The tree's scientific name means "bloodwood" (haima being Greek for blood and xylon for wood).

Spain claimed all of Central and South America as its sovereign territory through the 17th and 18th centuries; despite this, English, Dutch, and French sailors recognized the value of logwood and set up camps to cut and collect the trees for shipment back to Europe.

Spain periodically sent privateers to capture the logwood cutters – for example, Juan Corso's 1680 cruise – sometimes in retaliation for buccaneer raids on Spanish cities.

[10] When Spanish forces ejected a great many hunters and logwood cutters in 1715, they flocked to Nassau and swelled the already-considerable numbers of pirates gathering there.

[13] Logwood cutting was profitable – "According to a government report, in the four years 1713 to 1716, some 4,965 tons of logwood were exported to England at not less than £60,000 per annum" – but only brought in a fraction of the profits from tobacco and other legal exports, and "was always a minor industry carried on by a few hundred ex-seamen and pirates in a remote corner of the globe".