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Later Voyages
The Treaty of Tordesillas
Map resulting from the Treaty of Tordesillas
Where is it written that the world is already divided up?
King of France, 1494
Quoted in Hans Koning, Columbus: His Enterprise, 67
Pope Alexander VI expressed himself (using the royal “we”) in no uncertain terms:
We have indeed learned that you, who for a long time had intended to seek out and discover certain islands and main lands remote and unknown and not hitherto discovered by others, to the end that you might bring to the worship of our Redeemer and the profession of the Catholic faith their residents and inhabitants…chose our beloved son, Christopher Columbus,…whom you furnished with ships and men equipped for like designs, not without the greatest hardships, dangers, and expenses, to make diligent quest for these remote and unknown main lands and islands through the sea, where hitherto no one had sailed;…and they at length,…discovered certain very remote islands and even main lands that hitherto had not been discovered by others.
Wherefore, as becomes Catholic kings and princes, after earnest consideration of all matters, especially of the rise and spread of the Catholic faith, as was the fashion of your ancestors, kings of renowned memory, you have purposed with the favor of divine clemency to bring under your sway the said main lands and islands with their residents and inhabitants and to bring them to the Catholic faith….
And, in order that you may enter upon so great an undertaking with greater readiness and heartiness endowed with the benefit of our apostolic favor, we…by the authority of Almighty God conferred upon us in blessed Peter and of the vicar ship of Jesus Christ…do by tenor of these presents…give, grant, and assign to you and your heirs and successors, kings of Castile and Leon, forever,…all islands and main lands found and to be found, discovered and be discovered towards the west and south, by drawing and establishing a line from the Arctic pole…to the Antarctic pole…to be distant one hundred leagues towards the west and south from any of the islands…commonly known as the Azores and Cape Verde.
You should appoint to the aforesaid main lands and islands worthy, God-fearing, learned, skilled, and experienced men, in order to instruct the aforesaid inhabitants and residents in the Catholic faith and train them in good morals. Furthermore, under penalty of excommunication…we strictly forbid all persons of whatsoever rank…to dare, without your special permit…to go for the purpose of trade or any other reason to [these] islands or main lands.
Francis Gardner Davenport, ed., European Treaties Bearing on the History of the United States and its Dependencies to 1648, 76-78
The Church
1502 map depicting the meridian designated by the Treaty of Tordesillas
Columbus stopped first in Portugal, where he heard from John II, the king who had refused to sponsor the expedition, that, based on the terms of a treaty signed between Portugal and Castile in 1479, all the lands visited during the journey would henceforth be Portuguese territory. However, according to the medieval church under the traditions of feudalism, any newly discovered land belonged to the pope and could be given away only by him and only the heads of state who promised to lead the inhabitants to the “true faith.”
Although at this time it was unclear what place Columbus had visited, since he and many others assumed he had reached the outskirts of Asia, evidently no one worried about what the Emperor of Japan or the ruler of China might think of Pope Alexander VI dividing up the world between Spain and Portugal. For that’s what he did. He granted Ferdinand and Isabella, the “Catholic Sovereigns,” all they had already conquered and everything they might discover on the westward journey to the Orient.
King John wasn’t happy with this decision, naturally. In 1494 he persuaded the Catholic monarchs to meet with him in the town of Tordesillas where they signed the treaty of that name. An imaginary line now cut vertically through the ocean fourteen hundred miles west of the Cape Verde Islands. Everything west of that line belonged to Spain, everything east to Portugal. Based on the Treaty of Tordesillas, Portugal later claimed Brazil, and for years any foreign sailors apprehended in Spanish waters were punished by garroting (strangling to death with a rope and stick).
Late April, 1494: Isabella
Spaniards with Native Americans
The tone for the second voyage was set early on. At first Columbus continued his practice of bartering for the largesse his men received from the natives:
As he sail’d close along the Shoar, great Numbers of People came aboard in their Canoes from the Island, thinking the Spaniards to be Men come down from Heaven, bringing them Bread, Water, and Fish, and giving it all freely, without asking for any Return; but the Admiral, to send them away pleas’d, commanded they should be paid, giving them Beads, Bells, and such kind of Baubles.
