Rivers of Gold

by Hugh Thomas

Gorrevod, we can assume, placed the money that he made in his coffers in Bourg-en-Bresse. Some of it he would surely contribute to the Archduchess Margaret’s favorite project, the building of the exquisite church and monastery at Brou on which she had set her heart.

  The buyers of Gorrevod’s advantageous contract from López de Recalde were two Genoese merchants and one Spaniard established in Seville. These were Domingo de Fornari, who bought the right to carry one thousand African slaves to the New World; and Agostín de Vivaldi and Fernando Vázquez, who together acquired the right to carry the other three thousand slaves.63 These last two also sub-sold their rights, to Juan de la Torre, of Burgos; to Gaspar Centurión (an even more famous Genoese, though a Castilianized one); and to Juan Fernández de Castro, of Burgos, but then in Seville.64 They bought the rights for a little over 9 million maravedís, that is, 2,250 maravedís a slave.65

  The first of these men, Domingo de Fornari, belonged to a Genoese family long active in trading slaves of all kinds from Chios, and he was already also known in the Portuguese slave trade from Guinea as a provider for the tropical island of São Tomé, in the Gulf of Guinea.66 He was, therefore, a past master in the matter of providing black slaves. Agostín de Vivaldi (Ribaldo, sometimes, in Spain) was a man of the same background as Fornes. Vázquez was a native of Toledo who had always had many commercial interests in Seville. Juan de la Torre had been well known in Seville for a generation, a partner of the adventurer Francisco Barrionuevo, who would soon become a military commander in La Española. Juan Fernández de Castro was a businessman connected with all the important commercial families of Burgos. Finally, Gaspar Centurión was, by 1518, the most important Genoese merchant in Seville, with long experience in Santo Domingo. Renting a palace (in what is today the Plaza de Doña Elvira) from Jorge de Portugal—that palace was, indeed, the modern square—he had come to Seville as a trader from Naples about 1507 and was now a banker, being concerned in innumerable bargains, such as wine from Guadalcanal, with Juan de Córdoba, and loans to the geographer Martín Fernández de Enciso and even to Hernando de Soto, another brilliant captain on Pedrarias’s expedition.67 He was also the banker of Bishop Fonseca. Centurión was often associated with his fellow Genoese Juan Francisco (Giovanni Francesco) de Grimaldi, and the two were always making money by advancing loans to captains or Indies-bound merchants. Even churchmen, even Juan de Santa María, archpriest of the church in Concepción de la Vega, in La Española, owed Centurión money.68 So did Juan Ponce de León.

  Las Casas complained about the contract with Gorrevod: he thought that the license should have been given to Spaniards, because his countrymen were poorer than both the Genoese and the Flemings.69

  This first major consignment of African slaves for the Americas was thus, in every sense, a pan-European enterprise: the grant of the Flemish-born Emperor was to a Savoyard, who sold his rights through a Castilian to Genoese and Spaniards, who in turn would have to arrange for the Portuguese in Africa or Lisbon to deliver the slaves. It will be remembered that no Spanish ship could legally go to Guinea. The monarchs of the two countries were then allies, and, anyway, only the Portuguese could even think of supplying four thousand slaves at one time. Several of those concerned, such as Gutiérrez, probably Fernández de Castro, and possibly Juan de la Torres, were conversos.

  This grant was not, in fact, a monopoly, for some minor licenses to import slaves were also soon given: for 10 slaves to Pedro de Velasco in 1520, for 50 each to the royal secretaries Cobos and Villegas the next year, as well as one for 200 to the same Álvaro de Castro who had received a license in 1510 and who would use another Genoese, Benito de Basiniana, as a supplier.70 Álvaro Pérez Osorio, Marquis of Astorga, obtained a license in September 1518 to send 400 black slaves to the New World, which permission he, too, sold to Genoese bankers.71 But Gorrevod’s license was a turning point. No larger contract was signed for many years. The settlers in the Caribbean thought that their problems of labor had been resolved. So in a sense they had, for what Charles and Gorrevod, in their relative innocence, began, the Atlantic slave trade, leading to the sale of millions of Africans, continued for another three and a half centuries.

  29

  “It is clear as day …”

  It is clear as day that had it not been for me, you would not have been able to obtain the Roman Crown.

