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

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A number of Spaniards ran in advance, each anxious to signalize himself by
the capture of the cacique. They came to two roads, and the whole party
pursued that to the right, excepting one Juan Lopez, a powerful man,
skillful in Indian warfare. He proceeded in a footpath to the left,
winding among little hills, so thickly wooded that it was impossible to
see any one at the distance of half a bow-shot. Suddenly, in a narrow
pass, overshadowed by rocks and trees, he encountered twelve Indian
warriors, armed with bows and arrows, and following each other in single
file according to their custom. The Indians were confounded at the sight
of Lopez, imagining that there must be a party of soldiers behind him.
They might readily have transfixed him with their arrows, but they had
lost all presence of mind. He demanded their chieftain. They replied that
he was behind, and, opening to let him pass, Lopez beheld the cacique in
the rear. At sight of the Spaniard, Cotabanama bent his gigantic bow, and
was on the point of launching one of his three-pronged arrows, but Lopez
rushed upon him and wounded him with his sword. The other Indians, struck
with panic, had already fled. Cotabanama, dismayed at the keenness of the
sword, cried out that he was Juan de Esquibel, claiming respect as having
exchanged names with the Spanish commander. Lopez seized him with one hand
by the hair, and with the other aimed a thrust at his body; but the
cacique struck down the sword with his hand, and, grappling with his
antagonist, threw him with his back upon the rocks. As they were both men
of great power, the struggle was long and violent. The sword was beneath
them, but Cotabanama, seizing the Spaniard by the throat with his mighty
hand, attempted to strangle him. The sound of the contest brought the
other Spaniards to the spot. They found their companion writhing and
gasping, and almost dead, in the gripe of the gigantic Indian. They seized
the cacique, bound him, and carried him captive to a deserted Indian
village in the vicinity. They found the way to his secret cave, but his
wife and children, having received notice of his capture by the fugitive
Indians, had taken refuge in another part of the island. In the cavern was
found the chain with which a number of Indian captives had been bound, who
had risen upon and slain three Spaniards who had them in charge, and had
made their escape to this island. There were also the swords of the same
Spaniards, which they had brought off as trophies to their cacique. The
chain was now employed to manacle Cotabanama.

The Spaniards prepared to execute the chieftain on the spot, in the centre
of the deserted village. For this purpose a pyre was built of logs of wood
laid crossways, in form of a gridiron, on which he was to be slowly
broiled to death. On further consultation, however, they were induced to
forego the pleasure of this horrible sacrifice. Perhaps they thought the
cacique too important a personage to be executed thus obscurely. Granting
him, therefore, a transient reprieve, they conveyed him to the caravel,
and sent him, bound with heavy chains, to San Domingo. Ovando saw him in
his power, and incapable of doing further harm; but he had not the
magnanimity to forgive a fallen enemy, whose only crime was the defence of
his native soil and lawful territority. He ordered him to be publicly
hanged like a common culprit. [219] In this ignominious manner was the
cacique Cotabanama executed, the last of the five sovereign princes of
Hayti. His death was followed by the complete subjugation of his people,
and sealed the last struggle of the natives against their oppressors. The
island was almost unpeopled of its original inhabitants, and meek and
mournful submission and mute despair settled upon the scanty remnant that
survived.

Such was the ruthless system which had been pursued, during the absence of
the admiral, by the commander Ovando; this man of boasted prudence and
moderation, who was sent to reform the abuses of the island, and above
all, to redress the wrongs of the natives. The system of Columbus may have
borne hard upon the Indians, born and brought up in untasked freedom, but
it was never cruel nor sanguinary. He inflicted no wanton massacres nor
vindictive punishments; his desire was to cherish and civilize the
Indians, and to render them useful subjects; not to oppress, and
persecute, and destroy them. When he beheld the desolation that had swept
them from the land during his suspension from authority, he could not
restrain the strong expression of his feelings. In a letter written to the
king after his return to Spain, he thus expresses himself on the subject:
"The Indians of Hispaniola were and are the riches of the island; for it
is they who cultivate and make the bread and the provisions for the
Christians; who dig the gold from the mines, and perform all the offices
and labors both of men and beasts. I am informed that, since I left this
island, six parts out of seven of the natives are dead; all through ill
treatment and inhumanity; some by the sword, others by blows and cruel
usage, others through hunger. The greater part have perished in the
mountains and glens, whither they had fled, from not being able to support
the labor imposed upon them." For his own part, he added, although he had
sent many Indians to Spain to be sold, it was always with a view to their
being instructed in the Christian faith, and in civilized arts and usages,
and afterwards sent back to their island to assist in civilizing their
countrymen. [220]

