Rivers of Gold

by Hugh Thomas

  Next day, there were other complaints, this time from among the Basque sailors on the Santa María. Apparently Columbus persuaded Martín Alonso to quiet them down. But after a few more days “the men seemed to be able to endure no more.”26 In a conversation in Columbus’s cabin on the Santa María, the brothers Pinzón, with Peralonso Niño, gave Columbus three more days to discover land. If he did not do so, they said that they would make for home. At least one historian says that Columbus now told Martín Alonso Pinzón his story of the “unknown pilot” in the hope that that would calm him.27

  On October 10, Columbus announced that he would give a coat of silk to the man who first saw land. The idea was received in silence. What use would such a thing be in the ocean? But that day Columbus and Martín Alonso both noticed birds. The latter wisely said, “Those birds do not fly like that with no reason.” The same night, Columbus, Pedro Gutiérrez, and the veedor Rodrigo Sánchez thought that they saw light ahead that they believed must be land. The next night, two hours after midnight, with a full moon, Juan Rodríguez Bermejo, also known as Rodrigo de Triana, a sailor from Seville on the Pinta, saw “a white stretch of land” (una cabeza blanca de tierra) and shouted, “Land! Land!” and he fired a lombard.28 The next day, October 12, Columbus made landfall.29

  We can easily imagine the excitement of the ninety members of Columbus’s expedition as they anchored offshore in the calm, blue waters, the sea lapping at the ships’ gunwales—the first time in history that a European boat stopped in what we must now consider “American” waters.

  Columbus had probably arrived at Long Bay, on what is now known as Watling Island, then known to its indigenous inhabitants as Guanahaní. Columbus named the place “San Salvador,” the first of innumerable islands to which he gave names, usually those of saints.30 He saw inhabitants whom he called “Indians” from the beginning. They seemed simple people, though their presents to him, of parrots, javelins, and cotton balls, were, in their way, just as sophisticated as the equivalent Spanish presents of hats, balls, and glass beads. These indigenous people of the Bahamas were later destroyed by contact with the Spaniards. They were closely related to the Tainos, whom Columbus would soon meet in the Caribbean.31 What immediately seemed significant to him was that they wore no clothes.

  Columbus took possession of San Salvador in the name of the King and Queen of Spain.32 He also raised the flag of those monarchs: a green cross with an F and a Y (for Ysabel) crowned on a white background. He did not seem to think that these might be acts of war against the Ming Emperor of China, the shogun Hosokawa of Japan, or the Mogul Emperor. Presumably he supposed that the island was one of the many that Marco Polo had reported lay off the coast of Asia, without benefit of protection by a superior power.

  The natives were amazed at the beards of the Europeans, especially the white one of the Admiral. They themselves seemed to be of the same color as the Guanches, the natives of Tenerife, had long hair, and were good-looking. Some had painted themselves black or white (sometimes their whole bodies, sometimes just their faces). All seemed to be under thirty and carried wooden spears. Some of these had a fish tooth as a blade. One or two of these “Indians” had obviously been wounded in battles, perhaps with neighbors who had tried to capture them. Columbus immediately thought, most surprisingly, that they would make good Christians.33 They had long canoes made from “marvelously carved” tree trunks.

  A few of the people of San Salvador had gold hanging from holes pierced in their noses. Columbus was told by sign language that to the south there was a king who had much more of that metal, even ships made of it. The Admiral tried unsuccessfully to persuade the people of San Salvador to lead him there. After all, he had not sailed three thousand miles in difficult circumstances merely to discover an island of gesticulating savages. The reaction of these natives was intelligent, however: to suggest that there was gold some way to the south was the best way of freeing themselves from the strangers—a trick used by many other peoples in the next few generations.

