The native peoples of Cuba, in terms of economic development, social organization, technological advances, and art, are far inferior to the more advanced civilizations of the mainland, such as the Maya and Aztec of Mexico or the Inca of Peru.

The Ciboney and Taino leave only a mild imprint on Cuba's later culture; the Guanahatabey leave almost none.

There is little mingling of races between Spaniards and natives.

A new society, first of Spaniards and then of Spaniards and blacks, supplants the indigenous society.

New institutions, new values, and a new culture replace the old ones.

Some native words, foods, and habits, as well as agricultural techniques, however, will be retained by later generations.

Retained also is the bohio, the typical and picturesque dwelling of many Cuban farmers, which still can be seen today and remains perhaps the most visible legacy of the native society.

For the most part, however, the Cuban native peoples' contribution to the development of a Cuban nationality must be considered minor.

Nevertheless, for generations after the conquest, Native American warriors such as Hatuey, who fights the Spanish conquest in eastern Cuba, will be glorified in the pages of Cuban history books and raised to the status of folk heroes.

They will represent for Cuban children a symbol of native resistance against the oppressive Spanish conquistador.

The natives' innocence and kindness are contrasted with the cruelty of the Spanish invaders, but for those present-day Cubans in search of the roots of a uniquely Cuban national identity, this native heritage is not enough of a foundation.

Unlike for the Mexicans, the glory of the Aztec past is not there for the future Cubans to turn to.

Instead, Cuban writers in search of the roots of Cuban nationality will later look to Spanish or Negro contributions and try to find in them the missing link with the past, but with little luck.

The Spanish heritage will be dismissed as part of the rejection of colonialism, and Negro contributions will never be totally recognized, particularly by white Cuban society.

It is no easy task to find a conquistador who combines military skill, administrative talent, and loyalty to the crown as well as to Diego Columbus himself.

The choice finally falls on Diego Velazquez de Cuellar (governor of Hispaniola, 1511—21), Ovando's lieutenant and one of the wealthiest Spaniards in Hispaniola.

Although not as heroic or daring as later conquistadors such as Francisco Pizarro, conqueror of Peru, or as cunning as Hernán Cortés, conqueror of Mexico, Velazquez has achieved a reputation for courage and sagacity because of his role in subduing native caciques in Hispaniola.

From the start, Velazquez faces an outraged and hostile native population.

Led by Hatuey, a fugitive chieftain from Hispaniola, the natives of eastern Cuba resolve to resist the Spanish onslaught.

It is a futile gesture, for the peaceful Tainos lack the military skills and weapons to face the better armed and trained Spaniards.

Spanish horses and hounds, both unknown in Cuba, play a decisive role in terrorizing the indigenous peoples, who soon surrender or flee into the mountains to escape the wrath of the conquistadors.

Hatuey himself is captured, tried as a heretic and a rebel, and burned at the stake.

Velazquez sets out to pacify Cuba and end the abuses against the natives.

He induces groups of natives to lay down their weapons and work near the several new towns that he establishes throughout the island.

Among these are Baracoa, Bayamo, Trinidad, Sancti Spiritus, La Habana (hereafter, Havana), Puerto Principe, and Santiago de Cuba.

In this task, Velasquez is decisively aided by the work of Bartolome de Las Casas.

The Dominican friar precede the Spaniards into native villages on many occasions and succeeds in persuading the indigenous peoples to cooperate with the conquistadors.

Las Casas, however, is horrified by the massacre of the natives and becomes an outspoken critic of the conquest of Cuba.

He writes extensively, condemning the Spaniards' cruelty and claiming that the natives are rational and free and therefore entitled to retain their lands.

To strengthen his own power and gain supporters both in Cuba and in Spain, Velazquez begins to grant encomiendas, or contracts, whereby large landowners (encomederos), who are favored conquistadors, supposedly agree to provide protection and religious instruction to natives in return for their labor.

The crown uses the encomienda concept as a political instrument to consolidate its control over the indigenous population.

Many encomenderos, however, interested only in exploiting the resources of the island, disregard their moral, religious, and legal obligations to the natives.

A conflict soon develops between the crown and the Spanish settlers over the control and utilization of the labor by the exploitative encomenderos, and also over the crown's stated objective to Christianize the natives and the crown's own economic motivations.

In the reality of the New World, the sixteenth-century Christian ideal of converting souls is many times sacrificed for a profit.

Christianization is reduced to mass baptism; and despite the crown's insistence that natives are not slaves, many are bought and sold as chattels.

As soon as the conquest is completed and the natives subjugated, the crown begins introducing to the island the institutional apparatus necessary to govern the colony.

At first the seat of government in Cuba remains in Baracoa, the first village founded by Velazquez.

It is transferred in 1515 to Santiago, and finally in 1538 to Havana because of Havana's geographic location and excellent port.

