Chapter 726: Second Kingdom Exploration, Fleet Meeting, Cuban Population

“How will the Kingdom’s manpower left in Cuba get along with the simple Taíno people?”

Upon hearing this question, Priest Tomat touched his chin and roughly guessed Chihuaco's position. He was noncommittal about the old militiaman's soft-heartedness. He looked around at the woods and fields with blazing ambition flashing in his eyes!

On its south side, there are black and gray stretches of iron mines and sparse and low forests. On its north side, beyond the hills two miles away, is a flat and open coastal plain. The plains are covered with long grass, and the trees are not tall due to the impact of the hurricane. And beneath the long grass is fertile land that is easy to cultivate. The fertile land on the seaside, coupled with the connection to the iron ore belt, several criss-crossing streams and rivers, and good transportation conditions along the coast. There is no doubt that this is a real "fertile soil" whether it is farming, mining or trade. !

"The kingdom must control this iron mine and the entire coast. The nearby Taino villages must supply food and labor. And most importantly, the belief in the main god must be ignited in the nearby Taino tribe and become the only supreme light. !”

Priest Tomat looked calm as he declared what he needed to achieve. He had no hostility toward the simple and kind-hearted Taíno people, and even had some appreciation for them. But in order to complete the mission of the kingdom and spread the faith of the Lord God as quickly as possible, he has no scruples at all about whether to use force.

"Haha! The Taíno people are so weak. If we want to control this coast and spread the faith of the Lord God, isn't that easy?!"

Hearing the conversation between the two, the gray earth warrior Puap burst out laughing. He patted his chest confidently and looked to the northwest, with a cold flash in his eyes.

More than twenty miles to the northwest is the Mayari region where they set out. The large Taino tribe had about three thousand unarmed and weak villagers, as well as one or two hundred unarmored militiamen armed with wooden spears and short bows. The entire tribe was almost defenseless and had not seen much blood.

As for the kingdom's fleet, there were a total of four hundred warriors, most of whom had been in battle for a long time and were killing people like crazy. The warriors are equipped with refined leather armor or even bronze armor, two copper spears and copper axes, one or two hundred large bows, and several squatting tiger cannons whose gunpowder is damp but can emit thunder. With such overwhelming force, it would be easy to defeat any large Taíno tribe on the island of Cuba!

"We will go back now, assemble the warriors and sailors on the ship, and distribute bronze spears and armor. Then, let me and the guards wear bronze armor as the vanguard of the assault! Tonight, we can break through Mayari The big tribe, capture all the men and women!"

Speaking of this, Puap's eyes showed pure murderous intent. He can also be regarded as a senior warrior who was killed in a mountain of corpses and a sea of ​​blood. In his eyes, the lives of ordinary people are nothing at all.

"Then, we first beheaded all the chiefs, leaders, and sages who had the final say in the tribe! Then we made the remaining captives swear a blood oath and convert to the Lord God. Those who were unwilling to obey were all beheaded! Next! , and then let Ding Zhuang, who had surrendered, burn all the Zemi tablets in the village with his own hands, and finally, he took them with him to attack other Taino villages, with blood on his hands and no way out. "

"Haha, the Lord God has witnessed! As long as you give me half a year, I can attack and conquer all the Taino villages within hundreds of miles around the Cuban Snakehead! And all the conquered Tainos will also convert to the Lord God! "

Hearing Puap's harsh words, Chihuaco's eyebrows jumped and his old face twitched.

"Damn Puap! I knew you couldn't say anything nice, and all you could think about was sticks."

What Puap said was completely the brutal approach of General Black Wolf. It's feasible, but it will take a torrent of heads and mountains of corpses to make the conquered tribe awed to the core. If all the Taíno villages within hundreds of miles were to be destroyed in this way, the hundreds of thousands of Taínos in the Cuban snakeheads would probably be halved.

Moreover, in Taíno villages, there were actually no sharp conflicts between nobles, warriors and civilians that were common in Mesoamerican tribes. The kingdom can subvert order by killing the upper echelons, and it will not win many leaders from the lower levels.

"The Taíno villagers have never shown any hostility towards the kingdom. Their clean eyes have never been as blood-red as those on the plateau."

The old militiaman lowered his eyes, thinking about the kindness and hospitality of the Taino villagers along the way, and finally couldn't sit still. The reason why he raised such a question at this time was because he was keenly aware that as the Kingdom's fleet was the first to establish a foothold, everyone's choice at this time would officially open the diplomatic relations between the Lake Kingdom and the various tribes of Cuba.

If it is true, as Puap said, to use force and killing to push the Taino tribes to the opposite side of the kingdom, then successive waves of kingdom warriors will continue to get along with each other in this way and promote the bloody process until they are completely used Conquer the entire Cuban Snake Island with the means of killing!

And in this process, tens of thousands of Taíno people will inevitably die, Taíno villages large and small will be destroyed, and the tranquility and peace of various tribes in Cuba will be completely broken. All of this is against his true intention and makes It was hard for him to accept, and he even felt guilty.

