mark of reverence for the patron saint of Spain, and another
change was made a few years afterward, when the inhabitants, as a
proof of their piety, called it Ave Maria, in honor of the Holy
Virgin. In spite of all this effort at establishing a Spanish
name, the original Indian name of Cuba, which it bore when the
great navigator first landed on its shores, has asserted itself
triumphantly through all the centuries and is now ineradicable.

According to the accounts given by Spanish writers who were
contemporary with the discovery, and the century immediately
following, the aboriginal inhabitants of Cuba were a generous,
gentle, hospitable people, by no means energetic, but heartily
cordial and courteous to the strangers who reached their shores.
The mildness of their climate did not stimulate them to much
activity in cultivation of the soil, because tropical fruits and
vegetables came with scarcely an effort on the part of the
natives. Their implements and utensils were crude and their life
simple.

The system of government was by no means complicated. The island
was divided into nine independent principalities, each under a
Cacique, all living in harmony, and warfare being almost unknown.
Their religion was a peaceful one, without human sacrifices or
cannibalism, but the priests had great power through their
pretense of influence with spirits good and evil.

Of all the people discovered by the Spanish in their colonization
of the western hemisphere, the Cubans were the most tractable to
the influences of Christianity so far as their willingness to
accept the doctrines was concerned. Christianity, as practiced by