Rivers of Gold

by Hugh Thomas

  Just before this, while at the mouth of the River Sabaló,39 Columbus secured a statement, drawn up by Fernán Pérez de Luna, the notary of the flotilla, and signed by his sailors and passengers (including Juan de la Cosa) that they had seen the mainland, la tierra firme, at the beginning of the Indies, probably the province of Mangi (China) or just possibly the Golden Chersonese (Malaya). (The island would still be called Terra de Cuba Asiae Patris as late as 1516.)40 They formally swore, too, that if they had gone farther, they would have seen the mainland of China; and they promised to maintain their opinion, on pain of a fine of 10,000 maravedís and the cutting off of their tongues.41 Nearly everyone signed. Miguel de Cuneo was allowed not to take the oath as a Genoese (though that information did not appear in his own account), and the “rich and pious abbot” of Lucerne refused on the ground that he did not know where he was. Columbus, for his part, was determined to be able to say that he had discovered the Asian mainland even though he had been told by the Tainos of the north of the country, on his first voyage, that Cuba was an island. In insisting thus, he was probably seeking to please the Catholic Kings, for they always thought that “the mainland must contain greater benefits, riches, and secrets than the islands.”42

  At the end of June or the beginning of July 1494, Columbus was back on the east coast of Cuba, regaining Cabo Cruz on July 16. He then again cruised around Jamaica, which he found “extremely fertile and populous … the natives,” he thought, rather oddly, “have a keener intelligence and are cleverer in the mechanical arts as well as more warlike [than the people of La Española].…”43 On August 20 he sighted the west end of La Española, which he named Cabo San Miguel after his companion Cuneo (it is now Cabo Tiburón). He sailed along the south of the island and made for “Saona” (named after the Ligurian city of Savona, which he had known in his childhood). He was back at Isabela on September 29, where he remained ill for five months—perhaps it was gout, perhaps dysentery, perhaps both.44 Columbus found the island, says his son Fernando, in a “pitiable state”: his fellow Christians had committed outrages for which they were now hated by the Indians, who refused to obey them.45

  While he was away, there had indeed been trouble in the colony. The supplies that the Admiral had promised never arrived. Isabela was short of food, Cibao even more so. The harvest of the new crops originally brought from Spain was discouraging. Many Spaniards, perhaps half of Margarit’s men, had died of syphilis, caught from Indian girls.46 Diego Colón was unpopular; he could scarcely speak Spanish. To the tales of his incompetence were added stories of ghostly, well-dressed men taking their heads off with their hats and saluting the hungry survivors.47 The Indians were suffering, too, from having to put up with Spaniards drifting about the countryside, stealing women and food—though there were some fine moments, as when an Indian offered two turtles to Margarit, who gave him “various glass beads” as a result. (Margarit subsequently released the turtles because there were not enough for all, and he did not want to eat alone.)48 Shortly afterwards, he decided to withdraw from Cibao and make for Vega Real, only thirty miles from Isabela, intending either to subvert or insist on joining the council that Columbus had set up to manage the settlement. Margarit had, improbably, become the leader of those enlightened Spaniards who wished to insist that the Indians should be treated as human beings with souls.49

  All the same, there was an Indian rebellion: a fort under construction at a crossing of the Yaque River between Cibao and Isabela was attacked, and twelve Spaniards were killed. This was the first serious battle in Columbus’s La Española. A punitive expedition was sent out from Isabela, of course, and several hundred Indians were captured for the benefit of the home market in slaves.

  The only positive thing to which Diego Colón could point in his time as acting ruler of the colony was the building at Isabela of a water mill, which did begin to grind wheat sown the previous year though the stream that powered it was sluggish.

  At last, on June 24, Bartolomeo Colón sailed in from Spain with three caravels. With him came food and other supplies, and also an Aragonese nobleman, Miguel Díaz de Aux, and perhaps Juan Ponce de Léon, who probably had first gone to the Indies on Columbus’s second voyage, had gone back to Spain with Torres, and now returned. Díaz de Aux, who had been born in Barbastro, was probably the first Aragonese to reach the Indies. He came from a family well known for its public service in that realm. He was also related by marriage to Juan de Coloma, the influential secretary of the monarchs who had drawn up the Capitulaciones for Columbus in 1492.50 He would play a substantial part in the next few years’ history of La Española.

  Bartolomeo immediately took over command of the colony from his younger brother Diego. While they were not surprised, many Spaniards began to feel resentful of this Genoese invasion. Yet Bartolomeo was a more competent administrator than Christopher, his elder brother, and nearly as good a sailor. He was also an excellent cartographer. The hostility toward him had little to do with his qualities. It was a consequence of his critics’ national pride.51

  The arrival of Bartolomeo Colón coincided with the return of Margarit to Isabela with his men, including the rebellious knights. That meant an immediate challenge between two groups of hungry men, of whom some under Margarit had been reduced to eating the wild dogs that they had found on the island. Bartolomeo tried to persuade the knights to help finish his brother’s water mill—a task they thought was beneath them. They also thought that their much-prized horses should not be asked to work a mill. Was this a typical clash between Italians interested in technological development and Spaniards interested in honor? Worse, Margarit, though still in charge of the army of Cibao, was in the end not invited to join Columbus’s council.