But soon the voyagers took a more bellicose stand:
The next Day he ran along the Coast to seek out Harbours, and the Boats going to found the Mouths of them, there came out so many Canoes with arm’d Men, to defend the Country, that they were forc’d to return to their Ships, not so much for Fear, as to avoid giving an Occasion of Enmity to those People. But afterwards considering, that if they shew’d the least Signs of Fear, the Indians would grow insolent upon it, they return’d together to the Port, which the Admiral call’d Puerte Bueno, or the Good Harbour. And because the Indians came to drive them off, those in the boats saluted them with such a flight of Arrows from their Cross-bows, that six or seven of them being wounded they were glad to retire.
The American Traveller, 194-195
The Second Voyage
Columbus’s ships
The positive reception of the travelers led to a second voyage, this time grandly outfitted with seventeen ships and between twelve and fifteen hundred colonists, including five religious specifically charged with converting the natives, a large band of soldiers, and many adventurers, financed at least partly with funds confiscated from Spanish Jews. Underlying the voyage was the general assumption that surely this time Columbus would reach the Asian islands Marco Polo had described.
On the second voyage, “the pretense was ended, the idyll over. The Indians, who had been praised for their generosity and innocence, were now called savages. The talk was of slavery and gold, rather than brotherhood and conversion. The new relationship between the races was established” (Koning, 69-70).
As the fleet traveled through the islands, the Spanish took captives whenever they could. This time the villages were largely deserted. The Spanish colonizers in La Navidad had set the tone for centuries to come by roaming the islands in gangs, demanding gold and terrorizing the natives, until the gentle, timid Tainos rose against them and killed them in pitched battle, in spite of attempts by the cacique Guacanagari to prevent his revenge.
Murder
Carib indian family by John Gabriel Stedman
It has been said of the Spanish Conquistadors that first they fell on their knees, and then they fell on the aborigines.
Eric Williams, from Columbus to Castro, 30
As a Spanish longboat returned to the fleet, they observed a Carib canoe paddling around a point on the coastline. It stopped abruptly when those aboard caught sight of the vast Spanish fleet anchored in the harbor.
For a long hour the four men, two women, and a boy aboard the canoe stayed motionless on the water, staring in wonder at the huge ships and the white men gazing at them from the decks. The shore party meanwhile maneuvered their boat as to cut off the Caribs’ escape.
Seeing that flight was impossible, the Indians shot arrows at the Spaniards, wounding one and killing another. But they were soon overpowered and taken to the fleet.
One of the men, whose belly was sliced by a Spaniard’s sword, was tossed overboard. He did not sink, but clutching his guts with one hand, swam with the other toward shore. The Spaniards chased after him, pulled him aboard, tied his hands and feet, and threw him back into the sea. The Indian managed to free himself, and again swam off. Then the gallant whites, frustrated in their repeated attempts at murder, shot the Indian through and through with arrows until he died.
Milton Meltzer, Columbus and the World around Him, 125-127
Colonization
The Colony of Isabella
Another colony, Isabella, was founded in central Hispaniola (today the Dominican Republic and Haiti). The colonists suffered from the tropical heat, the changed diet, the hard work of building a town, and the contrast between the harsh reality they faced and the idyllic descriptions that had lured them. They wanted to return to Spain in spite of Columbus’s assurances that gold was plentiful in the interior, where he spent six months searching for it. Columbus himself contracted a devastating illness, quite possibly a mental collapse, with a high fever and crippling arthritis that plagued him the rest of his life.
As more forts were established, governing them became more and more of a problem, since the Spanish soldiers “went their own cruel way, robbing the Indians of their gold ornaments, raping the women, kidnapping boys and girls to serve as slaves, and gobbling up the scarce supplies of food” (Meltzer, 140).
The only way the newcomers could relate to the hospitable tribes Columbus knew from his first voyage was to terrorize them in order to crush the resistance that grew as a result of their own actions—a vicious cycle. The Spanish had horses and dogs, crossbows and arquebuses (portable guns); the Indians carried on a guerilla war, ambushing soldiers, burning their food supplies, raiding their camps at night.
However, after a year the last remnant of resistance was crushed and the total enslavement of the Indians was inevitable.
