except the Indians Ignacio and Calixto), as

appears its these ordinances, notorious crime and which as

such must be chastised summarily according to the rules of

the royal justice, after having seen these first ordinances, these

of the general meeting which are at the head of the others,

and the importance of this case.

JUDGMENT.

         We judge that we must condemn and we condemn the

twenty-two Indians whom the General Antonio de la Cruz

and the Second Lieutenant Diego Martinez de Arrieta have

caught arid brought to this town, with all the other Indians

of the said mission of Arena, accomplices and co-operators in

the said crimes, to death, with the exception of the two Indians

Ignacio who knew nothing of the tragedy and was not present

in the said mission when it happened, and the Indian Calixto,

who was sick and thereby prevented from taking part in them.

And that these twenty-two above indicated criminals and all

the others of the said mission who might be caught be dragged

along the public streets of this town, with a crier before them,

publishing their crimes, and after that be hung, until they

necessarily die, and after their death their hands and heads

shall be cut off and exposed and nailed in the places where

they committed and executed their crime, and their bodies

shall be cut in pieces and put along the roads for their

punishment, and good example for the public vengeance,

because so orders the King our Lord by his royal laws. And

for the other children and women who are caught or may be

caught of the said mission must be executed what has been

convened and resolved by the said general meeting which can

be found at the head of these ordinances. And the Indian

Ignacio, because he did not come back and give information

and followed and accompanied the said criminals, we condemn

to two years of personal service in the convent of our Serafic

Father San Francisco in this town, and we order that he shall

be set free and given over, after this judgment shall have been

executed, to the Reverend Preacher Fray Francisco de Riveros,

Guardian of the said convent, and we charge his conscience to

teach and instruct him during these two years in the things

of our Holy Catholic faith and the Christian religion. And

the Indian Calixto we condemn to four years of exile in the

royal fortress of Araia to work out his rehabilitation and all

that may be convenient to the royal service of His Majesty,

and he shall be sent to hand him over to the master of the

fortress at the first occasion that presents itself, and in the

meantime he shall be prisoner in the public jail of this town.

And to the said General Don Antonio de Ia Cruz who is the

General of all the Naparima Indians of this Island and its

missions, as a good minister and a faithful vassal of the King

our Lord whom God may guard, and in his royal name, we

give thanks, because he has well and courageously worked in

the case and in the pursuits he has made, and we confirm,

approve and revalidate for him in the said royal name the

title and honour of General of the whole Naparima-tribe of

this Island and its missions, and we recommend him to continue

in the future his good and faithful work in the said missions,

promising him that by all this his Majesty will be well served,

and will remember him for all that. And all the others who in

his company have worked and worked well shall be rewarded

in the fulfilment of the royal laws of his Majesty. And to

the said Lieutenant Don Diego Martinez de Arrieta

thanks are also given, because he has been the principal agent

of that which the said General has done in his company, and

the reward is given to him that is due to such good deeds,

so that be continue them in the future and an authorized

testimony of this our opinion will be given to the said General.

And it is recommended to him not to fail in the continuation

of the marches and trips and that he bring to this town those

of said criminals whom he will catch during these marches, in

order that the punishment contained in this our sentence may

he meted out to them. And judging so, we pronounce,

declare, order and sign this judgment definitely. Diego

de Alaje Tenreiro. Tomas de Lezania.

PUBLICATION.

         The judgment contained in this and the anterior sheet

was given and pronounced by us, the Sergeant-Major Diego

de Alaje Tenreiro and the Second Lieutenant Tomas

de Lezama, Alcaldes--Governors of this Island, in the vacancy

of a government through the death of the Camp-Master

Don Jose de Leon y Echales, Governor and Captain General

of these provinces for the King our Lord, being witnesses the

Captain Juan de Lezama and the Second Lieutenant Juan

Garcia de Miranda and Silvestre Ernandez, residents of this

town with whom we act in the absence of a Notary Public.

And this judgment is given in this town of San Jose de Oruna,

Isle of Trinidad, on the fourteenth day of the month of

January of 1700, for which we testify. Diego de Alaje

Tenreiro, Tomas de Lezama, Juan de Lezama, Juan Garcia

de Miranda, Silvestre Ernandez.

                                   

NOTIFICATION.

         On the said day, before us the said Alcaldes-Governors,

was read in the public jail of this town, in the presence of all

the criminals named in our judgment, and of the Captain

Don Antonio the Bustamante as their Protector, this our

sentence, and when they had heard it and when it was

translated by the Captain Martin de Mendoza, interpreter

who knew their dialect, they said that they had heard it, and

the said Protector answered the same for them. And he was

cited and advised that a term of twelve hours was given to

them, for the case that they would entreat or appeal, with the

understanding that after this time they would proceed to the

confirmation and execution of it, because it was very convenient

that the execution be short. Were witnesses :- The Captain

Juan de Lezama and the Second Lieutenant Juan Gaicia

de Miranda and Silvestre Ernandez who with us and with

the said Protector sign, and this we testify. Diego de Alaje

Tenreiro, Tomas de Lezama, Juan de Lezama, Antonio

de Bustamante, Juan Garcia de Miranda, Silvestre Ernandez

ORDINANCE.

         In the town of San Jose de Oruna, Island of Trinidad, on

the fifteenth day of the month of January, 1700, we the said

Sergeant-Major Don Diego de Alaje Tenreiro and the Second

Lieutenant Tomas de Lezania, Alcaldes-Governors, during

the vacancy of the Government, and the witnesses with whom

we act at the death of the Notary Public, because the term of

twelve hours which we gave yesterday for the appeal against

the judgment contained in these ordinances has passed, and

nothing has been brought in against it, we confirm and

approve it and order that it shall be executed to-day at

eleven o'clock according to its wording and form, and we give

convenient orders for its execution. And of those ordinances

two authorized copies shall be taken, one to be sent to the

King our Lord in his royal and supreme council of these

Indies, and the other to be sent to the Royal Audience, and

Chancery of Santa Fe in the new Kingdom of Granada, so

that with the document before them they may dispose of

what is most convenient for the royal service. So we dispose,

order and sign with the said witnesses (and that this be made

known to the said Protector) who were :- The Sergeant-

Major Don Cristobal de la Riva and the Captains Juan

de Lezama and Lorenzo Mendez de Sototmayer, residents of

and present in this said town. Diego de Alaje Tenreiro,

Tomas de Lezama, Lorenzo Mendez de Sotomaver, Juan

de Lezama, Don Cristobal de la Riva.

NOTIFICATION.

         And immediately after we the said Alcaldes-Governors

made known this ordinance to the Captain Don Antonio

de Bustamante, Protector of the said Indians, who answered

that he heard and understood it, and signed it with us,

Diego de Alaje Tenreiro, Tomas de Lezama, Antonio

de Bustamante.

DISTRIBUTION.

         In the town of San Jose de Oruna, isle of Trinidad, on the

sixteenth day of the month of January of 1700, the Alcaldes-

Governors Don Diego de Alaje Tenreiro and the Second

Lieutenant Don Tomas de Lezama and witnesses with whom

we act in the absence of a Notary Public, in order to fulfil the

sentence pronounced by us, which is contained in these

ordinances and already executed, and that which has been

resolved in the general meeting which is put at the head of

these ordinances, in order to make the distribution of the

women and children, as it is ordered, we made it in the

following form and manner :- Be delivered to the Captain

Jose Fernandez Palomeque, one ; another, to Pedro Angulo ;

another, to Maria Gertrudes ; another, to Juan Felipe

Fernandez another, to Dona Maria de Mendoza ; another,

to the Second Lieutenant Juan de Canas ; another, to Tomas

Randon ; another, to Dona Lucia Guerrero ; another, to

Dona Catalina Guerrero ; another, to Dona Maria de la Riva ;

another, to Dona Manuela de Leon ; another, to Diego Perez

de Leon ; another, to Juan Estanislao ; another, to Francisco

Ravelo ; another, to Felice de Lezama ; another, to the

Captain Antonio de Bustamante; another, to the Captain

Antonio de Robles ; another, to the Second Lieutenant

Jose Gonzales ; another, to Dona Sabina de Gongora ;

another, to Geronimo de Leon ; another, to Juan Antonio

Jaimes ; another, to Manuel Calderon ; another, to Don Juan

Emerio ; another, to the Captain Diego Oval ; another, to

Carlos Vocon ; another, to Andres de Arevelo ; another, to

Bartolome Sanchez ; another, to Juan Caraballo ; another,

to Michael Antunez ; another, to Manuel de Canas ;

another, to Simon de Lezama ; another, to the Comisario of

the Holy Office Don Alonso de Lerna ; another, to the

Licenciado Don Francisco Candido ; another, to Dona

Catalina de Orval ;         another, to Dona Isabela Quen ;

another, to Dona Maria de Orval ; another, to the Captain

Don Francisco Coronado ; another, to Manuel Perez ;

another, to the Captain Juan de Lezama ; another, to

Dona Catalina Quen ; another, to Ignacio Pimiento ;

another, to Don Andres Garcia ; two, to the Second Lieutenant

Martinez de Arrieta ; four, to the General Don Antonio

de la Cruz.

         And to all those it was recommended and ordered to feed

them and instruct them in our Holy Catholic faith and

Christian religion, in the meantime that the President and

the Judges of the Royal Audience and Chancery of the new

Kingdom of Granada dispose and order otherwise ; and we

order that a testimony be made of the criminal case which

the AIcaldes-Governors our predecessors instituted against

site two Indians whom they executed, and be added to these

ordinances, and the original be returned, and two copies be        

made of all those, as is ordered by our judgment, to transmit

them as and how it is ordered in our judgment. So we

dispose, order and sign with the said witnesses who were-

The Captain Don Vicente de Leon, Don Lorenzo Mendez,

and Don Juan Eusebio, residents of and present in this town,

Diego de Alaje Tenreiro, Tomas de Lezama, Vincente de

Leon y Urreti, Lorenzo Mendez de Sotomayor, Don Juan

Eusebio Pacheco.

FOOTNOTE OF THIS TESTIMONY.

         This copy agrees with the two originals from which I have

copied them and I have given one copy to the Captain

Don Antonio Robles and the other to the Sergeant-Major

Don Diego de Alaje Tenreiro, because they were judges in

this cause, and by verbal order of the said Sergeant-Major,

AIcalde-Governor in the absence of a government, for the

King our Lord, I the Captain Don Juan Eusebio Pacheco,

resident of this town appointed Notary Public, ordered to

extract and extracted the contents in fifty-eight sheets of

ordinary paper, because this Government has no sealed paper,

and in testimony of this I subscribe and sign, as it is customary,

in this town of San Jose de Oruna, Island of Trinidad, the

twentieth of April of this year 1700. Accustomed fees.

In testimony of the truth.

JUAN EUSEBIO PACHECO,

Votary Public.

Letter of the Alcaldes-Governers of the

Island of Trinidad to His Majesty, giving an

account of the sedition of the Indians of the

Naparima nation of the mission of San

Francisco de la Arena, and of their murder

of the Governor of that Island, the Camp-

Master Don Jose de Leon and his companions,

to which they add the testimony of the ordinances

which contain all that has been done for the

chastisement of the rebellious.

Source : General Archives of the Indies,

Sevilla, 1700. Audience of Santa Domingo,

Sec. 5, Bundle 582.

