Isabella: The Warrior Queen

by Kirstin Downey

  The biggest and most influential cluster of Columbus’s supporters was the circle that comprised the court of Prince Juan, who was fourteen years old in the summer of 1492. These members of the sovereigns’ entourage were carefully selected, having been charged with the development, education, and moral guidance of the future king. Queen Isabella carefully monitored the upbringing that her beloved son was receiving. His confidants had her ear. Chief of the prince’s household, for example, was Gutierre de Cárdenas, the man who had carried the sword aloft during the ceremony when Isabella proclaimed herself queen. By this time, he had been a trusted adviser to the queen for more than twenty years, holding a variety of posts of increasing responsibility.

  Another close associate of the queen was the humanist tutor to the young men at the court, including the prince. Peter Martyr grew friendly with Columbus and would become an early and prolific historian of the discoveries of the New World. Another influential supporter of Columbus was the prince’s governess, Juana de Torres y Ávila, who was close to the queen. Columbus wrote Juana a letter that suggested that he was a close and trusted friend of hers. Juana’s brother Antonio traveled with Columbus in his second voyage to the New World. When Columbus later needed to deliver a message to the Castilian court, and wanted to make sure it reached the queen, he put the missive into Antonio’s hands.

  Foremost among Columbus’s supporters, however, was the queen herself, according to observers. She alone saw the big picture of what he was offering to Castile—an opportunity that might change its fortunes for years to come. Her husband showed barely any interest at all, always being more preoccupied with the Mediterranean world than with the Atlantic Ocean. “She always aided and favored him,” Columbus’s son wrote later, “while the King he always found somewhat reserved and unsympathetic to his projects.”12

  By the summer of 1491, with the war against Granada still under way, Columbus was discouraged and had lost faith that he would ever get the go-ahead from the queen. He went to La Rabida to collect his son, Diego, intending to head to France to seek the backing of King Charles VIII. Juan Pérez, chief friar of the monastery and formerly a confessor to the queen, offered to intercede with her. Pérez sent her a letter and two weeks later got a response. Isabella told Pérez to come to court himself, and the friar set off for Granada on a mule that Columbus had rented for him. When he arrived, Pérez reminded Isabella of Columbus’s proposal and informed her of his penury, and she sent for Columbus once more, this time including a sum of 20,000 maravedis so that he should arrive appropriately garbed.13

  So Columbus, at Isabella’s expense, was at Granada when the city finally fell to the Christians. He thought the final hurdle had been surmounted. But the court scholars once again rejected Columbus’s proposal as unsound. Downcast, he saddled his mule and packed up, setting off with Pérez for Córdoba and points north. That had been the final straw. “Columbus resented this treatment all his life long,” writes Morison.14

  But Columbus now found himself with a new advocate, one who was finally able to bring good fortune. The converso Luis de Santángel, keeper of the privy purse for the king, decided to intervene. Santángel

  went to find the queen, and with words which his keen desire to persuade her suggested, told her that he was astonished to see that her Highness, who had always shown a resolute spirit in matters of great pith and consequence, should lack it now for an enterprise of so little risk, yet which could prove of so great service to God and to the exaltation of his church, not to speak of very great increase and glory for her realms and crown; an enterprise of such nature that if any other prince should undertake what the Admiral offered to her, it would be a very great damage to the crown, and a grave reproach to her.15

  Santángel said, moreover, that he would pay for the fleet himself. Isabella said she would reconsider and perhaps pledge her jewels for the expense, which Santángel quickly assured her would not be necessary. The queen sent a messenger after Columbus, and the servant caught up with him at the village of Pinos Puente, about ten miles from Granada. At last the trip was approved.

  The long series of delays and disappointments for Columbus may have been partly caused by the audacity of his personal requests—that if he succeeded, he be named “Admiral of the Ocean Sea,” which would be a very high rank in Castilian nobility; that he be named viceroy and governor over all the islands and mainland; that he have absolute authority to appoint and remove officials; and that he appoint the judges to oversee the affairs in each port. He also demanded a tenth of all the value of the goods bought, bartered, or produced in the lands to be discovered.16 His requests were extraordinary—but so was the risk he was undertaking. Sailing west from Europe into uncharted seas was likely to prove fatal, it was thought. The Portuguese, in their own explorations, were hugging the coast of Africa.

  The complexity of his demands made for extensive paperwork, and the terms would become matters of intensive scrutiny in later years. Columbus and Isabella worked up a set of contracts to confirm the terms of the arrangement, and documents to ease his way. Columbus was given official royal permission to make the journey, an agreement as to the titles and compensation he would receive if the trip succeeded, and a passport and official letters of introduction to give to the foreign potentates he would no doubt meet when he got to Asia.

  Isabella agreed to pay for the expenses of his trip. They were not, all in all, particularly great, just three ships, and salaries and provisions for a crew of about ninety men. The total cost was about 2 million maravedis,17 or about approximately “the annual income of a middling provincial aristocrat,” writes the historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto, “but the enterprise was risky, the pundits were derisive and in time of war cash was short.”18

  From the beginning, Isabella stressed that the expedition was a purely Castilian endeavor. Among the promises Columbus made to her, according to explorers Bartolomé de Las Casas and Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, was that the crew would be Castilian. Of the ninety men and boys who signed on, eighty-five were Castilians from Huelva and Andalusia, one was Portuguese, and four, including Columbus, were Italian.19 None were from Aragon.

