Haitian kasike named Hatuey who had fled with his men by canoe to Cuba. Brandishing gold, Hatuey warned the Cuban Taínos, ‘Here’s the God the Spaniards worship. For these they kill…they speak to us of an immortal soul and of their eternal rewards and punishments, yet they steal our belongings, seduce our women, rape our daughters.’ In the course of a three-year war, Velázquez crushed Hatuey, eventually burning him alive, and, in one atrocity among many, slaughtered 2,000 Taínos who had merely gathered to gawp at the Spanish and their horses.
