Christopher Columbus and How He Received and Imparted the Spirit of Discovery Part 30

[Sidenote: 1493. November 3. Guadaloupe.]

On Sat.u.r.day, November 2, the leaders compared reckonings. Some thought they had come 780 leagues from Ferro; others, 800. There were anxiety and weariness on board. The constant fatigue of bailing out the leaky s.h.i.+ps had had its disheartening effect. Columbus, with a practiced eye, saw signs of land in the color of the water and the s.h.i.+fting winds, and he signaled every vessel to take in sail. It was a waiting night. The first light of Sunday glinted on the top of a lofty mountain ahead, descried by a watch at the Admiral's masthead. As the island was approached, the Admiral named it, in remembrance of the holy day, Dominica. The usual service with the _Salve Regina_ was chanted throughout the fleet, which moved on steadily, bringing island after island into view. Columbus could find no good anchorage at Dominica, and leaving one vessel to continue the search, he pa.s.sed on to another island, which he named from his s.h.i.+p, Marigalante. Here he landed, set up the royal banner in token of possession of the group,--for he had seen six islands,--and sought for inhabitants. He could find none, nor any signs of occupation. There was nothing but a tangle of wood in every direction, a sparkling ma.s.s of leaf.a.ge, trembling in luxurious beauty and giving off odors of spice. Some of the men tasted an unknown fruit, and suffered an immediate inflammation about the face, which it required remedies to a.s.suage. The next morning Columbus was attracted by the lofty volcanic peak of another island, and, sailing up to it, he could see cascades on the sides of this eminence.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GUADALOUPE, MARIE GALANTE, AND DOMINICA.

[From Henrique's _Les Colonies Francoises_, Paris, 1889.]]

"Among those who viewed this marvelous phenomena at a distance from the s.h.i.+ps," says Coma, "it was at first a subject of dispute whether it were light reflected from ma.s.ses of compact snow, or the broad surface of a smooth-worn road. At last the opinion prevailed that it was a vast river."

[Sidenote: November 4.]

Columbus remembered that he had promised the monks of Our Lady of Guadaloupe, in Estremadura, to place some token of them in this strange world, and so he gave this island the name of Guadaloupe. Landing the next day, a week of wonders followed.

[Sidenote: Cannibals.]

The exploring parties found the first village abandoned; but this had been done so hastily that some young children had been left behind.

These they decked with hawks' bells, to win their returning parents. One place showed a public square surrounded by rectangular houses, made of logs and intertwined branches, and thatched with palms. They went through the houses and noted what they saw. They observed at the entrance of one some serpents carved in wood. They found netted hammocks, beside calabashes, pottery, and even skulls used for utensils of household service. They discovered cloth made of cotton; bows and bone-tipped arrows, said sometimes to be pointed with human s.h.i.+n-bones; domesticated fowl very like geese; tame parrots; and pineapples, whose flavor enchanted them. They found what might possibly be relics of Europe, washed hither by the equatorial currents as they set from the African coasts,--an iron pot, as they thought it (we know this from the _Historie_), and the stern-timber of a vessel, which they could have less easily mistaken. They found something to horrify them in human bones, the remains of a feast, as they were ready enough to believe, for they were seeking confirmation of the stories of cannibals which Columbus had heard on his first voyage. They learned that boys were fattened like capons.

[Ill.u.s.tration: [From Philoponus's _Nota Typis Transacta Navigatio_.]]

The next day they captured a youth and some women, but the men eluded them. Columbus was now fully convinced that he had at last discovered the cannibals, and when it was found that one of his captains and eight men had not returned to their s.h.i.+p, he was under great apprehensions. He sent exploring parties into the woods. They hallooed and fired their arquebuses, but to no avail. As they threaded their way through the thickets, they came upon some villages, but the inhabitants fled, leaving their meals half cooked; and they were convinced they saw human flesh on the spit and in the pots. While this party was absent, some women belonging to the neighboring islands, captives of this savage people, came off to the s.h.i.+ps and sought protection. Columbus decked them with rings and bells, and forced them ash.o.r.e, while they begged to remain. The islanders stripped off their ornaments, and allowed them to return for more. These women said that the chief of the island and most of the warriors were absent on a predatory expedition.

[Sidenote: Ojeda's expedition.]

The party searching for the lost men returned without success, when Alonso de Ojeda offered to lead forty men into the interior for a more thorough search. This party was as unsuccessful as the other. Ojeda reported he had crossed twenty-six streams in going inland, and that the country was found everywhere abounding in odorous trees, strange and delicious fruits, and brilliant birds.

