Columbus

by Laurence Bergreen

  In the “protected and deep” embrace of Acul Bay, surrounded by “people very good and gentle and without arms,” he savored his explorer’s paradise. Even the inlet’s mouth was wide enough to let ships pass one another without incident. Furthermore, “any ship can lie in it without fear that other ships might come by night to attack them.” He decided to name the bay Puerto de la Mar de Sancto Tomás, “for today was his feast.”

  Come Saturday, December 22, Columbus succumbed to the urge to find gold, and at dawn, the fleet quietly slipped its moorings amid heaving seas. In his mind’s eye, he imagined a place with more gold than earth, or so the Indians had led him to believe. Ominously, “the weather did not permit it,” and he quickly returned to his anchorage in Hispaniola, where he was courted by the local lord, Guacanagarí, who plied the Admiral with lavish gifts, most memorably a belt bearing a “mask that had two large ears of hammered gold as well as the tongue and the nose.” On closer inspection, he found that the “belt was of very fine jewelry work, like baroque pearls, made of white fishbones and some red ones interspersed like embroidery, so sewed with cotton thread and by such nice skill that on the side of the thread and on the reverse of the belt, it seemed very pretty embroidery, although all white, as if it were a web in a frame.” He tested it and judged it “so strong that I believe that an arquebus”—a portable muzzle-loaded firearm with limited accuracy but quite deadly at close range—“could not penetrate it, or with difficulty.”

  On Sunday, Columbus set sail again, after expressing conventional reservations about going to sea on the Lord’s Day, “merely from his piety and not from any superstition.” No matter, gold was at stake.

  Before he came to the gold, the gold came to him, borne by the local ruler. Prepared for hard bargaining, the Admiral reacted with astonishment, “for the Indians were so free, and the Spaniards so covetous and overreaching.” He and his men had only to give “a little piece of glass and crockery or other things of no value” to receive pieces of gold, and as these transactions proceeded, the Spaniards found they need give nothing to receive the precious gold, a practice forbidden by their Admiral, who, after observing that the Indians freely gave gold in exchange for just six glass beads, “therefore ordered that they”—Spaniards—“take nothing from them unless they gave them something in payment.” Bartered objects included glass beads, cotton, geese, or whatever came to hand. The ranks of the Indians swelled to include 120 canoes, “all charged with people, and all brought something, especially their bread and fish and water in earthen jars, and seeds of many sorts that are good spices, and ended up carrying one another piggyback across rivers and swampy places,” as much for the fun of it as for any other purpose, contented to pay their respects and rejoice with the men and their ships.

  The festivities became more boisterous. Columbus estimated that more than a thousand Indians approached his tiny ship, each bearing a tribute, “and before they came within half a crossbow shot of the ship, they stood up in their canoes with what they brought in their hands, saying, ‘Take! Take!’” And so the Spaniards did, as five hundred more Indians swam out to Santa María, standing about a league offshore, to pay their respects.

  At night, a convoy of Indian barges entered the harbor to visit the Spaniards, declaring they had come from afar. By now Columbus and his men, accustomed to receiving tributes of gold without having to seek it out, contemplated spending Christmas in this wonderful harbor, which, he surmised, belonged to an island “bigger than England,” his way of conveying the sense that it was very big indeed, as befit its presumed proximity to Asia.

  An official visit from an Indian leader prompted Columbus, attentive to matters of status, to ponder the unfamiliar term cacique. “The Admiral had been unable to understand whether they used this for ‘king’ or ‘governor.’” As for the designation, Columbus “didn’t know whether they say this for ‘hidalgo’ or ‘governor’ or ‘judge.’” In practice, a cacique could be considered an important chieftain just below the rank of king.

  This cacique demonstrated his importance by bringing with him a retinue of two thousand men, who “showed much honor to the ships’ people, and the populace, every one,” by bringing food, drink, cotton cloth, and especially for the Admiral, colorful parrots. And, of course, more gold. Finally, the Indians took their leave, “carrying on their backs what the cacique and others had given them down to the boats that remained at the entrance to the river.”

