Rivers of Gold

by Hugh Thomas

6. CDI, 11, 417.

  7. CDI, 11, 428.

  8. Woodrow Borah and Sherburne F. Cook, Essays in Population History, vol. 3, Berkeley, CA, 1979.

  9. Verlinden, Rosenblatt, Arranz.

  10. CDI, 7, 400.

  11. See for a discussion Silvio Zavala, Las instituciones jurídicas en la conquista de América, 3rd ed., Mexico 1988, 667; see also Las Casas [2:50], 2, 558.

  12. See David Henige, Numbers from Nowhere, unpublished MS, Madison WI, 1996. Charles Verlinden thought 40,000 in La Española in 1492 (see his article “La population de l’Amérique précolombienne. Une question de méthode,” in Mélanges Fernand Braudel, Toulouse 1973, 2, 453–52).

  13. Irving Rouse, The Tainos, New Haven, CT, 1992, 9.

  14. Las Casas, Apologética Historia Sumaria, ed. Pérez de Tudela, 2 vols., BAE, 95, 96, Madrid 1957, 44.

  15. Columbus’s diary of Dec. 13, 1492.

  16. Miguel Cuneo, in Morales Padrón (ed.) [6:19], 143.

  17. Colón [4:40], 183.

  18. Sven Lovén, Origins of the Taino Culture, Göteborg 1935. Carl Sauer concluded a chapter in his The Early Spanish Main [8:5] by saying, “The tropical idyll in the accounts of Columbus and Peter Martyr is largely true. The people suffered no want. They took care of their plantings, were dexterous at fishing and bold canoeists and swimmers. They designed attractive houses and kept them clean. They found aesthetic expression in woodworking. They had leisure to enjoy diversion in ballgames, dances and music. This judgement quite ignores the threat from the Caribs.”

  19. Sauer [8:5], 56.

  Chapter 9

  1. Fernández-Armesto [4:2], 221. Allegretti was Sienese commissario in Bagni di Petriolo and later podestà.

  2. López de Gómara [7:39], 242; Gerónimo Zurita, Historia del Rey Don Fernando el Cathólico [sic], Saragossa 1610, 30–32.

  3. Remesal [7:16], 61.

  4. Lope de Herrera was a minor official, thought of by the monarchs as their “mensajero.” See CDI, 21, 372, and also CDI, 38, 201.

  5. Remesal [7:16], 85.

  6. Navarrete [4:38], 1, 312.

  7. Remesal [7:16], 86.

  8. Instructions and costs of this fleet are in Navarrete [4:38], 1, 346ff.

  9. See García de Resenda, Cronica dos feitos del Rey Dom João, 2, Lisbon 1622.

  10. That is three hundred miles. For Carvajal’s life, see Batllori [2:45], 263ff. He became a cardinal in September 1493.

  11. According to Infessura [7:32]. Pastor doubted that that was so.

  12. Colón [4:16], 1, 466.

  13. Las Casas [2:50], 1, 336.

  14. Pastor [1:7], 6, 177, says so, but on what evidence? See M. Giménez Fernández, “Las bulas alejandrinas de 1493 sobre la historia y el sentido de las letras referentes a las Indias,” AEA, 1, 1944, 171–429, and also L. Weckman, “Las bulas alejandrinas de 1493 y la teoría política del papado medieval,” Publicaciones del Instituto de Historia, 2, Mexico 1949.

  15. Text in Latin in Navarrete [4:38], 1, 312ff.; tr. 1, 315.

  16. CDI, 16, 356–62.

  17. Pastor [1:7], 6, 162.

  18. See Manuel Giménez Fernández, Bartolomé de las Casas, Madrid 1953, 1961, 2, 142.

  19. Navarrete [4:38], 1, 329–30. See Adelaida Sagarra Gamazo, “La formación política de Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca,” in Congreso [5:27], 1, 611. For this remarkable family, see Edward Cooper, Castillos señoriales de la corona de Castilla, 4 vols., Valladolid 1991, 1, 176ff.; Ernst Schäfer, El Consejo Real y Supremo de las Indias, 2 vols., Seville 1935, 1, 2; and Reyes y Mecenas, Madrid 1992, 324. A portrait of Fonseca can be seen on the reredos of the cathedral in Palencia and also, younger, in the cathedral of Badajoz.

