EXPLOITATION OF PEARL FISHERIES IN THE SPANISH … · garitifera a fresh water species inhabiting mountainous regions can produce real but badly formed pearls amongst its tissues

ABSTRACT

This paper describes the pearl oyster exploitation process carried out in the Spanish American Colonies compiledby virtue of an integration of researched existing information. The study covers the whole of the colonial periodand describes the various productive pearl fisheries by considering all of the exploitation aspects, viz., location anddiscovery of oyster beds, harvesting methods, labour, diving equipment, taxes and productions. This study there-fore gives us a wholesome vision on the issue.

KEY WORDS: Colonial America, pearls, diving, taxes.

RESUMEN

El presente trabajo describe la explotación de ostras perlíferas llevada a cabo en la América española de acuer-do con las fuentes de la época. El trabajo cubre el período colonial completo y describe las distintas pesqueríasproductivas considerando todos los aspectos involucrados, como son la localización y descubrimiento de losostrales, la recogida de las ostras, el trabajo de los pescadores, los equipos de buceo, los impuestos a que estabansometidas las perlas, su valor y las producciones perlíferas deducidos de éstos. Por tanto, este trabajo proporcionauna visión de conjunto de las explotaciones perlíferas de la América colonial española.

PALABRAS CLAVE: América hispana, perlas, buceo, impuestos.

De Re Metallica, 13, 2009 pp. 19-33© Sociedad Española para la Defensa del Patrimonio Geológico y MineroISSN: 1577-9033

EXPLOITATION OF PEARL FISHERIES IN THE SPANISH AMERICAN COLONIES

Enrique Orche

Universidad de Vigo. SEDPGYM. E.T.S.I. Minas, Lagoas-Marcosende, 36310 Vigo. [email protected]

INTRODUCTION

Pearls are shiny hard concretions that are eitherspherical or irregular in shape but with a curved sur-face. They are formed in the mantle of certain molluscs,generally marine molluscs, although Margaritana mar-garitifera a fresh water species inhabiting mountainousregions can produce real but badly formed pearlsamongst its tissues. Some gastropods belonging to theTrochidae and Haliotidae can also produce pearls butthe fine and valuable pearls are found in diverse speciesof oysters generically termed pearl oysters (Smith etal., 1973). These lamellibranchs that fundamentallybelong to the species Pteria (= Meleagrina) margari-tifera, Pinctada maxima, and P. vulgaris (Symes & Hard-ing, 1991), generally exhibit a rough shell with analmost circular perimeter and a diameter (Lindner,1983) of between 25 and 30 cm. The inside of the shellis smooth and lined with mother of pearl. They liveattached to rock bottoms in tropical seas from wherethey are harvested to extract the pearls that they nor-mally contain while the shells are used to extract moth-er of pearl. The pearl oysters are generally found in

banks at depths of between 10 to 20 metres. Pearls areformed in the mantle of the oysters when a foreign body(generally a parasite, shell pieces, sand grains, etc...)enters the mantle cavity and the oyster neutralises theirritant foreign body by secreting layers of pearl oozearound it. This process lasts a few years wherein thepearl size increases with each successive layer deposi-tion.

The density of the pearls is 2.70 g/cm3. They arequite hard and are made of thin superimposed layers ofcalcium carbonate in the form of aragonite (82-86%), anorganic substance called conchiolin (10-14%) and water(2-4%). A pearl is formed when the existing spacesbetween conchiolin deposits (which are spider web-like)are filled with microscopic aragonite crystals and withits main axis located radially with respect to the pearlnucleus. The value of a fine pearl depends on many fac-tors: its weight (calculated in carats or grams), itscolour composed of a basal tone (normally white orcream coloured) which can be affected by a secondsuperimposed colour tone, its reflection (pink, green.blue), its iridescence caused by light diffraction in thesuperimposed mother of pearl layers, its shape, its lus-tre, its transparency, etc.

De Re Metallica 13 julio–diciembre 2009 2ª época 19

De Re Metallica 13 julio–diciembre 2009 2ª época

During the colonisation period, pearls had differentnames depending on their shape: asientos (flat on oneside), berruecos (irregular), aljófar (small & irregular),and margaritas (round uniformly white and with a skin-like lustre). The most highly appreciated pearls of thetime were those that originated in the Gulf of Persia fol-lowed by those that originated on the AtlanticColumbian coast (Arphe, 1985) called the Cabo de Vela.

It is quite possible that pearls were the first gemsused by Man during ancient times because they did notrequire further treatment to highlight their naturalbeauty. It is known that Mankind was keenly interestedin pearls since these have been found in ornaments thatwere made in India many centuries before the presenttime. Cleopatra was also known to have used pearls.Japanese chronicles are found to mention them in the VIcentury. In later years, pearls continued to be consid-ered as highly important ornamental elements andacquired prices comparable to gems of mineral origin.

The Spaniards upon arrival in America learned of theexistence of pearls as soon as contact with the nativeAmerican Indians was established with whom they com-menced trading via a barter system (called rescate inthose times) whereby local goods were exchanged forSpanish goods. After ascertaining the abundance ofpearl oyster beds, the colonisers soon isolated the pros-perous ones and exploited them exhaustively. Duringcolonial times, pearls were more abundant than pre-cious metals and therefore were of less economicimportance. Their supply was discontinuous and oftencoincided with discovery and exploitation of newer bet-ter pearl oyster fisheries. Despite the irregular supply,pearls were always present in cargo sent on a regularbasis to Spain, although most of the pearls were distrib-uted in the colonies themselves. They were solely usedfor ornamental purposes even though there was a con-stant quest for medicinal properties which were diffi-cult to prove (Arphe, 1985). Pearl production was sub-ject to Royal Tax just like all other valuable substances.

THE ORIGIN OF THE PEARLS

Las Casas (1995) compiled existing theories of theperiod on the origin of pearls, these being based entire-ly on the conception of classical authors like Plinio,Megastenes and others which the friar accepted withcertain reservations. According to belief, pearls werecreated from dew drops that fell into the oysters whenopen. To this end, at certain times of the year, the oys-ters would surface on to the beaches, feeling an urge toconceive and would await dew drops to fall from the skyabove. Pearl quality depended on the purity of the dew;clean dew resulted in white pearls whereas turbid dewresulted in brown or dark pearls. The earlier the dewfall, the whiter were the pearls. Whiteness also depend-ed on age and therefore the younger the oyster thewhiter the pearl. Oysters escaped from the heat of thesun into the depths of the sea to preserve the whitenessof the pearls.

Pearl size depended on the amount of dew receivedby the oyster. If there happened to be thunder and light-ning before the shells closed, the mature shells wouldshut tight frightened by the thunder and lightning. Thissudden reaction could forcefully expel the pearl oraffect its normal growth, thereby resulting in imperfector small pearls.

Pearls were naturally soft when in water and wouldharden upon removal from water. The oysters wereafraid of fishermen and therefore hid amongst andattached to rocks. They either swam or walked in thecompany of other oysters and their King , who happenedto be the biggest and oldest oyster. If the King, who theothers followed was somehow captured, the rest thatfollowed were also easily captured. Pearls were borninside the flesh of a live oyster and apparently waxedand waned with the different moon phases. When anoyster felt the hand of a fisherman upon itself, it wouldprotect the pearl by drawing its mantle over it and tryto hurt the intruder by biting with its valves.

Las Casas said that there were some not so presti-gious authors who cast doubt on the above statementsbut were unable to come up with alternate explanationsfor pearl formation. They opined that some naturalprocess was responsible for their creation such as themineralisation influence of seawater and of celestialbodies, which the friar did not think insensible either.

