Columbus

by Laurence Bergreen

  Pope Alexander VI closely followed Columbus’s discoveries, recognizing that they could mightily increase the reach of the Church of Rome and his personal power. But it was crucial that he divide the spoils among the competing states that would administer and exploit their resources. Acting as a mediator, Alexander issued four bulls—formal proclamations—dividing the newly discovered lands and their riches between the leading contenders, Spain and Portugal, who were allies in matters of faith but rivals in matters of politics and trade. (Italy, which supplied much of the manpower for exploration, ranked a distant third behind them.) The bulls were based on the assumption that Christian nations could, by divine right, claim title to newly discovered non-Christian lands and their peoples.

  In each bull, he gave to Spain the newly discovered “Indies” (the pope, like all of Europe, was mistaken about the location of Columbus’s tantalizing finds), and it was assumed that his Spanish origins influenced his decision. But his effort at clarification led to confusion in April 1493 when he established a line of demarcation that extended from the North Pole to the South “one hundred leagues toward the west and south from any of the islands commonly known as the Azores and Cape Verdes.” Anything west of the line—that is, everything that mattered—was Spain’s, and if Columbus was able to complete another voyage, partly his as well.

  Columbus’s son Ferdinand later explained, “As the Catholic Sovereigns knew that the Admiral had been the prime cause of the favors and grants made to them by the pope, and that the Admiral’s voyage and discovery had given them title and possession of all the lands, they resolved to reward him well.”

  On May 20, 1493, they appointed him captain general of a second voyage of discovery, and eight days after that, in an elaborate, finely honed document issued in Barcelona, they conferred rights and privileges on him, and gave him the title “Viceroy and Admiral of the Ocean Sea and the Indies,” or “Admiral of the Ocean Sea,” as he became known. By then, Columbus was inundated with formal orders for his second voyage with an urgency that seems all the more remarkable given the years of delay and evasion that preceded his first voyage.

  Although the document conferred extraordinary powers on Columbus, it reflected the regal self-aggrandizement of Ferdinand and Isabella, determined to shape the stubborn mariner into an instrument of their empire and their will. They treated him as both their Admiral and their vassal, revealing themselves as traditional medieval sovereigns despite the changes swirling about them. The document was studded with entitlements for the newly created Admiral of the Ocean Sea, who was formally empowered to call himself “Don Christopher Columbus,” as would his sons and successors, and he was now admiral, viceroy, and governor of the island and mainlands “which you may discover and acquire,” as would his sons and successors. That hereditary status meant he could “hear and determine all the suits and causes, civil and criminal,” that he could “punish and chastise delinquents,” and that he could “levy fees and salaries.” It was a long way from being a merchant seaman from Genoa.

  On May 29, 1493, the Catholic Sovereigns heaped more honors and obligations on the shoulders of “Don Christopher Columbus,” now fully authorized to claim and acquire lands for Ferdinand and Isabella, who charged and directed their admiral, viceroy, and governor to “strive and endeavor to win over the inhabitants” of the islands and mainland he claimed for Spain, which meant they would “be converted to our Holy Catholic Faith.” To assist Columbus in his primary mission, and to make certain it was done properly, the Sovereigns assigned a priest, Fray Buil (sometimes referred to as Father Boyle), and several assistants to the voyage “to see that they be carefully taught the principles of our Holy Faith.” The identity of this controversial cleric has been in doubt ever since, partly because of confusion surrounding his name. He was likely a Catalan who joined the Benedictine order. Although Columbus was profoundly religious, there was little love lost between the two.

  For the record, the Sovereigns insisted that “the Admiral shall, after the safe arrival of his fleet there, force and compel all those who sail therein . . . to treat the Indians very well and lovingly and abstain from doing them any injury.” Not only that, but Columbus “shall graciously present them with things from the merchandise of Their Highnesses which he is carrying for barter, and honor them much.” In fact, if members of the fleet mistreated the Indians “in any manner whatsoever,” Columbus was ordered to “punish them severely.” The order, unequivocal in writing, proved anything but in action.

  To accomplish these exalted goals, Columbus assembled a fleet worthy of Ferdinand and Isabella. This time, nothing was too good for him, by royal order. This carefully thought-out set of instructions marked a giant step forward in the Sovereigns’ appreciation of Columbus’s mission, and the rewards they hoped it would bring for everyone in this world, and, for good measure, in the next. The cost of the fleet was nominally borne by the crown. In fact, the Duke of Medina Sidonia lent five million maravedís for this purpose, much of it secured with property and jewelry confiscated from Jews during the Inquisition.

  The Admiral’s partners in the operational side of the voyage were well known to the crown: Juan de Soria, representing the royal auditors, and Don Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, representing the ultimate authority, the church, first as the archdeacon of Seville and subsequently as bishop of Burgos. At various times he antagonized and supervised Columbus’s efforts to equip the fleet; nevertheless, the Admiral willed himself to consider Fonseca an ally in the cause of conquest.

  A new realism informed these instructions. There was no more talk of trading with the Grand Khan, although the possibility that he existed hovered over the voyage. Columbus still tried to reconcile the lands and people he had encountered with those described in Marco Polo’s flamboyant travelogue. In reality, the Venetian had died in 1324, and the Mongol empire had rapidly disintegrated.

