animal. By this means an
excellent flavour was imparted to the meat and a fine red colour. The
place where the flesh was smoked was called by the Indians a "boucan,"
and the same term, from the poverty of an undeveloped language, was
applied to the frame or grating on which the flesh was dried. In course
of time the dried meat became known as "viande boucannee," and the
hunters themselves as "boucaniers" or "buccaneers." When later
circumstances led the hunters to combine their trade in flesh and hides
with that of piracy, the name gradually lost its original significance
and acquired, in the English language at least, its modern and
better-known meaning of corsair or freebooter. The French adventurers,
however, seem always to have restricted the word "boucanier" to its
proper signification, that of a hunter and curer of meat; and when they
developed into corsairs, by a curious contrast they adopted an English
name and called themselves "filibustiers," which is merely the French
sailor's way of pronouncing the English word "freebooter."[101]

The buccaneers or West Indian corsairs owed their origin as well as
their name to the cattle and hog-hunters of Hispaniola and Tortuga.
Doubtless many of the wilder, more restless spirits in the smaller
islands of the Windward and Leeward groups found their way into the
ranks of this piratical fraternity, or were willing at least to lend a
hand in an occasional foray against their Spanish neighbours. We know
that Jackson, in 1642, had no difficulty in gathering 700 or 800 men
from Barbadoes and St. Kitts for his ill-starred dash upon the Spanish
Main. And when the French in later years made their periodical descents
upon the Dutch stations on Tobago, Curacao and St. Eustatius, they
always found in their island colonies of Martinique and Guadeloupe
buccaneers enough and more, eager to fill their ships. It seems to be
generally agreed, however, among the Jesuit historians of the West
Indies--and upon these writers we are almost entirely dependent for our
knowledge of the origins of buccaneering--that the corsairs had their
source and nucleus in the hunters who infested the coasts of Hispaniola.
Between the hunter and the pirate at first no impassable line was drawn.
The same person combined in himself the occupations of cow-killing and
cruising, varying the monotony of the one by occasionally trying his
hand at the other. In either case he lived at constant enmity with the
Spaniards