INTRODUCTION
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS’s four voyages of discovery to the New World were recorded in a number of letters and dispatches written by him and the officers who sailed with him. The story was taken up by a talented writer of newsletters to the great, Peter Martyr, and later by the royal historian Captain Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo and by Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, in particular, both of whom knew the Indies, and by Columbus’s own son Hernando, who accompanied his father on his fourth voyage and wrote his biography. A great library of documents was collected in the Casa de las Indias at Seville (where American affairs were initially handled) and afterwards taken to Hispaniola, and in addition Hernando himself had many papers which were read also by Bartolomé de las Casas, who was a friend of the Columbus family. During the litigation concerning that family’s claims to wealth and governorship, facts were discussed and interpreted in a variety of ways. When Oviedo published his official Historia general y natural de las Indias in 1547 - fifty-six years after Columbus’s landfall - it might have seemed that everything relevant to the voyages had been read and written.
It was not until the quatercentenary of 1892, which inspired a number of books and articles on the man and his discovery, that Christopher Columbus emerged as a mysterious figure about whom many cardinal questions can be asked and few conclusively answered.
Oviedo, with whose narrative this book begins, accepted Columbus as a Genoese of no great lineage, education or attainments, one who had sailed on various commercial voyages, and who conceived and tirelessly advocated from court to court a scheme for crossing the ocean from Spain to China and opening up a direct trade route to the west, by which the gold, jewels and spices of the Orient could be brought to the ports of Castile: a reasonable trading venture, which he made more attractive to the Catholic sovereigns Ferdinand and Isabela, by offering them the prospect that the inhabitants of the intervening lands, perhaps of China and Japan themselves, might be converted to Christianity on the way. The royal pair were enthusiasts for the conversion of Jews and Moslems, and Columbus carried on his first voyage a converted Jew with a knowledge of Arabic, who would be able to expound the Christian mysteries to the Chinese, Japanese and Indians, who were presumed to speak Arabic.
Oviedo, as the royal historian, takes care to refute Columbus’s claims to having presented the sovereigns with a new world. This so-called new world was already known to the ancients, and, as Oviedo tries to prove by a resort to legends which could surely have convinced nobody, had actually belonged to the earliest kings of Spain.
Oviedo’s legends are transparent nonsense. But they are no more foolish than most of the arguments which Columbus himself put forward when trying to find backers for his first voyage, and even when theorizing about the probable shape of the world just after the discovery of Trinidad on his third voyage. Ever since the time of the Greek cosmographers Marinus of Tyre and Ptolemy, there had been theories that the world was a sphere and that it would consequently be possible to go to the east by sailing west. Two things were in dispute: the distance, which could only be calculated by computing the circumference of the world at some given latitude; and whether or not there were lands or islands on the way. As for the distance, the shortest possibility was advanced by Marinus of Tyre, and this figure was accepted by Paolo Toscanelli of Florence, an aged cosmographer, who had been approached by the Portuguese and with whom Columbus had exchanged letters. Toscanelli thought Columbus’s project feasible, but does not appear to have respected his learning. However, he sent him a map, which Columbus undoubtedly carried and consulted. Indeed, we find him discussing it with the captain of one of his caravels, Martin Alonso Pinzón, when he was already in the latitude of the Indies on his first voyage.
Columbus’s theories were more rigid and even more optimistic than Toscanelli’s. He mentally fixed the distance between Portugal and Chipangu Qapan) at 2,760 miles. The actual distance is 12,000. We can no more accept Hernando Colon’s claim that his father was a man of education than that he was of noble descent.
