CHAPTER 10
On February 3, 1500, Columbus returned from the interior to Santo Domingo, where he made plans to sail to Spain and present his version of events to the Sovereigns. “Throughout these disorders,” Ferdinand noted, “many of the rebels, writing from Hispaniola, and others who returned to Castile continually conveyed false information to the Catholic Sovereigns and their royal council against the Admiral and his brothers, claiming they were most cruel and unfit to govern.” Why? “Because they were foreigners and had no experience in dealing with people of rank.” Columbus was a stranger, speaking in a foreign accent, surrounded by one brother or another, rarely mingling, an aloof, determined, enigmatic mystic. But his accomplishments loomed over all. Everyone on the island toiled in the shadow of Columbus. Even in near disgrace he remained the most powerful European in the Indies. If the Sovereigns did not rescue Hispaniola from his influence, the critics warned, “the total ruin of the Indies would come about.” They predicted Columbus would “form an alliance with some foreign prince, claiming the Indies as his possession.” And they resorted to more obvious libels—Columbus had hidden the actual wealth of the Indies from Spain; he was planning to use his Indian forces against the Sovereigns—calculated to appeal to his enemies in Castile.
Ferdinand Columbus recalled that when he visited Granada, “more than fifty of these shameless people brought a load of wine and, sitting in the court of the Alhambra”—the Moorish fortress later occupied by the Sovereigns—“loudly proclaimed that Their Highnesses and the Admiral reduced them to the pitiful state by withholding their pay, besides thousands of other lies that they concocted.” So great was their resentment, however illusory its basis, that whenever King Ferdinand rode by on his royal steed, they would surround him, blocking his way and bellowing, “Pay! Pay!”
Columbus’s son Ferdinand cringed at the memory of his own youthful encounters with the rabble. “Any time my brother and I, being pages to the Queen, would run into them, they would shout and persecute us, chanting, ‘Here come the sons of the Admiral of the Mosquitoes, of him who discovered lands of vanity and deceit, the grave and ruin of Castilian gentlemen.’”
To minimize humiliating confrontations with Spaniards angry with Columbus, Ferdinand confided, he and his half brother “carefully avoided their presence.” So it was that the offspring of Spain’s most influential, transformative explorer went about the countryside incognito, out of fear for their lives.
Mindful of his descent into royal disfavor, Columbus recalled that he prayed “many times” to the Sovereigns to send “someone who might have charge of the administration of justice,” and he asked others to make the request on his behalf “since my reputation is such that although I were to build churches and hospitals, they would always be called liars or robbers.”
Ferdinand and Isabella listened to the many complaints about Columbus reaching Spain, and they acted as political leaders do: they appointed a special prosecutor. The date was May 21, 1499, and their choice was a man of impeccable credentials: Francisco de Bobadilla, a knight of the Order of Calatrava, the military wing of the Cistercian order, a venerable religious community of monks and nuns. His record reverberated with the pieties of Reconquista, and his new orders expanded on them, making him “Governor of the Islands and Mainland of the Indies.” On this basis, he had every right to believe that he, not Columbus, would soon rule the Indies. His mission would be to rid Hispaniola of the corruption wrought by Columbus. On arrival in the Indies, Bobadilla was to investigate Columbus—the presumption in Spain was strong that the Admiral would be found blameworthy—and, Ferdinand related, “should he find the Admiral guilty, he should send him back to Castile and take over the island.”
No one, not even Columbus, believed that the administration of Hispaniola had been handled properly. But no one besides Columbus was willing to leave Spain to manage it. Each voyage—and there were now three—demonstrated that Columbus was a brilliant navigator, canny, determined, able to learn from experience and mistakes with breathtaking speed—his Chinese delusion notwithstanding—but that he was ill equipped to serve as a governor of the lands he had conquered. Nearly every landfall showcased his brilliant and fearless navigation even as it exposed his inability to guide men, settle disputes, or instill loyalty.
