A statue was erected to his memory in 1882.  It stands in the plaza of San Jose in the capital and was cast from the brass cannon left behind by the English after the siege of 1797.

CHAPTER XII

INCURSIONS OF FUGITIVE BORIQUEN INDIANS AND CARIBS

1530-1582

The conquest of Boriquen was far from being completed with the death of Guaybana.

The panic which the fall of a chief always produces among savages prevented, for the moment, all organized resistance on the part of Guaybana’s followers, but they did not constitute the whole population of the island.  Their submission gave the Spaniards the dominion over that part of it watered by the Culebrinas and the Anasco, and over the northeastern district in which Ponce had laid the foundations of his first settlement.  The inhabitants of the southern and eastern parts of the island, with those of the adjacent smaller islands, were still unsubdued and remained so for years to come.  Their caciques were probably as well informed of the character of the newcomers and of their doings in la Espanola as was the first Guaybana’s mother, and they wisely kept aloof so long as their territories were not invaded.

The reduced number of Spaniards facilitated the maintenance of a comparative independence by these as yet unconquered Indians, at the same time that it facilitated the flight of those who, having bent their necks to the yoke, found it unbearably heavy.  According to “Regidor” (Prefect) Hernando de Mogollon’s letter to the Jerome fathers, fully one-third of the “pacified” Indians—­that is, of those who had submitted—­had disappeared and found a refuge with their kinsmen in the neighboring islands.

The first fugitives from Boriquen naturally did not go beyond the islands in the immediate vicinity.  Vieques, Culebras, and la Mona became the places of rendezvous whence they started on their retaliatory expeditions, while their spies or their relatives on the main island kept them informed of what was passing.  Hence, no sooner was a new settlement formed on the borders or in the neighborhood of some river than they pounced upon it, generally at night, dealing death and destruction wherever they went.

In vain did Juan Gil, with Ponce’s two sons-in-law and a number of tried men, make repeated punitive expeditions to the islands.  The attacks seemed to grow bolder, and not till Governor Mendoza himself led an expedition to Vieques, in which the cacique Yaureibo was killed, did the Indians move southeastward to Santa Cruz.