The fleet for the destruction of the Caribs consisted of three caravels.  With these, Ponce sailed from Betis on May 14, 1515,[24] and reached the Leeward Islands in due course.  In Guadeloupe, one of the Carib strongholds, he landed a number of men without due precaution.  They were attacked by the natives.  Fifteen of them were wounded, four of whom died.  Some women who had been sent ashore to wash the soiled linen were carried off.  Ponce’s report of the event was laconic:  “I wrote from San Lucas and from la Palma,” he writes to the king (August 7th to 8th).  “In Guadeloupe, while taking in water the Indians wounded some of my men.  They shall be chastised.”  Haro, one of the crown officers in San Juan, informed the king afterward of all the circumstances of the affair, and added:  “He (Ponce) left the (wounded) men in a deserted island on this side, which is Santa Cruz, and now he sends a captain, instead of going himself ...”

Ponce’s third landing occurred June 15, 1515.  He found the island in a deplorable condition.  Discontent and disorder were rampant.  The king had deprived Diego Columbus of the right to distribute Indians (January 23, 1513), and had commissioned Pasamonte to make a new distribution in San Juan.  The treasurer had delegated the task to licentiate Sancho Velasquez, who received at the same time power to audit the accounts of all the crown officers.  The redistribution was practised in September, 1514, with no better result than the former ones.  It was impossible to satisfy the demands of all.  The discontented were mostly Ponce’s old companions, who overwhelmed the king with protests, while Velasquez defended himself, accusing Ponce and his friends of turbulence and exaggerated ambition.

As a consequence of all this strife and discord, the Indians were turned over from one master to another, distributed like cattle over different parts of the islands, and at each change their lot became worse.

Still, there were large numbers of them that had never yet been subjugated.  Some, like the caciques of Humacao and Daguao, who occupied the eastern and southeastern parts of the island, had agreed to live on a peace footing with the Spaniards, but Ponce’s impolitic proceeding in taking by force ten men from the village of the first-named chief caused him and his neighbor of Daguao to burn their villages and take to the mountains in revolt.  Many other natives had found a comparatively safe refuge in the islands along the coast, and added largely to the precarious situation by pouncing on the Spanish settlements along the coast when least expected.  Governor Mendoza undertook a punitive expedition to Vieques, in which the cacique Yaureibo was killed; but the Indians had lost that superstitious dread of the Spaniards and of their weapons that had made them submit at first, and they continued their incursions, impeding the island’s progress for more than a century.

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