The brief view that has been given of the policy of Ovando, on certain
points on which Columbus was censured, may enable the reader to judge more
correctly of the conduct of the latter. It is not to be measured by the
standard of right and wrong established in the present more enlightened
age. We must consider him in connection with the era in which he lived. By
comparing his measures with those men of his own times praised for their
virtues and abilities, placed in precisely his own situation, and placed
there expressly to correct his faults, we shall be the better able to
judge how virtuously and wisely, under the peculiar circumstances of the
case, he may be considered to have governed.

Book XVIII.

Chapter I.

Departure of Columbus for San Domingo.--His Return to Spain.

The arrival at Jamaica of the two vessels under the command of Salcedo had
caused a joyful reverse in the situation of Columbus. He hastened to leave
the wreck in which he had been so long immured, and hoisting his flag on
board of one of the ships, felt as if the career of enterprise and glory
were once more open to him. The late partisans of Porras, when they heard
of the arrival of the ships, came wistful and abject to the harbor,
doubting how far they might trust to the magnanimity of a man whom they
had so greatly injured, and who had now an opportunity of vengeance. The
generous mind, however, never harbors revenge in the hour of returning
prosperity; but feels noble satisfaction in sharing its happiness even
with its enemies. Columbus forgot, in his present felicity, all that he
had suffered from these men; he ceased to consider them enemies, now that
they had lost the power to injure; and he not only fulfilled all that he
had promised them, by taking them on board the ships, but relieved their
necessities from his own purse, until their return to Spain; and
afterwards took unwearied pains to recommend them to the bounty of the
sovereigns. Francisco Porras alone continued a prisoner, to be tried by
the tribunals of his country.

Oviedo assures us that the Indians wept when they beheld the departure of
the Spaniards; still considering them as beings from the skies. From the
admiral, it is true, they had experienced nothing but just and gentle
treatment, and continual benefits; and the idea of his immediate influence
with the Deity, manifested on the memorable occasion of the eclipse, may
have made them consider him as more than human, and his presence as
propitious to their island; but it is not easy to believe that a lawless
gang like that of Porras, could have been ranging for months among their
villages, without giving cause for the greatest joy at their departure.

On the 28th of June the vessels set sail for San Domingo. The adverse
winds and currents which had opposed Columbus throughout this ill-starred
expedition, still continued to harass him. After a weary struggle of
several weeks, he reached, on the 3d of August, the little island of
Beata, on the coast of Hispaniola. Between this place and San Domingo the
currents are so violent, that vessels are often detained months, waiting
for sufficient wind to enable them to stem the stream. Hence Columbus
dispatched a letter by land to Ovando, to inform him of his approach, and
to remove certain absurd suspicions of his views, which he had learnt from
Salcedo were still entertained by the governor; who feared his arrival in
the island might produce factions and disturbances. In this letter he
expresses, with his usual warmth and simplicity, the joy he felt at his,
deliverance, which was so great, he says, that, since the arrival of Diego
de Salcedo with succor, he had scarcely been able to sleep. The letter had
barely time to precede the writer, for, a favorable wind springing up, the
vessels again made sail, and, on the 13th of August, anchored in the
harbor of San Domingo.

If it is the lot of prosperity to awaken envy and excite detraction, it is
certainly the lot of misfortune to atone for a multitude of faults. San
Domingo had been the very hot-bed of sedition against Columbus in the day
of his power; he had been hurried from it in ignominious chains, amidst
the shouts and taunts of the triumphant rabble; he had been excluded from
its harbor, when, as commander of a squadron, he craved shelter from an
impending tempest; but now that he arrived in its waters, a broken-down
and shipwrecked man, all past hostility was overpowered by the popular
sense of his late disasters. There was a momentary burst of enthusiasm in
his favor; what had been denied to his merits was granted to his
misfortunes; and even the envious, appeased by his present reverses,
seemed to forgive him for having once been so triumphant.

