Rivers of Gold

by Hugh Thomas

  The Portuguese fleet of Pedro Alvares Cabral, which sailed from Belem on March 9, 1500, had nothing directly to do with the Spanish Empire. Yet it affected it immensely. This expedition was large: thirteen vessels—the biggest that Portugal had mounted in the Atlantic. It was intended for India, following the successful journey there, two years before, of Vasco da Gama. On board these ships were 1,500 men, including Frei Henrique Suárez de Coimbra, once bishop of Ceuta, nine priests, and eight Franciscans.52 They sailed first to the Canary Islands (on March 14)—without landing, because the Canaries were Spanish—and then to the Cape Verde Islands, which they left on March 22. They then made for India on May 2 in a broad arc, but sailing rather to the southwest instead of the southeast. On April 22 they found themselves in Brazil. Nicolás de Coelho, who had sailed with da Gama in 1498, had landed in front of a steep mountain, which they named Monte Pascual. Cabral took possession of this territory on behalf of the King of Portugal; he named it Terra Sanctae Crucis, stayed ten days, and sent a ship back to Portugal to announce the discovery. (This was the Anunciada, which belonged to the Florentine merchant Bartolomeo Marchionni. We note that without surprise, for at that time he had his hand in every undertaking.)53

  In comparison with these voyages, that of Bobadilla to take over the reins of government in the only place as yet settled by Europeans in the New World, La Española, seemed a sedate operation. Yet to seize control from Columbus was something sensational. Bobadilla set off from Seville in July 1500 with four ships. On board were his priests and his freed Indian slaves. He reached Santo Domingo after about a month, on August 25, 1500, to find Diego Colón in control of the new city. The body of Adrián de Mújica hung in the breeze from a gallows on the right of the River Ozama and that of another, unnamed Spaniard hung on the left. Altogether seven Spaniards of Roldán’s party had been hanged the previous week, and two more, Pedro Riquelme and Hernando de Guevara, were in the castle of Santo Domingo awaiting death. Columbus himself and his brother Bartolomeo were in the interior of the island hunting other rebels, the Admiral being in the neighborhood of Concepción, the adelantado in the west near Jaragua.

  During the last year or so, since Columbus’s return to La Española and the relative peace he had established with Roldán, he and his family had managed the colony with constant criticisms ringing in their ears when there were not actual rebellions. The difficulties with Roldán were never properly overcome. Many letters had passed between the two men, in the course of which Columbus not only accepted that fifteen of the ex-rebel’s friends should be permitted to return to Castile by the next ship but also that Roldán, far from being punished, should be named magistrate of Jaragua for life. Roldán seems to have had by then the backing of about a hundred settlers, and they covered the richer, that is the western, part of the island (present-day Haiti). Columbus also agreed to Roldán’s idea that the land in La Española and elsewhere should be divided among the settlers. A settler would be responsible for organizing the Indians’ security and protection against Caribs, as well as for educating them in the Christian religion; in return, the caciques would work for him, ensuring both service and a form of tribute. The word used for these divisions of land, repartimiento, was well known in Old Castile. For example, the conquest of Andalusia had been characterized by that name.54 Conversion seems to have taken second place to contumely. It is true that the Belgian Franciscan father Juan de Deule, who had sailed with Columbus in 1493, claimed that by 1500, two thousand Indians had been baptized in La Española. But that still constituted a tiny minority of the Tainos available.55

  The Admiral had recently sent home several ships (one captained by Miguel Ballester), taking letters, slaves, and a few other products. He still hoped to develop the slave trade. He also thought in terms of making money by granting monopolies; for example, he gave permission to a Sevillano, Pedro de Salcedo, to sell soap in the island.56

  Columbus would later insist that these years, 1498–1500, had been decisive for the development of the colony. He had completed the line of forts, begun by his brother Bartolomeo, across the island of La Española, from Isabela, in the north, to Santo Domingo, in the south. In the center of this line, at Cibao, which had been christened La Vega Real, gold was regularly obtained. Columbus had established a stud for breeding horses, cattle, and pigs; and had agreed with Roldán that two heifers and two mares, as well as twenty pigs, would be permanently retained for that purpose. Surely, he argued, these were considerable achievements? In a letter of May 1499, Columbus told the King that the failure of the colony to produce more gold had been the fault of the greed of those who had come to the Indies to try to make a quick fortune: they thought that gold and spices could be gathered by the shovelful, and they did not reflect that, though there certainly was gold, it was buried in mines.