SIR,

         Because we the Sergeant-Major Diego de Alaje Tenreiro

and the Second Lieutenant Tomas de Lezama, Alcaldes in

ordinary of this present year, are governing this Island,

because there is no Lieutenant appointed by the Governor,

give an account to your Royal Majesty, how on the first day

of December of last year '99 the Governor arid Captain

General of these Provinces Don Jose de Leon went to visit the

mission of San Francisco de la Arena of the Indians of the

Naparima nation, situated at the East of this town, at the

distance of a half-days march, having with him a Father of

the Order of Preachers who was a religious instructor for

the two settlements of this Island : the Sergeant-Major

Don Manuel Fermin de Urresti ; the Treasurer of the Royal

Treasury of this Island Don NicoIas de Salas ; the Notary

Public Mateo de Oso y Aponte ; the Captain Don Francisco

de Mier ; Jose Morales ; Pedro Pacheco and two negro-slaves

of the said persons. And the Indians of the said mission knew

this, and the same morning they rebelled and killed these

Reverend Capuchin Fathers who at that moment were there

and the Second Lieutenant Tomas de Luna, resident of this

town who had gone there to help in the construction of a

Church which they were building in that mission. And after

having executed their crime, and destroyed the ornaments,

chalices, altars and images and all that the said Fathers

possessed in the Church and in the houses, they all came with

their weapons to wait for the said Governor half a mile from

the mission. And after they had crossed the river in a canoe,

and had brought them over, immediately they reached the

place where they were hiding for them in ambush, they sent

them such a charge of arrows and so suddenly, that without

being able to offer the least resistance, they fell dead from

their horses, and so they killed them all, except the said

Sergeant-Major who was the last and had a good horse and

escaped with seven wounds of arrows, and the same night he

gave an advice and died three days after. The day after

messengers were sent to verify the event and to bring over

the body of the Governor which was not found, because they

had dragged it to the river, and thrown it in. Measures were

immediately taken to inflict chastisement, and to this effect

seven searching marches have been made, during which by

the power of the weapons many criminals have been caught,

and the greatest part of them died, because of the resistance

which they so barbarously offered. And for those who were

taken prisoner the sentence (which with the justification of

their cause was given to them) was executed for all the men,

and concerning the punishment of the women and of the boys

under the age of fourteen years, we held a general meeting and

there it was resolved that their fate would be decided by the

Royal Justice of Santa Fe in the new Kingdom, and that in

the meantime that His Highness would give his decision, they

would be distributed among the residents of this town, and

all this is more evident by the testimony of the ordinances

which are sent with this Ietter, so that after having seen them

Your Majesty may dispose of what is most convenient for

his royal service.

         God our Lord guard your catholic and royal Person the

many years that we his humble vassals desire and Christianity

needs.

Trinidad de Barlovento,

May 16 of 1700.

DIEGO DE ALAJE TENREIRO,

TOMAS DE LEZAMA,

         1700. Letter of the Alcaldes-Governors

of the Island of Trinidad, having relation to the

sedition of the Indians which took the lives of

the Capuchin Fathers and that of the Governor

Leon y Eschales.

SIR,

         In the first letter of this day we have given an account to

your Royal Majesty of the unfortunate incident of the death

of the Governor, the Captain General of this Province and the

chastisement that was executed by seven searching marches

which were made. And in this letter we give an account of

how these marches were made by the residents of this Island

helped by the Indians of the two settlements of this town, and

one the General Don Antonio de a Cruz made who is the

General of the Indians of the Naparima nation, helped and

accompanied by the Captain Diego Martin de Arrieta, a man

who helps the Fathers in the said mission, and the Naparima

Indians of the three missions who have shown themselves your

faithful vassals, as Your Majesty will recognize by the

ordinances mentioned in the first letter and for these reasons

in the royal name of Your Majesty (whom God may guard),

we have given them thanks for the good and faithful service,

and we hope that they will act in the future in the same

manner on such occasions as may present themselves. And

this has been the greatest motive of such a success, because

we found ourselves with so little protection to be able to

dominate and submit them to our will, because we are so few

residents in this Island who help in all the necessary expenses

for its defence. And although your Royal Majesty has

ordered his royal decree to the Governor and to the Captain

General of this Province to bring from the garrison of Guiana

twenty-five soldiers for the punishment and the help which

the Missionary Fathers needed and asked, they have not

brought them and cannot bring them, because only a few

days previously a hundred youths had been sent from your

castle to that fortress to receive military training. And

therefore they have come to take some residents of this Island

to serve as sentries in the said castle which is a great damage

and prejudice of this Island, because the greatest number of

those who go never come back to their town. And this has

reached such an extreme that to go to the help of the said

fortress the Captain Juan de Aguilar resident of Guaiana had

gone to Santa Fe this last year of ninety-nine, was given for

his guard and escort residents of this Island although against

his will, because those who go to that fortress, when they come

back (who can do that, because most of them die) have lost

their poor earnings, and are not able to sustain themselves.

And all this we have represented and made known to the

Royal Audience of Santa Fe in a letter which we have sent

by the Governors of the coast of Cumana and Caracas the

twenty-fourth of last January to whom we gave an account of

all that happened, and we sent them at the same time the

ordinances, asking that his Highness would provide the

remedy for such necessities. And therefore we have not

asked this until now of your Majesty from lack of sailings and

now we do it, asking very humbly that your Royal Majesty

may consider this matter with the accustomed charity and to

provide what is most convenient for his royal service.

         God our Lord guard the catholic and royal Person of

your Majesty the many years that we his humble vassals

desire and that Christianity needs.

Trinidad, the 16th May, 1700.

DIEGO DE ALAJE TENREIRO.

TOMAS DE LEZAMA.

1700. Letter of the Alcaldes-Governors

of Trinidad, to His Majesty, exposing the great

need of weapons and ammunition of which it

suffers, for the defence of this Island, for the

reasons which it gives. Trinidad, 16th May,

1700.

SIR,

         After having given an account to your Royal Majesty in

the two preceding letters of this day of all that happened

concerning the death of the Captain General of these

Provinces, we pass now to bring to the knowledge of your

sovereign Majesty the need which we have in this Island for

weapons and ammunition for its defence, because the few

which we had have been worn out in the marches which have

been made and during which many of the weapons of the

residents were also worn out. And we have had none of your

Majesty, and the Governor who died left none neither,

because those which your Majesty ordered to send to this

Island, and which reached the Governors Don Sebastian

de Roteta and Don Francisco de Meneses who were those who

received them ordered the Treasurer of the Royal Treasury

to sell them among the residents, as he did, without leaving

some in stock for those who, when the occasion presents

itself are without weapons, or are broken on some occasions,

as it happened, when the enemy entered this Island last year

of 90. And to the best residents who were fighting to defend

the entrance the weapons failed, and many burst, and for

lack of good weapons they had to abandon the fight and

retire in the mountains, and this was, Sir, the greatest cause

that they did not resist the entrance of the enemy in the town.

And therefore we entreat very humbly your Majesty to order

to provide this Island with a hundred fire-arms which will

go off with a spark, because the others cannot be handled in

this Island, because of the thick forests and the great water,

and the matches become wet and cannot be kept burning for

the occasion. And that they be sent, Sir, with the order that

they must not be sold, but that they are reserved for the above

mentioned occasions, for besides what has happened, it

happens that on the occasion of the marches and disputes

which are frequent enough. in this Island, that many residents

have bad weapons from lack of one who can repair them,

and many strangers have not, and if there were in stock, this

Island could be defended with the glory of our triumph which

we must obtain by the royal arms of your Majesty. And we

entreat your Majesty to order to provide powder and bullets

for the said guns, and that they be sent by the first occasion

for this Island, because of that which has been exposed, and

because it finds itself exposed to the fatalities of rebellions of

Indians as well as to the attacks of the enemies of the Royal

Crown. And all that we put before the Sovereign for the

consideration of your Royal Majesty, in order that in view

of that your Royal Majesty may protide that which is most

convenient for his royal service. And God our Lord guard

.your catholic royal Person the many years that we his humble

vassals desire, and his Monarchy needs.

Trinidad de Barlovento, May 16, 1700.

DIEGO DE ALAJE TENREIRO

TOMAS DE LEZAMA.

         Judicial proceedings in the Island of Trini-

dad against the Indians of the Mission of San

Francisco de la Arena containing the judgement

given against some of the guilty of the murder

of the Missionary Fathers and of the Governor

of the Island.

         1699. General Archives of the Indies,

Seville, Audience of Sto. Domingo. Sect. 6

Bundle 582.

DECREE AND ORDER TO CAPTURE THE INDIANS GUILTY OF THE

HERE INDICATED CRIME.

         In the town of San Jose de Oruna, Isle of Trinidad, orb

the first day of the month of December, 1699, the alcaldes in

ordinary state, as it seems the best to the right and the laws of

his Majesty, that the Governor and Captain General Don Jose

de Leon y Echales left this town yesterday, the last day of

November of this year, accompanied by the Sergeant-Major,

Don Manuel Fermin, and other inhabitants, in order to visit

two settlements of Indians that exist in this island, and after

having visited that of Dona Geronima de Urrestiqui, they

went to that of the Captain Fabian de Mier, where they

resolved to visit the holy mission of San Francisco de la Arena.

In carrying out this plan, close to that mission, and at the

passage of the river Aripo, some Indians killed the said

Governor and companions. The Sergeant-Major was badly

wounded by several arrows, and brought to this town where

he received the last sacraments, and public rumour says that

all the others were killed. The Governor did not return,

and in order to know whether he is alive or dead, we order the

Camp-Master, Don Pedro Fernandez de la Vega, inhabitant

of this town, as first chief, and file Captain Juan de Lezama,

as second, to leave this town without delay, with a guard of

thirty armed men to seek for the Governor and his

companions, and bring them to this town dead or alive.

And to fulfil this order that he take with him some Indians,

as he sees fit, and search the country as far as the mission,

and cheek the rumour of the Indians concerning the

happenings, and order what is good for the general welfare

of this country, and the safety of its inhabitants, and bring us

the necessary information. This was fixed on the said day,

at three o'clock in the morning of the said month and year,

with the following witnesses, in the absence of the notary

Public Matheo de Oso y Aponte who was in the company of

the said Governor-Juan Martinez de Vengoechea y Esponda,

Antonio de Robles, Antonio de Bustamante, Juan de Mendoza,

Martin Alonso Guerrero.

NOTIFICATION AND ACCEPTANCE.

         And immediately after we the said alcaldes made this

order known to the said Camp-Master Don Pedro Fernandez

de la Vega for its execution, he said that he had understood

and was ready to execute the order, as it was given, and

signed. Accordingly thirty soldiers were put at his disposal.

And we order that in the meantime the doors be closed, and

guards be put in the royal houses where the Governor lived,

in addition to those already there, because it is desirable to

protect his possessions, until his death is certain, and take in

due time further convenient steps-Juan Martinez

de Vengoechea y Esponda, Antonio de Robles, Pedro

Fernandez de Ia Vega.

EXECUTION OF THE ORDER AND DECLARATION OF WHAT

WAS EXECUTED.

         Signed statement given on oath by the Camp-Master Don Pedro

Fernandez de la Vega at St. Joseph de Oruna, 3rd December, 1699 :

He reported that he left this town on the indicated day, about

four o'clock in the morning, with thirty soldiers, armed with

fire-weapons, and that he reached the river called Aripo,

which is about four or five hours from this town, and about

half an hour from the mission of Arena, where he stopped

with the said soldiers, because he found dead bodies on the

bank of a bend in the river. These bodies were identified by

the Camp-Master and the Infantry, one being that of the

Purser of the royal estate, Don Nicholas de Salas, and another

that of the Notary Public, Matheo de Ozo y Aponte, killed

apparently by arrows.

         And when they crossed the river near the mission in a

boat, because the river was much swollen, and could not be

passed in any other way, they found dead there the Rev.

