our Indians.[1] In 1630, a number of French adventurers were
expelled by the Spanish from St. Christophe, which they had taken
possession of five years before under the leadership of Neil
d'Enambroe of Dieppe. Shortly afterward they established themselves at
La Fortue. In 1650 the Spaniards still held the inner and greater
islands, Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica; though in
Hispaniola French buccaneers were laying the foundations of the
prosperous French Colony of St. Domingo. Smouldering resentment on the
part of the Spaniards soon burst forth in open hostility, exhibiting
more seriousness than before. Then followed savage contention between
Spain and France, the Spaniards disputing the rights of the French,
the French creeping steadily inward until 1697 by virtue of the
treaty of Ryswick an end was put to this struggle. Louis XIV obtained,
under this treaty, from Charles II of Spain, the cession of all the
western part of the island, which for forty years belonged to the
French by virtue of conquest. Spain kept the eastern portion of the
island, calling it Santo Domingo. This cession was of great economic
value to France, she increased her number of slaves and soon supplied
all Europe with cotton and sugar. Santo Domingo, Spain's portion of
the island, as compared with Haiti, was a sluggish community. Here
also Negroes increased as slaves and soon the population of these two
colonies was mostly Negro.

The distinct line between master and slave, white and black, was to
become smeared. Soon there grew up four distinct classes.
Miscegenation, the result of the contact of European masters with
slave women, gave rise to a new class called mulattoes. These were
usually given their freedom, and it was the practice to liberate the
mother as well. This gave rise to another class, the free-blacks. The
mulattoes and free-blacks obtained with emancipation no political
rights whatever. At first this caused no worry or serious difficulty.
Some of the mulattoes received vast wealth from their fathers and
often they were educated abroad, usually in France. Some of the
free-blacks accumulated a little property but in a far lesser degree,
however. With the increase of mulattoes and free-blacks, and the
return of those mulattoes from studies abroad, dissatisfaction grew
into thought and subsequently into expression and agitation for
political rights. Behind and beneath the growing dissatisfaction of
these two classes, the m