  So it was not surprising that, a few weeks later, with Columbus still ill and with Bartolomeo Colón still in control, in the middle of September 1494, Margarit, accompanied by the difficult and resentful Father Boil, finally “deserted.” Seizing the three ships in which Bartolomeo Colón had arrived, they sailed home to Castile. In part they blamed the Admiral’s cruelty (for example, his hanging earlier in the year of the Aragonese Gaspar Ferriz for treason)52 and in part the problem of food supply. “All the main troubles derived from hunger,” wrote Las Casas.53 This was when, also according to Las Casas, people in Isabela began saying, “Please God, take me to Castile!”54 They took with them some of the monks who had come to the colony in 1493 and also some of the knights (of whom three had died), leaving no priests in the colony and only one monk, the poor Catalan anchorite Fray Ramón Pané.

  Those Spaniards whom Margarit left behind at San Tomé or Cibao seem to have scattered into various Indian communities; as a result, wrote Fernando Colón, “each one went where he willed among the Indians, stealing their property and wives, and inflicting so many injuries upon them that the Indians resolved to avenge themselves on any Spaniards that they found alive or in small groups. Thus the cacique of the Magdalena, Guatiganá, killed ten Christians and secretly ordered fire to be set to a hut that housed forty sick men.…”55

  The only bright sign was that Fray Ramón Pané did carry out a successful proselytizing mission. He went first to the fortress in the interior that Columbus had named Magdalena (then captained by a Castilian named Arteaga), where there were converts to Christianity, the servants of the cacique Cuanóbocon, who had been martyred.56 Pané became the godfather of one cacique, Guaicavanú, who was baptized Juan. He then went on to La Concepción, where the Spanish captain was Juan de Ayala and where he instructed the cacique Guarionex in Christianity. Guarionex was at first a good pupil but then drew away, and Pané moved on to try to convert a cacique named Maviatué, all of whose household said that they would like to become Christians. But Guarionex obstructed this evolution.57 The expedition showed, at least, that conversion to Christianity was possible as an alternative to conquest. Pané’s report was not only the first study of Taino religion but the first work of literature written in the Americas.58

  Si
nce Columbus continued to be ill, Bartolomeo Colón remained in control. The Admiral named him “adelantado”—an office used in Castile for a general with administrative powers in a province that had been occupied, and that was within Columbus’s rights to grant.

  The most encouraging development of these months in La Española was the return from Spain of Antonio de Torres with four new ships carrying supplies, in October 1494. He brought with him the monarchs’ letters to Columbus of August 16 and 17, both written in Segovia and both drafted by Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, the clever converso secretary who now spent most of his time dealing with international matters.59 In the first, the monarchs told Columbus what had been agreed with Portugal.60 They also wrote to say, rather surprisingly, that “one of the principal things which gives us so much pleasure is that … it seems that everything which from the first you said could be done has been achieved and that all has turned out for the most part to be true, as if you had seen it before you spoke of it.”61 The Queen added that she was thinking of sending a monthly ship to the Indies. Fernando, meanwhile, demonstrated that he was at last showing some interest in the New World when he asked if Columbus would send him as many falcons as he could.62

  The monarchs in Spain seemed from these letters to be in other ways satisfied with their new dominions. Thus on October 22 they contracted with Andrés Quemada and Juan de Cartaya, both of Jerez de la Frontera, to go to La Española to inspect the soil, to find out the best place for agriculture, and then to plant as seemed appropriate.63

  That autumn the monarchs were mostly in Madrid, with brief visits to Guadalajara (in late September), partly to visit Cardinal Mendoza, now on his deathbed—an anticipation of what would turn out in the end to be the best place for a Spanish capital.64

  All the same, the King and Queen were not deceived by Columbus’s reports. That was made evident from a letter of theirs in early December 1494 that they wrote to Fonseca, saying what a pleasure it was for them to hear of the arrival from the Indies of Margarit and Boil. No reproach was addressed to either of them for irregularly seizing the ships in La Española and returning without permission from Columbus. They asked Boil to present himself at court.65 Las Casas says that when he did so, the monarchs were informed more graphically than before of what had been told them by Antonio de Torres: that all the stories of the riches of the Indies were “a mere tease” (burla); that there was not much gold; and that their Highnesses’ costs were unrecoverable.66

  The King and Queen of Aragon and Castile were concerned with, to them, a far more pressing problem. Fernando’s cousin Ferrante, King of Naples, died in January 1494. He was succeeded by his son, Alfonso, who had married a daughter of Ludovico el Moro, Duke of Milan. It was the signal for King Charles of France to revive his ancient if complicated claim to that throne; and on September 3, 1494, as he had promised, Charles crossed the frontier between France and Savoy with over thirty thousand foot and another ten thousand or so on ships.67 This well-armed force amazed his contemporaries. A considerable amount of artillery was also carried. The invasion was a threat to the Spanish possession of Sicily and, of course, to Fernando’s kinsman, King Alfonso.68