  Columbus believed that his system of government would have functioned had he not remained so long in Spain. Casting about for a scapegoat, he blamed conversos for subverting his authority, though nothing suggests that Roldán, Margarit, and Boil were such. Some of the royal secretaries certainly were. But they had not initiated policies against him. Columbus added that he did not have to worry too much since no one who had shown malice toward him had been left unpunished by God.57 Then, in February 1500, the Admiral wrote to the monarchs another, more bitter letter: “It appears that my communications,” he said, “do not reach your Highnesses.” He talked wildly of the desirability of restoring the Temple of Jerusalem with gold from Ophir. He recalled the efforts of his backer, Fray Juan Pérez of La Rábida, by then dead, to assist the Catholic Kings not only in respect of the New World but in the conquest of Granada and the expulsion of the Jews.58

  Any apparent neglect by the monarchs of the affairs of Columbus at this time was, in fact, natural: not only were they planning war with France in Naples, but they were still dealing with the Muslims of the old city there. There was a rebellion of Muslims not only in the Albaicín, in Granada, and in the Alpujarras (October 1500) but also in Ronda (January 1501). All were inspired by hostility to compulsory conversion. The King was busy conducting a war, which ended in 1502 with a decree by which all Muslims living in Castile were given two months to convert to Christianity, and those who refused would be sent to Africa with their goods. The Queen, on the other hand, was in Seville, but even her mind was on the Muslim rebels, not on the affairs of the Admiral in La Española.59

  After Bobadilla landed in Santo Domingo, he and his train went directly to the house where Diego Colón was staying and presented him with his royal letter of appointment. Columbus’s secretary, Diego de Alvarado, seems to have been ready alongside the commander of the fortress, Rodrigo Pérez, to fight the newcomers, but both were restrained.60 Diego Colón abandoned the place and sent messengers for his brothers. In a ceremony on September 15, Bobadilla again presented his letters of credentials, this time to the Admiral. Numerous settlers were present. Columbus said that he had a royal letter stating the contrary to what Bobadilla’s letter specified. Perhaps he thought that there would be, as so often had happened, a long debate at the end of which he would emerge victorious. But he also seems to have told Bobadilla that he considered him just one more Andalusian traveler. Whatever he said, Bobadilla immediately put him and his brothers into an improvised dungeon and had them chained. With the Columbus brothers was Miguel Díaz de Aux, the Aragonese who had become commander of the fortress of Santo Domingo.

  Bobadilla then carried out an investigation of the actions of Columbus and his brothers and heard innumerable complaints.61 Their chief offense was that they had executed Spaniards without the authority of the Council of Castile. Perhaps some of those so killed had been friends of Bobadilla. Had it not been for the loyalty to Columbus of a cook (his name was Espiñosa), life would have been hard for him. As it was, the indignity seemed outrageous, for within a few weeks, Bobadilla sent these illustrious prisoners home on the boat on which he himself had traveled to the Indies. He asked its captain, Andrés Mart�
�nez de la Gorda, to deliver the Columbus brothers still “in chains” to Bishop Fonseca.62 They set off for Spain in October.

  Bobadilla then made some more radical decisions in his colony. First, he revived the gold mining in the center of the island by permitting anyone to go there, with only a modest limitation—to pay an eleventh of what they found to the Crown. The mines of San Cristóbal were expanded, and nearly three hundred kilos of gold were found in 1501 alone.63 Then the Governor issued a decree that stated that the Indians of La Española were free vassals of the Queen. That meant, in practice, that any conquistador could make use of any Tainos, provided that he could persuade them to work for him. The rebels who had been condemned to death by Columbus were reprieved. Roldán was dealt with harshly but with respect.

