Columbus

by Laurence Bergreen

  Columbus continued to praise his newly discovered land, evoking “nine very remarkable harbors which all seamen considered wonders, and five great rivers . . . very high and beautiful mountains . . . the most beautiful valleys . . . thick with high and leafy trees, which were glorious to see.” The one gnawing concern in this paradise was “tremendous fear” of cannibals, rumored to launch raiding parties in which they captured the land’s timid inhabitants. The Indians he had brought on board as passenger-captives were horrified when they realized he was headed for their domain, “lest they make a meal of them, nor could he quiet their fears.” Instead, they babbled about the cannibals’ single eyes and “dogs’ faces.” Columbus chose to deal with the rumors thus: “The Admiral believed they were lying, and thought that those who had captured them must be under the sovereignty of the Grand Khan.”

  On November 27, from Baracoa, near the easternmost end of Cuba, he composed his most comprehensive summary yet. He revised his estimate of his findings upward, always upward, partly because he was convinced of the region’s strategic value, even if it was not China, and partly to distract the Sovereigns from the embarrassing circumstance that he had not accomplished what he had promised to do. “A thousand tongues would not suffice, nor his hand to write, for it appeared that it was enchanted,” he wrote of Cuba and its neighbors. Did anyone doubt the truth of his observations? “It is certain, Lord Princes, that when there are such lands there should be profitable things without number; but I tarried not in any harbor.” His justification for sailing across the Atlantic at great risk and expense, only to pass over exactly what he sought, was not entirely convincing: “I sought to see the most countries that I could, to give the story of them to Your Highnesses,” adding in passing, “and I do not know the language, and the people of the lands do not understand me nor I them, nor does anyone on board.”

  This observation did not square with the many conversations with Indians that he had already recorded in his diary, in which he described how Indians told him about gold, or trees, or harbors. Even allowing for significant misunderstanding, some inevitable, and some willful, between the two parties, there was no doubt that Columbus and his men had been carrying on multiple dialogues with their Indian hosts about trading, religion, Christianity, and local geography ever since the fleet’s first landfall on October 12. Each party confirmed the other’s mystical and religious prophecies and fantasies. The Indians thought Columbus’s fleet fulfilled the longstanding, widely held belief that divine or divinely inspired creatures like them would visit the islands, and Columbus believed that whatever he encountered was intended by God, even though the Taínos were not exactly what he had in mind. Mutual recognition vied with mutual confusion. But the unspoken potential behind the discovery varied greatly for each party. For the Indians, it meant a visitation from above, and implied being uplifted rather than degraded. For Columbus, it implied the possibility of exploitation and enslavement, and the acquisition of limitless personal wealth.

  To communicate with the Indians, he relied on his translator, Luis de Torres, but it quickly became apparent that he lacked the languages necessary to communicate in these islands. In his stead, Columbus enticed Indians aboard ship to act as guides and interpreters, only to realize that “these Indians whom I took along I often misunderstood, taking one thing for the opposite, and I don’t trust them much”—not because he failed to understand them, but because “they have tried to flee.” Columbus contradicted himself once more, writing that he was, after all, learning the Indian language “little by little,” and “I will have this language taught to people of my household.” And then he revealed, “I see that all so far have one language,” implying that he had some familiarity with their tongue.

  The “one language” about which he wrote was Arawak, now classed as a member of the Maipurean linguistic family, widely spoken across the Caribbean and South America. In his haphazard yet thorough exploration of the Caribbean Basin, he probably encountered two regional Arawakan dialects, Cuban and Bahamian.

  Indian culture, even agriculture, scarcely interested Columbus. In a letter to Ferdinand and Isabella, he spoke of the lands he explored as a spiritual and economic tabula rasa on which his Sovereigns would leave a lasting imprint of empire. “Your Highnesses will command a city and fortress to be built in these parts,” he predicted, “and these countries converted; and I certify”—a term with the force of an oath—“to Your Highnesses that it seems to me that there could never be under the sun [lands] superior in fertility, in mildness of cold and heat, in abundance of good and pure water; and the rivers are not like those of Guinea, which are all pestilential,” he noted as an afterthought. And as everyone at court knew, Guinea fell squarely within Portugal’s sphere of influence.

  To prevent the Portuguese and other meddlesome outsiders such as the French or Arab pirates from poaching on this newly discovered paradise, Columbus urged Ferdinand and Isabella “not to consent that any foreigner does business or sets foot here, except Christian Catholics, since was the end and the beginning of the enterprise,” a sentiment with which the Sovereigns and generations of clerics would find themselves in solemn agreement. It would remain his last chance but also his most persuasive argument: no matter what else went wrong, or whatever else he failed to accomplish on his voyage, he was bringing Christianity to the Indians before anyone else.

  Assessing his accomplishments thus far, Columbus was on firmer ground concerning the health of his men. He boasted that “nobody has even had a headache or taken to his bed through sickness; except one old man with pain of gravel, from which he has suffered all his life, and he was well at the end of two days.” That happy circumstance “applies to all three vessels.” It was a remarkable piece of good fortune, given the unprecedented nature of the voyage, Columbus’s distorted view of geography, his unreliable celestial navigation, and their primitive, unsanitary ships.

