by Owen J. Hurd
Turning lemons into lemonade, Columbus dismantled the shipwrecked Santa Maria, using the salvaged wood and nails to build a small fort on Hispaniola, where he left several dozen men with a sufficient amount of guns, ammunition, and provisions to last them a year. Even though these first American settlers were vastly outnumbered by the hundreds of thousands of indigenous peoples, Columbus was confident in their safety. He had cultivated a “great friendship with the king of that land, to such a degree that he prided himself on calling and holding me as his brother.” Besides, the Indians he met were “the most timorous creatures there are in the world.”
Of course, things happen and the relationship could take a turn for the worse, especially in Columbus’s absence. Even so, he was confident that “the men who remain there are alone sufficient to destroy all that land.”
Turns out he was wrong. When Columbus returned to Hispaniola the following year, he found the fort in ashes, alongside the bones of his slaughtered countrymen. Whether they too persistently pressed for information about where to find gold or took liberties with Taino women, they must have worn out their welcome one way or another.
Columbus made four journeys to the Americas in all, eventually reaching the South American continent on his third journey and Central America on his fourth. But the first time he returned—this time with seventeen ships and about a thousand soldiers—he put his colonial plans into action. Finding the locals “all of a good size and stature,” as well as “ingenious,” especially for the ease with which they picked up the Spanish language, Columbus concluded, “they ought to make good and skilled servants.”
They did and they didn’t. As governor of the islands claimed for the Spanish Crown, Columbus imposed a brutal system of tribute in which islanders were forced to mine gold for their Spanish taskmasters. Coming up short could mean horrific penalties, like torture and mutilation. The Tainos rebelled, but their primitive weapons were no match for the Spaniards’ “crossbows and small cannon, lances, and swords.” A Spanish observer, Bartolomé de Las Casas, also pointed out the advantage of domesticated animals. On horseback, Columbus’s army had a distinct advantage over the Tainos. “A still more terrible weapon against the Indians,” according to Las Casas, were the “twenty hunting dogs, who were turned loose and immediately tore the Indians apart.”
European domestication of animals presented yet another threat to the Tainos, one that was less obvious but far more lethal. Having long interacted with farm animals like pigs, sheep, cows, and poultry, Europeans built up immunities to diseases like smallpox and the plague. With absolutely no previous exposure to these diseases, indigenous Americans had no immunities whatsoever. The results were devastating.
Between the wars, the slave trade, and disease, the native population on Hispaniola plummeted from a million in 1496 to 200 in 1542. An entire civilization was virtually wiped out in a mere fifty years.
Columbus and his brothers—whom he put in charge of various operations and lands—also showed little restraint when dealing with the Spanish subjects who colonized these new lands, doling out punishments just as brutal and draconian as those imposed on the Tainos. Complaints made their way back to Spain, and Columbus was arrested in the Caribbean and shipped back to Spain in chains.
Columbus was eventually exonerated and released from jail. Still stripped of his governorship, the ailing and aging sailor embarked on one last journey of discovery to the Americas. This time his ship wrecked on the shores of Jamaica, where Columbus and his crew lived on the hospitality of the native islanders for over a year. Finally rescued in June 1504, Columbus returned to Spain, where he spent the remainder of his days, profiting from his discoveries up to the time of his death on May 20, 1506.
Columbus’s reputation has of course suffered in recent years, as more people become familiar with the less savory aspects of his history. It doesn’t help that Columbus did not discover America. The honor for that goes of course to the indigenous peoples who had been living in the “New World” for tens of thousands of years. Columbus was also beaten to the punch by Erik the Red and his son Leif, who settled the shores of Greenland and Newfoundland about five hundred years earlier. However, in terms of setting in motion a world-altering migration and settlement of a previously unknown landmass, Columbus deserves the credit—or blame, depending on your perspective.
So, why are our two continents named after Amerigo Vespucci, a comparatively minor explorer? Why do we not live in the United States of Columbia?
