During the seventeenth century there were a great number of pirates who committed serious ravages upon the settlements in the West Indies and upon the mainland adjacent, and whose expeditions extended even to the coasts of Chili and Peru. These men were called buccaneers; and the meaning of the word gives some intimation of the origin of the buccaneers themselves.

At an earlier day, many of the settlers in the island of Hispaniola, or Hayti, made their living by hunting cattle and preserving the meat by the boucan process. These hunters used to form parties of five or six in number, and arming themselves with musket, bullet bag, powderhorn and knife, they took their way on foot through the tangled forests of the country. When they killed one of the wild cattle, its flesh was cut into long strips and laid upon gratings, constructed of green sticks, where it was exposed to the smoke of a wood fire, which was fed by the fat and waste parts of the animals. The grating upon which the meat was laid was called a boucan, and the hunters were called boucaniers. Later these hunters were driven from Hayti by the Spaniards and took refuge in some of the neighboring islands, where they revenged themselves for some of the ill-treatment by preying upon the possessions of their oppressors wherever they could find them.

At the same time affairs in Europe brought France and England on the one hand, and Spain on the other, into collision; and as a result, the Spanish possessions in America became the object of French and English attacks. Accordingly, those two nations were inclined to look with a lenient eye upon the depredations committed by the buccaneers, so long as the property of the English and French was respected. As a natural consequence, many of the disreputable and daring characters of both nations joined themselves with the original buccaneers, whom they soon made as corrupt as themselves. Eventually these pirates increased so in number, and grew so daring in their operations that it was necessary for all nations to unite in putting them down; and by that time, the word buccaneer had come to mean pirate in its worst sense.

From time to time there arose among the buccaneers leaders whose success brought a large following from men of other companies, and in one or two instances a particularly strong man gathered about him almost all the men who were willing to engage in such enterprises. At such times the pirates formed a very powerful organization, and none of the smaller cities were proof against their ravages. Whether the band was large or small, however, the method of operation was always practically the same.

Naturally there were preliminary meetings in which a few men discussed plans and decided upon an expedition of some sort. Then a preliminary meeting was held at which the object of attack was determined, funds were raised, officers were elected, and the smaller details of the expedition were determined. Then articles of agreement were drawn up, signed by the buccaneers, and usually kept with remarkable exactness. In conformity with these agreements, the spoils of the expeditions were distributed among the individuals according to rank, each individual of the ordinary class receiving one share of the plunder, while the officers were given from two to eight, according to their position and influence.

It was customary, however, before any allotment was made to the individuals, to set aside a certain portion of the spoils to be distributed among those who had suffered some injury in the expeditions, and in case any of the members died, that member's share was distributed to his heirs. Besides this, there were special rewards given to the first man who should sight a prize, to the first man to board a ship, and to other men who were noticeably brave and successful.

It was quite customary for two buccaneers to swear brotherhood each to the other, to make written agreements to stand by each other during life, to sign these agreements with their own blood; and then to keep these curious partnerships to the end. There are numerous touching accounts of the devotion with which a friend often followed the fortunes of his sworn brother. In fact, the buccaneers usually dealt honestly and fairly with one another, and in the same way with the Indians, notwithstanding the fact that they were bloodthirsty, cruel and heartless in their treatment of the captives they made on their expeditions.

The usual place of meeting for the buccaneers was upon the west end of the island of Tortuga, which lies off the northern coast of Hayti, although the English pirates after 1654 met on the island of Jamaica. The traders and planters of these islands and of others in the vicinity were not averse to having the buccaneers among them, for no sooner had the latter returned from a successful expedition than they spent, with lavish hand, the money which they had made.

While it is true that between these forays the pirates were given to the wildest excesses, and were anything but a desirable addition to a community, yet there are always plenty of people who are willing to profit by the wastefulness and dissipations of others. Many of the buccaneers, accordingly, had homes which they visited in the intervals of their cruises, where, although their business was well known, they were in a certain sense respected. However, before the pirates were wholly subdued, they had become less and less acceptable residents in any community, and finally were at enmity with every soul not in their own occupation.

That these buccaneers had a large amount of physical bravery, goes without saying; for only a man who feared nothing could undertake such apparently hopeless tasks as these wild plunderers carried to a successful conclusion. In fact many times they were successful for the reason that the vessels or towns they attacked deemed themselves secure from attack by so small a force as the pirates could muster. They were inured to hardship and willing to undergo any amount of pain and suffering, if they could but gather the riches for which they sought. The accounts of their adventures are filled with description of daring deeds, which if undertaken in a better cause would have made the men famous for all time.

The beginning of these expeditions may be placed at about 1625, and the last important cruise of the pirates was made in 1688. After the latter date they gradually dispersed, and the buccaneers appeared no more. In 1664, Mansveldt, who was one of the ablest of the pirate chiefs, conceived the idea of forming an independent government with a flag of its own, and locating his capital at Santa Katalina. His early death prevented him from realizing his purpose; and though his successor, the famous Henry Morgan, attempted to carry out the plan, it met with such opposition from the Governor of Jamaica that it was definitely abandoned. It was under the leadship of this same Morgan that the buccaneers reached the height of their reputation, and executed their most daring and successful raids. Among Morgan's performances was the capture of the town of Puerto del Principe in Cuba, and the cities of Porto Bello, Maracaibo and Gibraltar in South America. His greatest exploit, however, occurred in 1670, when at the head of the fleet of thirty-seven ships of all sizes manned by more than two thousand pirates, he captured the forts on the Chagres River, marched across the Isthmus of Panama, and after ten days of incredible hardship and suffering, fighting against a force of twenty-five hundred men, captured the city of Panama. After a stay of about three weeks he returned across the Isthmus.

So unsatisfactory in value were the spoils of this expedition, that Morgan was accused of embezzling some portion, and in consequence became very unpopular with his followers.

However, as this expedition was made against the Spanish, it received some approval from the English; and Morgan, abandoning his career as a pirate, accepted the lieutenant-governorship of Jamaica, and was subsequently made governor of that island, in which capacity he did much toward suppressing piracy in the Caribbean Sea.

We have two notable accounts of the deeds of the early buccaneers. One was published in 1678 in Amsterdam by John Esquemeling, who wrote from observation, as he was himself one of the pirates, and present at many of the conflicts which he describes. The second account is the journal of Basil Ringrose, who, as a pirate, took part in Sharp's voyage around South America, and was finally killed in a plundering raid.