A more reliable crew operated Gallega (“the Galician”), with Pedro de Terreros as captain, earning the going rate of 4,000 maravedís per month. A diehard Columbus loyalist, he was sailing with the Admiral for the fourth time. The second-in-command, Juan Quintero, earning half that amount, had been boatswain aboard Pinta during the first voyage and, as the ship’s owner, had at least as much clout as the captain. A complement of sailors, a boatswain, cabin boys, and an escudero completed the roster.
The fleet’s smallest ship, Vizcaína (“the Biscayne”), boasted a captain with a famous name: Bartolomeo Fieschi came from a renowned Genoese family. Columbus was so determined to keep the fleet under his control that he bought the ship from her owner after sailing. Vizcaína carried several Genoese, a chaplain, and a page.
Whatever the flotilla lacked in size and status, it made up for in ambition.
“On May 9, 1502,” Ferdinand wrote, “we set sail from the harbor of Cádiz and made for Santa Catalina,” a fortress at the port’s opening, “whence we sailed again on Wednesday, the 11th of the month, for Arzila,” a city sometimes known by its older name, Asylum, situated on the Atlantic coast of northern Morocco, distinguished by stark white walls rising above the sea. In 1471, the Portuguese had wrested the city from Arab control.
Encouraged by King Ferdinand, Columbus attempted to repair his frayed relationship with Portuguese interests by offering to support the city in its struggle to ward off the foe, but by the time he arrived, “the Moors had already raised the siege,” wrote his son, for whom the spectacle of greeting one civilization after another assumed dreamlike clarity. “The Admiral sent ashore his brother the Adelantado Don Bartholomew Columbus and myself, together with the ships’ captains, to call on the captain of Arzila, who had been wounded by the Moors in the assault. He gave profuse thanks to the Admiral for this courtesy and for the offer of help, sending aboard certain of his gentlemen; some of these proved to be cousins of Doña Felipa Moñiz, who had been the Admiral’s wife in Portugal” and the mother of Ferdinand’s half brother, Diego.
Having paid their respects, the fleet called at Grand Canary on May 20, and began taking on “water and wood for the voyage” for the next four days, according to Columbus’s custom. “The next night we set course for the Indies,” said Ferdinand. Although ailing, Columbus performed a navigational marvel on this crossing by catching the trade winds, or easterlies. By the morning of June 15, “with a rather rough sea and wind,” they had arrived at Martinique, in the Caribbean Sea north of Trinidad, having crossed the Atlantic in only twenty days, a time frame that even a modern-day sailor would be hard-pressed to equal. If proof was needed that Columbus had not lost his navigational skill and weather eye, this feat surely provided it.
For all his skill, Columbus could not have expected to arrive precisely at this tiny speck, a little over four hundred square miles of sand and scrub at 14°40΄ 0˝ N, 61°0΄0˝ W. As his previous crossings had demonstrated, sailing west from the Canaries, with a push from the easterlies above and from the Gulf Stream below, he was bound to arrive somewhere in the Americas. But locating a specific port or island was highly unlikely. Except for a storm, little occurred in the open ocean that would affect a ship’s course, but coastal navigation was a different story, hit or miss. So it was that he discovered the diminutive island by chance.
On arrival, the men attended to chores, taking on water and wood, and washing their fetid clothing. On Saturday, they sailed the ten leagues to the island of Dominica. “Till I reached there I had as good weather as I could have wished for,” the Admiral noted some months and many disasters later, “but on the night of my arrival there was a great storm, and I have been dogged by bad weather ever since.” For a novice sailor like Las Casas, the misery of rolling and pitching in the ocean’s vastness was even greater, and it was all that he and his shipmates could do to endure the traumatic crossing. “The crew was so worn down, shaken, ill and overcome by such bitterness that they wanted to die rather than to live, seeing how the four elements working against them were cruelly torturing them,” he complained, having had a taste of the peril and misery that Columbus and his veteran crew members had endured for years at sea.