Europeans begin the enslavement of continental natives.

Hernán Cortés introduces Arabian and Barb horses to Yucatan and Mexico) from Cuba.

Bernal Díaz del Castillo had sailed to Tierra Firme (now Nombre de Dios in modern Panama) with the expedition led by Pedrarias Dávila in 1514 to make his fortune, but after two years had found few opportunities there.

Many of the settlers had been sickened or killed by an epidemic, and there was political unrest.

He had later sailed to Cuba, where he has been promised a grant of native laborers as a part of the encomienda system.

Native “laborers “ have become scarce, though, and those colonists lacking manpower to work their holdings will need to find new peoples to enslave for work in the mines and plantations.

Francisco Hernández de Córdoba, together with some one hundred and ten discontented Spanish settlers in Cuba, including Bernal Díaz, petitions the governor, Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, for permission to launch an expedition in search of new lands and exploitable resources.

Little is known of Córdoba's life before his exploration of the Yucatán.

A native of Spain, his residence in Cuba indicates that he had participated in the conquest of the island.

He is also quite wealthy, as he both owns a landed estate, including a native town, and self-finances his expedition to Mexico.

Official permission is granted after some haggling over terms, and the expedition, consisting of two warships and a brigantine under Hernández de Córdoba's command, leaves the harbor of Santiago de Cuba on February 8, 1517, to explore the shores of southern Mexico.

The main pilot is Antón de Alaminos, from Palos, the premiere navigator of the region, who had accompanied Christopher Columbus on his initial voyages.

The pilots of the other two ships are Juan Álvarez de Huelva (nicknamed "el manquillo", which indicates that he was missing a limb), and Camacho de Triana (the name suggests he was from Seville).

Santiago de Cuba, the fifth village founded by Spanish conquistador Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar on July 25, 1515, had been destroyed in 1516 by fire and immediately rebuilt.

This is the starting point of the expeditions led by Juan de Grijalva and Hernán Cortés to the coasts of Mexico in 1517 and 1518, respectively.

The Hernández expedition follows the coast of "Isla Fernandina" (Cuba) until February 20, when, at the point of Cape San Antonio, Cuba, they take to the open sea.

There follow two days and nights of furious storm, according to Bernal Díaz so strong as to endanger the boats, and in any case sufficient to consolidate the doubt about the objective of the expedition, because after the storm one may suspect that they did not know their location.

Two decades of Spanish conquest and slavery have depleted the indigenous population of the West Indies.

Cuban Governor Diego de Velázquez, hoping to establish a colony that might supply mineral riches and a replacement slave labor force, has sent a slave-hunting military expedition to the mainland under Francisco Hernandez de Córdoba.

Escaping a two-day storm of Cuba’s western tip, the expedition had sailed through twenty-one days of fair weather and calm seas after, which they spot the Maya-occupied Yucatán coast and, some six miles from the the coast and visible from the ships, the first large populated center seen by Europeans in the Americas, with the first solidly built buildings: this is possibly near the site of present Chetumal.

The Spaniards, who evoke the Muslims in all that is developed but not Christian, speak of this first city they discover in America as El gran Cairo, as they later are to refer to pyramids or other religious buildings as mezquitas, "mosques".

It is reasonable to designate this moment as the discovery of Yucatán—even "of Mexico", if one uses "Mexico" in the sense of the borders of the modern nation state—but it should be noted that Hernández's expeditionaries are not the first Spaniards to tread on Yucatán.

In 1511 a boat of the fleet of Diego de Nicuesa, which was returning to Hispaniola, was wrecked near the coast of Yucatán, and some of its occupants had managed to save themselves.

At the moment in which the soldiers of Hernández see and name El gran Cairo, two of those shipwrecked sailors, Gerónimo de Aguilar and Gonzalo Guerrero, are living in the area of Campeche, speaking the Mayan dialect of the area, and Gonzalo Guerrero even seems to have been governing an indigenous community.

Nicuesa's shipwrecked sailors who had not been not sacrificed or worked to death by their Maya captors had ended up enslaved.

The two boats of shallower draft go on ahead to investigate whether they could anchor securely near land.

Expedition member Bernal Diaz dates March 4, 1517 as the first encounter with the Indians of Yucatán, who approach these boats in ten large canoes (called pirogues), using both sails and oars.

Making themselves understood by signs—the first interpreters, Julián and Melchior, sare obtained by precisely this expedition — the Indians, always with "smiling face and every appearance of friendliness", communicate to the Spaniards that the next day more pirogues will come to bring the recent arrivals to land.

This moment in which the Indians come up to the Spanish boats and accept strings of green beads and other trifles fashioned for this purpose is one of the few peaceful contacts that Hernández's group will have with the Indians, and even these gestures of peace are feigned on the part of the Indians.