The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II)

W >> Washington Irving >> The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II)

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44

This conference was not conducted so privately, but that the rest of the
rebels learnt the purport of the mission; and the offer of pardon and
deliverance occasioned great tumult and agitation. Porras, fearful of
their desertion, assured them that these offers of the admiral were all
deceitful; that he was naturally cruel and vindictive, and only sought to
get them into his power to wreak on them his vengeance. He exhorted them
to persist in their opposition to his tyranny; reminding them, that those
who had formerly done so in Hispaniola, had eventually triumphed, and sent
him home in irons; he assured them that they might do the same; and again
made vaunting promises of protection in Spain, through the influence of
his relatives. But the boldest of his assertions was with respect to the
caravel of Escobar. It shows the ignorance of the age, and the
superstitious awe which the common people entertained with respect to
Columbus and his astronomical knowledge. Porras assured them that no real
caravel had arrived, but a mere phantasm conjured up by the admiral, who
was deeply versed in necromancy. In proof of this, he adverted to its
arriving in the dusk of the evening; its holding communication 'with no
one but the admiral, and its sudden disappearance in the night. Had it
been a real caravel, the crew would have sought to talk with their
countrymen; the admiral, his son and brother, would have eagerly embarked
on board, and it would at any rate have remained a little while in port,
and not have vanished so suddenly and mysteriously. [198]

By these, and similar delusions, Porras succeeded in working upon the
feelings and credulity of his followers. Fearful, however, that they might
yield to after reflection, and to further offers from the admiral, he
determined to involve them in some act of violence which would commit them
beyond all hopes of forgiveness. He marched them, therefore, to an Indian
village called Maima, [199] about a quarter of a league from the ships,
intending to plunder the stores remaining on board the wreck, and to take
the admiral prisoner. [200]

Columbus had notice of the designs of the rebels, and of their approach.
Being confined by his infirmities, he sent his brother to endeavor with
mild words to persuade them from their purpose, and win them to obedience;
but with sufficient force to resist any violence. The Adelantado, who was
a man rather of deeds than of words, took with him fifty followers, men of
tried resolution, and ready to fight in any cause. They were well armed
and full of courage, though many were pale and debilitated from recent
sickness, and from long confinement to the ships. Arriving on the side of
a hill, within a bow-shot of the village, the Adelantado discovered the
rebels, and dispatched the same two messengers to treat with them, who had
already carried them the offer of pardon. Porras and his fellow-leaders,
however, would not permit them to approach. They confided in the
superiority of their numbers, and in their men being, for the most part,
hardy sailors, rendered robust and vigorous by the roving life they had
been leading in the forests and the open air. They knew that many of those
who were with the Adelantado were men brought up in a softer mode of life.
They pointed to their pale countenances, and persuaded their followers
that they were mere household men, fair-weather troops, who could never
stand before them. They did not reflect that, with such men, pride and
lofty spirit often more than supply the place of bodily force, and they
forgot that their adversaries had the incalculable advantage of justice
and law upon their side. Deluded by their words, their followers were
excited to a transient glow of courage, and, brandishing their weapons,
refused to listen to the messengers.

Six of the stoutest rebels made a league to stand by one another and
attack the Adelantado; for, he being killed, the rest would be easily
defeated. The main body formed themselves into a squadron, drawing their
swords and shaking their lances. They did not wait to be assailed, but,
uttering shouts and menaces, rushed upon the enemy. They were so well
received, however, that at the first shock four or five were killed, most
of them the confederates who had leagued to attack the Adelantado. The
latter, with his own hand, killed Juan Sanchez, the same powerful mariner
who had carried off the cacique Quibian; and Juan Barber also, who had
first drawn a sword against the admiral in this rebellion. The Adelantado
with his usual vigor and courage was dealing his blows about him in the
thickest of the affray, where several lay killed and wounded, when he was
assailed by Francisco de Porras. The rebel with a blow of his sword cleft
the buckler of Don Bartholomew, and wounded the hand which grasped it. The
sword remained wedged in the shield, and before Porras could withdraw it,
the Adelantado closed upon him, grappled him, and, being assisted by
others, after a severe struggle, took him prisoner. [201]

When the rebels beheld their leader a captive, their transient courage was
at an end, and they fled in confusion. The Adelantado would have pursued
them, but was persuaded to let them escape with the punishment they had
received; especially as it was necessary to guard against the possibility
of an attack from the Indians.

