Encounters Unforeseen- 1492 Retold

by Andrew Rowen

  Martín was seriously ill, perhaps mortally. Large portions of his body were discolored, his limbs occasionally trembled, and his sight and coordination were failing. But his mind often was rapt, and he honored the Virgin for bringing his men—at least a third of them— home. He dispatched sailors ashore to provision and repair the Pinta before returning to Palos.

  Within days of Martín’s arrival, his son Arias and cousin Hernan Peréz Mateos fortuitously sailed into Bayona en route from Flanders to Palos. Arias quickly spotted the Pinta and boarded her to share an incredulous and joyous reunion with his father, although Arias was jarred and heart-stricken by his father’s condition.

  Arias and Hernan listened as Martín recounted the voyage and his fury at the Genoese charlatan. The Genoese had cowered to retreat to Spain when landfall failed at 750 leagues! It was Martín himself who had insisted they sail on! He had redirected the ships’ course southwest to San Salvador over Colón’s objection and sighted it first! Colón had become lost after San Salvador, leaving himself to discover Española! He had found Española’s gold, not Colón! He had recruited the crews in the first place, not Colón! The triumph of the voyage was his, not Colón’s!

  In early March, Martín dispatched a letter to King Fernando and Queen Isabel in Barcelona explaining that he was the captain of one of Colón’s ships and requesting an audience to relate his discovery of the islands and mainland of the Indies.

  NIÑA

  Second Storm, February 24–March 4, 1493

  The Niña suffered more tempestuous weather and rough seas en route from Santa María to Cape St. Vincent, with southeasterly winds forcing her course further north. Cristóbal placed a second note in a barrel in case he perished and lodged the barrel on the ship’s stern to float from wherever she sank.

  After sunset on March 3, another violent storm enveloped the ship, with enormous lightning bolts and thunderclaps. A full moon illuminated the thunderclouds, casting a ghostly hue fitting for death. Cross waves battered the Niña, raising her high, dropping her low, and washing her deck with enormous tonnages of sea. Her sails ripped, and she ran bare pole wherever the torrent bore.

  But the Niña would not succumb. Her occupants pleaded to their god and spirits yet again for mercy. Cristóbal sensed the Lord stalking behind, ceaselessly creating storms to humble him so that he not vainly believe he alone was responsible for the discovery. The crewmen confessed their sins, vowed a pilgrimage to the Santa María de la Cinta on the hill above Huelva, and promised to fast on bread and water for the first Saturday after landfall instead of celebrating with drink and women. Cristóbal drew the crossed pea. Bakako and Yutowa honored Guabancex, imploring her that they revered her kindness to spare them from the last storm.

  Land was sighted through driving rain after midnight, and Cristóbal raised what sail remained to take the Niña farther to sea, lest she founder on the rocky shore. At dawn on March 4, the crew recognized the Rock of Sintra offshore Lisbon, and, with no other alternative, Cristóbal directed that Niña sail into the Tagus and harbor at Restelo (Belém) rather than continue to Cape St. Vincent. He again was humbled beyond expression, recognizing that the Lord had wished to deliver him, after all.

  Memories of sneaking surreptitiously from Lisbon to escape creditors and the humiliation of Bartolomeu Dias’s triumphal return from Guinea flashed through Cristóbal’s thoughts. He anxiously turned from navigating the fury of the Ocean Sea to the jealousies of princes, despairing again that the sovereigns would interpret his harboring in Portugal as disloyalty. He feared João would punish him for sailing to Guinea or south of Hierro or simply take revenge for sailing for Castile.

  More immediately, he worried that thieves at Restelo would loot the Niña of the gold and other trophies. With trepidation, he wrote João requesting that he be allowed to harbor in the safer area of Lisbon proper, indicating that he had returned from the Indies, not Guinea. He retrieved his letters to the sovereigns and added a postscript to the public letter to indicate that he had harbored in Lisbon due to storms.

  ALIENATION, GUARICO,

  (Winter 1493)

  At dusk, Diego de Arana watched his two women prepare a fish casserole outside the fort. He enjoyed both of them and their nakedness and beauty and was flattered they had chosen to lie and live with him since he was the leader. Both were exciting to mount, particularly the young teenager, and the older one paid attention to his needs like a wife. He missed his wife and daughter in Córdoba and prayed daily for their health. But he judged that neither the Lord nor the Admiral had cause to consider his conduct scandalous—since every sailor and most priests he knew would do the same.