At the moment Bobadilla’s fleet approached Santo Domingo in August 1500, Columbus was at Concepción, putting down the latest Indian revolt. His brother Bartholomew, the Adelantado, was in Xaraguá with Roldán, arresting the allies of Guevara, who had attempted to kill the mutineer. And Diego Columbus remained behind in Santo Domingo, ordering the execution of other rebels. “The Admiral and the Adelantado,” explained Las Casas, “anxiously went about arresting those who had again rebelled. They hanged those that they could arrest, and he brought a priest with him to confess them so that he could hang them wherever he might find them.” At that point, “he could subject the Indians and constrain them to pay the tribute that he had imposed upon them and that Francisco Roldán had relieved them of during his rebellion.” He did all this simply to send money to Ferdinand and Isabella to repay them for their expenses, and to silence his critics. His master plan consisted of baptizing every Indian in the major towns and hamlets of Hispaniola so they could “serve Their Highnesses like the vassals in Castile,” in the opinion of Las Casas, who estimated that the scheme would generate sixty million maravedís a year for Spain. If Columbus’s plans came to fruition, AD 1500 would mark the turning point in the economics of the Indies, the year the empire began sending revenue to Castile. “But, while preparing his loom, God cut the thread of the cloth that he planned to weave.” The instrument was Bobadilla.
At about seven o’clock in the morning of Sunday, August 23, Bobadilla’s ships—La Gorda, named for her master, Andrea Martín de la Gorda, accompanied by Antigua—appeared at the entrance to the harbor, but were forced to tack one way and then another before an offshore wind until late in the morning, when the breeze reversed direction and blew ashore, bearing the caravels before it.
Diego dispatched a canoe bearing three Christians and several Indians to meet the newcomers. One was Cristóbal Rodríguez, a sailor known as the first visitor to master the Indian language. The other two Christians were Juan Arráez and Nicolás de Gaeta. The Indians, whose names have not been recorded, paddled.
As the canoe approached, Bobadilla, “who had traveled in the caravel Gorda, then leaned out and said he was sent by the king and queen as judicial investigator of those who were rebelling on this island.” Andrea Martín de la Gorda demanded news of Hispaniola, and learned that “seven Spanish men had been hanged that week.” Five more were incarcerated, awaiting hanging. The fact that all the victims were Spanish alarmed Bobadilla. What sort of rebellion had occurred? Had Columbus allowed it to get out of hand? The investigator immediately asked for the Admiral and his two brothers, but only Diego was nearby. The Admiral was in Xaraguá, busy preparing still more executions. And to whom did he have the pleasure of speaking? Cristóbal Rodríguez inquired.
Francisco de Bobadilla, the judicial investigator.
The canoe returned to the shore, where expectations ran high that the arrival of the two ships meant better days ahead for the long-suffering colony: supplies, or women, or weapons, or other comforts from home. When they learned that the ships carried a “judicial investigator,” said Las Casas, “those who felt guilt reacted with fear and sadness. Those who felt aggrieved by the admiral and his brothers were bursting with joy, along with those who were there involuntarily, mostly those who earned their salary from the king, who had not been and were suffering great need of food, clothing, and necessities from Castile.”
When the wind died down, the caravels rode the tide into the harbor. Two scaffolds came into view, “one on this side of the river, which is the western shore where the city has now been built, and the other on the opposite side.” Two hanged Christians, imprisoned several days before, dangled from the gallows.
Amid this macabre scene, “people came to and from the ships. They made their courtesies and reverences to the investigator Bobadilla. They asked and they answered, but always with some reserve until they saw what in the world was going to happen.”
The next day, August 24, Bobadilla disembarked to hear Mass in the small, ragged settlement that claimed to be the capital of a new global empire. The contrast between the empire of the Indies’ aspirations and its shabby reality could hardly have been greater. Bobadilla walked among flimsy, thatched structures housing the Europeans and compact stores of supplies. Most of the business of the settlement was still conducted aboard the ships, in tightly confined spaces, where men felt safer in fetid holds than on land, exposed to mercurial Indians and menacing snakes, flies, and mosquitoes. To an outsider, the settlement would have appeared more of a negligible, makeshift eyesore than an outpost of Christianity and the might of Spain. In contrast, the Indians’ villages, huts, hammocks, drums, and fires, graceful canoes and tiny cemís, and especially their carefully tended fields of cassava plants, appeared thoroughly in place. Only the Europeans’ expansive ships riding at anchor in the harbor or offshore suggested that these white men from afar were capable of better things than violence, rape, and an obsessive quest for gold.
