Rivers of Gold

by Hugh Thomas

  Figueroa was finally let into the Alcázar by its commander, Jorge de Portugal. But many of his followers deserted him and shortly he was surrounded, though offered a compromise by Archbishop Deza. He refused it, and the Alcázar was stormed by royal forces and captured, at the cost of five dead and Figueroa wounded. The latter became a prisoner of the Archbishop while two of his followers were hanged: a cheese merchant, Francisco López, on October 23, and a musician, Juan Velázquez, on November 6.

  The extraordinary civil war in the rest of Spain was also far from over. Acuña, the Bishop of Zamora, with two thousand armed men, unleashed a powerful, popular, basically anti-aristocratic movement in the territory near his see. This bishop, appointed by Julius II, was the bastard of a late-fifteenth-century bishop of Burgos and had been an agent of the Catholic Kings in Rome.17 In 1521, he set off for Toledo, which his men captured and whose townsmen were persuaded to name him archbishop. Also in February 1521, Juan de Padilla captured several key places. The rebels seemed increasingly successful, but their difficulty was that they did not quite know what to do with their sudden power. There was among them agreement that the old regime should be attacked, even destroyed, but no one knew what should succeed it. Extremists every day gained more authority, and a social revolution seemed certain. It would be a national social revolution, to be sure, one directed against Flemings and against Charles’s imperial role. But many merchants, earlier sympathetic to the protests, now trembled at the thought. The comuneros went to see Queen Juana in Tordesillas. They offered her everything that she wanted. Hesitant and confused, she expressed sympathy but nobly, regally, loyally, if (from her own personal point of view) foolishly, declined their offers. She thereby saved her son Charles but condemned herself to another thirty-five years of near-imprisonment in vile conditions.18

  On April 23, the comuneros, who had now become an army as much as a political party, were forced to fight outside the little pueblo of Villalar, near Toro, by royal forces improvised by the new Regents, the Constable, and the Admiral of Castile. They were defeated. The three main comunero leaders, Juan de Padilla, Juan Bravo, and Francisco Maldonado, were captured and immediately executed. Within a few weeks most of the rebellious towns fell to royalists. Toledo held out the longest, under Padilla’s widow, María Pacheco. But Bishop Acuña was captured and imprisoned in Simancas Castle.

  A similar but in some ways more dangerous movement of protest was taking shape in Valencia, where a group of townspeople, principally artisans, formed a brotherhood, or “Germanía,” that seized control of the city. Some, such as Juan Lorena, aspired to create there a “Venetian-style republic.” Others, such as Vicent Peris, also wanted to destroy aristocratic power. Local nobles such as Pedro Fajardo, adelantado of Murcia and Marquis of Los Vélez, played with the idea of sympathy for the rebel cause, but soon abandoned it. In early 1522, the rebellion was defeated. Lorena had already died, but Peris was captured and executed.19

  The upshot of the revolt of the comuneros was to reinforce an authoritarian element in the monarchy in Spain. Self-assertion by cities did not recur till the nineteenth century. Henceforward court and monarchy determined events. The Spanish Empire looked back across the Atlantic at institutions that never seemed to change. The monarchs did what they could to limit further the power of the Cortes. Procuradores continued to be elected, but they were impotent.

  On May 20, 1520, the day that the King left Corunna, Las Casas went to see Cardinal Adrian. He met him as he came out from his lodgings, with the Bishop of Almería, Francisco de Sosa, who had once been a member of the Council of the Realm. Sosa had worked with Fonseca, and now he said to Las Casas: “Kiss the hands now of your most reverend lord [Adrián], because it is he alone who has given you the liberty of all the Indians.” Las Casas laughed, replying in Latin, the language he had in common with Adrian.20

  With the King on his travels, with Spain in flames, and with Adrian preoccupied by the rebellions, power in respect of the Indies remained with the eternal Fonseca, though he himself was out of touch with his responsibilities for weeks. All the same, when the court was eventually reestablished, Las Casas obtained concessions:

  A special grant would be available for all who desired to participate in Las Casas’s territorial adventure. He undertook to pacify ten thousand Indians in two years without having recourse to coercion; and he committed himself again to give the Crown a rising income every year. He agreed to build three settlements with fifty inhabitants each, “to report any discovery of gold,” and to submit rigorously to the sovereignty of the Crown. An educated man (letrado) would be named for the administration, and both an accountant and a treasurer would also be chosen. A visitor could at any time be sent to supervise the work of Las Casas. In making these concessions Las Casas was showing that he retained some of the entrepreneurial qualities that he must have had in his early days as a settler in Cuba.

