Columbus: The Four Voyages, 1492-1504 (29 page)

On the scene, Columbus reported to Ferdinand and Isabella that “
Cibao
is the Indian name, which in our language means ‘quarry.’ It is a huge region, the land very rough, all the mountains and peaks quite high, and all or most of them not very steep. It has no trees, but it is not without vegetation because of its exceptional fertility; the grass here grows like a weed, thicker and higher than a field of barley at the best time of year, and in forty days it grows as high as a horse’s saddle, and it is always thick and green if it is not burnt. The ground below all those mountains and peaks is full of stones as large and round as those on a riverbank or a beach, and all or most of them are bluish.” The Cibao’s pure water delighted him; it was “clear, delicious, cold and not harsh like those waters that harm people and make them sick; it dissolves kidney stones, and many were cured.” Even better, “All the creeks and streams, large and small, have gold nuggets, in the water or nearby where the water has washed them out. I believe, or rather, I am certain, that this gold comes from the mines on the peaks and mountains, and during the rainy season the water carries it into the streams.”

 

The gold, and the men who would mine it, required protection. Columbus decided it was time to establish another fort in the heart of the Cibao. On a hilltop, they erected a small settlement with the intimidating name Fortaleza, or Fortress. But that was not their final destination. “After advancing almost seventy-two miles from the city into the gold region,” said Peter Martyr, “Columbus decided to build a fortress on the bank of a large river on a high hill, so that there they could gradually and safely explore the region’s hidden places. This fort he named Santo Tomás,” after Thomas the apostle, the original “Doubting Thomas” who refused to believe in the Resurrection until he felt Jesus’ wounds. This name was, perhaps, Columbus’s way of defying all the skeptics who refused to believe this valley produced gold.

Attracted by the industrious Spaniards, Indians gathered in the Cibao, seeking bells and other trinkets as eagerly as the white men sought gold. The Admiral obliged, so long as the Indians brought gold. Some nuggets were so large that Columbus assumed the Indians had melted smaller pieces of gold to form large lumps. Columbus held the nuggets in his hand, as an old Indian man told him there were others as “big as walnuts,” or even bigger. “When I received the two nuggets from this old man,” Columbus wrote, “I was most happy and indicated that they were very nice and gave him a bell. He received it with a sigh of satisfaction expressing greater contentment than someone being given a fine city.” These two nuggets, he said, were as nothing “compared with the others in his land.” The old man stooped and picked up several stones, claiming that he had nuggets of gold that were even larger. “They ranged in size from that of a walnut to a big orange,” Columbus exclaimed in wonder. But matters were not quite that simple.

Believing that he was close to finding greater amounts of gold, the Admiral “sent a young nobleman with a few armed soldiers to explore the [Cibao] region,” wrote Ferdinand. He returned telling fantastic stories of “gold nuggets the size of a man’s head . . . found on a riverbank.” Curiously, Columbus never followed up, preferring to whet the appetite of his Sovereigns for more voyages. He had his excuses prepared—the distance from the Cibao to the ships was too great, he lacked proper gold-mining equipment, the gold would be there when he got back—but, given the overwhelming importance of gold to Columbus and to Spain, his account is deeply suspect. He had indeed found gold, but not the incredible amounts of which he boasted.

 

Returning to La Isabela on April 1, just before Easter, Columbus discovered that a group of discontented Spaniards had coalesced around the unlikely figure of Bernal Díaz de Pisa, the fleet’s comptroller. In Spain, he had been a constable in the royal court. Now he was a rebel, and he was immediately arrested.

While Díaz de Pisa was confined aboard ship, it emerged that he had fabricated a catalogue of outrageous accusations against the Admiral and concealed it in a buoy marking an anchor. Even Columbus’s harsh critic, Bartolomé de Las Casas, expressed dismay at Díaz’s treachery: “I cannot imagine just how the Admiral could have committed all the crimes and injuries listed in the short space of two months that he had been out there.” Despite Columbus’s intercession, rumors of his cruelty toward his own men spread throughout Castile. “I have read the letters he sent to the king and queen in which he explains that he was obliged by law to hand out the punishments he did,” Las Casas noted, “which is an indication that he did punish some of them,” but the cleric sided with Columbus, for once. “Criminals are always demanding to go unpunished,” he wrote, “and always claim their actions are justified and that it is they who are being victimized.”

 

By this time, the formerly unified expedition had split into three parts. First, a small delegation of Spaniards painstakingly constructed the fortress known as La Isabela on the northern coast of what is now the Dominican Republic. Second, Columbus and his loyalists searched through the gold mines of Cibao. Along the way, they confronted Indians who were not allied with Guacanagarí and potential mutineers among the crew. Meanwhile, the third and largest contingent returned to Cadiz, under the command of Antonio de Torres.

Giambattista Strozzi, writing from Cadiz, catalogued the fleet’s flora and fauna snatched from the Indies, including gold, spices, parrots, and other fowl. Strozzi also wrote excitedly of “many brown men with wide faces like Tartars, with hair extending to the middle of their shoulders, large and very quick and fierce, and they eat human flesh and children and castrated men whom they keep and fatten like capons, and then they eat them. They are called cannibals.”

Guillermo Coma, the nobleman traveling with Columbus, remarked that they were accomplished mariners, traveling from island to island in canoes, “even as far as a thousand miles in search of plunder.” And they were ferocious. “They hand over the female captives as slaves to their womenfolk, or make use of them to satisfy their lust. Children borne by the captives are eaten like the captives.” It might have been for this reason that the Indian women were quick to resort to self-inflicted abortions.