When the observance concluded, the investigator ordered the king’s scribe, who had traveled across the ocean with him, to read a letter from Ferdinand and Isabella, in which they summarized the rebellions of Roldán and others, and stated their purpose for sending Bobadilla to Hispaniola: “As we see it, because it was and is a bad example, worthy of punishment and chastisement, and because it pertains to us as king and queen and lords to provide the resolution of it, we command you to go to these islands and mainland of the Indies and gather your information using ways and means you need to find out best and most completely . . . who and which persons were the ones who rose up against the admiral and our justice and for what cause and reason, and what plundering, evil deeds, and damage they have done.” When he had completed his investigation, Bobadilla was to “detain those whom you find guilty of it and confiscate their goods.” The orders were clear, and, on the face of it, equal to the dire reports from Hispaniola that had reached Ferdinand and Isabella. “Once they have been arrested, proceed against them and against those absent with the greatest civil and criminal penalties you can find by law.” Anyone who dared to obstruct Bobadilla’s investigation would be fined ten thousand maravedís, a sum larger than any but the wealthiest nobleman could afford.
In the morning, Bobadilla commanded that another royal proclamation be read to remind everyone within hearing that he enjoyed the unreserved backing of the Sovereigns. But skepticism concerning his legitimacy lingered. Having anticipated this reaction, he ordered a clerk to recite still another letter from Ferdinand and Isabella to Columbus himself, with a set of humiliating instructions for the thin-skinned Admiral: “You are required by this letter that without any excuse or delay you give and turn over . . . the fortresses, houses, ships, arms, munitions, provisions, horses, livestock, and whatever other of our things that we possess in these islands” to “the Commander,” that is, Bobadilla. If Columbus complied, he could keep whatever personal wealth he had acquired, but if he refused, he would incur the “pain of our displeasure,” buttressed with ominous threats about the fate of “those who defied the Sovereigns.” Finally, Bobadilla displayed a royal certificate instructing him to pay those owed money by the Sovereigns, implying heavily that even though Columbus had failed to comply with these demands, they would honor the obligations to clear the slate. There was no mistaking the import of these words: the Sovereigns had turned on Columbus, and placed Bobadilla in charge.
The Comendador added to his forces by assembling everyone on the Sovereigns’ payroll to inform them that henceforth they served him, and their first objective was to rescue several convicts who were about to be hanged. When he produced the document ordering their release, the warden, Miguel Díaz, looking down from the battlements, recognized the signatures of Ferdinand and Isabella affixed to it. Bobadilla persisted: the prisoners were to be released. The warden stalled, asking to examine the fine print. The Comendador shot back that there was no time to produce a copy for him. A delay might lead to the hanging of the convicts. If the warden did not comply immediately, the Comendador would do whatever was necessary to free them, and if injury and death resulted, the warden would bear the burden of responsibility. Cornered, Miguel Díaz insisted that he had to consult with the Admiral himself.
Realizing that the officious warden would not do his bidding, Bobadilla, with his newly assembled forces, advanced on the fortress and ordered him to open the gates and admit them. The warden stood his ground. Sword drawn, standing atop the battlements, he shouted that he had already given his reply. “Since the fortress had more sauce than meat,” said Las Casas, “because it had been built to withstand unfortunate people who were naked and without weapons, the Comendador and the people came up and with the great blow they gave to the main entrance, they broke the lock and plate.” Just as Bobadilla’s men raised ladders and prepared to swarm into the fortress through the windows, the main door swung open. Bobadilla and his forces charged past soldiers offering no resistance to his onslaught and found their way to the chamber holding the prisoners, their feet in painful shackles. Bobadilla delivered them, still bound, to the constable.
