by Hugh Thomas
For all sorts of reasons, which will be considered later, these indigenous people of the Caribbean, like those of the Canary Islands, have disappeared. It is therefore impossible for us to know exactly what they were like. They live only in history, and it is only just that history has treated them well. Yet they were not saints. Had it not been for the Spanish invasions, it is likely that the Caribs would have destroyed the Tainos as the Tainos had destroyed the Ciboneys. Some have written of the ancient Caribbean as if it had been Elysium. But it was an Elysium with savagery in the wings.
9
“We concede the islands and lands discovered by you”
So we concede to you and your heirs and successors the islands and lands discovered by you … with the same rights, privileges, faculties, and immunities.
Pope Alexander VI to the Catholic Kings, 1493
João, King of Portugal, was not slow to awaken to what he had lost by having been so discouraging in his discussions with Columbus in 1485 and 1488. Allegretto Allegretti, a Sienese senator and historian, did not comfort him when he wrote to the King that America was just another Canary Island.1 On April 5, 1493, even before Columbus had reached Barcelona, João dispatched to Spain Rui de Sande, chief magistrate of Torres Vedras, the little winegrowing town where the Portuguese court had spent Easter. He was to tell Queen Isabel and King Fernando that, having talked to Columbus in Lisbon, King João considered the lands that the Admiral had discovered to be Portuguese. All the relevant treaties confirmed his impression. As we have seen, he had secretly sent a boat west as soon as he heard of Columbus’s feat, and according to some imaginative scholars, this vessel brought back news of the existence of Brazil.2
Fernando and Isabel for their part sent an emissary to Lisbon. This was Lope de Herrera, who was to say, first, that the Spanish monarchs thought they ought to meet to discuss with the Portuguese any difficulties that might arise between the two countries because of Columbus’s achievements. He was to add that the Crown of Spain would threaten with reprisals anyone who set off for the Indies without their permission, in just the same way as, since the Treaty of Alcáçovas, the Spaniards had respected the Portuguese monopoly of the route to El Mina, on the Gold Coast, and elsewhere in Africa.3 Lope de Herrera was to inform or instruct Lisbon that no Portuguese should do anything in these new Spanish Indies that had been discovered by Columbus.4
The request was sensible, for, at the end of April, the new Duke of Medina Sidonia, Juan de Guzmán (Duke Enrique, who had been reluctant to help Columbus, had died in the summer of 1492), would inform the monarchs that he had heard King João wanted to send another expedition under Francisco de Almeida with ships to investigate Columbus’s discoveries.5 In reply, on May 2, the monarchs asked the Duke to organize his caravels in southern Spain to prevent Portugal from so acting.6 A royal armada from Biscay (six ships, served by nearly nine hundred men), under a Basque, Íñigo de Artieta, was also ordered to the coast of Cadiz.7 (Another of its missions would be to escort poor King Boabdil to Africa.)8 All these moves were soon known in Lisbon because of an efficient Portuguese network of spies in Seville.9
The astute Spanish monarchs were also in touch with the papacy. The Spanish agent in Rome, Bernardino de Carvajal, was a nephew of that Cardinal Juan Carvajal who had been one of the Church of Rome’s hardest-working legates, especially in central Europe: Animo Pectore Caesar erat had been inscribed on his tomb. Bernardino, a lesser man, had greater opportunities. The Carvajals came from Plasencia, in Extremadura, and were connected with the great families of that region, such as the Bejaranos, the Orellanas, and the Monroys. Bernardino Carvajal was asked to tell the Pope that if the new islands discovered by Columbus turned out to be on the same latitude as the Canaries, they would be naturally Spanish. But what if they turned out to be the mysterious “Antilla” or “Atlantis,” of which so many old sailors had talked? Legend at least gave those “islands” to Portugal. Where, seriously, could one draw a line between Portuguese and Spanish interests? Columbus himself proposed a line a hundred leagues west of the Azores where he thought that he had noticed a change of climate; beyond that line, Carvajal was to argue, Spanish influence would begin.10