PRINCIPAL PEARL FISHERIES

A greater part of the coast between the north ofVenezuela and Florida, both on the Atlantic andCaribbean, as well as the Pacific sides were favourableenvironments for the abundant presence of pearl oysterbeds. As the Spaniards began conquering newer territo-ries, they discovered newer pearl oyster fisheries thatresulted in either an increased production or in a trans-fer to sites in the newer colonies.

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Figure 1. Map of Pearls´ Coast, in northern Venezuela, in which Margarita andCubagua islands are placed (1594).

Pearls were obtained from a number of places andjust a handful of writers of the time mention placenames while the great majority made a passing refer-ence to place names. The following important fisheriesare mentioned in chronological order according to theyear of their discovery:

– 1499 Margarita & Cubagua Islands (Venezuela)– 1501 Atlantic Columbian Coast (Riohacha, Santa

Marta & Cartagena)– 1513 The Pearl Islands (Pacific Panamanian Coast)– 1533 Gulf of California (Mexico)– 1540 Florida (USA)

THE FIRST CONTACT OF THE SPANIARDS WITHPEARL ZONES: MARGARITA & CUBAGUA ISLANDS

Christopher Columbus arrived at the Island of Trinin-dad, on his third voyage, in August 1498 and stepped onthe American Continent for the first time in the Golfo deParia (Venezuela), after having crossed the mouth of theRiver Orinoco (Izard, 1987). The rich pearl fisheries ofthe Margarita & Cubagaua Islands were discovered onthis trip, where the Spaniards purchased pearls from thenatives either by weight or in exchange for glass orna-ments (Bry, 1997; Kirkpatrick, 1999; Las Casas, 1995).Many later expeditions in the beginning of the XVI cen-tury visited the areas after learning about these richfisheries which due to the exhaustive nature of pearloyster exploitation resulted in their depletion in a peri-od of just 40 years.

After 1495, The Catholic Kings, at no cost whatsoev-er to the Crown, authorised voyages to America to pri-vate entrepreneurs under strict conditions and in orderto break the monopoly agreement with Columbus.Amongst the many obligations (called capitulaciones dedescubrimiento) of these new entrepreneurs one musthighlight the prohibition to enter in the areas reservedfor Portugal according to the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494)as well as non-entry into the areas discovered by Colum-bus (Izard, 1987). Thus many expeditions were under-taken between 1499 and 1502 between the PanamanianAtlantic Coast and the Cape of S.Agustin in Brazil, all ofwhich were undertaken to find riches such as gold, sil-ver and pearls that were believed to be abundant on thesaid coasts. The Captains of the vessels were in posses-sion of nautical charts (derroteros colombinos) and nav-igated known coasts following the coastline and gath-ered everything valuable. The only insecure business onthese trips was the rescate or barter with the natives. Ifnatives appeared, they were given gifts in exchange forinformation, and gold, pearls and slaves were barteredfor cheap manufactured goods. The Captains drew mapsof the explored coastline which were then made publicupon their return to Spain. To return to Spain , theystopped over in Santo Domingo, then Capital and thebest port of the Island of La Hispaniola, where theywould take on provisions, cargo and passengers. Howev-er, after 1504, commerce between Seville & SantoDomingo was better trade wise rather than as rescate,

thereby leading to an abandonment of such expeditions(Céspedes, 1994).

The first of these voyages (Morales, 1988) organisedby Alonso de Ojeda left Spain in May 1499 and the aimwas to travel along the coast that was recently discov-ered by Columbus on his third trip. After 27 days of nav-igation, they sailed the Golfo de Paria, obtained a size-able quantity of pearls in the Margarita & CubaguaIslands (Majo, 1972), thereafter sailed westwards cover-ing the Venezuelan coast up to Lake Maracaibo fromwhere they returned to Europe in June, 1500, after hav-ing obtained some gold and more pearls.

The second expedition under the command ofChristóbal Guerra and Pedro Alonso Niño left Spainshortly after Ojeda s expedition (June, 1499) and alsoarrived at the Golfo de Paria and Margarita & CubaguaIslands, from where they collected an abundant supplyof pearls a few days earlier than Ojeda s expedition.The economic success of the expedition was splendid(Morales, 1988), as declared upon its arrival to Spain(April, 1500) namely, 117.5 marcos of pearls (about 27kg), in addition to another 2 long sac full and 785 ofloose pearls which they did not declare to the RoyalExchequer (Hacienda Real ).

Vicente Yañez Pinzón led the third expedition whichwas unsuccessful and sailed the coast between Brazil sS. Roque Cape and the Island of Trinidad. Diego de Lepelater organised a fourth expedition (December, 1499 toJuly-August, 1500) which practically repeated the sametrajectory, finally ending in the Golfo de Paria, wheretheir attempt at obtaining pearls failed and on theirreturn to Spain declared just five ounces (150 g) ofpearls.

Lake Maracaibo was revisited by a new private expe-dition that covered the same area (Rodrigo de Bastidas,February, 1501 to September, 1502) in which VascoNuñez de Balboa was just a simple seaman. From therethey sailed towards Panama, covering the ColumbianAtlantic Coast and arrived at the Golfo de Urabá (whereBalboa would return 8 years later). When the expeditionarrived back to Spain, they took back more than 100marcos (23 kg) of low purity gold or guanin and an unde-termined quantity of pearls collected along the recent-ly discovered coasts.

Ojeda organised another expedition to Venezuela in1502, to set up campsites and act as the Governor of thesaid land according to the Royal Concessions (Capitula-ciones) conferred on him by the Catholic Kings after thediscoveries of 1499 (Majo, 1972). After sailing the Golfo


Figure 2. Illustration of pearl oysters´ shells (end of the 16th century).


de Paria, Margarita Island and Cumaná collecting pearls,Ojeda suffered a set of vicissitudes that thwarted himfrom fulfilling his expedition objective and sadly termi-nated the expedition in La Hispaniola.

All of the above mentioned voyages, served to mani-fest, the wealth of pearls available on a stretch of theVenezuelan coastline, which was then baptised as thePearl Coast. A short while later, in 1500, the firstcolonisers arrived from La Hispaniola and founded a set-tlement on Cubagua Island, dedicated to the extractionof pearl oysters (Izard, 1987), which in 1523 was bap-tised as Nueva Cádiz. The city was attacked in 1528 byFrench pirates who were defeated and thereafter, thecity rapidly slumped until 1543 when a hurricane devas-tated the area whereby the city was abandoned shortlyafterwards. This decadence came about not only due tothe overexploitation of the bigger oysters but also theexhaustion of young oysters which would have otherwisehelped regenerate the fishery, this fact beingdenounced before the crown in 1534 (Izard, 1987). Theabove situation meant that Margarita pearl settlementscould hardly exist in the early part of the XVII century(Vázquez de Espinosa, 1992).

This fishery was the first ever fishery exploited by theSpaniards in the New World. More than 10,000 marcos ofpearls (2,300 kg), weighing between 2-5 carats (Cés-pedes, 1994), i.e., with diameter between 6.6-8.9 mmwere obtained during the first five years of existence ofNueva Cádiz. This meant approximately 3.2 millionpearls which gives us an idea of the size of the fishery.According to Las Casas (1995), each oyster could containbetween 4 & 5 pearls of different sizes.

THE COLUMBIAN ATLANTIC COAST FISHERY

The discovery of these fisheries was no doubt due tothe expeditions of Bastidas (1501) and his later visits(after founding Santa Marta in 1525), that of PedroHeredia (founder of Cartagena de Indias in 1533) andother Conquistadors holding Royal Concessions (Capitu-laciones) over the coastal territories.