  No sooner had Columbus informed the Sovereigns of his grand vision than he heard an alarming account from some of his crew. While reconnoitering, they told him, “they found in a house a cake of wax,” a fetish object that he found intriguing enough to bring home with him to Spain to display to the Sovereigns. Also, “the seamen found in a house a man’s head in a basket, covered with another basket and hanging to a post.” According to their description, these dried heads were festooned about the settlement, forming a gruesome tableau. Columbus assumed that the object “must be those of some ancestors of the family; because those houses were of a kind where many persons live in one, and they should be relations descended from only one.”

  Despite his shockprooftone, he urgently wanted to seek the relative safety of open water, but just then heavy rain, dark clouds, and a southwest wind dead astern blew in and made navigation all but impossible. The rain was so intense his men could practically inhale it, and it went in cycles, replaced by shifting veils of mist. An hour later, the rain would descend and commence weeping over the same sodden scene. The next day, November 30, the damp wind shifted to the east, contrary to his course.

  Unable to put to sea, he dispatched a scouting party of eight seamen and two Indians (as translators and guides) to assess the region and its settlements. “They went to many houses, and found nobody nor anything, for all had fled”: a New World hauntingly devoid of people. Finally they spied “four young men who were digging in their fields,” but the moment the Indians saw the intruders, “they turned to flee; couldn’t catch them.” The fearful inhabitants left behind impressive signs of civilization, “many villages, and very fertile land all cultivated, and great rivers of water, and near one they saw a dugout or canoe of 95 palms’ length, of a single log, very handsome, and 150 people could find room in it and navigate,” that is, if there were any people, but there were none.

  The ships rode uneasily at anchor, poised to head out to sea. With rain increasing day by day, the seamen fretted that a storm would blow up and destroy the ships, but Columbus believed that a large rock at
the mouth of the harbor would protect them from the worst of the weather, or so he said. But their situation was more precarious than he believed, or let on to the others. If the wind shifted, the rock would be no help at all.

  At last, he saw people, even if they refused to stay put. It was Monday, December 3, and Columbus, venturing onto land and following a winding creek, had just come upon “five very great dugouts, . . . very handsome and well worked.” Appraising the canoes as a navigator, he declared them a gratifying mixture of form and function. As he walked on, he came across a “boathouse very well ordered and covered, so that neither sun nor water could do [the dugouts] damage.” Within, protected by the structure, he examined a “canoe made of a single log like the others,” comparable to a large rowboat or barge “of 16 thwarts.” The artistry that went into the vessel impressed him deeply. “It was a pleasure to see their workmanship and fine appearance.” A pleasure for him, that is, but not for Spanish bureaucrats, who had dispatched him to save souls, forge trade with the Grand Khan, and, in the process, outfox the wily Portuguese. Examples of indigenous handicrafts were of scant interest to Spanish officialdom; gold was what they wanted, gold and power.

  Leaving the boathouse, Columbus “climbed a mountain” and from the summit surveyed broad fields “planted with many things of the country.” A man of the sea, Columbus was unfamiliar with the names of the fruits and vegetables he encountered; some he took to be gourds, or calabazas, among the first plant species to be cultivated.

  Suddenly “the people of the village” appeared. The moment they saw the strange figure on the mountain, they took flight. He dispatched his Indian guides to reassure them, and bestow gifts of hawk’s bells, brass rings, and green and yellow glass beads. Concerning the skittish Indians, Columbus “assured the Sovereigns that 10 men could put to flight 10,000, so cowardly and timid are they.” It was true that they were armed with simple spears, but on examination, they proved to be nothing more than reeds with fire-hardened tips. Wanting them for himself, Columbus employed “a good ruse, bartering in such manner that they gave them all.” And so the timid Indians were deprived of their rudimentary weapons by the cunning Admiral, whom they had come to fear and revere.

  Just when Columbus believed he had charmed and disarmed the populace, the Indians raised their arms skyward and shouted. Suddenly he saw the face of one Indian “become as yellow as wax” as he frantically gestured to Columbus that people—the Caribs, in all likelihood—were coming. The Indian pointed to a loaded crossbow held by one of the Spaniards, indicating that “they would all be killed” by this unseen menace. To emphasize his point, the Indian grabbed a scabbard and withdrew a sword, brandishing it.

  The Indians fled, with Columbus calmly following. When he caught up with them, they were readying for battle. “There were very many, all painted red and naked as their mothers bore them, and some of them with feathers on the head and other plumes, all with their bundles of darts.” Columbus proceeded to disarm them by means of bribery and distraction. “I went up to them and gave them some piece of bread and demanded their spears, for which I gave them a hawk’s bell, to others a brass ring, to others some beads, so that all were pleased.” The Indians offered their precious spears in return, because “they think that we have come from the sky.” If only they had the gold and spices he sought, how easy it would be to acquire these precious items from them.

