Columbus: The Four Voyages, 1492-1504 (28 page)

Syphilis was the scourge of both continents, and scientific consensus about the pattern of transmission has fluctuated. Reflecting the conventional view of his time, Fernández de Oviedo, the self-taught naturalist, wrote, “Syphilis first appeared in Spain after Admiral Christopher Columbus discovered the Indies and returned home. Some Christians who accompanied Columbus on the voyage of discovery,” as he called the first voyage, “and some who were on the second voyage brought this plague to Spain, and from them other people were contaminated.” Spanish soldiers brought it with them to Italy during a military campaign, and “from there it spread all over Christendom and was carried by men and women who had the disease.” It was so easy to transmit syphilis, Fernández de Oviedo believed, that merely sharing plates or cups or bedsheets would accomplish the deed. “Very few Christians who associate and lie with the Indian women have escaped the malady,” he warned. “This horrible disease came from the Indies,” where it was “quite common among the natives,” but, “not so dangerous there as it is here in Europe.” The reason for the disparity, according to Fernández de Oviedo, was that Indians cured themselves of syphilis, so he believed, by gulping drafts of water in which splinters of bark or wood that had been thoroughly boiled—not from just any tree, but the fruit-bearing
guayacán
of Hispaniola, or more precisely, the nearby island of Beata. “Undoubtedly many are cured of syphilis by this treatment.”

 

To meet the myriad difficulties facing the settlements, Columbus resolved to rotate his men; some would sail back to Spain, to be replaced with a fresh contingent of soldier-sailors ready to undertake the difficult work ahead. Those returning could boast of the giant gold nuggets waiting to be mined in the Cibao. The decision would alter the character of the voyage, splintering it yet again, and further weaken his uncertain command.

On the second day of February, 1494, Antonio de Torres, whom Ferdinand characterized as “a man of worth and good judgment, much trusted by Catholic Sovereigns and by the Admiral,” departed from La Isabela with a large fleet—twelve ships in all—bound for Cadiz, Spain. Torres planned to provide a full report of the voyage to the authorities, and to ask for more supplies to maintain the Spanish presence in the islands discovered by Columbus. He would also have to convey the grim news about the massacre at La Navidad and the uncertain prospects for the new settlements.

In the grand scheme of things, the promise of gold outweighed the loss of life.

It was an amazing sight: a fortune in gold nuggets direct from the Indies—thirty thousand ducats’ worth. Ferdinand and Isabella gazed upon an assortment of misshapen lumps endowed with magical power. To hold them, and to own them, was to feel the weight and might of riches. This glittering plunder was the most powerful of all incentives for the Sovereigns to remain supportive of Columbus and his mission. No matter where he had fallen short, he had kept this pledge.

To bring these nuggets from the Indies, Antonio de Torres had retraced Columbus’s route, arriving in Cadiz within twenty-five days, on March 7, 1494. In addition to the gold, he brought a sampling of spices and twenty-six Indians, including three believed to be cannibals. They were considered mere curiosities. The greatest excitement was caused by the fortune in gold nuggets.

Torres carried a lengthy, emotional letter from Columbus to the Sovereigns in which the explorer tried to make the best of the troubled situation in Hispaniola. He explained that he would have sent more gold with Torres’s fleet, “had not the majority of the people here suddenly fallen ill.” He had thought of employing the few men who remained healthy, but he dreaded the “many difficulties and dangers” they would have faced. He would have had to hike through rugged country to the mining region “23 or 24 leagues away,” all the while “fording inlets and rivers on a long journey.”

Nor was it wise to leave the sick men alone and unprotected from the Indians. Even if he had led the healthy men to the gold mines, they would have faced “a cacique named Caonabó, a man who, in everyone’s opinion, is very evil and even more audacious,” and likely to endanger them all. And if they reached the gold, how would they transport it to the ships? “Either we would have had to carry just a little bit every day, bringing it with us and risking sickness, or we would have had to send it with some of the men, still running the risk of losing it.”

Nearly as urgent as the pervasive illness was the “great scarcity of all things that are particularly efficacious in fighting sickness—such as raisins, sugar, almonds, honey, and rice—which should have arrived in large quantities but we got very little of.” And that had been consumed, “including the medicines.” Their situation worsened with every passing day.