The knowledge of the presence of pearl oysters inthese waters since ancient times and the decadence ofthe Margarita fishery influenced some of its inhabitantsto move eastwards by a 1,000 km and found Riohacha in1542, where they would continue the extraction of pearloysters (Céspedes, 1994).

Pearls were in abundance along the ColumbianAtlantic Coast since fisheries existed all along the coastfrom Cabo de la Vela to Cartagena de Indias covering astretch of approx. 800 km of coastline. The main centrewas Riohacha (Acosta, 1987; Anonymous, 1996) wherepearls arrived from the many oyster beds locatedbetween this city and Cabo de Vela (Vázquez deEspinosa, 1992; Anonymous, 1996).

Santa Marta was a second important source of pearlson the Columbian Coast (Esteve, 1992), although of alesser importance then Riohacha (Vázquez de Espinosa,1992). The chronicles of the time (Bry, 1997; Fernández

de Oviedo, 1996) cite the existence of a third modestfishery (300 km SW) on the islands at the mouth ofCartagena Harbour. In 1748, Ulloa (1990) makes no ref-erence to pearl production when describing the city andits surroundings, however, he does cite pearls whendescribing Panama and the Pearl Islands, from whichone can deduce that the fishery must have been deplet-ed by that time.

The Columbian oyster beds are mainly cited by chron-iclers of the XVI century which could mean that they gotdepleted very quickly either at the end of the same cen-tury or at the start of the next century. Pearls from Cabode la Vela were well appreciated in Spain due to theirperfect shape and colour (Arphe, 1985).

FISHERIES OF THE PEARL ISLANDS

The discovery of these fisheries is strictly attributedto Vasco Nuñez de Balboa (Jerez, 1972a). He settled onLa Hispaniola after sailing from Spain as a member ofRodrigo de Bastidas 1501 expedition. In 1510, he decid-ed to go to the recently created province of Urabá(Panamanian & Columbian Atlantic Coast) and activelyparticipated in the founding of Santa María la Antiguadel Darién, which was the first city on ContinentalAmerica, of which he was appointed Mayor. Whileexploring the surrounding territories, he befriended thenatives, who in 1511 told him of the existence of anoth-er sea to the south of the city, where gold was in plen-tiful supply. Balboa waited until 1513 to cross the Pana-ma isthmus and arrived at the Pacific Ocean near theGolfo de S. Miguel (Lucena, 1985) in September of thesame year.

The natives from whom he obtained a lot of pearlsalso informed him of the existence of Terarequi (Fernán-dez de Oviedo, 1996) Island, located about 20 milesfrom the coast, where there were abundant quantitiesof pearls. Bad weather prevented them from getting tothe Islands, so they travelled around navigatingnearshore and over land. Successive contacts with thenatives meant more pearls, which arrived from Ter-arequi Island, that formed part of a little archipelago,

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Figure 3. Illustration that idealizes the encounter of the Spaniards with pearloyster fishing in Cubagua island (1594).

thereafter named The Pearls (Jerez, 1972a). The nativesextracted pearls from the shells by throwing them intothe fire and this resulted in their loss of whiteness andgloss. The Spaniards therefore showed the natives howto obtain pearls without damaging them (Las Casas,1995). After fulfilling the aims of the expedition, theyreturned to Santa María in 1514 loaded with pearls andgold, after a 5 month voyage around the isthmus.

Upon his return, Balboa was substituted by PedrariasDávila, who had recently arrived from Spain with fullpowers. When Balboa informed Pedrarias of the exploitsfrom his travels, Pedrarias sent successive expeditionson reconnaissance missions and to obtain gold, pearlsand slaves from all over the territory. In 1515, one suchexpedition commandeered by Morales and Peña Solaarrived at the Island of Terarequi and returned withabundant gold together with 95 marcos (22 kg) of pearls(Jerez, 1972a).

Balboa personally visited the Island of Terarequi forthe first time when he led an expedition in 1518 afterbeing conferred with the title of “Adelantado del Mardel Sur y Gobernador de Panamá y Coiba” and stayedthere for four months during which time he obtainedgold and pearls.

Production data from this fishery are non-existent,however, this was undoubtedly an important fishery. It isknown that pearls were in abundance there and theirextraction continued at a good rate until the middle ofthe XVII century. In fact, when the English pirate Morgansacked Panama in 1671, a Spanish galleon filled withgold, silver, pearls and other valuable goods derivedfrom the city commerce (Exquemelin, 1988) managed toescape. Pearl extraction continued during the XVIII cen-tury (Ulloa, 1990) and still continues to this day.

Information from the epoch stated that the pearlswere bigger and more valuable than even those fromMargarita (Fernández de Oviedo, 1996) although at thebeginning of the exploitation, the numbers were small-er there (Haring, 1979).The first consignments aroundthe year 1515 contained pearls of surprising sizes: thereis mention of a queer pear shaped pearl weighing 31carats and another spherical one of 26 carats (approxi-mately 15.4 mm in diameter) that won the admirationof the Spaniards. As a reference, one can say that per-fectly formed pearls weighing 10 carats (approximately11.2 mm in diameter) were difficult to come by (Arphe,1985). Pearls from this fishery used to be irregular andmany of them were pear shaped (Fernández de Oviedo,1996).

THE FISHERIES FROM THE GULF OF CALIFORNIA

When the Spaniards arrived in Mexico in 1517, the ini-tial trade with the natives and later the sumptuous giftsfrom Moctezuma to Hernan Cortés rarely included pearlsor objects made from pearls (Jerez, 1972b; Díaz delCastillo, 1997). Nevertheless, they were present in someof the objects used by the Aztec Cacique and formedpart of his own personal treasure (Díaz del Castillo,1997). Likewise, the noble Aztecs adorned their clotheswith feathers and gold, and chronicles from the epochrarely mention pearls for such functions (Sahagún,1990). Pearls did not form part of the deity ornamentseither.

Pearls were considered to be precious stones and, asopposed to what happened in other areas, no mention ismade whatsoever of pearl fisheries or their sources dur-


Figure 4. Ship for pearl oyster fishing used in northern Venezuela. Some fishermen jump into the sea with baskets, in order to gather the oysters,while another man takes to the boat a basket full of shells newly gathered (end of the 16th century).


ing the initial years of the Spanish conquest of Mexico.Even a meticulous author such as Sahagún (1990) rarelyprovides data on the same.

However, the fact is that, even though pearls werenot abundant, their existence and value was known inNueva España (Mexico), and therefore were used asornaments of the higher Aztec classes. The question waswhere had they obtained their pearls from.

In 1530, when Cortés returned from Spain where hehad been giving an account of his position as Governorof Mexico, he brought back the capitulaciones or per-mission to discover and populate the Islands from Mardel Sur (Portillo, 1982). He organised and financed fourexpeditions which discovered the Gulf of California andPeninsula.

The first of these expeditions (1532), commandeeredby Diego Hurtado de Mendoza was lost without a trace.The second expedition (1533) co-commandeered byDiego de Becerra and Hernando de Grijalba, discoveredthe Island of Santa Cruz, which was the southern tip ofthe Californian peninsula, which was believed to be anisland until 1702. They were informed of the existenceof pearl fisheries in the then Sea of Cortés, later re-bap-tised as the Gulf of California. When a part of the crewwent ashore for reconnaissance, they were killed by thenative Indians, and the rest of the crew returned toNueva España and informed of their new discovery uponreturn to the continent. Cortés himself participated inthe third expedition (1535). His intention was reconnais-sance of the presumed Santa Cruz island and form newsettlements but had problems with supplies and had toreturn to Nueva España without fulfilling his aims.Cortés finally financed a fourth expedition (1536) underthe command of Francisco de Ulloa, who navigated forseven months around the Gulf of California and returnedwithout having obtained economic benefits worth high-lighting.