  The day ended with Columbus entering “a beautiful house” with “marvelous work” hanging from the ceilings; he did not know how to describe what he beheld, most likely intricately woven mats adorned with shells, so striking that he thought he had stumbled into a temple. With sign language, he asked the Indians if they said their prayers here, and “they said no; and one of them climbed up and gave me all that was there.”

  The morning of December 4 brought a light wind, and Columbus was finally able to set forth from the harbor he had taken to calling Puerto Santo. He ran along the coast, passing a landmark he named Cape Lindo, often identified as Punta Fraile, Cuba.

  He spied a “great bay” that just might be a strait or passageway leading to the empire of the Grand Khan and sailed throughout the night “in order to see the land which went to the E,” but eventually he yielded in his ambition on the advice of Indian guides. The coast he was now exploring, with its intimations of the Eastern kingdom, actually belonged to Cuba, “which up to then he had considered mainland by reason of its extent, for he had easily gone about 120 leagues along it.”

  By considering the possibility that Cuba was an island—not a promontory of the Asian mainland—Columbus seemed to abandon one of the most cherished hopes of his voyage. He had not, as yet, found Asia, nor the Grand Khan, yet he could not bring himself to acknowledge that he had found some other land. Unable to solve this geographic puzzle, he lost himself in the act of sailing, heading back once more to the island of Hispaniola, ceaselessly exploring, for what, he could not say.

  As night was coming on, Columbus sent Niña ahead to “sight the harbor by daylight, because she was speedy; and arriving at the mouth of the harbor”—on the coast of modern-day Haiti—“which was like the Bay of Cadiz, and because it was already night, she sent in her barge to sound the harbor, and which showed the light of a candle” to indicate the way. Columbus approached, “hoping that barge would show signals to enter the harbor,” but just then “the light on the barge went out.” As a consequence, Niña “ran off shore and showed a light to the Admiral, and coming up to her, they told him what had happened. At this point, the men on the barge showed another light; the caravel went to it, and the Admiral could not, and stayed all that night beating about.”

  After this intricate dance of wind and current and flickering torchlight, the new day, December 6, dawned, and Columbus “found himself 4 leagues from the harbor.” He caught glimpses of onshore fires, their columns of smoke “like beacons,” perhaps warning of a tribal war on land, from which he felt characteristically exempt.

  “At the hour of vespers, he entered the harbor, and gave it the name Puerto de San Nicolas, because it was the feast of St. Nicholas, for his honor,” Columbus wrote, extolling its “beauty and graciousness.” He considered it his right and responsibility to confer names wherever he went, regardless of the site’s traditional designation, and in many instances, the name has stuck, erasing history in the process. There was a power in naming, almost as if he were converting his surroundings to Christendom; naming was claiming.

  Considering it superior to all other harbors he had visited on his voyage, Columbus explored its perimeter, sounded its depths, searched for hazards, and was pleased to declare, “There does not seem to be a single shoal.” Its length could comfortably accommodate “a thousand carracks,” a heavy hint to his Sovereigns about the region’s potential. “The whole harbor is very breezy and uninhabited, clear of trees,” he commented. The majestic sweep extended as far as the eye could see, an emerald set in shimmering sapphire. “The land is very high, and all open country or clear.” In another direction, he saw “a beautiful plain,” large villages, and dugouts that were fifteen thwarts long, fleeing rather than approaching his ships. The Indians accompanying suddenly announced they had “great desire to go to their own country,” but he had his suspicions about their motives, and they, no doubt, about his.

  At seven the following morning, the commencement of the dawn watch, Columbus spread sail, and put Port St. Nicolas to stern.

  The approaching rain portended three solid days of cloudbursts and downpours. “Blew hard from the NE,” he noted laconically, hard enough, in fact, to force the ships to drag their anchors, “at which the Admiral was surprised.” Again, his scouts saw signs of human habitation, but by the time they went ashore, the inhabitants had disappeared into the tropical forest. The image of a bewildered Columbus both entreating and frightening the indigenous people of the Caribbean is at odds with the storehouse of conventionally heroic images of the Admiral as divinely inspired, supremely confident, bringing
Christianity and Spanish rule to untutored peoples. And it is at odds with the argument that he planned to exploit, enslave, degrade, or slaughter the timid, mostly unarmed Indians whose language he tried to learn, and whose seamanship he admired. At this juncture, he was neither a bringer of laws nor a spreader of disease, as centuries of commentators and portrait painters have represented him, but rather an earnest, fearless, and misguided navigator (and self-serving chronicler) who had difficulty impressing his sense of mission and self-importance on others, beginning with his own crew. Only the Indians who had never before seen his like were impressed, and they responded by taking flight. The more familiar they became with him and his men, the more they gravitated toward the explorer, partly because he deftly bribed them with trinkets, and partly because of an unspoken sense of a shared potential destiny between these two disparate groups. Their behavior, the way they clung to him like iron filings to a magnet, suggests that despite his confusion about where he was and his indecisiveness, his sense of high purpose communicated itself to his hosts. At the same time, he was also the cunning merchant of Genoa, looking for resources to trade and exploit.