Outlasting the storms, Columbus reached Puerto Rico and finally Santo Domingo in Hispaniola. Stripped of his status, he was not supposed to be there at all, having been replaced by Nicolás de Ovando, the new governor and widely known as a Columbus detractor. As Ferdinand carefully explained, Columbus urgently needed to avail himself of Santo Domingo’s safe harbor “to trade one of his ships for another because she was a crank and a dull sailor; not only was she slow but could not load sails without bringing the side of the ship almost under water.” If not for the need to replace the ship, said Ferdinand, Columbus would have been on his way to “reconnoiter the coast of Paria and cruise down it until he came to the strait” and so on his way to India, at last. (The discovery of the rumored strait, several thousand miles to the south, would have to wait for another eighteen years, until 1520, when Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese sailing for Spain, battling mutinies and rivals in a manner that Columbus would have recognized, finally reached it.)
Instead, Ferdinand said, Columbus sailed directly into a confrontation with Nicolás de Ovando, “the Knight Commander of Lares, governor of the island, who had been sent by the Catholic Sovereigns to hold an inquest into Bobadilla’s administration,” just as Bobadilla had been sent to investigate Columbus.
Nicolás de Ovando, a decade younger than Columbus, was a son of the Extremadura. Bordering Portugal, this Spanish province served as the cradle of conquistadors—Vasco Núñez de Balboa, Hernán Cortés, Francisco Pizarro, Gonzalo Pizarro, Juan Pizarro, Hernando Pizarro, and Hernando de Soto—those soldiers of fortune, adventurers, conquerors, and narrowminded visionaries who succeeded Columbus. All carried the region’s affinity for the rigors of adventure and exploitation with them.
On the strength of his father’s political connections, Ovando joined the Order of Alcántara, devoted to fighting infidels and obeying strict monastic vows. Distinguished by outstanding ability and loyalty, he had won the Sovereigns’ appointment to succeed Columbus and reform the administrative shambles left by Francisco de Bobadilla. As governor, Ovando was charged with performing sweeping tasks: transfer powers of government from Columbus to the Spanish crown, establish the church, promote economic development, extend Spanish rule over all laborers and towns, and convert Indians to Christianity, which, in practice, meant teaching them to live as Spaniards in Hispaniola. Although his responsibilities were clear, the way to fulfill them was not. Many colonists, having been brought to Hispaniola by Columbus, remained loyal to the Admiral of the Ocean Sea, while others developed ties to their Indian wives and mistresses. The oppressive climate, the spread of disease, and the strangeness of the setting challenged Ovando. His legacy of making Hispaniola more Spanish than Spain consisted of constructing public buildings of stone, as well as an opulent stone palace for himself. Like Columbus and Bobadilla before him, he fell under the illusion that he ruled the island, and all its inhabitants, the moment he set foot there, so he banned the Admiral of the Ocean Sea.
The Admiral glumly summed up his situation: “I was commanded from Spain not to touch or land there.” But land at Santo Domingo he did. It was Wednesday, June 29.
Columbus dispatched one of his captains, Pedro de Terreros, to Ovando, the knight commander, to convey the Admiral’s respects and to explain that one of his ships had to be replaced, or lives would be endangered. Adding to the urgency of the situation, he warned of a “great storm” approaching the region, and for this reason if no other, “he wished to take shelter in port.” At the moment, the port was witnessing the final preparations of Bobadilla’s convoy of ships bound for Spain. As Columbus knew, one of those ships, the fragile Aguja, carried his personal treasure. So he used the storm both as a pretext to return to Santo Domingo and supervise his personal wealth and to deliver a necessary warning. Drawing on hi
s experience in judging weather, he advised Ovando “not to permit the homeward-bound fleet to sail for eight days because of the great danger.”
Ovando stubbornly resisted Columbus’s prudent, if self-interested, warning. He “would not permit the Admiral to enter the port,” said Ferdinand, “much less would he detail the fleet that was homeward bound for Castile” even though the roster included such important personages as Francisco de Bobadilla and Francisco Roldán, “and all the other rebels who had done the Admiral so much hurt.” If Ovando and the others had heeded Columbus’s warning, matters would have turned out very differently. The fleet would have reached Spain only a few days later than planned. Instead, a calamity occurred.
Defying Columbus, Ovando ordered the fleet to depart, regardless of the storm warning. Ferdinand recorded that when the ships “reached the eastern end of Hispaniola, the storm assailed them with such fury that the flagship carrying Bobadilla and most of the rebels went down.”