There were many explorers and adventurers afterCortés who were attracted by the lure for pearls. Apartfrom the great number of expeditions that departedfleetingly from west coasts of Nueva España, there weremany other attempts to establish permanent pearl fish-eries with authorisation from the Crown which legalisedpearl fisheries in 1585 (Portillo, 1982). The first of suchreconnaissance expeditions that successfully found 400km of pearl oysters grounds on the peninsula coastlinewas that of Nicolás de Cardona (1615). Years later, Fran-cisco de Ortega undertook three expeditions between1632 and 1636 to look for fisheries and a detailedaccount was written in his log books (Esteve, 1992).Another six attempts of this nature are known for theXVII century.

The fisheries (also called placers) in the Gulf of Cali-fornia were located on the peninsula coastline that wasrocky. The coastline on the opposite side was sandy andnot apt for oyster colonies. The shells normally con-tained one pearl and rarely two or more. They came inall sizes and shapes. The fisheries located on the south-ern half of the peninsula from Cape of S. Lucas to Posi-tion Parallel 27 provided fine white pearls. The quality

diminished further northwards since their colour wasochre and this greatly reduced their value.

Before the arrival of the Spaniards, the nativesonly made use of the oyster meat by cooking it ona fire and discarded the burnt pearls, except sometribe from the south which used to use them asornaments. After the arrival of the Spaniards, thenatives learnt the real value of the pearls from thebarter goods (rescates) that the Spaniards werewilling to give them in exchange for pearls. Fromthen onwards, the natives began fishing for pearlsand storing them awaiting the arrival of the conti-nental expeditions. Just like the natives from LaFlorida and Panama, these did not know how to pryopen the oysters without the aid of fire and so theSpaniards taught them how to open them with aknife.

Fine pearl oyster beds were abundant (Barco, 1989)in southern California until 1738. The fishery declineddue to excessive indiscriminate harvesting which imped-ed the regeneration of the fishery.

In 1740, the sea washed a huge amount of oysters onthe northern shores of the peninsula, which had not yetbeen visited by the pearl collectors. The natives, whohad learnt of their value, collected the pearls and soldthem to the Spaniards at the S. Ignacio mission. One ofthe soldiers from the mission, Manuel Ocio, left the mil-itary (the troops were banned from pearl fishing) andled an expedition himself in 1742 to the northern fish-eries and had a huge success. With the proceeds, hefunded a second expedition in1743, from which heobtained 5 arrobas (57 kg) of pearls. On his third voyagethe following year, he managed to gather 11 arrobas(126 kg) in less than 3 months both via fishery and viatrade, and he wasn t the only person there involved withthe fishery since many others especially from Sonorawere in the business since news of Ocio s first expedi-tion had spread. After this year, production ratesslumped although pearls continued to be harvested forthis northern fishery, until the year 1750 when almost noone ever frequented such grounds (Barco, 1989). No oneknows the amount of pearls produced from the almosttwo centuries of Californian fishery but they must havebeen sizeable. Unfortunately, the economic value ofthese pearls was reduced because of their poor qualityand huge abundance.

The fishery went into further decadence in the XIXcentury and nowadays, pearl oysters are practicallynon-existent in the Gulf of California.

FISHERIES FROM FLORIDA

These fluvial fisheries were discovered in 1540 byHernando de Soto on his trip to the South and Centre ofthe Eastern half of the present day USA: The expeditionleft the previous year from La Havana, after Soto hadarrived from Spain with the pertinent capitulaciones(Royal Concessions).

The first pearl oyster beds were found in the region

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located to the south of the Appalachia, on the borderof Florida with Georgia (Vázquez de Espinosa, 1992). Afew months later, they once again found fluvial pearlfisheries on both flanks of the Blue Mountains whentravelling northwards, at the head of the River Savan-nah basin, to the NW of South Carolina, as well as in theRiver Tennessee and its tributaries on the eastern sideof the State of Tennessee. This unknown state wasincluded in La Florida in the XVI century and wasdescribed as such by chroniclers of the time (Vázquezde Espinosa, 1992; Vega, 1996). In fact, this zone con-stituted the northern border of the Spanish territoriesin the New World and therefore was less frequented.Besides, the area was overrun shortly by other Euro-peans with colonial interests in North America (the Eng-lish and the French), which later became part of thenewly established USA. Therefore, these fisheries hard-ly ever provided pearls to the economy of the SpanishColonies.

One can gather from Hernando de Soto s expeditiondetails that the fisheries on the eastern flank of theBlue Mountains were located in a river with great flowand with an abundance of pearl oysters that producedfine pearls and aljófares (small irregular pearls). Thenatives would collect them in baskets in their funeraltemples placed besides the corpses and gifted theSpaniards as many as they wanted to take, the officersput aside 20 arrobas (230 kg) towards Hacienda Real(Royal Taxes) to take back to La Havana as proof of thenewly found wealth, since the amount of pearls that thenatives had stocked over the years was enormous, theconquistadors calculated that there were more than1,000 arrobas (11,500 kg). The other slope of the BlueMountain also had oysters distributed over different flu-vial beds and the natives had collected and stored themjust like as described earlier.

These pearls were of good size (medium to big chickpea size) and there were some that were as big as ahazelnut shell. Just like in the other fisheries, the

native Indians opened them by throwing them into thefire: They strung them using heated copper needles.Somehow the high temperature affected the smoothsurface of the pearls which made them less attractive(Vega, 1996).

OYSTER EXTRACTION METHODS

The chroniclers and Spanish travellers left well docu-mented details of how oyster were harvested in the fish-eries. The following accounts from between 1525 and1750 are available:

Margarita & Cubagua Islands:– Bartolomé de las Casas– Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo– Antonio Vázquez de Espinosa– The Drake manuscriptRiohacha:– José de AcostaThe Pearl Islands:– Antonio de UlloaGulf of California:– Miguel de BarcoThe oyster harvesting method was pretty similar in

all fisheries, and they varied just on principles and diverworking conditions. The fishery was undertaken by har-vesting small zones which would then be abandonedafter depletion of the pearl oysters. The fishermenwould then move to another site which had been previ-ously inspected by the divers for their pearl harvestpotential.

Diving was performed under lung power althoughmany underwater breathing apparatuses were inventedand patented due to the physical weakening of thedivers.

