Columbus

by Laurence Bergreen

  He described the efforts he made to prepare for their conversion to Christianity: “I gave them a thousand pretty things that I had brought, in order to gain their love and incline them to become Christians. I hoped to win them to the love and service of Their Highnesses and of the whole Spanish nation and to persuade them to collect and give us of the things which they possessed in abundance and which we needed”—such as their young women, he might have added, if he were to be completely truthful, which he was not. He boasted that he, the Admiral of the Ocean Sea, received a “good reception everywhere, once they had overcome their fear . . . because they have never before seen men clothed or ships like these.”

  He learned to communicate with them “either by speech or signs,” but no matter what passed between them, the Indians “believe very firmly that I, with these ships and people, came from the sky.” The conviction remained unshakeable, and ubiquitous. Wherever he journeyed, the startled inhabitants “went running from house to house and to the neighboring towns with loud cries of ‘Come! Come! See the people from the sky!’ ”

  Cheered by the adulation, Columbus portrayed his empire building in grandiose terms; he proclaimed that he had discovered the gold mines associated with the Grand Khan, although the claim was based on his having caught glimpses of a few strands of gold. As if trumpet flourishes were sounding all around him, Columbus announced that he had “taken possession of a large town to which I gave the name La Villa de Navidad, and in it I have built a fort and defenses, which already, at this moment, will be all complete.”

  In fact, this was neither a town nor a citadel, as he implied; it was a modest stronghold cobbled together with timber salvaged from the scuttled Santa María and staffed by thirty-nine seamen ill equipped for survival in a strange environment. As the first European settlement in the New World, it served as a powerful symbol. In his Sovereigns’ imagination, it would appear as a castle with banners and battlements, a militant monastery in the midst of heathens. It was, in other words, an excellent selling point, secured by the hostages he had deposited there. Columbus insisted that they were not in any danger, and that they enjoyed the protection of the local king, who “took pride in calling me and treating me as a brother.” Even if the king underwent a change of heart, “neither he nor his people know the use of arms,” Columbus said.

  One more thing: he wanted to assure the Sovereigns that “I have not found the human monsters that many people expected. On the contrary, the whole population is very well made.” He admitted to hearing reports concerning “a people who are regarded in all the islands as very ferocious and who eat human flesh”—the fierce Caribs, who marauded vulnerable islands and practiced ritual human sacrifice—“they have many canoes with which they range all the islands of India and pillage and take as much as they can,” but even these warriors “are no more malformed than the others, except that they have the custom of wearing their hair long like women.” Their ferocity derived from the cowardice of their victims. In other words, they were not to be taken seriously as combatants.

  He finally bestowed a designation on the people he discovered: they were Indios, a term derived from the misconception that they inhabited India. No matter, they were rich in resources that Spain needed: not only gold, but mastic, “which up to now, has only been found in Greece, on the island of Chios”—as Columbus knew from personal experience during his arduous apprenticeship as a Genoese seaman—together with aloe, rhubarb, cinnamon, and a “thousand other things of value.” This appeared to be an impressive tally, but a skeptic predisposed to dislike Columbus would read between the lines and realize that much was lacking, chiefly gold, the most important item on the Sovereigns’ agenda. Had Columbus found abundant gold, he would have emphasized it above all. And, of course, he had not found the Grand Khan or his empire, no matter how vigorously he pretended that it lay just over the horizon. And the inhabitants, who today would be called indigenous peoples, were not the highly advanced civilization described by Marco Polo; they lacked the technological, mathematical, artistic, and military abilities catalogued by the Venetian. Columbus tried to turn their lack of technological prowess to his advantage; if they did not have sophisticated weapons, they must be docile. No matter how he couched his description of them, it was apparent they lacked the makings of sophisticated trading partners. He had found little of immediate use to the Sovereigns and their plans for empire. Nevertheless, his voyage triggered an unstoppable impulse for exploration, empire building, and greed.