All the while, Columbus remained in the interior, preoccupied with ending the uprising. Bobadilla took the Admiral’s absence to mean that he had abdicated his role as governor of Hispaniola. And so, Ferdinand said, he “promptly took up residence in the Admiral’s palace and took over all that he found there as if it were his by lawful succession and inheritance.”
Of this insult, Columbus snarled, “All that he found there, he appropriated for himself; all well and good, perhaps he had need of it; a pirate never treated a merchant so.” His personal papers had been confiscated, and those that would have helped him defend himself in Spain, “he has most carefully concealed.” While this madman pilfered Columbus’s personal effects, the Admiral himself was exposing himself to danger in the interior and at Xaraguá, pacifying rebellions. Even if he overstated his heroism, the Admiral had a point: Bobadilla had usurped the Admiral just as he was bringing a semblance of order to Hispaniola.
To win over the handful of Spaniards still loyal to Columbus, Bobadilla announced that “he had come to pay everyone, even those who had not served properly up to that day.” The Admiral looked on in amazement as this bureaucrat usurped his authority and reduced him to a nonperson. “He announced he was to send me back in chains, and my brothers also; and that I was never to return,” Columbus recalled. “All this happened the very day after he arrived,” with Columbus in the interior.
Bristling with officialdom, Bobadilla had brought letters signed by the Sovereigns that enabled him to do whatever he wished in their names. “To me he sent neither letter nor messenger, nor has he done so to this day,” Columbus lamented. A situation so awful “I could not recall even in my dreams,” he said. After all he had done for the Sovereigns over the course of three voyages, to be treated this way was beyond imagination and reason. Maybe Ojeda was behind it, maybe he had formed a pact with Bobadilla to dishonor Columbus. Meanwhile, the Sovereigns who owed him so much remained mute.
He unburdened himself in a letter to Doña Juana de la Torre, who enjoyed a close friendship with the queen, and served as conduit as well as confidante. “Consider, Your Grace, what one who held my position was to think!” the Admiral exclaimed to her. “Honors and favors for those who sought to usurp Their Majesties’ authority and who have done so much harm and damage; humiliation for one who has sustained it through many perils.” He admitted to mistakes in the founding of the Enterprise of the Indies, yet “my errors have not been committed with intention to do ill, and I believe Their Highnesses will credit me when I say so.” He had, he pleaded, “fallen into error innocently and under compulsion,” unlike the evil Bobadilla, who had plotted to defraud Columbus and the Sovereigns. “Maintaining justice and extending the realm of Their Highnesses to this day has brought me to the depths.” But then, inadvertently damning his administrations, he reported that Spaniards bought and sold Indian women for outrageously high prices, enough to buy a farm at home, “and this is very common, and there are now many merchants who go seeking for girls; nine or ten are now for sale; for women of all ages, there is a good price to be had.” The situation had become so dire that “if Their Highnesses would command a general inquiry to be made there, I declare to you that they would find it a great marvel that the island has not been swallowed up.”
As Columbus retreated into paranoia, Bobadilla established his regime. To begin, he suspended the demoralizing tribute system for a period of twenty years and summoned Columbus to appear before him immediately, as ordered by the Sovereigns. Bobadilla established the legitimacy of this command by conveying a stale royal order to Columbus from the Sovereigns.
Don Christopher Columbus, our Admiral of the Ocean Sea.
We have sent the Knight Francisco de Bobadilla, the bearer of this letter, to inform you of certain things on our behalf. We ask that you give him full faith, trust, and obedience. Given in Madrid on May 26, 1499.
I the King. I the Queen.
Columbus had no choice but to return to Spain immediately to face his impatient Sovereigns and envious rivals. His exploring, his quest for wealth for the glory of Spain, his awe at the discovery of lands and creatures for which he had no words, the whole magnificent panoply of realms no European before him had visited, had come to a sudden end. Columbus’s behavior suggests that he realized that retribution for the excesses he had permitted was coming, but he never imagined it would be so swift and severe.