  Every man and ship’s boy of the garrison had found women to live with and none returned to the fort at night. Most exulted in frequent sex. Diego had reminded them repeatedly of Guacanagarí’s instruction to refrain from touching married women or forcing the unwilling and of the Admiral’s orders to avoid angering Guacanagarí or inciting jealousies among the Indian men.

  Diego reflected that there had been many transgressions. A sailor had enticed a fisherman’s wife to lie with him while her husband was at sea and then to desert the husband, angering the couple’s relatives. Two ship’s boys had quarreled over the same girl and drawn knives to fight, only to be restrained by older sailors. Diego had publicly disciplined them, but quarrels over who claimed which woman continued to arise. Worst of all, one of the Basques had forced himself upon a mere girl, not yet a woman, and her father and uncles had become enraged. Swords and spears had been drawn between the garrison and Indians, and the Lord Guacanagarí had intervened to maintain peace.

  Diego’s older woman brought him a morsel of the casserole in a spatula. He tasted it and smiled and said “good” in Taíno, and she smiled and returned to the fire. He missed talking to his wife at dinner and wondered what their daughter had done that day. He missed the orderly house his wife kept, the sheets in their bed, the clothing she washed, their visits to church to pray, and the wine and drink he shared with friends at the apothecary. But he recognized he liked this older woman, as well. She, too, was decent and kind and, although they couldn’t converse, he was happy to be with her until the Admiral returned. The food she cooked disappointed, but he understood she cared for him in preparing it.

  As he awaited dinner, Diego reflected with unease that discontentment had swelled over the food supply. The crew lamented the wine was already spent and that the Indian cazabi, yams, and fish were hardly substitute for beef, pork, chicken, rice, and bread. Guacanagarí had advised repeatedly that the quantity of food he supplied the garrison far exceeded that which the same number of Indians ate. The crew had ignored Diego’s orders to tend the plots sowed with Castilian seed, and neither Pedro nor Rodrigo had lent example or authority to those orders. Sailors and Crown officials simply refused to be farmers, and all felt it was the Indians’ lot in life to farm for them, as servants for their natural masters. Weeds had overwrought the plots sown.

  Worse, the crew had begun to snatch and loot food from the Indians’ cooking fires and bohíos. Guacanagarí had explained that his subjects willingly shared food among themselves and with guests and strangers. But Taínos expected food not to be taken unless offered first, and Taínos didn’t steal. At Guacanagarí’s request, Diego had disciplined the crewmen, reminding them of the Admiral’s order to deal sweetly and honestly with the Indians. But the crew had ignored him.

  The teenager invited Diego to sit near the fire where she had laid some palm fronds, and the older woman served the casserole. Before eating, Diego crossed himself and said grace, and his women waited and listened, recognizing that he consulted the Christ spirit. They ate together, and Diego remembered his wedding and the first meals his then-young wife had prepared, and how he had enjoyed her company. He missed her and Spanish cooking, which he felt far surpassed the casserole. But he listened to his two women talk, and, while he could not understand, the sound of their soft voices had the same tenor as his wif
e and daughter, and he found it and them comforting.

  With chagrin, Diego reflected that relationships with Pedro, Rodrigo, and the crew were, surprisingly, more aggravating than with Guacanagarí. Every crewman agreed that the reward for remaining in Navidad was hoarding one’s own stash of gold. But they agreed on little else.

  Pedro and Rodrigo had denigrated his authority from the moment the Admiral sailed and now disobeyed it. They repeatedly denounced his control of the weapons held in the fort. They completely ignored his right to control the trifles now strewn on the field and heaped in the small bohío nearby, trading them openly. It was obvious they intended to take credit with the sovereigns for the gold that actually reached them.

  Jácome el Rico, the seaman from Genoa, had complained repeatedly to Diego that all the gold yet collected remained in the crews’ pockets and none had been stored in the fort for the king and queen and the voyage’s financiers, as the Admiral had intended. Pedro and Rodrigo had warned Jácome they were responsible for the sovereigns’ gold and that it would be dangerous for him to criticize the sovereigns’ collection.

