by Hugh Thomas
3. CDIU, 5, 148–55.
4. Francisca, daughter of Rodrigo Ponce de León, the victor in the war in Granada, referred in a document of April 18, 1518, Archivo de Protocolos de Sevilla (hereafter APS), oficio 10, escribanía de Diego López, qu. Murga Sanz [19:1], 22, to Juan Ponce de León, the conqueror of Puerto Rico, as her cousin.
5. Ramos [10:8], 109; Oviedo ([2:43], 2, 90), who knew him, says that he was on Columbus’s second voyage.
6. Las Casas [2:50], 2, 504. It is now some way from the sea.
7. Oficio 15, lib. I, escribanía de Bernal González Valdesillo, f. 3rd tercio del legajo, May 20, 1508 (APS, 1, 381).
8. Las Casas [2:50], 2, 373: “hombre muy hábil y que le había servido en las guerras mucho.”
9. Qu. Morison [4:42], 386.
10. Morison [4:42], 504.
11. See Garrido’s Información de Servicios y Méritos in AGI, Mexico, leg. 203, no. 3. He later fought in Cuba, Florida, and Mexico with Cortés. The others who accompanied Ponce de León are discussed in Murga Sanz [19:1], 35.
12. R. R. Hill, “The Office of Adelantado,” Political Science Quarterly, 28, 1913, 654. See also Haring [13:87], 23–25. Hill points out that there was probably an adelantado in Old Castile in the tenth century, certainly in the twelfth.
13. See Juan González Ponce de León’s Información de Servicios y Méritos, AGI, Mexico, leg. 203, no. 19. Oviedo speaks well of him as la lengua, “an interpreter,” but seems not to have known his relation with the commander.
14. CDI, 34, 480. This is Ponce de León’s own account. See Las Casas [2:50], 356, and Oviedo [2:43], 2, 90.
15. AGI, Mexico, leg. 203, p. 27 of my transcription, “por guanines colgando de las orejas y de las naryzes.”
16. Oviedo [2:43], 2, 100.
17. Juan González Ponce de León was also a witness in Juan Garrido’s Información de Servicios y Méritos, AGI, Mexico, leg. 204, no. 1.
18. This was a hacienda grande, to the east of what is now San Juan. The Indians there were put to work by Ponce de León looking for gold in the Toa valley. See Rouse [8:13], 158.
19. Murga Sanz [19:1], 21, 34.
20. Deive [6:36], 83.
21. Las Casas [2:50], 2, 386–90.
22. Oviedo [2:43], 2, 102.
23. Ibid. See also Murga Sanz [19:1], 75, for comment.
24. Cédula of Sept. 27, 1514, at Valladolid in AGI, Indif. Gen., leg. 419, lib. V. For the other adventures, see ch. 20. For this phase in Ponce’s career, see Murga Sanz [19:1], 160.
25. Oviedo [2:43], 2, 107.
26. “La más hermosa de todas cuantas había visto en las Indias,” qu. Morales Padrón [6:19], 25.
27. Morales Padrón, Jamaica [11:43], 88.
28. Díaz del Castillo [15:45], 1, 395.
29. For the conquest of Jamaica, there is CDI, 32, 240ff.; CDU, 1, 1; CDIU, 4, 312; and Las Casas [2:50], 2, ch. 56.
30. Oviedo [2:43], 2, 184.
31. Deive [6:36], 95 and ref.
32. Morales Padrón [6:19], 94; for Garay, see CDI, 2, 420, 558.
33. Martyr [1:2], 402.
34. AGI, Mexico, leg. 204, no. 3.
35. Morison thought that there were two men of this name.
36. See Morison [4:42], 198.
37. Oviedo [2:43], 3, 133.
38. Ibid.
Chapter 20
1. Pohl [5:35], 35.
2. Pohl [5:35], 137.
3. Professor Morison says that Soderini had been at school with Amerigo Vespucci.
4. It had been to his son John, Duke of Calabria, that Antoine de la Salle dedicated his strange, historical-geographical work La Salade, which contained a map of the world that did not show Britain. Queen Margaret of “Anjou,” married to King Henry VI of England, had been another child of the “Bon Roi René.”