Partly because of Columbus’s post-discovery decline and partly because of luck. It’s not clear that Columbus ever knew that he had discovered a new continent. But Vespucci did. In a series of letters written to Italian nobles, but obviously intended for a public audience, Vespucci outlined his theory, that the lands being explored by Columbus, Vespucci, and others were not the westernmost part of the Indies—which is what Europeans called lands now known as China and Japan—but a completely distinct landmass, a “Mundus Novus” (New World), bordered on each side by different oceans.
These letters made their way to Germany, where a mapmaker by the name of Martin Waldseemüller was planning a new world map. This was the first map to depict the new lands as a separate continent and to identify them as “America,” using a traditionally feminine form of a Latin spelling of Vespucci’s first name. Otherwise, we might be living in the United States of Vespuccia.
Although a thousand copies of the four-and-a-half-by-eight-foot wall map were printed in 1507, only one survives intact today. It was discovered in 1901 at the Wolfegg Castle in Württemberg, Germany. The Library of Congress purchased the map in 2003 for $10 million.
LOOSE ENDS
Columbus spent his last few years entreating the king of Spain to reinstate his titles, along with the corresponding monetary privileges. These legal cases outlived Columbus and were taken up by his heirs, especially his firstborn son, Diego, who succeeded in regaining the governorship of the Indies. He was later named viceroy of the Indies.
Little is known about the Pinta, but the Niña became Columbus’s preferred sailing vessel. Included among Columbus’s flotilla on his second journey to the New World, the Niña was the flagship for Columbus’s side expedition to Cuba. The Niña made her final journey to the Americas in 1498.
Vicente Yáñez Pinzón, who was captain of the Niña on Columbus’s first voyage, later discovered the Amazon River in 1500. His older brother, Martín Alonzo Pinzón, who had commanded the Pinta on the first voyage, died shortly after the return voyage to Spain.
While on a subsequent journey to the Americas, Columbus’s first mate on the Santa Maria, Juan de la Cosa, was killed by natives living in present-day Columbia.
Henry Hudson, Adrift
In the early 1600s English explorer Henry Hudson made four journeys in search of more advantageous trade routes with East Asia. The last two, in 1609 and 1610, brought him to North America, where he sought the fabled Northwest Passage, an all-water shipping lane through North America to the Pacific Ocean. In the process, Hudson mapped portions of the New England coast, including Cape Cod, before venturing up the Hudson River. In July 1610, Hudson steered his aptly named ship, Discovery, into what would later be called Hudson Bay. He spent the next few months exploring the unknown waters, trying to figure out if it did indeed offer passage to the South Seas.
Yet, when the Discovery sailed back into its English port in October 1611, it returned without Hudson, the first mate, and many others, including the captain’s teenage son, John. Only eight members of the original twenty-four-man crew were aboard. Emaciated and desperate looking, some too weak to stand, they were set upon by family members—as well as the voyage’s financiers—who had anticipated the Discovery’s return for more than six months.
The ship bore ominous signs, including top decks stained with blood as well as the bloodstained clothing of several missing crew members. The possessions of other missing sailors had been divvied up among the remaining crew. A search of the
navigator’s desk turned up a note that hinted at a potential mutiny.
The survivors had a miraculous story to tell—and a lot of questions to answer.
To hear the survivors tell it, there had been a mutiny all right, but none of them had taken part in it. As temperatures dropped and icebergs multiplied, they said, Captain Henry Hudson put a vote to his men: Should they head to the southernmost portion of the bay, spend the winter there, before resuming their voyage in the spring? Or should they return to England before ice choked off the straits, trapping them in the northern section of the bay?
Those who wished to return were outvoted by Hudson and a clique of loyal sailors who decided to stay put, assuming the weather there would not be too much worse than an English winter. That was their second mistake. The first mistake was putting it to a vote. Hudson may have believed that the crew would be more likely to accept the outcome if they had a say in it. Instead, it broadened existing divisions between two camps, hardening the resolve of those who were determined to overthrow the captain.