It was now early October 1500, nearly eight years after Columbus first spied the glittering white shores of the Indies and claimed them in the name of Ferdinand and Isabella. He hastened to Santo Domingo with his brother Diego to confront Francisco Bobadilla, who placed the two in chains and kept them under guard aboard ship. To reinforce the seriousness of the proceedings, Bobadilla insisted on secrecy from everyone with knowledge of the arrest.
And then he confiscated Columbus’s gold, a deed certain to torment its target. “Of this gold I had put aside certain specimens, grains as large as a goose’s egg, and a hen’s egg, and pullet’s egg, and of many shapes.” Now it all belonged to Bobadilla, who melted down much of it. A large gold chain disappeared. As the days passed, the Comendador raided Columbus’s house for silver, jewels, and decorations, appropriating everything for himself. Livestock, books and writings, and personal effects all wound up in his grip. In sum, said Columbus, Bobadilla “showed energy always in everything that he thought would injure me.” It seemed incredible, laughable that this man had been sent to “inquire into my conduct,” knowing that if he sent back a “very damaging report” he would “remain in charge of the government.” If only Bobadilla had appeared two years earlier, “I should have been free from scandalous abuse and infamy.”
His influence undermined by rebellions, Columbus felt powerless to resist Bobadilla. The standard by which he was judged was unjust, he insisted. He was being treated as an administrator of “a city or two under settled government, without fear of all being lost.” But Hispaniola posed entirely different and greater challenges. “I ought to be judged as a captain who went from Spain to the Indies to conquer a people, warlike and numerous, with customs and beliefs very different from ours, a people living in highlands and mountains, having no settled dwellings, and apart from us.” Because of his efforts, “I have brought under the dominion of the king and queen, our Sovereigns, another world, whereby Spain, which was called poor, is now most rich.” That was his claim, backed by three perilous voyages of exploration.
Heedless of Columbus’s elaborate self-justifying arguments, Bobadilla ordered a “farcical inquest,” or so it appeared to Ferdinand Columbus, “taking testimony from their open enemies, the rebels, and even showing public favor.” Even a blind man, he said, would recognize that the depositions were “dictated by prejudice rather than truth.”
Much later, when passions cooled, the Sovereigns came to agree with this assessment, and “ultimately cleared the Admiral of these charges,” and even “regretted having charged such a man”—Bobadilla—“with that mission.” But for now, Ferdinand Columbus noted, the Comendador preferred “hobnobbing with the richest and most powerful men on the island,” and awarded himself a share of the pay earned by the Indians he assigned to work for the Europeans. And he angrily reported that Bobadilla auctioned off the possessions he had seized, “while making sure some of his cronies acquired ownership of the properties for one third of their value.”
Columbus was not quite the innocent victim he proclaimed himself to be. He maintained that he silently endured the investigator’s challenge to the point of submitting to shackles and even jail, but witnesses testified that the Admiral had actually assembled a militia composed of Spanish settlers and Indians to resist Bobadilla. If true, Columbus enlisted Indians—heathens—to battle Christians: a serious offense against Spain.
Meanwhile, Bobadilla’s inquiry got under way. A priest testified that Columbus ordered Roldán not to baptize Indians without express permission. And another priest, who identified himself as Mateo Valenciano, beseeched the Admiral for permission to baptize a “female servant,” only to be denied. Instead, Columbus permitted the Spaniards to take the Indians as slaves to be bought and sold rather than baptized. Stories circulated that Columbus sold attractive Indian boys and girls as slaves rather than converting them to Christianity.
Rodrigo Manzorro, another witness, stated that he heard priests complain that they were unable to convert Indians to Christianity unless Columbus specifically permitted them, insisting that all the Indians of the island belonged to him. This accusation was echoed by Columbus’s antagonist Ojeda, who was said to have presided over mass conversions, a practice that upset the Admiral, who insisted that he, and only he, would decide who would be converted and who would be sold into slavery. Capturing a cacique with three hundred followers, the story ran, Columbus decided to send the lot to Castile to offer them as slaves to be bought and sold at auction, even though they were under Roldán’s protection. The Admiral’s conviction that all slaves belonged to him drove him to inform the island’s settlers that they must assign every other servant to him. No longer were they souls to be saved, they were human commodities whose value would be decided by Columbus.