  On October 14, Columbus coasted along la isleta, saw other villages, and met other “Indians” whom “we understood to be asking if we came from the sky.” Of these, Columbus seized seven, whom he proposed to take home to Castile to be taught Spanish, so that later they could become interpreters. Two of them managed to escape the next day. But several other indigenous people were seized in the course of the next weeks. One of them, who was given the name “Diego Columbus,” remained an interpreter with Columbus for two years.34

  The Admiral thought that he might send the whole population to Castile—as slaves presumably—because he considered that with fifty armed men he would be able to subjugate them all.35 He reported that they “were very timid” and “artless in respect of weapons.” That would surely make them “good subjects.”36

  Columbus, now for a time in unquestioned command of his three ships, stopped at several more islands in what is now the Bahaman archipelago. The first of these he called Santa María de la Concepción, two others Fernandina and Isabela. It is unclear which islands these were: Rum Kay? Crooked Island? Long Island? All were flat and offered little temptation for colonization or agriculture. He did not take possession of all these places formally because he seems to have assumed that if he had annexed one, he had annexed all.37 But he gave them all names, though they had indigenous designations already. He received presents of cotton and, in return, gave his usual glass beads and trinkets, which were well received. He wrote enthusiastically in his log of the trees, the scents of the flowers that blew offshore, as in Corsica, and of the clean houses, the “hammocks” (a local word henceforward used in Spanish), the small dogs, as well as the short cotton skirts worn by the women over their private parts. He asked constantly for gold, which he optimistically assumed would be found on the next island, and he only decided to leave the Bahamas when he realized that “there is no goldfield here.” Columbus regretted that he could not identify all the herbs that he came across, though he thought he did find aloes. He made constant comparisons to Andalusia in April. The singing of birds on Long Island was “so sweet that no one could want to leave the place.”38

  On October 24, Columbus left for what he thought would turn out to be Cipangu, or part of it: “another very large island … they call it Colba.… But I am still determined to proceed to the mainland and to the city of Quinsay [Hangchow] to present the letters of your highnesses to the Great Khan.” “Colba” turned out to be Cuba. The natives of Guanahaní said that one could not sail around it in twenty days, a comment that suggested they could circumnavigate it in a few more—a lesson Columbus did not learn. The Admiral spoke of that new island as being “larger than England and Scotland together,” though in truth it is smaller than England alone.39 But he did think of it at first as an island.

  When he reached Cuba on October 28, Columbus decided that it must be part of the Asiatic mainland.40 He called it “Juana” all the same. He sailed up what he took to be a beautiful river that would seem to have been the Bay of Bariay, not far from what he called the Rio de Mares: “Never have I seen such a beautiful thing.” The land, he thought, resembled Sicily. There were magnificent palm trees of a kind different from those of Spain and of Guinea. He found more dogs, which did not bark, and fishing tackle.41 In another town, he found good houses with palm roofs and little female clay figurines, and interesting reed ornaments; the river was as placid as that of Seville and full of frogs. He also observed silver ornaments hanging from the noses of the indigenous people.

  Did this coast have the coconut palms, the sea plums, the seaside lavender, the beach morning glory, the bay cedar, and the Strumpfia maritima that we admire as we arrive in eastern Cuba in our day? Surely the answer was yes. The mangrove and the mahoe were also seen for the first time by Europeans.

  At the beginning of November, Columbus sent inland Rodrigo de Xerez of Ayamonte and Luis de Torre of Murcia with two Indians, one from San Salvador and the other a local one. Luis de Torre “had live
d with the adelantado of Murcia [Fajardo] and had been a Jew—presumably he was one no longer—and knew both Hebrew and Chaldean as well as a little Arabic.” From his name, the odds must be that Xerez was also a converso.42 They returned after four days, having found a large village of fifty big wooden huts, thatched with palms, shaped like tents, in which many people lived as in a dormitory.43 This was the first serious town encountered by the Spaniards in the New World. The people were Tainos.

  The principal came out to greet these Spaniards and sat them down on duhos (chairs of wood, in animal shapes), and the people kissed the hands and feet of the newcomers, “believing that they came from Heaven.” Torre and Xerez encountered tobacco (“certain herbs the smoke of which they inhale”), a crop whose role in future history was to be so important. They found cotton, which was gathered from ceiba trees. The Admiral thought that Spanish merchants might make much of that commodity.