  He himself was now ready to set off again for the New World, but the civil war prevented him from leaving even Valladolid. So while Spain boiled politically and while the friends of Fonseca were seeking refuge wherever they could, Las Casas took the opportunity to refine his plans, with the support of Cardinal Adrian.

  Early in August 1520, the decree of May 17 restoring Diego Colón to the government of the New World reached Santo Domingo. The old judges resumed their places, and the old royal officials joyfully asked that Figueroa, whom they hated, be submitted to the usual residencia. Figueroa’s lieutenant, Antonio Flores, was soon accused of innumerable wrongdoings in Cubagua, in what is now Venezuela, principally in relation to the pursuit of pearls—though Figueroa had reported that all was prospering on the Pearl Coast, thanks explicitly to himself! In truth, Flores had created a petty dictatorship on that coast, hanging the once helpful indigenous cacique Melchor and some others, acts that in themselves resulted in a revolt that killed two more missionaries and nine other Spaniards.

  In the end, the judge of the residencia, Licenciado Lebrón, condemned Figueroa for his abuses. (Lebrón already had experience conducting an earlier residencia in La Española, against Judge Aguilar, and in the interim he had been a powerful lieutenant governor in Tenerife.)

  Given the disturbances in Seville and a subsequent mood of distrust, more potential emigrants were interested in Las Casas’s ideas than previously had been the case, especially since San Juan in Puerto Rico constituted the first stopping point of the voyage. If the idea of colonizing South America on Las Casas’s lines proved unappealing, the settlers could return to Puerto Rico. The Governor there now, comfortingly for Sevillanos, was Antonio de la Gama, a son of the lieutenant to the new asistente, the Crown’s representative of Seville, Sancho Martínez de Leiva.21

  Las Casas eventually left Seville for the Indies on December 14, 1520, accompanied by thirty-five companions.22 Another twenty or so joined him at Sanlúcar, men who had “forgotten their spades and their cows and had already begun to fancy themselves gentlemen, especially on Sundays and holidays, together with their women and possessions… [including] many biscuits, much wine, and hams, as well as many gifts of one kind or another, all at the expense of His Majesty.…”23

  On January 10, 1521, Las Casas once more reached San Juan, Puerto Rico. It had been a short voyage of only two and a half weeks. No one had crossed the Atlantic as often as he. Alas, the news of a “rebellion” of natives that had begun in September 1520 along the South American coast after the killing of the cacique Melchor, had spread to San Juan, following the murder of several friars at Chiribichi, on the Gulf of Santa Fe. Flores, still in Cubagua, had tried unsuccessfully to suffocate the rising. But in the process three captains and more than fifty Spaniards, including the experienced captain Francisco Dorta, had been killed by the Indians. Flores was preparing to leave Cubagua, and the settlers of that place were planning to abandon their houses.

  There had also been a Carib attack on San Juan itself, probably by natives from the island of Santa Cruz. Thirteen Spaniards had been killed
, and the Caribs seized fifty Tainos. A punitive expedition was prepared in Santo Domingo, to be led by the Extremeño Gonzalo de Ocampo, with San Juan as its first stop. Ocampo was an old friend of Las Casas’s, and he arrived off San Juan on February 27, in time for the two to meet.

  Ocampo was a citizen of Cáceres. Born in 1475, he was aged about forty-five in 1520 and was one of the many sons of a well-known landowner. He was also a brother-in-law of Francisco de Garay, the Governor of Jamaica. Las Casas said that he loved Ocampo and never had an exchange with him that was not one of happiness and laughter.24 In 1502, Ocampo had gone to La Española with Ovando as Las Casas had done. That was when they had become friends. Ocampo was later concerned in trade with the Pearl Coast, and he collected slaves in the Bahamas, too. From 1504 to 1507, he was the representative of the Grimaldis, Genoese bankers, in Santo Domingo. He gave evidence to the priors’ inquiry in 1517 as to whether Indians could be expected to benefit from liberty, even though he had an encomienda of thirty-three Indians in La Buenaventura, in La Española.25

  Las Casas asked his old friend to desist from his enterprise of destroying the revolt on the mainland, because his instructions reserved the north of South America to himself. Ocampo said that though he would, of course, be generally influenced by the instructions of the King, as transmitted by Las Casas (whom he admired), he had to fulfill the orders that he had received in Santo Domingo; and so, on March 1, he went on his way. Ocampo’s repression of the rebellion was rough, comprehensive, and effective. All the natives whom he captured were sent to Santo Domingo and sold as slaves.