  Though the queen claimed the entire venture was a royal prerogative, she did not advance the money for the trip. Perennially cash-strapped, she ordered the town of Palos to provide two ships for Columbus as repayment for a fine that the crown had previously levied against it. Town officials were ordered to provide the fully equipped ships “within ten days of receiving Our letter, without further notice from us, without deliberation or delay,” and were warned that if they failed to comply, they would risk “forfeiting Our favor” and would be fined 10,000 maravedis each.20 They jumped into action and soon provided two sailing ships, the Niña and the Pinta.

  Luis de Santángel and a Genoese named Francesco Pinelli advanced the additional funds needed, reportedly by borrowing money from the treasury of the Santa Hermandad. They were later reimbursed “from the sale of indulgences,” writes Fernández-Armesto, who adds that the money was “all recovered in due course from the proceeds of the sales in a poor diocese of Extremadura,” a dry and dusty province where most residents eked out a marginal existence.21 It was ironic that such a poor district financed the expedition. And it was also ironic, and perhaps not at all coincidental, that many of the explorers who would risk their lives by following in Columbus’s footsteps in the centuries ahead would hail from Extremadura.

  Even with the queen’s specific support, however, organizing the trip wasn’t easy. Many sailors thought it a pointless and potentially lethal journey, heading west into the boundless and pitiless ocean. “It was difficult to find sailors willing to sail more than a day without sighting land,” wrote Las Casas later, “because, in those days, losing sight of the coast was considered a frightening and horrible experience no sailor would undertake.”22

  Anticipating that problem and hoping to encourage volunteers to sign on, the queen ordered that any criminals who joi
ned the expedition would be released from punishment. Four men joined the crew to take advantage of that get-out-of-jail-free card.23

  Columbus had a stroke of luck when the three Pinzón brothers, excellent mariners who were well known in maritime circles in Castile, signed on in leadership positions. Martín Alonso Pinzón, the eldest, served as captain of the Pinta, while Francisco signed on as master; Vicente Yáñez, the youngest, served as captain of the Niña. Other sailors then signed on for the trip out of respect for the Pinzóns and in recognition of their talents and competence. Another prominent maritime family, the Niños, from the town of Niebla, also came along and persuaded still more to join as well.

  A key volunteer was ship captain Juan de la Cosa, who brought to the venture his own ship, the Santa María, the largest vessel of the three, and served as master of it. Columbus, leading the expedition, sailed with him aboard the Santa María.

  The recruitment effort was assisted by rumors swirling in the seafaring community that ancient accounts or secret documents substantiated Columbus’s theory. A story made the rounds that among the “tools and maps” that Columbus had received from his mother-in-law were a set of documents known as a “rutter,” a maritime handbook containing written sailing directions. These documents were considered so valuable that in Portugal they were kept as state secrets and divulging them was a criminal offense. Nevertheless, despite the core of competent officers, the group that assembled for duty in early August 1492 seems to have been a bit ragtag.

  Every man on board was required to confess his sins and receive communion before departing from Palos. They set sail on August 3, 1492, a half hour before sunrise. They passed the monastery at La Rabida, where Columbus had spent many hours among friends, and from the vessels they heard the friars chanting the ancient liturgy for the hour of Prime.24 Then they headed out in the direction of the newly colonized Canary Islands, west of Africa.

  The trio of tiny sailing ships, none longer than sixty feet, dropped anchor briefly in the Canaries, and then set sail again on September 6. By nightfall, all trace of land had been left behind, and Columbus and his crew were sailing into an uncharted sea. A month passed, day after day. At some point Columbus began doctoring the logbook so he could minimize to the crew the great distance they were sailing away from known land.

  Mariners who traveled on that first voyage later said that as they traveled “across the great ocean sea,” their terror mounted, and that “each hour the fear in them grew as their hope of seeing the land they were seeking waned.” The crews grew restive, and some began “murmuring” questions about Columbus’s competence at navigation. They feared they had been tricked into joining the trip and that they would be lost at sea; they wondered whether the king and queen were cruelly risking their lives for an uncertain outcome. And “they discussed among themselves whether to throw Columbus in the sea.” Columbus comforted the mutinous crew with “sweet words,” telling them they would win glory and good fortune by persevering. “He promised that within a few days there would be an end to the fatigue and travel, with much and undoubtable prosperity.”25

  Then the ships’ officers too began questioning Columbus’s leadership. Sometime in the first week of October, Columbus and Martín Alonso Pinzón had an “acrimonious interview,” where they fought over the direction they should be heading. Columbus thought Pinzón was rebelling against his authority and resented it, but the men agreed to continue on the course Columbus was plotting.26

  Some of the stress lifted in early October, when the sailors spotted bits of drifting vegetation that suggested they were near a coastline. Then very early on the morning of October 12, after they had been sailing in the open sea for five weeks, a shout rang out: “Land!”

