n
the produce of the mines, because nearly all the Indians on the island
are dead.[42] And in 1532 the licentiate, Vadillo, estimates the total
number of Indians on the island, including the large percentage brought
from the mainland by the slavers, at only 4,500.[43]

As a specimen of what the treatment of the Indians was, we have an
accusation in 1522 against Vasco Porcallo, afterwards one of the
companions of Hernando de Soto. He captured several Indians, cut off
their genitals, and forced them to eat them, cramming them down their
throats when they could not swallow. When asked for his defence,
Porcallo replied that he did it to prevent his own Indians from
committing suicide, as he had already lost two-thirds of his slaves in
that way. The defence was apparently deemed valid, for he was
released![44]

The myths and traditions of the Haitians have fortunately been
preserved, though not in so perfect a form as might be wished. When
Bartholomew Columbus left Rome for the Indies, he took with him a lay
brother of the order of the Hermits of St. Jerome, Ramon Pane by name, a
Catalan by birth, a worthy but credulous and ignorant man.[45] On
reaching Haiti brother Pane was first sent among the natives of the
small province called Macorix de abajo, which had a language peculiar to
itself, but he was subsequently transferred to the province of Guarinoex
on the southeastern part of the island where the _lengua universal_
prevailed. He remained there two years, and at the request of Columbus
collected and wrote down the legends and beliefs of the natives.

He is not a model authority. In the first place, being a Catalan he did
not write Spanish correctly; he was very imperfectly acquainted with the
native tongue; he wrote hastily, and had not enough paper to write in
full; he is not sure that he commences their legends at the right end.
Moreover his manuscript is lost, and the only means we have of knowing
anything about it is by a very incorrectly printed Italian version,
printed in 1571, and two early synopses, one in Latin in the Decades of
Peter Martyr, the other in Italian, by Messer Zuane de Strozi of
Ferrara, which has been quite recently published for the first time.[46]
By comparing these we can arrive at the meaning of Brother Pane with
considerable accuracy.

His work contains fragments of two distinct cycles of legends, the one
describing the history of the gods, the other the history of the human
race.

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