The latter had taken arms and drawn up in battle array, gazing with
astonishment at this fight between white men, but without taking part on
either side. When the battle was over, they approached the field, gazing
upon the dead bodies of the beings they had once fancied immortal. They
were curious in examining the wounds made by the Christian weapons. Among
the wounded insurgents was Pedro Ledesma, the same pilot who so bravely
swam ashore at Veragua, to procure tidings of the colony. He was a man of
prodigious muscular force and a hoarse deep voice. As the Indians, who
thought him dead, were inspecting the wounds with which he was literally
covered, he suddenly uttered an ejaculation in his tremendous voice, at
the sound of which the savages fled in dismay. This man, having fallen
into a cleft or ravine, was not discovered by the white men until the
dawning of the following day, having remained all that time without a drop
of water. The number and severity of the wounds he is said to have
received would seem incredible, but they are mentioned by Fernando
Columbus, who was an eye-witness, and by Las Casas, who had the account
from Ledesma himself. For want of proper remedies, his wounds were treated
in the roughest manner, yet, through the aid of a vigorous constitution,
he completely recovered. Las Casas conversed with him several years
afterwards at Seville, when he obtained from him various particulars
concerning this voyage of Columbus. Some few days after this conversation,
however, he heard that Ledesma had fallen under the knife of an assassin.
[202]

The Adelantado returned in triumph to the ships, where he was received by
the admiral in the most affectionate manner; thanking him as his
deliverer. He brought Porras and several of his followers prisoners. Of
his own party only two had been wounded; himself in the hand, and the
admiral's steward, who had received an apparently slight wound with a
lance, equal to one of the most insignificant of those with which Ledesma
was covered; yet, in spite of careful treatment, he died.

On the next day, the 20th of May, the fugitives sent a petition to the
admiral, signed with all their names, in which, says Las Casas, they
confessed all their misdeeds, and cruelties, and evil intentions,
supplicating the admiral to have pity on them and pardon them for their
rebellion, for which God had already punished them. They offered to return
to their obedience and to serve him faithfully in future, making an oath
to that effect upon a cross and a missal, accompanied by an imprecation
worthy of being recorded: "They hoped, should they break their oath, that
no priest nor other Christian might ever confess them; that repentance
might be of no avail; that they might be deprived of the holy sacraments
of the church; that at their death they might receive no benefit from
bulls nor indulgences; that their bodies might be cast out into the fields
like those of heretics and renegadoes, instead of being buried in holy
ground; and that they might not receive absolution from the pope, nor from
cardinals, nor archbishops, nor bishops, nor any other Christian priests."
[203] Such were the awful imprecations by which these men endeavored to
add validity to an oath. The worthlessness of a man's word may always be
known by the extravagant means he uses to enforce it.

The admiral saw, by the abject nature of this petition, how completely the
spirit of these misguided men was broken; with his wonted magnanimity, he
readily granted their prayer, and pardoned their offences; but on one
condition, that their ringleader, Francisco Porras, should remain a
prisoner.

As it was difficult to maintain so many persons on board of the ships, and
as quarrels might take place between persons who had so recently been at
blows, Columbus put the late followers of Porras under the command of a
discreet and faithful man; and giving in his charge a quantity of European
articles for the purpose of purchasing food of the natives, directed him
to forage about the island until the expected vessels should arrive.

At length, after a long year of alternate hope and despondency, the doubts
of the Spaniards were joyfully dispelled by the sight of two vessels
standing into the harbor. One proved to be a ship hired and well
victualed, at the expense of the admiral, by the faithful and
indefatigable Diego Mendez; the other had been subsequently fitted out by
Ovando, and put under the command of Diego de Salcedo, the admiral's agent
employed to collect his rents in San Domingo.