A settlement or ranchería was usually founded nearthe fisheries of the Margarita & Cubagua Islands. Har-vesting was done manually with the diver submerging


Figure 5. Way of fishing pearl oysters everywhere with great ease and alacrity (1623).


and surfacing repeatedly with the catch which wasdeposited into a medium sized canoe fitted with a Latinsail which usually belonged to a fisherman or señor de lacanoa (boatman). The human team was usually com-prised of a Spanish helmsman, the canoero (the oars-man) and a mayordomo (foreman) together with at least12 divers with their chief who happened to be an experton the matter (Vázquez de Espinosa, 1992). The shiftstarted when everybody involved was transported to thefishing ground which happened to be at a distance ofabout one or two leguas (5.5-11 km). Once on site, thedivers submerged to manually bring back oysters whichwere at a depth of about 14 fathoms (23 m) and thegreater the depth, the bigger the pearls (Anonymous,1996). The divers carried a small net with one end tiedto the net and the other to the canoe, and in which theydeposited the shells extracted from the bottom (LasCasas, 1995). In deeper water, the divers submerged bytying stones to their waists as ballast and would releasethe weights when surfacing (Fernández de Oviedo,1996). They surfaced holding on to the string and woulddescend once again after having rested sufficiently,eaten some food, pulled the net to the surface anddeposited the contents into a place reserved inside thecanoe, for each diver. This procedure would continueuntil sunset when they would return to the ranchería.After anchoring the canoe, each diver would hand hiscatch to the mayordomo (foreman). They would thenhave dinner and later open the oysters to remove thepearls. After this they would move into a bigger hallowned by the vessel owner, where they would rest forthe night under lock, to prevent them from escaping topreserve their chastity, since it was believed that if thismeasure failed then “the divers would not be able tostay underwater and would float on the water like cork”(Vázquez de Espinosa, 1992). Those divers who did notcatch many oysters or were rebellious were tied withshackles and punished with blows or whip. The work wasexhausting and was crudely described by Las Casas(1999). The working day was from sunrise to sunset,wherein they were underwater for the greater part ofthe day, which soon affected their health seriously. Thedivers ate fish, oyster meat and cassava or corn bread.Casualties due to shark attacks were not rare either. Inthe final years of the fishery, the divers would hide andkeep some of the valuable pearls which would permitthem to exchange them on festive occasions with theirbosses (compulsorily) for clothes.

The diver group was bigger (18-20 persons + foreman)in the Panamanian fisheries of the Pearl Islands than inthe Margarita fisheries and they also had their base inrancherías. The divers did not carry a net bag with themwhen submerging and dived tied to a string. They there-fore surfaced with three or four oysters per dive, bring-ing them up under their left armpit or in the right handor even in the mouth. Once at the surface, they wouldthen introduce the oysters in a cloth bag and after gath-ering breath, they would submerge once again until endof work or until they felt tired, since each diver wasobliged to collect a fixed amount of oysters (Ulloa,

1990) and hand them to the vessel owner. When thedivers had filled their bags with oysters, they stoppeddiving and began opening the oysters for pearl extrac-tion, which would then be handed to the foreman, whoasked them to account for even the smallest and mostimperfect ones. The excess pearls would belong to thediver, even if they were bigger, better and more valu-able, and the vessel owner had no additional right otherthan to buy the same at a just price. The divers werenot always able to fulfil the daily pearl quota, in whichcase they had to complete the quota using their reservepearls or write them into a debt account. There werenormal sharks, blue sharks and manta rays which were adanger to the divers. The divers usually carried a knifeto defend themselves. The caporal (foreman) stayed inthe canoe and kept watch for approaching animals andwarned the divers by tugging at a chord that they hadtied to their bodies. When necessary, he would jumpinto the water to collaborate in the defence operations.

The Californian pearl fishery, as against other fish-eries described earlier, was organised as a three monthscampaign (July to September), wherein a vessel ownerafter taking on provisions and rescate (barter goods),would approach the fishing grounds where he wouldcontract native Indian divers to harvest the oysters andalso purchase any oysters that they might have beencollected between campaigns. Some of the natives, likethose from the island of S.Jose, were so fond of thecanoes that they would request a barter of a canoe forpearls, which they then used for raids on the surround-ing coasts, and stole and looted the S. Juan BautistaLiguig mission on three occasions, before they werefinally overcome and their canoes confiscated. Duringtimes of plenty, the vessel owners would carry a sailboatwith one or several canoes but as catches fell, the num-ber of vessels and sizes diminished until finally theywould just take the one or at most two canoes. The con-tracted divers could either opt for a salary or a part ofthe catch (partido). The salary system meant that thevessel owner had to pay a previously agreed sum and allharvested pearls belonged to him. In the second system,no salary was paid out but half of the catch belonged tothe divers. In both cases, the vessel owners would haveto ship the divers to the fishing grounds and then returnthem to their place of origin. The divers had to be fedduring the fishing season, and given a knife to open theoysters in addition to a patio, a cotton cloth measuring1.6 metres which they had to wear around their waistsbefore entering the water, as well as a wooden pot(Barco, 1989). At the beginning of July, the vessel ownerwould approach the grounds that he considered best,near which he would set ranchería (camp). After con-tracting the divers, the vessel owner would ferry themacross to the fishing grounds, where the divers wouldsubmerge in the waters taking a net bag with them toput the oysters in and a pointed stake attached to astring to defend themselves from the manta rays or tocollect pearl oysters. They would return to surfacewhen they needed to breathe or when the bag was fulland submerged a while later for more oysters. They

26

dived for 5 hours on average daily from ten in the morn-ing to three in the afternoon, in order to make good useof the daylight hours. The working depth was about tento fifteen fathoms (17-25 m), at times it could get tobetween twenty and twenty-five fathoms (33-42 m) andexceptionally down to thirty or more fathoms (50 m).According to Barco (1989), “the efficiency of the diversduring the first days was poor since they appeared to bedazed and with a headache, since they were not used toholding their breath or because of water entering theirears, but after three to four days, their ears wouldbegin to bleed and that cleared their heads and madethem agile for the fishing operation”. After finishing theday s work, they would return to camp, distribute theoysters and extract the pearls. Those that had chosenthe share option would then count the oysters in publicand make three heaps, from which they would place onefor the vessel owner, a second one for the diver, a thirdone for the vessel owner, a fourth one for the diver anda fifth one for the King. The oysters were distributed asthey were taken from the heaps and since they wereclosed no one knew whether they contained pearls ornot. The divers that were contracted on a salary, wouldhand all of the oysters to the vessel owner, after puttingaside one fifth for the King (quinto real). The shellswere then opened with a knife and the flesh was takento a dump except for those oysters that were saved forconsumption. At the end of the season, the oyster wastewould be washed in large earthen pots to recover thosepearls that went unnoticed amongst the mantle foldsduring the previous check-up. The waters in the Gulfwould cool at the end of September and the fishing wasclosed for the season. The vessel owners had to applyfor the diving licence to the Juez de Quintos who almostalways was the Captain of the Loreto prison. When manyvessel owners approached the same grounds, the saidCaptain would appoint one of the vessel owners as his

delegate for the entire season and the others had totreat him accordingly, and hand him the quinto real.The delegate in turn had to send the quinto real to theCapitán de Loreto. When there was just the one vesselowner on the fishing ground, this person had to ensurethat the pearls pertaining to the quinto real went toLoreto. The Captain gave receipts for all pearls handedto him as quinto real. From Loreto, the Captain wouldpersonally take the pearls to Gaudalajara (Mexico) andhand them to the Royal Officials. The Captain did notreceive any compensation for his job.

LABOUR

In 1441, the Portuguese navigators began trade ofAfrican blacks, by taking them to Portugal and becamerich in just a few voyages. In 1444, they founded ablacks company which they supplied via a firm estab-lished on the Guinean coast from where they obtainedblack slaves to supply an ever increasing demand. Theslaves were captured from their tribes by armed Arabsand sold to the Portuguese firms (Ibañez, 1988). At theend of the XV century, the presence of black slaves waswell established on the Iberian peninsula (Sepúlveda,1995), and there was an annual recruitment of about500 slaves from the Portuguese settlements in Africa(Pardo, 1995).