While this second party was gone, the crews took aboard a supply of water, and on Ojeda's return Columbus resolved to proceed, and was on the point of sailing, when the absent men appeared on the sh.o.r.e and signaled to be taken off. They had got lost in a tangled and pathless forest, and all efforts to climb high enough in trees to see the stars and determine their course had been hopeless. Finally striking the sea, they had followed the sh.o.r.e till they opportunely espied the fleet. They brought with them some women and boys, but reported they had seen no men.

[Sidenote: Cannibals.]

Among the accounts of these early experiences of the Spaniards with the native people, the story of cannibalism is a constant theme. To circulate such stories enhanced the wonder with which Europe was to be impressed.

[Sidenote: Caribs.]

The cruelty of the custom was not altogether unwelcome to warrant a retaliatory mercilessness. Historians have not wholly decided that this is enough to account for the most positive statements about man-eating tribes. Fears and prejudices might do much to raise such a belief, or at least to magnify the habits. Irving remarks that the preservation of parts of the human body, among the natives of Espanola, was looked upon as a votive service to ancestors, and it may have needed only prejudice to convert such a custom into cannibalism when found with the Caribs.

The adventurousness of the nature of this fierce people and their wanderings in wars naturally served to sharpen their intellects beyond the pa.s.sive un.o.bservance of the pacific tribes on which they preyed; so they became more readily, for this reason, the possessors of any pa.s.sion or vice that the European instinct craved to fasten somewhere upon a strange people.

[Sidenote: Caribs and Lucayans.]

The contiguity of these two races, the fierce Carib and the timid tribes of the more northern islands, has long puzzled the ethnologist. Irving indulged in some rambling notions of the origin of the Carib, derived from observations of the early students of the obscure relations of the American peoples. Larger inquiry and more scientific observation has since Irving's time been given to the subject, still without bringing the question to recognizable bearings. The craniology of the Caribs is scantily known, and there is much yet to be divulged. The race in its purity has long been extinct. Lucien de Rosny, in an anthropological study of the Antilles published by the French Society of Ethnology in 1886, has ama.s.sed considerable data for future deductions. It is a question with some modern examiners if the distinction between these insular peoples was not one of accident and surroundings rather than of blood.

[Sidenote: 1493. November 10. Columbus leaves Guadaloupe.]

When Columbus sailed from Guadaloupe on November 10, he steered northwest for Espanola, though his captives told him that the mainland lay to the south. He pa.s.sed various islands, but did not cast anchor till the 14th, when he reached the island named by him Santa Cruz, and found it still a region of Caribs. It was here the Spaniards had their first fight with this fierce people in trying to capture a canoe filled with them. The white men rammed and overturned the hollowed log; but the Indians fought in the water so courageously that some of the Spanish bucklers were pierced with the native poisoned arrows, and one of the Spaniards, later, died of such a wound inflicted by one of the savage women. All the Caribs, however, were finally captured and placed in irons on board s.h.i.+p. One was so badly wounded that recovery was not thought possible, and he was thrown overboard. The fellow struck for the sh.o.r.e, and was killed by the Spanish arrows. The accounts describe their ferocious aspect, their coa.r.s.e hair, their eyes circled with red paint, and the muscular parts of their limbs artificially extended by tight bands below and above.

[Sidenote: Porto Rico.]

Proceeding thence and pa.s.sing a group of wild and craggy islets, which he named after St. Ursula and her Eleven Thousand Virgins, Columbus at last reached the island now called Porto Rico, which his captives pointed out to him as their home and the usual field of the Carib incursions. The island struck the strangers by its size, its beautiful woods and many harbors, in one of which, at its west end, they finally anch.o.r.ed. There was a village close by, which, by their accounts, was trim, and not without some pretensions to skill in laying out, with its seaside terraces. The inhabitants, however, had fled. Two days later, the fleet weighed anchor and steered for La Navidad.

[Sidenote: 1493. November 22. Espanola.]

It was the 22d of November when the explorers made a level sh.o.r.e, which they later discovered to be the eastern end of Espanola. They pa.s.sed gently along the northern coast, and at an attractive spot sent a boat ash.o.r.e with the body of the Biscayan sailor who had died of the poisoned arrow, while two of the light caravels hovered near the beach to protect the burying party. Coming to the spot where Columbus had had his armed conflict with the natives the year before, and where one of the Indians who had been baptized at Barcelona was taken, this fellow, loaded with presents and decked in person, was sent on sh.o.r.e for the influence he might exert on his people. This supposable neophyte does not again appear in history. Only one of these native converts now remained, and the accounts say that he lived faithfully with the Spaniards. Five of the seven who embarked had died on the voyage.

[Sidenote: 1493. November 25.]

[Sidenote: 1493. November 27. Off La Navidad.]

