Rivers of Gold

by Hugh Thomas

  Thus another myth was born. For the next generation, any native who resisted the Spaniards would be considered a cannibal, fit to be enslaved. Columbus named the bay and the cape “de las Flechas”—of the arrows.

  To begin with, Columbus had difficulty finding a way through the winds bearing on him from the east. Then he sailed northeast through the Sargasso Sea, finding the seaweed so thick that some of his men thought they might be held fast. He nevertheless sailed east to the Azores. On the way, they met a storm, and once again the two ships “of glory” were separated. This was by far the worst weather they had encountered since they had left Palos the previous year. On February 14, Columbus wrote two letters: one to Luis de Santangel,7 the treasurer and his chief backer, another to the Aragonese treasurer Gabriel Sánchez. The letter to Santangel described how, in thirty-three days, he had reached the Indies, how he had found many well-populated islands, giving them the names of San Salvador, Santa María de la Concepción, Fernandina, Isabela, Juana (Cuba), and La Española. Returning, he had found six other islands but not the mainland. Columbus put this letter to Sánchez in a barrel, with a note saying that anyone who found it should deliver it to King Fernando and Queen Isabel.

  The purpose of these actions was to ensure that “if his ship were lost in the storm, the monarchs would still hear of his achievement.…”8 The precaution turned out to be unnecessary, for on February 17, 1493, the Niña reached the harbor of Santa María in the Azores. But the Pinta, with Martín Pinzón, had once again disappeared.

  Ten of Columbus’s men went ashore in the Azores on Ash Wednesday to give thanks to Our Lady. They were promptly arrested by Juan de Castañeda, the Portuguese captain of the island. The Admiral had difficulty in securing their release, for the relations between Spain and Portugal were then poor. But in the end he was successful. He showed to the Portuguese authorities, “at a distance,” his “letter of privileges” of April 30, 1492.9 He left the Azores on February 20 and then reached Lisbon, the nearest European port, on March 4.10 That day, Columbus added a postscript to his letter to Santangel, saying that he was stopping in Portugal because of bad weather.11 He repeated that he had reached the Indies “in thirty-three days and explained that he had returned in twenty-eight.”12

  He also wrote a letter to the King and Queen announcing the discovery. It was much the same as that to Santangel. In it he made the interesting request that the King should demand, for Columbus’s son Diego (still a page of the Infante), a cardinalship from the Pope when (as Columbus expected that he would) Fernando wrote to Innocent VIII about the discoveries, “just as the young Giovanni de’ Medici, son of Lorenzo, obtained one in 1489 when only fourteen.…”13 He did not send this letter till he reached Spain. Columbus wrote several other letters recounting his achievements: one to his friend of 1490, the Duke of Medinaceli, another to Juanotto Berardi, the Florentine merchant of Seville.

  Before returning to Spain, on March 6, the Admiral called on King João of Portugal in the convent of Santa María das Virtudes in the Valle del Paraíso, about thirty miles from Lisbon. The King had gone there because of an outbreak of plague in the capital. Later Columbus naturally came under suspicion in Castile because of the visit. For he was, indeed, greeted enthusiastically by João, who predictably argued that Columbus’s new lands must belong to Portugal, not Spain, by the terms of the treaties between the two countries.14 Columbus also called on the Portuguese Queen Isabel, who was Spanish in origin, being the eldest child of Fernando and Isabel, in the convent of San Antonio at Vila Franca de Xira.15 King João offered horses to the Admiral to take him to Castile if he wanted to return by land, but Columbus preferred to travel by sea.

  After he had left for Spain, on March 13, King João interrogated extensively the two Portuguese who had been with Columbus and who had remained in their native land. He decided immediately to send a fleet under Francisco de Almeida to search for the lands found by Columbus.16 One Portuguese chronicler, Rui de Piña, says that some courtiers of João suggested that Columbus should be murdered on his way to Spain so that they could take advantage of the success of the expedition.17

  The news of Columbus’s return reached the King, Queen, and court of Spain by March 9. A Milanese businessman, Anibal Zennaro (Ianuarius), also in Barcelona, wrote about the expedition to his brother, who was ambassador in Milan. He reported that Columbus had come back, had disembarked in Lisbon, and had written to the King, who had summoned him to Barcelona.18