Shortly after the discovery of America, the Spaniardsbegan taking native Indian slaves back to Spain andChristopher Columbus was the first to propose to theCatholic Kings, the trade of Indians as a work force (Seg-reo et al., 1991). However, the Catholic Queen Isabellacut short this trade down to the grassroots and prohib-ited that her new subjects from America be enslaved.Nevertheless, the colonial legislation had anticipateddifferent forms of converting the native Indians into


Figure 6. Way of fishing pearl oysters in waters many or few fathoms deep with great ease and alacrity (1623).


slaves: by capturing them as prisoners in the wars withthe natives, for transgressing the colonial rules, or aspart tax payment by the Caciques to the Crown, etc.The Motherland was a great distance away and the con-quistadors lamented not being able to use the cheapand abundant labour available and would resort tofraudulent means to legally oblige the Indians to work inslavery conditions on plantations, in mining, in the pearlfishery, etc. This situation produced a capture andundercover trafficking of Indian slaves which lasteduntil 1547, the year in which encomiendas (trusteeships)were established to fight the said situation, wherebythe natives became servants with limited rights to theSpanish Lords in return for work (Izard, 1987). The Indi-ans were not used to working on a continual and regularbasis, at least, not under the harsh conditions imposedby the Spaniards, since their tropical surroundingsamply looked after their needs. Therefore, under thesubjugation of the encomenderos (Spanish Lords), thenatives preferred to escape or commit suicide, whichtogether with the work mortality and death due to dis-eases carried to America by the Spaniards and the blackslaves, resulted in an abrupt reduction of the nativepopulation (Sánchez-Albornoz, 1994).

The Spanish laws that prohibited the slavery of nativeAmericans, Arabs and Jews, however, permitted thetransportation of African slaves into America, whichfirst took place in 1501. And the importation of blackslaves into the New World was thus established. In thosetimes, Portugal dominated the trade in African work-force, since Spain could not set foot in Africa due to thetreaty of Tordesillas, and therefore, Portugal was thesole supplier of slaves to the American Colonies. Thepetition for slaves was continuous immediately after theCatholic King Fernando authorised the shipment of 200blacks to work in the gold mines. Even Bartolomé de lasCasas, who promoted the slave trade in his quest forimproving the situation for the native Indians (Barco,1989), managed to fix a quota of 1000 blacks for each ofthe bigger Antilles. The slave settlements became con-tinuous throughout the XVI, XVII (with supply from thePortuguese), XVIII and XIX (with supply from the Englishand the North Americans) centuries until slavery waseventually abolished.

The panorama, therefore was that the workforce forthe hard work of pearl oyster harvesting was native Indi-an in the initial stages and black slaves a short timelater, when the native Caribbean Indians had practicallydisappeared. So, the presence of Indians is cited in theIslands of Margarita & Cubagua around 1525 (Fernándezde Oviedo, 1996; Las Casas, 1999), who were thenreplaced by black slaves in the final decades of thesame century (Anonymous, 1996) and obviously in thefollowing century (Vázquez de Espinosa, 1992). Some-thing similar must have happened to the Columbian fish-eries, although Acosta does not provide any informationto that respect. The workforce in Panama also evolvedalong similar lines: native Indians in Balboa s time andblack shortly afterwards (Ulloa, 1990; Jerez, 1972b). Onthe contrary, in California, although black slaves were

authorised (Portillo, 1982), considerable numbers werenot evident due to the absence of mining, agricultureand extensive cattle farming, the seasonal nature ofpearl fisheries and due to the abundance of native work-force, thanks to the improved working conditions whichhad greatly improved life expectancy.

The original documents consulted cover the periodfrom 1525 (Fernández de Oviedo, 1996) to 1750 (Ulloa,1990; Barco, 1989). A gradual humanisation of the hardpearl oyster harvesting working conditions was observedthroughout the 225 year period. In the first fisheryexploited (Margarita & Cubagua Islands), the nativeswere brutally treated like slaves and were practicallyexterminated, as denounced by Rev. Bartolomé de lasCasas (1999) before the Crown, when the monk evenrequested the King to prohibit pearl fishing (Bataillon &Saint-Lu, 1994) and appealed for new laws that cameinto force in 1542. A Royal Cédula (Decree) from thatyear prohibited under the death penalty, any personfrom forcing native Indians into the pearl fishery againsttheir will. The employment of aborigines was prohibitedin 1585 but authorised the use of Africans which showsthat the Royal Decree was not complied with in 1542(Izard, 1987). In later years, the divers were certainlyblack slaves who were given the right to keep the excesspearls fished while the working conditions became morehumane. Finally, the divers in the Californian fisherywere contracted freely on a salary or with the option tokeep a part of the pearls obtained, in which theyworked a shift of 5 hours during three months of theyear.

Since the black slaves were given small salaries asperks for good results, they could save money and buyback their freedom thus constituting free black commu-nities who were contracted on a day wage basis, justlike the Californian Indians.

DIVING EQUIPMENT

Right from the early stages, the presence of theSpaniards meant the transference of industrial tech-niques to the production processes that were supposedto be implanted in the newly discovered territories.

However, the conditions that the Spaniards found inAmerica were not the same as in Spain, therefore theyhad to resort to invention or adaptation of equipmentand processes that permitted the start of an industrialproduction of the resources in America. During the XVI,XVII & XVIII centuries, there were many attempts andinitiatives in this direction, therefore we can say thatthis period was the heightened period of technical inno-vation in America. It was mostly the Spaniards who con-tributed their innovations to the New World, furtherdeveloping proper legislation for copyrights, that ispatents (García, 1992). Not all of the inventors of thetechnical inventions used in America were presentthere. Sometimes, these inventions were presented inSpain, to the Consejo de Indias (Council for OverseasTerritories), in order to obtain an exclusivity licence for

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the American territories, which was conceded to themon approval by the said Council if the invention wasfound to be useful and would function adequately.

People generally believe that the patents for theAmerican inventions were initiated in the USA but it isnot the case, because when the first US patent arrivedon the scene, the Hispano Americans had already beendoing so for over a century.

One has to highlight the important role that the Span-ish Crown played right from the beginning in as far asthe introduction of the industrial techniques into Amer-ica, because all Monarchs starting with the CatholicKings up to the Enlightenment Monarchs always provid-ed institutional support to the inventors and scientists.To this end, we can cite Phillip II and Charles III, widelyseparated in time but not in their ideas in as far as theimportance of technology in the development of theNew World.

Some of the most important inventions of the timewere those related to diving equipment because of thehuge physical casualty that the divers underwent duringdiving operations for the pearl fishery and the salvage ofcargo from sunken ships, and the economic importanceof both the above mentioned activities was the stimulusto the design and development of diving equipment thatcould aid such work.

Ever since the discovery of the Margarita Island fish-ery in 1499, it was evident that there would be animportant economic repercussion in future years(Morales, 1988). Due to the high mortality, first of thenative Indians and then of the black slaves, the inven-tors, in an attempt to improve the working conditions ofdivers, sharpened their ingenuity to try and perfect div-ing equipment which although present during the IX cen-tury B.C. had not really evolved a lot since then.

In the middle of the XVI century, there were manyinstruments used for diving which were basically of twotypes. The greater part of them were spheres or a cylin-drical recipient, like a diving bell, open on the lowerside from where the diver introduced his head andwhich had small glass windows at eye level for exteriorviewing. The second system consisted of an imperme-able leather bell, weighted with stones, which was sunkto the bottom and which contained a certain amount oftrapped air, where the diver approached when in needof a breath, by introducing his head through the bottompart. The inconvenience of all of these simple inven-tions was that the time that the diver could spendunderwater was limited to the resistance of his lungs orto the capacity of the equipment to retain air, whichusually resulted in serious accidents. Therefore, thegeneral interest to perfect these types of equipment.There were many initiatives and improvements, espe-cially in the middle of the XVI century and at the startof the XVII century which are described in detail by Gar-cía (1992).