  Jacob Fugger to Charles V, April 24, 1523

  The return of Bishop Fonseca to authority in Castile as a result of the death of the Fleming Le Sauvage did not prevent the interminable circulation of further proposals for the improvement of conditions in the Indies. Thus, on September 10, 1518, even the Bishop promulgated an order on the subject of the “Privileges and Liberties granted to laborers who go to the Indies.” This would provide an opportunity for emigration to all who lived in poverty in Spain. There would be free passage to the New World for all men and women concerned, free medicine and land, animals, seeds, and everything needed to support them till their crops matured. Taxes need not be paid for twenty years (except for the tithe, for the Church), assistance would be given to Indians who built the settlers’ homes, and prizes would be presented to farmers who produced the first twelve pounds of silk, cloves, ginger, cinnamon, or other spices.

  King Charles approved this and instructed López de Recalde, in the Casa de Contratación in Seville, to allow these privileges to any farmers who appeared there for passage to the New World. López de Recalde would inspect the applicants, “incite laborers” to go to the New World, and explain the possibilities. It was he who would ensure that each farmer had what he needed.1

  Then, not to be outdone, certainly not by Fonseca, Las Casas, recovering from typhus, secured a royal order authorizing the foundation of towns of free Indians to live in a “political way like Spaniards.” They were to pay tribute, like other vassals, and not be in an encomienda. He also secured an order that would make known to officials, judges, gentlemen, “good men of every city and town” in Spain, the purpose of Fonseca’s plan to send farmers to the Indies. No impediments were to be placed in the way of anyone who wished to go.

  Las Casas had yet another curious plan up his sleeve for the promised land between Darien and the Pearl Coast—essentially from the Gulf of Urabá to the island of Margarita, off Venezuela. This enormous stretch of territory, he believed, should be reserved for the mendicant orders. This was not the first time that this astonishing idea had been put forward. Fray Pedro de Córdoba had launched it and Las Casas had already talked of it. But now he insisted that this was the best land that Castile possessed in the Indies, and within it there were surely hidden riches beyond counting. He then repeated his remarkable suggestion of the previous April for a chain of fortresses to be manned by a hundred men each, to be provided with sufficient goods to allow them to exchange with the natives both gold and emeralds. The commanders of these fortresses would slowly extend their authority over the interior, to increase both the evangelical work and the dominions of Castile. Entradas of the traditional kind would be prohibited, and no Indians would be enslaved. The costs would be met by confiscating some of the gold and silver already taken by the Spaniards.2

  Having delivered this plan to the Council of the Realm, Las Casas set about trying to recruit people for Fonseca’s scheme of colonization. He and some friends, therefore, left Saragossa on mules in October 1518 and went to many towns in Castile, making declarations in the churches on the benefits of the idea. They announced from pulpits that the King aimed to settle these new lands in the Indies. They spoke of the fertility, the freedom from disease, and the riches of the lands in question, and of the grants that the King would make to those who went there. They spoke in such a way, Las Casas himself said, that “the hearts of all rose up.”3 After all, he knew those places in the New World and so could talk with real experience. He reached Rello, a poor town consisting of thirty houses near Almazán that belonged to the Count of Corunna, a grandson of the Marquis of Santillana. There he recruited twenty people, includi
ng two old brothers with seventeen children between them. He asked, “You, father, do you really want to go to the Indies, being so old and tired?” To which the reply came, “By my faith, sir, I am going there to die and to leave my children in a free land.”4 Such a radical statement must have been as unexpected for Las Casas as it was to the Count of Corunna.

  Las Casas was accompanied by Luis de Berrio, from Jaén, once a soldier in Italy. He had been recommended to Las Casas by Bishop Ruiz de la Mota.5 Berrio, with the approval of Fonseca, recruited in Andalusia two hundred people whom Las Casas considered “ruffians, vagabonds, and idle people, not at all working men.” They were sent by the Casa de Contratación to Santo Domingo, where they encountered many difficulties because, alas, the officials there had not been told in advance about them. Some died while they waited for approval of their journey. Some became thieves, robbing Indians, and some became tavern keepers, as they had been before.