Father Juan Mazien de Sotomayer of the Order of Preachers,

and Parish-Priest of the settlement of San Agustin de Arouca

and of that of San Pablo de Carigua ; Joseph de Morales,

surgeon of this town, and a negro-slave of the Governor,

called José, and another of Captain Francisco de Mier, agent-

of the settlement of San Agustin de Arouca, called Pedro, and

another body in the river which was thought to be that of the

Governor. And we could not find the body of Don Francisco

de Mier, nor that of Pedro Pacheco, nor that of another negro

of the Sergeant-Major Don Manuel Fermin de Urresti,

because the river was much swollen by the continuous rains.

And because it was about six o'clock in the evening, and we

could not reach the mission of Arena during the day, and we

had no shelter for the infantry during the night, we went

back to the valley of San Agustin de Arouca, from where a

message was sent to this town, giving a special account of the

above, which can he supplemented by the declaration which

the other soldiers may make, as being the truth, given under

oath in due form, which he maintains and ratifies. And he

said that he had a little more or less than fifty years, and

signs with the witnesses present Captain Juan de Lezama,

Captain Domingo Nieto de Soberado, and Captain Don

Antonio de Bustamante, inhabitants of this town-Juan

Martinez de Vengoechea y Esponda-Antonio de Robles,

Juan de Lezama, Pedro Fernandez de Ia Vega, Antonio

de Bustamante, Domingo Nieto de Soberado.

DECLARATIONS OF (i) DON FRANCISO CORONADO (AGED 30),

         (ii) JUAN DE MIER (AGED 32), AND (iii) CIPRIAN DE MIER

         (AGED 24).

         The above witnesses, on oath, substantiated the statement of the

Camp-Master, Don Pedro Fernandez, and supplemented his evidence

with the following information :-

         (i) Captain Don Francisco Coronado : that they found

               close to the river, where the treacherous attack

               was made, numerous arrows which were believed

               to have been directed at the Sergeant-Major of

               this island, Don Manuel Fermin, whom they

               brought to this town, where he received the last

               Sacraments, and died of wounds, caused by

               five arrows.           

         (ii) Captain Juan de Mier : he had found in the road

               some arrows, and that these were supposed to have

               been directed at Don-Manuel Fermin, Sergeant-

               Major of this island, who received the last

               Sacraments in this town, being badly wounded

               by five arrows, from which he died;

        (iii) Ciprian de Mier : if the march had been continued

               to the mission of Arena after crossing the river,

               they would have put themselves in evident danger

               of life, because of the great number of Indians, and

               the bad roads, and the rainy weather, with the

               suspicion of ambushes, and that in this other part

               of the road they found some arrows, and that they

               said that those were shot at the Sergeant-Major of

               this island Don Manuel Fermin, when they retired.

               He died in this town of five wounds from arrows.

These witnesses signed their statements in the presence of :-

Alfarez Juan Garcia de Miranda, Alfarez Silvestre Ernandez

and Lorenzo Marcano, inhabitants of this town, Antonio

de Robles, Juan Martinez de Vengoechea y Esponda.

ORDINANCE TO MAKE THE INVENTORY.

         In this said town, on the fourth day of the said month of

December, 1699, we the said Sergeant-Major Juan Martinez

de Vengoechea y Esponda and Antonio Robles, alcaldes in

ordinary of this town, in the name of the King for whom we

govern, because of the death of the Camp-Master Don José

de Leon y Echales, Governor and Captain General of this

said town, and because two Indians were brought to this

town prisoners, as guilty of these murders the one called

Pedro who says that he is a Christian, and the other called

Luis, who says that he is not baptized, we gave order to

Captain Calixto of the mission of Savaneta, and also to the

said Captain Don Vicente de Urrestigui and Don Juan

Pacheco, and infantry, to seek, make prisoner and bring to

town the other Indians guilty of said crime, and we order

that in         the meantime the two said Indians be put in jail

under the watch of the Guard which is placed in the royal

houses of this town, and that the inventory be made of the

goods of the said Governor which are there, and that the

Trustees of his residence, the Camp-Master Don Pedro

Fernandez de la Vega and others be notified, as is written in

the town-book, to be present at this inventory and to take

further all the other convenient steps. So we arrange, order

and sign in the presence of witnesses.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT BY THE CAMP-MASTER.

         And immediately after we the said alcaldes notify and

make known this ordinance to the Camp-Master Pedro

Fernandez, as Trustee of the Governor Don José de Leon to

be present at the inventory of his goods, as he had been ordered,

and he says that he had heard and understood, and that he is

present for himself and for Don Vicente de Leon y Urrestigui

who is also Trustee, and whom he legally represents at said

inventory, because he is absent from the town to execute the

order which was given to him to go with, infantry to the

mission of Arena, and for the third Trustee of said Governor

Sergeant-Major Don Manuel de Urrestigui, deceased.

         Signed by Pedro Fernandez in the presence of witnesses.

INVENTORY.

         Captain Don Antonio de Robles in the absence of the other alcalde,

Sergeant-Major Don Juan Martin de Vengoecher y Esponda, who was

sick in bed, and with the assistance of the Camp-Master Don Pedro

Fernandez de la Vega, Trustee of the murdered Governor, thereupon

made an inventory of the Governor's possessions. The list of vestments,

furniture and papers occupy 11 1/2 pages of the typewritten copy of the

original documents. Mention is made in the inventory of two horses

which were found on 5th December in the mission of Arena where

they had strayed without saddles. The papers record that the negro,

Jose Gabriel, died by the side of the Governor. The inventory was

begun on 4th December and completed on the 5th, while the list of

papers was compiled between the 6th and 13th December.

CUSTODY OF THE INVENTORIED GOODS.

         The Alcalde, Don Antonio de Robles duly transmitted all the

goods and papers mentioned in the inventory to the custody of the

Camp-Master Pedro Fernandez de la Vega and Captain Vicente de Leon

in due and legal form on the 14th December, 1699, in the town of

St. Joseph.

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ORDINANCE AND DECLARATION OF PEDRO RAMOS (AGED 34

YEARS) CONCERNING THAT WHICH HE OWES.

         In this said town, on the above named day, month and

year, I the said alcalde Don Antonio de Robles received a

notice that Pedro Ramos, inhabitant of this town, had an

account with the Camp-Master Don Jose de Leon, Governor

and Captain General of this town and island, for his Majesty

the King, and that it seems that he owes a certain amount.

So I ordered him to appear before me and the Camp-Master

Don Pedro Fernandez de la Vega and Captain Don Vicente

de Leon y Urrestigui and witnesses, and declare under oath

what he owes to the said Governor. And when he was

present, I the said alcalde received his oath which he made

to God our Lord, and with a sign of the Cross, under the

obligation of which he promised to say the truth, and being

asked, he said that it is true that he had some accounts with

the said Governor, while he was living in this town, after he

began to govern, and that he owes him for fruits of the Island

of Margarita, hides, cheese, meat, two hundred and forty-three

pesos and two reales, which he is ready to hand over in the

nature of cacao, as is the custom, to whom he will be ordered

to pay. And that a receipt he given him for his security.

And after having seen this, I the said alcalde ordered him to

hand over this sum of two hundred and forty-three pesos and

two reales to the said Camp-Master Don Pedro Fernandez

de la Vega who was present as Trustee of the said Governor

whom God may have in His residence, and that he keep them

in deposit with the other goods, according to these arrange-

ments. And having heard and understood this, he said that

he had received this quantity on deposit.

         In this said town on the eighteenth of the months of

December of the said year, 1699, we the said Sergeant-Major

Don Juan Martinez de Vengoechea and the Captain

Don Antonio Robles, alcaldes in ordinary, who are in charge

of the government for His Majesty, said that on this same day

a pirogue reached Port-of-Spain of this island from the

Island of Margarita with fruits, under the direction of Sergeant -

Major Don CristobaI de la Riva who brought eighteen letters

addressed to the Camp-Master Don Jose de Leon, Governor

and Captain General of this Island of Trinidad. We found

it convenient to open them and to see, if they contained some

orders for the Royal Service or something that might belong

to the said Governor, and we opened and read them in the

presence of his Trustees who lived here, and of the witnesses,

because there was no Notary Public, and we found that it

was ordinary mail from his friends and his acquaintances of

that island and of its Governor, and we ordered to add them

to the other inventoried goods, and therefore we gave them

over to his Trustees, and we signed in the presence of witnesses.

And in these letters was given a notice that the pest reigned in

Puerto Rico and Veracruz.

DECLARATION BY JUAN FRANCISCO JARA Y VALVERDE, ADJUTANT

OF THE GOVERNMENT OF HIS INDEBTEDNESS

TO THE LATE GOVERNOR.

         He said that it is true that he had some accounts with the

said Governor, and for its settlement he showed different

papers and memoirs, and we the said alcaldes have seen and

inspected those papers too badly arranged for a settlement.

And therefore we gave them back to him in order to arrange

them better, having ample time, because of the many

occupations in which we found ourselves at the death of the

said Governor, the Reverend Fathers of the mission, and other

residents of this town. Signed by the said adjutant in the presence

of witnesses.

DECLARATION BY DIEGO RODRIGUEZ BARRENO OF HIS

INDEBTEDNESS TO THE LATE GOVERNOR.

         He said that it was true that he had an account with the

said Governor concerning some fish for the use of the

Governor's house, arid for this reason he owes to the deceased

one hundred and thirty-three pesos and six reales, and he is

ready to pay this sum to whom me must pay. After having

seen this we the said alcaldes ordered the said Diego Rodriguez

Barreno to pay the one hundred arid thirty-three pesos and

six reales to the Camp-Master Pedro Fernandez de Ia Vega,

local Trustee of the Governor, in whose possession are all his

goods in deposit. This Trustee being present said that this

sum was handed over to him, and he signed in the presence

of witnesses.

And immediately after, on the same day, month and year

above indicated, came before us the Captains Don Vincente

de Leon y Urrestigui and Don Juan Ensebio Pacheco and

showed the order which was given to them to go with forty men

to the mission of Arena and surroundings, to seek and make

prisoners the Indians guilty of the murders of the Capuchin

Missionaries and of the Governor of this place and other

residents, his companions. They were ordered to declare

under oath which they made in due form, what they had

executed in virtue of the order they received, and they said,

that on the fifth day of the present month they left this town

to execute the order at about eleven o'clock and went with

the men, weapons and Indians of Tacarigua and Arauca to

the valley of Arauca to take there a supply of bread. They

did this that day, and then went to the valley of Arima,

where darkness over-took them, and spent the night there.

The following day they left with their men and followed the

road of the mission of Arena which they reached at twelve

o'clock. They found that mission abandoned, the Holy

Church in disorder, and the holy statues with eyes pulled

out, and broken nose. And led by the marks of blood they

sought after the bodies of the dead and they found that

Brother Raimendo de Figuerola was buried within an

enclosure of woodwork, and that the two others and the

carpenter Tomas de Luna were buried in the foundation

trenches of the new Church which they were building, and

which had been filled up. For this reason they left the said

mission on the same day and reached the first cottage to

which the aggressors had gone when they took to their

flight, and passed the night there. And by those very tracks

they could follow them over these mountains and ridges,

until they found themselves on the sixth day of the month

about ten o'clock close to the sea. They despatched the

vanguard to the beach who brought news that the aggressors

were on the beach. And because they were so close to them,

they made three battle-lines with their men and attacked them.

And the said aggressors, seeing that they were attacked closely,

defended themselves and threw themselves its the sea in the

number of ten or twelve, and continued to defend themselves

from there, shooting arrows until they died from bullets.

And in this attack they made two Indian women prisoners of

whom the said Captain asked where the other aggressors were.