In relation to the possible islands lying between Spain and China, of which he was granted the governorship by the Catholic sovereigns at Granada before his first voyage, Columbus was equally credulous. There were many stories of islands lying out in the Atlantic - Antilla, Brasil, St Brendan’s Isle - which were either pure inventions or sailors’ tales of cloud banks or ice-floes. In Ireland, the Azores, the Canaries and the Cape Verde Islands there were stories of lands to be seen on clear days to the west, but the only western lands that had been visited - Greenland, Labrador and Newfoundland, which had been colonized by the Vikings - were not mentioned in any of Columbus’s letters or notes. The Danes, with a Portuguese pilot aboard, had actually revisited Labrador only fifteen years before he landed in the Bahamas. But having visited Iceland, on a trading voyage, Columbus had no interest in the discovery of more frozen wastes. His goal was the rich lands described by Marco Polo and the romantic Sir John Mandeville, lands flowing with gold and spices and eager to be awakened to the true faith.
Impelled by his fixed idea of a westward voyage of less than three thousand miles, Columbus hawked his project around the courts of Portugal, England and the twin kingdoms of Castile and Aragon. Every year the Portuguese were sailing farther down the coast of Africa. Soon they would round its southern cape, still to be discovered, and sail up the east coast to the Red Sea and so along the Arab trade-routes to India and China. To do so they had never to depart far from the sight of land. But with the invention of the ship’s compass, a journey far from the sight of land was theoretically possible. Spanish sailors had experience of carrying wine, in round flat-bottomed boats like Columbus’s flag-ship the Santa Maria, to Bristol, and of bringing furs and whale blubber from Iceland. But these routes had been known to pilots for centuries. To journey out into the ocean, a pilot would have to use the compass and check his position each night with the quadrant, measuring the altitude of the Pole Star. But even on his third voyage, Columbus was theorizing wildly about the apparent deviations of the Pole Star, which he could only explain by the crazy supposition that the earth was pear-shaped and he was sailing uphill. Columbus’s theoretical knowledge of navigation was clearly not exceptional. Yet when on his third voyage he decided to sail by dead reckoning from Trinidad (which he had just discovered) to Hispaniola, which he knew from his first and second voyages, with no point of reference nearer than the Cape Verde Islands, he sailed a correct course, though it brought him a little west of his destination on account of currents which he could not reckon with. Columbus was seemingly a good natural pilot, who knew how to take advantage of winds and currents, and who learnt almost intuitively how to sail out with the trades and back with the westerlies.
Whatever Columbus’s skill as a pilot, he was extremely inept in his handling of men. His pretensions were great, and he could share no power with a subordinate; he quarrelled with his captains, and his crew were several times on the point of mutiny. He could not control his settlers in the island of Hispaniola, and was frequently at odds with Bishop Fonseca and the office at Seville which was responsible for his supplies and ships. He trusted no one except members of his own family. Yet so long as Queen Isabela lived, he was able to sway the court to his side. Even the tragic episode of his arrest at Santo Domingo and his return loaded with chains turned eventually to his advantage. In the eyes of all, even of his enemies, he was a man of destiny who had vastly extended the dominions of his sovereigns and the bounds of Christendom.
But what was the relationship of the islands and the possible mainland he had discovered to the Asian continent he was seeking? Having assumed that the island of Hispaniola was in fact Japan, the Chipangu of Marco Polo, he was compelled to accept Cuba as the Asiatic mainland, the ‘extreme end of the East’. Although, on first reaching it, he had believed a native account that it was in fact a large island, on his second voyage he compelled his officers and crew to swear under heavy penalties that it was beyond any doubt the mainland of Asia. By an even greater piece of fictional geography the Orinoco, whose delta he discovered on his third voyage, was one of the four rivers of the Bible, flowing from the earthly Paradise, and had a common source with the Tigris, the Euphrates and the Ganges. Whether to the last he still believed that the coasts of Panama, and Costa Rica and the Mosquito coast of Nicaragua, which he explored on his fourth voyage, were also parts of Asia is uncertain. But it would seem so. Alonso de Ojeda and Amerigo Vespucci, a Genoese clerk who accidentally gave his name to the new continent, perhaps believed otherwise, after their expeditions to the north coast of South America. But Columbus was hard to shake from his illusions.
