Rivers of Gold

by Hugh Thomas

  The music died down and for a few days all was both calm and happy, but then, eight days out, halfway to the Canary Islands, on February 21, Ovando’s fleet encountered a terrible storm. One ship, La Rábida, was lost with 120 passengers, while the crews of many of the others felt constrained to throw their merchandise overboard. All the vessels were dispersed. Many chests were washed up on the coast of Andalusia. The news reached the court that the entire fleet had to be supposed lost.

  Fernando and Isabel, fearing the worst, did not talk to anyone for eight days.39 Their lives, so triumphant in politics, had been so sad in private that this new tragedy seemed to imply a new curse on their endeavors.40 But shortly they learned that only one ship had actually sunk. The vessels that were scattered might be recovered. The King and Queen resumed their usual arduous journeys. They soon left Seville, and Andalusia, too, for the north, passing through the Sierra Morena to Toledo, where they spent the summer of 1502. The royal mood warmed a little as their daughter and heir, Juana, reached Spain with her husband, Philip von Habsburg. This royal pair reached Fuentearrabia after having left Flanders in July 1501. They took the land route, which meant endless acts of obeisance to the King of France, including the gift of coins in token of vassalage.41 They were, of course, now the heirs to the kingdom. They were greeted by Fernando, and Isabel met them at Toledo. There followed a state banquet, tourneys, and, on May 22, the Cortes and other leaders took an oath to Philip and Juana as “Princes of Asturias.”42 Some complained that Philip did not speak Spanish. But with the realization that through him the monarchs now at last had grandchildren, including male descendants (Charles, Juana’s eldest son, had been born in 1500), such qualms were forgotten. More troubling was the inability of Prince Philip to ignore any pretty girl on whom his blue eye happened to alight, as well as the inability of the Infanta to rise above such flexibility on her husband’s part.43

  Ovando, meanwhile, regrouped most of his ships in Gran Canaria. He found much evidence of enterprise then at work on the island. Batista de Riberol had been building an important sugar mill, and his fellow Genoese Mateo Viña was doing the same at Garachio in Tenerife.44 Many Portuguese farmers and laborers had been welcomed as colonists—several of them after a stay in Madeira. Using the services of the island to help him repair his fleet, Ovando again set off. He reached Santo Domingo with half his ships on April 15, 1502. The remainder of his expedition, with the sad exception of those lost on La Rábida, followed two weeks later, led by the veteran Antonio de Torres.

  Ovando found that the Spanish population of La Española amounted to only about three hundred on his arrival. A few were established at Concepción de la Vega, Santiago, and Bonao, and some, like Roldán, in the far west of the island, but most were established at Santo Domingo. Many of these colonists, as we have seen, had settled down with native mistresses, and had mestizo children. There were rudimentary churches with thatched roofs in both Isabela and Santo Domingo. (The priests there, however, were not entitled to carry out confirmations.) Power among the Indians theoretically remained with caciques, but by then Guacanagarí and Guarionex had been subdued, and Caonabó was dead. In Higuey, in the eastern part of the island, Cotubano was delivering tribute in kind—of a varied sort—to the Spaniards, as in Jaragua, while in the west, in what is now Haiti, the king named Behechio was doing the same.

  Gold was still being produced from the valley of San Cristóbal. The other products of value were cotton and brazilwood.

  Two of Columbus’s friends, Francisco de Garay, a Basque, and Miguel Díaz de Aux, a hardworking Aragonese, had made themselves rich in consequence of the gold.45 The Admiral had sent these entrepreneurs down the woody slopes of Bonao, and there, on the banks of the River Hayna, a woman resting near a stream had found a lump of gold weighing thirty-five pounds, a famous pepita (nugget) of gold that helped give these two northern Spaniards a fortune. They were reputedly the richest men in the colony. Garay had begun to build the first private house of stone in the city of Santo Domingo.

  As soon as he arrived, Ovando carried out the required inquiry (residencia) into the actions of Bobadilla. The Cortes of 1480 in Toledo had ruled that, after the dismissal or resignation of a magistrate, especially a senior one, he would remain in his “residence” for a month (“thirty days and no more”) while anyone who chose could complain about or praise his actions during his time of office. Sometimes these inquiries were drawn out, some ended quickly. Occasionally, if the subject of the inquiry proved to have behaved badly, a criminal charge might be preferred.46 The practice was a direct transfer of Castilian practice to the New World.