It was at about this time that Discovery’s mathematician penned his secret note, hidden in the navigator’s desk, detailing a challenge to the captain’s authority by captain’s mate Robert Juet. Juet allegedly made drunken accusations and suggested that bloodshed was imminent. Hudson demoted Juet, replacing him with Robert Bylot.
Things continued to get worse, thanks to the cold. The crew had also underestimated the amount of food required to make it through winter, and one of the men died, probably due to a combination of exposure and starvation. However, a crew member’s journals suggested that maybe there was more to the death: “God pardon the Master’s uncharitable dealing with this man,” it said, providing no further details. Whatever the case, all the survivors agreed that Hudson was inconsistent and deceptive in the manner he doled out rations, favoring superior officers as well as those who voted with him to winter in Hudson Bay.
It all became too much for crew member Henry Greene, who along with Juet and three other crew members staged a mutiny. As soon as the summer’s rays released the Discovery from its icy grip, the mutineers overpowered Captain Hudson and his loyal crew members. They then attempted to recruit as many of the neutral crew members to join them. One of them, Abacuk Prickett, later claimed that he attempted to talk the mutineers out of it, but Greene insisted that “he would rather be hanged at home than starved abroad.”
Hudson and eight others, including his son and the ship’s carpenter, were placed in a small canoe-shaped boat and cast adrift as the Discovery sailed back toward England. They were never seen or heard from again. Several of the holdouts, including Bylot and Prickett, were permitted to remain on the ship, despite their alleged refusal to formally join the mutiny.
Still starving and having little luck at fishing, the remaining sailors aboard the Discovery decided to take their chances on land, despite the threats posed by polar bears and the inscrutable Inuit Indians. On shore, they were ambushed by Inuits, who slashed the Englishmen with knives and shot them with arrows. Several English died on the beach, while others succumbed on the decks of the Discovery—hence the bloodstains.
Robert Juet died of starvation on the voyage back to England, the last of the alleged mutineers to get his comeuppance.
The authorities back in England were suspicious enough of the survivors’ version of events that they tried four of them for mutiny and Hudson’s murder. The survivors themselves must have realized how far-fetched their tale seemed—that none of the perpetrators survived to face justice. Yet, lacking any physical evidence or eyewitness testimony, the court was obliged to find all suspects not guilty.
It’s surprising that Prickett and Bylot, fresh off the disastrous journey, reenlisted on the Discovery, which returned to Hudson Bay in 1612, once again spending the winter there. They found no traces of Hudson or the Northwest Passage and returned to England in 1613, but not before losing five men in yet another struggle with the Inuit.
After two subsequent expeditions aboard the Discovery (captained no less by Robert Bylot), English explorer William Baffin finally determined in 1616 that if there was a Northwest Passage it would not be found in Hudson Bay.
Weary of sea adventures, Abacuk Prickett became a London haberdasher.
James Cook, Cooked
In terms of American history, Captain James Cook is best known for his discovery of the Sandwich Islands, which we now call the Hawaiian Islands, our fiftieth state. Cook first landed there in January 1778, visiting Kauai briefly before heading northeast toward the Pacific Northwest. Throughout the spring and summer Cook and his crew mapped the coastal territory north from Vancouver Island to Alaska and the Bering Strait. Yet, with winter approaching, Cook decided to steer his ships, Discovery and Resolution, south back toward the islands that had provided his men with so many tropical comforts the year before.
Nothing in their previous visit to Kauai could have prepared them for the welcome they received on the Big Island of Hawaii. Canoes with thousands of natives swarmed Cook’s ships, with some of the more eager greeters climbing aboard the British vessels. Cook quickly realized that it would be fruitless to enforce his standard policy forbidding sexual relations with the local women.
