Columbus and his men sailed on through what is believed to have been the Bahamas, observing the flora and fauna. Columbus, who believed he had landed among islands on the coast of Asia or India, took careful note of the characteristics of the islands. He waxed more and more poetical about the beauties of the landscape because he was not finding anything that looked like an advanced mercantile civilization and he was collecting only small amounts of gold, mostly by bartering trinkets for jewelry that the natives were wearing on their bodies or attached to their noses.
He gave each island a name as he reached it. To thank God, he named the first island San Salvador, or Holy Savior, the second he named Santa María de Concepción, the third he named for the king, calling it Fernandina, and the fourth he reserved for the queen, calling it La Isabela.
Disconcertingly, on November 20 Martín Alonso Pinzón, master of the Pinta, sailed off with his ship without warning. He may have been fighting with Columbus, or perhaps he decided to hunt for gold, but it was frightening for the officers and crews of the two other ships to be alone thousands of miles from home. They were irritated at their departed comrades but also worried about them. All they could do was continue without them.
In early December, Columbus arrived at the island of Hispaniola, or as the inhabitants called it, Haiti, and took possession of it for Ferdinand and Isabella. He was told that there were gold-bearing regions in the interior, and that more gold was to be had in neighboring islands.
On December 20, Columbus received an invitation to visit from a tribal chief, or cacique, who held sway over a large part of the island. As a welcoming gift, the cacique, whose name was Guacanagari, sent a beautiful garment of woven cotton and multicolored fishbones with an ornamental mask in the middle made of a large, stiff piece of hammered gold. Baskets of food and presents were delivered next. The timing for the meeting seemed propitious—Christmas Eve 1492.
That night, however, Columbus must have let his guard down. In the early morning hours, everyone was fast asleep on the Santa María, and the watchman on duty had dozed off. The ship, their largest vessel and the one carrying most of their provisions, slid onto a sandbar and became stranded. The tides pushed it onto coral reefs at the edge of the island, the ship’s bottom began to shred, and the hull took on water. Some of the crew panicked, jumped into a rowboat, and paddled to the Niña, abandoning ship.
The men quickly realized that the ship could not be saved, but they also realized they must do all they could to remove its cargo and equipment, so essential to their survival in an alien land. The cacique Guacanagari appeared just at this point, when the Castilians were at their most vulnerable. He mobilized all his people to help the Europeans transport their goods to shore, commiserating with them over the loss and ensuring that the items were safely removed and stored. Gaucanagari told them not to worry, that he would give them two large houses in which to live now that they had no place to stay. More Indians soon came bearing additional gifts of gold, and that night the cacique treated the Christians to an elaborate feast with many delicacies, including yams and lobsters and bread made from the cassava plant.
Columbus believed that he had a real friendship with this man, and he made a momentous decision. The Pinta had not reappeared—perhaps it was gone forever. The remaining men were too many to fit on the Niña, the smallest of the three. So he told himself it was God’s will that the Santa María had gone aground, because he was destined to build a fortress there and make the place a European colony. He would leave a contingent of men behind on the island, and because it was Christmas, he named the new settlement La Navidad.
A small fort was built securely with the planks and timbers from the Santa María. There was bread and biscuit for a year, and wine and ammunition, in addition to the abundant food sources available on the island. Columbus told himself the men would be fine. He picked thirty-nine people to stay behind, including a ship carpenter, a man with medical skills, a gunner who was also an engineer, a tailor, and a number of sailors. No accounts as to how this was decided survive. Some of the men may have wanted to stay. A few of the colonists were upper-class, including one who had served on the king’s staff and another who was nephew to a prominent cleric, so this duty may not have been seen as a punishment. Perhaps some wanted the opportunity to be first to collect the available gold on the island. Others may have been charmed by the area’s beautiful and generous-spirited women. But it also seems safe to say that some members of Columbus’s team were not thrilled to learn they had been chosen to remain behind.
On January 2, 1493, exactly one year after the surrender at Granada, the explorers held a farewell party. Columbus was anxious to be on his way for fear that Martín Alonso Pinzón would get to back Spain ahead of him and perhaps tell false tales that would put Columbus in a bad light. Leaving the colonists behind seemed like a reasonable decision, as relations between the Indians and the new colonists were splendid. “The cacique showed the Admiral much love, and great grief at his parting, especially when he saw him embark,” according to Columbus.30
Columbus started to make his way back home, winding his way back through the Caribbean islands. On January 6 Martín Alonso Pinzón and the Niña suddenly reappeared, and Pinzón told Columbus that his departure had been unintentional. Columbus had an angry confrontation with him, saying that Pinzón was lying and had left the other ships out of “insolence and greed.” He accused Pinzón of disloyalty and bitterly called his actions “the evil works of Satan, who wished to hinder that voyage, as he had done up to that time.”31
Columbus had some justification for making these charges. Pinzón reportedly gathered up a good quantity of gold for himself and his crew. But Pinzón, for his part, was disturbed that Columbus had left thirty-nine people behind. The clash widened, and now Columbus seemed to be at odds with all the Pinzón brothers.
