Native Indians were enslaved to work the gold fields and to supply labor for farms and plantations. Labor was also supplemented by indentured servants who traded years of unpaid servitude for passage to the New World. But the gold fields were soon depleted, and agriculture proved difficult in the rough terrain. With Hernán Cortés' conquest of Mexico and Peru in 1521, new gold revenues were opened up, and Spanish colonists set their sights on richer pickings.

Spanish Departure

By the mid-1500s, Spanish settlers had largely abandoned Hispaniola, leaving their livestock to the wilderness of the island. With the native population decimated by slavery, slaughter, and European diseases, the cattle, sheep, and pigs belonging to the colonists flourished and multiplied. The port city of Santo Domingo remained under Spanish control on the southern coast and thrived on shipping, but the rest of the island was virtually deserted. Similar scenarios continued throughout the coastal and island communities of the Caribbean, with scattered, strategically located port towns serving the Spanish fleets. Many settlements were left to the few remaining Spaniards, and they eventually became interspersed with various seamen and refugees from other nations.

The Boucan of Hispaniola

From the mid- to late 1500s to the early 1600s, the northern coast of Hispaniola became sparsely populated by intermingled descendants of the Taino Indians and Spaniards, runaway slaves and indentured servants, and marooned sailors and seamen. Learning the art of survival from the native Indians, these people would form the first foundations of New World piracy. The Spanish had driven many French citizens from their homes on several islands in the Caribbean, including St. Kitts. These misplaced Frenchmen found a new home for themselves on the island of Hispaniola and joined the rest of the growing mix of hunting survivalists.

The hunters residing on Hispaniola island soon became known as boucaniers, the name derived from boucan. The boucaniers would kill wild cows and pigs, then cut the meat into thin strips and dry and preserve it over smoky fires. Eventually the name boucanier was Anglicized and became buccaneer, a word whose meaning also changed to mean “pirate.”

A Spanish Plan Backfires

For the most part, these early buccaneers were content to live their lives hunting and trading, but occasionally during the rainy season, several buccaneers would commit small acts of piracy. In the dead of night, they would launch a small boat, or pinnace, and attack an anchored merchant ship. A pinnace was a small vessel, generally having two square-rigged masts. Pinnaces were small, fast, and maneuverable, and sometimes carried oars. They were frequently used as message boats within fleets and were also highly regarded by the buccaneers for scouting coastal waters. With a crew of ten to twenty sailors, a pinnace was perfect for sneak attacks on unsuspecting merchant ships that usually anchored close to shore at nightfall.

The buccaneers may have thought these small deeds went unnoticed, but the Spanish were very aware of the buccaneers and decided they needed to do something to stop them before their piratical practices accelerated. Knowing that the hunters depended on the wild-roaming livestock of Hispaniola, the Spanish sent out groups of soldiers to hunt down and kill all the cattle and hogs. This turned out to be a bad move on the part of the Spanish, as the buccaneers, who could no longer hunt and trade for their livelihood, turned to piracy full-time.

Pairing Up

A unique social element in the early lives of the buccaneers was that they lived in pairs, where personal belongings were held in common. The buccaneers developed tight bonds with their partners and were fiercely loyal to them and to each other. Some historians believe that many of these partnerships were homosexual in nature, but there is little factual evidence to support the contention. The stronger likelihood is that pairing off was a logical survival technique to deal with the physical hardships of living off the land, and for defending personal property from interlopers and the ever-present danger of Spanish military forces.

Burning Hatred

In an effort to maintain domestic control over its New World domains, the Spanish government forbade its merchants to do business with any trading ships other than those of Spain. This edict was generally ignored in the coastal port communities of the northern coast of Hispaniola as Dutch, English, and French merchantmen traded freely with the Spanish colonists and buccaneers for preserved meats and hides. In 1603, in a vain effort to curtail those trading operations, the Spanish governor in the southern port city of Santo Domingo implemented an order to clear all of the remaining Spanish settlers from the northern coast of the island. In their zeal to fulfill the order, the Spanish military forcibly removed the colonists from their homes and burned their settlements to the ground, further fueling the already well established hatred that most of the north coast residents had for Spanish authority. Soon after the military fleets departed, the buccaneers moved into the deserted settlements and rebuilt, and trade activities with passing ships continued unabated.