A Family of Islands Read online

  The second expedition was very much larger than the first. Seventeen ships were assembled instead of three, and fifteen hundred men instead of eighty-eight. Many varieties of men were to make the crossing. The prospective colonists were not all of them, by any means, seamen under a captain’s orders. Many were independent adventurers in search of gold and glory; there were also ecclesiastics, with very definite views as to their own importance, whose standards were not those of the admiral; neither faction would accept the admiral’s authority without question. The group also included a number of recently released jailbirds who, once free from discipline, were likely to prove truculent.

  The seventeen ships were provisioned not only for the voyage but for residence. The deficiencies in the diet of the islands were to be repaired with many kinds of seed, with wheat and barley, with sugar cane from the Canaries, with oranges, melons, lemons. They also took animals – cows, bulls, goats, horses, poultry. The descendants of the eight pigs that Columbus took with him on this voyage were later to provide the conquistadores of South America with their main source of nourishment.

  The instructions given to Columbus were specific. It must be made clear on every occasion that authority derived from the King and Queen and from no one else. An oath of allegiance to the crown was to be taken by every man setting out on the expedition. Every judicial sentence had to be announced by the town crier as ‘the justice which is rendered by the King and Queen, our sovereigns’, and all the orders issued by the admiral and viceroy had to be delivered in the name of Ferdinand and Isabella.

  Yet, although these orders were given under the names of Ferdinand and Isabella, Isabella thought of herself primarily as Queen of Castile, rather than the joint occupant of the Spanish throne, and she regarded Columbus’ expeditions as a Castilian operation; she decreed that the new territories should be administered from Seville, and formed a special department to deal with them. This decision was later to hamper the colonial machine, since Seville stands several miles up a river that is awkward for big shipping.

  The day Columbus sailed upon this second voyage was the high point of his career. Never again was he to enjoy completely the confidence of his fellow men. It was a proud day for his country, too, the beginning of Spain’s imperial greatness. Yet ironically enough, four hundred years later, historians were to wonder whether, in spite of Spain’s achievements across the Atlantic, it might have been better for her if Portugal had accepted Columbus’ proposal in the first place. Had Portugal discovered the New World, the most ambitious Spaniards would not have been lured to emigrate, nor would the sudden inflow of bullion have disorganized Spanish economy, causing inflation and, through a faulty appraisal of the reasons and consequences of that inflation, ruining the home industries that Isabella had been so anxious to foster. Little of the gold that came into Spain reached the Spanish people. It went to middlemen and to other countries; it enriched the Creole colonists and it financed the ruinous Flemish Wars. It might have been better for Spain if she had spread her powers, as Ferdinand himself had wished, across the Mediterranean instead of the Atlantic, pursuing the Moors into Africa.

  For his second voyage Columbus took a southern route, and his first landfall was the island that he called Guadeloupe. He made here the unwelcome discovery that it was inhabited by a race very different from the gentle Arawaks. He found human limbs hanging from the rafters, and the remains of a young man being boiled with the flesh of geese and parrots. These cannibals, who came to be known as Caribs, had been gradually advancing up the Lesser Antilles, exterminating opposition as they went. Adult men and women were killed; girls were kept to provide babies for the larder; boys were caponized.

  This unsavoury disclosure partially resolved one problem that had puzzled Columbus. Lack of a common language had proved a great hindrance in his dealings with the Indians. He had taken on board a few Arawaks whom he had instructed in the elements of Castilian, so that they might act as interpreters, but the Arawaks conversed largely in sign language. He had noticed on his first voyage that Indians in the bush often fled in terror at the first sight of a Spaniard, shouting, ‘Can, Can.’ He was convinced that the object of their terror was the armies of the great Khan, and instructed his men to shout after them, ‘No can. No can.’ He now realized that ‘can’ was the Indian word for Carib territory; and that the Indians were terrified of a race that was perpetually raiding their coast for the replenishment of its larders.

  On this second voyage Columbus discovered several of the islands that are known now as the Lesser Antilles – Antigua, Dominica, Montserrat, Puerto Rico. He found pineapples, rhubarb, cinnamon, cassava bread, yams, sweet potatoes; he also saw some excellent cotton rugs and earthenware vessels. But he found no gold. Its absence, coupled with the ferocity of the Caribs, convinced him that it was useless to attempt a settlement there, and he pushed on to Hispaniola. There he was to receive a second shock.

  The Indians who welcomed him at La Navidad did their best to assure him that all was well, but indicated, as best they could by signs, that some of the garrison had died of sickness and others had quarrelled among themselves. He was soon to discover that not one of his former comrades was alive. He was never to learn under what conditions they had met their end.

  This second voyage was the first colonial expedition that Europe had undertaken, and the odds against its success can be appreciated readily today. In our estimate of its chances, we can be guided by the experience of four and a half centuries. Columbus was first in the field. He had no such guide. His second voyage was indeed to serve as a warning to his successors.

