against the natives as those of some other lands did. Thus it was an
unusual thing for a French settler in North America, and a still more
unusual thing for a British settler, to marry an Indian woman, and such
unions, when they did occur, were generally regarded as debasing. But
there was no such feeling among the Spanish, and intermarriages between
the races, of an entirely legal and honorable character, were not
uncommon and were not regarded with disfavor. Nevertheless, the
repartimiento system soon lapsed into utter evil, as such a relationship
between a superior and an inferior race seems certain to do. In brief,
it became slavery, pure and simple.

The benevolent and statesmanlike spirit of Velasquez was shown, in
contrast to that of most other conquistadors of that time, in the
circumstance that he ordered the natives to be thus impressed into work
for a period of only a single month, to be paid for their labor at a
prescribed rate, and to be engaged as largely as possible in
agricultural pursuits. He did not prohibit the employment of them at
gold mining, but he strove earnestly to extend agricultural enterprise.
This was partly, no doubt, in pursuance of the king's order, that he
should make Cuba a source of food supplies for the supposedly less
favored regions at Darien and elsewhere, but was partly, too, because
Velasquez recognized the agricultural possibilities of Cuba and was
determined to make it self-supporting. He exercised this authority, not
merely as Governor General of the island, but also as Repartidor, or
Partitioner of the Natives, to which office he was expressly appointed
by the king, with responsibility to nobody but the king himself. He
apportioned the natives in lots of from not fewer than forty to not more
than three hundred, according to the land held by the vecino, and
ordered that they be well treated, and of course be not sold nor
transferred from one master to another.

There was, unfortunately, another class of native servitors, to wit,
those taken as captives in battle in the occasional hostilities between
the two races. These were by royal decree made outright and life-long
slaves, subject to be bought and sold and even branded with their
owners' names, like cattle. The number of these being few after the
collapse of Hatuey's short-lived resistance, the practice arose of
adding to their number natives from Mexico, Darien and elsewhere, who
were seized and brought to Cuba as slaves