by Hugh Thomas
This expulsion was not a holocaust. It was a deliberate export of intransigent Jews whose numbers the monarchs hoped, and supposed, would be few. They were surprised. But their actions should be compared with similar ones undertaken in England, say, in the thirteenth century, not that of brutal Germany in the 1940s.
At the same time, another emigration began. In 1492, all those who spoke Spanish lived on the peninsula that Castile and Aragon shared with Portugal. It would never be so again. Men and women from those lands were soon to find themselves in tropical or subtropical America, and there they would establish a new and ingenious society whose time may still be to come.
6
“A white stretch of land”
Juan Rodríguez Bermejo saw a white stretch of land and shouted, “Land! Land!” and he fired a lombard.
Columbus and his men approaching San Salvador, October 1492
So it was against a background of intolerance that Columbus, in the early summer of 1492, made his way from Granada to Palos de la Frontera, near Huelva. Palos today is a small, sleepy town some miles inland from the Río Tinto. There are strawberry fields in what was the harbor in the fifteenth century, for the river silted up and then dried out. But in 1492, Palos was a busy small port with perhaps three thousand inhabitants, playing a part in trade with Portugal, the Canary Islands, and the Spanish section of the African coast. It was close to the monastery of La Rábida, and Columbus could use that establishment as a base.1
Before he reached there, Columbus had secured one more honor: Diego Colón, his son by Felipa Muñiz, now twelve years old, became a page to the Infante Juan, shortly joining a famous kindergarten at Almazán where he would make friendships that would last him the rest of his life.2 Columbus surely owed this honor to the backing of Fray Diego de Deza.
The royal decree requiring the services of the port of Palos was read out there on May 23 in the new church of San Jorge, overlooking the harbor, by the notary Francisco Fernández: “Know ye that, whereas for certain things done and committed by you to our disservice, you were condemned, and obliged by our council to provide us for a year with two equipped vessels at your charge.” In the congregation were Columbus, his mentor Fray Juan Pérez, the mayor and magistrates of the town as well as the councillors (regidores), and the procurador.3 There were also present the brothers Martín Alonso Quintero Pinzón and Vicente Yáñez Pinzón, prominent citizens of Palos and well known in the world of mariners. Their task was to arrange the proposed voyage; their expectation, Las Casas says, was that they would be rich and powerful in consequence.4
The ships provided by Palos, the Pinta (painted lady) and the Niña (girl), were small, fifty-five- to sixty-ton caravels, each about seventy feet long by twenty-five feet wide, and eleven feet in depth. Both had three masts. The Pinta belonged to Gómez Rascón, from a converso family that had already suffered from the Inquisition, and Cristóbal Quintero, from another seafaring family of the town. The former sailed with Columbus. The Niña was owned by Juan Niño, after whom it was named, who came from the slightly larger port of Moguer, a few miles higher up the red Río Tinto—now, like Palos, some distance from it.5 These two ships would be captained by the two brothers. A third ship was hired by Columbus himself: the Santa María, also known as the María Galante.6 About one hundred tons, with a round hull, built in Galicia, and square-rigged, she was hired from Juan de la Cosa, a captain who came from near Santoña, in Cantabria, but had lived most of his life in El Puerto de Santa María. He had belonged to the household of the Duke of Medinaceli, where Columbus probably first met him.
Having found his ships, Columbus went ahead to seek crews, and in this he was helped decisively by the Pinzóns, who found most of the eighty or so men who sailed. Many of these had had experience of voyages to the Canaries or Lisbon.
The Pinzóns’ help had been assured by either Fray Antonio Marchena or Fray Juán Pérez, Columbus’s friends at La Rábida. Fernán Pérez Camacho, a sailor, later reported that Fray Antonio had told Martín Pinzón that it would please God if much land was found.