…and Rape
Carib women
No European women traveled to the “new world” until several years later; obviously the men had implicit permission to use the island women as they wished.
While the great courage of the Indians did not win mercy, it deeply impressed the militaristic Spaniards. They soon found the Carib women were just as brave. Cuneo [a nobleman and one of the few reporters of the second voyage] tells how he tried to rape one he had made his slave. She fought back so violently he had to whip her with a rope before he could subdue her. That evening, he joined all the other Spaniards in singing a hymn to the Blessed Virgin.
Milton Meltzer, Columbus and the World around Him, 127
The Tribute System
Spanish acts of cruelty against Native Americans
Columbus had another major problem: he still hadn’t found a good source of gold. Now governor of Hispaniola, he instituted the tribute system, “a simple and brutal way of fulfilling the Spanish lust for gold while acknowledging the Spanish distaste for labor” (Sale, 155).
Every man and woman, boy and girl of fourteen or older was forced to collect gold for the Spaniards. They had to fill a hawks’ bell with gold dust and bring it to the fort every three months. (Hawks’ bells were the same trinkets the Indians had received from the explorers with such happiness during the first voyage.) The “chiefs” had to produce about ten times as much. In areas with no gold, the requirement was twenty-five pounds of spun cotton.
When the Indians brought their tribute in they were given a copper token to wear around the neck. The punishment for not paying tribute was the cutting off the hands of the offender. A famous engraving from a 1619 book called Spanish Cruelties shows Indians stumbling away from the chopping block, looking with surprise at the stumps of their arms pulsing out blood.
Since no gold fields existed, the Indians’ only hope was to work all day in the streams, washing gold dust from the pebbles. Meting the quotas of both gold and cotton was an impossible task. Indians who tried to flee into the mountains were hunted down with dogs and killed as an example. Desperate, the Tainos began killing themselves with cassava poison. In two years, one half the entire population of Hispaniola were killed or killed themselves.
When it became obvious that no gold was left, the Spaniards instituted another system known as the encomienda, based on models familiar to the Europeans from their own experience of feudalism. The governor could give (“commend”) Indians to the colonists (encomenderos) to use as they chose, for tribute or forced labor; the masters would in return provide their servants with instruction on becoming good Christians.
February, 1495: First Massive Slave Raid
Columbus presenting Native Americans to the Ferdinand and Isabella
Time was short for sending back a good “dividend” on the supply ships getting ready for the return to Spain. Columbus therefore turned to a massive slave raid as a means fro filling up these ships. The brothers rounded up fifteen hundred Arawaks—men, women, and children—and imprisoned them in pens in Isabella, guarded by men and dogs.
The ships had rooms for no more than five hundred, and thus only the best specimens were loaded aboard. The Admiral then told the Spaniard they could help themselves from the remainder to as many slaves as they wanted. Those whom no one chose were simply kicked out of the pens. Such had been the terror of these prisoners that (in the description by Michele de Cuneo, one of the colonists) “they rushed in all directions like lunatics, women dropping and abandoning infants in the rush, running for miles without stopping, fleeing across mountains and rivers.”
Of the five hundred slaves, three hundred arrived alive in Spain, where they were put up for sale in Seville by Don Juan de Fonseca, the archdeacon of the tow. “As naked as the day they were born,” the report of this excellent churchman says, “but with no more embarrassment than animals.”
The slave trade immediately turned out to be “unprofitable, for the slaves mostly died.”
Hans Koning, Columbus: His Enterprise, 82
Stories of Cannibals
Supposed cannibalism among Native Americans as depicted by deBry in Great Voyages
In the tradition of the Wild Man and Savage Beast tales, legends circulated in Europe about man-eating islanders, and Columbus assumed that the inhabitants of the Caribbean islands, the Caribs, were the fierce, warlike, cannibals of whom he had heard. However, he never met or saw any Caribs on his first voyage; on the second voyage his assumptions led him to convey the notion that the islands he visited were populated by Caribs. Yet on Guadeloupe, the only Carib island his fleet stopped at, the natives “as soon as they saw us, instantly ran to the mountains,” according to Cuneo, one of the reporters.