  Other than the sovereigns’ representatives and Jácome, none of the crew cared one whit about the Admiral’s objective that the Indians be dealt with honestly and sweetly to ensure that Hispaniola’s subjugation be secured peacefully. Unlike the king and queen, the Admiral, and the financiers, the crewmen would not share in the profits of future colonization. Securing for themselves now the best terms of trade for gold—no matter how dishonestly the Indians were treated—was their only concern. Each man traded broken garbage from the Santa María—hoops from barrels, broken pottery, torn sail—for as much gold as he could wrangle. Worse, sailors had begun to loot gold jewelry, barging into bohíos to steal family heirlooms the Indians did not want to trade. Guacanagarí had demanded return of the jewelry taken, but none of the crewmen would relinquish that stolen from an Indian.

  Diego realized the more he tried to discipline the men—be it over women, food, or gold—the more they ignored him and gravitated to align with Pedro and Rodrigo or worse, the Basques. The Basque and Galician sailors had rejected both Diego’s and the sovereign representatives’ authority. Their leader Chachu, the Santa María’s boatswain, held sway over his countrymen and most of the ship’s boys through boisterous and brazen conduct, openly derisive and contemptuous of Indian food and custom and even disrespectful of Guacanagarí. His band leered at the naked women and took as many as four or five concubines each, who they frequently traded or discarded. They openly mocked the Indians as silly, stupid, docile, and untrustworthy.

  As the sun set, Diego and his women finished dinner, and the teenager sat close beside him. He knew he would lie with her first. For an instant, he remembered the commandments prohibiting adultery, stealing, and coveting another’s woman, and memories of priests’ warnings of hell flickered through his thoughts. He worried how he would feel if this girl were his daughter and he one of the Basques. But the warmth of her naked body, and the incredible distance he now sat from any church, priest, and Spain itself, quickly relaxed and comforted him.

  To Diego’s surprise, Guacanagarí then appeared in the twilight and approached, together with nitaínos. Diego gestured for them to sit beside the dwindling fire and share in the remains of the casserole. Guacanagarí declined, and Diego stood to talk as his women retreated toward the fort, embarrassed to be seen by their cacique living with the pale men.

  Through gestures, Guacanagarí indicated that there had been a knifing in Guarico. A sailor had stabbed another sailor over the possession of a girl. Guacanagarí asked what would be done.

  Diego pondered and replied with a show of conviction that the wounded sailor should be brought back to the fort for treatment by the surgeon, as well as the assailant for punishment. But he had no idea what punishment to order or whether any of the men who remained loyal would administer it.

  Guacanagarí studied Diego and knew he was not fit to govern. He watched Diego’s women pretend to busy themselves and reflected that they had no cause for embarrassment. Guacanagarí had offered his own daughters in marriage to the cacique Fernando. The women seemed happy to be with Diego, yet Guacanagarí felt for them. They had sought a powerful cacique from beyond the heavens and his status—as was natural. But he studied their bellies to discern whether they were with child and wondered whether Diego would take them for wives or care for the children after Admiral returned.

  _______________

  1 Actually, closer to the Artic.

  2 Actually, 34 degrees north.

  XII

  LISBON TO BARCELONA

  AUDIENCE WITH JOÃO,

  March 5–13, 1493

  Bakako and Yutowa stood on Niña’s stern deck gazing wondrously in all directions. There was a stone house on the embankment by Niña’s anchorage, less formidable than the one Admiral had drawn on the floor of Guacanagarí’s bohío. Pero Alonso said it was a “church” dedicated to the Virgin.1 Hills rose beyond it, dotted with more houses with smoke billowing from their tops. A large road curled along the shore and there were exotic beasts walking it, some led by pale-skinned natives and a few—shockingly—bearing the natives seated atop their carcasses! Bakako studied the beasts, spellbound by their heft and obvious strength—they were far taller and heavier than men, with lengthy, muscular legs and skin covered in fur. Pero Alonso said they were “mules” and “horses.” The beasts often pulled large wooden litters rolling like logs—Pero Alonso called them “wagons” with “wheels”—which were laden with food, wood, or things unknown. A tremendous harbor stretched east, filled with a multitude of ships like the Niña, many much larger. The largest ship lay anchored close by, packed with weapons butting outward, and a launch approached from it.