The majority of the crews came from other ports of the Río Tinto, Moguer, and Huelva, as well as Palos, but there were also a few from Seville. Moguer had had a Jewish district until 1486. Palos had had some difficulties on that score with a recent commander of its fort.7 In consequence, some of the crews with Columbus may have been Jewish. There were several Basques on board the ships; they could probably recall to advantage their experience of fishing in the Atlantic. About ten sailors came from Cantabria. There were two Portuguese, a small number considering the constant interchange of Castilian and Portuguese sailors in Atlantic ports in those days.8 Four or five men were criminals allowed to escape justice by their enlistment; among these was Bartolomé de Torre, who had killed a rival in a brawl. Another Torre, Luis, a converso who knew both Arabic and Hebrew but of course not the indigenous languages, sailed as an interpreter.
There were some royal officials on the expedition; for example, Diego de Araña, a cousin of Columbus’s mistress in Córdoba, was chief constable, while Pedro Gutiérrez, once chief butler of the King, was a royal supervisor. There was also Juan de Peñalosa, another converso and a courtier, whose main task was to persuade the crews to unite under Columbus—a difficult task because the Admiral, as he was now always known, was Genoese. The curiosity of this voyage was that no priest sailed.9
Martín Alonso Pinzón, an experienced captain then in his late forties, a little older than Columbus, was the decisive personality in all the preparations. After his death, his friends and relations made extravagant claims on his behalf. For example, Arias Pérez, his son, wrote that when in Rome on business in 1491, Pinzón had convinced himself, by a study of “charts in the Library of the Vatican,” that there was some sense in Columbus’s ideas. Pinzón was said, too, to have found in that library a document written in Solomon’s time that argued that if one traveled west from the Mediterranean, one would soon find oneself in Japan. A citizen of Moguer, Francisco García Vallejo, argued that had it not been for Pinzón, Columbus would never have set out. A cousin of Pinzón’s, Juan de Umbria, said much the same.10 All these stories may be inventions: we hear nothing about the Vatican Library in any document contemporary with the expedition. But it would seem obvious, from his subsequent actions as well as his conduct before the expedition set out, that Pinzón had hopes of seizing control of the voyage. He was a powerful captain and had been often to Lisbon and the Canary Islands. He was connected by blood with most of the shipbuilders and other captains of the ports in the Rio Tinto. He seems to have made decisions quickly and to have been ruthless. He gave Columbus a great deal of trouble and could have given him much more had events turned out differently.
We examine the list of those who first set off to what became the Spanish Empire in the Indies with little sense of surprise. There is a Vélez de Mendoza, two other Mendozas, one from Guadalajara, the heart of Mendoza power, and so perhaps an illegitimate member of the famous family. We see a Godoy and a Patiño. There is a Foronda and a Vergara, a Baraona and a Talavera. These are names that might have filled any Castilian ship in those days or, indeed, a modern Spanish cabinet. There were also a few foreign names, a characteristic, despite prohibitions, of Spain’s empire for many generations.
Before he left, Columbus was conceded a pension of 10,000 maravedís a year, deriving from the royal income in Córdoba; and it was there that, in this first year, Columbus’s mistress, Beatriz Enríquez de Arana, received the money.11
The voyage started “half an hour before sunrise” on August 3, 1492. Twenty-six men were on the Pinta, twenty-four on the Niña, forty on the Santa María. These were paid 1,000 maravedís a month if they were experienced sailors, 600 if they were novices. None in fact would be paid anything until 1513, when gold from the Indies was more available to the Crown.12 They had on board typical objects for this kind of journey such as would have been known to Columbus from his expedition with the Portuguese to the west coa
st of Africa: hawks’ bells, glass beads from Venice, and other glass objects for trading, as well as food expected to last: salted cod, bacon, and biscuits. There was also flour, wine, olive oil, and, of course, water—enough for a year. Perhaps the wine was manzanilla from Sanlúcar de Barrameda or port from Cazalla de la Sierra, or some similar wine fortified with brandy, that great Benedictine medieval invention without which none of the ensuing expeditions could have been carried through so well.13 Despite many complaints on other scores during the voyage, there seems never to have been any shortage of food.