Columbus’s principal illusion, that he had made the voyage to Asia, was fostered by his need to provide rapid successes or victories in order to get renewed backing for his explorations. The islands that he discovered were not rich. The quantities of gold he claimed to be just about to discover were always on the next island. The Arawak fishermen and the Carib cannibal raiders who preyed on them had only a few gold ornaments; the inhabitants of the South American coastlands alloyed such gold as they had with copper, which they in fact valued more highly. Despite Columbus’s frequent lists of valuable plants discovered, he was no botanist and made frequent mistakes. The islands had some gums, but no valuable spices. They had timber, it is true, suitable for shipbuilding, and parrots. In future, the sugar-cane, the banana palm and tobacco would thrive there. But for the present they had little but fish and maize, sweet peppers, yucca and sweet potatoes, the food of the natives - and when European crops were planted there, they speedily shot up and withered. The only wealth of the country lay in its human inhabitants, who could be made to work as slaves either in Spain or at home. The settlers quickly forced them to dig for nonexistent gold, and Columbus advocated almost at the start their export to Spain as labourers. But these ideas offended the religious fervour of the sovereigns. The natives must be converted, and Christians might not be enslaved. Such was their view, and that of the historian Bartolome de las Casas, the bishop of Chiapa and historian of the Indies, who offended all Spanish settlers by his advocacy of native rights and the tales of oppression he gathered from all parts of the sovereigns’ new dominions. Only criminals and prisoners of war might be enslaved, and the settlers deliberately increased the numbers of these by provoking Indian rebellions and placing the cannibal Caribs outside natural law.
On their first arrival the Spaniards were favourably received and entertained by the Arawak people, who traded food and water and a few gold ornaments for such trifles as newly minted copper coins, brass bells and even bits of broken glass and pottery. They believed that these white strangers in their tall ships had come down from the sky. One finds similar illusions even in the present century on remote islands of the South Seas, as is evidenced by the cargo cult of Melanesia. The Arawaks at first welcomed the newcomers with awe and affection, hoping for their protection from the marauding Caribs, who descended on them from the Leeward Islands to steal their women and castrate and fatten their young men for food. But soon the Arawaks were as frightened of the Spaniards as of the Caribs, and in the end attacked them. When they landed, Columbus’s men found the villages deserted. The inhabitants had fled, taking all their possessions into the bush. It is fairly evident, from a chance observation of Columbus that he took care that a certain girl who came aboard with her relatives on the first visit to Hispaniola should not be molested, that sexually hungry Spanish sailors undoubtedly seized Indian women. Quarrels about women led to the massacre of the first settlers at La Navidad.
It is more or less proven that syphilis, a disease unknown in Europe before the end of the fifteenth century, was brought by the Spaniards from America. The Indians suffered from it in a mild form, but it attacked the Spaniards more severely. This explains Columbus’s frequent allusions to the sickness and exhaustion of his men. Columbus’s own illness, which prostrated him and caused him temporary blindness, is not so easily explicable. He drove himself hard, remaining for days and nights on end in the forecastle, watching the course. He says that all this time he did not sleep. Certainly he did not go down to his cabin. Twice at least, on his return to Hispaniola from Cuba on the second voyage, and on leaving Trinidad on the third, he was prostrated, but whether the symptoms were physical or neurotic is far from clear. We know that when he was in this condition he thought and acted most unreasonably. This perhaps accounts for his head-on collision with the settlers on his arrival at Isabela, and for his strange theorizings of the earthly Paradise, set down in his log-book on the third voyage. Columbus not only drove himself obsessively forward but confided in nobody except his brothers, Bartolomé, who had treated with HenryVII on his behalf, and on coming out to the Indies took charge of the settlers on Hispaniola, and Diego, a less clearly defined figure. Bartolomé was a good map-maker but no administrator, and Diego, sent for from Italy, had no experience of government. His other lieutenants were of uneven quality. Pedro Margarit, who was to have obtained the gold of Hispaniola while Columbus was exploring Cuba and Jamaica, went home in disgust on finding that the Admiral had given him office but no authority. Columbus did not wish to administer settlers but to go on exploring, and such was the disorder created by his indeterminate policy that after the third voyage he was forbidden to return to Santo Domingo.