And they said that they were in cottages along the beach to

the south, and that they had seen them there, because that

beach was without shelter. For this reason, without delay

and taking as a guide one of those women, and leaving a

guard in this road, they went with the rest of their men, at

that hour, to seek the aggressors who came out from different

places, three by three or more, to the midst of the beach,

where they had brought almost all the members of their

families. And out of the middle of them came forward about

twenty Indians who joined themselves with the others and

pushed their families in a big and rough marsh. And there

the said Captains separated themselves, and while Don Vicente

de Leon followed with half of his men the track in the marsh,

on Juan Ensebio with the other half followed those on the

beach as far as the river that they call Narigua which was

so swollen that the aggressors and the said Captain could not

pass it. Therefore, when those aggressors saw that they were

closely pursued, they threw themselves in the marsh. In this

hunt and search they were occupied the rest of that day, and

the whole of the following day, and they killed many persons,

until those Captains saw the impossibility of taking them

prisoners or following them, because of the roughness of the

marsh. And so they resolved to go back, the more because

the day before the provisions which they brought with them

were exhausted. And so they marched to the first cottage,

and met on the beach Antonio del Campo, Indian General

of the mission of Naparima who with eighty Indians had gone

in search of the aggressors. To those men and that General

the said Captains indicated the place where they were and

recommended him to take great care. And the said Captains

continued their march and on the following day they met on

the same beach Cipriano de Mier and Blas Morillo, with

twenty Indians, who had been sent by us to bring provisions

to them. And having received this help, they resolved to

wait, and had time to gather the sacred vessels, ornaments,

corporals which those criminals had divided among themselves

with little respect, and had thrown away in their flight.

And when Cirpiano de Mier had handed over his provisions,

and a letter written by us to those Captains, they divided

them among the men. And while Captain Don Vicente

explored the borders of the marsh, he encountered four

Indian men and women whom he killed, because he could

not take them prisoners. And Captain Juan Ensebio Pacheco

destroyed with the rest of his men the coconut-plantations to

take away from them the means of living. After this was

done by both Captains, Don Juan Ensebio came to this

town, followed by Captain Don Vincente, without having been

able to do other things. because of the indicated difficulties.

All this which is said and declared is the truth given under

the responsibility of the oath which they made, and they

maintain and ratify it, and for greater abundance refer to the

other declarations concerning this happening which might be

given, and they gave their age, Don Vicente twenty-eight

years, and Don Juan Ensebio a little more or less than

forty years, and they sign with the witnesses present who were

Martin Guerrero, Juan de Mendoza, Rodrigo Marcano,

residents of this town, Juan Martinez Vengoechea y Esponda,

Antonio de Robles, Vicente de Leon y Urrestigui, Don Juan

Ensebio Pacheco, Martin Alonso Guerrero, Juan de Mendoza,

Rodrigo Marcano.

         And immediately after, in view of this declaration, we the

said alcaIdes gave an order that to these acts he added the

ordinance and the papers of help and the notice that this

help was sent to the above named Captains Don Vicente

de Leon y Urrestigui and Don Juan Ensebio Pacheco, as it

was said in their declaration, as proof. And in view of all

this we ordered to take further convenient dispositions. So

we arrange, order and sign in the presence of witnesses.

ORDINANCE.

         We, the Sergeant-Major Juan Martinez de Vengoechea

y Esponda and Captain Antonio do Robles, alcaldes in

ordinary of this town of San Jose do Oruna and of the Island

of Trinidad, in the name of our Lord the King, and in whose

charge is the government of this Island and its provinces, in

virtue of royal orders, because of the death of the late Camp-

Master Don Jose de Leon y Echales, Governor and Captain

General, arranged and gave order to the Captains Don Vicente

de Leon y Urrestigui, and Don Juan Ensebio Pacheco, that

at once and without delay they go with forty armed men to

the missions of Arena, and there and in the surroundings

search and make prisoners the Indians whom they would

find out to be guilty of the death of the said Governor and

other persons who accompanied him in the visit to the said

mission, so as it sufficiently will appear to the said Captains

Don Vicente de Leon and Don Juan Entsebio, and likewise

make prisoner the other Indians whom they find to have been

accomplices of the indicated crime, and bring them to this

town and give them over to the Guard. Likewise they shall

examine the said mission and other places, as they will judge

convenient, in order to know and verify, whether those

Indians killed the Capuchin Fathers, and other damage they

caused there, and the reason of all this, in the shortest possible

time, in order to take all the other convenient measures in

the service of their Majesties, and the public welfare and

preservation of this community. Dated in this town on the

fifth day of the month of December of 1699. And the order

and the charge was given to the said Captain Don Vicente

de Leon, that he as principal commander take the necessary

steps for the fulfilling of this order, and divide the men in

divisions with their respective Chiefs, as it seems best for its

effect and execution, precisely and punctually. And if he

would be unable, or for some other legitimate inconvenience,

then the Second Commander shall execute the indicated

order, as we hope by its loyalty and zeal in the royal service

of His Majesty. Juan Martinez de Vengoechea y Esponda,

Antonio de Robles.

LETTER.

         Sir Captain Don Vicente. As soon as we received your

advice, although oral, through the soldier Florencio, we took

care to send to your Honour without delay to-day Tuesday

two o'clock in the afternoon Blas Morillo and Cipriano

de Mier, with two little jars of brandy and other provisions

and with the order for Captain Juan de Lezama to pass at

Arauca, and add to this the cassava which they would be able

to take with the Indians who would go with them, so that

provisions might not fail them. And in Arauca order was

given to hand over to you the cassava which would be needed,

where your Honour can send some one to hand it to you in

the house of the Fiscal Nicolas. You will give us an account

of all that happens, so that we are advised and make the

necessary arrangements for the chastisement of such an

atrocity, and the preservation of this community, and we

gave a part to your Honour of the news which had been

given us by the Father Prefect Gabriel de Barcelona that he

sent on Sunday before yesterday the General Antonio with

a good number of Indians of his mission and of that of the

land of Moruga, to go through the coconut plantations, and

that they went over the Northern part, without another

reason than that you know what passed there, arid they will

give you this letter, so that at all times this may be evident.

God guard your Honours many years.

Trinidad, the eight of December of 1699. Of your

Honours whose hand they kiss, JUAN MARTINEZ

DE VENGOECHEA, DON ANTONIO DE ROBLES.

ANOTHER WRITTEN MESSAGE.

TO THE CAPTAINS DON VICENTE AND DON JUAN.

         To-day Saturday came to us in our quarter Bartolome

Sanchez and Captain Calixto, with two spies from Arena who

went to Savaneta. They were tortured and admitted that

they alone were the aggressors, without having had a part

with others. Thursday they went to the old plantations on

the road of the coconut plantations, to take provisions and to

take refuge on the mount Tamanaco, to wait there for the

Guarauns and to go with them according to circumstances.

There is nothing else to relate to Your Honours. By the

tracks you will see the way they took. We hope Your Honours

will not come without them. That God our Lord will give

you a good chance for the chastisement of such a crime as

they have committed. God guard Your Honours many

years. To-day the fourth of December of 1699.

         The Servant of Your Honours who kisses your hands.

         By the bearers you will give us news, although they would

be stopped one day.

ANTONIO DE ROBLES.

ORDINANCE.

In this town of San José de Oruna, the fifteenth day of

the month of December, 1699, we the Sergeant-Major Juan

Martinez de Vengoechea y Esponda and Captain Don Antonio

de Robles, its alcaldes in ordinary, under whose care is the

government, declare that the Captain Calixto who is Captain

of the Indians of the mission of Savaneta of this island, received

the order to seek for and to make prisoner and to bring to

this town the Indians of the mission of Arena who killed

treacherously three missionaries who worked in this mission,

and a lay-man, the said Governor and other persons of this

town who accompanied him, brought two prisoners of said

Indians who are under guard. The one is called Pedro, and

the other Luis, and they said that they were aggressors

in this crime, and we order that their declarations be taken,

with the assistance of Captain Don Antonio de Bustamante,

resident of this town, Protector of the Indians of this island,

and we order that this declaration be added to the other

declarations, and in view of all this to take the other convenient

steps. So we arrange, order and sign with the witnesses

present.

NOTIFICATION TO THE PROTECTOR.

         And immediately after we the said alcaldes, made the

above written order personally known to the Captain

Don Antonio de Bustamante, Protector of the Indians of this

island, and he signed it. Juan Martinez de Vengoechea y

Esponda, Don Antonio de Robles, Antonio de Bustamante.

DECLARATION OF THE INDIAN PEDRO.

         In this same town, on the eighteenth day of the indicated

month and year, we the said alcaldes, to fulfil the order above

indicated, received the declaration of the Indian Pedro

through the Captain Luis, chief Indian of the settlement of

Dona Geronima de Urrestigui, resident of this town, who

fulfilled the role of interpreter, because the said Pedro did

not know the Spanish language, and therefore the said

interpreter, being versed in different languages and knowing

the meaning of an oath, made it to our God and with a sign

of the Cross in due legal form, under the obligation of which

he promised faithfully to say that which the said Pedro would

answer to all that would have been asked him, and they put

to him the following questions :- What is his name ? Of

what place is he a native ? What employment and age has

he ? And he answered -That he is called Pedro, that he is

a native of this Island, and of the Mission of San Francisco

de la Arena. They asked him further, if he knows, that it is

a great crime to kill treacherously the Missionary Fathers and

other persons whomsoever; he answered that he did not

know, but that the old people know it. Then, he was asked

who killed Father Estevan and Father Marcos, Capuchin

Missionaries Priests, and the Lay Brother Raimundo of the

said mission, and the carpenter Tomas de Luna, in the mission

of Arena, at what hour and in what manner they killed them,

and for what reason. He answered that there were three

Indian brothers of the same mission who killed the said

Fathers and Tomas de Luna, and that one of those murderers

was the alcalde of that place, and was called Bustamante,

and the two other murderers were called Lucas and Sebastien,

and other Indians of the said mission, and that, after they

had killed them, they stripped them, and with ropes around

the neck dragged them and buried them head first in some

pits which they had made in the construction of a new Church

which the Fathers were building. And it was on a Tuesday,

the first of this month, between nine and ten o'clock in the

morning. And as soon as they had killed the fathers and the

lay-man Luna, all the Indians of the said mission went with

their bows and arrows to the royal road which leads to the

said mission to wait with their weapons in ambush in the

hills for the Governor and the others who accompanied him

in the visit to the said mission. And between three to four

o'clock in the afternoon of the same day, when the Governor

passed, after having crossed the river, they shot a good number

of arrows at him on horseback, until they killed them all,

including the two Negroes who went on foot. And after

having killed them, they left the bodies in the road and went

back to the mission, and destroyed all that was in the kitchen,

broke the statues, pulling out the eyes of San Francisco, and

broke the fingers and the top of the nose of the Virgin of the

Rosary and of the blessed corporals and other ornaments

of the Church, those Indian men and women made "guaiucos"

to cover their bodies. And while the said Indians left behind

the Indian women and the boys to gather provisions, they

went back to the road and stripped the dead bodies, and in

the same manner that of a Dominican Father, and threw

them in the river, except two who had been killed at a further

distance. And when they had done that, they resolved to go

with those spoils to a hill called Tamanaco, situated in this

Island. The said Indian Pedro was put as sentry in a road

to see, if other Spaniards would come ; he became tired of

watching, and went to another mission, where they caught

him and brought him as prisoner to this town. And the

interpreter declared that this is the truth which the said Pedro

had answered to all which was asked him under the charge of

an oath which he made, and he maintains and ratifies this as

Christian and says that he is a little more or less than

seventy years of age, and the said Pedro does not know his age,

but he looks, as if he was a little more or less than twenty years

of age. And because the said interpreter was skilled in

languages and understood the value of an oath, this declaration

was given to him to read, and he said that he had heard and

understood, that it was the same as that which the said Pedro

had declared, and nothing more came to his memory, except

the truth which he had spoken, although he is an Indian of

the district of the said mission and known by the Indians of

that mission. He did not sign, because he said he could not.