Blasco de Garay (1543 patent) was the first to start aseries of inventions towards facilitating the extractionof pearls and treasures. Sometime later, in 1556, Pedrode Herrera patented an invention with the Consejo de

Indias for the extraction of gold and pearls from the bot-tom of the sea. A year later, Antonio Luis de Cabrera,Antonio de Lima and Diego de Lira founded a companyto exploit pearl fishing based on a diving invention,whose licence had been patented with the above men-tioned Council in 1568. The patent was awarded for 16years and had privileges such as: obtaining all necessarymaterial for its manufacture at a tax free rate, theauthorisation to take three workers to America and per-mission to use 100 black slaves for diving. As compensa-tion, they promised to give the Crown half of the sunkentreasures that they would salvage with their inventiontogether with one fourth of the pearls.

The Consejo de Indias awarded Francisco Soler apatent for a new diving instrument in 1573. The divinginventions were perfected with ongoing experience. In1577, the Consejo de Indias awarded a patent toCristóbal Maldonado for a yoke which for the first timeincorporated two independent tubes: one for air entryand the other for air exit, but which lacked the corre-sponding air inlet and outlet valves, which were usedyears later by Ayanz. This moment in time was very nearthe discovery of the diving apparatus that would permitthe diver to stay submerged for an indefinite amount oftime.

Giusepe Bono from Florence managed to patent aninvention in 1585 with the Consejo de Indias for harvest-ing of pearls and coral on the American coast by using asimple diving bell, without any accessories, by whichthe diver could leave the water without getting wet andcould stay underwater for as long as he wished. Bono


Figure 7. Way of fishing pearl oysters from a ship with great ease (1623).


managed to do trials in Seville and Lisbon, whereby wit-nesses confirmed that the diver did not get wet since hewas confined inside the bell surrounded by air, but hid-ing the fact that the diver could not stay there perma-nently breathing used air. The official support for thisapparatus which was condemned to failure, provokedvociferous protests from the Spanish inventors who sawBono as an opportunist swindler. Some years later, in1589, Hernán Ruiz de Rozas proposed to build an instru-ment with which the divers could stay underwaterindefinitely and requested for official aid to finish theproject.

The next diving apparatus was that of Jerónimo deAyanz, the most notable submarine inventor of thetime. He introduced two open circuit tubes in all of hisdiving inventions and what is more important, he includ-ed inspiration and expiration valves, with one-way sys-tems such that the expired air could not ever bebreathed in again. Ayanz s diving instruments were com-posed of the same elements as can be found in today sdiving equipment: compressor (substituted for bellows),pressurised air cylinders (substituted for air filled wineskins), flexible tubes, dry suit, diving goggles, etc. Thesystem was tested in the river Pisuerga where it passesthrough Valladolid in 1602, in the presence of KingPhillip II and his court, and it was probably the first timeever that a diver stayed underwater for more than anhour without the minimum discomfort, which wasviewed by the innumerable public present at the site.This invention was destined for recovering cargo fromsunken vessels and for pearl harvesting, especially fromthe Margarita Island. To this end, 4,000 cow skins wereimported to manufacture the diving suits. Thus Ayanzlitigated against Bono who aspired to do the same butwith inadequate means.

The diving equipment inventions continued duringthe XVIII century and special mention must be made ofa diving suit designed by Alejandro Durand in 1720 andcalled by the author as “Máquina hydroándrica” orclothing to cover a man underwater, whose sketcheswere detailed very well but no one knows if this wasever put into practice. The design was far behind thatmade by Ayanz about a century earlier as it did not haveinspiration and expiration valves.

Funnily enough, despite the important developmentsin the underwater breathing apparatuses, one cannotfind references to the use of such systems for the har-vesting of pearls in the different fisheries. This could bedue to the fact that either the use of such equipmentwas obvious or that nobody ever used them. Fernándezde Oviedo (1996) tells us in 1526 that the Indians fromMargarita, in those early days, could stay underwaterfor more than an hour depending upon their individualphysical capacities. This could be interpreted in the fol-lowing two ways: that the said time corresponded tocontinuous immersion periods, wherein they periodical-ly surfaced for breathing purposes and submerged onceagain without resting or to the time they spent under-water extracting oysters without surfacing, evidentlyusing some sort of underwater breathing apparatus. The

latter is quite improbable since the important develop-ments in diving bells and scuba gear did not take placeuntil the first quarter of the XVI century as has alreadybeen indicated earlier. Bartolomé de las Casas testimo-ny on the harsh working conditions of the native Indians(Las Casas, 1999) also points to the former explanation.Graphical documentation of the epoch (Bry, 1997;Anonymous, 1996) does not show any such underwaterbreathing apparatuses, not even rudimentary ones.Ulloa (1990), who wrote two centuries after Fernándezde Oviedo s detailed account of oyster harvesting inPanama, does not mention anything on the subjecteither: and moreover, his details of the pearl oyster fish-ery clearly demonstrate that no underwater breathingapparatus was being used at the time. In fact, Ulloaindicated that black divers on the job must have hadhuge lung capacities (largo resuello), a very significantcomment.

Of all the documentation consulted from the epochon the extraction of pearl oysters (Acosta, 1987; Anony-mous, 1996; Barco, 1989; Fernández de Oviedo, 1996;Las Casas, 1999; Ulloa, 1990; Vázquez de Espinosa,1992), one can conclude that the use of diving equip-ment in the American fisheries was something unusual,in spite of the efforts from the Crown and the inventorsat the beginning of the XVI century to develop and per-fect such systems. The fact that Durand s 1720 suit didnot incorporate Ayanz s technology from 1602 couldindicate that his invention did not get sufficient atten-tion and was long forgotten.

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Figure 8. Tackle for fishing pearl oysters everywhere no matter how many orbig they are, or whether they are surrounded by stones or hollows (1623).

TAXES

Right from the very beginning, the Crown participat-ed in the benefits from the expeditions, that is, thebarter exchanges and the exploitation of the valuablesubstances from the New World, which the Crown nego-tiated each operation individually. The agreements var-ied according to the territories visited and in function ofthe investment of the Crown or the Vessel Owner.Therefore, one cannot generalise and state that theRoyal Treasury kept a fixed percentage of all that theVessel Owners obtained from the expeditions. Pearlswere also subject to Royal Tax (Pardo, 1995) just like allother valuable products from the New World, which onsome occasions happened to be 20% and was thereforeknown as the quinto real. This tax (a fifth) was deduct-ed by the vessel owners or the barterers and was hand-ed over to the offices of the Royal Tax Collectors. How-ever, contraband and tax dodging was a frequent occur-rence just like in the cases of precious metals. There-fore, as detailed earlier, the tax rate was not a fixedrate, it being 20% in just a handful of cases. However,the depletion of mines and fishing grounds broughtabout a relative decrease in tax rates, since otherwise,the fiscal pressure would have acted as a deterrent tonewer explorations and exploitations. In many cases,the tax reduction and temporal fiscal concessionstogether amounted to less than the 20%, although fiscallanguage of the time continued to refer to it as thequinto real, which somehow complicates the evaluationof the production volumes from those figures (Bernal,1998).