5. Saint-Dié and the neighboring towns had been part of the Duchy of Lorraine, actually “Upper Lorraine,” which itself was part of the Holy Roman Empire. It was razed by retreating Germans in 1945. The dukes of Lorraine were French in origin, coming from an ancient family named Vaudémond. Duke René II was a successful ruler: he had expanded the territory of Lorraine and interested himself greatly in everything new. He had also helped to defeat the last independent Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Rash, at Nancy in 1477.
6. One well-preserved copy of the “planisphere” was found in Wolfegg Castle in 1901 and was apparently bought by the Library of Congress in 2001 for $10 million.
7. See, for an interesting discussion, Heers [4:17], 220.
8. Had someone already been to the Pacific from Europe? A Portuguese? Mr. Peter Dickson thinks so. See The Times (London), Oct. 8, 2002, p. 15. Magellan was so sure he would find the strait that now has his name that one can only speculate why that was so (see ch. 36). I myself think that guesses play a large part in geography, as in history.
9. Martyr [6:34], letter to Leo X, 163.
10. Pohl [5:35], 174.
11. See Nicholas Crane, Mercator, London 2002, 97ff.
12. Alberto Magnaghi, Amerigo Vespucci, Studio Crítico, Rome 1926. Cit. Pohl [5:35], 72.
13. As Pohl says, “A successful name is a work of art.”
14. The first page of text in all editions of that letter of Vespucci runs: “Quando apud maiores nostros nulla de ipsis fuerit habita cognitio et auditibus omnibus soit nouvissima res.”
15. Pohl [5:35], 176. “Ut ad perquirendas novas regiones versus meridiem a latere orientis me accingam per ventum qui Africa diciter.”
16. “Dead reckoning” was the estimate of a ship’s position from the distance traveled as recorded in the log and the courses steered by the compass, with corrections for current, etc., but without taking into account any astronomical observations.
17. See comment in Haring [9:39], 285.
18. CDI, 36, 251ff. The first padrón real is reproduced on pp. 197 and 287.
19. Martyr [1:2], 1, 271.
20. Unless he went to Florence for a time. Vasari says that Leonardo da Vinci drew the head of Vespucci as “a fine old man.” That must have been between 1508 and 1512 unless he was making a mistake—or unless Leonardo made an unrecorded visit to Seville! (Vasari, Lives, Everyman, London 1927, 2, 16.)
21. Consuelo Varela, “El testamento de Amerigo Vespucci,” Historiografía y Bibliografía Americanistas 30, 2, Seville 1986, 5. The will is in the APS; see Oficio 1, lib. 1, escribanía Mateo de la Cuadra, f. 367, April 9, 1511 (APS 8, 711).
22. Las Casas [2:50], 2, 335. Their instructions are in CDI, 22, 1–13. They are dated March 23, 1508. The journey cost 1,700,863 ms., as is shown in the accounts of the Casa de Contratación, published by Ladero Quesada [16:42], 52. The only study of this journey is Ramón Ezquerra, “El viaje de Pinzón y Solís al Yucatán,” R de I, 30 (1970), 217ff.
23. See Las Casas [2:50], 2, 374, and Oviedo [2:43], 2, 37. The instructions are in CDI, 22, 13.
24. Martyr [6:34], 98.
25. Martyr [1:2], 1, 195. See, for Talavera, CDI, 1, 212; 22, 158, and 284ff.
26. Las Casas [2:50], 406.
27. Las Casas [2:50], 2, 504.
28. Having sailed first with Bastidas in 1501, Balboa had remained in Santo Domingo after 1502.
29. Oviedo [2:43], 3, 143.
30. Martyr [6:34], 1, 211.
31. For Aguilar, see the Información de Servicios y Méritos, in Patronato, leg. 150, n. 2, r. 1, of which a transcription was kindly given to me by Francisco Morales Padrón.