  By these and other measures, the confidence of the island, which had much declined during the near–civil war between Roldán and the Columbus brothers, revived. Bobadilla was effective even if he was ruthless. The colony, for such it now clearly was, was run much better by him than it had been by the Columbuses, whose qualities were different. The drain of settlers back to Spain stopped. Kidnappings of Indians for slaves ended, though the Indians were worked hard in the mines and gained little from it. Judging discretion to be the better part of valor, Bobadilla did not interfere with Roldán’s repartimientos in Jaragua. Indeed, he encouraged each settler to find a different cacique for his own use, basing his power first on the act of conquest and threat of punishment; but he also took account of how many Spaniards had settled down with the daughters of the native leaders.

  Las Casas wrote that “the three hundred Spaniards who were here [in 1502] … used seduction or force to take the head women of the villages or their daughters as paramours, or servants, as they called them, and live with them in sin. Their relatives or vassals believed they had been taken as legitimate wives and, in that belief, they were given to the Spaniards, who became objects of universal adoration.”64 Thus began the tradition of interbreeding that thereafter characterized the Spanish Empire, in contrast with what happened later in the Anglo-Saxon world. It was encouraged by the obvious attraction of the Spaniards to the Indian women.

  Columbus, meanwhile, reached Spain. He and his brothers had remained in chains throughout the crossing. They were accompanied by Father Franciso Ruiz, Cisneros’s clever secretary, who had not been able to tolerate the Caribbean climate. Landing in Cadiz on November 20, 1500, the Admiral wrote to the monarchs, in a not unnaturally plaintive note, saying that he had arrived home. He explained: “Bobadilla sent me here in chains. I swear that I do not know, nor can I think why, save what God, our Lord, wants me to do for your Highnesses.… I did only what Abraham did for Isaac, and Moses for the people of Israel in Egypt.”65

  The monarchs in Granada were apparently dismayed that Bobadilla had gone so far. Despite their preoccupation with the problem of the Moors, they wrote back on December 17, asking for the Admiral to be released from chains immediately, and instructed him to come to Granada. Columbus sulkily kept on his impediments until he shuffled, wearing them, into the presence of the monarchs in the Alhambra. The Catholic Kings insisted that it had not been their wish that Columbus be so treated and imprisoned.66

  Columbus wrote, too, to Juana de la Torre, the onetime governess of the Infante Juan and sister of Antonio de Torres. “If my complaint against the world is new, its practice of ill treatment is old,”67 he began. Then he described how everyone he had met had been incredulous: “But the Lord gave to the Queen the spirit of understanding.… Seven years passed talking and then came nine when I was engaged in the enterprise itself.… Then I arrived back, and there was no one so vile but wanted to denounce me.” He said that he had often “begged their Highnesses to send someone out at my expense to take over the administration of justice; and when I found the chief magistrate [Roldán] in revolt, I begged them once more for some men or at least for a servant bearing their letters.”68

  The monarchs had remained in Granada most of 1500 and much of 1501. Their preoccupations were still with the Muslim population. The old administration in the city of Granada was abolished in 1501, and a single city government formed with few concessions to the Muslim population. The Supreme Court that had been established in Ciudad Real was soon also moved to Granada. Most Muslims submitted to baptism as Christians, though some went to the mountains or fled the country altogether, convinced that the monarchs had broken the terms of the peace of ten years before. A low-level guerrilla war continued in the sierra to the south, with some support for the Muslims from across the Mediterranean. Christians and converted Muslims (Moriscos) alike suffered, and the Granada silk industry fell into decline. The Inquisition of Córdoba began its activities in Granada, causing much resentment and inspiring the hostility of the city’s benign governor, the Count of Tendilla. The Muslims of Spain in general ceased to be the self-confident people they had been until recently.

