bade its
colonists in Spanish America to receive European merchandise from any
but Spanish ports, which in turn enabled Spanish exporters to demand
unreasonable prices. This was resented by many colonists, and they were
willing to deal with smugglers who sold this merchandise at a lower
price or exchanged it for the produce of the colonies, especially for
hides and sugar. The governors of Santo Domingo were among the first in
the colonies to take steps against this trade. They fitted out small
vessels, which they called Guardacostas, coastguards, and had them
patrol all along the coast. If they succeeded in capturing the
smugglers, they proceeded against them with little ceremony. They were
either thrown overboard or hanged.

This summary process having stirred in the smugglers the spirit of
vindictiveness, they organized for concerted action, determined to
resist what they considered unwarranted severity and cruelty. They began
to group into fleets, and openly invaded the coasts, burning,
plundering, marauding and killing. They looked about for suitable places
where to establish settlements of their own that could be used as bases
of operation in the neighborhood. Hispaniola or Hayti, where the natives
had been almost exterminated and which by misgovernment was nearly
deserted, invited them. Herds of cattle and swine were running wild
about the island and offered not only valuable provisions for
themselves, but promised to become marketable commodities. Some French
smugglers settled there, killed the cattle and swine, smoked the beef
and salted the pork, and opened a remunerative trade with visiting
sailors in these commodities as also in tallow and hides. The Indians of
the island called smoked beef "boucan"; hence these traders were called
boucaniers which was anglicized into buccaneers. In a similar way the
English freebooter was by the French corrupted into flibustier and later
came back to us as filibuster. At first the term boucanier was limited
to the smugglers and traders in smoked beef living on land, while the
flibustier was applied to the smuggler and trader living on board of a
ship. But later these nice distinctions were ignored and the names
applied indiscriminately to smugglers, freebooters and pirates.

Whatever term one chose to apply to them, these Brethren of the Coast
and outlaws of the oceans became almost a recognized institution of the
century when rival European powers were fighting for suprema