  It was for centuries said that this was when modern history began. The historian Guicciardini describes alarming auguries in Italy: in Puglia one night three suns appeared in the sky, with awful thunder and lightning; in Arezzo an infinite number of men on enormous horses were seen in the heavens, with a terrible clamor of trumpets and drums; many sacred statues sweated; monstrous men and other animals were sighted; and people became terrified of French power.69 Fernando, however, had partly benefited from the rumors of these events. As earlier explained, he had recovered Roussillon and Cerdagne for Aragon. But he had not expected King Charles to reach Naples in triumph. Yet that monarch entered the cathedral there, carrying the imperial orb (the Empire of the East) in his left hand and the sceptre (of Naples) in his right, even if a few days later, with half his army, he began his retreat, the rest of his troops remaining under his cousin, the Duke of Montpensier.

  What was most shocking about this new stage in European history was Charles VIII’s method of war: at Monte Giovanni, the French committed massacres. Guicciardini reported that “after having given vent to every other kind of savage barbarism, they resorted to the ultimate cruelty of setting buildings on fire.” That way of making war had not been used in Italy in the Middle Ages, and it filled all the kingdom with “the greatest terror.…”70 The Battle of Taro in 1495 was a good example of the change: the French lost two hundred, the Italians several thousand; it was the first time for generations that such battles had happened in Italy.

  Fernando saw that war had to replace diplomacy, and he dispatched in September a fleet of more than forty caravels under Garcerán de Requesens. With him was the hero of the last stages of the war against Granada, Gonzalo Hernández de Córdoba, “El Gran Capitán,” who soon set out for Calabria where he began a long career of legend. The fleet of Requesens had, unsurprisingly, been well organized by the ubiquitous Fonseca.71

  Something else occurred, too, in Italy, which was related to the achievements of Columbus. To quote again from the admirable Guicciardini:

  This was the same time when there first appeared that malady which the French called “the Neapolitan disease” and the Italians commonly called either “boils” or “the French disease.” The reason was that it manifested itself first among the French when they were in Naples and then, as they marched back to France, they spread it over Italy. This ailment showed itself either in the form of the most ugly boils that often turned into incurable ulcers or in very intense pains all over the body. And since the physicians were not experienced in dealing with such a disease, they applied remedies that were not appropriate, indeed often were actually harmful, frequently inflaming the infection. Thus this disease killed many men and women of all ages, and many became terribly deformed and were rendered useless, suffering from almost continual torments.

  This malady was syphilis, from which Columbus’s men had already suffered in the New World, which Antonio de Torres had brought back to Spain and which would now begin a long life in European culture.72 The word was coined by Girolamo Fracastoro when he published his poem “Syphilis Morbus Gallicus” in 1530. By that time the malady was well known, and the crippling sores so caused soon darkened the lives of emperors and clowns, Frenchmen and Turks, bishops and businessmen, as well as soldiers and missionaries. The disease was more prevalent among the upper classes than the lower: a punishment, as it seemed, to greater sinners.

  12

  “Whether we can sell those slaves or not”

  We want to inform ourselves from … theologians and canon lawyers whether we can sell those [slaves] or not.

  Fernando and Isabel to Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, April 16, 1495

  By 1495 the King and Queen in Spain were coming to realize that the discoveries of Columbus would impose new responsibilities, as well as new opportunities, on themselves. So they began to fumble toward an imperial policy. A decisive influence in this, as in most other matters, was that of Jiménez de Cisneros, the Queen’s new confessor, and, after January 1495, Cardinal Mendoza’s successor as primate and archbishop of Toledo.1 As archbishop, this able, austere, and effective churchman still lived as if he were a hermit. He walked barefoot; and he continued to devote his attention to his reforms of the Franciscan Order, which caused an upheaval—especially when he insisted that friars lead an ascetic life. Some of them are said to have gone to North Africa in order to convert to Islam rather than abandon their mistresses.2

  The executive official, however, who ensured that decisions about the Indies taken by the wandering court were put into effect in Seville or Cadiz, was another prelate, Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, the onetime archdeacon of the former city who in these years became a “minister for the Indies” without the name. In 1494, he had been named Bishop of Badajoz, though he never went to live in that city of Extremadura since his work for
the Crown kept him in Seville. He was paid an annual salary of 200,000 maravedís for this. He also became a member of the Council of Castile, which brought him another 100,000 maravedís. He was competent and resourceful, but his effectiveness was vitiated by his dislike of Columbus, whose genius he never saw and of whom he could only observe the foibles.

  This was something that everyone noted at the time. Las Casas wrote of Fonseca: “He was much more successful in planning fleets than presiding at masses”3 and added, “I always heard and believed and, indeed, saw something of the fact that he had always been contrary to the activities of the Admiral. I do not know with what spirit and with what cause.… I must say that, justly or unjustly, the Admiral was against him, and that I don’t have any doubts about. Yet the Bishop was a man of good stock and of a generous spirit, and very close to the monarchs.”4