The said alcaIdes and the Protector of the said Indians who

were present at all that has been related , signed with the

witnesses who were the Sergeant-Major Don Diego de Alaje

y Tenreiro, Martin Alonso Guerrero and Manuel de Rianos,

residents of this city, Juan Martinez de Vengoechea y Esponda,

Antonio de Robles, Diego de Alaje Tenreiro, Martin Alonso

Guerrero, Manuel Rianos.

DECLARATION OF THE INDIAN LUIS.

         The Indian, Luis, then gave the following evidence through an

interpreter, Martin :  And he answered through the said

interpreter that his name is Luis, although he is not baptized ;

that he is a native of this Island and of the mission of' Arena

and that he does not know his age. He seems to be a little

more or less than twenty years of age. And in the said

mission he had no other occupation than that of planting

fruits.

Asked why he was not a Christian, he said that he was

Iearning to pray. Asked, if he knew who killed in the same

mission of Arena the Reverend Fathers Estevan and Marcos,

Priests, and the Lay-Brother Raimundo, and the carpenter

Tomas de Luna, resident of this town and official carpenter

who was building a new Church in the same mission, for the

increase of the divine cuIt and the instruction in the Holy

doctrine of the said Indians, he answered that he knew those

who killed those Fathers and Tomas de Luna.

         Asked who killed them and for what reason, he said that

Bustamante, alcalde of the said mission, and with him,

Antonio, Sebastian and Lucas, all Indian kinsmen of said

mission killed them, and that the said Antonio was Lieutenant

there, and that the reason, for which they killed the Fathers

was, that they feared that the Governor who would come to

visit said mission, would punish them for their transgressions,

as he had done a few days before in the missions of Naparima,

Savanna Grande, and Savaneta with the Indian sorcerors and

those who contradicted the instruction of the holy doctrine.

And he said that they dragged them and buried them in the

pits of the foundations of the building, putting them in, head

down, and Brother Raimundo close to a pig-yard. And he

added that it was Tuesday the first, between ten and eleven

o'clock in the morning, and that they passed immediately to

the royal road to wait for the Governor and the others who

with him was on his way to visit said mission. And they put

themselves in ambush on the hill at the edge of the river Aripo,

and about three or four o'clock in the evening of said day,

after the Governor and his companions had passed the river,

and were again on horseback, they shot at them a great

number of arrows, until they killed them all and some horses.

And Ieaving the bodies in the road, they went back to the

mission in order to destroy, eat and drink that which was in

the kitchen of the Fathers, making pieces of the sacred

corporals and other ornaments of the Church, with which

they covered their bodies, while they put spies in the road in

case more white people would pass, and returning to the road,

they stripped the bodies of all the vestments, and dragged

them naked in skins to the hill, and the Governor and others

to the river, and retired with the spoils to the mission. There

they resolved to go all to mount Tamanaco to hide themselves,

and not to be punished for such a crime.

         The above was sworn by the interpreter as being correct in the

presence of said Alcaldes, the Protector and witnesses.

DECLARATION OF THE INDIAN WOMAN MATILDA.

         The Indian woman, Mailda, then made the following declaration

through an interpreter, Captain Martin de Mendoza : Asked her

name, she answered that her name is, as it said, that she is a

native of this Island, and married to an Indian of the said

mission, called Juan. She could not tell her age ; she seemed

to be a little more or less than twenty years of age. Different

questions were put to her, and especially who killed the

Reverend Fathers Estevan and Marcos, Priests, and the

Lay-Brother Raimundo, and the carpenter Tomas de Luna,

resident of this town, and she answered through the same

interpreter that Bustamante, Felix, Sebastian, Lucas. Indians

of said mission, and Antonio, Lieutenant there, killed them,

and she heard that the other Indians said this at that time,

and when they took their flight into the coconuts, and that

she likewise heard it said that the Governor and other

Spaniards were killed. She was asked, where they stopped,

when they took to flight and she answered through the same

interpreter that the most of those Indians threw themselves

in a marsh to the south, and that the others threw themselves

into the sea. And her husband and herself and another ten

or twelve men, women and children were killed or taken

prisoner by the Captain Don Vicente de Urresti and DossJuan

Eusebio. She, Matilda and another Indian woman, called

Agustina, were taken prisoner, and the others were killed by

arrows and bullets, and it was impossible to pursue all the

others, because of the roughness of this marsh. And she

added through the interpreter that she knows nothing more

of the happening than what she has declared.

         The above was sworn by the interpreter as being correct in the

presence of the Alcaldes, the Protector and witnesses.

DECLARATION OF THE INDIAN WOMAN AGUSTINA.

         The Indian woman, Agustina, was then questioned. And she

answered through the same interpreter that her name is

Agustina, that she is a Christian, that she is not married, and

that Bustamante, Lucas, Felix, Sebastian and Antonio with

the others killed the Reverend Fathers and dragged and

buried them in the pits that were dug to construct a Church,

and that they buried there also the said Luna, an official

carpenter who was employed in the work of this Church.

And they reduced to pieces the chalices, chrismatory, the

custody, and divided them among themselves, and the other

ornaments and corporals they cut in pieces to cover their

bodies. And they pulled out the eyes of the images, and they

destroyed the consecrated altar, and they did all that about

ten or eleven o'clock in the morning. And at once they went

in ambush to wait for the Governor, and these were

Bustamante, Hilario and others. And when they had fled

to the coconut-plantations, the Captains Don Juan Eusebio

Pacheco and Don Vicente de Leon came with the men they

had taken with them. And they attacked them, and ten or

twelve men threw themselves in the sea, where they died,

killed by arrows and bullets. And she was taken prisoner,

and all the other people were spread along the beach, and as

the rumour went that there had been a fight, they threw

themselves in the marsh. And this is all that she knows.

         The above was sworn by the interpreter as being correct in the

presence of the Alcaldes, the Protector and witnesses.

DECLARATION OF THE CACIQUE DON LORENZO DE MENDOZA.

         On the 19th of December, 1699, at San Jose de Oruna, the

Cacique Don Lorenzo de Mendoza, who belongs to the

Indians of Arauca . . . who, after our order went to

punish some Indians, perpetrators of the murders of

the Capuchin Fathers, made the following declaration

on oath: He said that he was in company of the

Spaniards who left this town on the fifth of the present

month to seek after the Indians aggressors, and that he took

with him all his men, and passed through the mission of Arena,

where he saw the ruins, that the aggressors made, mutilating

the Holy images of Our Lady and of San Francisco, and that

he went with these Spaniards to overtake them, until he

reached the sea, on the beach of which on the ninth day of

the present month about mid-day they found a cottage which

contained between ten or twelve Indians, whom they attacked

with charges of arrows and bullets, until they threw themselves

in the sea, where they were killed by bullets, and of the three

who remained on the beach, those Spaniards hanged two

from the trees. And in the said cottage they made prisoner

two Indian women, from whom they received the news that

the other Indian transgressors were further on the beach, and

with this information they went on in search of them, and

they could put their hands only on some Indian women whom

they killed, and all the others had thrown themselves in a

very rough marsh, into which the said Caeique with the

Spaniards followed them during the rest of that day and the

following day, until they saw the impossibility of pursuing

them further, and sent back to this town, and that the

two Indian women whom they made prisoners are Matilda

and Agustina.

         The Cacique then swore to the truth of the above statement in the

presence of the Alcaldes and witnesses.

                  DECLARATION OF MARTIN DE MENDOZA.

         Martin de Mendoza Captain of the Indians of San

Agustin de Arauca . . . who went to pursue the Indians, . . .

took the oath and declared ... that on the fifth of the present

month he left this town in the company of the Spaniards who went

to pursue the aggressors with their Cacique, and other known

Indians, and when he had reached the said mission of Arena,

he saw the holy Church in disorder, and the image of Our Lady

mutilated by said guilty Indians who cut her nose, and that

of the glorious San Francisco, with one eye pulled out, and

that from there they went to the sea and found there a cottage

which sheltered ten or twelve Indian men of the transgressors.

And there the Spanish Captains made three battle-lines,

two of Indians and one of men with fire-arms and attacked

them, closely pursuing them with bullets and arrows, until

some of them threw themselves in the sea, where they continued

to fight, until they were killed by bullets. And he said that

those Captains hanged two Indians of the three who died on

the said beach, and that in the other cottage they made

prisoners two Indian women, called Matilda and Agustina,

from whom they heard that the other aggressors had dispersed

over the beach towards the south. And with this knowledge

they went on to seek for them, and some came out to fight,

and some were killed in this encounter, and some threw

themselves in a very rough marsh, where they followed them

during the rest of the day and during the following day, and

when they saw the impossibility to take them prisoners,

because of the roughness of said marsh, they resolved to go

back to this town, taking with them the two mentioned

prisoners.

         Mendoza then swore to the truth of the above statement in the

presence of the Alcaldes and witnesses.

DECLARATION OF THE INDIAN LUIS.

         . . . Luis, Indian Captain of the Indians of San Pablo of

Tacarima, because he had taken part in the pursuit of the

Indians of the mission of Arena . . . then took the oath : He said

that on the fifth day of this month he left this town in company

of the Captains Don Juan Eusebio Pacheco and Don Vicente

de Leon y Urrestigui with all the Indians of his party and

that of Arauca and the Spaniards who were sent by us, and

that he reached the mission of Arena which they found

deserted, the temple destroyed, the holy images mutilated,

and from there they marched two days, until they reached

the sea at the coconut plantations, and they, found there on

the beach a cottage of the seditious Indians which sheltered

as many as twelve of them. And when this cottage was

attacked, they defended themselves and threw themselves in

the sea, and from there continued to defend themselves, until

they died by bullets. And in the same cottage two Indian

women were made prisoners, named Agustina and Matilda

who informed them where the others were on the beach, and

there they followed them, until they threw themselves into

marshy land, and they killed some during the rest of that day

and the following day, and seeing that further pursuit would

be fruitless, they returned to this same town with the named

two Indian women as prisoners.

         Luis then swore to the truth of the above statement in the presence

of the Alcaldes and witnesses.

DECLARATION OF THE INDIAN BONIFACIO.

         . . . Bonifacio, Indian of the party of San Pablo of

Tacarigua and their Lieutenant, of whom the oath was

taken because lie was one who went after the aggressors

.  .  .  Said that on the fifth day of this present month

he left this named town in company of the Spaniards

who were sent by us to pursue the aggressors, and

other Indians of their party and other parties, and that on

the following day they reached the mission of Arena, which

he saw destroyed, and the Church in disorder and the holy

images mutilated, and from here he went over with the others

as far as the sea towards the southern part of this Islands

where ten or twelve Indians of the aggressors had taken

refuge in a Cottage, and they opened a fight with them, and

killed them all, because they threw themselves in the sea,

where they defended themselves until they died, and there

they made prisoners two Indian women, called Matilda and

Agustina, from whom they heard that the other aggressors

were in the cottage of that beach more ahead of them. And

they followed them, until they threw themselves in a marshy

place, where walking was very difficult, and that they caused

them there much damage, and killed some, and pursued them

in said Marsh one day and a half, until they saw that it was

impossible to take them prisoner, and returned then to this

said town, having with them the two said women prisoners.

         Bonifacio then swore to the truth of the above statement in the

presence of the Alcaldes and witnesses.