Columbus sent several lists to Spain with Torres. One requested basic supplies “for the people”:

Another list presented requirements expressly “for the Admiral and his household,” who, on the basis of their stated needs, craved sweets and other delicacies to soften the hardships of the Indies:

The Admiral catalogued other indulgences to ease his stay in the islands: five-yard-long tablecloths, seventy-two small cloths, six towels, six pairs of tablecloths for his men, pewter cutlery, two silver cups, two jugs, a saltshaker, twelve spoons, two pairs of brass candlesticks, six copper pitchers, four pots, two cauldrons, four frying pans, two stewing pans, two copper pots with lids, a brass mortar, two iron spoons, graters, two forks, a colander, a large basin, candles and tapers, and a “grill to roast fish.” He did not explain how these items would help convert Indians, locate the Grand Khan, or find gold, but he did offer a suggestion concerning the islands’ cannibals. He urged the Sovereigns to consider “sending some of them to Castile . . . because they will finally abandon their cruel custom of eating flesh. And in Castile, by understanding the language, they can soon receive baptism and save their souls.” The Taínos, on whom Columbus had come to rely, would give “great credit when they see that we have taken prisoner those who torment them and of whom they are so fearful as to tremble at the very mention of their name.” He proposed regular transports of cannibals between the islands and Spain. “The more that are taken over there, the better.”

But the Sovereigns, noting the fatalities among the Indians who sailed for Spain, responded in the letter’s margin: “You must tell him what happened here with the cannibals who came.” The prospect of caravels filled with dying cannibals crowding the docks of Seville did not sit well with Ferdinand and Isabella; they much preferred that Columbus “should get busy there and, if at all possible, see to it that they submit to our holy Catholic faith, and likewise try to see to that with all the inhabitants right on their own islands.” In other words, it was better for Columbus to convert the Indians where they lived.

 

As if attending to navigation, exploration, the maintenance of his ships, the search for gold, and conversion were not enough to occupy him, the Admiral of the Ocean Sea also interested himself in the sensitive matter of finances. It was his conviction that the major participants of the second voyage, Ojeda, Chanca, and others, deserved recognition in the form of higher pay as well as good honey and fine oil and rose-colored sugar.

He expressed resentment of “these caballeros” who had substituted inferior horses at the last moment (“such nags that the best is not worth even 200 maravedís”). The Admiral declared, “These substitutions were carried out with great maliciousness,” and he described the dishonest scheme perpetrated by some of the men on the ships. “These caballeros, in addition to their pay, have had their expenses on the voyage paid so far, including that of their horses, and are still being paid now even though they are the kind of people who, when they do not
feel
well or do not
feel
like doing anything, claim that their horses are not to be used without them; and besides, they expect to do no work except on horseback.” The Sovereigns decreed that the caballeros must stay, but required them to make their horses available whenever “the Admiral so commands.”

And as for the unruly volunteers, who had a habit of going their own way, Columbus recommended that they, all two hundred of them, receive pay as a means of directing their conduct. (The Sovereigns agreed on this point.) And while he was at it, he asked for essentials such as clothing, shoes, mules, arquebuses, and crossbows to replenish the fleet’s dwindling stock of supplies.

In the midst of these tribulations, Columbus dispatched the restless Alonso de Ojeda with fifteen men to look for the mines of Cibao.

After days in the wild, Ojeda and his men returned, explaining that after ascending a troublesome mountain pass, they had been welcomed by the chieftain of a nearby village, and reached the Cibao in only six days. Once there, he observed Indians panning for loose nuggets of gold in a stream. Hearing from the Indians that many streams contained gold nuggets, Ojeda concluded that the region must be “very rich in gold,” an overstatement worthy of Columbus. Recovering from his illness, and “overjoyed,” said his son, Columbus decided to see the gold for himself.

Before setting out, Columbus assigned his brother Don Diego to secure La Isabela and supervise its construction. The Admiral ordered all the arms stored in the flagship during his absence “that none might use them to mutiny, as some had attempted to do while he was ill,” his son wrote. There was ample motivation. The hidalgos and other amateur explorers on the voyage believed that “as soon as they landed they could load themselves with gold and return home rich,” according to Ferdinand, without realizing that his father was as susceptible to the magic spell cast by gold as anyone in his crew, and encouraged the illusion. Sadly, “they did not know that gold may never be had without the sacrifice of time, toil and privations.” Once they were confronted with the reality that gold was scarce and difficult to mine, and that transporting it to Spain would be time-consuming and dangerous, disillusionment and resentment quickly set in. And so the stage was set for mutiny.

 

Columbus intimidated potential antagonists—both Spanish and Indian—with a show of force. Leading his men forth in military columns, as banners bearing royal insignia flapped haphazardly in the moist heat and thick vegetation muffled the sound of their trumpets, he departed from La Isabela on Wednesday, March 12, accompanied by every able-bodied man the expedition could spare, excepting those “required to guard the two ships and three caravels that remained of the fleet,” in Ferdinand’s words. Peter Martyr, claiming Columbus himself as his source, estimates the force included “all his cavalrymen and four hundred foot-soldiers,” bound for the Cibao and its gold.

Led by the amphibious Admiral, the land force embarked on a journey across a landscape “of such perfection, grace, and beauty,” wrote Las Casas, “so fresh, so green, so open, of such color and altogether so full of beauty, that as soon as they saw it they felt they had arrived in some part of Paradise.”