  Columbus’s orders also directed him to construct a “customs house for the storage of all the merchandise of Their Highnesses.” This plan borrowed heavily from the Portuguese model and made the venture’s commercial aspect explicit. Almost as an afterthought, Ferdinand and Isabella permitted Columbus to explore as he saw fit: “If the Admiral, after reaching the Islands, believes it would be well to send some vessels and people to certain parts to discover what has not hitherto been discovered, or for the sake of barter . . . all the captains and mariners whom he may so command are required to carry out and fulfill his orders.” Even here, trade was the impetus, and as an incentive the Sovereigns awarded Columbus a healthy share of the proceeds: “The Admiral should have one eighth part of whatever may be acquired from whatever gold and other things there may be on the Islands and Mainland.”

  Never was there a more exalted moment in his career than this. He had vast resources and royal prestige at his disposal, beginning with the seventeen ships at his command. Three were classed simply as naos, or ships. Columbus named the flagship Santa María, after the durable vessel he had commanded during his comparatively modest first voyage, and called her by the affectionate nickname Maríagalante. She was owned by Antonio de Torres, the brother of the governess of Prince Don Juan. The connection to the Catholic Sovereigns was impressive and implied their approval. Colina and Gallega were similarly substantial craft. Of the remaining fourteen ships, twelve were light, maneuverable caravels. Sharp-eyed observers recognized Santa Clara as Niña of the first voyage, under a new name. Several of the caravels were square-rigged, that is, they carried conventional square rigging on the mainmast and the foremast, and lateen rigging on the mizzen, aft of the mainmast. Learning from the mistakes of the first voyage, Columbus insisted that at least some of his new fleet have a shallow draft to explore rivers and shoals without running aground.

  The ships, according to his son Ferdinand, came “well-stocked with provisions and carrying all the things and persons needed to settle those lands, including artisans of all kinds, laborers, and peasants to work the land.” When he was prepari
ng for his first voyage, Columbus had to scrape for every crew member he could find, and sailed shorthanded, but this time “so many offered themselves that it was necessary to restrict the number of those who might go,” even though the fleet was nearly six times larger than his earlier convoy. The ships carried horses—unknown in the Caribbean—and other beasts of burden that could be useful in settling Hispaniola. His company of over a thousand gentlemen, commoners, and criminals comprised a microcosm of Spain waiting and, for once, eager to be transported to a New World and its riches under the leadership of Christopher Columbus.

  Many reprised their roles on the first voyage, a circumstance that spoke well of Columbus’s reputation as a navigator and the promise of easy riches. There were the Genoese; a few Basques, born to the sea; and still others from the Spanish towns of Palos, Huelva, and Moguer, where the sailors resided between voyages. The influential Pinzón family was conspicuously absent from the roster. Many in Spain believed their claim that they were responsible for whatever success Columbus had enjoyed on his first voyage. The Admiral would be on his own this time, with storms and tides mercilessly exposing his shortcomings, and no Pinzóns to come to his rescue.

  His captains included bureaucrats and political leaders. Alonso Sánchez de Carvajal, for example, was the mayor of Baeza rather than an experienced mariner. Another participant, Pedro de Las Casas, was the father of Bartolomé de Las Casas, who had observed Columbus’s return to Seville after the first voyage. (It is believed that Bartolomé’s grandfather, Diego Calderón, was Jewish and had been burned at the stake in Seville in 1491.) Three of Bartolomé de Las Casas’s uncles were also on board, ensuring strong familial ties to Columbus.

  Although the fleet’s physician, Diego Alvarez Chanca, had treated Queen Isabella, physicians in Spain were rarely revered, but he enjoyed Columbus’s trust and was considered one of the better-qualified medical practitioners in the land. Of all those on board the ships with Columbus, Chanca was among the best educated. If not quite brilliant, he showed himself to be reasonably thoughtful and resourceful in the journal of the voyage that he maintained.

  Two other members of the fleet’s roster went on to win renown. The chart maker, Juan de la Cosa, aboard Maríagalante, had sailed on the first voyage as the owner and master of Santa María, Columbus’s flagship, and he would sail with Columbus on the third voyage; after that, he went to sea with Columbus’s sometime rival Amerigo Vespucci. Juan de la Cosa fashioned the celebrated Mappa Mundi of 1500, considered the first European cartographic representation of the New World, and the sole surviving map of Columbus’ voyages made by a participant. (His map is on display at the Museo Naval in Madrid.)

  Then there was the charming and ambitious soldier of fortune, Juan Ponce de León, who later rose to become the first governor of Puerto Rico, by order of the Spanish government. Only eleven years after participating as a gentleman passenger on the second voyage, he financed his own expedition, a feat that not even Columbus at the height of his influence managed to accomplish. On April 2, 1513, Ponce de León would encounter a landmass he took to be an island. He called it La Florida because of its luxuriant foliage, and because it was Eastertide, observed in Spain as Pascua Florida, Festival of Flowers. He had landed somewhere in North America, and that alone was a significant accomplishment. Columbus, in all his voyaging, never touched, and never even knew, that a North American landmass existed.

