Thus were the natives bound together by the polity of instinct and
consanguinity alone. They had no laws, but only natural customs. The
cacique was an arbitrator: if his decision did not appease a litigant,
the parties had an appeal to arms in his presence. Their cacique
received unbounded reverence, and for him they would freely die.
Polygamy was permitted only to him, but not always practised by him. The
Spaniards were so surprised at the readiness with which the natives gave
them everything, both food and ornaments, that they declared them to be
defective in the sense of property, and to have everything in common.
This was a mistake: each man had his little possessions; stealing was
punished with death, as the crime that did the greatest violence to
the natural order; and crimes against domestic purity were severely
punished, till the people became demoralized by their conquerors, who
mistook the childish freedom of the women, for lustful invitation, and
imputed to the native disposition something which belonged to their
own.[K]

[Footnote K: They even accused the natives of communicating that
loathsome disease which results from promiscuous intercourse, when
in fact the _virus_ was shipped at Palos, with the other elements of
civilization, to give a new world to Castile and Leon! Nations appear to
be particularly sensitive upon this point, and accuse each other. But
the first time a disorder is observed is not the date of its origin. See
the European opinion in the fifteenth century, in Roscoe's _Lorenzo de'
Medici_, p. 350, and note, Bohn's edition. It has probably existed from
the earliest times, wherever population was dense and habits depraved.
The Romans suffered from it, but, like the Europeans of the Middle Ages,
did not always attribute it to its proper source. What did Persius mean
in one or two places in his _Third Satire, e.g._, 113-115? And see also
Celaus, _Medicina_, Lib. V. Sec.3.

When the fighting-man of Europe became a mercenary, (soldier,
_soldner, paid-man_,) he carried this tinder from country to country,
and kindled the fire afresh. The Spaniards bore it to Hayti, and it
stung like a snake beneath that fervid sky.]

They were timid, credulous, extravagantly friendly, affected easily to
tears, not cunning enough for their own good, and little capable of
concealing or of planning anything. Yet when their eyes were opened, and
they understood at last that the strangers had not descended from