“No women I ever met with were more ready to bestow their favors,” he wrote in his journal. The native men were also willing to ingratiate themselves to their new guests. Having identified Cook as the man in charge of the expedition, local chiefs escorted him on shore, bestowing gifts, bowing to him, and calling him “Lono.”
The islanders then performed a series of mysterious ceremonies, all seeming to celebrate the arrival of Lono. There was a feast of pork and liquors. And more sexual favors. The islanders established a beach camp for the British visitors and treated them with great deference. Cook’s reception at the Big Island, which “seemed to approach adoration,” vastly exceeded anything the English explorers had experienced at Tahiti or Bora Bora. Rather than question the reasons for this royal treatment, Cook and his men eagerly indulged in it.
But just as quickly, the mood changed. The natives suddenly “became inquisitive as to the time of our departing & seemed well pleased that it was to be soon.” Taking the hint, Cook made arrangements to resupply his ships with food, water, and firewood, quitting the islands to great fanfare on February 4. As their sails filled with a fresh wind, one member of the crew recorded his impressions of the Hawaiian people in his journal. “No quarrels,” he predicted, “could possibly arise in our intercourse with them.” He had no idea how quickly his assessment would be put to the test.
Cook had intended to explore some of the other islands in the Hawaiian archipelago, but a bad storm intervened, damaging a mast. To make the necessary repairs, Cook sent his able mate, William Bligh, in search of an appropriate harbor. Finding only rough surf, they resolved to return to the Big Island to make the repairs within friendly environs.
This time, their reception could not have been chillier. Greeted a month earlier by a hysterical celebration, they now found deserted beaches. Cook sent a small boat into the harbor with several marines. His men were confronted by a somber delegation of priests, inquiring about the reason for their return. Cook and his men did their best to make their repairs quickly and be on their way, but their work was repeatedly interrupted by the now-quarrelsome islanders. Instead of graciously bestowing gifts, they struck hard bargains, usually preferring iron daggers in exchange for food and other essential items sought by the sailors. Other islanders took to stealing British property. On one occasion, the islanders stole one of the explorers’ boats, a crime that Cook was determined to punish.
Angrily stumbling ashore on the uneven lava beach, Cook demanded to see the local chief. A crowd formed, hurling jeers and then stones at Cook and his men. Cook had planned to take the chief hostage in order to get the boat back, but the chief sat down on the beach and refused to budge. A native warrior then approached Cook, jabbing a spear in his direction. Shots were fired and a
melee broke out.
“Take to the boats!” Cook implored, but it was too late. A swarm of natives descended on Captain Cook, bashing his head with rocks and stabbing him repeatedly. He and four of his men were killed, as the rest of the British made their escape. Safely aboard the Discovery and Resolution, the remaining sailors struggled to come to grips with these events—and wondered in vain what caused such a reversal in attitude toward them. It took years of study by cultural anthropologists before theories began to emerge about what went wrong.
It seems as though Cook was the victim of bad timing. His original arrival on the shores of Hawaii coincided with the island’s Makahiki Festival, in which they celebrate the ascendancy of Lono, the god of fertility and peace. To this day academics are arguing about whether or not the Hawaiians actually perceived Cook as the personification of Lono. Regardless, by returning during the ascendancy of Kū, the god of war, Cook was unwittingly pushing his luck. His haughty and dictatorial attitude toward the natives sealed his fate.
The islanders cooked the captain’s dead body in an underground barbecue pit, pulling his limbs apart and removing the flesh from his bones. By some accounts, they ate his heart and buried some of his bones in various caves on the island. Several days later a canoe paddled out to the British ships. Permitted to climb aboard the natives returned a portion of Cook’s remains—his arms, legs, skull, and hands. The crew committed Cook’s remains to the ocean in a ceremonial burial, before resolving to continue his mission, to find the Northwest Passage. First, they exacted a measure of revenge on the Hawaiians, burning their homes and killing as many as a hundred villagers.