  At the time he wrote this summary, he could not, nor could anyone else, have imagined the immediate consequences or the long-term implications of this voyage. To him, it was the fulfillment of a divine prophecy. To his Sovereigns and their ministers, it was intended as a landgrab and a way to plunder gold. Instead, it became, through forces Columbus inadvertently set in motion and only dimly understood, the most important voyage of its kind ever made.

  Columbus signed the document: “Done on board the caravel,” as he called sturdy little Niña, “off the Canary Islands, on the fifteenth of February, year 1493. At your service. The Admiral.” He knew that he was off Santa María island in the Azores that day, rather than in the Canaries, but his habit of obscuring his location remained so ingrained that he could not help but perform this legerdemain even when reporting to his Sovereigns.

  By the time the ink dried, his little ship was engulfed in yet another tempest.

  On Sunday, February 10, 1493, the Admiral and his crew readied themselves for departure. Even with the help of two pilots, Sancho Ruiz and Peralonso (or Pedro Alonso) Niño, he wrote, “the Admiral found himself much off his course, finding himself much more behind”—that is, farther west—“than they.” He supposed they were approaching Castile, and “when, by virtue of the grace of God, they caught sight of land, it will be known who reckoned it more accurately.”

  Birds glided past, leading him to believe he must be near land. Instead, on Tuesday, he experienced “high seas and tempest, and if the caravel had not been . . . very staunch and well-prepared, he would have been afraid of being lost.” The day’s sailing involved some of the nastiest weather Columbus encountered on the entire voyage, with lightning bolts shattering the sky. He hauled in his sheets and “proceeded most of the night under bare poles” sustaining only a “scrap of sail” into rougher seas. “The ocean made up something terrible, and the waves crossed each other, which strained the vessels.”

  By Thursday, they were somewhere west of the Azores, a group of islands that lay a thousand miles west of the Portuguese coast. As the gale lasted into Thursday, February 14, the fortunes of errant Pinta became a source of great anxiety, as Columbus related in one of the most emotional entries in his diary: “That night the wind increased and the waves were frightful, running counter to one another, and so crossed and embarrassed the ship that she couldn’t make headway or get out from between them, and they broke over her.” Even for an experienced sailor, few spectacles are as intimidating, or predictive of drowning, as the sight of towering waves breaking overhead, as if the turbulent sea were engulfing the ship. In response, Columbus ordered the mainsail’s yardarm lowered as far as it could go without its sail being shredded or carried away by seawater roaring across the deck. When that strategy failed, and the seas became even more formidable, Columbus “began to scud”—that is, to run before the storm with practically no sail—“since there was nothing else to be done. Then the caravel Pinta, in which Martín Alonso [Pinzón] went, also began to scud before it, and disappeared, although all night the Admiral made flares, and the other replied, until it appeared that he could do no more from the force of the tempest, and because he found himself very far from the Admiral’s course.” That was Columbus’s last sight of Pinta. Ships disappeared all the time in violent storms such as these, among surging seas and stinging rain, blown sideways between tall waves, and disappearing into a watery trench.

  Oblivious to Pinta’s destiny, the Admiral’s main concern was to su
rvive the night. “At sunrise the wind and sea made up more, sea crossing more terribly,” and proceeded with the “main course only, and low, to enable her to rise above the cross-swell, that it might not swamp her.” He headed northeast by east for six exhausting hours, traversing seven and a half leagues, or about thirty miles. Columbus vowed that if they survived the ordeal, they would make a grateful pilgrimage to Santa María de Guadalupe, the renowned, inaccessible shrine in Extremadura, Spain, known as the Powerful Lady of Silence, fashioned of wood from Asia. They would “carry a candle of five pounds of wax and . . . all vow that on whomever fell the lot should fulfill the pilgrimage.” For them, the ritual was a matter of life and death.