  Setting out to build a new Spain across the water, he believed that culture, customs and faith could be transplanted easily, once the Atlantic had been crossed. He had no conception of the different way of life that was demanded by a different climate and by the demands of a different, if subject race. The Spaniards had to accommodate themselves to tropical conditions. Diseases to which the Indians were immune might well prove lethal. They had to discover what diet and clothes were most suitable to the climate, and what kind of house. They also had to live on terms of cordiality with a race speaking a different language, a race with different ideas, laws, customs.

  Columbus landed at Watling Island dressed in the full regalia of a Spanish grandee, carrying the royal standard. The heat must have been overpowering, and it would appear from pictures that Spaniards dressed in the tropics just as they would in Spain, in satin and velvet, very often in armour and always carrying swords. They must have endured the greatest discomfort. The strain on their nerves must have been incessant. The pictures that illustrate early West Indian books always show Europeans dressed as though they were attending a court function in Madrid, Paris, or London.

  Only an exceptional man could have conducted such an enterprise successfully. Columbus was an exceptional man; he was more than an exceptional man; he was a man of genius. But he was the wrong kind of genius for this particular undertaking. He was a man in conflict with his time. There are two types of man in conflict with their time-the reactionary who hankers for the past, and the visionary whose aim exceeds his grasp. Columbus had the faith and imagination to picture a Christian and Spanish empire beyond the seas, which would fill the coffers and heighten the prestige of Castile and Aragon; he could foresee a pattern of trade payments in which the colonies would provide raw materials for the home country’s industries, in return for which the home country would supply finished products; he also visualized trade between the colonies and neighbouring countries, to the home country’s eventual profit. He saw the necessity of stocking a colony with the resources that a European population required. Many of the arrangements that were made for the second voyage were the outcome of Isabella’s foresight, but Columbus must have made his own contribution. Considering that not only he and his sovereigns but Europe as a whole had no previous experience of colonial administration, it is remarkable that the expedition should have been fitted out so quickly, that allow
ances should have been made for so many contingencies. Columbus was far more than a navigator; he had the vision of a great proconsul. But he had not the temperament of one.

  It has been said of the British Empire that it was founded by rebels, by men who put their telescopes to their blind eyes, but that it was organized from London by the very men against whom those rebels were in conflict. There was constant friction between the bureaucrats of Whitehall and the Warren Hastings’ of India and the Stamford Raffles’ of Singapore, but the two acted as balances for one another; they supplemented one another; for two centuries they created harmony out of disharmony. Columbus, however, was expected to combine within himself these two opposing factions. He was the rebel, the initiator, but he had to be also the cautioning counsellor. It is not surprising that the result should have been unsatisfactory.

  Columbus was authoritative, intolerant of opposition, distrustful of his fellows. On his first voyage he had managed to quarrel with his second-in-command and with the crew of his own ship, and had concealed from his crew the extent of the day’s run, keeping two separate logs so that they should not know how far they were from Spain. He did not confide in his associates. He trusted only his family, although he must have known that his brother Diego was ineffectual. Like most ambitious men, he was ruthless and relentless in the pursuit of his ambition. He did not spare himself; why should he spare others? He never considered the feelings and interests of others. He was completely absorbed in himself and in his dream. He was not equipped for the role of colonial governor, and on this second instance he was rendered even more unsuitable by his overriding need to make contact with the mainland of Cathay.

  Since La Navidad had been destroyed, he established a second settlement a few miles along the coast, which he called Isabela. The site for it was to prove unsuitable, and it was soon visited by an epidemic. The nature of this epidemic is unknown. Today the Caribbean area is one of the healthiest in the world, but more British troops died of yellow fever in the West Indies during the Napoleonic Wars than fell in action in the Peninsular campaign. It may have been that the colonists were the victims of influenza; it may have been that they were the victims of undernourishment and overwork. It is certain that the ill health among the settlers contributed to their intractability. The Hidalgos were indignant at being put to work on menial labours, on fencing, ditching, the raising and roofing of houses. They had been assured that gold was here; why could they not get at it?

  Columbus also was sure that gold was there. His certainty that it was there heightened the unhappy atmosphere in the colony. Leaving the management of Isabela to Diego, he marched into the interior with a large portion of his troops to examine a section of the island where he believed gold to exist. He was away only two and a half weeks, but seventeen days is a long time in the tropics when tempers are strained, and he returned to find Isabela a hospital rather than a camp.

  The colonists were starving; the food they had imported had deteriorated and the native food did not agree with their digestions. He had no flour with which to relieve their distress, but there was wheat and there was a river. He therefore ordered the. building of saw mills. This was a further indignity to his Hidalgos.

  Columbus was impatient with their trivial complaints. What did their petty dignities matter in comparison with the wealth that lay so near at hand? On his short trip into the interior he had reached, through a difficult mountain pass, a fertile valley with friendly natives, beyond which he had found a dry, rocky territory whose rivers contained gold. Surely any moment now he would stumble on the lands of treasure. His health was weakening; he had no time to waste.

