Christopher Columbus

E

Return to Spain

On January 6 the Pinta rejoined the expedition, and shortly thereafter the two remaining vessels headed home. Upon leaving the Caribbean, Columbus again had the good fortune of finding an ocean current, just as he had in the Canaries. Entering the Gulf Stream, his ships sailed far enough north to catch the prevailing westerly winds. But the return trip was not uneventful. As the ships approached Europe, they encountered a terrible storm. The Pinta became separated from the Niña and arrived at the port of Bayona on the northwest coast of Spain several days before the Niña made landfall. Columbus limped into Lisbon, where he was apprehended by agents of King John II. Although suspicious of Columbus’s story, the king accused him of violating Portuguese sovereignty in the Atlantic, which had been extended to all lands south and west of the Canary Islands by a series of papal decrees beginning in the 1450s. Afraid that the king might not release him, Columbus sent a secret messenger to the Spanish court relating his experiences and his detention. By mid-March he was free to return to Spain. On March 15, 1493, at noon, the Niña entered the harbor of Palos de la Frontera, 32 weeks after leaving from the same port. Although Pinzón had arrived in Spain earlier, he did not reach Palos until several hours after Columbus. Very sick, Pinzón died before he had a chance to report to the king.

Columbus alone held the stage. When he appeared before Ferdinand and Isabella at the royal palace in Barcelona, he was accorded the honor of being invited to sit with them and to eat at the same table. With a parade of exotic islanders and colorful parrots, he told his tale of the voyage and of the islands he explored, describing their lush vegetation and strange inhabitants. He also showed the gold he had brought home, some of it in the form of crowns, masks, and ornaments, and some in the form of nuggets and dust.

All of his rewards were reconfirmed and he was addressed by his new title, “Admiral of the Ocean Seas.” He received 1,000 doubloons, the equivalent of 345,000 maravedis. Columbus had delivered what he had promised—at least everybody at the Spanish court thought so—and as such he owned the day. He urged the sovereigns to equip another expedition as soon as possible, promising gold, spices, and other riches. The admiral had little difficulty persuading the Spanish royalty to sponsor a second voyage.

To prevent the Portuguese from attempting to claim the results of his voyage, Columbus had sent a letter to Pope Alexander VI (himself a Spaniard) as soon as he arrived in Spain. His letter explained his explorations in as much detail as he felt he could reveal. The pope issued a papal bull, or decree, in May 1493 granting control to Spain of every island Columbus had encountered. At Columbus’s urging, an imaginary line, called the Line of Demarcation, was drawn in the ocean 100 leagues (about 483 km/about 300 mi) west of the Cape Verde Islands. It was declared that all previously unknown land west of the line not belonging to a Christian sovereign belonged to Spain; anything east of the line went to Portugal. This declaration resulted in an immediate conflict because of the grant that had been made to Portugal in 1481. A resolution was reached in the following year when the sovereigns of Spain and Portugal signed the Treaty of Tordesillas. In this treaty the Line of Demarcation was moved to 370 leagues (about 1,780 km/about 1,110 mi) west of the Cape Verde Islands.

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VII

The Second Voyage (1493-1496)

The second voyage departed from Cádiz on September 25, 1493, and was of a much larger scale—17 ships and about 1,200 men accompanied Columbus. Included in the crew were two of Columbus’s brothers, Bartholomew and Giacomo (who, after moving to Spain, used the Spanish version of his name, Diego). The purposes of the voyage were to return to La Navidad in Hispaniola to relieve the men left behind from the first voyage, settle more colonists on the islands, and explore and claim other islands.

To quicken the departure, in case another nation might attempt an expedition, the sovereigns did not hesitate to provide Columbus with whatever supplies he requested. The cargo included horses, cattle, donkeys, sheep, goats, pigs, dogs, cats, chickens, grain, seed, and all the supplies needed for sailing, fending off attacks, building settlements, and setting up an administration overseas.