  The text is interesting:

  Last August, these monarchs, as a result of the requests of a certain Columbus [Colón], agreed that he should arrange for four [sic] caravels to sail in the great ocean and travel in the westward direction … until he arrived in the East, because, the world being round, he was bound eventually to reach the East.19 And so he did … and, in thirty-three days, he arrived at a great island where there were inhabitants whose skin was the color of olives, going about naked, with no disposition to fight.20

  By late March the news was everywhere. The Florentine Tribaldo de Rossi announced the discovery of the Indies in his Libro de Conti, a kind of primitive news sheet, presumably deriving the information from one of his many compatriots who lived in Seville.21

  The monarchs had left Granada and Santa Fe at the end of May 1492, during Columbus’s ten-month absence from the court. They had gone first to Córdoba and then traveled north, stopping occasionally until they reached Barcelona on October 18, where they remained till the end of January 1493, largely to supervise the diplomatic negotiations for the recovery of Roussillon and Cerdagne that Fernando’s father, Juan II, had mortgaged to King Louis XI of France in the 1460s.22 The Queen, meantime, was preparing her reform of the monasteries, which went far toward making a Reformation and dissolution of monasteries unnecessary in Spain. Had Isabel read the best seller of the year, Diego de San Pedro’s Carcel de Amor (The Prison of Love)? It would not be surprising, since it had been dedicated to one of her dearest friends, the commander of the royal pages (alcaide de los donceles), Diego Fernández de Córdoba.

  In December 1492, Fernando had been attacked by a man with a knife in the Plaza del Rey in the Catalan capital. Fortunately, the King wore a heavy gold chain that turned away the weapon and he survived the attack. The deranged attacker, Juan de Cañamares, confessed that the devil had told him to kill the King because the kingdom was rightfully his. The Queen “flew in search of her husband,” but not before she had commanded war galleys to be rowed to the embankment in order to protect the Infante. An “entire battalion of doctors and surgeons has been summoned,” Martyr wrote, “we swing between fear and hope.”23 After some days of fever, Fernando recovered. The would-be assassin died a dreadful death, the details of which were concealed from Isabel until it had happened.24 Isabel wrote to her onetime confessor Talavera: “Thus we see that kings too may die.”25

  On January 19, 1493, the two monarchs signed a treaty with France by which the latter returned to Aragon the contested provinces of Roussillon and Cerdagne. In return, Spain agreed to allow King Charles VIII to cross into Italy to challenge Fernando’s nephew, Ferrante, King of Naples, in a trial by combat. Fernando and Isabel went to Perpignan to be present at an act celebrating the restitution of the provinces, though Isabel wrote a long letter complaining of the tedium of dining so often with French ambassadors.

  During all these months, the monarchs had remained apparently as uninterested in the possible achievements of Columbus as they were impervious to such news as was brought to them of the tragedies suffered by their late subjects, the unbending Jews. Many of these were seized by corsairs and sold as slaves in the very port whence they had set out, while others found themselves in the slave markets of Fez or Tangier. A few returned and then willingly converted on their arrival.26

  The monarchs did, of course, take into account that, following the death of Pope Innocent VIII at the end of July 1492 and his swift interment in a tomb designed by Pollaiuolo, the conclave in Rome had voted for Cardin
al Borgia, of the same Valencian family as Calixtus III (his uncle), who thereupon assumed the papacy as Alexander VI at the age of sixty-one. “A victory obtained,” said Guicciardini, “because he openly bought many votes, partly with promises of benefices and offices.”27

  Everyone knew that Borgia was not going to be the “angel Pope” whom a few dreamers had optimistically predicted would appear in 1493—a man who could be expected to seek no temporal power but be concerned only with the good of souls. Profligate simonist and hedonist though Alexander might be, worldly and charming as he certainly was, unapologetically sensual and a lover of women as he had always been, great promoter of his family, including his murderous son Caesar, as he would show himself, he had the advantage, as far as Fernando and Isabel were concerned, of being half Spanish. Peter Martyr commented ribaldly that if Borgia had made his eldest son Duke of Gandia when he was a mere cardinal, now surely he would make him a king.28 He feared that even though Alexander was Spanish, the monarchs hated the thought of his “wickedness, lewdness, and ambition for his children.”29