  The sailor who made the first sighting was Rodrigo de Triana, aboard the fastest of the ships, the Pinta. This was a great coup for him, because the first to spot land was to receive a silk jacket and a reward of 10,000 maravedis from the queen.

  “When the Admiral saw the land, he fell to his knees, and it brought tears to his eyes with the extreme pleasure he felt,” and he began to sing Te Deum Laudamus.27 The men embraced one another with joy. But Rodrigo de Triana did not receive the promised gifts. Columbus soon claimed that he had been the first to spot land because he had noticed lights on the horizon the night before and pointed them out to a ship’s officer. Saying the reward belonged to him was not the most effective way to build good morale among people who were being asked to risk their lives, and it was an omen of what would come later.

  The three ships landed on an island somewhere in the Caribbean, probably in the Bahamas, although no one knows which one precisely. Columbus’s changes in his logbook during the trip complicated the task for later scholars who tried to replicate his voyage. In addition, copies of his original seaboard diary mysteriously disappeared. They were perhaps stolen because the information had become valuable, a kind of treasure map to the Americas. Or they may have been discarded in a careless purge of family books and papers in Seville after Columbus’s sons died, or been dumped by Castilian courtiers eager to lighten the load while the king and queen moved from palace to palace. But Bartolomé de Las Casas, through friendship with Columbus’s children, obtained access to an early version and transcribed large sections of it, and his account remains the single most important source of information about this world-changing voyage.

  The men saw before them a beautiful tropical isle, with palm trees and flowering bushes waving in the wind. At home the weather was growing cold and blustery, but here in this new place, the balmy breezes made it feel like an eternal spring. They saw strange and exotic plants and animals they had never encountered before, including delightful, brightly colored parrots. They groped to describe what they saw, and as many travelers to the Caribbean do, they likened it to paradise.

  They were dazzled by the colors—all brighter and somehow lighter than the hues of Europe. The sands of the beaches, made up of particles of coral, were glistening white, quite unlike the dark stones of Spain. The waters near the shore took on this same coloration from the sandy bottom and showed up as an impossibly light blue, almost turquoise, scarcely blue at all. Even the sky was somehow a lighter, brighter shade of blue than elsewhere.

  This world looked gentle and welcoming. The jagged reefs of coral might have been dangerous, but once the sailors were safely ashore, the islands seemed to hold few threats. The waters at the beach, inside the sheltering reef, were serene and calm. The winds, so often filled in Europe with clouds and rain and cold, blew here only as a warm, steady breeze that caressed and soothed the skin.

  Pelicans circled steadily along the shore, plummeting into the waters at intervals in search of their next meal and soon finding it. Bright fish swarmed in the shallows. Fruit could be had from the trees for the taking. And the most pleasing of these trees—the palm—grew everywhere along the shoreline, sometimes in groves, sometimes as single trees leaning out over the water, giving a picturesque quality to the view and the welcome prospects of shade and building materials.

  Columbus was most struck by the first thing he saw: naked people. On the beach were a group of islanders, almost all of them men, wearing almost nothing. Within a few days, the sailors had seen women, too, beautiful women also nude, physically agile and casually proud of their strong and shapely bodies.

  The lack of clothing made sense for people living in a place with constant moderate temperatures. October’s weather averaged in the eighties Fahrenheit by day and in the seventies at night, making clothing essentially unnecessary. This was a revelation for Europeans, who were bound most of their lives in heavy woolen garments that protected them from the elements but that also confined them to the social caste and class within which they had been born.

  When people in cold, windy Europe read the seamen’s descriptions of this place, it sounded like heaven. That people walked around nude was a titillating detail. It also carried connotations that echoed across Europe: the simplicity r
ecalled an easier, less complicated, and less materialistic time; the purity resembled that of Saint Francis, who had spurned rich clothing and renounced material possessions; and the suggestion of unbridled and unrestricted sexuality stood at odds with conventional European morality. But Columbus was not alone in highlighting the nudity—it was the one single thing emphasized in every report from the first European men who landed in the New World.

  Columbus added to the sensation by describing the islanders as a “gentle and peaceful people and of great simplicity,” to whom he gave trinkets of little red caps and glass beads that they hung around their necks.28 In exchange, he said, they gave him gold.

  The first interactions with the Indians were amiable. They were friendly and seemed eager to cooperate with their surprising new visitors. No doubt they were repulsed by the men’s body odors and fascinated by their bearded hairiness, for the islanders kept themselves very clean and removed their body hair, but they were too polite to share those thoughts. They were curious about the newcomers, and some seemed to wonder whether they came from earth or from the sky.

  Columbus immediately began thinking about how best to enslave them, according to entries in his logbook, which he intended to share with Isabella and Ferdinand upon his return to Castile. On the first day, October 12, 1492, he noted that they learned quickly and “ought to make good servants.” On October 13 he began to press them to look for gold, though they were not much inclined to do so. On the third day, he noted that they were so unskilled in arms that “with 50 men they could all be subjected and made to do all that one wished.” Soon the Spaniards picked up some Indians and took them along in the ships, without noting whether the Indians had protested.29