  This was, of course, a voyage of discovery, and Columbus was anxious to see more. On November 12, he set sail for what turned out to be Inagua Grande, where, on a hill, he saw crosses that were used to warn of an approaching hurricane but which gave the Europeans a curious sense that they must be near a Christian society. Then they sailed west to a point near Puente Malagueta before returning to Cuba, where they spent another two weeks, kidnapping a few more Indians to take back to Spain. They found wax, which Las Casas later believed must have come originally from Yucatan, suggesting that there was contact with the mainland.44 Columbus sent down divers for pearls but found that though there were oysters, of pearls there were none.

  By this time the Admiral had experienced another, and serious, rebellion: the ambitious Martín Alonso Pinzón had sailed off on November 21 on the Pinta, without leave. He had gone to look for gold on his own. His action, the culmination of a growing sense of frustration at having to follow Columbus’s orders, was a blatant act of indiscipline. Columbus prudently kept quiet about the matter, biding his time, and seems to have maintained the loyalty of Pinzón’s brother Vicente.45

  Left with only two ships, the Santa María and the Niña, the Admiral found himself at the eastern end of Cuba, at Baracoa, which he named Puerto Santo and which he described with special exultation. He left there on December 5, finding a wind to carry him to “Haiti,” as the indigenous people called it, or Little Spain, “La Española,” the name Columbus immediately gave to the island because of the vegetation. Even the fish were much the same as those he knew in Spain.46 La Española seemed to Columbus “the best land in the world.” He believed it to be Cipangu (Japan), and it appeared to produce some gold, to be found in river sands or rocks. That alone surely made his journey worthwhile. The place also seemed to boast a cultivated society—more so than that in Cuba. There were several principalities, all of which produced stonework, woodwork, ball courts, stone collars, and pendants. Columbus thought that “all the islands are so utterly at your Highnesses’ command that it only remains to establish a Spanish presence and order them to perform your will.… I could traverse all these islands without meeting opposition … they are yours to command, and make them work, sow seeds, and do whatever else is necessary to build towns. They could wear clothes and adopt our customs.”47 Columbus talked continuously of seeing the Great Khan’s ships and other signs of Chinese civilization; but he still never seems to have considered how he could with impunity seize that powerful sovereign’s people and land.48

  Had no gold at all been produced, or had no ornaments been made from it, the Spanish interest in the Indies would have evaporated. As it was, a preoccupation was aroused that would never go away.49

  But alongside these amiable people, the Tainos, there turned out to be also in the Caribbean many warlike eaters of human flesh. On December 26, 1492, the word caribe, or “cannibal” (the two words were looked upon for a long time as synonymous), first appears in Columbus’s log: he and his captains were dining with a local prince, a so-called cacique (also a local word, and like hamaca, it passed into Spanish).

  After they finished eating, the prince took the Admiral to the beach and the Admiral sent for a bow and arrows, and he made one of his company shoot the arrows; and the prince, who did not know of such a thing, thought this wonderful, and then he said that he wanted to talk of the Caniba, whom they were wont to call Caribs. The Admiral indicated by signs that the monarchs of Castile would seek to destroy the Caribs … and then the Admiral had a lombard and an arquebus also fired.50

  The lombard both fascinated and terrified the Indians. The prince was much comforted when the Admiral indicated that he would use the weapons in his defense. He gave Columbus some masks with golden eyes and large ears of gold.51 Columbus thought these natives were “such an affectionate and generous people and so tractable [convenible] that I assure your Highnesses there are no better people or land in all the world.… [True] they go about naked … but … they have very good customs and the prince keeps so wonderful a state and displays such dignity that it is a pleasure to observe him.”52 Columbus also thought the peppers that he found on the island superior to those brought by him from Guinea and Alexandria.53

  On Christmas Eve 1492, the largest of Columbus’s ships, the Santa María, on which he himself had crossed the Atlantic, was wrecked on a coral reef off the northern shore of La Española, near what is now Cap Haitien in Haiti. Columbus was asleep at the time and reported that the mishap was the fault of a boy left in charge. Then he blamed the duplicity of the “men of Palos” who had, he thought, given him a bad ship. (But the Santa María had been built in Galicia.) Columbus’s lieutenant, his Córdoban mistress’s cousin, Diego de Araña, arranged with the cacique, Guacanagari, with whom they had dined, to send men to help the Spaniards disembark the goods that were on board before the ship sank. That was done, but the shipwreck left the Admiral with only one ship.