  The residencia of Bobadilla was finished in the regulation period of thirty days. No doubt Ovando wanted to send his predecessor home as quickly as he could. Bartolomé de las Casas, in La Española for the first time, marveled at how people competed to attack Bobadilla. Yet the outgoing Governor did not seem to have enriched himself personally. By the end of June, the ships under Antonio de Torres were ready for the return journey; with the papers relating to the residencia safely packed on board, Bobadilla and his staff were preparing to embark for home. There were others who wanted to return. Then the disquieting news came that Columbus, the hated “pharaoh,” was offshore with a small flotilla of four ships.

  Columbus, it will be recalled, had been encouraged by the monarchs to set off on a new, fourth journey—one of exploration only. He was not to think of administering what he had discovered. But he was to explore further the territory of South America. It was to be hoped that he would find a strait that would lead to Asia. He himself expected to reach the Spice Islands. On March 21, the Admiral wrote to Niccoló Oderigo, the ambassador of Genoa in Spain, telling him that he had left a copy of his recently confirmed “Privileges” with Francesco de Riberol, another copy with his Carthusian friend Fray Gaspar de Gorricio, and another in his own house in Santo Domingo. He sent a fourth to Oderigo himself. The list of recipients shows how his friendships then stood. Riberol, for example, was one of the richest of Genoese merchants, with his wide interests in sailcloth, soap, sugar plantations, and wheat. He farmed the monopoly of Canarian dyestuffs, such as orchil, for Gutierre de Cárdenas, the great courtier, and he had by now an interest, too, in the oldest sugar mill in the Canaries, El Agaete.47

  On April 2, Columbus wrote to the Bank of San Jorge in Genoa: he assured them that, though his body might travel to many places, his heart was always with them. God had granted him the best gifts that He had given anyone since the age of King David, and now he was going to return to the Indies in the name of the Trinity.48 He wrote also to his son Diego, saying that he hoped Diego would use everything that belonged to him in Santo Domingo, and would look after Beatriz Enríquez, Columbus’s mistress in Córdoba, paying her 10,000 maravedís a year or half what would be earned by each of the three commanders of the new fortresses in La Española who were accompanying Ovando. Another 10,000 maravedís was to be paid to his sister-in-law, Briolanja Muñiz.

  He told Diego, too, about four friends from Genoa: Riberol; Francesco Doria, who sold more wheat in Seville and bought more olives than anyone else; Francesco Cataño (Cattaneo), concerned in exporting sugar to Milan, and whose brother Rafael had done the accounts for his third voyage;49 and finally, Gaspar d’Espinola, whose interest had hitherto been dried fruit from Granada. These friends provided Columbus with the goods that he was now taking to the Indies.50

  Columbus set off with four caravels and with not only his two brothers, Bartolomeo and Diego, but also Fernando, his clever, illegitimate, still very young son by Beatriz Enríquez. His first mission was to “reconnoiter the land of Paria.” He had told the monarchs that he might very well meet Vasco da Gama, the Portuguese captain who had sailed east. They had written back: “We have written appropriately to the King of Portugal [Manuel I], our son-in-law, and send you herewith the letter addressed to his captain as requested by you, wherein we notify him of your departure toward the west and say we have learned of his [d
a Gama’s] departure eastward and that if you meet, you are to treat each other as friends.…”51 The prospect was appealing, the possibility imaginative.

  Columbus’s fleet of four ships was led by the Santo (or Santa María), the flagship, whose captain, Diego Tristán, had been on the journey of 1493 and who came from a family of leather merchants in Seville. The master was Ambrosio Sánchez, a sea captain now embarking on a career of many years of crossing the Atlantic.52 There was also the Santiago de Palos,53 on which Francisco de Porrás was captain, while his brother, Diego de Porrás, was the notary. They had been on the expedition to Paria of Cristóbal Guerra and Peralonso Niño in 1499, and had been placed on this fourth voyage of Columbus at the request of the treasurer of Castile, Alonso de Morales, who, it is said, was in love with their aunt—though whether that insistence was because he wished them out of the way or desired to offer them a chance of glory is not evident. They were of a converso family—a fact that did not endear them to Columbus.54 The third ship was the Gallega, captained by Pedro de Terreros, who, like the master, Juan Quintero, had been on all Columbus’s previous three voyages. Quintero, who came from a well-known seafaring family in Palos, was the brother of Cristóbal Quintero, who had been the owner of the Pinta on the voyage of 1492.