  Yet there were definite advantages for the monarchs of Spain in having Alexander as pope: the language preferred in Rome was now Valencian, and that lasted throughout his reign.30 Fernando, who liked him, was not the man to have objections to anyone on moral grounds. As vice-chancellor to Pope Sixtus IV, Borgia had influenced Rome’s policy to support Fernando and Isabel ever since his visit to Spain as papal legate in 1472, hoping to secure active Spanish support against the Turks. It was Borgia who had persuaded the young Cardinal Mendoza to side with Fernando and Isabel in 1472 and to desert King Enrique. He had brought the bull enabling these second cousins to marry, and he had approved of Fernando seizing for himself the Mastership of the Order of Santiago in 1476 after the death of Rodrigo Manrique. Further, so the Florentine historian Francesco Guicciardini thought, Alexander possessed “singular cunning and sagacity, excellent judgment, a marvelous efficacy in persuasion, and an incredible dexterity and attentiveness in dealing with weighty matters.” Guicciardini considered, nevertheless, that these things were outweighed by his “obscene behavior, insincerity, shamelessness, lying faithlessness, impiety, insatiable and immoderate ambition, a cruelty more than barbaric, and a most ardent cupidity to exalt his numerous children.”31 The historian Infessura commented that immediately after he became pope, Alexander gave away all his goods to the poor—that is, to the cardinals who had voted for him, of whom Ascanio Sforza was the leader.32

  The monarchs sent a generous letter of congratulation to Columbus on his way to Barcelona. They were pleased that “God has given you such a good end as you began, whereof He will be greatly served, and ourselves as well, and our realms will receive so much benefit.”33 They requested that Columbus make haste to Barcelona and referred to him by all the grand titles that he had obtained from them: Admiral of the Ocean Sea, Viceroy and Governor of the Indies.

  Columbus went first, though, to Palos and then to Seville, where he was cheered in the street by, among others, the young Bartolomé de las Casas, the future historian, agitator, and apostle of the Indies. He then made for Barcelona, going triumphantly via Córdoba, Murcia, Valencia, and Tarragona. He had seven of his Indians still alive to exhibit in Barcelona.34

  Martín Alonso Pinzón had also arrived in Spain with the Pinta, at Baiona, in Galicia, near Vigo, a few days before Columbus reached Seville. He was ready to cause difficulty by disputing Columbus’s story and would indeed have been able to claim he was the first to return from the New World to Europe. He wrote to the monarchs that he had discovered what he knew to be the mainland (China?) as well as islands, whereas Columbus considered that he had only found islands. But Pinzón died as soon as he reached Seville, perhaps from syphilis; and, at any event, the monarchs wanted to welcome their Admiral. Still, in other circumstances America might perhaps have been called Pinzonia.

  Columbus was in Barcelona probably on April 21. Las Casas said that the streets were full and that the monarchs received Columbus as a hero, allowing him to ride with them in processions. He added that in appearance the Admiral resembled a senator of the old Roman Empire.35 Peter Martyr, who was present, wrote that “Columbus was honorably received by the King and the Queen who caused him to sit in their presence, a token of great love and honor among the Spaniards.” He added that he was like “one of those whom the ancients made gods.”36 The cartographer Jaume Ferrer, who was also there, thought that the Admiral was like an apostle doing for the West what St. Thomas had done in India.37 There was a Te Deum in the monarchs’ chapel, and Las Casas reported that there were “tears in the royal eyes” as the two rulers knelt in emotion.38 Isabel received from Columbus presents of hutias (the ratlike wild animals of the Caribbean), chili peppers, sweet potatoes, monkeys, parrots, some gold, and six (no longer seven) men wearing gold earrings and nostril rings, men not white but “the color of quince jelly.”39 These Tainos were baptized, the royal family acting as godparents, one of them, “Juan de Castilla,” becoming a page, though, alas, “God soon called him to Himself.”