The settlers were difficult men, all bent on making swift profits. Those who remained from the first voyage were wiped out. Those that came on the second consisted largely of men under sentence for crimes, who had been pardoned on condition that they joined Columbus’s expedition. By now the idea of permanent settlement was taking shape. But most of those who were free to, left for home with Pedro Margarit. Pardoned criminals, however, were compelled to stay, since their pardons were conditional on their remaining away from Spain. They were not suitable colonists, and even after some women were sent out to them from Spain they continued to raise factions. They opposed the Council of Santo Domingo (the Columbus family and their friends) calling them new Christians, or Jewish converts (conversos ) and boasting of the purity of their own Christian blood.
On the basis of their accusations and some even less sub stantial arguments Columbus himself is sometimes said to have been of Jewish descent. The most extreme story is that he was no Italian but a Majorcan Jew, and that the reason for his ambitions for noble rank was to exact private compensation for the humiliation of that people, who were, as he notes in his log-book, expelled from Spain on the day on which he made his terms with Ferdinand and Isabela for the first voyage. Certainly his backers at court, Luis de San Angel in particular, were conversos, and he himself wrote in Castilian, the natural language of a converso, not in Italian, which he claimed as his native tongue. Columbus’s Castilian is spattered with Portuguese and Catalan words, which would not be unexpected in the language of a man whose experience was chiefly of the sea. His Christian faith is not in doubt. It was a very enthusiastic kind, and much affected by a private cult of the Trinity.
Columbus felt himself to be guided by a supernatural destiny to make the discoveries that he did and to add greatly to the dominions of the Catholic sovereigns. As Christopher, he was fated to carry his Redeemer on his shoulders into distant lands. It is this supernatural sense of mission, to be read in all his writings, that impelled him to the Indies and caused him to continue his search, whether for the mainland of Asia or the earthly Paradise, almost to the end of his life. His gains in happiness were small, in wealth not enormous, but in patents of nobility, which he valued highly, very great. On his return from the first voyage he rode beside King Ferdinand through the streets of Barcelona, the equal of the dead prince Juan who had once ridden beside his father. He had done mighty service to his God and his King; in this lay his chief reward.
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I have endeavoured to arrange the documents which I have translated for this book in such an order as to give a consecutive narrative of events. I have, therefore, begun, after a short prelude by the royal historian Oviedo, with the digest of Columbus’s lost log-book made by Bartolomé de las Casas for his history. It frequently quotes Columbus’s own words, especially his words of wonder at the new lands discovered, that seemed to have a climate ‘as mild as Andalusia in May’. I have followed the log-book as far as the Cuba landfall. For events on Hispaniola, the defection of Pinzón, the loss of the Santa Maria, and the first half-hearted attack by the natives at the Bay of Arrows (Golfo de las Flechas) I have turned to the Life of the Admiral by his son Hernando, which also frequently quotes Columbus’s own words, taken from the lost log-book. This account of the first voyage then reaches its conclusion with a letter written by Columbus a few days before landing at Lisbon, copies of which he addressed to various personages. The letter tells, as if for the first time, of matters which will be known to the reader. It is, however, the most important document for the first voyage, since it attempts to sum up the Admiral’s discoveries and achievements. It tells nothing of any adverse events, however, for it is after all a success story that he wishes to tell, a story that will bring him fame, honours and ready backers for a second expedition.
The second voyage opens with a letter from Doctor Chanca, physician to the fleet, who accompanied it to Hispaniola but returned with the first convoy to sail for Spain. He is circumstantial in his description of the country, though he shares the Admiral’s unsubstantiated optimism concerning its riches. At the moment of his departure for the Old World, reports were just coming in from the reputed gold-fields of Cibao, which can hardly have been as categorical as he asserts. Nor had he thoroughly sifted the history of those events between the first voyage and the second, which had led to the death of all the Spanish settlers at La Navidad. He passes over the quarrels among the settlers themselves and their treatment of the Indians, especially the women, though this last would have sufficiently explained the burning of the fort and the annihilation of the garrison.
