Columbus: The Four Voyages, 1492-1504 (47 page)

Each of these expeditions both validated and threatened Columbus’s voyages of exploration. They demonstrated that it was not so difficult, after all, to sail west from Spain or Portugal across the Atlantic and, thanks to the Gulf Stream and the trade winds, land somewhere in the Americas. Locating a specific island, in this era of primitive navigation, was next to impossible, as even the Admiral of the Ocean Sea learned. With all its promise and challenges, the enterprise he had begun gradually overtook him, like the giant tsunami, irresistible and all-encompassing.

 

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n his voyage, Ojeda brought along a forty-five-year-old Florentine named Amerigo Vespucci, the most enigmatic explorer of his era. By writing or inspiring a letter about a mythical “first voyage” of 1497 preceding his actual debut as an explorer, Vespucci guaranteed himself a controversial reputation. Las Casas, for instance, held him responsible for giving the impression that “Amerigo alone, with no other and before anyone else, had discovered it”—the mainland that came to be known, for no good reason, as America. As a result of Amerigo’s “very great fraud,” Las Casas acidly observed, “it is apparent then how much injustice was done to the admiral Christopher Columbus.” Attempting to right the balance, the chronicler noted, “It was more his due that the mainland be called Columbus, de Colón, or Colombo, after the man who discovered it, or Tierra Santa or Tierra de Gracia, which he himself named it, and not America after Amerigo.” But it was not to be. The name “America” stuck to the continent, beginning with the huge, composite
Universalis cosmographia
, a printed wall map of the world by Martin Waldseemüller, published in April 1507, the same year that the cartographer made corresponding globe gores—flat, approximately triangular sections designed to wrap around a ball. This is the first map to include the name “America.” For it, Waldseemüller and his assistant, Matthias Ringmann, drew on several sources, including Columbus, for their depiction of the world at the height of the age of exploration, but they decided to award Vespucci preeminence. When it became apparent that Vespucci’s role had been vastly overstated, Waldseemüller revised his map and renamed parts of it Terra Incognita; by this time, about a thousand copies of the original had been distributed, too late to correct the misimpression.

Although he gave his name to the continent that Columbus visited before him, Amerigo Vespucci’s exploits did not obliterate his predecessor’s contribution. Columbus had made such a large impression on the events of his time, and was so well known, if not admired, that the name “America” does not summon the legacy of Vespucci, but the exploits of Columbus.

 

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merigo Vespucci began his career not at sea but in finance, working for both Lorenzo de’ Medici and his son Giovanni. In the year Columbus made his first voyage, Vespucci had been detailed to the Medici bank in Seville. Cultivating Portuguese as well as Spanish connections, he received an invitation from King Manuel of Portugal to observe a number of voyages bound for South America between 1499 and 1500. One of them, led by Pedro Alvares Cabral, bound for the Cape of Good Hope and India, visited what is now Brazil in 1500. According to the terms of a modified Treaty of Tordesillas, Portugal was entitled to this land. Then, in a situation parallel to the one in which Columbus found himself with respect to the islands making up the Indies, the Portuguese king wished to learn if this newly discovered land, Brazil, was an island or part of the same continent that Columbus had already visited. Another voyage would be required to obtain the answer.

For now, Vespucci, despite his advanced age, benefited from his prestigious connections and arranged to sail with Ojeda’s fleet, “but I do not know whether as a pilot or as a man trained in navigation and learned in cosmography,” Las Casas confessed. “And even though Amerigo stresses that the king of Castile”—that is, Ferdinand—“put the fleet together, and that they went to discover at his command, it is not so.” Instead, a small group of investors “pestered the king and queen for a license to go discover and trade.” With the tremendous advantage of Columbus’s hard-won chart, his pilots, and sailors, Ojeda stood ready to capitalize on their hunger for empire. He knew about the “Indies,” and he even knew about Columbus’s much more recent discoveries of Paria, Trinidad, and the Dragon’s Mouth. Ojeda took care not to challenge Columbus’s claim to have visited the region first; he wanted to be among the subsequent visitors included in its bounty. Imitation was the shortest route to wealth.