32. Martyr [6:34], 214.
33. CDIU, 17, 265.
34. Martyr [6:34], 234–35.
35. Martyr [6:34], 235–36.
36. Rouse [8:13], 20–21.
37. CDI, 22, 26–32, has the capitulación with Ponce de León dated Sept. 26, 1512. For a brief modern investigation, see Edward W. Lawson, The Discovery of Florida and Its Discoverer Juan Ponce de León, St. Augustine, FL, 1946. A more helpful study is in Murga Sanz [19:1], 100ff, where there is a list of the ships’ companies.
38. See Jesús Varela Marcos,
“Antón de Alaminos: el piloto del Caribe” in Congreso [5: 27], 2, 49ff.
39. See Garrido’s Información de Servicios y Méritos in AGI, Patronato, leg. 204, no. 3. All of the eight witnesses seem to have been with Garrido in Florida. They did not say much, but they were survivors of that journey.
40. Martyr [6:34], 294. Oviedo [2:43], 2, 105, was scornful: he said that the search for the fountain made old men like children. Legend had it that fifty-six aged companions of Alexander the Great recovered their complexions of forty years earlier by bathing in a river near the Tigris and the Euphrates that flowed out of the Garden of Eden. See Leonardo Olschki, “Ponce de León’s Fountain of Youth,” HAHR, 21, August 1941, 362–85.
41. Morison [4:42], 507.
42. Ibid., 511. This was the third Spanish contact with the Mayan world. The first was Columbus’s meeting off Honduras in 1502 (see ch. 11) followed by Díaz de Solís’s and Pinzón’s in 1508 (see ch. 14).
43. Murga Sanz [19:1], 117.
Chapter 21
1. “con mucha casa.”
2. The only study of Diego is Luis Arranz, Don Diego Colón, Madrid 1982, of which the first volume only has been published. It takes the life to 1511. These ships were owned by all of the most prominent shipowners of Seville: both Gaspare and Bartolomé Centurión, Mencía Manuel, Duchess of Medinaceli, Francisca Ponce de León, daughter of the famous Rodrigo, Jacome Grimaldi (a part share), Manuel Cansino, Francisco Garay, and Miguel Díaz de Aux (a half share), and Tomás de Castellón (Castiglione) were among the investors in this expedition. See AGS, Consejo Real, leg. 43, f. 5, for the register of the fleet, analyzed in Enrique Otte, “La flota de Diego Colón, Españoles y Genoveses en el comercio trasatlántico de 1509,” R de I, 95–96 (1964), 475ff.
3. See Emelina Martín Acosta, “García de Lerma en la inicial penetración del capitalismo mercantil en América,” in Congreso [5:27], 2, 429ff.
4. Las Casas [2:50], 371: “más fué heredero de las angustias e trabajos e disfavores de su padre, que del estado, honras y preeminencias que con tantos sudores y, afliciones ganó.”
5. Navarrete [4:38], 1, 498–504. See also Arranz [21:2], 184.
6. “un memorial muy largo y muy particular … de la manera que ha tendido en la buena gobernación de la dicha isla …”
7. “muy larga y particularmente todas las cosas de alli.”
8. Instructions are printed in CDI, 32, 55ff.
9. Qu. Juan Gil, El libro Greco-Latino [18:15]. At that time books were listed by number, not name. That only became necessary in 1550.
10. For all matters related to population, see the splendid work of investigation by David Henige, Numbers from Nowhere [8:12], kindly given to me by the author.
11. CDIU, 5, 197ff.
12. See, for example, Carlos Bosch García, La esclavitud prehispánica entre los Aztecas, Mexico 1944.
13. Letter from Fernando el Católico to Pasamonte, Valladolid, May 3, 1509, in AGI, Indif. Gen, 418, lib. iii.
14. CDI, 36, 288–89.
15. Las Casas [2:50], 2, 345. Lamb, “Cristóbal de Tapia,” HAHR, 33, Aug. 1953.
16. Ursula Lamb [15:67]: “las haciendas desta tierra no son nada sin indios.”
17. Muñoz Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, vol. 90, f. 58.
18. See the accounts of Sancho de Matienzo, as published by Ladero Quesada [16:42], 27.
19. See Earl Hamilton’s figures [3:8], 123.
20. Schäfer [9:19], 1, 19.
21. Navarrete [4:38], 1, 505–9; see Haring [9:39], 29; Schäfer [9:19], 1, 178: “no consintáis o dejéis pasar a las Indias a ninguna persona de las prohibidas.”