  Las Casas, meanwhile, having characteristically quarreled with La Gama, the Governor in San Juan, bought a caravel for 500 pesos and set off with his assistant Francisco de Soto for Santo Domingo, leaving behind in San Juan most of those whom he had brought from Spain. The grand schemes that had seemed so compelling to the Emperor and bishops in Spain now seemed to be unraveling. Could a great entrepreneur who expected to rule one thousand miles of seacoast be forced to buy his own ship? After he arrived in Santo Domingo, Las Casas found that his new friend, Diego Colón, had returned, but with the old treasurer, Pasamonte, as ever making imperious demands. Diego Colón was finding his old headquarters gloomy, even if a cathedral was being built nearby: the first stone of it had been laid. (Work had begun in 1512, the north door would be finished by 1527, and the building itself consecrated in 1541.)26 To prevent Las Casas from returning to Castile to denounce everyone (which was always assumed might happen), the authorities in Santo Domingo arranged to deprive him of his ship. They even persuaded a Basque shipbuilder, Domingo de Guetaria, to ensure that it was not seaworthy.27

  With the news of the royalists’ victory over the comuneros at Villalar and the subsequent revival of the powers of Cardinal Adrian, the authorities realized that they would now have to make some token effort at least to assist Las Casas, who seemed to be a favorite of his. They fortunately did not at that stage know that the Crown had limited the impact of Las Casas’s grant by giving licenses to seek pearls in part of his territory to two merchants who were protégés of Fonseca’s (and Cobos’s), Juan López de Idíaquez and Juan de Cárdenas, who was also the inspector of caravels in Seville. The Bishop no doubt hoped to profit from their dealings.

  Las Casas was able to arrange an understanding of a sort with the powers that be. His friend Gonzalo de Ocampo would remain in charge of disciplining recalcitrant Indians, but Las Casas, as “administrator of the Indians on the Pearl Coast,” would be the overall governor. His enterprise would be reconstituted as a trading company divided into twenty-four shares, six being held for the King by Ocampo, six going to Las Casas and his partners, three to Diego Colón, and one each to leading men of Santo Domingo, such as the judges Vázquez de Ayllón, Villalobos, and Ortiz de Matienzo. This list included most of Las Casas’s old enemies as well as his friends.

  Las Casas would decide where slaves and pearls could best be found. Two ships would be provided for him by his erstwhile enemy Domingo de Guetaria. One hundred and twenty men would be allocated to him as soldiers; the Spaniards would negotiate with the Indians and fight them only if Las Casas personally certified that they were cannibalistic or unwilling to accept the faith.

  Actually, pearls were being brought back in a large quantity from Cubagua by Juan de la Barrera, a converso from the riverside port of Moguer, on the Río Tinto, who was becoming the most important entrepreneur at that time and who seems to have reached his own private (if separate) understanding with the authorities in Santo Domingo.

  In July 1521, Las Casas at long last sailed for his designated Utopia accompanied by a small group only: the accountant Miguel de Castellanos; a priest, Hernández; his assistant, Francisco de Soto, from Olmedo, Valladolid; Juan de Zamora, a Castilian; and about six others. It was a sad decline in Las Casas’s fortunes, which had seemed earlier to stand so high. It was as if his ideas themselves had been devoured by shipworms of the tropics.

  The expedition stopped at the island of Mona and then at San Juan, where Las Casas did not find waiting for him the “modest and industrious farmers” whom he had brought from Spain to carry out his colonization. Some of these had died, others had vanished into the growing new society of Puerto Rico, and a few others had joined Juan Ponce de León in a new journey to Florida. But he and what remained of his old group of friends continued to Cumaná, on the north coast of South America, where they arrived on August 8. It was a very beautiful place, but savage.