The fleet left Cádiz and, as before, stopped at the Canary Islands to make repairs and to store more meat, wood, and water. After leaving the Canary island of Hierro, the fleet took a more southerly route than before. On November 2, 21 days later, land was sighted. This new group of smaller islands (known as the Lesser Antilles) were south and east of the large islands of Cuba and Hispaniola (part of the Greater Antilles).

Encountering the islands of Guadeloupe and Puerto Rico along the way, Columbus reached Hispaniola at the end of November. The sailors fired a cannon to announce their arrival, but no one returned the salute. To their horror, they discovered that the entire settlement of La Navidad had been massacred and the site burned to the ground. As they searched for any trace of their compatriots, the newcomers found a mass grave in which several Spaniards had been buried. They discovered also that the village of Columbus’s friend Guacanagarí had been burned and destroyed. No one will ever know for sure what happened at La Navidad. The popular theory is that local islanders destroyed the settlement out of disgust with the Europeans’ greed and avarice.

A

Founding of Isabela

A new settlement, Isabela, was built a short distance east of La Navidad. Some of the settlers, however, balked at the prospect of doing manual labor. Many were ill, and others were more interested in finding gold and other riches than in building a settlement. To keep the colonists happy, Columbus organized an expedition to search for gold. When little gold was found, the settlers grew restive, and he decided on a policy of forced labor. Local peoples were put to work on the settlement. Enslavement of the indigenous peoples had not been one of the stated goals of the expedition and, in fact, it was offensive to the queen. Yet Columbus justified it on the grounds that it would be profitable.

Despite his policy of enslavement, Columbus did not find his first real riches on Hispaniola until 1496. Taking part in an expedition into the interior of the island, Columbus and his men forced the inhabitants of the region to gather loose gold. Within a few days they had collected about 10 kg (about 22 lb) of the precious metal. Although Columbus was impressed with the beauty of the Caribbean, he did not come looking for that. With incredible single-mindedness, the admiral was looking for riches and a doorway to Asia, to the land of Marco Polo, and hoping that Hispaniola might be Japan, and Cuba part of China.

Before returning to Spain in 1496, Columbus explored more of Cuba and encountered Jamaica. The admiral was determined to prove that Cuba belonged to mainland Asia and was part of the empire of the Mongols. Although he never sailed completely around the island, he did force his men to take a solemn oath that Cuba was a promontory of Asia.

B

Worsening Relations

As time wore on, relations between the Spaniards and the indigenous peoples of Hispaniola began to deteriorate. Instead of searching for provisions while Columbus was off exploring other islands, the men left behind raided Taíno villages in search of riches. With little hope for anything more than poverty and unhappiness, disgruntled settlers began returning home. Many of the men were sick, many died, and most were unhappy with the lack of opportunity. The fact that Columbus had left his brother Diego behind as governor of Isabela contributed to the admiral’s problems with the settlers. Diego was not an administrator. The colonists repeatedly protested against his ineffective rule and resented him for being an Italian. Some of the settlers began sending letters back to relatives and officials in Spain complaining about the conditions and the leadership. In October 1495 a Spanish official arrived with a royal commission to investigate Columbus and the charges that had been made by the discontented settlers. On March 10, 1496, Columbus had no choice but to return home hoping to preempt any royal inquiries into the complaints of the settlers. Leaving his brothers Bartholomew and Diego in charge of the colony, Columbus boarded a ship for Spain.

Ferdinand and Isabella gave Columbus a friendly welcome upon his return and listened with interest to his story about the discovery of new islands with great potential. They appeared grateful and continued to show him favor but waited more than a year before approving a third voyage.

VIII

The Third Voyage (1498-1500)

Having been cleared of any wrongdoing, and with the full confidence of the monarchs, Columbus left Sevilla with a fleet of six ships on May 30, 1498. Separating the expedition, Columbus sent one part to aid the settlement at Hispaniola, while he took the other part and sailed farther south than ever before. Departing from the Cape Verde Islands, he crossed the ocean in hope of discovering new islands in the southwest, toward the equator.

