Guacanagarí returned at dawn on Thursday, December 27, hoping to delay Columbus’s departure with the promise of more gold. The Admiral continued to court his favor by inviting Guacanagarí, his brother, and another “very intimate relation” to dine with him, when they suddenly switched tactics and expressed the desire to go with Columbus to the wonderful kingdom of Castile. Their sense of urgency only increased when, in the midst of the meal, other Indians arrived bringing news of Pinta; she was anchored “in a river at the end of that island.”
Columbus seized the opportunity to send the unstable and insubordinate Martín Alonso Pinzón a letter of reconciliation. Columbus needed Pinzón. The Admiral’s plan to establish a fortress in the wilds of India would not succeed so long as his men were threatening mutiny. Worse, Pinzón’s returning to Spain to disseminate a different version of events, one that showed Columbus as a naive, self-seeking adventurer rather than an idealistic servant of Castile, could trigger a disastrous chain of events. If Pinzón’s version prevailed, the Sovereigns might be inclined to forgive rather than punish him for his near mutiny.
As Columbus tarried among the Indians and presided over construction and staffing of the fortress, the Indians appeared to compete for his favor. In Columbus’s telling, one leader entreated him to make use of an elaborate “dais of palm bark,” while another at first feigned ignorance of his presence and then ran to him and “hung on his neck a great plate of gold that he carried in his hand” in an effort to outdo his rival. This flattery and bribery continued through Sunday, culminating in a ceremonial send-off, which Columbus found irresistible. The cacique personally received the Admiral with great pomp and formality, and led him by the arm to a sort of dais and chair. He asked Columbus to be seated, whereupon he removed a bejeweled headpiece and placed it on the explorer’s head. Returning the gesture, Columbus removed a collar encrusted with multihued gems and placed it around the cacique’s neck. He also bestowed the handsome scarlet cloak he wore that day on the Indian, and even sent for a pair of fine boots for the Indian to wear. Finally, he placed on his finger a large silver ring. It reminded the Indian of a silver earring worn by a mariner. With this ceremonial exchange of gifts and show of goodwill, Columbus’s voyage was nearing its conclusion, and he wanted to see the Sovereigns before his rival Pinzón got there. He was likely already en route, with malice in mind.
On Monday, the last day of the year, Columbus prepared to set sail for Spain at last, “taking on water and wood,” and planning to “give prompt news to the Sovereigns, that they might send ships to discover what remained to be discovered.” He could have continued his voyage of exploration, voyaging eastward along the coast “until he had seen all that country,” but on sober reflection, he realized that he was left with only one vessel, and “it did not seem reasonable to expose himself to the dangers that could occur in discovering,” as well as “all that evil and inconvenience” stemming from the “parting of the caravel Pinta.” By this, Columbus hinted he was preparing to counter malicious propaganda that he expected to be spread by his rival Martín Alonso Pinzón. The last thing the Admiral wanted the Sovereigns to consider was an unauthorized account of how Santa María came to be lost, or the mysterious disappearance of Pinta, or the failure to locate the Grand Khan, or other embarrassing incidents. It was preferable to focus on his hastily improvised fortress and plans to colonize the strange land that he had discovered.
The overdue departure finally occurred on January 2, 1493, with Columbus placing Diego de Arana, Pedro Gutiérrez, and Rodrigo Escobedo in charge of the fortress and, in the Admiral’s mind, over the Indians. With the threat of the fierce Caribs ever present in the minds of the Indians, the Spaniards demonstrated their lombards, pointing out “how [they] pierced the side of the ship and how the ball went far out to sea.” He staged a mock battle between his men and the Indians to demonstrate “they need have no fear of the Caribs, even if they should come.” He backed his assurances with tangible resources, designating thirty-nine men, the translator Luis de Torres among them, to remain behind in the fortress, along with sufficient food, and even a physician, all of them good “men of the sea.”
Even with these reassurances, the Indians remained fearful, and made their best effort to seduce Columbus, their defender, with an irresistible offering. One of Guacanagarí’s men informed Columbus that the king had “ordered to be made a statue of pure gold as large as the Admiral himself.” What could be more impressive, or more calculated to appeal to Columbus’s vanity than this priceless effigy? They promised it would be ready for delivery in only ten days.
Friday dawned fair, with a light wind, and Columbus made a determined effort to depart, deploying nimble Niña to scout a channel and to confirm that it was free of reefs; he noted islets and gulfs as he went, but light wind impeded his progress that morning. He continued to profess, though with less conviction, that the splendid China described by Marco Polo must be close by, but the kingdom remained as elusive as the mythical El Dorado.
On Sunday, while running along the northern coast of the landmass he had named Hispaniola, he feared that reefs and shoals lurked around every point, or were concealed beneath the iridescent water of every harbor like so many sea monsters, their teeth poised to rip his ship’s hulls to slivers. Amid these hazards, Pinta, presumed lost, appeared on the horizon, racing downwind toward Niña and Columbus. The two ships sailed a full ten leagues together to find a safe anchorage, and then Martín Alonso Pinzón came aboard, dispensing with the usual formalities, “to excuse himself, alleging that he had left him [Columbus] against his will.”
