Among the arquebusiers the best shot was a certain Juan de Leon.  This man had received instructions from Ponce to watch closely the movements of Guaybana, who was easily distinguishable from the rest by the “guanin,” or disk of gold which he wore round the neck.  On the second day, the cacique was seen to come and go actively from group to group, evidently animating his men for a general assault.  While thus engaged he came within the range of Leon’s arquebus, and a moment after he fell pierced by a well-directed ball.  The effect was what Ponce had doubtless expected.  The Indians yelled with dismay and ran far beyond the range of the deadly weapons; nor did they attempt to return or molest the Spaniards when Ponce led them that night from the camp and through the forest back to Caparra.

This was the beginning of the end.  After the death of Guaybana no other cacique ever attempted an organized resistance, and the partial uprisings that took place for years afterward were easily suppressed.  The report of the arquebus that laid Guaybana low was the death-knell of the whole Boriquen race.

The name of the island remained as a reminiscence only, and the island itself became definitely a dependency of the Spanish crown under the new name of San Juan Bautista de Puerto Rico.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 19:  Puerto Rico y su Historia, p. 189.]

CHAPTER VII

NUMBER OF ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS AND SECOND DISTRIBUTION OF INDIANS

1511-1515

Friar Bartolome de Las Casas, in his Relation of the Indies, says with reference to this island, that when the Spaniards under the orders of Juan Ceron landed here in 1509, it was as full of people as a beehive is full of bees and as beautiful and fertile as an orchard.  This simile and some probably incorrect data from the Geography of Bayaeete led Friar Inigo Abbad to estimate the number of aboriginal inhabitants at the time of the discovery at 600,000, a number for which there is no warrant in any of the writings of the Spanish chroniclers, and which Acosto, Brau, and Stahl, the best authorities on matters of Puerto Rican history, reject as extremely exaggerated.

Mr. Brau gives some good reasons for reducing the number to about 16,000, though it seems to us that since little or nothing was known of the island, except that part of it in which the events related in the preceding chapters took place, any reasoning regarding the population of the whole island, based upon a knowledge of a part of it, is liable to error.  Ponce’s conquest was limited to the northern and western littoral; the interior with the southern and eastern districts were not settled by the Spaniards till some years after the death of Guaybana; and it seems likely that there were caciques in those parts who, by reason of the distance or other impediments, took no part in the