  Cristóbal and Vicente waited at the Niña’s rail to receive it, apprehensive of suffering ill-treatment as in the Azores. Cristóbal was startled to recognize the launch’s ranking officer as none other than Bartolomeu Dias.

  “I am the master of the royal warship São Cristóvão,” Dias called courteously across the water. “Your ship bears the flag of the Castilian sovereigns, and I request that your captain accompany me back to the warship to explain your arrival to the king’s agents.”

  “I am Cristóvão Colombo,” Cristóvão replied in Portuguese. “I command this ship and, as an admiral of Castile, I will not leave it at the request of such persons.”

  Bartolomeu did not recollect who Colombo was. “Captain, my request is the harbor’s normal practice, honored by all mariners.”

  “I am Cristóvão Colombo and am now an admiral of Castile.” Cristóvão did not disguise his insult that Dias did not know of him.

  “If you won’t come, kindly dispatch your master instead.”

  Vicente offered to go, but Cristóvão would not countenance that. “I will not send another when I myself will not go. Admirals of Castile die before they surrender themselves.”

  Bartolomeu restrained himself and pondered a bit, surmising that Colombo’s Ligurian accent explained his haughtiness. He brought the launch astride the Niña. “Show me your papers.”

  Cristóvão handed the sovereigns’ passport over the rail. “I’ve come from discovering the Indies and haven’t visited Guinea.”

  Bartolomeu pondered again, subdued by memories of Guinea, his triumphal return, and a subsequent decline in his fortune. He returned the passport and relinquished reluctantly—“I’m satisfied”— and departed to his ship, resigned to tend it while another explorer was acclaimed.

  Soon, the warship’s captain came to the Niña with trumpets, pipes, and kettledrums to fete and honor Colombo. Word quickly spread through Lisbon that the Genoese had reached the Indies and returned with naked Indians to prove it and marvelous trophies. For two days, throngs of skiffs and rowboats surrounded the Niña, and noblemen and others clambered aboard to meet Colombo and behold the wonders the ship bore. The Lisboans peered at the captives’ nakedness and touched their olive skin and
gold jewelry, fascinated that indeed they might come from the Indies since they were not from Guinea. Cristóvão recounted his triumph to old friends and enemies and all who came.

  King João and Queen Leonor had departed Lisbon as a plague visited the villages along the Tagus estuary. João magnanimously granted Colombo’s request to berth the Niña in Lisbon proper, ordered the ship refitted as Colombo directed, and dispatched a nobleman to invite Colombo to meet in the Vale de Paraíso some thirty miles northeast of Lisbon, all at the Crown’s expense. Cristóvão feared acceptance would cause Fernando and Isabel to favor Martín if Martín had survived, but João undoubtedly would interpret refusal as an admission of sailing to Guinea. With trepidation, Cristóvão debarked with Pero Alonso, Bakako, and Yutowa, leaving Juan Niño and Vicente to take the Niña and the rest of the crew and captives to Lisbon’s shipyard quays. With the assistance of old friends, Cristóvão discretely dispatched his public and private letters to the sovereigns’ in Barcelona before João might interfere with them.

  For the first time, Bakako and Yutowa stood on what Pero Alonso called “terra firma,” although it wasn’t Castile, and more pale-skinned natives surrounded them to behold and touch. Bakako recalled when the roles had been reversed and he had first touched a sailor on the beach on Guanahaní, puzzling whether the being was man or spirit. Many who now touched poked rather than caressed, and Bakako and Yutowa grew apprehensive that some onlookers were amused by their nakedness. They sensed that those poking sought to determine not whether they were men or spirits, but men or beasts.

  Cristóvão entered the small church by the anchorage and knelt at the altar to pay tribute to the Virgin for reprieving his life on the Ocean Sea and to the Lord for the successful voyage of discovery. He recalled kneeling at the same altar more than a decade before to offer prayers for Prince Henrique, and he mused whether his own fame would now eclipse the prince’s.