  It was against this background that the Catholic Kings turned their attention again to the Indies. Columbus had been treated harshly, and Bobadilla had shown himself intemperate. It is true that the arrival of new imports of gold suggested that “the enterprise of the Indies” was at last beginning to be worth the effort of managing it. The monarchs, after all, needed money, not least for their confrontation with the Turks in the Mediterranean. The threat to Christianity from the Ottoman Empire had not vanished with the fall of Granada. So a fleet was needed, and a fleet needed money. The Indies could produce some of it, if not as much as the Admiral had once promised. The Mediterranean as well as the Balkans remained a theater of war. Those considerations were on everyone’s mind in the European courts, including the papal one.

  In the circumstances, the monarchs decided that it was essential to appoint a serious, new, loyal, and effective proconsul who could mend the divisions in La Española, which seemed to have been pushed farther apart by Bobadilla. Perhaps they found it easier to come to a decision on this at a time when, in the summer of 1501, their most experienced adviser on Indian affairs, Bishop Fonseca, who had been responsible for nominating Bobadilla, had gone to Flanders to assist Prince Philip, the husband of the Infanta Juana. It must have been a difficult assignment for Fonseca, who was used to the sobriety of Spain. Now he found himself in a court where love and marriage were not always partners, and where mistresses played important parts in the lives of noblemen as well as of the royal family. In Fonseca’s stead in Spain for a time, there was the less ambitious Diego Gómez de Cervantes, the corregidor of Cadiz, with whom Columbus had good relations through Alonso de Vallejo, who had accompanied him from Santo Domingo.69 In addition, Peter Martyr, the Italian courtier who had always taken such an interest in the affairs of the Indies, had gone to Egypt as Spanish ambassador.

  So Fernando and Isabel went ahead with a nominee of their own to take over Santo Domingo: this was Fray Nicolás de Ovando, commander of Lares in the Order of Alcántara. Though Bobadilla thought that he was doing well and was making money for the Crown, he would be relieved of his authority. Probably the then president of the Council of the Realm, Álvaro de Portugal, played a part in the new nomination, as did Cisneros. This announcement was followed by the proclamation of a bull by the Pope in November, at the royal request, that the Crown would receive all ecclesiastical tithes in the New World on condition that the governors carried out the instruction and conversion of Indians as well as the maintenance of churches.70

  One or two further journeys to the Indies were approved before Bobadilla knew of his dismissal. Thus in February 1501, two supply ships were sent quietly to Santo Domingo by Francesco Riberol of Genoa71 and Juan Sánchez de Tesorería, a well-connected Aragonese merchant of converso origin: his uncles included Gabriel Sánchez, treasurer of Aragon after 1479, and Alonso Sánchez, treasurer of Valencia.72 There also shared in this voyage Francesco de’ Bardi of Florence (he had married Briolanja, the sister of Columbus’s long-dead wife, Felipa) and three other businessmen. This was the first purely commer
cial expedition to the Indies, and its profits were said to have been between 300 and 400 percent.73 The cargo was mostly clothes, but it included horses, sheep, and cattle.

  There were also journeys to the New World from Lisbon. The most interesting was that of Gaspar Corte-Real with his brother, Miguel, and was composed of two vessels that set sail in the summer of 1500. Gaspar Corte-Real had sailed in search of new islands, even a new continent, before 1500. He was the son of Joam Vaz Corte-Real, captain-general of southern Terceira, in the Azores, by a girl from Galicia whom his father had kidnapped. Joam was also said to have been “a great land stealer.”74 His son seems to have reached Labrador, then Newfoundland, very “close to England,” reflected Las Casas rather curiously.75 He went on another expedition in 1501 with three ships, apparently discovered Greenland, returned to Labrador, and then probably died in Hudson’s Strait. His brother, Miguel, went to look for him but also died in an arctic part of Canada.76 The interest of these journeys is that they show Portuguese captains were determined to discover new lands but at the same time were reluctant to break into territory accepted as Spanish. There was no suggestion by Corte-Real, any more than there had been with Cabot, that the travelers thought they were off Asia. Other journeys undertaken, or at least financed, by members of the family of Corte-Real continued, indeed, throughout the century.