The governor and principal inhabitants came forth to meet him, and
received him with signal distinction. He was lodged as a guest in the
house of Ovando, who treated him with the utmost courtesy and attention.
The governor was a shrewd and discreet man, and much of a courtier; but
there were causes of jealousy and distrust between him and Columbus too
deep to permit of cordial intercourse. The admiral and his son Fernando
always pronounced the civility of Ovando overstrained and hypocritical;
intended to obliterate the remembrance of past neglect, and to conceal
lurking enmity. While he professed the utmost friendship and sympathy for
the admiral, he set at liberty the traitor Porras, who was still a
prisoner, to be taken to Spain for trial. He also talked of punishing
those of the admiral's people who had taken arms in his defence, and in
the affray at Jamaica had killed several of the mutineers. These
circumstances were loudly complained of by Columbus; but, in fact, they
rose out of a question of jurisdiction between him and the governor. Their
powers were so undefined as to clash with each other, and they were both
disposed to be extremely punctilious. Ovando assumed a right to take
cognizance of all transactions at Jamaica; as happening within the limits
of his government, which included all the islands and Terra Firma.
Columbus, on the other hand, asserted the absolute command, and the
jurisdiction both civil and criminal given to him by the sovereigns, over
all persons who sailed in his expedition, from the time of departure until
their return to Spain. To prove this, he produced his letter of
instructions. The governor heard him with great courtesy and a smiling
countenance; but observed, that the letter of instructions gave him no
authority within the bounds of his government. [221] He relinquished the
idea, however, of investigating the conduct of the followers of Columbus,
and sent Porras to Spain, to be examined by the board which had charge of
the affairs of the Indies.

The sojourn of Columbus at San Domingo was but little calculated to yield
him satisfaction. He was grieved at the desolation of the island by the
oppressive treatment of the natives, and the horrible massacre which had
been perpetrated by Ovando and his agents. He had fondly hoped, at one
time, to render the natives civilized, industrious, and tributary subjects
to the crown, and to derive from their well-regulated labor a great and
steady revenue. How different had been the event! The five great tribes
which peopled the mountains and the valleys at the time of the discovery,
and rendered, by their mingled towns and villages and tracts of
cultivation, the rich levels of the Vegas so many "painted gardens," had
almost all passed away, and the native princes had perished chiefly by
violent or ignominious deaths. Columbus regarded the affairs of the island
with a different eye from Ovando. He had a paternal feeling for its
prosperity, and his fortunes were implicated in its judicious management.
He complained, in subsequent letters to the sovereigns, that all the
public affairs were ill conducted; that the ore collected lay unguarded in
large quantities in houses slightly built and thatched, inviting
depredation; that Ovando was unpopular, the people were dissolute, and the
property of the crown and the security of the island in continual risk
from mutiny and sedition. [222] While he saw all this, he had no power to
interfere, and any observation or remonstrance on his part was ill
received by the governor.

He found his own immediate concerns in great confusion. His rents and dues
were either uncollected, or he could not obtain a clear account and a full
liquidation of them. Whatever he could collect was appropriated to the
fitting out of the vessels which were to convey himself and his crews to
Spain. He accuses Ovando, in his subsequent letters, of having neglected,
if not sacrificed, his interests during his long absence, and of having
impeded those who were appointed to attend to his concerns. That he had
some grounds for these complaints would appear from two letters still
extant, [223] written by Queen Isabella to Ovando, on the 27th of
November, 1503, in which she informs him of the complaint of Alonzo
Sanchez de Carvajal, that he was impeded in collecting the rents of the
admiral; and expressly commands Ovando to observe the capitulations
granted to Columbus; to respect his agents, and to facilitate, instead
of obstructing, his concerns. These letters, while they imply ungenerous
conduct on the part of the governor towards his illustrious predecessor,
evince likewise the personal interest taken by Isabella in the affairs of
Columbus, during his absence. She had, in fact, signified her displeasure
at his being excluded from the port of San Domingo, when he applied there
for succor for his squadron, and for shelter from a storm; and had
censured Ovando for not taking his advice and detaining the fleet of
Bobadilla, by which it would have escaped its disastrous fate. [224] And
here it may be observed, that the sanguinary acts of Ovando towards the
natives, in particular the massacre at Xaragua, and the execution of the
unfortunate Anacaona, awakened equal horror and indignation in Isabella;
she was languishing on her death-bed when she received the intelligence,
and with her dying breath she exacted a promise from King Ferdinand that
Ovando should immediately be recalled from his government. The promise
was tardily and reluctantly fulfilled, after an interval of about four
years, and not until induced by other circumstances; for Ovando
contrived to propitiate the monarch, by forcing a revenue from the
island.

