ll two
Indian settlements in the neighborhood of Anasco and San German.]

[Footnote 65: Puerto Rico y su historia, p. 369.]

CHAPTER XXXI

NEGRO SLAVERY IN PUERTO RICO

From the early days of the conquest the black race appeared side by
side with the white race. Both supplanted the native race, and both
have marched parallel ever since, sometimes separately, sometimes
mixing their blood.

The introduction of African negroes into Puerto Rico made the
institution of slavery permanent. It is true that King Ferdinand
ordered the reduction to slavery of all rebellious Indians in 1511,
but he revoked the order the next year. The negro was and remained a
slave. For centuries he had been looked upon as a special creation for
the purpose of servitude, and the Spaniards were accustomed to see him
daily offered for sale in the markets of Andalusia.

Notwithstanding the practical reduction to slavery of the Indians of
la Espanola by Columbus, under the title of "repartimientos," negro
slaves were introduced into that island as early as 1502, when a
certain Juan Sanchez and Alfonso Bravo received royal permission to
carry five caravels of slaves to the newly discovered island. 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 t