  These events occurred in the Salon del Tinell, the throne room, in the royal palace in what is now known as the Plaza del Rey, where indeed the attempt to murder Fernando had happened such a short time before. The hall had been designed by Guillén Carbonell in the mid-fourteenth century and has remained unaltered. The discoverer of America would doubtless have seen the curious Gothic murals on the walls of this vaulted place. When the monarchs were absent, the palace was used by the Inquisition.40

  A copy of the letter of Columbus to Gabriel Sánchez was published by Pedro Posse in Barcelona a few days later. A Latin edition translated by Leandro del Cosco soon appeared in Rome, and it was printed no less than eight times in 1493 (three times in Barcelona, three times in Paris, once in Antwerp, and once in Basle).41 Such a wide distribution of the letter could not have occurred, of course, had it not been for the new invention of printing, which over the next generation everywhere stimulated excitement at geographical discovery.

  In this and in all his letters of that time, Columbus spoke of God’s gift to Castile. How convenient to have such a present so close to the Canaries! How ideal the Indians were to receive the Christian faith!42 Columbus wrote that he had heard the nightingale everywhere in Cuba. He said that in La Española the people had no religion, yet believed that power and goodness dwelt in the sky.43 He had found no monsters and had seen that the people were well made and that all spoke the same language, a fact that would be useful when it came to converting them to Christianity. He reported that he had left behind a strong fortress, Navidad, and taken possession of a large town where he had established good relations with the local king.44 What that town was is rather obscure. He spoke also of the Caribs, who, he said, traveled around in canoes doing damage as well as pleasuring the women of “Matinino” (presumably Martinique, which he had neither seen nor visited) once a year.

  Columbus concluded that as a result of his discoveries, he would be able to give their Highnesses all the gold they needed “if they will render me some very slight service.” Also:

  I will give them all the spices and cotton which they want, and I will bring back as large a cargo of mastic [like that of Chios] as their Highnesses desire. I will also bring back as many aloes as they ask for and as many slaves, who will be taken from among the idolators. I believe also I have found rhubarb and cinnamon. Thus the eternal God, Our Lord, grants to those who walk in his way a victory over apparent impossibilities.… So all Christendom will be delighted that our Redeemer has given triumph to our most illustrious king and queen and their renowned kingdoms in this great matter. They should hold celebrations and render solemn thanks to the Holy Trinity, with many solemn prayers for the great feat which they will have by the conversion of so many peoples to our faith and for the temporal benefits which will follow, for not only Spain but all Christendom will receive encouragement and profit.45

  Columbus, of course, considered that he had been t
o Asia. But most astute Italian commentators immediately assumed that his discoveries were antipodean: he had taken the name of Christ to the Antipodes, which “we did not even previously think existed.” Someone in Florence spoke of the discovery as “the other world opposite our own.”46 That was because the idea fitted in with the general stream of ideas among Italian humanists of the 1490s. The fifth-century ecclesiastical writer Macrobius had written commentaries on Cicero that suggested that an “Antipodean landmass might exist in the northern as well as the southern hemisphere”—and Macrobius had recently been published; while a fifth-century encyclopedist from North Africa, Marciano Capella, had suggested the same in his curious allegorical novel De Nuptis Mercurii et Philologia, also now available (the cosmographer Pierre d’Ailly had thought that the Antipodes might be a landmass continuous with the known continents). Peter Martyr in Spain also wrote that Columbus had been to “the Antipodes”: “There has returned from the western Antipodes a certain Columbus, of Liguria, who barely obtained from my sovereigns three ships for the voyage, for they regarded the things which he said as chimerical.” (Since “Antipodes” implies something directly opposite, it would have been difficult to find the western Antipodes!)

  Martyr also said that Columbus had been to “places unknown,” which presumably meant that he at least considered that they were not Asiatic.47 Columbus wrote in September to his onetime benefactor, the Count of Tendilla, and to Archbishop Talavera, without whose advice (he flatteringly, though inaccurately, added) he would not have done what he had done: “Raise your spirits, wise men, and hear about the new discovery! Remember, because you should, that Columbus, he of Liguria, has been traveling along a new hemisphere in the western antipodes.”48 A month later he wrote, even more appropriately, to the Archbishop of Braga in Portugal that, as to his finding the Indies, “I do not deny it entirely, though the magnitude of the globe seems to indicate something else.”49 In a letter to Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, of November 1, 1493,50 Martyr was using the accurate expression “new world”—novi orbis—about the places where Columbus had been.