  In the midst of the endless storm, Columbus, driven by piety, and possibly driven mad, said that he “ordered as many chickpeas,” or garbanzo beans, “to be brought as were people in the ship, and that one [chickpea] should be marked with a knife, making a cross, and placed in a cap, wellshaken.” Columbus, ever the child of destiny, went first, placing his hand in the cap, and he “drew the chickpea with the cross, and so the lot fell on him, and henceforth he regarded himself as a pilgrim and bound to go to fulfill the vow.” The terrified sailors devised still more schemes to perform acts of religious devotion as a way of improving their chances of survival, their reception in the afterlife, or as distraction from their plight, which became more grave by the hour.

  “After that, the Admiral and all the people made a vow that, upon reaching the first land, they would all go in their shirts in procession to make a prayer in a church that was dedicated to Our Lady. Beside the general or common vows, everyone made his special vow, because nobody expected to escape, holding themselves all for lost, owing to the terrible tempest that they were experiencing.” Second-guessing himself, Columbus wished, too late, that he had stowed more provisions, more water and wine, if only to have the benefit of their weight on tiny Niña at this moment, but he had been distracted by his quest for the Isle of Women, where he had persuaded himself he could take on those precious items. “The remedy that he found for this necessity was, when they were able, to fill with seawater the pipes that were found empty with water and wine; and with this they supplied the need.”

  Columbus became convinced that “Our Lord wished him to perish.” At the same time, he reminded himself of his mission and the news of his exploits that he was bringing to Ferdinand and Isabella. The more important the news became in his mind, the more fearful he became that he would not be able to deliver it, and that all his discoveries and sacrifices would be for naught, “and that every mosquito might interrupt and prevent it.” He reflected on his lack of faith, and yet it had been sufficient to bring him to Spain, to win royal patronage, and to enable him to overcome adversity to reach this point, the difficulty of dealing with the sailors, and their mutiny against him. He had managed, with the Lord’s help, to prevail. If only he could outlast adversity a little longer.

  To leave some record of his accomplishments, he frantically grabbed “a parchment and wrote upon it all that he could of everything that he had found, earnestly requesting whoever might find it to carry it to the Sovereigns. This parchment he enclosed in a waxed cloth, very well secured, and ordered a great wooden barrel to be brought and placed it inside, without anyone knowing what it was, unless they supposed that it was some act of devotion, and so he ordered it to be cast into the sea,” his version of a message in a bottle, his testament for posterity, to be washed up on the shores of history. (The barrel was never found.)

  As Niña helplessly scudded before the wind, heaving and lurching to the northeast, his fervent prayers were not enough to bring him confidence that he would survive the night, let alone succeed in his mission, or, as he put it, his “weakness and anxiety . . . would not allow my spirit to be soothed.”

  And then, after sunset, “the sky began to show clear in the western quarter.” The shift in the wind’s direction offered a shred of hope that he might, after all, survive. “Sea somewhat high,” he noted, “but somewhat abating.” Several hours later, after sunrise, the crew sighted a ghostly apparition that gradually coalesced into a distant landform. Guessing correctly for once, Columbus concluded they had arrived in the vicinity of the Azores, while “the pilots and seamen found themselves already in the country of Castile.”

  “All this night went beating to windward to close the land,” Columbus wrote on February 16, after the worst of the nightmare seemed to have passed, “which was already recognized to be an island.” He tacked to the northeast, and then a bit farther north to north northeast, and at sunrise tacked southward, to reach the mysterious island, now cloaked in a “great cloudmass,” and then, to what could only have been his profound relief, he “sighted another island” lying perhaps eight leagues, or fifty miles, away. This was, in all likelihood, São Miguel (St. Michael), with a stiff headwind frustrating his approach. Undeterred, Columbus laboriously tacked upwind all day until, at nightfall, “some saw a light to leeward.” Perhaps it emanated from the island they had first seen—Columbus’s diary is not clear on this point—and Niña spent the night beating to windward. At this moment, Columbus’s strength gave out. He had not slept for three or four days, had been living under terrible strain, with little food, “and he was much crippled in the legs from always being exposed to cold and to water.”