The long neglect of Ovando to attend to the relief of Columbus had, it
seems, roused the public indignation, insomuch that animadversions had
been made upon his conduct even in the pulpits. This is affirmed by Las
Casas, who was at San Domingo at the time. If the governor had really
entertained hopes that, during the delay of relief, Columbus might perish
in the island, the report brought back by Escobar must have completely
disappointed him. No time was to be lost if he wished to claim any merit
in his deliverance, or to avoid the disgrace of having totally neglected
him. He exerted himself, therefore, at the eleventh hour, and dispatched a
caravel at the same time with the ship sent by Diego Mendez. The latter,
having faithfully discharged this part of his mission, and seen the ships
depart, proceeded to Spain on the further concerns of the admiral. [204]

Book XVII.

Chapter I.

Administration of Ovando in Hispaniola.--Oppression of the Natives.

[1503.]

Before relating the return of Columbus to Hispaniola, it is proper to
notice some of the principal occurrences which took place in that island
under the government of Ovando. A great crowd of adventurers of various
ranks had thronged his fleet--eager speculators, credulous dreamers, and
broken-down gentlemen of desperate fortunes; all expecting to enrich
themselves suddenly in an island where gold was to be picked up from the
surface of the soil, or gathered from the mountain-brooks. They had
scarcely landed, says Las Casas, who accompanied the expedition, when they
all hurried off to the mines, about eight leagues distant. The roads
swarmed like ant-hills, with adventurers of all classes. Every one had his
knapsack stored with biscuit or flour, and his mining implements on his
shoulders. Those hidalgos, or gentlemen, who had no servants to carry
their burdens, bore them on their own backs, and lucky was he who had a
horse for the journey; he would be able to bring back the greater load of
treasure. They all set out in high spirits, eager who should first reach
the golden land; thinking they had but to arrive at the mines, and collect
riches; "for they fancied," says Las Casas, "that gold was to be gathered
as easily and readily as fruit from the trees." When they arrived,
however, they discovered, to their dismay, that it was necessary to dig
painfully into the bowels of the earth--a labor to which most of them had
never been accustomed; that it required experience and sagacity to detect
the veins of ore; that, in fact, the whole process of mining was
exceedingly toilsome, demanded vast patience and much experience, and,
after all, was full of uncertainty. They digged eagerly for a time, but
found no ore. They grew hungry, threw by their implements, sat down to
eat, and then returned to work. It was all in vain. "Their labor," says
Las Casas, "gave them a keen appetite and quick digestion, but no gold."
They soon consumed their provisions, exhausted their patience, cursed
their infatuation, and in eight days set off drearily on their return
along the roads they had lately trod so exultingly. They arrived at San
Domingo without an ounce of gold, half-famished, downcast, and despairing.
[205] Such is too often the case of those who ignorantly engage in
mining--of all speculations the most brilliant, promising, and fallacious.

Poverty soon fell upon these misguided men. They exhausted the little
property brought from Spain. Many suffered extremely from hunger, and were
obliged to exchange even their apparel for bread. Some formed connections
with the old settlers of the island; but the greater part were like men
lost and bewildered, and just awakened from a dream. The miseries of the
mind, as usual, heightened the sufferings of the body. Some wasted away
and died broken-hearted; others were hurried off by raging fevers, so that
there soon perished upwards of a thousand men.

Ovando was reputed a man of great prudence and sagacity, and he certainly
took several judicious measures for the regulation of the island, and the
relief of the colonists. He made arrangements for distributing the married
persons and the families which had come out in his fleet, in four towns in
the interior, granting them important privileges. He revived the drooping
zeal for mining, by reducing the royal share of the product from one-half
to a third, and shortly after to a fifth; but he empowered the Spaniards
to avail themselves, in the most oppressive manner, of the labor of the
unhappy natives in working the mines. The charge of treating the natives
with severity had been one of those chiefly urged against Columbus. It is
proper, therefore, to notice, in this respect, the conduct of his
successor, a man chosen for his prudence, and his supposed capacity to
govern.