  20. It is easy to make Fonseca a villain for everything that went wrong in the Spanish Indies, but of course the fact was that Fonseca could have had no idea what the Caribbean was really like.

  21. Navarrete [4:38], 1, 320.

  22. Navarrete [4:38], 1, 326.

  23. “visoreyes y gobernadores que han sido e son de los dichos nuestros reynos de Castilla y León.”

  24. Cit. Remesal [7:16], 72: “por una linea o raya que hemos hecho marcar qua pasa desde las islas de los Azores a las islas Cabo Verde, de septentrión al austro, de polo a polo.”

  25. Navarrate [4:38], 1, 336.

  26. Rumeu de Armas [7:35], 38.

  27. Navarrete [4:38], 1, 327–28. It would not be surprising to find that he was connected with the Sorias, who were condemned by the Inquisition, for which tragedy see Gil [3:37], 3, 339.

  28. CDHR, 30, 68: also Navarrete [4:38], 1, 323. For the Hermandad, see Luis Suárez Fernández and Manuel Fernández Álvarez, La España de los Reyes Católicos, that is, vol. 17 of Historia de España, ed. Ramón Menéndez Pidal, Madrid 1978, 232–50.

  29. Navarrete [4:38], 1, 321, 324. Zafra was typical of the new letrados, or civil servants, of his epoch—a man without a past or even as it would seem a family. The fact that his surname is a place-name suggests a possible converso connection and indeed a Fernando de Zafra, a tailor of Seville, figures in the “padrón de los habilitados” in Seville in 1510 (Gil [3:37], 5, 493).

  30. Navarrete [4:38], 1, 329.

  31. Navarrete [4:38], 1, 352.

  32. Navarrete [4:38], 1, 321. Villareal would seem to be the family of Villareal of Toledo, for whom see Gil [3:37], 5, 482ff.

  33. Gil [3:37], 1, 386.

  34. Navarrete [4:38], 1, 322.

  35. Navarrete [4:38], 1, 339.

  36. Ibid.

  37. Las Casas [2:50], 1, 338.

  38. Pastor [1:7], 6, 163.

  39. C.H. Haring, Trade and Navigation Between Spain and the Indies in the Time of the Habsburgs, Cambridge 1918, 4; Juan Pérez de Tudela, Las armadas de Indias, y los orígenes de la política de la colonización, CSIC, Madrid 1956, 31.

  40. Navarrete [4:38], 1, 342; cf. CDI, 39, 165.

  41. Navarrete [4:38], 1, 344.

  42. Remesal [7:16], 74: “Plugo a Nuestro señor Jesús Cristo sujetar al imperio de los reyes de España las Islas Afortunadas cuya admirable fertilidad es tan notoria. Y hasta ahora mismo les ha dado otras muchas hacia la India hasta aquí desconocidas, que se juzga no las hay más preciosas y ricas en todo lo que del mundo se conoce.”

  43. CDI, 30, 164–65.

  44. CDI, 30, 183, 184–86.

  45. BRAH, 1891, 19, 187 et seq., qu. Pastor [1:7], 6, 163.

  46. Pastor [1:7], 5, 410.

  47. Varela [4:14], 155.

  48. Navarrete [4:38], 1, 345.

  49. Remesal [7:16], 93.

  50. Navarrete [4:38], 1, 356–57.

  51. Navarrete [4:38], 1, 363–64. The letter is also in Las Casas [8:16], 1, 350–51.

  52. Navarrete [4:38], 1, 362.

  53. Navarrete [4:38], 1, 354.

  Chapter 10

  1. Consuelo Varela [4:14], 109. Las Casas [2:50], 1, 346, suggests 1,500. Fernando Colón says that he and his brother, Diego, watched their father’s fleet leave.

  2. Las Casas [2:50], 1, 347, says that Diego, whom he knew, was “una persona virtuosa, muy cuerda, pacífica, y más simple y bien acondicionada que recatada ni maliciosa.”

  3. Heers [4:17], 200.

  4. The comment of Consuelo Varela [4:14], in Retrato. Las Casas [2:50], 1, 347, says he was named captain-general of the fleet.

