In that year
Governor Vallejo wrote to the emperor: "I found great irregularity in
the treatment of these few Indians, ... they were being secretly sold
as slaves, etc."
Finally, in 1582, Presbyter Ponce de Leon and Bachelor-at-Law Santa
Clara, in a communication to the authorities, stated: "At the time
when this island was taken there were found here and distributed 5,500
Indians, without counting those who would not submit, and to-day there
is not one left, excepting 12 or 15, who have been brought from the
continent. They died of disease, sarampion, rheum, smallpox, and
ill-usage, or escaped to other islands with the Caribs. The few that
remain are scattered here and there among the Spaniards on their
little plantations. Some serve as soldiers. They do not speak their
language, because they are mostly born in the island, and they are
good Christians." This is the last we read of the Boriquen Indians.
* * * * *
With the gradual extinction of the natives, not only the gold output
ceased, but the cultivation of ginger, cotton, cacao, indigo, etc., in
which articles a small trade had sprung up, was abandoned. The Carib
incursions and hurricanes did the rest, and the island soon became a
vast jungle which everybody who could abandoned.
"We have been writing these last four years," wrote the crown
officers, February 26, 1534, "that the island is becoming depopulated,
the gold is diminishing, the Indians are gone.
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