It will be recollected, that when Columbus was in a manner compelled to
assign lands to the rebellious followers of Francisco Roldan, in 1499, he
had made an arrangement that the caciques in their vicinity should, in
lieu of tribute, furnish a number of their subjects to assist them in
cultivating their estates. This, as has been observed, was the
commencement of the disastrous system of repartimientos, or distributions
of Indians. When Bobadilla administered the government, he constrained the
caciques to furnish a certain number of Indians to each Spaniard, for the
purpose of working the mines; where they were employed like beasts of
burden. He made an enumeration of the natives, to prevent evasion; reduced
them into classes, and distributed them among the Spanish inhabitants. The
enormous oppressions which ensued have been noticed. They roused the
indignation of Isabella; and when Ovando was sent out to supersede
Bobadilla, in 1502, the natives were pronounced free; they immediately
refused to labor in the mines.

Ovando represented to the Spanish sovereigns, in 1503, that ruinous
consequences resulted to the colony from this entire liberty granted to
the Indians. He stated that the tribute could not be collected, for the
Indians were lazy and improvident; that they could only be kept from vices
and irregularities by occupation; that they now kept aloof from the
Spaniards, and from all instruction in the Christian faith.

The last representation had an influence with Isabella, and drew a letter
from the sovereigns to Ovando, in 1503, in which he was ordered to spare
no pains to attach the natives to the Spanish nation and the Catholic
religion. To make them labor moderately, if absolutely essential to their
own good; but to temper authority with persuasion and kindness. To pay
them regularly and fairly for their labor, and to have them instructed in
religion on certain days.

Ovando availed himself of the powers given him by this letter, to their
fullest extent. He assigned to each Castilian a certain number of Indians,
according to the quality of the applicant, the nature of the application,
or his own pleasure. It was arranged in the form of an order on a cacique
for a certain number of Indians, who were to be paid by their employer,
and instructed in the Catholic faith. The pay was so small as to be little
better than nominal; the instruction was little more than the mere
ceremony of baptism; and the term of labor was at first six months, and
then eight months in the year. Under cover of this hired labor, intended
for the good both of their bodies and their souls, more intolerable toil
was exacted from them, and more horrible cruelties were inflicted, than in
the worst days of Bobadilla. They were separated often the distance of
several days' journey from their wives and children, and doomed to
intolerable labor of all kinds, extorted by the cruel infliction of the
lash. For food they had the cassava bread, an unsubstantial support for
men obliged to labor; sometimes a scanty portion of pork was distributed
among a great number of them, scarce a mouthful to each. When the
Spaniards who superintended the mines were at their repast, says Las
Casas, the famished Indians scrambled under the table, like dogs, for any
bone thrown to them. After they had gnawed and sucked it, they pounded it
between stones and mixed it with their cassava bread, that nothing of so
precious a morsel might be lost. As to those who labored in the fields,
they never tasted either flesh or fish; a little cassava bread and a few
roots were their support. While the Spaniards thus withheld the
nourishment necessary to sustain their health and strength, they exacted a
degree of labor sufficient to break down the most vigorous man. If the
Indians fled from this incessant toil and barbarous coercion, and took
refuge in the mountains, they were hunted out like wild beasts, scourged
in the most inhuman manner, and laden with chains to prevent a second
escape. Many perished long before their term of labor had expired. Those
who survived their term of six or eight months, were permitted to return
to their homes, until the next term commenced. But their homes were often
forty, sixty, and eighty leagues distant. They had nothing to sustain them
through the journey but a few roots or agi peppers, or a little cassava
bread. Worn down by long toil and cruel hardships, which their feeble
constitutions were incapable of sustaining, many had not strength to
perform the journey, but sank down and died by the way; some by the side
of a brook, others under the shade of a tree, where they had crawled for
shelter from the sun. "I have found many dead in the road," says Las
Casas, "others gasping under the trees, and others in the pangs of death,
faintly crying, Hunger! hunger!" [206] Those who reached their homes most
commonly found them desolate. During the eight months they had been
absent, their wives and children had either perished or wandered away;
the fields on which they depended for food were overrun with weeds, and
nothing was left them but to lie down, exhausted and despairing, and die
at the threshold of their habitations. [207]

It is impossible to pursue any further the picture drawn by the venerable
Las Casas, not of what he had heard, but of what he had seen; nature and
humanity revolt at the details. Suffice it to say that, so intolerable
were the toils and sufferings inflicted upon this weak and unoffending
race, that they sank under them, dissolving, as it were, from the face of
the earth. Many killed themselves in despair, and even mothers overcame
the powerful instinct of nature, and destroyed the infants at their
breasts, to spare them a life of wretchedness. Twelve years had not
elapsed since the discovery of the island, and several hundred thousand of
its native inhabitants had perished, miserable victims to the grasping
avarice of the white men.