  Las Casas continued with his mission in Castile for two months. It was December when he arrived in Berlanga, a pueblo between Burgo de Osma and Almazán belonging to the Constable of Castile, Íñigo Fernández de Velasco. It had a population of two hundred. Las Casas, nothing if not eloquent, recruited seventy of them. They too explained that they did not want to go to the Indies “for lack of anything here, because each of us has 100,000 maravedís or more; but we want to leave our children in a free land.”6 The repetition of what he had been told in Rello of course much impressed Las Casas. On hearing of this exchange, Fernández de Velasco sent an infantryman to order Las Casas to leave the town. He asked Las Casas also to remove all his assistants from other places. Las Casas returned to Saragossa to tell Bishop Fonseca that he had gathered three thousand workers, a figure that could have been ten thousand had he not wished to avoid offending the grandees. For the moment, he had two hundred volunteers ready. Fonseca asked: “Are you sure, are you sure?” “Yes, sir, certain, certain,” was Las Casas’s answer. “By God,” said Fonseca, “that’s a great achievement, that really is!”7

  By that time, however, a new authority was beginning to make itself evident in the conduct of business in relation to the Indies. This was Mercurino Gattinara, who had been named chancellor and who arrived at court on October 8. On October 15 he knelt before the King to take up his office. Though the Indies were always for him of less importance than was Spain, and much less significant than either Italy or Germany, Gattinara’s clear brain soon caused him to realize the need for coherent policies in the New World.

  Gattinara had been born in Vercelli, Piedmont, in 1465, into a family of the lesser nobility. He rose to eminence as a lawyer working for the Duke of Savoy, in Turin. He became president of the parliament of the Duke, bought an estate at Chévigny, near Besançon, in Franche Comté, and became a Burgundian subject of the Archduchess Margaret; and Burgundian concepts of honor always played a decisive part in his reactions. Yet the Venetian ambassador to Spain, Contarini, thought him essentially Italian, and he retained property in northern Italy. He was trusted by both Margaret and her father, Maximilian, and the latter sent him in 1509 to Flanders as ambassador. He aroused suspicions there for trying to impose a rigorous, if classical, system of justice on the Flemish nobility, who obtained his removal.

  At the time of his appointment as imperial chancellor by Charles, Gattinara was president of the Parlement of Dôle and had also been for some years head of Margaret’s Privy Council. He had a humanist conception of the Holy Roman Empire, which he wanted Charles to embellish and to which he hoped to give a new, Renaissance meaning. Christopher Scheurl, of Nuremberg, remembered him as

  an accomplished orator, an erudite jurisconsult, a faithful counselor, hardworking, gentle, charming, jovial, kind, and well versed in matters of polite learning. A bachelor but never dining alone, he is always revived by the company of feasting guests. He makes merry, laughs, converses, mixes jokes with serious matters when eating; he is most pleasing in his manner and most accessible and obliging. He honors those who visit him and listens indulgently.8

  From now on, Gattinara was the adviser who would influence not only Charles’s policies but also his character. His advice marked a change from the Francophile direction of Chièvres and Le Sauvage. In addition, he was the spokesman for Charles’s right to be the Holy Roman Emperor, which in its religious inspiration had a Dantesque exaltation all of its own. He pressed for Charles to be the emperor in order to be able to use the title “iustisimus” and to dominate the globe. A great writer of memoranda, which he would pen in his neat, clear, careful handwriting, he dreamed of a world monarchy under a single shepherd.9 He was not as yet in any way informed about the Indies. But his warmth of personality and capacity for imagination as well as hard work soon converted him into the most enlightened influence on all American questions.

  Before Gattinara became fully engaged with overseas problems, Bishop Fonseca made some important decisions. He knew that the regime of the priors in Santo Domingo had failed, so he persuaded the King to bring it formally to an end. He proposed that Rodrigo de Figueroa (no relation that we know of to Prior Luis de Figueroa, who was still in La Española), a forty-seven-year-old lawyer from Zamora who had once worked for the military orders and had been in Seville as judge of almojarifazgo (the duty on imports and exports), take over as governor. The King agreed and wrote to the priors, thanking them for their numerous letters, explaining that the troubled position of Spain had made it impossible to write before, and asking them to remain where they were till their successor arrived.