Columbus also took with him a number of hourglasses, probably made in Venice.14 They only lasted a quarter of an hour or half an hour at most, giving a heavy responsibility to those whose task was to note the time that had passed. Columbus had, of course, a compass, as did the other two captains, of a type that measured in cuartas (angles of eleven degrees). This ingenious twelfth-century Chinese invention had been in use in Italy since about 1400 and had been shown by the Portuguese off the coast of Africa to be an essential instrument of discovery. All the pilots had with them stones that enabled them to magnetize faulty needles. Columbus also had an astrolabe, inaccurate though such things then were; it enabled him to calculate his approximate latitude by finding meridian altitudes of the sun. His was probably a version of the one devised by the brilliant Nuremberger Martin Behaim.15 He also had a map, perhaps based on that given to him by Toscanelli. He kept all these objects in his small cabin on the Santa María where he wrote his daily record, which was itself a radical change, for such diaries were unknown before.16
These three caravels are ships of legend: we see them always in our imagination, each with its three masts, its white sails with their red crosses slightly billowing in the wind. A caravel, it is perhaps necessary to add, was a small ship of often less than one hundred tons. The galleys of, say, Venice or Florence in the past might have been of three hundred tons, those of Barcelona or Marseilles four hundred, while the vast merchant ships of Genoa, which Columbus would have known as a boy, were one thousand tons. Caravels were intended, however, for long voyages or for piracy, rather than for carrying heavy products. They were light and almost spherical.17
The journey of Columbus between August and October 1492 has been so often described that it may seem superfluous to say anything more. Yet some new light may yet be cast. The first stage, from the Río Tinto, lasted a week. This was always an easy journey because of the favorable currents and the winds; it was the return from the Canaries that, in the days of sail, necessitated tacking, often for many days. This voyage took Columbus to Gran Canaria, where he remained with his three ships almost a month. For the Pinta’s rudder needed attention, the rigging of the Niña left much to be desired, and it also seemed necessary to procure more supplies—some of the well-known goat cheese from the westernmost Canary Island of La Gomera, which had an excellent deepwater harbor. Columbus chose the Canaries as his final point of departure because he knew how the winds blew in the Atlantic and because, as we know, Toscanelli recommended it. He had to sail from a Spanish port, anyway, which ruled out the Portuguese archipelagoes of the Azores or Madeira.
At that time, all the Canary Islands except Tenerife, the biggest, were under direct Spanish rule. La Palma, for example, had been occupied in 1491. The monarchs had recently also approved a plan of Alonso Fernández de Lugo’s, a Castilian entrepreneur and commander, to capture Tenerife, with its magical volcano, El Teide, so often hidden by cloud. He would take with him twelve hundred men and twenty thousand goats and sheep. He knew the Canary Islands well, for he had founded the first sugar mill, Agaete, in Gran Canaria, but had sold it to finance his conquest of Tenerife. He was much assisted by the brilliant missionary work beforehand of the indigenous Christian Francisca de Gazmira. Meanwhile, the Treaty of Alcáçovas of 1479 had enabled the Castilians under Jofre Tenorio to build a tower, Santa Cruz de la Mar Pequeña, on the African coast opposite Lanzarote. It was to be a starting point for trade with Africa, including, of course, trade in slaves.
The de facto Spanish Governor of La Gomera at that time was Beatriz de Bobadilla (not to be confused with her cousin, the Queen’s friend of the same name, the Marquesa of Moya). This Beatriz was known as “the huntress” (la cazadora), “as cruel as she was beautiful,” legend says, who had accompanied her husband, Hernán Peraza, to the island and then, when he was murdered in 1488, herself fought back, reestablishing Spanish control with much bloodshed.18 As has been intimated, rumor said that she had had an affair with the King and, in Córdoba, with Columbus.19 But those delicate matters have never been clarified. At all events, Beatriz was in no way helpful to the expedition of 1492.
Yet it was appropriate for Columbus to spend so long in this archipelago, for in the islands he could observe for himself an interesting combination of private enterprise and state control. That combination had also occurred and worked in the Balearic Islands in the fourteenth century. It is true that Majorca had been a royal conquest, as Minorca had been. But Ibiza and Formentera had been conquered by private crusaders, acting with royal approval. In the Canaries, also, men who were half generals, half entrepreneurs financed journeys of their own, having received overall royal approval. That arrangement must have interested Columbus. In its harking back to the Reconquista, as in its anticipation of what would happen in the New World, the conquests in the Canaries can be seen as a “laboratory” for Spain’s colonial foundations.20 A visit to the Canary Islands even now gives the traveler a whiff of what he can expect to encounter in Spanish America: the light, the architecture, the color, even the accented, undoubtedly maritime Spanish.