  5. Fernando Colón [4:40].

  6. Las Casas [2:50], 1, 347. Altogether, Columbus wrote later (to Juana de la Torre, Colón [4:16], 265) that there were two hundred people “sin sueldo.” See, for the converso origin of these brothers, see Gil [3:37], 3, 120ff. Pedro was the father of Fray Bartolomé. See Las Casas [2:50], Historia, 30.

  7. See Robert B. Tate, Joan Margarit i Pau, Cardinal-Bishop of Gerona, Manchester 1955.

  8. See Gil [3:37], 1, 33, Demetrio Ramos, El conflicto de lanzas jinetes, Santo Domingo 1992, 16fn, 7, and Serrano y Sanz [5:15], 227.

  9. Fernando Colón [4:40], “habían acudido tantos caballeros e hidalgos y otra gente noble, que fue necesario dismunir el número
.…”

  10. Las Casas [2:50], 1, 348. “Todas las perfecciones que un hombre podía tener corporales.”

  11. The list in Demetrio Ramos is Francisco de Olmedo, Diego de Sepúlveda, Antonio Quintela, Antonio de Peñalosa, Diego de Leyva, Arias Gonzalo, Francisco de Estrada, Rodrigo Vázquez, Lope de Cáceres, Gonzalo Pacheco, Diego Osorio, Antonio Román, Rodrigo de Arévalo, Alonso Serrano, Cristóbal de León, Pedro Coronado, and Diego Cano, with a certain Villalba (veedor). There were seven whose names Ramos could not establish.

  12. See Juan Gil and Consuelo Varela, Cartas de particulares a Colón, Madrid 1984.

  13. Fidel Fita, Fray Bernardo Boyl, and Cristóbal Colón, “Nueva Colección de cartas reales,” BRAH, 19, 20, 1891–92, 173ff., 184.

  14. The phrase is from Consuelo Varela [4:14], 113.

  15. Boil’s inspiration, Francisco de Paola, was canonized in 1519, a little more than a century after his birth in 1416.

  16. Pastor [1:7], 6, 163.

  17. Ibid.

  18. Las Casas [2:50].

  19. First published in Venice in 1571 and later in Brasseur de Bourbourg’s Relation des Choses de Yucatan, of Diego de Landa. See also the edition of Juan José Arrom, Mexico 1988; Martyr [6:34], 80.

  20. The reformed Franciscans, the Observants, had met at Florence on May 26 and became excited at the prospect of vast new territories to convert to their version of Christianity. Fr. Antonino Tibesar, OFM, “The Franciscan Order of the Holy Cross of Española, 1505–1559,” The Americas, vol. 43, 3, 1957.

  21. “Castilla y le mandé dar a una muger que de Castilla acá benía.…”

  22. Martyr [6:34], 22.

  23. Giménez Fernández [9:18], 2, 551, wrote that “parece cierta la especie, no documentalmente comprobada, de que ya en el segundo viaje de Colón fueron algunos negros o loros esclavos.…” For Marchionni, the most interesting Florentine businessman of Lisbon, see my The Slave Trade [3:24], 83–85.

  24. Bernáldez [3:2], 301.

  25. Navarrete [4:38], 1, 321.

  26. Colón [4:16], 236.

  27. Las Casas [2:50].

  28. Morales Padrón [6:19], 183.

  29. Fernández-Armesto [4:49], 42.

  30. Álvarez Chanca in Morales Padrón [6:19], 111; Cuneo, in the same, 141.

  31. Cuneo in Morales Padrón [6:19], 141.

  32. Álvarez Chanca in Morales Padrón [6:19], 113.

  33. Cuneo in Morales Padrón [6:19], 142. For La Deseada, see Oviedo [2:43], 1, 34. See also the evidence of Juan de Rojas, discussed by Manzano [4:43], 480–81.

  34. Martyr [6:34], 20.

  35. Álvarez Chanca in Morales Padrón [6:19], 114–16.

  36. Martyr [6:34], 19.

  37. “Al final, nos encontramos de acuerdo de tan manera, que os digo que eso parecía amaestrada en una escuela de rameras”: Cuneo in Morales Padrón [6:19], 144.

  38. Colón [4:16], 239.

  39. It was in the tenth century that the number became fixed at 11,000, thanks to a misreading of a text that spoke of “eleven virgins.”

