In 1514, twenty-two years after Colón’s first voyage, the Spanish government counted up the Indians on Hispaniola for the purpose of allocating them among colonists as laborers. Census agents fanned across the island but found only 26,000 Taino. Thirty-four years later, according to one scholarly Spanish resident, fewer than 500 Taino were alive. The destruction of the Taino plunged Santo Domingo into poverty. The colonists had wiped out their own labor force.