Carvajal and Diego López de Haro, the ambassador of Fernando and Isabel in Rome, were with the Pope in the Vatican. López de Haro, a minor poet from a great family, had privately criticized the Pope for promoting war in Italy, for condoning corruption in the Curia, for harboring conversos who were really Jews,11 and for simony. Carvajal was now to insist that, by the will of God, the Canaries had been subjugated by Spain, as had “many other [islands] toward India, until now unknown … and it is expected that they will be converted to Christianity in a short time by persons whom the monarchs are sending there. The latter, therefore, request bulls from the Pope that would confirm the Indies to them. They ask, too, for papal permission to devote the proceeds of the bulls of indulgence that had been intended to finance the war against Granada to the conversion of newly found peoples.”12
Pope Alexander, world-weary though he was, had been excited by the news of the expedition of Columbus, “seeing that such ample gates onto the Ocean had been opened up, and seeing that the world which had been hidden was shown to be overflowing with an infinite number of nations, for so many centuries concealed in such a way that one would hope that the empire of Christ would now be augmented and increased.”13 On May 3, 1493, he issued “a brief” on the subject of the new islands, changed the next day into the bull Inter Caetera Divinae. By this he allocated everything discovered by Columbus to the Crown of Castile, on the condition that the monarchs set about propagating the Christian faith there, and provided the lands concerned were not already occupied by another Christian power—that is, Portugal. Spain thus received the same rights as had been bestowed on her neighbor for her exploitation of Africa. Possibly the speed with which this statement was made was assisted by the present of a little Spanish gold, some of which had been brought back by Columbus and given to the monarchs in Barcelona. Certainly the story has been that the first gold brought to Rome from the Americas was used for the decoration of the panels in Santa María Maggiore, these being the most charming Roman works of their kind.14
Secondly, Pope Alexander described the rights of Spain in detail and dwelt on how these “newly found barbarous nations” might be introduced to the Christian faith. He spoke enthusiastically of Fernando and Isabel’s victory over the Moors (los saracenos) and talked of the need to propagate Christendom (el imperio Cristiano). He mentioned, too, how
our dear son Columbus, not without great labor, danger, and expense, ensured that, with ships and men suitable for the task, he was able to find remote and unknown lands across seas where no one previously had sailed.
In consequence of which, having considered everything and, above all, thought of the exaltation and propagation of the Catholic faith as is natural for Catholic kings and princes, you [that is, Fernando and Isabel] have decided, according to the customs of your progenitors, kings of illustrious memory, to submit to us the said lands and the islands and their inhabitants and those who dwell there and to convert them with the help of divine charity to the Catholic faith.… [So] just as some kings of Portugal discovered, and acquired, the regions of Africa, Guinea, El Mina on the Gold Coast, and other islands … so we concede to you and your heirs and successors the islands and lands discovered by you … with the same rights, privileges, liberties, faculties, and immunities.…15
It was notable that this grant was made exclusively to the realm of Castile. Aragon was given no part. The exclusion did not seem to trouble King Fernando, who presumably expected to rule Castile for his lifetime.
Perhaps because some of these statements seemed vague, and possibly on the suggestion of Carvajal, the Pope added on May 4 another statement that omitted all mention of Portugal and included further compliments to Columbus. Alexander also declared that “we give, concede, and assign all the lands and islands discovered, and to be discovered,
and to be found toward the west and the south, making and constructing a line from the arctic Pole which is in the north, to the Antarctic pole which is in the south, the line lying at a distance from what we vulgarly call the Azores and Cape Verde, one hundred leagues away.”16
These declarations conferred on Fernando and Isabel priority in regard to the territories discovered by their Admiral. “As nowadays, patents are given for inventions, and copyrights for literary production,” wrote a historian of Rome, so “a papal bull, enforced by the censures of the Church, protected the laborious discoverer from having the hard-won fruits of his own toil wrested from him by a stronger hand.”17
This decision, as a Castilian judge, Alonso de Zuazo, would put it a generation later, “cut the world in two, as if it were an orange, between the king of Portugal and the monarchs of Spain.” Had the Pope not been of Spanish blood, had Portugal had a stronger negotiator in Rome, the decision could have been different.