On the 25th, while the fleet was at anchor at Monte Christo, where Columbus had found gold in the river during his first voyage, the sailors discovered some decomposed bodies, one of them showing a beard, which raised apprehensions of the fate of the men left at La Navidad.

The neighboring natives came aboard for traffic with so much readiness, however, that it did much to allay suspicion. It was the 27th when, after dark, Columbus cast anchor opposite the fort, about a league from land. It was too late to see anything more than the outline of the hills. Expecting a response from the fort, he fired two cannons; but there was no sound except the echoes. The Spaniards looked in vain for lights on the sh.o.r.e. The darkness was mysterious and painful. Before midnight a canoe was heard approaching, and a native twice asked for the Admiral. A boat was lowered from one of the vessels, and towed the canoe to the flag-s.h.i.+p. The natives were not willing to board her till Columbus himself appeared at the waist, and by the light of a lantern revealed his countenance to them. This rea.s.sured them. Their leader brought presents--some accounts say ewers of gold, others say masks ornamented with gold--from the cacique, Guacanagari, whose friendly a.s.sistance had been counted upon so much to befriend the little garrison at La Navidad.

[Sidenote: Its garrison killed.]

These formalities over, Columbus inquired for Diego de Arana and his men. The young Lucayan, now Columbus's only interpreter, did the best he could with a dialect not his own to make a connected story out of the replies, which was in effect that sickness and dissension, together with the withdrawal of some to other parts of the island, had reduced the ranks of the garrison, when the fort as well as the neighboring village of Guacanagari was suddenly attacked by a mountain chieftain, Caonabo, who burned both fort and village. Those of the Spaniards who were not driven into the sea to perish had been put to death. In this fight the friendly cacique had been wounded. The visitors said that this chieftain's hurt had prevented his coming with them to greet the Admiral; but that he would come in the morning. Coma, in his account of this midnight interview, is not so explicit, and leaves the reader to infer that Columbus did not get quite so clear an apprehension of the fate of his colony.

When the dawn came, the harbor appeared desolate. Not a canoe was seen where so many sped about in the previous year. A boat was sent ash.o.r.e, and found every sign that the fort had been sacked as well as destroyed.

Fragments of clothing and bits of merchandise were scattered amid its blackened ruins. There were Indians lurking behind distant trees, but no one approached, and as the cacique had not kept the word which he had sent of coming himself in the morning, suspicions began to arise that the story of its destruction had not been honestly given. The new-comers pa.s.sed a disturbed night with increasing mistrust, and the next morning Columbus landed and saw all for himself. He traveled farther away from the sh.o.r.e than those who landed on the preceding day, and gained some confirmation of the story in finding the village of the cacique a ma.s.s of blackened ruins. Cannon were again discharged, in the hopes that their reverberating echoes might reach the ears of those who were said to have abandoned the fort before the ma.s.sacre. The well and ditch were cleaned out to see if any treasure had been cast into it, as Columbus had directed in case of disaster. Nothing was found, and this seemed to confirm the tale of the suddenness of the attack. Columbus and his men went still farther inland to a village; but its inmates had hurriedly fled, so that many articles of European make, stockings and a Moorish robe among them, had been left behind, spoils doubtless of the fort.

Returning nearer the fort, they discovered the bodies of eleven men buried, with the gra.s.s growing above them, and enough remained of their clothing to show they were Europeans. This is Dr. Chanca's statement, who says the men had not been dead two months. Coma says that the bodies were unburied, and had lain for nearly three months in the open air; and that they were now given Christian burial.

[Sidenote: Guacanagari and Caonabo.]

Later in the day, a few of the natives were lured by friendly signs to come near enough to talk with the Lucayan interpreter. The story in much of its details was gradually drawn out, and Columbus finally possessed himself of a pretty clear conception of the course of the disastrous events. It was a tale of cruelty, avarice, and sensuality towards the natives on the part of the Spaniards, and of jealousy and brawls among themselves. No word of their governor had been sufficient to restrain their outbursts of pa.s.sionate encounter, and no sense of insecurity could deter them from the most foolhardy risks while away from the fort's protection. Those who had been appointed to succeed Arana, if there were an occasion, revolted against him, and, being unsuccessful in overthrowing him, they went off with their adherents in search of the mines of Cibao. This carried them beyond the protection of Guacanagari, and into the territory of his enemy, Caonabo, a wandering Carib who had offered himself to the interior natives as their chieftain, and who had acquired a great ascendency in the island. This leader, who had learned of the dissensions among the Spaniards, was no sooner informed of the coming of these renegades within his reach than he caused them to be seized and killed. This emboldened him to join forces with another cacique, a neighbor of Guacanagari, and to attempt to drive the Spaniards from the island, since they had become a standing menace to his power, as he reasoned. The confederates marched stealthily, and stole into the vicinity of the fort in the night. Arana had but ten men within the stockade, and they kept no watch. Other Spaniards were quartered in the adjacent village. The onset was sudden and effective, and the dismal ruins of the fort and village were thought to confirm the story.

