With her mainmast chopped away in a vain attempt to lighten her, the Santa Maria is stripped of gear and cargo by Europeans and Indians working together. Painting by Richard Schlecht.
"I am not taking pains to see much in detail because I could not do it in fifty years and because I want to see and explore as much as I can so I can return to Your Highnesses in April , Our Lord pleasing. It is true that, finding where there is gold or spices in quantity, I will stay until I get as much of it as I can. And for this reason I do nothing but go forward . .. ." As Columbus led his ships through these distinctly not mythical or uncertain islands, he kept looking for the civilizations of Asia, and on October 2 1 he recorded hi s intention to "leave for another very large island I believe must be Cipango." He noted that the natives called it "Colba," and that: "In it they say there are many and very large ships and many traders. And from this island another which they call Bohio ... and depending on whether I find a quantity of gold or spices, I will decide what I am to do. "But," he added , "I have already decided to go to the mainland and to the city of Quin say and give Your Highnesses' letters to the Grand Khan and to ask for, and to come with, a reply ." Well , all thi s never happened, of course. The Chinese city of Quinsay (Hangchow) was thousands of miles away across the wide Pacific, and, as noted earlier, it had been more than a hundred years since a Grand Khan had ruled in China. Colba, as you might have guessed, was Cuba; Bohio was the word for a Taino hut (a term still alive in Cuba today) , which was applied to the island of Haiti (which Columbus named Hispaniola) evidently because the Taino felt this was their homeland island , their central hearth , though at this time, the big, mountainous island was partly in the grip of the Taino 's deadly enemies, the Caribs-as was much of Cuba. Against thi s background of Columbus's goals and intentions, and the actualities of the natives' situation, the main events of Columbus's cruise through the islands fall into place. On the Coasts of Cuba and Haiti In Cuba, Columbus found a mountainous country quite different from the Bahamas. Columbus initially and later insisted Cuba was not an island at all , but part of mainland Asia. Here, by all the saints, he would find the Grand Khan . The continual Indian talk of oppressors round about led him evidently to suppose the Grand Khan was the oppressor; hearing of a strong local king whom the Indians liked and admired, he seems to have conceived the idea of making this king an ally. On Friday, November 2, he put together a delegation to go inland in Cuba to meet the king. The four-man expedition included Lui s de Torres, the converted Spanish Jew , who was said to know Hebrew, Chaldean and "even a little Arabic," and one of the Taino guides from Guanahani or San Salvador, plus another Spaniard and a local Indian. Three days later, the emissaries returned; they had found not the court of a great king, but a village of a few hundred inhabitants living in huts. There were cordially received, even with honor- they told of women kissing them and feeling their bodies to see if they were really the same flesh and blood. And on the road they found out what the dried leaves the natives had been offering them was for; they were tobacco, a drug unknown to Europeans, which in the next few hundred years was to take Europe by storm. Perhaps a little discouraged, Columbus resolved to "go to the southeast to seek gold and spices and discover land." But Martin Alonso Pinzon, the proud and truculent captain of the Pinta , had had enough of thi s jogging along the coast, with occasional doublings back. Sometime around daybreak on November 22, when the fleet was returning from a long SEA HISTORY 59, AUTUMN 1991
seaward leg to the north to free its wind and get on down the coast, Martin Alonso caught a draft of the morning breeze and made off to the eastward, headed for the island of Great Inagua. There, his Taino guide had said he would find gold. Columbus held on to the southward , sagging off in the new slant of wind to land where he had been before. Martin Alonso's brother, Vicente Yanez Pinzon, in the Nifia , held on loyally in the slow-moving Santa Maria's wake. Making his way eastward along the north coast of Cuba, Columbus finally crossed the Windward Passage to Haiti and began his usual crawl along the Haiti an coast, working his way eastward against breezes that blew fresh out of the east, the direction they were trying to go. The sea kicked up by these vigorous Trades made slow going for the bluff-bowed Santa Maria particularly, and the loyal Nifia had to rein herself in to keep in company, though sometimes she was sent scouting out the lay of the land ahead. An insidious steady set of current to the westward put further brakes on their progress. But, Columbus accepted these conditions of navigation , which would drive a modem sailor to distraction, and he rejoiced in each crystalline stream and pretty cove he came across as his ship moved up the coast, like some great browsing creature. He rejoiced in the natives, considering them more advanced than the nati ves of Cuba, and finding all kinds of pleasant things to say about their handsome appearance and gracious ways. And, at last, in Haiti, he met the authority he had been seeking , a native authority he came to respect and even admire, despite the fact that it did not open for him the road to Ci pan go or the great Asian cities he sought, or even the spice islands. In mid-November, a yo ung king, aged about 21, came aboard with his retainers and counselors-a composed young man of few words and superb control. When Spanish food was produced, he would take just one mouthful and pass it on to his counselors, who continuously showed him the utmost respect. Columbus was deeply impressed with this young leader and entertained him royally during the Feast of the Annunciation on December 18. The Santa Maria and her consort Nifia dressed ship, with banners hung out and salutes fired with the great guns. This did not upset the young king, who took it all in with composure and pleasure. Clearly, he and the Spanish shared a sense of occasion! And the king must have passed on a good word to his overlord, the ¡cacique or chief of all the tribes in northwest Haiti, for when Columbus met this chief, Cuacanagari, he was greeted with open arms. Behind the scenes, however, there is no question that Columbus maintained a hidden agenda, one leading ultimately to the enslavement and desolation of all these peoples and their
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