  It was now Monday, Christmas Eve, and as soon as a promising offshore breeze stirred the rigging, he gave the order to weigh anchor, taking with him an Indian “who seemed better disposed and devoted or who spoke with more pleasure,” charged with locating the elusive gold mines sought by the Admiral on the basis of his mentioning the word “Çybao.” Columbus thought he heard the guide pronounce a near homonym, Çipango, Marco Polo’s name for Japan. The actual Cibao denotes the central region of the island of Hispaniola, and on that slender basis, Columbus leaped to the conclusion that his little fleet had made it to Marco Polo’s Asia, where the houses had roofs of gold.

  Noticing the Admiral’s excitement, the cacique compounded the miscommunication by speaking of a “great quantity of gold there.” He indicated the “banners of beaten gold” he bore. Columbus yearned to claim this glittering wealth in the name of Ferdinand and Isabella.

  By eleven o’clock on Christmas Eve, with his ships running confidently before a light breeze, the Admiral “decided to stretch out and sleep.” He was exhausted from the rigors of the voyage, along with the rest of the crew, and had been drinking in celebration of the holiday. And that was when the trouble started. “As it was calm, the seaman who steered the ship decided to go to sleep, and hand over the tiller to the ship’s boy, which the Admiral had always strictly forbidden during the entire voyage, come wind come calm; namely that they should let the ship’s boy steer.” Nevertheless, a lad of about fourteen or fifteen now guided Santa María.

  “It pleased Our Lord that at Midnight, after they had seen the Admiral lie down and rest, and seeing there was dead calm and the sea like [water] in a porringer”—a shallow bowl usually equipped with a handle—“all lay down to sleep, and the tiller remained in the hand of the small boy, and the currents carried the ship upon one of the banks which, even though it was night, made a sound so they could be heard and seen a good league off.” It was the grating thud of the keel grinding into sand. The ship came to an abrupt halt, stranded. The most significant voyage of discovery, years in the making, backed by the most powerful rulers in Europe, threatened to end on a calm night and a gentle sea at the hands—just one small hand, to be exact—of an innocent youth who steered the ship.

  “The boy, who felt the tiller, and heard the sound of the sea, gave tongue, at which the Admiral jumped up and was so prompt that no one had yet felt that they were aground.” Unseen below the water’s surface, not one but three coral reefs presented a concealed, treacherous barrier.

  Columbus roared at Santa María’s master and owner, Juan de la Cosa, to secure the longboat they towed astern, grab an anchor, and take it into the longboat. Cosa, accompanied by other desperate crew members, jumped into the longboat as the Admiral assumed they were taking steps to rescue Santa María. In fact, they fled to Niña, “half a league to windward.” But those aboard that ship would not permit them to board. Frustrated, they had no choice but to return to the wreck of Santa María.

  Alarmed, Columbus surveyed the scene: his own men abandoning his ship, the water becoming shallower as the sea drove the hull ever higher onto the fatal reef, and the ship beginning to list precariously, as if preparing her death throes. He “ordered the mainmast to be cut away and the ship to be lightened as much as they could, to see if they could get her off [the reef],” but Santa María persisted in driving up the reef until “she lay on her beam ends across the sea (although there was little or no sea running), and the planking opened.”

  In this desperate situation, Columbus, overwrought, lay to unti
l daylight. When it became possible to see beyond the beach and into the deep forest, he dispatched Diego de Arana, listed as “marshal of the fleet,” and Pedro Gutiérrez, “butler of the royal household,” to seek help from Guacanagarí, the Indian leader who had regarded the Spaniards as supernatural beings.

  The Admiral, meanwhile, said that he “wept,” a remarkable confession. Officers normally commanded, or disciplined, or set an example for others. But the Admiral of the Ocean Sea, overwhelmed, terrified, and possibly disgraced, shed tears. He was Christopher Columbus, the Christ-bearer, as he thought of himself. How could this disaster be happening?

  The Indians rushed to the Spaniards’ rescue, emptying Santa María of her precious cargo. “He cleared the decks in a very short time, such was the great haste and care that the king gave.” Columbus noted through his tears that the Indians exercised the same care to secure everything on land that they had removed from the ship. Nor did the king’s services and sensitivity toward the afflicted mariners end there. “From time to time he sent one of his relatives to the weeping Admiral to console him, telling him that he must not be troubled or annoyed; that he would give him whatever he had.”