The continual misunderstandings between the admiral and the governor,
though always qualified on the part of the latter with great complaisance,
induced Columbus to hasten as much as possible his departure from the
island. The ship in which he had returned from Jamaica was repaired and
fitted out, and put under the command of the Adelantado; another vessel
was freighted, in which Columbus embarked with his son and his domestics.
The greater part of his late crews remained at San Domingo; as they were
in great poverty, he relieved their necessities from his own purse, and
advanced the funds necessary for the voyage home of those who chose to
return. Many thus relieved by his generosity had been among the most
violent of the rebels.

On the 12th of September, he set sail; but had scarcely left the harbor
when, in a sudden squall, the mast of his ship was carried away. He
immediately went with his family on board of the vessel commanded by the
Adelantado, and, sending back the damaged ship to port, continued on his
course. Throughout the voyage he experienced the most tempestuous weather.
In one storm the mainmast was sprung in four places. He was confined to
his bed at the time by the gout; by his advice, however, and the activity
of the Adelantado, the damage was skillfully repaired; the mast was
shortened; the weak parts were fortified by wood taken from the castles or
cabins which the vessels in those days carried on the prow and stern; and
the whole was well secured by cords. They were still more damaged in a
succeeding tempest; in which the ship sprung her foremast. In this
crippled state they had to traverse seven hundred leagues of a stormy
ocean. Fortune continued to persecute Columbus to the end of this, his
last and most disastrous expedition. For several weeks he was
tempest-tossed--suffering at the same time the most excruciating pains
from his malady--until, on the seventh day of November, his crazy and
shattered bark anchored in the harbor of San Lucar. Hence he had himself
conveyed to Seville, where he hoped to enjoy repose of mind and body, and
to recruit his health after such a long series of fatigues, anxieties,
and hardships. [225]

Chapter II.

Illness of Columbus at Seville.--Application to the Crown for a
Restitution of His Honors.--Death of Isabella.

[1504.]

Broken by age and infirmities, and worn down by the toils and hardships of
his recent expedition, Columbus had looked forward to Seville as to a
haven of rest, where he might repose awhile from his troubles. Care and
sorrow, however, followed him by sea and land. In varying the scene he but
varied the nature of his distress. "Wearisome days and nights" were
appointed to him for the remainder of his life; and the very margin of his
grave was destined to be strewed with thorns.

On arriving at Seville, he found all his affairs in confusion. Ever since
he had been sent home in chains from San Domingo, when his house and
effects had been taken possession of by Bobadilla, his rents and dues had
never been properly collected; and such as had been gathered had been
retained in the hands of the governor Ovando. "I have much vexation from
the governor," says he, in a letter to his son Diego. [226] "All tell me
that I have there eleven or twelve thousand castellanos; and I have not
received a quarto. ... I know well, that, since my departure, he must have
received upwards of five thousand castellanos." He entreated that a letter
might be written by the king, commanding the payment of these arrears
without delay; for his agents would not venture even to speak to Ovando on
the subject, unless empowered by a letter from the sovereign.

Columbus was not of a mercenary spirit; but his rank and situation
required large expenditure. The world thought him in the possession of
sources of inexhaustible wealth; but, as yet, those sources had furnished
him but precarious and scanty streams. His last voyage had exhausted his
finances, and involved him in perplexities. All that he had been able to
collect of the money due to him in Hispaniola, to the amount of twelve
hundred castellanos, had been expended in bringing home many of his late
crew, who were in distress; and for the greater part of the sum the crown
remained his debtor. While struggling to obtain his mere pecuniary dues,
he was absolutely suffering a degree of penury. He repeatedly urges the
necessity of economy to his son Diego, until he can obtain a restitution
of his property, and the payment of his arrears. "I receive nothing of the
revenue due to me," says he, in one letter; "I live by borrowing." "Little
have I profited," he adds, in another, "by twenty years of service, with
such toils and perils; since, at present, I do not own a roof in Spain. If
I desire to eat or sleep, I have no resort but an inn; and, for the most
times, have not wherewithal to pay my bill."

