Ayiti's scale and Spain's limits: Las Casas wrote of 3+ million people on the island; Cook and Borah estimated about 8 million in 1492; other scholars estimate…

SUMMARYAyiti's scale and Spain's limits: Las Casas wrote of 3+ million people on the island; Cook and Borah estimated about 8 million in 1492; other scholars estimate hundreds of thousands to about a million (range debated; low counts rest on Spanish counts of people they controlled = hostile witness). The 1514 repartimiento's ~26,000 was a labor head-count after 20+ years of war, massacre and disease, NOT the population. Spain never controlled the whole island: Bahoruco held by Enriquillo (to 1533) and then the maroons for centuries (Le Maniel 1785); the Devastaciones de Osorio (1605-1606), in which Spain forcibly emptied the north and west coasts it couldn't control, opened the west to the buccaneers and France. Large coastal towns and 100+-person canoes described by the chroniclers; En Bas Saline among the largest Taino sites. Record. "Massive port cities" = Open (test: LiDAR surveys of Hispaniola, like the Maya and Amazon discoveries).