Another jarring event occurred on January 13. As the two remaining ships were continuing home, the winds died down, and they ended up in an exposed harbor. Columbus sent some men ashore to collect yams for eating, and they encountered some Indian warriors unlike any they had seen to date. They were very fierce in appearance, and their charcoal-painted faces gave them a ghoulish appearance. Columbus and his men conjectured that they might be the fearsome cannibals that the more peaceful Indians had mentioned with dread. They engaged in some barter, but these Indians suddenly turned and attacked them with bows and arrows. The Spanish defended themselves, wounding two of the Indians, and the rest of the group quickly fled, disappearing into the forest. It was the first violent clash between Europeans and Indians in the New World.
It made Columbus and his men even more eager to get home. They made some repairs to the ships, then set sail to the east. They took samples of the foodstuffs they had found, parrots, gold objects, and a small group of natives they had captured. The return journey took about two months. They hit bad weather, and Pinzón was driven toward Galicia, in northern Spain, and then had to turn back south.
Oddly, however, Columbus did not sail directly to Spain. Instead, providing grist for those who suspected he was secretly a spy for Portugal, he landed first on islands near Portugal, in late February 1493. He claimed he had later been blown into the port of Lisbon by a powerful storm that he had been unable to resist. It was from Lisbon that he wrote to Queen Isabella about his discovery. While there, however, he had at least three separate private conversations with King João. Columbus almost certainly gloated, given that he had once sought financial support from Portugal and been rejected.
King João, who had frequently been outmaneuvered by Queen Isabella already, was seriously out of sorts when he got the news of Columbus’s discovery. According to his courtiers, he considered killing Columbus as a traitor who had probably stolen navigational secrets from the state. But he decided instead to turn to diplomacy to protect his interests.
Columbus was greeted with great fanfare in Lisbon. People mobbed the streets to see the marvelous objects he had brought
back and the Indians in his entourage. Many in the crowd that day remembered it for years to come, fueling a groundswell of desire on the Iberian peninsula to set out on maritime adventures. Among the people employed at the Portuguese court at that time, for example, was a fourteen-year-old page named Ferdinand Magellan.
King João opted to let Columbus go, with a stern warning that the Treaty of Alcáçovas had given the Portuguese the rights to the lands Columbus was claiming. He vowed to take up the question with the queen in Castile.
So Columbus was permitted to depart. In Palos he caught up with the rebellious captain Pinzón, but only briefly. Pinzón had contracted a mysterious ailment and died within days of his arrival home. This removed a potential rival and a man who had been a thorn in Columbus’s side. But reports soon began to circulate that the Pinzón brothers had been most responsible for the successful voyage, while Columbus had wanted to turn around. Later on, after everyone realized the immense value of the lands they had reached, the matter would become the subject of a protracted legal dispute.
The queen immediately understood the importance of Columbus’s discovery. She urged him to hurry to see her in Barcelona, where the sovereigns were living while tending to domestic issues that had been put off for years during the war with Granada. On April 7, Columbus received a letter from the sovereigns addressed to Don Cristóbal Colón, underscoring his new honorific title.32 Isabella clearly wanted to move immediately to follow up with further expeditions:
We have seen your letters and we have taken much pleasure in learning whereof you write and that God gave so good a result to your labors, and well guided you in what you commenced, whereof He will be well served and we also, and our realms receive so much advantage. It will please God that, beyond that wherein you serve him, you should receive from us many favors.… Inasmuch that which you have commenced with the aid of God be continued and furthered, and we desire that you come here forthwith, therefore for our service make the best haste you can in your coming, so that you may be timely provided with everything you need; and because as you see the summer has begun, and you must not delay in going back there, see if something cannot be prepared in Seville or in other districts for your returning to the land which you have discovered. And write to us at once in this mail which departs presently, so that things may be provided as well as may be, while you are coming and returning, in such manner that when you return hence, all will be ready.33
As Columbus was passing triumphantly through Seville, an excited young boy, standing near the ancient Church of St. Nicholas, watched his arrival. He was Bartolomé de Las Casas, who would become an explorer in the Indies, a colonist, a priest, and an activist for Indian rights in the decades ahead. Columbus was creating paroxysms of enthusiasm for overseas exploration, parading through the streets with beautiful green parrots, Indians in exotic regalia, chunks of gold, and face masks made of precious stones and fishbones. “The news spread over Castile like fire,” Las Casas later recalled, “that a land called the Indies had been discovered, that it was full of people and things so diverse and new, and that the discoverer himself was to take such and such a route accompanied by some of the Indians. They flocked from all directions to see him; the roads swelled with throngs come to welcome him in the towns through which he passed.”34
In Barcelona his reception was even more splendid, and the sovereigns listened to his story with rapt attention. Columbus’s son recalled:
This news caused them great joy and happiness; and they ordered a solemn reception be held for him as befitted one who had rendered them so great a service. All the Court and the city came out to meet him; and the Catholic Sovereigns received him in public, seated with all majesty and grandeur on rich thrones under a canopy of cloth of gold. When he came forward to kiss their hands, they rose from their thrones as if he were a great lord, and would not let him kiss their hands but made him sit down beside them.35
In Barcelona, another excited boy was in the crowd, the future explorer Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, who was employed as a court page. He remembered the excitement, the presents of gold, the odd foods and new spices, the jewel-toned birds, and the fascinating and strangely garbed people: “And then came the Admiral, don Cristóbal Colón, with the first Indians from those parts that arrived on the first voyage of discovery,”36 Oviedo wrote.