  Finally, the Vizcaína had as her captain Bartolomeo Fieschi, from a famous Genoese family. Fieschi was the only Genoese to serve as a captain under Columbus at sea. The pilot was Pedro de Ledesma, also a veteran of the Admiral’s third voyage. The crews totaled 140 on the four ships.55

  The pilots included men who would be found navigating the Caribbean one way or another for the next generation. One such was Antonio de Alaminos, later the pioneer of the use of the Gulf Stream, who now began his maritime life with Columbus as a cabin boy;56 and Juan Bono de Quejo, a Basque, from San Sebastian.57 The chief clerk of the fleet was Diego Méndez, an old ally of Columbus, a Sevillano of Portuguese origin who, having fought on the losing side in the civil war of La Beltraneja, had accompanied Lope de Alburquerque, Count of Peñaflor, in a long exile in France, Flanders, and even England.58 There was at least one black slave, a certain Diego, who sailed with his master, Diego Tristán.59

  Columbus had been instructed not to go to Santo Domingo, though he was to be allowed a short stop there “on the way back, if you think it necessary.” He had intended sailing due west along the north coast of South America from Paria, but on June 15, at Martinique, he turned north because he wanted to exchange one slow, heavy ship, the Santiago de Palos, for a better, lighter one, at Santo Domingo. (This was quite contrary to his instructions and it is not surprising that it brought him difficulties.) The Admiral sailed to the island of San Juan (Puerto Rico) on June 24, reaching Santo Domingo on the twenty-ninth, where he sent ashore Pedro de Terreros, the captain of the Gallega, to tell Ovando about his needs. He also thought that he should advise Ovando not to let the homeward-bound fleet under Torres set off because a storm was in the offing.

  Ovando read out Columbus’s letter to him in a mocking voice before a group of colonists, refused the Admiral’s request, and did not delay the sailing of Torres’s large fleet of nearly thirty ships. His attitude was determined by the resentment still entertained toward the Columbus family by the majority of the settlers in Santo Domingo. Antonio de Torres, the cacique Guarionex, the ex-governor Bobadilla, with the papers relating to Bobadilla’s residencia, the famous pepita de oro found by Garay and Díaz de Aux, and the rebel Francesco Roldán, with many of his followers, then set off gaily on June 30 for Spain. At the last minute, the young converso merchant from Triana, Rodrigo de Bastidas, who had walked two hundred and more miles to reach Santo Domingo when his own ship had been wrecked off Jaragua, also joined the homebound armada, in a small vessel, the Aguja, along with Columbus’s agent, Sánchez de Carvajal, who had come out with Ovando.60

  Columbus, furious at being denied entry into what he regarded as his own island, took refuge along the coast in what would become the Bay of Azúa de Compostela: “Was there a man born who would not die of despair—excepting Job himself—at being denied refuge at the hazard of his life and soul … in the very land which, by God’s will, and sweating blood, I won for Spain.…”61 Columbus sailed close to the shore. He was at Azúa when the hurricane came.62

  This storm was destructive. The town of Santo Domingo, built by Bartolomeo Colón on the east side of the River Ozama, was practically razed.63 Columbus wrote that “the storm was terrible and, that night, my ships practically fell apart. Each ship pulled at its anchor without hope, except for death. Everyone thought that the other ships were bound to have been lost.”64 But thanks to the skilled seamanship of both Columbus and his brother Bartolomeo, their four vessels survived, after a fashion.