The idea of fierce and hostile Caribs, in short, was never more than a bogey, born of Colon’s own paranoia or stubborn ferocity and spread to his comrades, to the chroniclers of Europe, and to history. Certain sixteenth-century sailors did come to grief when landing on those islands—given the fierce reputation of the white man by then, it is not surprising that the Caribs were less than hospitable—but the historical record for that century actually emphasizes the friendliness of the islanders and the passivity of their behavior.
And their rapacious cannibalism? That, similarly, from all the real evidence we have, seems to be a myth…That is all there is…Las Casas, who had considerable experience in the islands over several decades, said flatly that the Caribs were not cannibals, and a nineteenth-century scholar, William Sheldon, reviewing all the literature, said that he could find no believable evidence of cannibalism…The anthropologist W. Arens, in his wide-ranging The Man-Eating Myth, says that he was “unable to uncover adequate documentation of cannibalism as a custom in any form for any society” and adds that “there is little reason to assume that the very aborigines whose name now means man-eaters actually were so.”
Kirkpatrick Sale, The Conquest of Paradise, 129-133
Colonists’ Complaints
Spaniards and Native Americans
Columbus’s role in the second voyage came to an ignoble end. Reports to Ferdinand and Isabella pictured him as an inept administrator. The colonists complained bitterly that he had led them astray with his tales of instant riches. They were unhappy and sick, unable to become self-sufficient and constantly clamoring for fresh supplies from Spain.
A new disease had appeared, and although historians differ on its origin, many agree that syphilis was first transmitted to Europe by colonists returning from the Indies, who contacted it through sexual intercourse with native women. Evidently among the Indians of the Caribbean it was a widespread, nonfatal condition with almost no symptoms. It flared up in a new and deadly form in Europe, as “they just price the Spaniards paid for their ravaging of Indian women” (Koning, 88).
Because of their history as warriors, the colonists were arrogant and brutal toward the Indians and each other. As Spanish gentlemen, they were unaccustomed to hard work and indeed felt only contempt for those who worked with their hands. “They would rather rot than do anything for themselves…In a land where it was easy to grow food, easy to catch fish or fowl, they acted as though Hispaniola were some godforsaken desert” (Meltzer, 145).
…And Amazons
Another persistent story was about the Amazons:
He made for the island Guadalupe, where sending his Boats, well-man’d, ashore, before they reach’d Land, abundance of Women came out of the Woods with Bows and Arrows, as if they would defend their island.
[The wife of a Cacique] told the Admiral that this Island was only inhabited by Women, and that those who endavour’d to hinder his Men from Landing were all Women, except about four Men, who were there accidentally from another Island; for at a certain Time in the Year, they come to hunt, and accompany with them.
The same Customs, she assur’d him, were also abserv’d by the Women of another Island, called d’Matrimonio, of whom she gave much the same Account as we read of the ancient Amazons; all which the admiral made no Difficulty to credit, because of the surpizing Strength and Courage of these Women, which he himself had been a Witness to.
It is likewise observable, that these Women seemed to be endu’d with clearer Understandings than those of the other Islands; for in them they only knew to reckon the Day by the Sun, and the Night by the Moon; whereas these Women could reckon by other Stars, it being a common Expression amongst them, when the North Star rises, or such a Star is North, then it is Time to do such or such a Thing.
American Traveler, 118-220
The Third Voyage
Columbus in chains
The King and Queen finally had to pay attention to all the complaints against Columbus by the angry men under his command, and they called him back to Spain.
There he lived in the house of a priest and dressed as a friar, evidently to show humility. He continued to petition for another voyage. With financing partly from the sale of enslaved Indians, Columbus made a third trip in May 1498.
His reports back began to show the effects of his long illness on his mind: he claimed in all seriousness to have found the Garden of Eden and concluded that the earth is not round by pear-shaped, with Paradise at its tip.
He stayed in Hispaniola for two years, governing with his brothers and continuing to bring about the destruction of the island’s civilization. The Arawaks were dying out, the colonists waged constant war on each other and all the Indians, and finally the monarchs sent a commissioner, Francisco de Bobadilla, to investigate. What he found led him to arrest Columbus and his two brothers and deport them for trial in Spain. During the arrest, Columbus was manacled. Although later the captain of the ship offered to remove the chains, Columbus insisted on wearing them during the entire trip, until he met with his sovereigns to receive their words of criticism.