  As the sun rose over the scene of wreck and recovery, Columbus surveyed the possessions and reflected that not even in Spain would they have been safer, or treated better, than they were here. And he continued to weep, perhaps more with gratitude and relief than with sheer terror, recording the histrionics in his journal for posterity. “He and all the people wept,” he observed once more, adding a curious footnote, open to various interpretations : “All are people of love and without greed, and suitable for every purpose. I assure Your Highnesses”—the distant but all-seeing Ferdinand and Isabella—“that in all the world there is no better people nor better country. They love their neighbors as themselves, and have the sweetest talk in the world, and gentle, and always with a smile.” Even though they went about as naked “as their mothers bore them,” he advised, they maintained “very good manners.” The king exercised such admirable self-restraint “that it is a pleasure to see all of it.” Perhaps it was the suddenness of the shipwreck, or the aftereffects of the drinking (if it occurred), or the emotional connotations of the holiday—whatever the reason, the wreck of Santa María and the rescue of her contents and crew had the makings of a Christmas miracle to his way of thinking. By means of this cognitive shift, he devised an ambitious scheme to salvage the voyage, his honor, and that of Spain from disaster.

  On the day after Christmas, while still drying his tears and expressing his gratitude to his Indian saviors, and his Sovereigns, he began to formulate his rejoinder to the Indians’ altruistic impulses: a Spanish empire across the sea, and loyal slaves to maintain it. It seemed to Columbus that the Indians were prepared to assume this role; indeed, with their show of subservience they were practically auditioning for it. This was, of course, his assumption, not theirs, and it had its roots in his long experience with slavery, especially female slavery, in Genoa, where slaves formed an essential and intimate component of the economy and of households. To his way of thinking, they were analogous to the Arabs, Asians, and eastern Europeans, non-Christians all, who supplied Genoa with its free labor.

  For the moment, he kept his plan to himself, and the generous gestures resumed the following day, when Guacanagarí tearfully promised Columbus and his men “two very big houses, and would give more if necessary,” along with canoes necessary to handle the ship’s cargo, and sufficient manpower, all “without taking any morsel of bread or anything else.” In his desire to repay and validate their kindness with something, anything, the Admiral resorted to offering more hawk’s bells, and at the sight of these tinkling trinkets, the Indians called out “chuque, chuque” and seemed “on the point of going mad for them.” Columbus was gratified to receive four pieces of gold “as big as the hand” in exchange, he was pleased to note, “for nothing.” The Admiral became merry, “and the king rejoiced much to see the Admiral merry.” That evening, the two leaders dined twice, first aboard Niña, the Spaniard celebrating his deliverance and gratification of his greed, the Indian celebrating his own generosity, and later ashore, where they devoured “yams, rock lobsters, game, and other viands they had, and their bread,” cassava. The Indians exhibited respectable table manners, Columbus was pleased to note, and afterward he cleaned his hands by rubbing them with herbs in the manner of his hosts.

  Striding past “groves of trees next to the houses,” the Spaniards found themselves escorted to their guest quarters by “a good thousand people, all naked,” except for Guacanagarí, who, out of respect for his guests, “now wore a shirt and gloves that the Admiral had given him, and over the gloves he made more rejoicing than anything.” They talked of strategic matters, of the Indians’ fierce rivals, the Caribs, who carried bows and arrows reminiscent of the Spaniards’ exotic weapons, but made without iron, and of the way the Caribs captured the Indians at will. At once, “the Admiral said by signs that the Sovereigns of Castile would order the Caribs to be destroyed, and would order them all brought with their hands bound.” To reinforce his show of strength, Columbus ordered a lombard and musket to be fired. The two shots, powered by gunpowder technology unknown to the Indians, shattered the Caribbean calm, and the Indians fell to earth. A little later, they brought Columbus, their protector, a “big mask that had great pieces of gold in the ears and the eyes and in other parts,” together with gold ornaments, which they ceremoniously draped over the Admiral’s head and neck.