  Las Casas was named as the chief assistant to the new Governor Figueroa. Fonseca evidently wished to remove that turbulent priest from Spain in as effective a way as possible. He was indeed so enthusiastic about the chance of saying goodbye to Las Casas forever that for a time he was almost kind to him. Figueroa’s instructions—in forty paragraphs10—meanwhile were dominated by the usual moralistic statements. The instructions included a discussion of the work that would be done in the fields and in the mines by the Indians, of the need to ensure their good physical treatment, of the requirement for their education in Christian doctrine, of the need to ensure that Indians had only one wife, and of the obligation to protect women and children and to limit the numbers of Indians assigned to a single encomendero to 150 maximum, 40 minimum. Figueroa was also to send the King the opinions of all “disinterested persons” in the colony on how to define Indian liberty.11 These paragraphs may have been due to the influence of Cardinal Adrian, the latest to become convinced of the wisdom of Las Casas’s judgment.12

  Figueroa also received orders about the flotillas that were still leaving Santo Domingo to look for slaves: first, the regions inhabited by cannibalistic Caribs should be carefully marked out; second, Indians from non-Carib tribes should not be captured against their will; third, Figueroa should find out what had really happened during Juan Bono’s expedition to Trinidad; fourth, the people of the Bahamas, Barbados, and the Islas Gigantes, off Venezuela (as it is now), should be looked upon as free; and, fifth, the details as to how pearls were found on the Pearl Coast should be made evident.13

  But while the new ruler prepared himself in Castile and listened to a hundred speeches of well-intentioned advice, the poor priors in Santo Domingo were facing a new disaster: a smallpox epidemic in the winter of 1518 swept through the islands, in particular the new towns that the priors had founded.14 This was the first full epidemic in the New World, though influenza, typhus, and measles had done damage before. Perhaps the priors’ well-meant creation of new towns had inadvertently assisted the spread of the infection. It anyway now seemed as if the indigenous population, far from merely suffering from being overworked or losing faith in the future, was in danger of extinction because of a European epidemic, one to which the tough Spaniards, newcomers and established settlers alike, seemed immune. Indians and Spaniards joined together in sponsoring religious processions in the city of Santo Domingo, begging for divine protection. But prayers and ceremony proved inadeq
uate.

  The immediate consequence of the epidemic was to increase the demand for Lucays (from the Bahamas) and slaves from the Pearl Coast. The Genoese Sevillano Jacome de Castellón (Castiglione) continued to send armadas north to the Bahamas and south to the Pearl Coast, in which there was a curious mixture of evangelization and criminality. There was also some conventional trading: arms and wine, especially the latter, were found in the hands of the Chiribichi in South America by 1518.15 This also led the priors to repeat their requests for more black slaves.16

  The deliberations at Saragossa concerning the Indies were interrupted. First, on January 7, 1519, the Cortes of Aragon gave Charles its support and its money. Charles, much relieved, then went to Cataluña to meet its Cortes, in Barcelona. The court traveled without fanfare via Lérida. But while in that Catalan city, he received on January 24 news of an event that transformed the history of Spain and of all her possessions: the King’s grandfather, the Emperor Maximilian, who had seemed immortal, had died at Wels, in upper Austria, on the twelfth. The last months of the Emperor had been rendered uncomfortable by syphilis. His pains were only mildly reduced by the application of “Indias” wood (madera de Guayana), which, like the disease it was intended to soothe, derived from America.17

  The candidacy of King François I of France for the empire was immediately announced, with support from the Medicean Pope, Leo X. But Charles was the critical candidate. In these circumstances, for several months it was difficult for anyone in Spain to gain the King’s attention on any local subject, much less the Indies. The Chancellor, Gattinara, was even more possessed by the imperial dream than was Charles. So, many things happened in the New World without even being noticed in the home country.

  Thus, early in 1519, Alvarez de Piñeda began to explore the coast between present-day Florida and the Mississippi. This region he called Amichel. His first vision of the River Mississippi entitles him to first place among the explorers of his generation. Alas, he seems to have left no description of what he saw. Then Diego Velázquez, the Governor of Cuba, promoted another expedition to the west, to follow up what had been discovered by Fernández de Córdoba and Juan Grijalva. This was entrusted to an ex-secretary of his own, an experienced Extremeño, Hernán Cortés (see chapter 35). Few in Spain learned of the expedition, and when they did, none paid attention to it. Even Las Casas was as ignorant as he was uninterested.