DECLARATION OF THE SECOND LIEUTENANT TOMAS DE LEZAMA.

         . . . Second Lieutenant Tomas de Lezama, resident of this

town .         . . took the oath and said that on the fifth day of the present

month he left this town in company of the said Captains,

executors of this order, and that he with them reached said

Mission of Arena on the following day, and that he saw the

house of the said Fathers with the marks of blood, where the

Indians of the said mission had dragged their bodies, after

having killed them, and that from there he went to the Church,

which he saw in disorder, and a statue of Our Lady with the

nose broken, without crown or other ornaments, with which

they had seen them on other occasions, and the statue of the

glorious San Francisco with one eye pulled out, and many

other images spread over the floor, and the holy consecrated

altar smashed to pieces and pulled to the door of the Church.

And they found the body of Brother Raimundo buried behind

an enclosure of woodwork, and the other bodies in the pits of

a Church which they were building, and that on this day

they went in search of said aggressors, following their footsteps

until Wednesday the ninth of the present month. Then they

found a cottage of the said aggressors, where they attacked

them and killed some of them in the sea, and some on land,

and they heard from two Indian women, that the other

aggressors were further up on the beach, whom the said

Captains attacked without delay. And he in the company of

the Captain Don Juan Eusebio Pacheco went as far as the

river Narigua, pursuing the Indians who came out of their

cottages, fighting and wounding and pursuing them, until

they threw themselves in a marsh. And the Captain

Don Vicente with other soldiers and Indians pursued the

families into the marsh, until night overtook them, after they

had done as much as they could to pursue the said aggressors.

And when the two Captains met, they divided the men in

two divisions, men with fire-arms and archers, and Don Juan

Eusebio remained with those in the middle of the beach, and

Don Vicente with him and the other half of the men went

back to occupy the road to the mount, to see if some of the

Indians would hide themselves there, and during this same

night some of the Simarrones fought to pass through the royal

road where was Don Juan Eusebio. He fought with them,

and cut them off, and put them to flight, until they threw

themselves in the said marsh. And one of the Indians of the

party from Arauca wounded him, and he took prisoner an

Indian woman. And the following morning the said Captain

re-united and resolved to go through this marsh, where they

were occupied during this day, and killed some men whom

they met, because they could not reach them, and they

gathered the ornaments of the Church, which the aggressors

had left behind them to take to flight with all the provisions

they had, and these ornaments, blessed corporals and purifi-

cators, they had divided among themselves to cover their

bodies, and they had broken the chalices, and the crisimatory

of the holy oils, and the patines, and a part of this was given

to everyone, and all that was gathered together and given to

the Indians of our troops to bring it to this town. And he

says that when the provisions failed the two Captains resolved

to go back, the one exploring the borders of the marsh, and

the other destroying the coconut-plantations, in order to

deprive the aggressors completely of provisions. And although

the following day they received help from this town, they

carried on with their plan, because it was impossible to

penetrate the marsh, and he destroyed said coconut-plantations

in company of Captain Dan Juan Eusebio, and from there

they reached this town and brought with them Matilda and

Agustina, Indian women prisoners who belonged to the

criminals.

         Lezama then signed the above statement in the presence of the

Alcaldes and witnesses.

DECLARATION OF SECOND LIEUTENANT GASPAR GUTIERREZ.

         . . . Second Lieutenant Gaspar Gutierrez de Sandoral . . .

took the oath and said that on the fifth day of the present month

he left this town in company of the Captains Don Vicente

de Leon v Urrestigui and Don Juan Eusebio Pacheco,

executors of the order which was read to him, and he declared

that on the said day they reached the valley of Arima, and

the following day they went to the Mission or Arena, and

when he had reached this mission, he saw that the house of

the Fathers was completely in disorder. And he saw the

marks of the blood of those Fathers, where the Indians had

killed them, and had dragged them to the pits of the Church

which they were constructing and there they had buried the

two priests and the carpenter Tomas de Luna. And Brother

Raimundo they found buried behind an enclosure of wood-

work, and he saw that the temple was without ornaments,

and an image of Our Lady with broken nose, and another of

the glorious San Francisco, with one eye failing, and he saw

that the consecrated altar was pulled to the door of the Church,

and smashed in small pieces. And on that day he left that

mission, following the tracks of the aggressors, until on the

ninth day of the present month, about ten or eleven o'clock

in the morning they reached the sea on the southern part of

this Island, on the beach of which they found some cottages,

and they attacked them at that hour, wounding and killing

as many as ten or twelve Indians who defended themselves.

And he went then from here with the Captain Don Juan

Eusebio to the river Narigua, following the aggressors. And

Don Eusebio followed another group who threw themselves

in a marsh, as all the others did, and they threw away all the

provisions and ornaments of the holy Church which they had

divided amongst themselves, and the altar-clothes and blessed

corporals, which they had torn to pieces and with which they

had covered their bodies. And they pursued them until the

following day, when they resolved to go back, because it was

impossible to take those aggressors prisoner, and because the

provisions failed. And so they did, and the two Captains

separated themselves with their men, one to follow the borders

of the marsh on the side of the land, and the other to destroy

tile coconut-plantations, in order to take away from the

fugitives all the provisions. And after this was done, they

went back to this town, and they made two Indian women

prisoner of whom he does not know their names.

         He then signed the above statement in the presence of the Alcaldes

and witnesses.

DECLARATION OF THE SOLDIER FRANCISCO APOLINAR VONEO.

         . . . Francisco Apolinar Voneo, a soldier, took the oath and

declared, that on the fifth day of the present month he left

this town in company of those Captains and that on the

following day he reached the mission of Arena, and that he

saw in the house of the Fathers two pools of blood, and one

in the Church. And in the Church he saw an image of

Our Lady with a broken nose and a piece of her mantle, and

another image of the glorious San Francisco, with one eye

pulled out, and many other images thrown to the ground,

and the holy altar smashed to small pieces at the door of the

church. And he saw that three were buried in the foundation

of a new churcn which they were building. And on the same

day they went from the said mission through steep mounts

and ridges, following the trail of the offenders, until on

Wednesday the ninth of the present month about mid-day

they were close to the sea, and there the life-guard which

marched ahead gave warning that the Indians were in their

cottages on the beach, and the Captains prepared to attack.

The aggressors moved to a better place, and thc Captains

formed three battle-lines of their men, and prepared an

ambush for the Indians and assailed them. A dozen men

defended themselves and threw themselves fighting in the sea,

from where they shot a great number of arrows, until they

died by bullets, and on that beach three died of whom the

Captains hung two of the principals on the trees of this beach.

They took prisoner an Indian woman who told them that

there were different cottages on that beach. And the Captains

left him with other companions to watch over the provisions

and munitions in the first cottage. And the Captains went

with the rest of their men to the other cottages, taking as

guide the said woman prisoner, and for this reason he did

not see what happened there, until at night the Captain

Don Vicente came back to the first cottage, and he heard

that they had done them much damage. And Don Juan

Eusebio remained with half of his men, waiting in the middle

of the beach, where the same night he had a fight with the

aggressors, until he drove them in a marsh that served them

as a place of refuge, because it was thick and very difficult.

And this same night he made prisoner an Indian woman.

And on the following morning Don Vicente left him as guard

of said cottage and scent to join Don Juan Eusebio, and at

night-fall the two Captains came back with all their men,

and he heard how many and difficult precautions they had

taken, and they killed some Indians, and to found many

ornaments of the church which he saw, reduced to pieces,

some to make guaiucos, and the blessed corporals, and purifi-

caters, and chalices, patines, chrismatory of the Holy Oils

reduced to pieces. And on she following day the two Captains

left, after dividing their men, Don Vicente to examine the

borders of the marsh, and Don Juan Eusebio to demolish the

coconut-plantations, and he went with him. And after doing

this, they returned to this town, bringing with them the

two women prisoners.

         Voneo then signed the above statement in the presence of the

Alacaldes and witnesses.

DECLARATION OF THE SOLDIER FRANCISCO DE FIGUEROA.

         . . . Francisco de Figueroa, a soldier . . . took the oath and

declared that on the fifth day of this month he left this town

in company of two Captains and that on the following day

they reached the mission of the Arenales where he saw the

havoc which the aggressors had done, killing the said Fathers

and burying the two Priests and Tomas do Luna in the pits

which they had made for the construction of a new church,

and he saw an image of Our Lady with a broken nose and

other things, and the glorious San Francisco with one eye

pulled out, and other images thrown to the ground, and the

holy altar smashed to small pieces and pulled to the door of

the church, and that behind the church was a horse which

they had fastened to a post and killed by bullets, and a mule

which belonged to the said Fathers with ears, nose and other

parts of the body cut, by which it could be seen that even in

the animals they sought to cool off the hatred they had for

those who gave them spiritual food, And he saw many other

destructions that he does not remember, and on the same day

he went further in the company of the two Captains, following

continually the tracks of these malefactors, until they reached

the sea on the ninth day of the present month, where they

found two of the aggressors whom they attacked in one of

their cottages which contained as many as a dozen Indians,

and when they were forced to defend themselves, they made

for the sea, because our men had cut them off from the thickly

covered mountain to enable them to use fire-arms without

danger to their own men, until pursued closely, and having

lost three men by bullets and arrows on the border of the sea,

the others, in despair, threw themselves into the sea, and

from there they continued to fight, until they were killed by

bullets. And in that cottage they made prisoners two Indian

women, whose avowal Don Juan Eusebio received, and

knowing therefore that the other aggressors were scattered

over the rest of the beach in the direction of the south, he

called his companion who was going to the mouth of another

river. And while they left there the prisoners and the

ammunition under the necessary guard, they went further

on the said hour, until they reached the cottages, from where

the aggressors shot small arrows, and took to flight, until they

saw that they were closely pursued, and threw themselves

in a very rough marsh, after having separated from them the

non-combatants whom the Captain Don Vicente followed

with the necessary men. And Don Juan Eusebio with the

rest of the men went as far as a very swollen river, called

Narigua, closely pursuing the aggressors to the mouth of this

river, and on the bank of this river they turned North, until

they saw that they were closely pursued, and then they

threw themselves in the marsh. And Don Juan remained

there the rest of the day, so that the Indians had no other

place to come out of this marsh. And at night he marched

over the beach, until he met Don Vicente who waited for

him there where the greatest part of the families had entered

the marsh. And Don Vicente left with half of the men to

watch the mount, so that the Indians could not go back to it.

And Don Juan Eusebio remained on the beach, cutting the

passage of those Indians who had the intention of passing the

said river, and about ten o'clock at night a good number of

those Indians came as far as the royal road with whom they

fought, and he was in the company of Don Juan, and they

followed them so closely that they obliged them to throw

themselves in the marsh. And one of the Indians of his

company, called Andres Martin, wounded him, and one of

the aggressors was killed, and an Indian woman, wounded

by an arrow in one arm was made prisoner. And in the

morning Don Vicente returned to the place where Captain

Don Juan was. And they resolved to destroy the marsh with

all their men. And so they did, and they killed some criminals

who were in the marsh, until night robbed them of the

opportunity of continuing their work, and therefore they went

together back to the road of the mount, and they took with

them the sacred ornaments, chalices, patines, custodia and

corporals which the Indians had already divided among

themselves. And there they met Captain Don Vicente with

his men who now went over the border of the marsh on this

side of the land, while Don Juan Eusebio went to destroy the

coconut-plantations, to take away all provisions from the

aggressors. And when each of the Captains had done this,

they both came back to this town, and took with them the

two Indian women prisoners, called Matilda and Agustina.

         He then swore to the truth of the above statement in the presence

of the Alcaldes and witnesses.