[Sidenote: Dona Catalina.]

Other confirmations followed. A caravel was sent to explore easterly, and was soon boarded by two Indians from the sh.o.r.e, who invited the captain, Maldonado, to visit the cacique, who lay ill at a neighboring village. The captain went, and found Guacanagari laid up with a bandaged leg. The savage told a story which agreed with the one just related, and on its being repeated to Columbus, the Admiral himself, with an imposing train, went to see the cacique. Guacanagari seemed anxious, in repeating the story, to convince the Admiral of his own loyalty to the Spaniards, and pointed to his wounds and to those of some of his people as proof.

There was the usual interchange of presents, hawks' bells for gold, and similar reckonings. Before leaving, Columbus asked to have his surgeon examine the wound, which the cacique said had been occasioned by a stone striking the leg. To get more light, the chieftain went out-of-doors, leaning upon the Admiral's arm. When the bandage was removed, there was no external sign of hurt; but the cacique winced if the flesh was touched. Father Boyle, who was in the Admiral's train, thought the wound a pretense, and the story fabricated to conceal the perfidy of the cacique, and urged Columbus to make an instant example of the traitor.

The Admiral was not so confident as the priest, and at all events he thought a course of pacification and procrastination was the better policy. The interview did not end, according to Coma, without some strange manifestations on the part of the cacique, which led the Spaniards for a moment to fear that a trial of arms was to come. The chief was not indisposed to try his legs enough to return with the Admiral to his s.h.i.+p that very evening. Here he saw the Carib prisoners, and the accounts tell us how he shuddered at the sight of them. He wondered at the horses and other strange creatures which were shown to him. Coma tells us that the Indians thought that the horses were fed on human flesh. The women who had been rescued from the Caribs attracted, perhaps, even more the attention of the savage, and particularly a lofty creature among them, whom the Spaniards had named Dona Catalina.

Guacanagari was observed to talk with her more confidingly than he did with the others.

Father Boyle urged upon the Admiral that a duress similar to that of Catalina was none too good for the perfidious cacique, as the priest persisted in calling the savage, but Columbus hesitated. There was, however, little left of that mutual confidence which had characterized the relations of the Admiral and the chieftain during the trying days of the s.h.i.+pwreck, the year before. When the Admiral offered to hang a cross on the neck of his visitor, and the cacique understood it to be the Christian emblem, he shrank from the visible contact of a faith of which the past months had revealed its character. With this manifestation they parted, and the cacique was set ash.o.r.e. Coma seems to unite the incidents of this interview on the s.h.i.+p with those of the meeting ash.o.r.e.

[Sidenote: The cacique and Catalina.]

There comes in here, according to the received accounts, a little pa.s.sage of Indian intrigue and gallantry. A messenger appeared the next day to inquire when the Admiral sailed, and later another to barter gold. This last held some talk with the Indian women, and particularly with Catalina. About midnight a light appeared on the sh.o.r.e, and Catalina and her companions, while the s.h.i.+p's company, except a watch, were sleeping, let themselves down the vessel's side, and struck out for the sh.o.r.e. The watch discovered the escape, but not in time to prevent the women having a considerable start. Boats pursued, but the swimmers touched the beach first. Four of them, however, were caught, but Catalina and the others escaped.

When, the next morning, Columbus sent a demand for the fugitives, it was found that Guacanagari had moved his household and all his effects into the interior of the island. The story got its fitting climax in the suspicious minds of the Spaniards, when they supposed that the fugitive beauty was with him. Here was only a fresh instance of the savage's perfidy.

[Sidenote: Columbus abandons La Navidad.]

Columbus had before this made up his mind that the vicinity of his hapless fort was not a good site for the town which he intended to build. The ground was low, moist, and unhealthy. There were no building stones near at hand. There was need of haste in a decision. The men were weary of their confinement on s.h.i.+pboard. The horses and other animals suffered from a like restraint. Accordingly expeditions were sent to explore the coast, and it soon became evident that they must move beyond the limits of Guacanagari's territory, if they would find the conditions demanded. Melchior Maldonado, in command of one of these expeditions, had gone eastward until he coasted the country of another cacique. This chief at first showed hostility, but was won at last by amicable signs.

From him they learned that Guacanagari had gone to the mountains. From another they got the story of the ma.s.sacre of the fort, almost entirely accordant with what they had already discovered.

[Sidenote: Isabella founded.]