Exasperated, Columbus dismissed Pinzón’s claim as “all false.” Pinzón had gone his way out of “much insolence and greed.” His behavior was the work of Satan. The Indians believed that Pinzón had abandoned the fleet in the futile pursuit of gold, going all the way to Jamaica—“Yamaye” to the Spaniards—a ten-day journey by canoe. Columbus declared that Pinzón’s unauthorized conduct amounted to “insolence and disloyalty.”
Water is the enemy of wood, and Niña required repairs, pumping, and caulking the following day, January 8, before Columbus considered the craft seaworthy. He awaited news of the life-size gold statue he had been promised, but none was forthcoming. On Tuesday, a high wind from the southeast delayed his exodus yet again. He remained troubled by the actions of the Pinzón brothers, Martín Alonso and Vicente Yáñez, who had abandoned him on November 21. “To get rid of such bad company, with whom he had had to dissemble (for they were undisciplined people), and although he had along many men of good will (but it was no time to deal out punishment), he decided to return and delay no more.”
As usual, the slightest mention of gold acted on him like a powerfully addictive drug and sufficed to distract him from his other concerns and goals. Columbus heard from his sailors that they had found gold in the mouth of a river—probably the Yaque—while they were collecting water for Niña. He dreamed of the wide and deep river “all full of gold, and of such quality that it is marvelous but very fine.” He ordered the sailors “to go up the river a stone’s throw,” in search of the gold, and when they filled their barrels with water and returned to Niña, “they found bits of gold”—gold!—adhering to the barrel hoops. He named the body of water Río de Oro, River of Gold. Columbus’s thoughts once again veered toward reality and the necessity of returning to Spain “at full speed to bring the news and to quit the bad company that he had, and that he always said they were a mutinous lot.” The ill will was entirely mutual.
After the latest series of delays and maneuvers, he estimated he had traveled only twenty-seven miles from the fortress, which he had taken to calling La Navidad, after the date of the shipwreck and to commemorate the beginning of the Spanish empire in Hispaniola. At midnight, January 9, he set sail once again, soon becoming frustrated by reefs and unseen channels. He took in fine sights, turtles (“very big, like a large wooden shield”) and “three mermaids who rose very high from the sea,” but, he ha
stened to add, “they were not as beautiful as they were painted, although to some extent they have a human appearance on the face.” In fact, the creatures were sea cows, or manatees, herbivores that generally graze in shallow waters, forbidding-looking beasts weighing over a thousand pounds, nearly ten feet long, with widely spaced eyes and a mournful appearance.
The next day’s anchorage brought Columbus, still aboard Niña, to the mouth of a broad waterway that he named Río de Gracia. A “good landlocked harbor” beckoned in the distance, but the presence of shipworms, or teredos, warned him away. Once shipworms worked their way into the planks, there would be no getting rid of them, and they would destroy the ship from within. He departed from this uneasy anchorage at midnight on Friday, and confidently reported “great progress because the wind and currents were with him. Dared not anchor for fear of shoals, and so lay-to all night.”
Even before dawn Niña raised anchor and shaped a generally easterly course. Columbus was tempted to explore “a great and very beautiful opening between two great mountains,” which led to an enticing harbor, but he was fearful that once Niña entered the harbor, the wind might shift. Instead, he rounded one rocky cape after another, daring to anchor in the midst of a “very great bay” surrounding a “tiny little island.” He estimated the depth at twelve fathoms when he dropped anchor, and dispatched a barge in search of water and people, but the inhabitants, he reported, had all fled, and with them the hope of obtaining the life-size statue of gold. He paused to wonder at the immense surroundings, and the configuration of the landmass along whose board he had been coasting. Had he reached a new gulf or island? Or was this endless and varied coastline still “one land with Hispaniola”? If so, “he remained amazed at how big was the island of Hispaniola.”
On Sunday, the Admiral had the time and tranquillity to make planetary observations. He patiently awaited “the conjunction of the moon with the sun,” which he expected four days later, on January 17, as well as the sun in opposition with Jupiter, which he claimed to be “the cause of great winds.”
As Columbus studied the heavens, preoccupied with what the celestial signs portended for his destiny, sailors aboard Niña’s barge disembarked onshore in search of food, “and they found some men with bows and arrows, with whom they waited to talk.”
One warrior wished to board Niña to meet the Admiral himself, and when Columbus came face-to-face with him, the encounter proved unsettling. His face was stained with a substance that Columbus took to be charcoal but more likely was a dye derived from a local fruit. “He wore his hair very long and drawn together and fastened behind, and gathered into a little nest of parrots’ feathers, and he was as naked as the others.” Columbus believed the Indian was a Carib, but in Las Casas’s opinion, the emissary belonged to the Taínos, who had borrowed the Caribs’ weapons in self-defense. It mattered little to the Admiral, who talked only of gold. Was there any to be found in this region? A great deal, the Indian replied, gesturing at Níña’s substantial poop to evoke a massive quantity. “Tuob,” he called it, a new designation for the precious substance, and said it could be found on the island of Boriquén, the Land of the Valiant Lord, as the Taínos referred to Puerto Rico.