But what precisely did the Pope mean by his donation? Did he anticipate a missionary task or that Fernando and Isabel should have “full, free, ample, and absolute authority and jurisdiction”? Further, one could easily argue, as Magellan later did, that this arbitrary division of the world covered not only the Western Hemisphere but could be interpreted also as dividing the Eastern Hemisphere between Spain and Portugal. Thus the Spice Islands, the Moluccas, in what became the East Indian archipelago, the supreme goal of the era of discovery, would also lie in that section of the globe belonging to the Spaniards.18
King João of Portugal pretended not to know of these concessions by the Pope and tried to negotiate directly with Isabel and Fernando. These matters, however, were left on one side while the Crown of Castile encouraged Columbus to plan a second voyage to the new Indies.
After showing off his treasures and his captives, and explaining how he had left behind Spanish colonists at his “fortress” of La Isabela, the Admiral returned from Barcelona to Seville, taking with him a “letter patent” of May 23, which decreed that no one should go to the New World or take any goods to it without permission of the King and Queen, or of himself or of Archdeacon Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca.19
This last had just been ordained a priest and was of a good family, descended from the royal house of Hungary, so the genealogists said. A royal marriage in Spain in the eleventh century? Everything seemed to have happened to the Fonsecas. Our Fonseca was a cousin of a notorious if generous absentee Archbishop of Santiago. An aunt of his had married a Castilla, a royal bastard, and so he was a cousin of the late Queen Juana’s lover. His father, Fernando, had died at the Battle of Toro, fighting for Castile, while an uncle, Alonso, had been a powerful archbishop of Seville in the 1470s. The vast brick family castle of Coca, near Medina del Campo, repays a visit even now.
A pupil of the great grammarian Nebrija at Salamanca as well as a protégé of the royal confessor Talavera, Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca had in 1492 crossed France in disguise to organize the marriage of the Infante Juan to the Habsburg princess Margaret, as well as the wedding of the Infanta Juana with the Habsburg prince Philip. Talavera took Fonseca as vicar-general to Granada also in 1492 when he became archbishop there, and he sought to train him so that, it was said, “in his service, he could learn to be a saint.” But Fonseca learned managerial skills, not saintliness.
The Archdeacon was thus already a tried diplomat. He was ordained in March 1493, though he had been born in 1451, the same year as both Columbus and the Queen. The Queen allocated great responsibilities to him, and as a result of hard work and dedication, he dominated the history of Spain’s relations with the Indies for a generation.20 He has been called a “minister of the Indies” without the title, but essentially he was a civil servant rather than a politician. His brother Antonio also played an important role in Castile, receiving lands after the conquest of Ronda, in which he participated, and becoming, among other things, chief accountant (contador mayor) of Castile.
By the new arrangements, the position of Columbus seemed at one level enhanced. For instance, he was granted a new coat of arms, which would have above it “a castle and a lion whose colors and standing were to be carefully and grandly described.…”21 He would be paid 10,000 maravedís a year for life for having been the first to see and discover the new lands.22 His titles, rights, and powers as proclaimed in the “capitulaciones” and the “privilege” of April 17 and 30, 1492, were confirmed, and he was specifically compared to “the viceroys and governors which have existed and exist in our said kingdoms of Castile.”23 The Admiral was also confirmed as “Don” Cristóbal. His rule (dominio), it was said, would begin at a line drawn from the Azores and the Cape Verde Islands to both the North and South Poles, which was a more generous version of what had just been proposed by the Spanish diplomats at Lisbon.24 Another letter spoke of Columbus as a “captain-general.”25
The monarchs also addressed Columbus by his grand new titles and accepted as their own “the islands that he has discovered in the Indies.” It was essential, they thought, to find more tierra firme, some part of this “new Asian mainland.” All the same, in document after document, decree after decree, as a modern historian points out, the monarchs were now beginning to establish the bases for a new colonial government, naming public officials, recruiting peasants and laborers for specific works, and setting up their own monopoly in the Indies.26 Whether they realized that Columbus had discovered a new world, not the far eastern end of the old one, is still not quite clear. But it is obvious that their civil servants and secretaries (among whom Fonseca was preeminent) were being practical.