  40. Álvarez Chanca in Morales Padrón [6:19], 121.

  41. Fernando Colón [4:40], 241.

  42. Martyr [6:34], 22.

  43. Fernando Colón [4:40], 167, and Las Casas [2:50], 1, 355.

  44. Álvarez Chanca in Morales Padrón [6:19], 130.

  45. Martyr (perhaps using Antonio de Torres’s reports) [6:34], 23.

  46. Álvarez Chanca in Morales Padrón [6:19], 132. Note that Consuelo Varela and Juan Gil show (Colón [4:16], 243fn,16) that the pensions to the heirs of those killed were paid after 1508.

  47. Fernando Colón [4:40] and Las Casas [2:50], 1, 362, say the seventh, Cuneo the eighth.

  48. Chanca in Morales Padrón [6:19], 130.

  49. Las Casas [2:50], 1, 362.

  50. Ramos [10:8], 70.

  51. Bernáldez [3:2], 2, 21. It is not at all easy to decide when this was. Álvarez Chanca says that on Jan. 1, 1494, he decided to land in order to sleep. Morison said that it was on Jan. 2 that the fleet arrived at Isabela.

  52. Morales Padrón [6:20], 134–35.

  53. Las Casas [2:50], 1, 363.

  54. Colón [4:16], 248.

  55. “Memorial que para los reyes dió el almirante don Cristóbal Colón en la ciudad de la Isabela,” Jan. 30, 1494, Antonio Torres, in Navarrete [4:38], 195–202, 262. See also Las Casas [2:50], 1, 365.

  56. Álvarez Chanca in Morales Padrón [6:19], 137.

  57. Cuneo in Morales Padrón [6:19], 146: “la búsqueda de oro” was “por lo que, principalmente, había emprendido un viaje tan largo.”

  58. Ibid., 147: “por la codicia de oro, todos no mantuvimos fuertes y gallardos.”

  59. Oviedo [2:43], 2, 123.

  60. Américo Castro, The Structure of Spanish History, Princeton, NJ, 1954, 130.

  61. Las Casas [2:50], 1, 366; Sale [6:16], 145fn. See Samuel Eliot Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, 2 vols., Boston 1942, Appendix 1, for a detailed discussion.

  62. Navarrete [4:38], 1, 196–205.

  Chapter 11

  1. Colón [4:16], 291. See, for this journey, Antonio Núñez Jiménez, El Almirante en la tierra más hermosa. Los viajes de Colón a Cuba, Cadiz 1985: “yo tenía esta tierra por firme, no isla.”

  2. Cuneo in Morales Padrón, [6:19], 146.

  3. Ibid., 147.

  4. Fernando Colón [4:40], 122.

  5. CDI, 21, 365–66; Las Casas [8:14], 1, 367.

  6. Ramos [10:8], 209.

  7. Navarrete [4:38], 1, 196.

  8. Cuneo in Morales Padrón [6:19], 147; “y también, mientras España sea España, no faltarán traidores; asi el uno denunció el otro, de manera que casi todos fueron descubiertos, y a los culpables muy fuertemente azotados: a unos les cortaron las orejas, a otros la nariz, y daba compasión verlos.”

  9. Fernando Colón [4:40], 176.

  10. Ramos [10:8], 95; Navarrete [4:38], 1, 365ff.

  11. Colón [4:16], 270.

  12. “la justicia sea mucho temida.”

  13. Colón [4:16], 281.

  14. Las Casas [2:50], 1, 408.

  15. Deive [6:36], 15.

  16. Las Casas [2:50], 1, 383.

  17. Colón [4:16], 254ff.

  18. Isabel is supposed to have said that if she had had three sons, she would have liked one of them to have been King of Castile, the second the Archbishop of Toledo, and the third a notary of Medina del Campo.

  19. Liss [2:42], 277.

  20. Gil [3:37], 1, 188.

  21. Gil [3:37], 1, 107.

  22. Liss [2:42], 297.

  23. Martyr [6:34], 41. Melchor had been the royal ambassador at the court of the pope the year that Málaga fell.

  24. Navarrete [4:38], 1, 368; CDI, 16, 560.

  25. Navarrete [4:38], 3, 485.

  26. CDI, 36, 178.

  27. “en lo de las carnes, vea cómo las que se enviaren sean buenas.”

