Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts | Page 6

for the purpose of legitimate enterprise and commerce, and who
afterwards became thorough-going pirates, without trying to make it
clear that they had shining examples for their notable careers.
Chapter III
Pupils in Piracy
After the discoveries of Columbus, the Spanish mind seems to have
been filled with the idea that the whole undiscovered world, wherever it
might be, belonged to Spain, and that no other nation had any right
whatever to discover anything on the other side of the Atlantic, or to
make any use whatever of lands which had been discovered. In fact, the
natives of the new countries, and the inhabitants of all old countries
except her own, were considered by Spain as possessing no rights
whatever. If the natives refused to pay tribute, or to spend their days
toiling for gold for their masters, or if vessels from England or France
touched at one of their settlements for purposes of trade, it was all the
same to the Spaniards; a war of attempted extermination was waged
alike against the peaceful inhabitants of Hispaniola, now Hayti, and
upon the bearded and hardy seamen from Northern Europe. Under this
treatment the natives weakened and gradually disappeared; but the
buccaneers became more and more numerous and powerful.
The buccaneers were not unlike that class of men known in our western

country as cowboys. Young fellows of good families from England and
France often determined to embrace a life of adventure, and possibly
profit, and sailed out to the West Indies to get gold and hides, and to
fight Spaniards. Frequently they dropped their family names and
assumed others more suitable to roving freebooters, and, like the bold
young fellows who ride over our western plains, driving cattle and
shooting Indians, they adopted a style of dress as free and easy, but
probably not quite so picturesque, as that of the cowboy. They soon
became a very rough set of fellows, in appearance as well as action,
endeavoring in every way to let the people of the western world
understand that they were absolutely free and independent of the
manners and customs, as well as of the laws of their native countries.
So well was this independence understood, that when the buccaneers
became strong enough to inflict some serious injury upon the
settlements in the West Indies, and the Spanish court remonstrated with
Queen Elizabeth on account of what had been done by some of her
subjects, she replied that she had nothing to do with these buccaneers,
who, although they had been born in England, had ceased for the time
to be her subjects, and the Spaniards must defend themselves against
them just as if they were an independent nation.
But it is impossible for men who have been brought up in civilized
society, and who have been accustomed to obey laws, to rid themselves
entirely of all ideas of propriety and morality, as soon as they begin a
life of lawlessness. So it happened that many of the buccaneers could
not divest themselves of the notions of good behavior to which they
had been accustomed from youth. For instance, we are told of a captain
of buccaneers, who, landing at a settlement on a Sunday, took his crew
to church. As it is not at all probable that any of the buccaneering
vessels carried chaplains, opportunities of attending services must have
been rare. This captain seems to have wished to show that pirates in
church know what they ought to do just as well as other people; it was
for this reason that, when one of his men behaved himself in an
improper and disorderly manner during the service, this proper-minded
captain arose from his seat and shot the offender dead.

There was a Frenchman of that period who must have been a
warm-hearted philanthropist, because, having read accounts of the
terrible atrocities of the Spaniards in the western lands, he determined
to leave his home and his family, and become a buccaneer, in order that
he might do what he could for the suffering natives in the Spanish
possessions. He entered into the great work which he had planned for
himself with such enthusiasm and zeal, that in the course of time he
came to be known as "The Exterminator," and if there had been more
people of his philanthropic turn of mind, there would soon have been
no inhabitants whatever upon the islands from which the Spaniards had
driven out the Indians.
There was another person of that day,--also a Frenchman,--who became
deeply involved in debt in his own country, and feeling that the
principles of honor forbade him to live upon and enjoy what was really
the property of others, he made up his mind to sail across the Atlantic,
and become a buccaneer. He hoped that