  Thereafter, the idea of a fortress, once the stuff of daydreams, became Columbus’s mission and obsession. Once he felt a faint puff of destiny urging him on, he submitted to it as if it were a gale. The “great luck” of running into a reef and wrecking the flagship during a Christmas Eve spree became “the predestined will of God,” complete with a purpose that Columbus suddenly divined: “that he might leave the people there” to begin a colony, and to become the catalyst for more voyages to China.

  Ruminating on the accident, he made critical revisions to his account. No longer was it caused by the inexperienced hand of the ship’s boy on the tiller at precisely the wrong moment, as Santa María encountered an all-but-invisible reef at night while Columbus slept; now he insisted it was caused by the “treachery of the master and the people . . . in refusing to run out the anchor from the stern to kedge”—that is, haul—“off the ship as the Admiral ordered.” There was no more mention of the hapless boy at the tiller, or Columbus’s fatigue, or the holiday celebrations; “treachery” had taken their place.

  If only his orders had been obeyed, “the ship would have been saved.” He laid the blame on the “men of Palos,” the Spanish port where the voyage began, where he failed to receive the “vessels suitable for the voyage” to which he believed himself entitled. The town of Palos, under orders from Ferdinand and Isabella, had provided two of the three ships comprising his fleet, tiny Niña, as her name indicated, and delicate Pinta. This explanation failed to account for the loss of Santa María, in which Columbus himself had a stake. The treachery and accident fit a larger divine plan, “preordained” to bring him into contact with this land and people, so he thought. Until this event, Columbus wrote, “he always went with the intention to discover and not tarry in a place more than one day.” No more. His self-serving revelation endowed him with a different goal, one that far exceeded his boast that he could sail from Spain to China.

  “Now I have given orders to erect a tower and a fortress, all very well done, and a great moat, not that I believe it to be necessary for these people, for I take for granted that with this people I could conquer all this island, which I believe to be bigger than Portugal”—Spain’s principal rival for empire—“and double the number of inhabitants.” In this revised world order, he viewed the Indians, his gentle, generous, resourceful protectors, in a harsh new light, “naked and without arms and very cowardly, beyond hope of cure.” His tears had dried, and his meaning was clear; he considered t
hem ripe for exploitation. Their weakness became his strength, and he turned to the God-given task of empire building. “It is right that this tower should be built,” he insisted, “and it is as it should be, being so far from Your Highnesses, and that they may recognize the skill of Your Highnesses’ subjects, and what they can do, so they may serve them”—Columbus chose his words carefully—“with love and fear.”

  The matériel for the stronghold came from Santa María, transmuted into a new purpose, “boards of which to build the whole fortress.” They worked diligently, completing a rudimentary structure in only ten days, a microcosm of confinement and order in a sea of freedom and occasional chaos. Indicating the rapid advance of his plans, he gave orders for “provisions of bread and wine for more than a year, and seeds to sow, and the ship’s barge, and a caulker, a carpenter, a gunner and a cooper.” He envisioned a stream of wealth in the form of gold and spices flowing from this fortress directly to Castile and the cause of a new Crusade. He became so imbued with a sense of divine mission that he declared that “all the gain of this Enterprise should be spent in the conquest of Jerusalem,” as he had once mentioned to his Sovereigns, whom he recalled smiling indulgently at the thought. Inconsistent, inspired, and self-serving, Columbus was proving himself a brilliant but mercurial explorer.

  Couched in spiritual and political idealism, the sudden, unauthorized construction of a manned fort served Columbus’s interests first and foremost. Until he had hit upon this scheme, he had contracted for a single voyage. Now he would have to return in the name of Spain, if only to relieve the crew, who became hostages to his ambition, marooned off the coast of Haiti, unable to return home until he fetched them. Only Columbus and a few of his officers and pilots knew where in the world this fortress was located, and only they would be able to find it again. If Bartolomeu Dias had been able to think up a comparable scheme, he might not have been cast aside by his sovereign, King João of Portugal. Columbus would not allow Ferdinand and Isabella the same option; they would be duty bound to send him on another journey. For all its anticipation and daring, his voyage to the New World, rather than an end in itself, had become a prologue to a much grander adventure into empire, conquest, and conversion, one that would also serve, he hoped, as his avenue into history.