  28. Consuegro, Spanish for co-father-in-law, is a word that ought to be launched into English usage. The letter, dated May 21, 1494, was published by Batllori [2:45], 222–24.

  29. Rumeu [2:2], 210–11.

  30. Navarrete [4:38], 1, 369.

  31. “una raya, o linea derecha de polo a polo del polo arctico al polo antartico que es del norte al sur, la cual raya o linea e señal se haya de dar y de derecha como dicha es, a 370 leguas de las islas de cabo verde para la parte de poniente por grados o por otra manera.…” Navarrete [4:38], 1, 378ff.

  32. Demetrio Ramos, El Repudio al Tratado de Tordesillas, Congreso Nacional de la Historia, Salamanca 1992.

  33. John Parry, The Spanish Seaborne Empire, London 1966, 46.

  34. Other names are in Navarrete [4:38], 1, 387ff.

  35. Cuneo, letter in Morales Padrón [6:19].

  36. Colón [4:16], 291.

  37. Bernáldez [3:2], 49.

  38. I. A. Wright, The Early History of Cuba, New York 1916, 18.

  39. A. Núñez Jiménez [11:1] says so.

  40. The incident does not figure in
Las Casas, ch. 96; but see Heers [4:17], 219.

  41. Morales Padrón [6:19], 217; Navarrete [4:38], 1, 387ff.

  42. Las Casas [2:50], 1, 345.

  43. Martyr [6:34], 92. See, for this journey, Francisco Morales Padrón, Jamaica Española, Seville 1952, 5–10, and Bernáldez [3:2], 2, 71ff.

  44. Fernando Colón [4:40], 191. Sale [6:16] suggests “Reiter’s syndrome,” following dysentery.

  45. Fernando Colón [4:40], 198.

  46. Oviedo [2:43], 1, 49–50.

  47. Las Casas [2:50], 1, 378.

  48. Oviedo [2:43], 1, 49.

  49. Ibid.

  50. AGI, Contratación, 5089, 1, f. 106r, qu. in Fernando Colón [4:40], 284 fn20.

  51. For Bartolomeo Colón, see Las Casas [2:50], 1, 153.

  52. Oviedo [2:43], 1, 51, and see Serrano y Sanz [5:15], 233; Las Casas [2:50], 1, 427.

  53. “todos sus principales males eran de hambre.”

  54. Las Casas [2:50], 1, 425: “Así Dios me lleve a Castilla.”

  55. Fernando Colón [4:40], 194.

  56. Ibid.

  57. Fernando Colón [4:40], 200.

  58. See Arrom [10:19], passim.

  59. Pérez de Tudela [9:39], 89, esp. fn 37.

  60. Navarrete [4:38], 1, 394.

  61. Las Casas [2:50], 1, 411: “Una de las principales cosas porque esto nos ha placido tanto es por ser inventada, principiada y habida por vuestra mano, trabajo e industria y parécenos que todo lo que al principio nos dixistes que se podía alcanzar por la mayor parte, todo ha salido como si lo hubiérades visto antes.…”

  62. Navarrete [4:38], 1, 392: “quiere que se le envien todos los mas halcones que se pudiese.”

  63. Heers [4:17], 317.

  64. Rumeu [2:2], 212ff.

  65. Navarrete [4:38], 3, 501.

  66. “que era burla … no era nada el oro que había en esta isla y que los gastos que sus altezas hacían eran grandes, nunca recompensables” (Las Casas [2:50], 1, 421).

  67. Charles’s claim to the throne of Naples derived from his grandmother María, a sister of the “Bon Roi René” of Naples who for years lived royally in France even if he never reigned in Italy.

  68. Delaborde, 324, qu. Pastor [1:7], 5, 432.

  69. Guicciardini [3:6], 44.

  70. Guicciardini [3:6], 72.

  71. Sagarra Gamazo, in Congreso [5:27], 636.

  72. For the American origin of syphilis, see Morison [10:61], App. 1. There may have been, however, a European or Old World variety. See Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange, Westport, CT, 1972, 122–56, and W. H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples, Oxford 1977; the similarities between the spirochetes that cause yaws and syphilis are well discussed.