ORDINANCE.

         In this same town, on the day, month and year above

indicated I the Captain Don Antonio de Robles, its alcalde in

ordinary for his Majesty, and in whose charge is its government,

in sight of these ordinances and proceedings, say that there

must be charged and that I do hereby charge the said Luis

and Pedro, mentioned in these ordinances, and the two Indian

women Matilda and Agustina of the mission of Arena, prisoners

in this town, with the guilt that results from this information

and from their avowals, because in it they committed a crime,

and I intend to punish them, as will be found according to

law, and I order to give their case over to their protector and

defender Don Antonio de Bustamante, and that he answer

in the first Court, without more delay, to help so the good

and real administration of justice, and that the ordinances be

handed over to him for what he may say or not. So I have

arranged, ordered and signed with the witnesses present who

were the Second Lieutenant Silvestre Ernandez, Juan

Bartolome Randon and Francisco Apolinar Voneo, residents

of this town, Don Antonio de Robles, Silvestre Ernandez,

Juan Bartolome Randon, Francisco Apolinar Voneo.

         And immediately after I said alcalde made known the

ordinance above to the Captain Don Antonio de Bustamante,

Protector of the Indians of this Island, who said that he had

heard it and received it. Don Antonio de Robles. Before me,

Antonio de Bustamante.

DECLARATION OF THE PROTECTOR.

         I the Captain Antonio de Bustamante, General Protector

of the Indians of this province, appear before Your Honour

and say that the ordinances concerning the rebellion of the

Indians of the Naparima- tribe who were in the holy mission

of Arena were given to me. And having seen what was

declared by Luis and Pedro, Indians of the said mission,

prisoners in the royal houses, I have found that neither was

the promoter of the said rebellion, and that they did not help

the others to commit the sacrileges and atrocities, which are

related in the said ordinances, and therefore and because of

their incapacity I implore Your Honour to use mercy in their

chastisement, paying attention to all the laws which favour

them, and at the same time declare free of crime Matilda and

Agustina, Indian women made prisoners during the march of

the Captains Don Vicente de Leon and Don Juan Eusebio

Pacheco, for it seems that such must be done, first because

they did not know the intention of the seditious Indians,

further because they had not communicated it to them and

these women had not been able to advise those Captains, and

if they had tried to do so, they would have been killed, and

last because it is known that the Indians in executing their

resolution never told the women their intention, and held

them in everything ever submitted to their disposition as

slaves. Paying attention to this and to all the circumstances

which are in their favour as women, and not knowing their

intention, I ask and pray Your Honour that it be done, as I

have asked, because it is justice.  Antonio de Bustamante.

DECREE.

         When all these ordinances were seen by me, I the said

alcalde Don Antonio de Robles ordered to hand them over to

the second-Lieutenant José Gonzalez, resident of this town

who is present and whom I appoint as judicial Promoter in

this case in the name of royal justice, and he said that he had

heard and understood and that he accepted, and he made

an oath in due legal form that he will well and faithfully

examine this ease, and he was ordered to cite those Indian

men and Indian women prisoners for the first Court. So I

have arranged, ordered and signed in this named town of

San Jose de Ozuna, Isle of Trinidad, on the twenty-first day

of December of 1699, with the witnesses present who were: -

The Second-Lieutenant Silvestre Ernandez, Juan Bartolome

Randon and Francisco Apolinar Voneo, residents of this town,

and so I act in the absence of a Notary Public. Antonio

de Robles, Silvestre Ernandez, Juan Bartolome Randon,

Francisco Apolinar Voneo, José Gonzalez.

ORDINANCE.

         In this town of San José de Ozuna, on the twenty-third

day of the month of December, 1699, I the Captain Don

Antonio de Robles, alcalde in ordinary and Governor of this

Island and its Provinces, for his Majesty, through the death

of the Governor Don José de Leon y Echales, whom the

Indians of the mission of Arena killed treacherously with

other Principals of this town, as it is written in the acts

concerning this case, ordered and seen by me, because it is

not evident that burial was given to the bodies of the said

Governor, and the Reverend Father Juan Masien of the

Order of Santo Domingo and other bodies at the time that

reached them to see and recognize them the Camp-Master

Don Pedro Fernandez, head of thirty armed men and of the

Indians of Arouca whom he took with him in conformity

with the order that is indicated at the beginning of these acts,

the order was given to the Captain Juan de Lezama, resident

of this town, to take this necessary and pious care and to go

without delay with Juan Cordero and the necessary Indians

of their settlement, and bring these bodies to this town and

give them burial in the holy parochial Church, and in the

case they are in decay to bury them on the spot where they

are found. And he went to execute this order and returned

at once to this town and indicated, how much the river was

swollen where the murder occurred, because it had rained

much the night before, and that these bodies had been washed

away, except that of the Notary Public and that of the

Accountant which were in an advanced state of decomposition

and eaten by animals. And he gave back a bed-sheet which

belonged to the Governor, which was given him to cover his

body until it reached this town. And in order that it may

be evident that he had taken all the care to fulfil his obligation,

I ordered the said Captain Juan de Lezama to declare under

oath all what was done according to this ordinance, and that

his declaration be added to all he others of the same case, so

that it may be evident. Thus I have arranged, ordered and

signed with the witnesses present who were: -Silvestre

Ernandez and Juan Bartolome Randon, inhabitants of this

town, Antonio de Robles, Silvestre Ernandez, Juan

Bartolome Randon.

DECLARATIONS OF CAPTAIN JUAN DE LEZAMA, AND

JUAN CORDERO.

         Captain Juan tie Lezama and Juan Cordero, having taken the oath,

each testified to the accuracy of the above Ordinance.

JUDICIAL PETITION.

         I, José Gonzalez, inhabitant of this town, judicial promoter,

appointed by Your Honour in he case that according to royal

justice has been made against Pedro and Luis, natives of this

Island, and belonging to Arena, prisoners under the guard

of this town, appeal before Your Honour, in the best possible

way that the law permits me, say that on the twenty-third of

this present month Your Honour  was served, because all those

ordinances were handed over to me, in order that I as judicial

promoter make the accusations against the said Indian

prisoners. And after having studied them with due care, I

find therein that the named Indians have been accomplices

with the aggressors of such great treachery that they have

committed, and of such an atrocious crime, and consequently

Your Honour must, according to justice, and to prevent in the

future such crimes, and for an example and the amendment

of the others, punish the said Indians according to law, and

if you do not, there may result in the future greater damage,

and because it is necessary to follow this case according to all

the terms of the law, I ask and implore Your Honour to give

order, to put everything in full light by commanding the

guilty who appear in it to ratify their declaration, and put

them in the state of accusation, in order that I may quote

that which I find in the law. And for all this I ask and

implore Your Honour to pay attention to this and to do

according to what I have asked, as being justice. I ask

justice, and make the oath in due form. Jose Gonzalez.

ORDINANCE.

         Copy of this petition to the protector and defender of the

Indians with the order that he give his answer for the first

audience, and according to what he will say or not, this case

must be proved within the limit of three ordinary days with

all charge of publication, and citation and conclusion for the

judgment. So I have arranged, ordered and signed, I the

Captain Don Antonio de Robles, alcalde in ordinary for

His Majesty, in this town of San José de Oruna, Island of

Trinidad, and under the charge of whom is its government,

on the twenty-third day of the month of December of 1699,

with the witnesses present who were :--The Captain Don Juan

Eusebio Pacheco and Juan Bartolome Randon, inhabitants of

this town, Don Antonio de Robles, Antonio de Bustamante,

Don Juan Eusebio Pacheco, Juan Bartolome Randon.

COPY.

         Immediately after, I, the said alcalde, made known the

ordinance above to the Captain Don Antonio de Bustamante

in his person as protector and defender of the Indians, and

give him the copy of this ordinance, and he signed it with me

and the witnesses present Don Juan Eusebio Pacheco, Juan

Bartolome Randon.

PETITION OF THE PROTECTOR OF THE INDIANS.

         I the Captain Antonio de Bustamante, Protector of the

Indians of these provinces appear before Your Honour in the

name of Pedro, Luis, Matilda and Agustina, guilty of the

criminal accusation which by the office of the royal justice has

been pronounced at the tribunal of Your Honour concerning

the sedition of the Indians of the mission of Arena, say that

Your Honour was served in the execution of the order to give

me a copy of that which was asked by the judicial promoter

appointed by Your Honour, and concerning this and all the

rest of this matter, I repeat that which I have said in my first

petition, and renounce any proof, because there is none to the

contrary of what has been declared and proved in the judicial

proceedings, and having attention to that I ask and implore

Your Honour that he pronounce the sentence according to

justice, considering with attention the incapacity and the

ignorance of the said guilty Indians, and above all that which

his Majesty orders in his royal laws. I ask that you use mercy

as far as justice allows. Antonio de Bustamante.

JUDICIAL PETITION.

         I, José Gonzalez, judicial promoter of the criminal case

that by the office of the royal justice has been brought forward

against Pedro, Luis, Matilda and Agustina, criminals in this

case, Indians of the mission of San Francisco de Ia Arena,

appear before Your Honour and say in the best form that

the law permits me that Your Honour was served in that

they gave to me a copy of a petition presented by the Captain

Don Antonio do Bustamante, Protector of the Indians of this

Province, to which I answer and say that I reproduce that

which I have said in my first petition, and I ask and implore

Your Honour to be served by the order that the said criminals

who appear in it ratify their declaration so that I may propose

what I find in the law. I ask and implore Your Honour to

consider this petition and in sight of this to do what is asked

according to justice. I ask this and made the oath in due

form. Jose Gonzalez.

DECREE.

         That the two Indian men and the two Indian women

ratify their declaration, as you ask. So I decree, the Captain

Don Antonio do Robles, alcalde in ordinary, and in the charge

of whom is the government of this town of San José de Oruna,

Isle of Trinidad, in the name of his Majesty, on the twenty-

-fourth day of the month of December, 1699, with the

witnesses present in the absence of a Notary Public --

The Second Lieutenant Silvestre Ernandez and Lorenzo

Antonio Dominguez, inhabitants of this town, Don Antonio

de Robles, Silvestre Ernandez, Lorenzo Antonio de

Montenegro.

RATIFICATION OF THE INDIAN PEDRO.

         In this said town, on the said day, month and year, we,

the Sergeant-Major Don Juan Martinez de Vengoechea y

Esponda, and the Captain Don Antonio de Robles, under the

charge of whom is its government, because of the death of the

Camp-Master Don José de Leon, Governor and General

Captain, in sight of these ordinances, we order that the two

Indian prisoners Pedro and Luis and the Indian women

Agustina and Matilda ratify their avowals. And we ordered

to appear in our presence and that of the protector and that

of the witnesses, because of the absence of a Notary Public,

said Pedro, through Martin de Mendoza who held the office

of interpreter, because he is skilled in languages and under-

stands the value of an oath, and said Pedro does not speak

another language than his own native tongue. And the oath

was received from said interpreter that he made to God and

a sign of the cross, to make a good and faithful use of the said

office, telling to and asking from the said Pedro that which he

will be ordered by us, and the order was given him to read

the declaration that Pedro had made, in these proceedings on

page twenty-six, in order to tell the said Pedro, as he did, to

say in conformity to this, if it seems to him to add or omit

something of it what passed in the murders of the Reverend

Fathers and the Governor and others who accompanied him

to the mission of Arena. And he said that he had heard and

understood his declaration and he maintains and ratifies it in

this plenary tribunal, and for greater abundance, to have

remembered it after, and after the first confusion, he adds

that at the murders of the Reverend Fathers was present

Cartuja, and that he knows that it is a great crime to kill the

Fathers or any other person, and that he and his companion

Luis were sent by the other Indian aggressors to advise the

Indians of the mission of Santa Ana de la Savaneta, so that

they might be warned and on their head for the damage that

they might receive from the Spaniards for the misdeed that

they had committed. And asked, if the Indians of this mission

of Savaneta had known the atrocity, before it was executed

he said, no. And he knows nothing else than what he has

said, and he says that this is the truth under the obligation of

the oath, which he maintains and ratifies and that he is of

the age which he has given. He did not sign because he

could not. We, the alcaldes, sign with the protector Don

Antonio de Bustamante and the accustomed witnesses who

are :-The Second Lieutenant Silvestre Ernandez, the

Adjutant Juan Francisco Jara and Juan Bartolome Randon,

inhabitants of this town, Juan Martinez de Vengoechea y

Esponda, Antonio de Robles, Antonio de Bustamante,

Silvestre Ernandez, Juan Francisco Jara y Valverde, Juan

Bartolome Randon.

