by Edmund Burke
On his arrival he found the fort he had built utterly demolished, and all his men killed. They had first fallen out amongst themselves, upon the usual subjects of strife, women and gold; and afterwards preserving as little harmony with the natives, and observing no decency in their behaviour, or justice in their dealings, they quickly lost their esteem, and were every man murdered, after having been dispersed into different parts of the island. The prince, whom they were left to defend, was himself wounded in their defence, and bore this mark of his affection and good faith, when Columbus returned to the island. The admiral very wisely forbore to make any nice enquiry into the affair, or to commence hostilities in revenge for the loss of his soldiers; but he took the most effectual measures to prevent such an evil for the future; he chose a more commodious station for his colony, on the North-East part of the island, which had a good port, great conveniency of water, and a good soil, and lay near that part where he was informed the richest mines of the country were found: in gratitude to his royal patroness he called it Isabella. He engaged in the settlement with great warmth, and never allowed himself a moment’s repose from superintending the fortifications, the private houses, and the works of agriculture; in all which the fatigue was infinite; for he had not only the natural difficulties attending all such undertakings, but he had the insuperable laziness of the Spaniards to contend with. So that spent with the fatigues of so long a voyage, and the greater fatigues he had endured since he came on shore, he fell into a dangerous illness. Of this accident numberless of his men took the advantage to begin a rebellion, to undo all he had done, and to throw every thing into the most terrible confusion. These people on their leaving Spain, had fancied to themselves that gold was to be found every where in this country, and that there required nothing further to make ample estates, than to be transported into it; but finding their mistake, and that instead of receiving these golden showers without any pains, they fared ill, laboured hard, and that their prospects of it in future, if any at all, were emote and uncertain, their discontent was general; and the mutinous disposition increased so fast, and was carried to such extremities, that if the admiral had not recovered at a very critical time, and on his recovery had not acted in the most resolute and effectual manner, all his hopes of a settlement in Hispaniola had been at an end. He was satisfied with imprisoning some of the chiefs. This was neither a time or place for very extensive or rigorous justice. He quelled this sedition, but he saw at the same time that his work was not yet done; he saw another danger, against which he was to provide with equal diligence. He had good reasons to apprehend, that the Americans were not well affected to their new guests, and might probably meditate to cut them off, whilst they saw them divided amongst themselves. To prevent this, as well as to banish idleness from amongst his men, and to revive military discipline, he marched into the heart of the country, through the most frequented parts of it, in order of battle, colours flying, and trumpets sounding, with the flower of his troops, to the mountains of Cibao; where lay the richest mines then discovered in the island. Here he built a fort to secure this advantageous post, and overawe the country; and then he returned in the same pomp and order, to the inexpressible terror of the inhabitants, who had now no prospect of withstanding a force, which to them seemed more than human.
In this expedition Columbus made great ostentation of his cavalry. This was the first time the Indians of America had ever seen horses. Their dread of these animals and their riders were extreme; they thought both formed but one animal, and the impetuosity of their charge appeared irresistible to these naked and ill-armed people. Wherever they appeared, those Indians, who intended any hostility, immediately fled; nor did they think the intervention of the deepest and most rapid rivers any security; they believed that the horses could fly, and that nothing was impossible to creatures so extraordinary. But Columbus did not rely upon those prejudices, though he made all imaginable use of them, knowing that those things which appear most terrible at first, become every day less affecting by use, and that they even grow contemptible, when their real power is once well known, for which reason he neglected none of his former methods of cultivating the affections of the natives; he still shewed them all manner of respect, and when he had taken two persons of their nation, who had committed some acts of hostility, and was at the point of putting them to death, he pardoned and set them free at the intercession of a prince of the country, with whom he was in alliance. On the other hand, he saw how necessary it was to preserve a strict discipline amongst the Spaniards, to keep them from that idleness to which they had such a propensity, and which naturally retarded the growth of the colony, at the same time that it nourished discontent and sedition. He employed them in cutting roads through the country, a work which the natives never attempted themselves, nor now endeavoured to oppose, though it be one of the best instruments of enslaving any barbarous people. This wise governor observed besides, that the Spaniards conformed with great difficulty to the Indian manner of living, to which, however, they were necessitated, but from which, for want of use, they suffered great hardships. To remedy this evil, he daily sent out small parties upon expeditions into the country; from which he derived two material advantages. First, he enured, by degrees, all his people to the manner of living in the country; and secondly, he taught them to know it perfectly, lest a war should find them unprovided in the only point in which the Indians were their superiors, and a point which in a woody and mountainous country is certainly of the greatest importance. All this he did without any material hazard to the sum of his affairs. At home he endeavoured to withdraw the Spaniards from their romantick hopes of miraculous treasures, and to fix them to a rational and industrious course of life. He represented to them, that there was no real wealth but what arose from labour; and that a garden, a corn ground, and a mill, were riches more to their present purpose, than all the gold they were in expectation of meeting in the Indies. In short, he laboured for the establishment of this colony with as much assiduity, as though his views had extended no further; at the same time that he meditated the greatest discoveries, and considered those things which had astonished the world, only as the earnest of his future performances.