22. Giménez Fernández [2:39], 2, 673. The friars were Fr. Pedro de Córdoba, Fr. Antonio Montesinos, Fr. Bernardo de Santo Domingo, and Fr. Domingo de Mendoza. They would be reinforced before the end of the year by Fr. Thomás de Fuentes, Fr. Francisco de Molina, Fr. Pedro de Medina, Fr. Pablo de Trujillo, and Fr. Tomás de Berlanga.
23. Las Casas [2:50], 2, 381–82.
24. AGI, Patronato, leg. 11, r. 5; CDI, 7, 43.
25. García Gallo in Fernando el Católico, pensamiento político [1:22], 154.
26. Navarrete [4:38], 2, 83–85.
27. “Testimonio de reclamación y protesta de D. Diego Colón,” etc., December 29, 1512, summarized in CDHI, 7, 232, qu. Haring [13:87], 19.
28. These were Fr. Lope de Paibol, Fr. Hernando de Villena, Fr. Domingo Velázquez, Fr. Pablo de Carvajal, Fr. Juan de Corpus Cristi, and, a little earlier, Fr. Tomás de Toro.
29. Las Casas [2:50] 2, 441. This, of course, is Las Casas’s version of events, and Fray Antonino S. Tibesar criticizes it. “Montesinos” was often rendered “Montesino.”
30. “la cabeza no muy baja.” This could have been the motto of the Dominican order in the New World.
31. Las Casas [2:50], 2, 446–47.
Chapter 22
1. Deive [6:36], 95.
2. Vicente Cadenas, Carlos I de Castilla, Señor de las Indias, Madrid 1988, 123.
3. CDI, 32, 304–18.
4. Deive [6:36], 96.
5. Otte [15:83], 116.
6. José María Chacón y Calvo, ed., Cédulario Cubano, 1493–1512, in Colección de documentos inéditos para la historia de Hispano-América, Madrid 1929, 429.
7. Chacón y Calvo [22:6], 445ff.
8. Las Casas [2:50], 2, 449.
9. Fernández-Armesto [4:49].
10. Las Casas [2:50], 2, 450.
11. John Major, 1470–1540, spent half his life in Paris, the rest in Haddington.
12. Martyr [1:2], 2, 142.
13. Las Casas [2:50], 2, 459–62, gives the speech. Mesa was subsequently named bishop of Cuba, which island he never visited, and he died as bishop of Elna, in Cataluña.
14. Perhaps he was related to Cortés, whose mother’s half-sister was Inés de Paz, precisely of Salamanca. Cortés stayed with her when at the university about 1490.
15. Beltrán de Heredia, “Un precursor del maestro Vitoria,” in La Ciencia Tomista, 40, 1929, 173–90.
16. See the study of Eloy Bullón y Fernández, Un colaborador de los reyes católicos. El doctor Palacios Rubios y sus obras, Madrid 1927. Bullón’s title (Marquís of la Selva Alegre) appears to be a justification of the peerage. Palacios Rubios entered the Consejo Real in 1504.
17. CDI, 7, 24–25, Las Casas [2:50], 1, 442. Las Casas recommended Cardinal Cisneros to read Palacios and to have his and Paz’s works published.
18. Gregorio’s speech is given in Las Casas [2:50], 1, 471–75.
19. Antonio Muro Orejón, Ordenanzas Reales sobre los Indios. Las Leyes de Burgos, 1512–1513 (AEA), Seville 1956. For a list of seven preliminary conclusions of eight members of the committee, see Las Casas [2:50], 2, 456–570.