The king and queen treated Columbus as a grand gentleman: “He was very benevolently and graciously received by the King and by the Queen.” Then he gave a long account of all that had transpired and of the riches that were there. They also talked of the millions of lives that were at risk of damnation if they were not evangelized and saved, for troublingly, the expedition had found signs of “idolatry, and diabolical sacrifices, and rites that gave reverence to Satan.”37
The sovereigns listened “with profound attention and, raising their hands in prayer, sank to their knees in deep gratitude to God,” Las Casas wrote.
The singers of the royal chapel sang Te Deum Laudamus while the wind instruments gave the response and indeed, it seemed a moment of communion with all the celestial joys. Who could describe the tears shed by the King, Queen and noblemen? What jubilation, what joy, what happiness in all hearts! How everybody began to encourage each other with plans of settling in the new land and converting people! They could tell how the Sovereigns, especially Queen Isabella, valued the propagation of the Faith by showing such words and actions that their principal source of pleasure was having found such favor in the eyes of God as to have been allowed to support and finance (though with mighty few funds) the discovery of so many infidels ready for conversion.38
Meanwhile Cardinal Mendoza, a nobleman of such high stature, and so admired by Isabella, that he was known as the third king of Spain, hosted Columbus at a great dinner, another extraordinary mark of favor. The mariner was seated at the “most eminent place next” to the churchman, and “for the first time, Columbus was served a full course dinner with covered dishes and a food taster,” amid an atmosphere of pomp and festivity. “The rulers showered honor upon honor on the Admiral.”39
The greatest honor of all was that the queen ordered the mariner’s two sons, Diego and Ferdinand, to come live at court among the prince’s entourage, as pages to the prince. There they would receive the same education given to the young aristocrats at court. Columbus’s sons, in effect, were raised among the children of the queen and became particular friends of Prince Juan, serving him as pages. The two young men were “favored, and stayed in [the] house” of the prince even after the prince grew to adulthood.40
And so for the next voyage, Columbus was sent to sea in style. He was ordered to return to these new lands, lavishly equipped, with seventeen ships and a horde of passengers. Many people of wealth and position elbowed each other for the chance to journey to this wonderful land, this paradise, where gold nuggets could be found on the ground. There was an air of great expectation, of wealth just readily at hand. Within six months, Columbus set off once again.
In the years ahead, as a result of his second, third, and fourth trips, Columbus’s fortunes would wax and wane. He would steadfastly cling to his belief, against a growing mountain of proof, that he had found a path to India, even as the evidence increasingly suggested he had discovered a land previously unknown to the European world.
Columbus would always believe that his single most stalwart supporter, his most reliable defender, was the queen. Their relationship at that point was at its zenith. He spoke to her in the terms of courtly love permitted to her top-ranked courtiers. “The keys of my desires I gave to you in Barcelona,” he told her in a letter. “If you try a taste of my good will, you will find its scent and savour have only increased since then.… I dedicated myself to your Highness in Barcelona without holding back any part of me, and as it was with my spirit, so it was with my honour and estate.”41
Even as Columbus was acknowledging the importance of Isabella’s sponsorship, however, the memory of her role was being era
sed elsewhere in Europe. On February 15, after he had landed in Portugal, Columbus had composed a letter about his journey to Luis de Santángel, the Aragonese financier who had helped back the expedition, wrapping it within a letter meant for the crown. He described the beauty of the islands, their rich natural resources, the attractive naked people he had seen, “men and women, as their mothers bore them,” the easy availability of gold, and the presence of “ferocious” cannibals.42 All this was given in triumph to the “most illustrious King and Queen,” he wrote, “and to their renowned realms, for this all Christendom ought to feel joyful and make celebrations and give solemn thanks to the Holy Trinity with many solemn prayers for the great exaltation that it will have, in the turning of so many peoples to our holy faith, and afterwards for material benefits.”43
The letter to Luis de Santángel, bearing these new and sensational tidings, was soon widely circulated and became a publishing phenomenon, reproduced all over Europe, thanks to the new printing press. Sixteen separate editions, published in Latin, German, Spanish, and Italian, were produced in Antwerp, Basel, Paris, Rome, Florence, Strasbourg, and Valladolid. A strange thing happened, though. Columbus’s text mentioned the queen as well as the king, and the trip had been an entirely Castilian undertaking sponsored by Isabella, yet almost all the printed versions named or depicted Ferdinand as the trip’s patron and sponsor. Some versions even included woodcuts of Ferdinand dressed in armor. None gave any credit to the queen, observes Columbus biographer Morison, finding the omissions “curious.”44 And when they mentioned the islands that Columbus had named, they specified Fernandina and the others; but the island he had named for the queen, La Isabela, was unaccountably renamed La Ysla Bella, or the Beautiful Island.
Isabella: The Warrior Queen Page 32