I have before mentioned his having put in at Cuba. He had reason to believe this a place no way contemptible in point of wealth; and with regard to its extent, he was not certain whether it was an island, or a part of some great continent. But now that he had got his colony to take firm root in the Indies, he prepared with all expedition to ascertain this, and to push his discoveries to the utmost, in which he had succeeded hitherto so happily.
CHAP. III.
THIS voyage was more remarkable for the hardships which the admiral and his men suffered, than for any considerable discovery it produced. As he endeavoured to coast along the Southern shore of Cuba, he was entangled in a labyrinth of an innumerable multitude of islands, amongst which he reckoned 160 in one day. They were most of them pleasant and well inhabited, affording our navigator an agreeable meditation on this fertility of nature, where the world looked for nothing but a barren ocean. These islands, perhaps the most numerous in the world, Columbus, who had a grateful mind, in which the memory of his benefactress was always uppermost, called Jardin de la Reyna, or the queen’s garden, in honour of queen Isabella. But their number and fertility made little amends for the obstruction they gave Columbus in the course of his navigation: the coast absolutely unknown, among so many rocks, sands, and shelves, the sudden and violent storms, the tornadoes, and the terrible thunder and lightning so constant between the tropicks, obliged him to keep a continual watch, and held his mind upon a constant stretch; the voyage was extended to an unprofitable length by these difficulties, and being driven out to sea, the worst disaster of all befel them. Their provisions fell short. In this extremity they were obliged to come to a very narrow and bad allowance, in the distribution of which the admiral fared nothing better than the rest. In this extremity of fatigue of body and of mind, in famine and in
danger, his usual firmness began nearly to forsake him; but it could go no further than to oblige him to remark in his journal, that no interest of his own should ever oblige him to engage again in such an enterprise. They were at last relieved by the appearance of Jamaica, where they were hospitably received, and supplied with Cassava bread and water. From thence they proceeded, mortified and disappointed, to Hispaniola, not being able to come to any certainty concerning Cuba, other than that they understood from some of the inhabitants that it was an island. This disappointment, and the infinite fatigue and difficulty of the voyage, threw Columbus into a lethargy, which was near being fatal to him, and of which he was scarcely recovered when they arrived at the harbour of Isabella.
Here they found all things in confusion, and the colony in the utmost danger of being a second time utterly destroyed, as if its prosperity or destruction depended upon the presence or absence of Columbus. For no sooner was he sailed, than the Spaniards, who were very difficultly retained in their duty by all his steadiness and wisdom, broke through all regulations, laughed at government and discipline, and spread themselves over the island, committing a thousand disorders, and living at free quarter upon the inhabitants, whose hatred to them was worked up to such a point, that they wanted only the word from their princes to fall on and massacre the whole colony; a thing by no means impractiable, in it’s present disorder. Four of the principal sovereigns of the island took advantage of this disposition, and united to drive out those imperious intruders. None adhered to them but one called Gunacagarry, the same prince whom Columbus from the first had taken so much pleasure to oblige. In his dominions some of the Spaniards found protection. The other princes had already commenced hostilities, and one of them killed sixteen of the Spaniards, who were taking no uniform measures to oppose them, nor in their present anarchy could it be well expected.
In this condition was the island on the arrival of Columbus, whose first business was to collect the scattered fragments of the colony, and to form them into a body; this he was the better able to accomplish, because the present danger added a weight to his authority; but it was necessary that he should lose no time. He was resolved to act with what force he had, rather than wait until the union of the islanders might be better cemented against him, and they might find some lesser matters in their favour to raise their courage, and abate their terror of the Spanish arms. He therefore marched against the king, who had killed the 16 Spaniards, as having a greater appearance of justice, and because he happened to be worse prepared to receive him than the others. He was easily subdued, and several of his subjects sent prisoners into Spain. The second whom he designed to attack being better prepared against force, he was resolved to circumvent him by fraud, and got him into his power by a stratagem, which did no honour to his sincerity, and rather shewed great weakness in this unfortunate barbarian, than any extraordinary contrivance in those who deceived him.
The other princes were not terrified at these examples. Their hatred to the Spaniards increased, and perceiving that all depended upon a sudden and vigorous exertion of their strength; they brought an immense army, it is said of one hundred thousand men, into the field, which was arrayed in the largest plain in that country. Columbus, though he had but a small force, did not scruple to go out to meet them. His army consisted but of two hundred foot, twenty horse and twenty wolf dogs. The latter part of this army has a ludicrous appearance; but it was a very serious matter amongst a people no better provided with arms offensive or defensive than the Indians. Neither was it rash in Columbus to venture an engagement with forces so vastly superior in numbers; for when such numbers are no better skilled or armed than these were, their multitude is in fact no just cause of dread but to themselves. The event was answerable; the victory was decisive for the Spaniards, in which their horses and dogs had a considerable share; the loss on the side of the Indians was very great; and from that day forward they despaired, and relinquished all thoughts of dislodging the Spaniards by force. Columbus had but little difficulty in reducing the whole island, which now became a province of Spain, had a tribute imposed, and forts built in several parts to enforce the levying of it, and to take away from this unhappy people all prospect of liberty.