  He flung himself with spasmodic energy into his role as Viceroy: he founded another settlement on the north coast, then another on the south side of the island, calling it Santo Domingo; but all that was something that he did with his left hand, a sideshow. He was fretting to be away. The sense of urgency prevented him from paying the necessary attention to the needs and importunities of his subjects.

  He was always impatient to be away, to explore the interior of Hispaniola and the coastline of Cuba. The word ‘can’ again misled him. A native told him that there was gold in ‘Cubanacan’. This meant to his Indian informant that there was gold in the centre of Cuba,’ nacan’ being the Indian for middle, but Columbus believed that Cuba was part of the mainland and that he was actually in China. He was so convinced that Cuba was the mainland that he made his crew swear before a lawyer that it was a continent; he threatened them with fines if they would not sign. Each time he returned to Isabela he found the colony in a worse state. It was essential that a strong man should be continually on the spot, yet Columbus was for ever absenting himself, delegating his powers to a council presided over by Diego.

  On one of his excursions, an envoy whom he had sent into the interior with a letter of introduction to the great Khan returned with the letter undelivered but with the report that he had seen men carrying flaming branches with which they fumigated their homes and villages, placing the stalks in their mouths, inhaling the smoke, then blowing it out into the air. He had, in fact, discovered tobacco. But Columbus was not interested in this great source of wealth. It was not gold. The incident is typical of the whole Spanish adventure across the ocean. Spain was only interested in gold and silver, not the means to wealth.

  Columbus discovered Jamaica, but found no gold there and was soon on his way back to Cuba. He sailed along its coast to within a hundred and fifty miles of its western tip. Had he continued his voyage he must have realized that Cuba was an island, and he might have learned that Yucatan and the mines of Mexico were across the water, but the claims of his double role intervened. He was short of food, the winds were high, the coastline was set with shoals.

  He retraced his path, zigzagging among the islands, uncertain of his direction. After a five months’ absence, he returned to chaos. He also returned in broken health, unfit to continue the administration of the city. He delegated his powers this time to his elder brother.

  Commanders in the field complain that the bureaucrats directing their destiny from a desk in a capital cannot place themselves imaginatively in the position of someone who is ‘on the spot’. The bureaucrats in their turn complain that the man on the spot does not appreciate that his problem is one of many, to be assessed in relation to those of others. During the thirty months that Columbus spent upon his second voyage, Ferdinand and Isabella had a great deal upon their hands, much of which must have seemed, particularly to Ferdinand, more important than an expedition of seventeen vessels to the West.

  Ferdinand had always been more concerned with the Old World than the New. Now that the Moorish menace had been removed, he could concentrate upon his diplomatic role in the courts of Europe. He had at his disposal the veterans of the Moorish War, and he was confident that if he played his cards carefully he could establish Spain as a first-rank power. He was too busy recruiting and organizing an army, and manipulating political alliances, to give his full attention to the Caribbean. Isabella, for her part, was occupied with her children’s marriages, that of her delicate and adored son, Juan, to Margaret of Austria, and that of her daughter, the infanta Juana, to the son of the Emperor Maximilian. These marriages would ensure the continuance of her own stock in Castile and Aragon and might lead to the union of Spain and Portugal. The progress of her empire across the seas had become momentarily of secondary importance.

  Such news as she did receive had worried her. The reports of Columbus himself still glowed with optimism, but there was not as yet any very practical return for the considerable cost of the expedition. Very little gold had been sent home; and only small quantities of musk and cinnamon. Columbus insisted that the discovery of the rich gold and silver mines of Cathay was imminent, but his only concrete suggestion was to send home Carib cannibals as slaves, so that they could be cured of their taste for human flesh and be instructed in the faith. The returning caravels could bring out cattle. This, in his opinion, wo
uld prove a profitable trade and provide the crown with substantial dues.

  The idea did not commend itself to Their Majesties, particularly to Isabella. She and Ferdinand had sponsored the baptism of the first Indians that Columbus had brought back. The role that she conceived for them in the social hierarchy, as attendants and servants to the Spaniards, was certainly a lowly one, but they were subjects and not slaves. In the instructions which he had taken on his second voyage, Columbus had been adjured to treat the Indians with affection. Their Majesties’ reply to Columbus’ suggestion was noncommittal. They must wait, they said, until they had consulted with their theologians.

  Before a decision had been reached, four ships arrived in Seville, containing some five hundred Indian slaves. Isabella was at first under the impression that these slaves were prisoners of war, Columbus having sent her news of a battle in which three hundred Spaniards, with the help of bloodhounds, had routed 100,000 Indians. As it was the custom of the day to treat prisoners of war as slaves, Isabella, believing this to be the status of the Indians and believing them to be all male, authorized their sale. She was highly indignant when she learned that they were of both sexes, some little more than children. She commanded that they should be freed and returned to their homes. But before her orders could be carried out, the slaves had died. They had been brought over unclothed like cattle and they had been unable to withstand the cold. They had proved a highly unprofitable investment for their purchasers.