RATIFICATION OF THE INDIAN LUIS.

         The Indian Luis similarly ratified his statement, adding : that

he knows that it is bad to kill the Fathers or any other person,

and that he and his companion were ordered by Cartuja and

the other aggressors to warn the Indians of the mission of

Savaneta, so that the white people would not deceive them

and would not hang the old people and that he does not

know anything else concerning all this. And asked, if the

Indians of Savaneta had had a knowledge of these happenings

before, he said that he does not know. And this is the truth

under the weight of the oath which he made, and maintains

and ratifies.

DECLARATION OF THE INDIAN WOMAN MATILDA.

        

         The Indian woman, Matilda, similarly ratified her statement,

adding : that she heard that the fugitive Indians said that

they waited for Pedro and Luis, criminals of whom mention

is made here, whom they had sent to the mission of Savaneta

to give notice of the sedition, and of the murders which they

had committed, and that she knows nothing else, concerning

that what was asked her, and that she maintains and ratifies

what she has declared.

DECLARATION OF THE INDIAN WOMAN AGUSTINA.

         The Indian woman, Agustina, similarly ratified her statement,

adding : that she knows that Peter and Luis, criminals of

whom mention is made in these ordinances, went to

Savaneta sent by the aggressors, to advise the Indians of the

said mission of what they had done, so that they might do

the same. Questioned by the said interpreter, if those Indians

of Savaneta knew before hand that which the aggressors

intended to execute, she answered that she did not know

and that this is the truth.

ORDINANCE.

         In this said town, on the said day, month and year, we

the said alcaldes Governors, in possession of the ratification

contained in these ordinances, and made by the offenders

Pedro, Luis, Matilda and Agustina, in order to terminate

everything and go over to the citation for the judgment, we

order to give a copy to the protecting and judicial parties, and

band over these ordinances to said judicial party, in order to

make the accusations that he shall find in the law, with the

arrangement that he shall answer in the first audience, and

pass to the other procedures that are to the purpose. So we

arrange, order and sign with the witnesses present who

were :- The Captain Juan de Lezama and the Second

Lieutenant Lorenzo Antonio de Montenegro, Silvestre

Ernandez, inhabitants of this town, Juan Martinez de

Vengocehea y Esponda, Antonio de Robles, Juan de Lezama,

Lorenzo Antonio de Montenegro, Silvestre Ernandez.

NOTIFICATION.

         And immediately after we the said alcaldes Governors

made known the ordinance written above to the Captain

José Gonzalez, judicial promoter who said that he sad heard

and understood it, and signed with us and with the usual

witnesses who were present and were the Captain Juan

de Lezama, Don Juan Eusebio Pacheco, inhabitants of this

town, Juan Martinez de Vengoeehea y Esponda, Antonio

de Robles. José Gonzalez.

JUDICIAL PETITION.

         I, Jose Gonzalez, inhabitant of this town, judicial promoter

in the criminal case, that by the office of the royal justice was

opened against Luis and Pedro, Indians of the mission of'

Arena, and against Matilda and Agustina, appear before

Your Honours and say : That Your Honour was served

according to your order, in that all those ordinances were

handed over to me in full, to formulate the accusations which

I might find in the law, and having seen and studied them,

I find that Your Honour, according to justice, must condemn

them to the accustomed punishment of death the said Luis

and Pedro, because it is lawfully plain in those acts that these

have been aggressors in union with the others, and have

treacherously thought to kill the Fathers, the Governor and

other companions, as it is plainly evident in the process,

without the presence of a proof to the contrary, that excuses

them from the accustomed punishment that they have drawn

upon themselves by the royal laws. And therefore Your

Honour must chastise them with all the severity of the law,

so that every one may understand in the future the crime they

have committed. And if Your Honour does no give an

exemplary chastisement to those two, it may happen , that in

the. future irreparable damage may be caused, as they

experience in the present ; and in order to avoid such damages

and atrocities, Your Honour must act according to justice.

I ask it. Jose Gonzalez.

PETITION OF THE PROTECTOR OF THE INDIANS.

         I, the Captain Antonio de Bustamante, Protector of the

Indians in this province, appear before Your Honour in the

criminal case that by the office of the royal justice has been

followed against the Indians, of whom is made mention in it,

say, that after having seen the ordinances and accusation by

the judicial promoter of Pedro and Luis, prisoners under

guard, I find that, in sight of the declarations that the said

Indians have made, and the guilt that according to these

declarations can be proven against them, the punishment

must be exercised with the greatest mercy, because by these

declarations it is evident that those two are the least implicated

in the committed crime and the least suspected among the

aggressors, for as such the others ordered them as their

servants, only occupied in bringing and receiving messages,

as it is plain by their avowals, and likewise attention must

be paid by Your Honour to their great incapacity, in order

to free them from the accustomed punishment to death, and

likewise attention must be paid to the royal laws which protect

them, and likewise I entreat Your Honour to declare in the

name of justice free of the crime Matilda and Agustina,

Indian women made prisoners on the beach of the coconut-

plantations, because no guilt can be brought against them,

and to pronounce the judgment accordingly, and therefore I

ask and implore Your Honour that he make use of the greatest

compassion. Antonio de Bustamante.

DECREE.

         That all the ordinances be brought forward to administer

justice. This was decreed by us the said alcaldes, Governors

in this town of San José de Oruna, Isle of Trinidad, on the

twenty-fifth day of the month of December, 1699, with the

witnesses present who were the Captain Juan de Lezama, the

Second Lieutenant Silvestre Ernandez and Juan Bartolome

Randon, inhabitants of this town, Juan Martinez de

Vengoechea y Esponda, Antonio de Robles, Juan de Lezama,

Silvestre Ernandez, Juan Bartolome Randon,

ORDINANCE.

         In this said town, on the day, month and year above

indicated, I the said alcalde Don Antonio de Robles, having

seen those ordinances, and that they are ready for the

judgment, order that for it the parties be cited of said

Protector and defender of the Indians and the judicial

promoter José Gonzalez. So I arrange, order and sign, with

the witnesses present, in the absence of a Notary Public, the

Second Lieutenant Silvestre Ernandez and Joan Bartolome

Randon, Juan Martinez de Vengoechea y Esponda, Antonio

de Robles, Silvescre Ernandez, Juan Bartolome Randon.

CITATION.

         And immediately after I the said alcalde communicated

the ordinance above to the said Protector Don Antonio

de Bustamante personally, and cited him for the judgment,

as it is ordered there, and he said that he had heard it, and

signed, being witnesses the Second Lieutenant Silvestre

Ernandez and Juan Bartolome Randon, Antonio de Robles,

Antonio de Bustamante, Silvestre Ernandez, Juan Bartolome

Randon.

CITATION.

         And immediately after, I the said alcalde Don Antonio

de Robles read and made known the ordinance above to

José Gonzalez personally, and cited him for the judgment, as

is ordered therein, and said that he had heard it and signed it,

being witnesses the said Antonio de Robles, Jose Gonzalez,

Silvestre Ernandez, Juan Bartolome Randon.

JUDGMENT.

         Having seen this case directed through the office of the

royal justice against Pedro and Luis, Matilda and Agustina,

prisoners in the public jail of this town, concerning the causes

contained therein to which we refer, and because of the service

due to both Majesties, and the general welfare and preservation

of this community:

         We judge that we must condemn and hereby condemn the

said Pedro and Luis to death; for this reason they will be

removed from the public jail, with ropes around their necks,

and with the voice of the public crier who manifests their

crime along the accustomed streets, and conducted to the

Plaza Mayor, where shall be erected the gallows where they

shall be hung, until they necessarily die, and it is ordered

that no one of whatsoever state, quality or condition he may

be, shall take them from the gallows without our permission,

under penalty of the law. And the said Matilda and Agustina

we condemn to six years of personal service for the Captains

who made them prisoners. And this our definitely fixed

judgment we pronounce, order and sign, and we condemn                 

the said criminals to the cost the amount of which we reserve

for us. Martin de Vengoechea y Esponda, Don Antonio

de Robles,                 

PUBLICATION.

         This sentence was given and published by us the Sergeant-

Major Juan Martinez de Vengoechea y Esponda and the

Captain Don Antonio de Robles, alcaldes-Governors, because

of the death of the Governor, in this town of San Jose de Oruna,

Isle of Trinidad, on the twenty-seventh day of the month of

December, 1699, and we sign it with the witnesses who were

the Captains Juan de Lezama, Juan Eusebio Pacheco and the

Second Lieutenant Lorenzo Antonio de Montenegro, present

and inhabitants of this town, Juan Martinez de Vengoechea

y Esponda, Antonio de Robles, Juan de Lezama, Juan

Eusebio Pacheco, Lorenzo Antonio de Montenegro.

NOTIFICATIONS.

         And immediately after we the said alcaldes-Governors

Sergeant-Major Don Juan Martinez de Vengoechea y

Esponda and the Captain Don Antonio de Robles notify the

judgment to Pedro and Luis, and Matilda and Agustina,

through the interpreter Martin de Mendoza, and to the

Captain Don Antonio de Bustamante, protector and defender

of the said Indians, present, and they said that they approved,

and he signed in the presence of Captain Juan de Lezama and

the Second Lieutenant Lorenzo Antonio de Montenegro,

inhabitants of this town, Juan Martinez de Vengoechea y

Esponda, Antonio de Robles, Antonio de Bustamante, Juan

de Lezama, Lorenzo Antonio de Montenegro.

         And immediately after, we the said alcaldes notify and

made known the above mentioned judgment to the Second-

Lieutenant Jose Gonzalez, judicial promoter of the royal

justice, personally, and after having heard and understood it,

he said that he approved it and signed it with the witnesses

above indicated. Juan Martinez de Vengoechea y Esponda,

Antonio de Robles, Jose Gonzalez, Juan de Lezama, Lorenzo

Antonio de Montenegro.

         This copy agrees with the original, from when it has been

taken, and remains in our possession, written on seventy-two

leaflets of ordinary paper, because this Government has no

sealed paper, and in testimony of this we the said Alcaldes-

Governors for our King, because of the death of the Camp-

Master Don Jose de Leon y Echales, Governor and Captain

General of these Provinces, sign with the witnesses who were

the Captain Juan de Lezama and the Second Lieutenant

Silvestre Ernandez and Lorenzo Antonio de Montenegro, in

this town of San José de Ozuna, Island of Trinidad on the

thirtieth day of the month of December of 1699.

JUAN MARTINEZ DE VENGOECHEA Y ESPONDA.

DON ANTONIO DE ROBLES.

JUAN DE LEZAMA.

LORENZO ANTONIO DE MONTENEGRO.

SILVESTRE ERNANDEZ.