Columbus had the misfortune on this trip of entering the doldrums, a dead space in the ocean where wind and ocean currents die and the heat is unbearable. After a little more than a week, the crew was saved by a wind that pushed them westward. Changing course to the north brought Columbus to an island with three mountain peaks, which he named Trinidad. From there they sailed west into the Gulf of Paria and then to the coast of South America, where they found the mouth of the Orinoco River, the largest river any of the crew had ever seen. Seeing the huge amount of water flowing into the sea, Columbus believed that he had found the Garden of Eden—in those days people thought that all great rivers flowed from there. Without giving in to the idea that he was someplace other than Asia, he did manage to report, “I believe this is a very large continent which until now has remained unknown.”

After several weeks of exploring Trinidad, the Gulf of Paria, and nearby Margarita Island, Columbus headed for Hispaniola, where his brother Bartholomew had begun building a new settlement. Bartholomew had decided to move the settlement from Isabela, which had a poor water supply, to a new site near a place where the Spaniards had encountered gold mines. The new settlement was named Santo Domingo. When Columbus arrived at the new settlement at the end of August 1498, however, he found not a city at work but a country at war. Many of the settlers, upset about the lack of opportunity and unwilling to put the effort into building a long-lasting colony, were rebelling. Two factions had formed: those who were loyal to the Columbus family, and the rebels, led by Francisco Roldán, whom Columbus had appointed mayor of Isabela before returning to Spain after his second voyage. It took two years to put down the revolt and restore order. To end the rebellion Columbus had to agree to give each of the rebels a plot of land and the islanders who lived on it.

Despite these measures, however, conditions in the colony continued to deteriorate over the next several months. In great anguish over his inability to bring peace to the island, Columbus requested that the Spanish king and queen send a judge to the island to deal with the situation. In response, the monarchs sent Francisco de Bobadilla. Unfortunately for Columbus, Bobadilla carried a decree stripping Columbus of the titles of governor and viceroy and appointing Bobadilla governor of the Spanish possessions in the Americas. Shortly after his arrival, Bobadilla seized Columbus’s house and records and sent an order to have Columbus and his brothers found and arrested. They were placed in chains and returned to Spain. Columbus refused to have the chains removed until the monarchs themselves issued the order to do so. He arrived in Cádiz in November 1500. Upon hearing of the plight of the admiral, the sovereigns immediately ordered the chains removed and he and his brothers freed.

On December 17, 1500, Columbus went before the royal court. The king and queen instructed that whatever items were taken from Columbus at his arrest be restored to him. The monarchs would not reinstate Columbus’s titles, however. Instead they removed Bobadilla and replaced him with Nicolás de Ovando. This was, however, neither victory nor vindication for Columbus. With his titles annulled, the former governor spent the next two years in despair and humiliation.

Meanwhile, a flurry of exploration had taken place in the Caribbean Sea, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Indian Ocean. In South America, ships reached as far south as Río de la Plata, which forms the southern border of what is now Uruguay, and far north along the coast of North America. Columbus clung desperately to his original theory that the islands he had encountered were part of Asia, but he was alone in his belief. Other navigators saw it as a world hitherto unknown. Whatever it was, colonial activity in the Americas took on a life of its own, and Columbus could do very little to alter its course.

In 1488 the Portuguese navigator Bartolomeu Dias had successfully rounded the southern tip of Africa, and in 1499 Vasco da Gama had returned to Lisbon after a successful trip around Africa and across the Indian Ocean to India. This gave the Portuguese their direct trade route to Asia and finally outflanked the Muslims who controlled the overland trade routes between Europe and Asia. For Columbus, Portugal’s success was a new opportunity, and the Spanish monarchs were again receptive to his vision of finding a strait to mainland China. Rather than retiring with a pension and an estate, perhaps even a castle, Columbus suggested yet another voyage, his fourth.

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