"O God! Since I have the power to choose and influence, I can't watch all this happen! The kingdom and the Taino tribes should be like corn and beans surrounding each other, promoting each other's growth, and they should never be between hungry wolves and The captured hares were killed and gnawed unilaterally.”

Chihuaco, the veteran militiaman, lowered his head and pondered for a while before speaking slowly. He did not immediately refute Puap's words, but looked at Mecat, the divine priest who had not spoken, and raised a new question.

"Dear Priest Mecat, you are good at statistics and have made detailed observations of various tribes in Cuba. In your opinion, how many tribes are there on this Cuban Snake Island?"

"Huh? The tribal population on the island of Cuba?"

Hearing Chihuaco's sudden inquiry, Priest Mecat was startled. As a divine priest who masters technology, he has a gentler personality. In the discussions of the fleet leader, he usually only speaks on navigation issues and mineral resources issues, and does not participate in other fleet decisions. However, with his status as a second-level divine priest, he is indeed enough to occupy an important place in the discussion and voting.

"During the trip, we circled half of Cuba's Snake Island. We heard about or came into contact with nearly thirty large tribes with thousands of people, as well as countless small tribes with thousands of people."

Priest Mecat pinched his fingers and calculated silently in his mind. In fact, along the way, he did keep recording the size of the tribes along the way, and he had a rough estimate of the population on the island of Cuba.

"The length of Cuba's Snake Island from east to west is at least 2,500 miles, and the distance between the north and south coasts is between 200 and 400 miles. The entire island is warm all year round, with abundant precipitation and fertile land. Most of the land can The yield of the cassava crop is astonishing. Without the need to apply fertilizer, the yield can reach more than 500 kilograms per mu."

After a bunch of analysis, Priest Mekart paused and gave a preliminary conclusion.

"This fertile Cuban Snake Island has a conservative estimate of a tribal population of 400,000-600,000! And if the entire island is fully developed like the Mexica Valley, it shouldn't be difficult to feed 2 million people!"

After hearing Priest Mecat's conclusion, everyone nodded in agreement. Along the way, the richness of Cuba’s Snake Island has indeed become deeply rooted in people’s hearts.

In fact, this large island with 110,000 square kilometers is only slightly smaller than England with 130,000 square kilometers. The entire island has a savanna climate suitable for farming. More than two-thirds of the island's area is made up of long grass plains and low-tree grasslands that can be reclaimed as good cultivated land, rather than the difficult and dangerous tropical jungles found on other Caribbean islands.

From an agricultural perspective, "Cuba" is, as its name implies, "a fertile soil of abundance." In later generations, Cuba, even though it faced a blockade and a serious shortage of agricultural machinery and fertilizers, and large tracts of cultivated land were used to grow sugar cane, it still supported a population of 12 million people! From the perspective of epidemic disease, Cuba, which is dominated by savanna, is also the only place in the entire Caribbean Islands that can control the spread of malaria.

"Well, the tribal population is 400,000-600,000. To put it simply, it is 500,000."

The old militiaman Chihuaco straightened up slightly, looked at Puap seriously, and asked in a deep voice.

"Lao Pu, there are 500,000 Taínos on the island of Cuba, more than the bees in the woods! And the fleet has only more than 200 people left!. You are really sure that with the force of 200 people, we can go Conquer hundreds of thousands of Taínos?”

"Huh? What about me? Lao Qi, that's not quite right, is it? We are fighting one tribe at a time."

"I'm not done yet, listen to me!"

Chihuaco waved his hand, interrupting the somewhat confused Puap, and continued in a deep voice.

"Even if we can win this battle, how many soldiers will die? And even if the Tainos are not good at fighting, won't they flee? Where do we have enough manpower to watch them? If they flee into How many people do we have to chase them inland? What if we catch them? If they are captured, why bother to catch them? "

"What's more, how many thousands of Taino villagers will be killed in such a bloody conquest? His Highness once said that human heads are not weeds. If they are cut off, they will not grow back. The Taino people are not hostile to the kingdom. As long as the method is proper, With enough patience, you could have surrounded us like string beans and become a devout believer in the Lord God! .Well, Priest Mecat, what do you think?”

Chihuaco glanced at the missionary priest Tomat who was listening attentively, and then asked the divine priest Mecat. Priest Mecat thought for a moment and realized that he actually had a good impression of the Tainos, so he nodded in agreement.

"That's right! Captain Chihuaco, what you said makes sense! The Taíno people are numerous and have a very gentle temperament. We should not treat them as enemies, but turn them into subjects of the kingdom!" "

Priest Mecat has a gentle temperament. Although he rarely speaks out, his status on the ship is not low. At this time, he made suggestions, and the weight was still higher than that of Puap who had made a mistake. The exploration captain Chihuaco, plus the divine priest Mecat, are two important votes that others cannot ignore.

Priest Tomat bit his mouth, looked at the old militiaman Chihuaco, and finally asked aloud.

"Dear Captain Chihuaco, you said that with the right method, the Tainos can be conquered peacefully. So, what is your method?"