There have been many references to the payments ofthe quinto real from the discovery or barter of pearlsright from the times of the first conquistadors. Thus,after the discovery of the Columbian fisheries, RodrigoBastidas on his return to Spain in 1502, paid the corre-sponding quinto real (Las Casas, 1995); Balboa likewisealso paid the quinto real for the pearls obtained fromPanama, as reclaimed by the King of Spain in a letter tohim in 1513 (Núñez de Balboa, 1988); a third case wasthat of Hernando de Soto who told a soldier that hewould pay the corresponding quinto real for the pearlthat he had found in an oyster, which he was eating atthe time, and which he had offered as gift to the wifeof the Conquistador (Vega, 1996); in fact, there wereTax officials travelling on this expedition whose job wasto separate one fifth of all the valuables obtained by theSpaniards. All quantities of pearl cargos that arrived inSpain on the different expeditions were registered inthe Treasury Register (Casa de Contratación de Sevilla),that is those sent to the King (quinto real) as well asthose sent to individuals, and therefore can serve as areference basis for estimating pearl production from theNew World.

The method of keeping the quinto real was not uni-form either since, at times, the fifth corresponded tothe amount of pearls obtained (Vega, 1996; Núñez deBalboa, 1988) and at other times to the fifth of the oys-ters obtained (Barco, 1989) before opening them, and

therefore, the amount of pearls that the Crown receivedvaried greatly depending upon the number of shells thatcontained pearls. It is quite clear from the above thatthe Tax Collector (Juez de Quintos) was authorised toproceed as he deemed fit.

PRODUCTIONS

Knowledge of pearl production from the colonies isalways an approximation. What is evident is that, virginfisheries discovered produced enormous quantities inthe first years of production. According to data fromCéspedes (1994), pearl production in the first five yearsin Nueva Cádiz, from the fisheries of the Margarita &Cubagua Islands, gave a total of 2,300 kg of pearls ofbetween 2-5 carats. This meant the extraction of about1,800 pearls per day. Pearl oysters were so abundant inthe Pearl Islands that it would have been rare to findinhabitants of Panama not using slaves in the fishery(Ulloa, 1990). The productions in California were alsospectacular at the start as has already been describedearlier. A chronicler from the time, Fernández deOviedo wrote in his book “Historia General y Natural delas Indias”, published in 1547, that the quinto real fromthe pearl fisheries amounted to more than 15,000ducats per year, which would mean an approximatedeclared production of 75,000 ducats per year, never-theless, the real value would be a lot higher.

The abundance of pearls in the New World meantthat they lost their character as an ornament for the


Figure 9. Another way of fishing pearl oysters anywhere in the sea and nomatter how deep (1623).


elite and were very popular, as mentioned by Acosta(1987) in 1590, that even the lowest classes in societywore chains made from them. Ulloa (1990) years lateraffirmed the use of pearls as an usual feminine orna-ment.

The Spaniards had known and eaten oysters in Spainas well as in the New World because of their abundantsupply. They were eaten cooked in Spain and one fre-quently was surprised to find a pearl while eatingalthough at the risk of loosing a tooth or teeth (Acosta,1987; Vega, 1996).

A part of the pearls extracted in America werebrought back to Europe but the greater majority wasleft behind in the colonies and their circulation depend-ed on the demand. Therefore, most of the pearls fromPanama were taken to Lima where they were sold andmade their way to the interior of the Viceroyalty ofPeru. The pearl cargos that came to Spain were concen-trated in certain important cities near the fishinggrounds, such as Cartagena de Indias (those that arrivedfrom the Margarita & Cubagua Islands and theColumbian coasts), Panama (Those that arrived from thePearl Islands) and Guadalajara (those that arrived fromCalifornia) from where they were transhipped to thepoint of concentration of the fleet that would return toSpain, most likely in La Havana.

There are many references of pearls being sent to theMother Country, which generally corresponded to thequinto real but also contained consignments sent byindividuals. To cite a few important examples amongstmany in the XVI century (Haring, 1979) are:

– In 1523, a vessel arrived from America with 600marcos (138 kg) of pearls which had been stolen bythe French pirate Jean Florin, and who was cap-tured in 1527 and hanged shortly after.

– In 1538, Blasco Nuñez de Vela s fleet brought backto the Casa de Contratación de Sevilla 208 ducatsof pearls from Cartagena as quinto real.

– In 1543, the fleet of Martín Alonso de los Ríos tookto Seville 9,211 ducats in pearls for the Royal Trea-sury.

– In 1556, the fleet of Alvar Sánchez de Avilésbrought back 17,585 ducats of pearls as quintoreal.

– In 1587, Acosta (1987) cites that on his voyage toSpain, the ship transported three boxes and 18marcos (4 kg) of pearls for the King, and sevensacks and 1,264 marcos (291 kg) of pearls for pri-vate individuals.

The fact that the pearls imported from America hadto bear their own specific tax (tasa de avería) is anoth-er data that proves that this merchandise was a wellknown one.

PRODUCTION YEAR QUINTO REAL EXTRAPOLATION

(20% tax rate)1503 - 1507 4.6 kg 23 kg

1508 4.2 kg 21 kg1513 3 sacks 15 sacks1514 3.0 kg 15 kg1515 2.9 kg 14 kg1516 11.2 kg & 5 pearls 56 kg1517 3.8 kg & 4 pearls 19 kg1518 71.2 kg & 615 pearls 356 kg1519 7.8 kg 39 kg1520 37.3 kg 186 kg

1526 - 1530 42.6 kg & 380 pearls 213 kg1530 - 1537 305.8 kg & 1,969 pearls 1,529 kg

Table 1. Estimation of total equivalent production of pearl for a tax rate of20% between 1503 and 1537.

When used with the right precautions, the knowledgeof the quinto real is interesting not only from the pointof view of tax collecting but also to obtain an estimateof pearl production from the New World, to which onewould have to add numbers from contraband. Thisassertion is valid when the quinto real quantities areexpressed as weight (marcos, ounces, etc.). When thequantities are expressed as monetary units (ducats,maravedís, etc.) it is practically impossible to estimatethe corresponding pearl production of these quantities,since the value of the pearls depended on their weight,and they increased exponentially with weight, togetherwith other characteristics which are difficult to quanti-fy such as (form, colour, iridescence, etc.) just like inpresent times (Arphe, 1985).

Table 1 reproduces slightly modified figures of

32

Figure 10. Hydroandric machine or suit to be worn underwater by a man,designed by Alejandro Durand (1720).

income from the Casa de Contratación de Sevillaexpressed in kg of pearls, between 1503 and 1537 (Har-ing, 1979) and an estimation of total equivalent produc-tion for a tax rate of 20%. The results do not fit wellwith the estimated indications in other work places,which only corroborates the importance of contraband,the exaggeration of pearl production data from somesources of the times, the variable percentage of thequinto real or the inconsistency of some of the data.

The amount of pearls exported as contraband with-out payment of the corresponding quinto real must havebeen important and even more after the entry of poten-tial Spanish rivals with possessions in the New World.Ships from these countries, laden with European goodswould sail along the coast exchanging their productswithout any form of control from the Spanish Adminis-tration. In the case of pearls, one can cite the case ofthe Dutch, who had a base in Curaçao and who tradedwith the ports of Riohacha, Maracaibo and La Guaira, byproviding black slaves and cloth in return for metals,emeralds and pearls (Malamud, 1995), or the many for-eigners who were involved with barter exchange to thenorth of La Hispaniola for animal skins, silver, gold,pearls and other valuable goods in exchange for basiccommodities that did not arrive regularly from Spain(Exquemelin, 1988).

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EXPLOITATION OF PEARL FISHERIES IN THE SPANISH … · garitifera a fresh water species inhabiting mountainous regions can produce real but badly formed pearls amongst its tissues