  The fleet of Antonio de Torres was less fortunate. Having already reached the deep and dangerous Mona Straits between Santo Domingo and Puerto Rico, twenty-three or twenty-four ships, including those carrying Antonio de Torres himself, Bobadilla, Roldán, and many of his friends, and even the cacique Guarionex, were lost,65 together with 200,000 pesos of gold; so were the pepita de oro and all the documents about the outgoing governor. Three ships warily returned to the ruined harbor of Santo Domingo. Only one vessel of the fleet, and that one of the smallest, the Aguja, with Bastidas and Sánchez de Carvajal on board, eventually reached Spain, with 4,000 pesos of the Admiral’s gold. Bastidas’s treasure made an impression, as we have seen.66 But it did not compensate for the losses.

  Despite this bad beginning, Ovando’s government in La Española soon took shape. He sent criminals back to Spain. The disappearance of Roldán and many of his followers made everything much easier. Ovando immediately began the rebuilding of Santo Domingo on the west bank, not the east, of the Rio Ozama, where the city has stood ever since and where a fine statue commemorates him. He laid out a plan (la traza) of the new capital, embarked on a fortress there, and arranged for the building of twelve houses of stone. He imposed a new tax, in addition to that paid since 1498, of one ounce on each three ounces of gold mined, a proportion especially unpopular with colonists dedicated exclusively to mining. This coincided with an increase in the price of both food and tools caused by the sudden failure of communication with Castile. Ovando also made an enemy of a protégé of Fonseca’s, Cristóbal de Tapia, who, before the building of the new city, had bought land where most of the new Santo Domingo was to be built. But he was not compensated for it.67

  Most of Ovando’s new men made quickly for the goldfields in the center of the island, in the region of Cibao, by now treated as a Spanish province. But these new settlers, as full of enthusiasm as they were covetous, died nearly as fast as the Indians whom they secured to work for them—as a result of dysentery caused by the new diets more than anything else. The gold-seekers would return to Santo Domingo crowing over a tiny speck of gold that they believed they had found. It was hard for them to realize that “gold was not to be found like fruit on trees, to be picked as soon as they arrived.”68 It was harder still to find that when the Indians fled, which they often did, “they had themselves to work on their knees, loading carts with potentially interesting rocks, even carrying burdens on their own shoulders.”69 The euphoria of the new arrivals, therefore, lasted only a short time: heat, fatigue, even hunger took their toll. Then an epidemic of syphilis, or a variation of it, broke out in Cibao. So by the end of 1502, a thousand of the newcomers had died, another five hundred were ill, and Ovando’s colonists had been reduced to little more than a thousand.70 Most of these soon abandoned the gold mines both for want of indigenous labor and because their lack of technical knowledge prevented them from enjoying any success in directing the works themselves.71

  The consequence was that the three hundred veterans, men like Diego de Alvarado and Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, who had reached the island on the second or third voyage of Columbus, were the masters of the situation, for they not only had experience and access to food but also the service of Indians whom they needed.
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br />   The search for, discovery, and washing of gold soon became a systematic undertaking. Official places for the melting of gold every year were designated, two in the new gold zone of Buenaventura, near Santo Domingo, where each marco was worth between 50 and 60 million maravedís; and two in the first gold territory, at La Vega or Concepción, where rather more than that was usually measured.

  After the initial setbacks, Ovando’s policy began to be successful. After the unhappy reign of the “pharaoh” Columbus and his brothers, followed by the harsh days of Bobadilla, it seemed as if this conversion of the Caribbean into an outpost of Extremadura by Frey Nicolás de Ovando was at last creating a treasure house comparable to what Columbus had predicted. In 1504, 1506, and 1507, respectively, only 15.3 million, 17.5 million, and 16.8 million maravedís’ worth of gold were sent home.72 All the same, the colony seemed in these years to be organized (as a modern historian has pointed out) like a “large mining farm in which the entire active population was imprisoned.”73 Actually, agriculture did well, too: cassava, garlic, and pigs were now the main concerns.

  Castile still dominated no more than the center of the island of La Española. The Spaniards did occupy, however, a broad sweep of land running from the old capital of Isabela, every day in greater decay, to Santo Domingo. Both to the west and to the east, indigenous principalities survived in a lesser or greater degree of independence. Ovando put an end to this cohabitation with indigenous rulers. Bartolomé de las Casas, who, as has been seen, came out with Ovando, wrote that his commander was “prudent, slow, modest, and equable,” but his acts seem to challenge that judgment for, from the beginning, Ovando had bad relations with the Indians, whom he could not begin to understand.