20. This followed a different stratagem. In 1504, the son of a cacique was sent back to Spain in a vessel of Luis Fernández’s to learn Spanish. His death, and that of several others, led the Spaniards to later reverse the idea implicit in this: instead of sending the Indians to be educated in Spain, Spaniards would go to the Indies; and Suárez was asked to go out to Santo Domingo to teach grammar to the sons of caciques. His teaching was based on Nebrija’s Gramática, though Latin had also to be taught to enable pupils to understand jurisprudence and theology. A certain “Diego Indio” was taken back to Seville to be “industriado en las cosas de la fe o en otras cosas de buena crianza e conversación para cuando hobiere de tornar a la dicha isla pueda aprovechar a los vecinos e moradores della en la salud de sus animas e conciencias.” He was to be lodged by Luis de Castillo, a chaplain of the chapel of Santa María de Antigua en Sevilla, for an annual fee of 8,000 ms. But he died before he could return home.
21. Hanke [16:14], 25; the laws are in Las Casas [2:50], 2, 482–89.
22. The first of these was at the time the King’s confessor.
23. Antonio Rodríguez Villa, Bosquejo biográfico de la reina Juana, Madrid 1874, 33.
24. These amendments are summarized in Las Casa
s [2:50], 2, 492ff.
25. Fernández de Enciso, Memorial, in CDI, 1, 441–50.
26. Qu. Hanke [18:33], 35. This would eventually seem to give the Crown of Castile another title, beyond that of the initial grants of the Pope, to the territories in the New World.
27. Arranz [12:17], 196.
28. CDI, 1, 50ff.
29. CDI, 11, 216–17.
30. Otte [15:83], 118.
31. Otte [15:83], 119.
32. See Helen Parish, with Harold Weideman S. J., “The Correct Birth Date of Bartolomé de las Casas,” HAHR, 56, 385.
33. According to Claude Guillen in “Un padrón de conversos sevillanos,” Bulletin Hispanique 65 (1965). Marianne Mahn-Lot, Bartolomé de las Casas, Paris 1982, 12, also suggested that the Peñalosas of Segovia were a converso family. See now Gil [3:37], 3, 121 and 460, whose study seems decisive. Bartolomé was not related to the noble Sevillano family of Las Casaus.
34. Arranz [12:17], 540, 564.
35. Giménez Fernández [2:39], 2, 89, 385.
36. Las Casas [2:50], 1, 332.
37. See Raymond Marcus, El primer decenio de Las Casas en el Nuevo Mundo, Ibero-American Archives, 1977, 87ff. Mahn-Lot [22:33], 19, however, thinks he was involved.
38. Las Casas [2:50], 1, 466.
39. Las Casas [2:50], 3, 26, 87.
40. Las Casas [2:50], 2, 17, 53.
41. Las Casas [8:14], 164, 528: “de las flautas, este se celebraba en el treceno día de enero con gran licencia de lascivia … andando los hombres vestidos de vestiduras de mujeres por toda la ciudad, enmascarados, haciendo bailes y danzas, y la memoria y vestigio de ellos yo lo he visto los días que estuve el año de siete, digo quinientos y siete, que de estas Indias fui a Roma.”
42. Las Casas [2:50], 2, 385–86. “La cual fue la primera que se cantó nueva en todas estas Indias; y por ser la primera, fué muy celebrada y festejada del almirante [Diego Colón]… porque fué tiempo de la fundición.…”
43. Fernando had been in Lerma on July 22, Aranda de Duero July 27–Aug. 9, Gumiel de Hizan Aug. 11–23—though going back to Aranda Aug. 15–20—San Esteban de Cuéllar Aug. 24, Segovia Aug. 25–Sept. 15, Sotos Albos, Fresno de Cantespino, Piquera de San Esteban, Burgo de Osma, Almazán, Monteagudo, and, finally, Calatayud, for the Cortes of Aragon Sept. 29–Oct. 18, then Sigüenza, Cogulludo, Buitrago, La Pedrezuela, Alocobendas, and Madrid, where he arrived on Oct. 29. Afterwards he was at Móstoles, Casarrubios, Cazalegas, Talavera, Oropesa, Mesillas, and Castejada. To find a less rigorous climate for the winter than Castile, the King stayed at Plasencia off and on till the end of year, with short visits to La Abadía, Dec. 6 to 11, to go hunting, and to Galisteo, Dec. 13–18. See also Giménez Fernández [2:39], 2, 673, and David Brading, The First America, Cambridge 1991, 74.