As a competitor supported by the Spanish crown, Ojeda posed a graver threat to Columbus’s legitimacy than the scheming Francisco Roldán. Believing that Columbus could be assailed with impunity, Ojeda resorted to causing “all other mischief he could,” including spreading a false rumor that Queen Isabella “was at death’s door and that on her death the Admiral would be without a protector.” At that point, Ojeda “could do what injury he pleased to the Admiral.”

Treasonous sentiments like these were calculated to inflame Columbus’s old adversary Roldán. To Ojeda’s dismay, Roldán, having made peace with the Admiral, gathered a force of twenty-six men to pursue their new common enemy, Ojeda, who had taken up residence in an Indian village in Hispaniola. Energized, Roldán searched for his prey by night, but word of his mission reached Ojeda, who came out to confront his adversary.

Posing as a supplicant, Ojeda feebly explained that he had taken refuge on Hispaniola only because his supplies had run out; he meant injury to none. He distracted the skeptical Roldán with an account of his voyage, claiming he had explored six hundred leagues of coastline extending from Paria; survived a furious battle with Indians, who wounded twenty Christians; and yet despite these tribulations, he had bagged “stags, rabbits, tiger skins and paws,” examples of which he displayed to Roldán. Refashioning his agenda, Ojeda claimed he would depart immediately to deliver a full report of his exploits to Columbus in Santo Domingo.

Chaos threatened to overwhelm other parts of the island empire. Columbus and his brother crisscrossed the island throughout much of 1499, avoiding peril until the end. “The day after Christmas Day, 1499,” wrote Bartholomew, “all having left me, I was attacked by the Indians and bad Christians, and was placed in such extremity that fleeing death, I took to sea in a small caravel.” In his vulnerable state, Bartholomew sought God’s protection. “Then Our Lord aided me, saying, ‘Man of little faith, do not fear, I am with thee.’ And he dispersed my enemies, and showed me how I might fulfill my vows.”

 

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jeda’s encounter with Roldán occurred in late September 1499, but not until February 1500 did Ojeda set sail for Xaraguá, Roldán’s former haunt. On arrival, Ojeda did all he could to supplant Roldán, trying to convince his former supporters that Ferdinand and Isabella had actually appointed him as a minder to Columbus, “lest the Admiral do something harmful to the royal interests.” To make his claim more appealing, he insisted that the Sovereigns had ordered Columbus to pay those who had served the crown, but Columbus had stubbornly refused to comply, or so Ojeda argued, and he offered his services “to lead them to Santo Domingo to force him to pay up immediately; afterward they could throw the Admiral out of the island dead or alive.”

Ojeda’s scheme won the support of many former rebels. Under cover of night, he formed a group of the most insistent, or desperate, to attack the others. Ferdinand Columbus related that “there were dead and wounded on both sides.” Those who emerged from the fray on Ojeda’s side concluded that Roldán had betrayed them. Now loyal only to Ojeda, and his particular brand of mayhem, the misguided insurgents planned to capture Roldán, who learned of the conspiracy and “marched with strong force to punish Ojeda and crush the revolt.” Afraid for his life, Ojeda took refuge aboard his ships, where he negotiated with Roldán, who had retreated to
his
ship. They bickered farcically about where to anchor the vessels, “each fearing to place himself in the power of the other.”

Ojeda refused to leave his ship. Roldán proposed to parlay there with him, so long as Ojeda sent a boat to take him. After Roldán and his men climbed aboard the vessel, they attacked Ojeda’s loyalists. When they had taken control of the boat, they rowed to shore and safety. Humbled, Ojeda realized he had to negotiate with Roldán as best he could.

