Lucayan People - Extinction

Extinction

The Bahamas held little of interest to the Spanish other than the Lucayans. Columbus seized several Lucayans on San Salvador and Santa María de la Concepción. Two managed to escape, but Columbus took some back to Spain at the end of his first voyage. Vespucci took 232 Lucayans to Spain as slaves in 1500. Spanish exploitation of the labor of the natives of Hispaniola rapidly reduced that population, leading the Governor of Hispaniola to complain to the Spanish crown. In 1509 Ferdinand II of Aragon ordered that Indians be imported from nearby islands to make up the population losses in Hispaniola, and the Spanish began capturing Lucayans in the Bahamas for use as laborers in Hispaniola. At first the Lucayans sold for no more than four gold pesos in Hispaniola, but when it was realized that the Lucayans were practiced at diving for conchs, the price rose to 100 to 150 gold pesos and the Lucayans were sent to the Isle of Cubagua as pearl divers. Within two years the southern Bahamas were largely depopulated. The Spanish may have carried away as many as 40,000 Lucayans by 1513. Carl O. Sauer described Ponce de León's 1513 expedition in which he "discovered" Florida as simply "an extension of slave hunting beyond the empty islands." When the Spanish decided to evacuate the remaining Lucayans to Hispaniola in 1520, they could find only eleven in all of the Bahamas. Thereafter the Bahamas remained uninhabited for 130 years.