  On Sunday evening, when the seas moderated, Columbus rallied and circumnavigated the sanctuary. Niña dropped anchor, and “promptly lost” the equipment while the Admiral attempted to hail someone on land. He had no choice but to raise sail and stand offshore throughout the night. In the morning, he anchored off the northern coast of the island, “and ascertained that it was Santa María, one of the Azores.” He was safe, at least for the present.

  After mooring securely in the harbor, and explaining how he came to be there, Columbus heard that “the people of the island said that never had they seen such a tempest as there had been these fifteen days past,” and they wondered how Columbus had escaped the storm’s fury. The apparently innocent question concealed suspicion. Was Columbus telling them the truth?

  To impress his audience, the Admiral blurted out his marvelous discovery of the Indies. He proceeded to boast that “this navigation of his had been very exact”—far from the truth—“and that he had laid down his route well,” except for exaggerating his speed and, as a result, the distance he had covered. At least his guess that he had arrived in the Azores proved correct.

  To save face and avoid the appearance of accidentally washing up on Santa María, he “pretended to have gone further than he had in order to confuse the pilots and seamen who pricked off”—that is, marked with pins—“the chart, in order to remain master of that route to the Indies.”

  His hosts were not convinced, but they cloaked their skepticism with hospitality. The island’s captain, Juan de Castañeda (or perhaps his deputy), sent messengers with refreshments to the ship. In response, “the Admiral ordered much courtesy shown to the messengers, ordering that they be given bunks to sleep in that night, because it was evening and the village was far.” In the midst of these diplomatic maneuvers, Columbus recalled the vows he had made on Thursday, “when he was in the anguish of the tempest,” and asked the priest of Nossa Senhora dos Anjos, Our Lady of the Angels, to say Mass. The fulfillment of this religious obligation led to a diplomatic contretemps. As the men prayed, the whole town “fell upon them and took them all prisoners.”

  Unaware of the outrage, Columbus impatiently awaited the return of his men. By 11:00 a.m., they still had not arrived, and he suspected they had been detained. He ordered Niña to weigh anchor, and sailed toward the chapel, where a company of armed horsemen dismounted and prepared to arrest him. At the same time, the island’s captain “stood up in the barge and asked for safe conduct from the Admiral [Columbus],” who agreed to allow him aboard Niña, “and do all that he wished.”

  Displaying unusual patience and presence of mind after his ordeal at sea, Columbus “tr
ied with fair words to hold him, so as to recover his people, not believing that it would break his word in giving him safe conduct, because he [the captain], having offered peace and security, had broken his word.”

  As the standoff turned acrimonious, Columbus demanded to know why his men had been seized, and in the midst of a pilgrimage, no less. He claimed that the captain’s rude behavior would “offend the king of Portugal,” whereas in Spain, the Portuguese were “received with much courtesy and entered and were safe as in Lisbon.” He offered to show the official letters he carried from Ferdinand and Isabella naming him “their Admiral of the Ocean Sea and Viceroy of the Indies, which now belonged to Their Highnesses.” He had the signatures, he had the seals, and to prove his point he flourished them at a safe distance. If the captain chose not to release the sailors, Columbus argued, he would sail on to Seville, where, the captain could be certain, the outrage would be reported and his people would be punished.

  Santa María’s captain replied that he knew nothing about the Sovereigns of Castile, was not impressed by Columbus’s letters, and as far as he was concerned, Columbus should consider himself in Portugal. His manner, according to the diary, was “somewhat threatening,” and Columbus speculated whether a rupture between the two nations had occurred during his voyage. The two of them, captain and Admiral, continued to posture, with Columbus at one point threatening to carry “a hundred Portuguese to Castile and depopulate that whole island.” Columbus returned to his flagship without the hostages to ride out yet another storm.