Columbus recalled the calamity with biblical intensity and resonance: “The storm was terrible, and on that night my fleet was broken up. Everyone lost hope and was quite certain that all the rest were drowned. What mortal man, even Job himself, would not have died of despair? Even for the safety of myself, my son, brother and friends, I was forbidden in such weather to put into land or enter harbors that I had gained for Spain by my own blood and sweat.” Meanwhile, “Gallega lost her board and all lost a great part of their provisions.” Despite these hazards, he noted in wonder, “the ship in which I was traveling, though amazingly storm-tossed, was saved by Our Lord and was completely unharmed.” At times like these, Columbus felt singled out by the Lord, yet his salvation was not all that mysterious; he had wisely anchored in the lee of the shore. Even as the fleet’s crew found deliverance from the storm, they experienced waves of “grief and chagrin” at being snubbed by the imperious Ovando. And if another disaster appeared on the horizon, “they could expect no aid from ashore.” Stateless and unwanted, they were all on the way to becoming outlaws and buccaneers.
“By skill and good judgment he managed to keep the fleet together till the next day,” Ferdinand continued, “when, as the storm gained in intensity and night came on with deep darkness, three ships were torn from their anchorages, each going its own way; and though all ran the same danger, each thought the others had gone down. . . . Still greater was the danger of the caravel Bermuda, which ran out to sea, where water washed over the deck—from which it is easy to understand why the Admiral wanted to trade her for another.” Without Bartholomew, all agreed, the ship would have been lost.
The next day, the surviving ships in Columbus’s fleet held a rendezvous in the port of Azua. “As each captain related his misfortune, it appeared that the Adelantado, experienced seaman that he was, had weathered the great storm by going out to sea, while the Admiral had saved his ship by lying close to shore, like a sage astrologer who foresaw whence the danger must come.” Believing that he commanded the planets, the weather, and nature itself, the enemies of Columbus “charged that by his magic arts he had raised that storm to take revenge on Bobadilla and other enemies that were with him.” In fact, he had relied on his instinct for survival and hard-won nautical experience to warn against the hurricane.
When it was over, the men, utterly drained, went fishing, “one of the pleasures offered by the sea in such time of idleness.” The presence of natural splendor roused them from their misery, as did the sudden appearance of a giant manta ray gliding through the water on graceful fins tapered like a bird’s: a marvelous fusion of locomotion and beauty. To Columbus’s young son, the ray looked “as large as a medium-sized bed.”
The crew of Vizcaína came upon the creature asleep on the ocean’s surface and stabbed it with a harpoon “so it could not escape.” They secured it to their launch with a rope, and “it drew the boat through the harbor as swiftly as an arrow.” All the while, those aboard Vizcaína, “not knowing what went on, were astounded to see the boat running about without oars.” The fun ended when the manta ray died and “was hauled aboard with tackling gear used for heavy objects.”
Later, the men came upon a manatee, or sea cow. Ferdinand approached it cautiously. “It is not known in Europe,” he stated. “It is as big as a calf and resembles one in taste and color, but it is better tasting and fatter.” In its strangeness, the bulbous, glistening creature offered further proof that they had entered a world of mystery as well as danger.
By the middle of July 1502, one storm system after another was making up across the Caribbean Sea. It was hurricane season. Having completed repairs to his fleet, taken on supplies, and rested, Columbus and his men strained for the safer waters of Yaquimo, in today’s Haiti, to ride out the storm. As soon as they departed on July 14, they “ran into such a flat calm that he could not hold his course, and the currents carried him to some small sandy islands near Jamaica.” Ferdinand probably meant Morant Cays, sparsely vegetated islets rising from coral, beautiful to see but hazardous to navigate. Columbus called them the Puddles because “his men soon found enough water for their needs by digging puddles in the sand.”
During a leisurely southerly swing off the coast of Honduras, Ferdinand warned, “the map-makers have not traveled in this part of the world.” He continued, “They fall into a grievous error,” when they depicted Cape Gracias á Dios as a separate landform from Cape Honduras, although in reality they were the same.