The events of the third voyage are described in two highly emotional letters from the Admiral, the first of which tells of the discovery of Trinidad and develops some very strange theories about the shape of the world, and the second, written in chains, protests grievously against the wrongs done to him by the royal emissary, Bobadilla. The linking narrative drawn from his son’s Life, though strongly favourable to the Admiral, suggests some of the reasons for his arrest and deportation. Not even his most powerful advocate could entirely justify his quarrels with all his collaborators except those who were members of his own family.
The fourth voyage, which brought Columbus to the mainland of Central America, is told in his own report, supplemented by the story of his loyal lieutenant Diego Mendez, drawn from that gentleman’s last will. And the final chapter is contributed by Hernando, who tells of his father’s swift decline after his final return to Spain.
Hernando Colon and Bartolomé de las Casas both had access to Columbus’s papers, and both give full accounts of the Admiral’s life and voyages. Las Casas’ History of the Indies (Historia de las Indias, second edition 1965, Fondo de Cultura Economica, Mexico) is by far the larger book, since it covers the whole history of American exploration up to 1520. It suffers, however, from prolixity of style and from the too frequent introduction of Las Casas’ favourite theme, the ill-treatment of the natives. In his advocacy of the rights of the Christianized Indians against the predatory Spaniards, Las Casas made himself extremely unpopular, since the right was always on his side. His history is deeply affected by his humanitarian views, one or two examples of which I have fitted into the narrative. I have generally preferred however, where no first-hand document exists, to take my story from Hernando’s life of his father, a work of scholarship and style, which has too often been slighted by modern historians.
Hernando was the Admiral’s illegitimate son by his Spanish mistress Beatriz Enriquez. As a boy he was put as page at the royal court and afterwards accompanied his father on his fourth voyage. But Hernando was a scholar rather than an explorer, and collected a large library. In 1571, his Life of the Admiral, which purported to be a translation of a Spanish original, was published in Italian. The history of Columbus and the claims of his family were by then matters of dispute in Spain and publication in Spanish might have been inadvisable. The unpublished Spanish original is lost. Though one nineteenth-century scholar actually suggested that it was no more than the compilation of an Italian bookseller, its authenticity is supported, in my opinion, by the son’s exaggerated claims for his father’s noble descent and scholarly education - in which no objective critic will believe - and, more strongly still, by his frequent quotations of his father’s log-book and other writings, which agree with those of Las Casas and with such originals as survive. None of this material would have been available to an Italian hack working for the book trade. Las Casas’ history (begun in 1523), with which he in so many respects agrees, was not published till the nineteenth century. I have no hesitation therefore in accepting Hernando’s Life of the Admiral, and have translated many chapters from it, working from the most recent Spanish version (Vida del Almirante Don Cristobal Colon, published by the Fondo de Cultura Economica, Mexico, 1947).
My source for the chief documents has been the Austral reprint Los cuatro viajes del almirante y su testamento (fourth edition, Buenos Aires, 1954), which I have compared in most cases with the Hakluyt Society’s versions and translation, edited by Cecil Jane (London, 1930 and 1933).
Those who want full-length studies of the Admiral’s life should read Samuel Eliot Morrison’s Admiral of the Ocean Sea (Boston, 1942), which is strongest on the side of navigation, since its author followed most of the Admiral’s journeys from port to port in his own yacht; and Salvador de Madariaga Christopher Columbus (London, 1949), an exhaustive psychological study, which advances an interesting theory of Columbus’s Jewish origins. The latest work, Bjorn Land-strom’s Columbus (London, 1967), is particularly illuminating on the subject of Columbus’s ships, their provisions and equipment.
J.M.C.
April 1968 Knappswood