The Canaries were still productive. The lichen orchil was as ever being strenuously sought by the royal adviser Gutierre de Cárdenas and his wife, Teresa, who sold it to Genoese merchants for its use as a dye. Sugar mills, served by black slaves imported from Africa, were being built, often with Genoese money behind them (there would be about thirty by 1515, and probably their produce exceeded that of Madeira by then). The first denunciations of ill-treatment of indigenous people had also already been made in the Canaries, for example, by Father Juan Alfonso de Idularen and Father Miguel López de la Serna, in a report to the Queen. In this, Pedro de Vera, the conqueror of Gran Canaria, would figure as the villain, a slave dealer and brutal commander. That, too, anticipated similar accusations soon to be made in the New World. So did the decline of the native population as a consequence of contact with Spanish disease, not to speak of divisions among the conquered peoples, so that some men from Gran Canaria helped in the conquest of Tenerife—something that conquistadors on the American mainland would also soon inspire, to their advantage.
Columbus and his three ships finally left La Gomera on September 6 after praying at its large new parish church, San Sebastián, which still today looks out over the ocean. Columbus set off westward, with a deviation to the southwest. The trade winds, las brisas, as the Spaniards would call them, filled his sails. That was the best way to sail to the West Indies, and the sea there soon became known as the Ladies’ Gulf, El Golfo de Damas. Before he set off, Columbus heard from the captain of a ship that had come from the Canary Island of El Hierro that Portuguese caravels were in the eastern Atlantic, hoping to obstruct his voyage. Perhaps the King of Portugal was anxious to wreak revenge on him for transferring his loyalty to Spain. But Columbus maneuvered around this danger, if it existed. He anyway believed from the beginning that his real enemies would be more likely to be on board his own ships. Thus, from his fourth day out, he kept two sets of logs: one accurate, the other in which he deliberately underestimated the miles that he had covered, in order not to distress his crew. Perhaps his intention was also to keep the route a secret from colleagues who might later be rivals. The last sight of the Old World for the expedition, as it was for so many others in the future, was that of the volcano, El Teide, on Tenerife.
On September 22, Columbus showed Pinzón his map “in which the Admiral seemed to have painted
certain islands in the sea.” Las Casas reported that this was Toscanelli’s map. But Columbus did not sail by that. It must have been a different one.21
Two days later, there was unrest on the ships. None of the sailors had ever been so long away from the sight of land. Some thought it “great madness and self-inflicted homicide to risk their lives in order to follow the folly of a foreigner who was ready to die to make himself a gran señor.”22 Others believed that they should murder Columbus by throwing him overboard. This crisis was overcome, and the little fleet sailed on fairly calmly for another two weeks. They still saw nothing. Columbus did not strengthen his position by beginning to compare himself with Moses.23
On October 5, Pinzón and Columbus quarreled. The former suggested making a sharp turn to the south and so, he assumed, heading directly for Cipangu (Japan). Columbus thought that they should go ahead as fast as possible to China. Their knowledge of the Far East was, as can be seen, modest. Friends of Pinzón afterwards alleged that this was when Columbus asked the former what to do.24 The sailor Francisco García Vallejo later commented that Columbus summoned his two fellow captains—and perhaps the pilots, too—and asked their advice about his crew, who seemed to be suffering so much.
Vincente Yáñez, the captain of the Niña, said: “Let’s go on for two thousand leagues and then, if we don’t find what we are looking for, we must turn round.” But his brother, Martín Alonso Pinzón, said: “How is this, señor? We set off from Palos and now you are distressed! Onward, señor, and God give us a victory so that we find land. God would never like us so shamefully to turn around.” Columbus then said, “May you be blessed.” And it was because of the said Martín Alonso Pinzón that they went ahead.…25