The Tragedy of the Natives
Massacre in Haiti by Columbus and his men
The growing hostility between the colonizers and the natives led to tragic misunderstandings and horrible consequences for the natives. During the third voyage, trouble with the Indians accelerated into open warfare. Columbus captured thirty of them in an ambush and confined them to a lower deck on one of the ships.
But even as he prepared to sail, the Indians chose suicide rather than captivity. During the night they all hanged themselves from beams in the low hold of the ship, bending their knees while they strangled. Much later, writing of it, the admiral’s son Ferdinand disposed of the tragedy by saying, “Their deaths were not great harm to the ships….”
Milton Meltzer, Columbus and the World around Him, 166
Eduardo Galeano sums up the total lack of communication:
Bartolomé Columbus, Christopher’s brother and lieutenant, attends an incineration of human flesh.
Six men play the leads in the grand opening of Haiti’s incinerator. The smoke makes everyone cough. The six are burning as a punishment and as a lesson: They have buried the images of Christ and the Virgin that Fray Ramon Pane left with them for protection and consolation. Fray Ramon taught them to pray on their knees, to say the Ave Maria and Paternoster and to invoke the name of Jesus in the face of temptation, injury, and death.
No one has asked them why they buried the images. They were hoping that the new gods would fertilize their fields of corn, cassava, boniato, and beans.
The fire adds warmth to the humid, sticky heat that foreshadows heavy rain.
Eduardo Galeano, Memory of Fire: Genesis, 51
Naming of America
Amerigo Vespucci
By this time other explorers from other countries were filling in more of the details of the newly discovered continent, and recognizing it as such. Amerigo Vespucci sailed with one of Columbus’s former lieutenants and wrote brilliant accounts of his voyages. In his honor mapmakers called the new landmass in the Western Hemisphere “America.”
The Last Voyage
Nicolas de Ovando
Ferdinand and Isabella replaced Columbus as governor of the Indies with Nicolas de Ovando. His first action on his arrival in Hispaniola was to massacre the welcoming party of eighty-five chiefs headed by a woman, cacique, Anacoana, and everyone else they could catch. Hispaniola quickly became a center for the expeditions launched by the Spanish to commit similar atrocities against the people of Cuba.
But Columbus was still determined to find a passage to the Indies. Again he convinced the monarchs to fund him, on condition that he stay away from Hispaniola an search for gold and silver, pearls and spices, but not take slaves. By 1502 he was to old and sick to command the small fleet of four caravels, but he went along, with his brother Bartolomé and his young son Ferdinand, who much later wrote an account of this extremely difficult voyage.
A fourth of the crew, the majority twelve-or-thirteen-year-old boys, never returned home. Attempts to colonize again failed. In the end the men mutinied, almost murdering Columbus before they were subdued by Bartolomé.
Columbus returned to Spain a broken old man wracked by illness. Queen Isabella died shortly after his return, and Ferdinand asked the archbishop of Seville to deal with Columbus’s appeals for the income and property and titles he had been promised before his first voyage. His demand to be restored as governor of the Indies was refused, in the interests to the state, but he continued to receive the revenues due him. Contrary to the myths that he died penniless, he ended his life a rich but very unhappy man.
The Legend
Columbus on his death bed
For many years no one paid much attention to Columbus. The publication in 1571 of Ferdinand’s biography of his father caused some stir, but it wasn’t until later, in the 1600s, that the legend of Columbus gained a place in European consciousness. The first centennial commemoration was celebrated in Europe and America three hundred years after the first voyage in 1792.
Later Assessments
Jeremy Belknap
The depths of the differences in worldview among the many cultures involved continued to be plumbed in succeeding centuries, as European immigration followed the initial voyages of Columbus. Only very gradually did Columbus become a hero and his voyages something to remember on a special day. On October 23, 1792, on the occasion of one of the first celebrations in America honoring Columbus, Jeremy Belknap delivered an address at the request of the Historical Society in Massachusetts. Three centuries after the event, Belknap raised significant questions about its meaning for human kind. His speech began with recognition that European travels to the Western Hemisphere had many positive consequences:
The discovery of America has opened an important page in the history of man. We find our brethren of the human race, scattered over all parts of this continent, and the adjacent islands. We see mankind in their several varieties of color, form and habit, and we learn to consider ourselves as one great family, sent into the world to make various experiments for happiness.