  While Columbus prospered, King João II of Portugal feverishly tried to reverse the papal decree, which threatened to diminish or even extinguish the Lusitanian empire. A unified Spain could abide without the resources of an overseas empire, but tiny, underpopulated Portugal required its colonies’ assets for survival. After enduring threats of naval action and pleas for Iberian cooperation for a year, João II cajoled Ferdinand and Isabella to send representatives to a summit conference in Tordesillas, Spain, on June 7, 1494, where a treaty between the two sovereign powers shifted the line of demarcation to 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands, although this refinement opened the door to further confusion. Where was the line itself—in the middle of the islands, at the western edge? No one could say with certainty. Moreover, the size of the globe was badly misunderstood, so even if everyone came to an agreement on the line’s theoretical location, no one could actually find this geographical unicorn.

  What seemed merely a technical victory for Portugal turned out to be critical. The alteration meant that ships flying the flag were permitted to ply trade routes along the west coast of Africa. Still more important and less appreciated, the redrawn line of demarcation gave to Portugal the immense, fertile, and largely unexplored land of Brazil.

  But for now, the new order favored Spain’s emergent empire. It was said that Columbus had personally influenced the pope’s thinking, and he was duty-bound to follow up on it. He was already forty-three, an advanced age for a mariner, and he would do well to take action while he still enjoyed royal favor and was strong enough to endure a transatlantic crossing. As his father’s example demonstrated, political disenfranchisement was only a revolution away.

  A festive atmosphere reigned on the day of departure, September 25, 1493, in the port of Cadiz. “The parting embraces were exchanged, the ships were decked out with flags, while streamers wound about the rigging and the colors of the sovereigns adorned the stern of every ship,” recalled one of the passengers, Guillermo Coma, a “nobleman of Spain.” All the while, musicians, “playing the flute and the lyre, dumbfounded the very nereids, seanymphs, and sirens with their mellifluous strains. The shores rang with the blare of trumpets and the blast of horns, and the bottom of the sea re-echoed to the roar of cannon.”

  A fresh breeze sped the seventeen ships toward their destination. “On September 28, being one hundred leagues from Spain, many small land birds, turtledoves, and other kinds of small birds came to the Admiral’s ship; they appeared to be flying to winter in Africa.” They had their fixed route, to the south, and Columbus had his, to the south and east. Holding on his course, on Wednesday, October 2, he reached Grand Canary, a verdant landmass rising from the sea. He set his anchors, but not for long. By midnight, he was sailing for Gomera, and reached the small, lush island three days later.

  Gomera had been settled since Roman times, and the island’s isolated inhabitants communicated with one another by means of a peculiar whistled language of rising and falling pitches known as Silbo Gomero. Columbus had no time to admire the curious tongue. His mission consumed his attention, as he obtained necessary supplies, especially animals. The transatlantic menagerie included pigs and sows, sheep and goats, twenty-four stallions, ten mares, and three mules. Unable to survive the long weeks at sea in the ships’ fetid holds, the animals occupied privileged space on the bridges. Arrayed against the sky, heads bobbing, they imparted a resemblance to that biblical ship, Noah’s Ark.

  There was one other distraction on the island of Gomera: Doña Beatriz de Bobadilla. Or, as she was known in the Canaries, “Bobadilla the huntress, a woman of rare distinction.”

  On the outward-bound leg of his first voyage, Columbus had paused at San Sebastián, Gomera, from September 3 through 6, 1492, long enough for a romantic encounter with the island’s ruler, Beatriz de Bobadilla. A thirtyyear-old femme fatale, she claimed noble lineage from Castile, and served Queen Isabella as a seventeen-year-old maid of honor; in this role she fell under the spell of King Ferdinand. (Despite his professed loyalty to his wife, Ferdinand carried on a series of clandestine liaisons.)

  At about this time, the court was visited by Hernán de Peraza, who had the unpleasant task of accounting for the death of a commander associated with him. He received a pardon from Queen Isabella in exchange for vowing to conquer Grand Canary island in the name of Spain. And there was one other condition, a “less onerous penance,” as it is traditionally described: to marry young Beatriz de Bobadilla, and thereby distance her from Ferdinand. At one stroke Isabella won Peraza’s loyalty and removed the younger and more attract
ive rival for her husband’s affections. Beatriz de Bobadilla and Hernán de Peraza quickly wed and returned to Gomera, where her husband was killed by the indigenous people there, known as Guanches, to protest his tyrannical rule.

  As a widow, Beatriz de Peraza proved to be no less cruel. She lured knights and local figures to her castle. Some survived their encounters with her, and others did not. One of her visitors, it was said, spread indiscreet rumors about the viuda’s scandalous behavior. She invited him to the castle, where they chatted a bit, and then summoned her servants, who arrested her visitor. He admitted his misdeeds and apologized, to no avail. She ordered her servants to place a noose around his neck and hang him from a tower beam. She calmly watched him in his death throes, and let the body hang from a palm tree, where it warned others who would gossip about Doña Beatriz.