As Ferdinand realized, this erroneous depiction was a hoax designed to deprive his father of the fruits of his exploration. Two envious explorers, Juan Díaz de Solís and Vicente Yáñez Pinzón (who had commanded a ship on the Admiral’s first voyage), set out in 1508 for Nicaragua, which the Admiral had considered so promising for exploitation. Reaching the islands off the coast of Honduras, which they knew as Guanajas, they ignored the advice given by one of their pilots, Pedro de Ledesma, who recognized the landforms because he had explored them with the Admiral. Instead, they falsely claimed they had arrived at another island for the first time.
Their assertion, backed by phony charts, fooled many, but not Ferdinand, who was determined to expose their conspiracy in his account of his father’s life. In Ferdinand’s words, the charts clearly “depict that island twice,” in different locations. In the short run, there was nothing Columbus or his son could do to correct a deception occurring in such a remote and poorly understood region.
In Guanaja, Columbus sent reliable Bartholomew ashore with two skiffs; there they “encountered people who resembled those of the other islands, but they had narrower foreheads.” Treading carefully among pine trees “and pieces of earth called cálcide, which the Indians use to cast copper,” and which some of the men, mistaking it for gold, pocketed, they came upon a canoe as long as a galley, eight feet across, hollowed out from a single giant tree trunk. Ferdinand wrote that the canoe was “freighted with merchandise from the western regions around New Spain,” an observation often taken to mean that Columbus’s men had come across an artifact of the Aztec empire, then at its apogee during the reign of the ruler Ahuitzotl.
More likely, the Europeans confronted the highly advanced, complex Maya civilization. In China, Marco Polo had encountered a culture beyond his own; now Columbus faced a similar situation. The Maya were an ancient, hierarchical, deeply spiritual, militaristic society. Their civilization had highly developed mathematics, astronomy, architecture, and letters. They charted the movements of heavenly bodies in books fashioned from the bark of trees. In the years after 1000 BC, when Romans and Celts were struggling to dominate a fragmented and stunted western Europe, Maya civilization flourished in villages and cities. The Maya writing system recorded the deeds of leaders and their political conquests.
By AD 250, Maya civilization entered its Classic era, characterized by the rise of dynasties, whose deeds were recorded in symbolic characters, or glyphs. The Maya population and cities expanded rapidly until about AD 900, when the empire entered a steep, mysterious decline—no
t all at once, and not everywhere, but the downward trend gained momentum and became irreversible. The Maya collapse was accompanied by civil war, exhaustion of natural resources, prolonged drought, and other calamities. The populace nearly vanished from the face of the earth; during the collapse, the number of inhabitants in one region alone declined 99 percent, or even more. Where there were once millions of Maya, there were now only a few thousand tending to deteriorating edifices, many half-buried by sifting topography, whose origins were lost in the mists of legend. Columbus and his men saw the remnants of a great civilization. Compared with the Maya, he and his European crew hailed from a New World, and now they were encountering the Old among the Maya in Veragua.
Columbus’s journals reveal that he had an inkling that he had stumbled across a powerful and ancient civilization, but ultimately the Maya failed to engage his interest for one overriding reason: they were not Chinese. The only aspects of the Maya that Columbus did appreciate were their seamanship and their long, agile, canoelike craft. Given their prowess on the water, it is worth asking why the advanced Maya did not discover Europe long before Columbus arrived on their shores. The answer has to do with the trade winds, which blow steadily south and west, defeating attempts to sail against them. Columbus benefited greatly from these prevailing winds, which at the same time kept Maya mariners hugging the shore.
The Spaniards paid close attention to the Maya watercraft. “Amidships it had a palm-leaf awning like that which the Venetian gondolas carry; this gave complete protection against the rain and waves. Under this awning were the children and women and all the baggage and merchandise. There were twenty-five paddlers aboard, but they offered no resistance when our boats drew up to them,” said Ferdinand. The reception was especially welcome after the unpleasantness of Nicolás de Ovando and near extinction in the hurricane. When the flagship got close enough, Columbus offered “thanks to God for revealing to him in a single moment, without any toil or danger to our people, all the products of that country.” Time and again on his voyages he had encountered fleeing Indians, deserted hamlets, and, on occasion, pots and skewers containing human body parts. This time, he had found the opulence he had sought for so long.
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