Fernando and Isabel issued several other instructions on May 23, 1493. Thus Columbus was required with the help of Fonseca to prepare a new fleet, and they were to collaborate with Juan de Soria, who had been appointed the accountant of the expedition. Soria had once been an efficient secretary to the Infante Juan and also a magistrate charged to investigate how the Jews of León and Zamora had fled to Portugal, taking with them all their possessions, which had been against the law.27
Hernando de Zafra, a senior royal secretary who had been responsible for carrying through the terms of the surrender of Granada, was also ordered to choose, from among the members of the new Hermandad of that city, “twenty reliable knights, five of them with spare horses (mares),” to go with Columbus to the New World. They were to be paid the same as the treasurers of the Hermandad paid their colleagues—though this was a new departure for them.28 These were modern knights, a light cavalry, it might be said, their armor reduced to a cuirass and steel helmet, much as the Granada cavalry’s had been, to give them increased mobility. This instruction astonished Columbus, who began to sense his independent command crumbling beneath him.
That same May 23 the King and Queen ordered Columbus’s fellow Genoese, the banker Francesco Piñelo, to act as paymaster for the expedition.29 He also agreed to pay a salary of 200,000 maravedís every year to Archdeacon Fonseca.30 The royal attitude toward that Genoese banker was, in fact, almost humble; for example, on August 4, 1493, they wrote to him thanking him for his services.31 These were, indeed, considerable.
Similarly, the monarchs ordered Fernando de Villareal and Alonso Gutiérrez de Madrid, the new treasurers of the Santa Hermandad, both young bankers, both probably conversos, to give the 15,000 gold ducats that they had collected for the Hermandad to Francesco Piñelo for the costs of the new armada.32 Gutiérrez, whose wife was the niece of two Grand Masters of the Order of Calatrava, would have a long career in relation to Atlantic commerce. The monarchs also decided to use a confiscated sum of 1.545 million maravedís, which two other Genoese bankers, Octavio Calvo and Bernardo Piñelo (a kinsman of Francisco), had wished to send (in the name of a Toledo merchant, Alonso de Castro) to an expelled Jew, Iya Beneniste, already in Portugal, to help the expedition instead.33 Finally, the Florentine friend of Columbus, Juanotto Berardi, the Seville agent of Bartolomeo Marchionni, was asked to buy a caravel of between one hundred and two hundred tons
and make it ready for the Admiral.34
On May 29, Columbus received his formal instructions for the new expedition. This document discussed the fleet to be prepared and also the organization of the colony to be founded in La Española. The Admiral was to control all ships and crews, and could send them where he wanted, both to trade and to discover territory. He was to appoint magistrates (alcaldes) and constables (alguaciles).35 Essentially, the colonists would be mostly workers, paid by the Crown and overseen by Columbus. There would be a few officials but no women: Isabel feared that any such would become prostitutes. The unplanned consequence would be, of course, to cause the Spaniards to seek Indian girls—hence the beginning of a mestizo population throughout the New World.36
The monarchs expected to be thought of, on the voyage and in the colony, as “sovereign emperors [emperadores soberanos] over all the kings and princes and kingdoms of all the Indies, islands, and tierra firme, discovered and to be discovered.”37 The phraseology was new but it passed unnoticed. The conversion of the new countries to Christianity was put forward as the consideration closest to the monarchs’ hearts.38 The instructions show that the Crown expected Columbus and his lieutenants to treat the Indians “muy bien e amorosamente” (the repetition of a word used in the surrender of Granada), without causing them any kind of “annoyance.” Anyone who treated the Indians badly was to be severely punished.