  There they found the wooden convent of the Franciscans where Fray Juan Garceto and his fellow fathers had been left largely unscathed by the indigenous “rebellion,” and also a small town optimistically called Toledo, which had been founded by Ocampo. But the last-named place had been ruined, and the Indians there had fled.

  Las Casas addressed the few Spaniards whom he found on the coast and told them of the changes upon which he was going to insist.28 But not many of these wanted to stay in the Indies, much less do so in Las Casas’s dreamland, and soon, despite repetitions of the eloquence that had so entranced everyone in Castile, from the Emperor downward, all left except the Franciscans, who in Cumaná received the “apostle of the Indies” with anthems and prayers. It was one thing to sound buoyant in Castile, another to remain so in the wilderness of South America. Las Casas built a house of straw and wood for himself, as well as an orchard with oranges, a vineyard, and a vegetable garden with fine melons. He then told the Indians what he was planning to do, speaking through “Doña María,” wife of a cacique known as “Don Diego,” who served as interpreter. To protect the water of the River Cumaná from use by other Spaniards who had established themselves on the island of Cubagua, Las Casas wanted to build a fortress, but he failed to achieve this, for those other Spaniards bribed the quarryman charged to carry out this task to be lethargic. Las Casas also failed to control those who secretly and illegally continued to trade slaves and pearls. The Spaniards in Cubagua had suborned the natives by the use of wine, “the most precious money which the Indians loved.29 When they became drunk, they took up their bows and poisoned arrows, and became quite unpredictable.”

  Las Casas also had a conflict with Francisco de Vallejo, the previously named appointee of the priors in Santo Domingo, who, some miles away, claimed that he was the real lieutenant of Diego Colón on that coast. Further flotillas seeking slaves, belonging to such experienced merchants as Bastidas, Fernández de las Varas, and Jerónimo de Riberol, continued to sail in. Las Casas went to Cubagua and demanded unsuccessfully of Vallejo that he abandon his command and return to Santo Domingo. He refused. Las Casas complained by letter to the government in Santo Domingo, without making any impact, and he decided in the end to go there to protest in person.

  He left in December 1521 on a ship of one of the slave seekers, Fernández de las Varas, leaving Francisco de Soto in command. In Las Casas’s absence, and without his knowledge, Soto, with the two ships that he still had, began to look for gold and then for pearls and
slaves. The prospect of establishing a chivalrous Utopia seemed daily more remote. Once Las Casas had gone, the Indians of Cumaná turned against the monks. The latter asked “Doña María” (the interpreter) to intervene. She told them that there was no danger to them, though signaling privately that there was. A boat looking for slaves appeared, and all the old followers of Las Casas sought sanctuary on it, but the Indians prevented the vessel in question even from anchoring. The Spaniards prepared artillery for their defense, but the powder was damp. The Indians eventually attacked, killed five of Las Casas’s group as well as a Franciscan, and burned Las Casas’s house, with the others inside. Soto was wounded, and he and the few remaining friars set off in a canoe, pursued by Indians. The Spaniards reached the open sea, took refuge on a beach protected by thistles, which the Indians would not cross, and were eventually saved by a passing Spanish slaving vessel. Soto died in the Caribbean on the way to La Española.30

  Las Casas himself took two months to return to Santo Domingo, because as a result of a shipwreck he had to land at Yáquimo, in the west of La Española, and walk the rest of the way to the “capital.” When he reached there, he wrote to the King, hoping that his problem had some solution. But the King was still in Germany. He received no response.

  Rejected by all, his plans in tatters, Las Casas sought succor from the Dominicans, whose leader, or provincial, in Santo Domingo, an intelligent Gallego, Fray Domingo de Betanzos, told him tartly that he had worked enough for the souls of the Indians. Now was the time to worry about his own. Betanzos knew what he was talking about. After a wild youth, he had become a Dominican friar and had gone to La Española in 1514. Las Casas, who was then aged about thirty-eight, took sanctuary in the Dominican monastery at Santo Domingo and at the end of the year, without further comments or activity of any sort, decided to remain. His disillusion was complete, and he entered the Dominican order. For the next ten years he allowed himself to reflect on all these events.31 The settlers, freed of the scourge of Father Bartolomé, as they saw it, thereafter carried on much as they wished despite the wonderful memoranda and the high-minded speeches far away in Castile.