Ovando,
who was governor at the time, protested strongly on the ground that
the negroes escaped to the forests and mountains, where they joined
the rebellious or fugitive Indians and made their subjugation much
more difficult. The same thing happened later in San Juan.
In this island special permission was necessary to introduce negroes.
Sedeno and the smelter of ores, Giron, who came here in 1510, made
oath that the two slaves each brought with them were for their
personal service only. In 1513 their general introduction was
authorized by royal schedule on payment of two ducats per head.
Cardinal Cisneros prohibited the export of negro slaves from Spain in
1516; but the efforts of Father Las Casas to alleviate the lot of the
Indians by the introduction of what he believed, with the rest of his
contemporaries, to be providentially ordained slaves, obtained from
Charles II a concession in favor of Garrebod, the king's high steward,
to ship 4,000 negroes to la Espanola, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica
(1517). Garrebod sold the concession to some merchants of Genoa.
With the same view of saving the Indians, the Jerome fathers, who
governed the Antilles in 1518, requested the emperor's permission to
fit out slave-ships themselves and send them to the coast of Africa
for negroes. It appears that this permission was not granted; but in
1528 another concession to introduce 4,000 negroes into the Antilles
was given to some Germans, who, however, did not comply with the terms
of the contract.
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