REDISCOVERING COLUMBUS,
p ART VI
ways. His journal, written for the eyes of his sovereigns, sets forth the case with (to our eyes) brutal candor: "They bear no arms and are all unprotected and so very cowardly that a thousand would not face three; so they are fit to be ordered about and made to work, to sow and do aught else that may be needed, and you may build towns and teach them to go clothed and to adopt our customs." Reading words like these, one comes to feel that Columbus had no conception of the evils he was getting into. In his eyes, bringing the natives into the family of Christendom, getting them into clothes and houses and all the paraphernalia of civilization more than excused any coercion used. The Christian Church in Spain had been for centuries a church in arms, preaching a perpetual holy crusade to drive the Moslems out of Spain-adding, in a horrible postscript when the last Moslems were vanquished, the exile, conversion or killing of all Spain 'sJewish population. A warrior class had grown up in the course of these wars , which expected to be sustained on the labor of subject peoples wherever they rode. But Las Casas, friend of Columbus and transcriber of his journal, saw the evil in these words. He said: "Note here, that the natural, simple and kind gentleness and humble condition of the Indians, and want of arms or protection, gave the Spaniards the insolence to hold them of little account, and to impose on them the harshest tasks they could, and to become glutted with oppression ... " Las Casas, of course, lived on to see the full , terrible flowering of this European oppression of the first Americans; but he went on to point out in his stern commentary that Columbus himself was led on into evil by these ideas. "And sure it is that here the Admiral enlarged himself in speech more than he should, and that what he here conceived and set forth from hi s lips was the beginning of the ill usage he afterwards inflicted upon them. " But in December 1492, these tragic developments were only seeds in men's minds, as Columbus wrote his notes up in the creaking, swaying cabin of the Santa Maria riding at anchor in coves and inlets along the coast. In the world of wind and sunlight outside the wooden chamber where these words were written, all was joy and festivity. On December 22 and 23,just before Christmas, Columbus estimated 1000 Indians came out by canoe to board the Santa Maria, though she lay more than a mile offshore. A further 500 swam out, to offer bits of gold or what they had and to accept hawk 's bells and other trinkets from the sailors. Crew fatigue may have been a factor in what happened next. Columbus had planned to celebrate Christmas in Guacanagari 's village up the coast, at the cacique 's invitation. Writing up his journal, Columbus hit upon the idea that the natives' Cibao (the name still used for the central highlands of Haiti) was Cipango-at last! And the cacique's message mentioned gold, which the natives had learned was the one thing the Europeans really wanted. So, as Morison aptly remarks , "after inditing another tribute to the kindness, generosity and 'singularly loving behavior' of the Indians whom he was planning to enslave, Columbus took his departure . .. ." The fleet left before sunrise on Christmas Eve, December 24 to catch the early land breeze. There followed a day of wearisome tacking into light airs. By nightfall at the end of the long day , the Santa Maria and Nina were off the lofty headland of Cape Haitien, which Columbus named Punta Santa. When the watch changed at 11 PM, the ships were just a league past the 14
cape. The Santa Maria crept along, following the sails of the Nina, dimly visible in the faint moonlight. Her people, including the master, Juan de la Cosa, turned in. The helmsman , left without an officer and feeling overcome with sleep, got the ship's boy to relieve him. At midnight when the ship slides up on a sandbank, the boy is apparently the only person awake. He cries out as he feels the rudder grate against the sand. Columbus is on deck in a flash, ahead of La Cosa. He orders the master to board the big ship's boat, which they are towing, and to run out an anchor to haul the vessel off-there is not a moment to lose, for the swell already is lifting the ship up and setting her down further up the shoaling bank. But La Cosa does an incomprehensible thing-he gathers up some of the Basque crew, boards the launch and simply rows away toward the Nina, abandoning the Santa Maria to her fate. Vicente Yanez, aboard the Nina, has already sent a boat off toward the big ship. When La Cosa comes alongside the Nina, he orders him back to his ship. But it is too late to save the Santa Maria. Bumping on the hard sand, the heavy ship starts her seams and soon is filling with water. During the next days, Guacanagari brings his people to help unload the wreck, and, as Columbus notes, every scrap is recovered and piled on the beach with nothing missing through theft. The cacique, seeing Columbus afflicted , gives gold to cheer him-and Columbus does cheer up. He decides this catastrophic shipwreck on Christmas Day is a gift from God. He will build a fort ashore from the ship 's timbers and man it with the people who can't be fitted aboard the little Nina for the long voyage home. Fortunately for Columbus, the ship's people fell in with this idea, and there was competition to see who would get to stay on those friendly shores and simply gather gold from the biddable population, until the next Spanish ships came by. Diego de Harana, cousin of Columbus's mistress Beatriz, undertook to lead the shore party, composed of 39 men counting himself. Columbus and Guacanagari had a grand farewell party on January 2, with the Nina firing her cannon at the hulk of the Santa Maria, partly to entertain Guacanagari, but surely also to impress the watchful natives with European firepower. Anti-climactically , a foul wind delayed the Nina's departure until January 4, when, sending her boat ahead to guide her carefully through the coral reef, the caravel put to sea. Two days later, she met the Pinta sailing gaily down toward her. An unrepentant Martin Alonso Pinzon came aboard the Nina, giving reasons for his absence which Columbus notes " were all false." Columbus observed bitterly that "with much insolence and greed he parted from him ," adding that he didn ' t know what Pinzon 's insolence and greed stemmed fromwhich we may well believe. He had no idea what had gone wrong. The sad truth is that Columbus did not excel in inspiring loyalty from the men he sailed with. Like many visionaries, he upset, humiliated and angered people he worked with. He was right in most of his disagreements with them-but that is not an answer to the problem. And it clearly was a problem. Whatever one thinks of the Admiral and his captains, they faced an ultimate testing of themselves, their crews and their ships in the winter North Atlantic that whispered and rustled before them in a rising west wind as they weighed anchor in the pre-dawn darkness of January 16, 1993 and stood away for Spain. D SEA HISTORY 59, AUTUMN 1991