coln," IV, 237.

[44] Shaler, "History of Kentucky," 261.

[45] _House Journal_, 1861, p. 122.

[46] Speed, "The Union Cause in Kentucky," 300 _et seq_. See despatches
and letters given in same.

[47] Rhodes, "History of the United States," III, 392.

NOTES ON NEGROES IN GUATEMALA DURING THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

The introduction of Negroes into Guatemala commenced with the year of the
conquest of that country by the Spaniards in 1524, when there came several
Negro slaves with the _conquistadores_ from Mexico. It seems that they soon
increased in numbers, for among the decrees of the _conquistador_, Pedro de
Alvarado, there is one which prohibits the selling of gunpowder to Indians
and Negroes. The number of African slaves brought to Guatemala had,
however, always remained relatively a very limited one, for as the
Spaniards had plenty of cheap hands by means of a system of indentured
labor forced upon the numerous Indian population, the importation of slaves
evidently did not pay them well. It seems safe to say, that their total
number never amounted to ten thousand.

The most copious, though still very sparse notices of them I have run
across, are those given by Thomas Gage, an English Catholic educated in
Spain, who, in the twenties and thirties of the seventeenth century, lived
as a priest in the then city of Guatemala, nowadays called Antigua, and in
some Indian villages not far from there.[1] One of the places where Thomas
Gage observed a somewhat considerable population of Negroes was the
so-called Costa del Sur, or Southern Coast, the hot land between the Andes
and the Pacific, to the south of the capital. They were worked there on the
indigo plantations and large cattle _haciendas_. The Negroes impressed
Thomas Gage as the only courageous people in Guatemala while the Spanish
Mestizos and Indians seemed to him to be very cowardly.

This writer said that if Guatemala was powerful with respect to its
people, for she was not in arms nor resources, then she was so merely by
virtue of a class of desperate Negroes, who were slaves living on the
indigo plantations. Though they had no arms but a machete, which was their
small lance used for chasing the wild cattle (nowadays, that name is given
to a long and broad, sword-like knife), they were so desperate that they
often caused fear to the very city of Guatemala and had made their masters
tremble. "There are among them," said he, "those who have no fear