REDISCOVERING COLUMBUS, PART VIII:
Sail On, Colu01bus! by Peter "Lift up your hearts!" wrote the intellectual man-about-town Peter Martyr, relaying news of Columbus's voyage to his fellow humanists in Italy in the spring of 1493. "Oh happy deed," he ran on, "that under the patronage of my King and Queen the disclosure has begun of what was hidden from the first creation of the world!" The ecstatic tone of this communication from a sophisticated frequenter of the royal court of Ferdinand and Isabella reflects the general reaction of the educated community of the day . Some hailed it as the greatest event since the birth of Christ. And there was no question about it: the triumph of opening what Columbus later called "another world" on the far side of the Ocean Sea was indeed his; just as the ridicule and obloquy he had encountered almost everywhere during the preceding years had also been his . The support of the Catholic Sovereigns (as Ferdinand and Isabella were universally called) was forthcoming speedily and in abundance for Columbus's second voyage. With a fleet of 17 ships and perhaps 1300 men, he_set sail from Cadiz on September 25, 1493,just over six months after his return from the first voyage he had set out on the year before, with some 90 men in 3 ships. This was the high point of his sea career, leading a great fleet in the gallant Nina, the caravel that had brought him safely home after his flagship Santa Maria was wrecked in the Caribbean_ His essential mi ssion had been accomplished in that transatlantic voyage of 1492, however. He was to make three more voyages, opening to European ken the whole chain of islands that fence in the Caribbean, and considerable stretches of the coasts of Central and South America. But he could not control the proud hidalgos he took with him , and he was to end up shut out of the "Enterprise of the Indies," which he had launched with such dedicated effort. The objectives of the second voyage, 1493-4, were: first, to convert the natives to Christianity; second, to establish a going-concern colony in Hispaniola, where he had left a fort built with the Santa Maria's timbers and manned by so me 90 men . And, finally, he was to explore Cuba, which in the confused geography of the day was thought possibly to be the Golden Chersonese, or Malaya, beyond which lay India. European ships, it must be remembered , had not yet sailed those waters; Vasco da Gama was to arrive on the western coast of India only five years later, in 1498 , coming from Portugal by sailing around the southern tip of Africa. Within these guidelines Columbus was free to shape his own itinerary, and he decided to make land at a point further south and east than Hispaniola, where the Indians had told him there were further islands. He made his landfall on Dominica, then followed the island chain north and west, meeting some resistance from the war-like Caribs as he went. When he reached Hispaniola he found the fort he had built in ruins. The seemingly biddable natives had turned on the Spanish and killed every one. From his old friend the chieftain Guacanagarf and others, he learned that the Spanish had gone wild, roaming the island and raping and looting where they went. The tough cacique in the central highlands wiped out the intruders and then descended on the coastal fort and killed everyone there. Columbus accepted the truth of the Indian account and forbade any reprisals, though there were those in the fleet who called for Indian blood. He went on to found a new trading post and colony back to the eastward on the north coast of Hispaniola, 12
Stanford naming the new city Isabela after the queen . Isabela was laid out as a classic Spanish city with central plaza, church and governor's palace, but it was poorly sited and without benefit of the scouting and development of relations with the Indians that had been expected from the original fortress settlement. Nothing seemed to go right. Some gold and native plants were sent back-with 26 Indian slaves, the beginning of a sorry traffic that usually ended tragically for the Indians involved. The Queen was to protest the slave traffic, but it continued. Slaves were the one valuable commodity, besides the trickle of gold, that the Spanish could get out of the islands in the early years. Ultimately, the encomienda system grew up, under which Spanish lordlings took possession not only ofland, but also of the people living on it, a harsh version of the medieval system oflandholding in Europe, under which lords of the manors held land and those who worked the land were bound to the lord 's service, although they were not actually owned by the lord. The hidalgos who came to the islands were accustomed to rule from the saddle, and they were a pretty rough lot. They scorned Columbus's attempts to govern them; despite his titles of Viceroy and Admiral of the Ocean Sea, he was just a seaman in their eyes, and Genoese at that. Bishop Las Casas, who admired Columbus but was highly critical of his dealings with the native peoples, later observed that the Archangel Gabriel would have had his hands full trying to govern these early settlers of Hispaniola. The third part of Columbus's charge, to explore further, was the one he felt most at home with, and he pushed on up the south coast of Cuba in the Nina with two smaller consorts, undoubtedly glad to be rid of the big fleet, which returned to Spain, and of the quarrelsome hidalgos left to work things out at Isabela. Finding a warm reception for the "men from the sky" in Cuba, but none of the gold he had to find to justify the voyage, he stood off for Jamaica-but there was no gold there, and there was some sharp fighting with the natives, as there had been earlier in the Lesser Antilles to the eastward. The flotilla returned to Cuba, working its way to a point just short of the western end of the island. Columbus had thoughts of pushing on, into what he believed was the Gulf of Siam (remembering undoubtedly that that is how Marco Polo returned from China), so intending to complete his voyage by sailing around the world. The men would have none of this, so, after securing a deposition signed by all hands that Cuba was part of a continent and no island (a fiction no one seemed to have believed), Columbus beat his weary way back to Isabela and set about subduing Hispaniola, while simultaneously fending off threats of revolt by the unruly colonists. It was a sad situationterrrible for the Indians, whose numbers were dwindling fast due to European diseases and their overlords' oppression, and not good for the Spanish either. As Columbus 's fellow countryman Michael Cuneo, who was with him on this voyage, put it, no one sowed grain unless forced to, because "no one wants to live in these countries." By March 1496, after two years and four months in the islands, Columbus realized he'd better get back to Spain, where returning colonists were making trouble for him, and he set sail in the Nina, with a single consort. This time he did not follow the proven homeward route north about, but sailed to Guadeloupe down the island chain, and departed from there. He battled headwinds as he shaped his course to the northeast, SEA HISTORY 63, AUTUMN 1992