  Columbus now made a fateful decision. He had had no expectation when he set off from Palos that he would occupy territory. But faced with the impossibility of carrying all his men back to Spain in one small boat, he did so. He founded a “city,” which he named “La Navidad” because it was Christmas Day, for thirty-nine men who, he thought, would remain collecting gold samples and await the next Spanish expedition. Columbus represented the site of Navidad as the product of a revelation, not because the Santa María had gone aground there: “God plainly wanted a garrison there,” he remarked, and with the planks from the wrecked ship he built a wooden tower and a moat.

  On January 4, 1493, Columbus left this first European town of the Americas in the hands of Diego de Araña, along with the thirty-nine inhabitants.54 A doctor, “Maestre Juan,” was also abandoned. Among the others was Luis de Torre, the interpreter converso, who had been one of the first two men to see tobacco smoked. Columbus left other things, too: to a cacique whom he encountered offshore, he bequeathed a coverlet that he had used on his own bed, “some very good amber beads,” some red shoes, “a flask of orange flower water,” and a bead on which he had had carved the heads of the King and Queen taken from a coin, the excelente, then current in Castile.55

  7

  “Tears in the royal eyes”

  There were tears in the royal eyes.…

  Bartolomé de las Casas’s comment on what occurred when the King and Queen received Columbus in Barcelona in 1493

  Columbus now planned to return to Spain, a brave, even reckless act considering the bad weather in spring in those parts. Sailing east along the north coast of La Española, Columbus on the Niña with fifteen men encountered the errant Alonso Pinzón and the Pinta near what is now the town of Montecristi just inside the Dominican Republic. Pinzón, with his twenty-six followers, rejoined the expedition, bringing 900 pesos’ worth of gold that he said he had gained through trade. He gave various unconvincing excuses for having deserted, and Columbus pretended to believe him.

  In an inquiry of 1513, a number of witnesses said that Pinzón had reached Maguana1 and visited the houses of several princes, one named Behechio, and
another, Caonabó, “where they found great stores of gold.”2 He was also said to have found chili, cinnamon, pearls, pineapple, and tobacco. Canoes and hammocks abounded. Columbus took home with him on the Niña ten Indians, according to Peter Martyr, of whom one died at sea.3 He confided to his log on January 1 that he had definitely found what he had been looking for.4

  The return journey to Spain was not without incident. On January 13, when the now reunited expedition of the Pinta and the Niña reached a peninsula off La Española named Samaná, the Spaniards had their first armed clash with indigenous people in the New World. Perhaps the Europeans, in search of slaves, attacked, and the Indians defended themselves. At all events, heavily painted Tainos used long and straight yew bows and arrows of cane, with arrowheads of sharpened wood sometimes finished with a fishbone, and sometimes coated with poison. The resistance convinced the Admiral that these were some of “those carib[e]s who eat men.”5 His indigenous friends had, after all, told him that

  cannibals, also called Caraibes, were accustomed to land amongst them and pursue them through the forests, like hunters chasing wild beasts. The cannibals capture children whom they castrate, just as we neuter chickens and pigs which we wish to fatten for the table; and, when they are grown up, they eat them. Older persons who fall into their power are killed and cut into pieces for food; they also eat the intestines and the extremities, which they salt. They do not eat women.… If they capture any women, they keep them and care for them, in order that they may produce children, just as we do with hens, sheep, mares, and other animals. Older women when captured are made into slaves.… The island inhabited by these monsters [the peninsula, actually] lies toward the south and halfway toward the other islands.…6