In exchange for this intelligence, Columbus ordered that the obliging Taínos be given food, “pieces of green and red cloth, and little beads of glass,” and sent the man ashore with orders to return with gold. Columbus had seen traces of gold sewn in the Taínos’ clothes and assumed it must be readily available. When the barge bearing the Taínos approached the shore, no less than fifty-five men, with “very long hair, as the women wear it in Castile,” appeared from behind the trees, each one carrying a bow. The Taíno who had gone aboard Niña turned to his own people and persuaded them to lay down their bows, which Columbus’s men offered to buy, along with arrows. The mood suddenly turned hostile: “Having sold two bows, they wished to give no more, but prepared rather to attack the Christians and capture them.”
They came rushing at them with ropes, prepared to bind their victims as a prelude to imprisonment, torture, and slaughter. “Seeing them running toward them, the Christians, being prepared as always the Admiral advised them to be, fell upon them and gave an Indian a great slash on the buttocks, and wounded another in the breast with an arrow.” At that, the rest of the Taínos ran from the scene of battle.
What should have been a peaceful commercial encounter had turned bloody and vicious, but the unexpected turn of events reassured rather than dismayed the Admiral. He confided to his journal that he was sorry about the ill will engendered by the conflict; at the same time, he was not sorry at all: The Indians would have to learn “fear of the Christians.” Although he appeared indifferent to the reputation of the Caribs, he came around to the opinion that they had just drawn the blood not of the Taínos but of the Caribs themselves, “bad actors” who “ate men.”
Now they had been chastened, or so he hoped. If they encountered the Spanish seamen at the fortress La Navidad, they would “fear to do them any harm.” And even if they were not Caribs, “they must have the same customs,” and would be deterred in the same way. In either case, the charmed relations and fellow feeling between Indians and Spaniards dissipated. Although Columbus had tried to banish the sinister Caribs from his thoughts, it was apparent from his journal, with its frequent mentions of these fierce warriors, that they were on his mind, and to the peaceful Taínos, they posed an ever-present danger.
By January 15, three weeks after the shipwreck, Columbus had yet to summon the resolve to leave the Indies and their unfulfilled promise of gold for the repercussions awaiting him in Spain. He invited several Indians aboard Niña and sent a barge bearing Spaniards to reconnoiter ashore. He confessed that he could not learn much about a country in the space of a few days, “both from the difficulty of language, which the Admiral didn’t understand except by guess, and because they knew not what he was trying to say.”
To help, Columbus detained four youths aboard Niña, communicating with them by sign language. The boys indicated they knew the nearby islands well, and could serve as guides and go-betweens if necessary. So they joined the Spaniards for the journey to Spain, heedless of the elements to which they would be exposed on the open water, and, if they survived, in Europe. From the Indians Columbus also heard a story concerning another island, Matinino, said to contain abundant copper. The island, they added, was “inhabited only by women.” Columbus decided to go there directly, see the women, and carry specimens away with him.
The story evoked Marco Polo’s account of Male Island and Female Island, located somewhere in “greater India.” The legend, beguilingly related by the Venetian, was fact to Columbus and to Europeans. Perhaps the Admiral had managed to locate himself in the Venetian’s world after all. “I assure you that in the island the men do not live with their wives or with any other women; but all women live on the other island, which is called Female Island.” According to Polo, the men visit for three months of pleasure-taking before taking their leave.
Fumbling for the proper words with which to communicate with the island’s inhabitants, Columbus studied their bows and arrows, made from the “shoots of canes.” The Indians inserted a fish tooth at the tip, generally coated with poison. He also noted abundant cotton and chili, “which is stronger than pepper,” yet “the people won’t eat without it, for they find it very wholesome.” Traditional European black pepper belongs to the genus Piper, while the shiny green and red chili pepper belongs to the genus Capsicum , and there was so much in evidence that he estimated he could “load fifty caravels with it in Hispaniola.” But was chili pepper worth anything in Spain?
Thick mats of seaweed clogged the harbor, he noticed. He had seen it before, “in the gulf when they came upon the discovery,” and in his experience it grew only in shallow waters near land. “If so,” he guessed, “these Indies were very near the Canary Islands,” his jumping-off point before heading out to the uncharted Atlantic, which he called the Ocean S
ea, “and for that reason he believed that they were less than 400 leagues distant.” In fact, he would have to traverse more than twice that distance.
The ever-present drifting seaweed was the brown algae, commonly called gulfweed, or sargassum, from which the huge Sargasso Sea takes its name. His fleet had silently and unwittingly entered a sea like no other, stretching two thousand miles east from Bermuda. The water of the Sargasso Sea was intensely blue, so clear that he could gaze two hundred feet into its depths. The sea extends fifteen thousand feet—nearly three miles—to the ocean’s floor. This strange, shoreless sea is defined by the confluence of four currents known as the North Atlantic Subtropical Gyre. (In oceanography, a gyre denotes a system of rotating ocean currents generated by large-scale wind movements.) When Columbus sailed through the Sargasso Sea, he experienced a unique combination of wind and water and plant life in the form of sargassum.
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