Despite these repugnant practices, Guillermo Coma considered the Caribs “intelligent, sharp-witted, and shrewd,” qualities that gave him hope that “they could easily be led to adopt our laws and manner of life, when they realize that our manners are more mild and our manners more civilized than theirs. It is hoped, therefore, that they will in a short time abandon their savage character as a result both of instruction from us and an occasional threat that, unless they abstain from human flesh, they will be reduced to bondage and carried in chains to Spain”—a “civilized” society with terrors of its own, and which would all but exterminate the Caribs within a few years.

 

The Admiral marked the three-month anniversary of his fleet’s arrival in these islands on a note of nervous rapprochement with the Indians, whom they observed at close range. “All of them,” said Chanca, “go naked like they were born, except for the women of this island, who keep their waists covered by means of either a piece of cotton fabric that girds their hips or weeds and leaves. As an embellishment, both men and women paint themselves, some in black, others in white and red, in such an imaginative way that seeing them will make one truly laugh; their heads are shaved in patches with such various lock patterns that it is impossible to describe. In sum, all that in Spain we might wish to do on a madman’s head would here . . . be an object of refined attention.”

By this time, Columbus’s men felt safe enough to make a practice of sleeping on dry land rather than in their leaky, crowded ships. Although they feared another massacre, their encounters with the inhabitants proved peaceful enough, and even enjoyable. “We saw many things worthy of amazement: ‘wool-producing’ trees”—cotton shrubs—“and of great quality, too, so good that those who know the art affirm they could make good clothes with it,” Chanca said with satisfaction. And he found “very good mastic from the mastic tree,” the resin with which Columbus was familiar from his apprenticeship in the Aegean.

Concerning the Indians’ diet, the doctor approvingly noted a “bread made from a weed root” (cassava), and yams, which he considered a source of “excellent nourishment.” Guillermo Coma raved about them: “When eaten raw, as in salads, they taste like parsnips; when roasted, like chestnuts. When cooked with pork, you would think you were eating squash. You will never eat anything more delicious.” Michele de Cuneo, on the other hand, favored parrots. “The flesh tastes like that of the starling. There are also wild pigeons, some of them white crested, which are delicious to eat.” Not everything that grew on the island attained this high culinary standard. Chanca noted that the Indians routinely consumed “snakes, lizards, spiders, and worms found all over the land,” a stomach-turning regimen that made “these people more similar to animals, as far as I am concerned.”

 

By the end of March, La Isabela teetered on the verge of collapse. The physical labor prescribed by Columbus drove the overworked, undisciplined men to the brink of exhaustion. Nearly all the settlement’s inhabitants were seriously ill and starving. The little food they had rotted in the heat and humidity. Columbus blamed the ships’ captains, who he claimed had neglected to take necessary precautions. He pressed the demoralized survivors—everyone from hidalgos to servants, and even clerics—into service to construct a canal and watermill to grind wheat. Under this regimen, gentlemen had to cook their own meals, if they could find anything edible. The sick received a single egg and a pot of stewed chickpeas, a meager ration considered sufficient to sustain five patients. Death stalked every man at the settlement, including the nobles who had never before had to cope with deprivation.

To enforce his will, Columbus constantly threatened violence. He agonized over how to portray his inglorious efforts before the court of Castile, where jealous bureaucrats waited to discredit him. Success for Columbus meant, above all, identifying with divine will, but for the time being he was in danger of losing the way. Accusations of Columbus’s cruelty and “hatred for Spanish,” in Las Casas’s words, gained credence in the royal court—“accusations that gradually wore him down, ensured he never knew a day’s happiness through the rest of his life, and sowed the seeds of his eventual fall.”

Columbus and his backers were coming to terms with the fatal calculus of discovery. Despite strenuous efforts to ascribe his motives and deeds to a higher power, the quest remained intensely personal, especially when Columbus confronted sickness, suffering, and the prospect of death. At times like these, he seemed to purchase glory with the suffering of his crew members. The first voyage’s unlikely success emboldened Columbus to believe that establishing trade with China could be swift and painless, but that no longer appeared true. It was one thing, he realized, to visit a strange harbor, drop anchor, ask the priests on board to bless their cause, and sail away when the wind and tide permitted, another to establish a permanent, selfsustaining settlement: that was the difference between discovering an empire and maintaining it. Empire building required an innovative and different skill set, as essential as the navigational instincts and abilities he had spent a lifetime acquiring. It meant adding the skills of military commander, merchant, politician, and even spiritual leader—all roles he was barely qualified to play. Grumble though they did, threatening mutiny and retribution for perceived slights, no one else among the hundreds of men on the voyage’s roster displayed an aptitude for them or was willing to risk taking them on.

But there was worse to come.

 

“With the Admiral on the very brink of his tribulations and anguish,” a messenger from Fort Santo Tomás appeared with alarming news. The Indians on whom the Spaniards had come to rely were abandoning their settlements. A warrior named Caonabó was vowing to kill every Christian. Roused from his torpor, Columbus immediately assembled seventy of his ablest men to protect the fort. He appointed Alonso de Ojeda to command another group, with orders to proceed to Fort Santo Tomás, which they would use as a staging area to aid the surrounding settlements “in a show of the strength and power of the Christians, which might cow the Indians into learning to obey.”

Energetic and responsive, Ojeda ingratiated himself with Columbus and his adjutants, but the decision to put the reckless young man in charge soon proved questionable. Las Casas paid tribute to Ojeda’s charisma, and to his fatal flaw. “He was slight of body but very well proportioned and comely, handsome in bearing, his face good-looking and his eyes very large, one of the swiftest of men,” the
historiador
sighed. “All the bodily perfections that a man could have seemed to be united in him.” For instance, “he was very devoted to Our Lady,” and yet, “he was always the first to draw blood whenever there was a war or a quarrel.” His fiery temperament would soon pose problems for Columbus.