In this affecting situation they often asked the Spaniards, when they intended to return to their own country. Small as the number of these strangers was, the inhabitants were extremely burthened to subsist them. One Spaniard consumed more than ten Indians; a circumstance which shews how little this people had advanced in the art of cultivating the earth, or how lazy they were in doing it, since their indigence reduced them to such an extreme frugality, that they found the Spaniniards, who are the most abstemious people upon earth, excessively voracious in the comparison. Their observation of this, joined to their despair, put the Indians upon a project of starving out their invaders. In pursuance of this scheme, they entirely abandoned the little agriculture which they practised, and unanimously retired into the most barren and impracticable parts of the island. This ill-advised stratagem compleated their ruin. A number of people crouded into the worst parts of the country, subsisting only upon it’s spontaneous productions, were soon reduced to the most terrible famine. It’s sure attendant epidemical sickness pursued at it’s heels; and this miserable people, half famished and lessened a third of their numbers, were obliged to relinquish their scheme, to come down into the open country, and to submit once more to bread and fetters.
This conquest, and the subsequent ones made by the several European nations, with as little colour of right as consciousness of doing any thing wrong, gives one just reason to reflect on the notions entertained by mankind in all times concerning the right of dominion. At this period few doubted of the power of the pope to convey a full right to any country he was pleased to chalk out; amongst the faithful, because they were subject to the church; and amongst infidels, because it was meritorious to make them subject to it. This notion began to lose ground at the reformation, but another arose of as bad a tendency; the idea of the dominion of grace, which prevailed with several, and the effects of which we have felt amongst ourselves. The Mahometan great merit is to spread the empire and the faith; and none among them doubt the legality of subduing any nation for these good purposes. The Greeks held, that the barbarians were naturally designed to be their slaves, and this was so general a notion, that Aristotle himself, with all his penetration, gave into it very seriously. In truth, it has it’s principle in human nature, for the generality of mankind very readily slide from what they conceive a fitness for government, to a right of governing; and they do not so readily agree, that those who are superior in endowments should only be equal in condition. These things partly palliate the guilt and horror of a conquest, undertaken with so little colour, over a people whose chief offence was their credulity, and their confidence in men who did not deserve it. But the circumstances Columbus was in, the measures he was obliged to preserve with his court, and his humane and gentle treatment of this people, by which he mitigated the rigor of this conquest, take off much of the blame from him, as the necessity of taking up arms at all never arose from his conduct, or from his orders. On the contrary, his whole behaviour both to the Spaniards and Indians, the care he took to establish the one without injury to the other, and the constant bent of his policy to work every thing by gentle methods, may well be an example to all persons in the same situation.
Since I have digressed so far, it will be the more excusable to mention a circumstance recorded in the history of this settlement. America was then, at least these parts of it, without almost any of those animals by which we profit so greatly. It had neither horses nor oxen, nor sheep, nor swine. Columbus brought eight sows into America, and a small number of horned cattle. This was the stock which supplied, about two hundred years ago, a country now the most abounding in these animals of any part of the known world; in which too it has been a business for this century past, to hunt oxen merely for their hides, An example which shews how small a num
ber might originally have served to produce all the animals upon earth, who commonly procreate very fast to a certain point, and there seem very much at a stand.
CHAP. IV.
WHILST Columbus was reducing this wealthy island to the obedience of the crown of Castile, and laying the foundations of the Spanish grandeur in America, his enemies were endeavouring with pains as indefatigable to ruin him in Spain. Some of the persons principally concerned in the late disorders, fled to Spain before his return; and there to justify their own conduct, and gratify their malice, accused him of neglecting the colony, and of having deceived their majesties and the adventurers with false hopes of gold, from a country which produced very little either of that or any thing else that was valuable. These complaints were not without effect, and an officer, fitter by his character for a spy and informer than a redresser of grievances, was sent to inspect into his conduct; in which manner of proceeding there was certainly a policy as erroneous, as it was unjust and ingrateful. At that distance from the fountain of authority, with an enemy at the door, and a mutinous household, a commander ought always to be trusted or removed. This man behaved in a brutish and insolent manner, like all such persons, who unconscious of any merit of their own, are puffed up with any little portion of delegated power. Columbus found that he staid here to no purpose under such disgraceful terms; and that his presence at court was absolutely necessary to his support. He determined to return once more to Spain, convinced that a long absence is mortal to one’s interest at court, and that importunity and attendance often plead better than the most solid services. However, before he departed, he exerted the little remains of authority he had left, to settle every thing in such a manner, as to prevent those disorders which hitherto he had always found the certain consequence of his absence. He built forts in all the material parts of the island, to retain the inhabitants in their subjection. He established the civil government upon a better footing, and redoubled his diligence for the discovery of mines, which were to be the great agents in his affairs; nor did he altogether fail of success.