Yet in the midst of these personal distresses, he was more solicitous for
the payment of his seamen than of himself. He wrote strongly and
repeatedly to the sovereigns, entreating the discharge of their arrears,
and urged his son Diego, who was at court, to exert himself in their
behalf. "They are poor," said he, "and it is now nearly three years since
they left their homes. They have endured infinite toils and perils, and
they bring invaluable tidings, for which their majesties ought to give
thanks to God and rejoice." Notwithstanding his generous solicitude for
these men, he knew several of them to have been his enemies; nay, that
some of them were at this very time disposed to do him harm rather than
good; such was the magnanimity of his spirit and his forgiving
disposition.

The same zeal, also, for the interests of his sovereigns, which had ever
actuated his loyal mind, mingled with his other causes of solicitude. He
represented in his letter to the king, the mismanagement of the royal
rents in Hispaniola, under the administration of Ovando. Immense
quantities of ore lay unprotected in slightly-built houses, and liable to
depredations. It required a person of vigor, and one who had an individual
interest in the property of the island, to restore its affairs to order,
and draw from it the immense revenues which it was capable of yielding;
and Columbus plainly intimated that he was the proper person.

In fact, as to himself, it was not so much pecuniary indemnification that
he sought, as the restoration of his offices and dignities. He regarded
them as the trophies of his illustrious achievements; he had received the
royal promise that he should be reinstated in them; and he felt that as
long as they were withheld, a tacit censure rested upon his name. Had he
not been proudly impatient on this subject, he would have belied the
loftiest part of his character; for he who can be indifferent to the
wreath of triumph, is deficient in the noble ambition which incites to
glorious deeds.

The unsatisfactory replies received to his letters disquieted his mind. He
knew that he had active enemies at court ready to turn all things to his
disadvantage, and felt the importance of being there in person to defeat
their machinations: but his infirmities detained him at Seville. He made
an attempt to set forth on the journey, but the severity of the winter and
the virulence of his malady obliged him to relinquish it in despair. All
that he could do was to reiterate his letters to the sovereigns, and to
entreat the intervention of his few but faithful friends. He feared the
disastrous occurrences of the last voyage might be represented to his
prejudice. The great object of the expedition, the discovery of a strait
opening from the Caribbean to a southern sea, had failed. The secondary
object, the acquisition of gold, had not been completed. He had discovered
the gold mines of Veragua, it is true; but he had brought home no
treasure; because, as he said, in one of his letters, "I would not rob nor
outrage the country; since reason requires that it should be settled, and
then the gold may be procured without violence."

He was especially apprehensive that the violent scenes in the island of
Jamaica might, by the perversity of his enemies, and the effrontery of the
delinquents, be wrested into matters of accusation against him, as had
been the case with the rebellion of Roldan. Porras, the ringleader of the
late faction, had been sent home by Ovando, to appear before the board of
the Indies; but without any written process, setting forth the offences
charged against him. While at Jamaica, Columbus had ordered an inquest of
the affair to be taken; but the notary of the squadron who took it, and
the papers which he drew up, were on board of the ship in which the
admiral had sailed from Hispaniola, but which had put back dismasted. No
cognizance of the case, therefore, was taken by the council of the Indies;
and Porras went at large, armed with the power and the disposition to do
mischief. Being related to Morales, the royal treasurer, he had access to
people in place, and an opportunity of enlisting their opinions and
prejudices on his side. Columbus wrote to Morales, inclosing a copy of the
petition which the rebels had sent to him when in Jamaica, in which they
acknowledged their culpability, and implored his forgiveness; and he
entreated the treasurer not to be swayed by the representations of his
relative, nor to pronounce an opinion unfavorable to him, until he had an
opportunity of being heard.