Belknap recognized that the oppressed of Europe have always found safety and relief in North America, and t he idea of individual freedom from tyranny has been expanded into a clear vindication of the rights which are the gift of god to man.
However, Belknap pointed out, two major flaws undercut the new society that formed in the “new world.” The first was slavery:
Our astonishment is excited, by considering that the discovery of America has opened a large mart for the commerce in slaves from the opposite continent of Africa. So much has been written and spoken on the iniquity attending this detestable species of traffic, that I need not attempt again to excite the feelings of indignation and horror, which I doubt not have pervaded the breast of every person now present, when contemplating this flagrant insult on the laws of justice and humanity.
I shall only observe, that the first introduction of the negro slave into America, was occasioned by the previous destruction of the native inhabitants of the West India islands, by the cruelty of their Spanish conquerors, in exacting of them more labor than they were able to perform….The commerce of slaves from Africa has proved destructive to human life and happiness, in the same proportions that it has encouraged avarice, luxury, pride and cruelty.
Belknap, clearly a man ahead of his time, was hopeful that slavery would be abolished soon:
But do I not see the dawn of that auspicious day which shall put a stop to this infamous traffic, and shall teach mankind that Africans have a native right to liberty and property as well as Europeans and Americans? May these rights ever be respected, and never more be infringed, especially by those who have successfully contended for the establishment of their own.
Another flaw Belknap recognized resulted from the savagery of Christians who insisted on conversion of all the inhabitants of the lands they conquered. Using Peru as his model, he questioned the need to force obedience from a people whose code of laws was a work of reason and benevolence, and bore a great resemblance to the divine precepts given by Moses and confirmed by Jesus Christ.
But when we find that these mild and peaceful people were invaded by avaricious Spaniards, under a pretence of converting them to the catholic faith; when instead of the meek and humble language of a primitive evangelist, we see a bigoted Friar gravely advancing at the head of a Spanish army, and, in a language unknown to the Peruvians, declaring that their country was given to his nation, by the Pope of Rome, God’s only vicar on earth, and commanding them to receive their new masters on pain of death; when we consider this parade of arrogant hypocrisy as the signal for slaughter, and see the innocent victims falling by the sword of these ministers of destruction; when we see the whole nation vanquished, disheartened, and either murdered or reduced to slavery, by their savage conquerors; when instead of the worship which they addressed to the luminary of heaven, and which needed but one step more to conduct them to the knowledge of its invisible Creator, we see the pomp of Popish idolatry, with the infernal horrors of the Inquisition introduced into their country; our astonishment is excited to the highest degrees….
If we survey the whole continent, from the first discovery of America, to the present time, the number of converts to Christianity, among the Indians, bears but a small proportion to those, who have been destroyed wither by war, by slavery or by spirituous liquors.
Belknap suggested that looking inward was in order:
If the truths of our holy religion are to be propagated among the savages, it will become us to consider, whether we had not better first agree among ourselves, what these truths are….It is also worthy of consideration, whether the vicious lives and conduct of our people, and especially those on the frontiers, with whom the Indians are most acquainted, be not a great obstruction to the spreading of divine knowledge among them. It is very natural to estimate the goodness of any religion, by the influence which it appears to have on those who profess it; and, if they are to regard the conduct of the people by whom they have been cheated, robbed, and murdered, as a specimen of the influence of Christianity on the human mind, it would be a greater wonder that they should embrace it than reject it.
Jeremy Belknap, A Discourse Intended to Commemorate the Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, 36, 46-52
These cautionary words would be echoed through the years by many other observers. The saga of conquest continued, in the destruction of the Aztec civilization, in the tremendous increase in the practice of slavery, and in the continued colonization of the Western Hemisphere by the rising nation-states of Europe.
http://www.nh.gov/nhdhr/publications/legport1/belknap.html
http://www.historycarper.com/resources/articles/prevere.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Belknap