When the two adversaries finally met, Ojeda apologized for his excesses and vowed to release several of Roldán’s men who had been taken hostage. In exchange for these concessions, he pleaded for a “boat and crew.” Without it, “he faced certain ruin, having no other boat fit for use,” in Ferdinand’s account. Conscious of his former status as a rebel, Roldán wanted only to rid himself and the island of Hispaniola of Ojeda, without giving him grievances to carry back to Spain and the Sovereigns, and so he agreed to the request, on condition that Ojeda and his men depart by a certain date. And to make certain that Ojeda complied, he “kept a strong guard ashore.”

The leaders and usurpers had changed places. Roldán found himself in the position formerly occupied by Columbus, trying to foil the designs of Ojeda, who played the rebellious role once embraced by Roldán. But none of the men had grown wiser as a result of the conflict, only more cautious and wily. The three-way tussle was symptomatic of the sense of decline afflicting the Enterprise of the Indies; no one even pretended to invoke religious or political ideals anymore.

 

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oldán and Columbus believed they had rid themselves of Ojeda and other troublemakers. But, Ferdinand observed, “just as a bad weed is not so easily uprooted that it will not grow again, so men of evil habits are with difficulty kept from relapsing into their own old courses after Ojeda had sailed away.” The latest threat came from a troublemaker named Fernando de Guevara, who resented Roldán for preventing Guevara’s marriage to a young woman who happened to be the daughter of Anacaona, “the principal queen of Xaraguá.” With Roldán married to another Indian woman, it became increasingly likely that the affiliations of the women of Hispaniola lay behind this conflict. The longer the Europeans remained on the island, the more their loyalties aligned with their hearts rather than their homeland.

Now Guevara, plotting to supplant Roldán “as lord of misrule,” in Ferdinand’s words, formed an alliance with another hardened rebel, Adrián de Mújica. By June 1500 they were planning to capture or kill their target. Learning of the conspiracy against him, Roldán rounded up the outlaws, informed the Admiral, and waited for instructions.

Columbus, for once, responded decisively. The men posed a threat to the island’s security; they should be punished “as the law required.” So Roldán, in his official capacity as the mayor, tried the group, and ordered the apparent ringleader, Adrián de Mújica, to be hanged. Roldán deported the other conspirators and imprisoned Guevara until June 13, when he was conveyed to the Admiral, then in the island’s interior, for safekeeping.

Peace had come to Columbus’s realm at last.

On February 3, 1500, Columbus returned from the interior to Santo Domingo, where he made plans to sail to Spain and present his version of events to the Sovereigns. “Throughout these disorders,” Ferdinand noted, “many of the rebels, writing from Hispaniola, and others who returned to Castile continually conveyed false information to the Catholic Sovereigns and their royal council against the Admiral and his brothers, claiming they were most cruel and unfit to govern.” Why? “Because they were foreigners and had no experience in dealing with people of rank.” Columbus was a stranger, speaking in a foreign accent, surrounded by one brother or another, rarely mingling, an aloof, determined, enigmatic mystic. But his accomplishments loomed over all. Everyone on the island toiled in the shadow of Columbus. Even in near disgrace he remained the most powerful European in the Indies. If the Sovereigns did not rescue Hispaniola from his influence, the critics warned, “the total ruin of the Indies would come about.” They predicted Columbus would “form an alliance with some foreign prince, claiming the Indies as his possession.” And they resorted to more obvious libels—Columbus had hidden the actual wealth of the Indies from Spain; he was planning to use his Indian forces against the Sovereigns—calculated to appeal to his enemies in Castile.

Ferdinand Columbus recalled that when he visited Granada, “more than fifty of these shameless people brought a load of wine and, sitting in the court of the Alhambra”—the Moorish fortress later occupied by the Sovereigns—“loudly proclaimed that Their Highnesses and the Admiral reduced them to the pitiful state by withholding their pay, besides thousands of other lies that they concocted.” So great was their resentment, however illusory its basis, that whenever King Ferdinand rode by on his royal steed, they would surround him, blocking his way and bellowing, “Pay! Pay!”