Chapter II.

Massacre at Xaragua.--Fate of Anacaona.

[1503.]

The sufferings of the natives under the civil policy of Ovando have been
briefly shown; it remains to give a concise view of the military
operations of this commander, so lauded by certain of the early historians
for his prudence. By this notice a portion of the eventful history of this
island will be recounted which is connected with the fortunes of Columbus,
and which comprises the thorough subjugation, and, it may also be said,
extermination of the native inhabitants. And first, we must treat of the
disasters of the beautiful province of Xaragua, the seat of hospitality,
the refuge of the suffering Spaniards; and of the fate of the female
cacique, Anacaona, once the pride of the island, and the generous friend
of white men.

Behechio, the ancient cacique of this province, being dead, Anacaona, his
sister, had succeeded to the government. The marked partiality which she
once manifested for the Spaniards had been greatly weakened by the general
misery they had produced in her country; and by the brutal profligacy
exhibited in her immediate dominions by the followers of Roldan. The
unhappy story of the loves of her beautiful daughter Higuenamota, with the
young Spaniard Hernando de Guevara, had also caused her great affliction;
and, finally, the various and enduring hardships inflicted on her once
happy subjects by the grinding systems of labor enforced by Bobadilla and
Ovando, had at length, it is said, converted her friendship into absolute
detestation.

This disgust was kept alive and aggravated by the Spaniards who lived in
her immediate neighborhood, and had obtained grants of land there; a
remnant of the rebel faction of Roldan, who retained the gross
licentiousness and open profligacy in which they had been indulged under
the loose misrule of that commander, and who made themselves odious to the
inferior caciques, by exacting services tyrannically and capriciously
under the baneful system of repartimientos.

The Indians of this province were uniformly represented as a more
intelligent, polite, and generous-spirited race than any others of the
islands. They were the more prone to feel and resent the overbearing
treatment to which they were subjected. Quarrels sometimes took place
between the caciques and their oppressors. These were immediately reported
to the governor as dangerous mutinies; and a resistance to any capricious
and extortionate exaction was magnified into a rebellious resistance to
the authority of government. Complaints of this kind were continually
pouring in upon Ovando, until he was persuaded by some alarmist, or some
designing mischief-maker, that there was a deep-laid conspiracy among the
Indians of this province to rise upon the Spaniards.

Ovando immediately set out for Xaragua at the head of three hundred
foot-soldiers, armed with swords, arquebuses, and cross-bows, and seventy
horsemen, with cuirasses, bucklers, and lances. He pretended that he was
going on a mere visit of friendship to Anacaona, and to make arrangements
about the payment of tribute.

When Anacaona heard of the intended visit, she summoned all her tributary
caciques, and principal subjects, to assemble at her chief town, that they
might receive the commander of the Spaniards with becoming homage and
distinction. As Ovando, at the head of his little army, approached, she
went forth to meet him, according to the custom of her nation, attended by
a great train of her most distinguished subjects, male and female; who, as
has been before observed, were noted for superior grace and beauty. They
received the Spaniards with their popular areytos, their national songs;
the young women waving palm branches and dancing before them, in the way
that had so much charmed the followers of the Adelantado, on his first
visit to the province.

Anacaona treated the governor with that natural graciousness and dignity
for which she was celebrated. She gave him the largest house in the place
for his residence, and his people were quartered in the houses adjoining.
For several days the Spaniards were entertained with all the natural
luxuries that the province aiforded. National songs and dances and games
were performed for their amusement, and there was every outward
demonstration of the same hospitality, the same amity, that Anacaona had
uniformly shown to white men.