Another witness, Francisco de Sezé, testified that in the previous six and a half years, the Admiral had ordered a dozen or more Spaniards to be whipped in public, tied by the neck, and bound together by the feet because they had traded gold for “a bit of pork and for some wine and bread” when starving. Columbus subjected them to this extreme punishment “because they bartered and gave gold without the Admiral’s permission.”
More examples of his viciousness surfaced. In one instance, he ordered a woman to be stripped and placed on the back of a donkey, “stark naked,” to be whipped because she falsely claimed to be pregnant. In another case, he ordered a woman’s tongue cut out because she had “spoken ill of the Admiral and his brothers.” She had said that his father had been a weaver—which was true—and that his brothers were “journeymen,” a vague insult, perhaps, but hardly a crime.
In La Isabela, a Spanish official arrested a woman named Teresa de Vaeça. With another Spaniard, Rodrigo Pérez, the Spanish official tortured her in secret because the governor had had an affair with a married woman allied with Teresa, who, it was claimed, “deserved the punishment for pimping.” Without trial, she received a hundred lashes “naked and on foot” and had her tongue cut out to chastise her for her transgressions, real or imagined, but in reality—from the context of the accusation—for daring to dishonor a Spanish official.
Columbus punished homosexuality with the same severity. He ordered Juan de Luxan’s throat cut for being a “traitor” and “sodomite.” The accused objected to the former accusation but not the latter.
Other testimony revealed that Columbus ordered Spaniards to be hanged for stealing bread when they were hungry. He even ordered the ears and nose cut off one miscreant, who was also whipped, shackled, and banished from the island. He ordered a cabin boy’s hand nailed in public to the spot where he had pulled a trap from a river and caught a fish.
Whippings for minor infractions occurred with alarming frequency. Columbus ordered one wrongdoer to receive a hundred lashes—which could be fatal—for stealing sheep, and another for lying about the incident. An unlucky fellow named Juan Moreno received a hundred lashes for failing to gather enough food for Columbus’s pantry. He received his lashings “on foot and naked” at the hands of an Indian, who was told to proclaim that Moreno was a “scoundrel.”
There were hangings, as Bobadilla had seen. And many others that he had not seen. Learning that two Spaniards had sold bread from the ships’ stores to hungry Christians, Columbus dispensed with an investigation and trial, and ordered them to be hanged. And so they were. Other hangings were carried out swiftly, without trial or time for the accused to confess.
Witnesses testified to Columbus’s bungling management of Hispaniola. Despite the remarkable abundance of fruit and other nourishment on the island, the generosity of the Indians in sharing it with the settlers, and the regular supplements provided by supply ships from Spain, fifty men had died at La Isabela from starvation as Columbus refused them provisions from the ships’ bountiful stores. Food that began to decompose was thrown into the sea, and anyone who tried to bargain with a food store’s guard was beaten for his trouble. The sick and convalescent discovered that their rations were reduced amid the fertile island’s plenty. The accounts, coming from so many witnesses, were abysmal, inexcusable, and served to justify the Comendador’s relieving Columbus of command.
After the inquiry, Bobadilla feared that Roldán, now realigned with the Admiral, might free Columbus from his fetters, but the raid failed to materialize. In captivity, both Columbus brothers “displayed much self-restraint,” Ferdinand reported. That way, “on arrival in Castile they could more easily secure Bobadilla’s punishment.” If they survived their ordeal.
Their situation was deteriorating by the hour. When Columbus was led to the ship, he believed he was about to be executed by having his throat cut.
“Where are you taking me?” he implored the hidalgo Alonso de Vallejo, who had been assigned the task of conveying Columbus from the fortress to La Gorda.
“Sir, your lordship goes to board the ship.”
Skeptical that he would be spared, he asked, “Vallejo, is it true?”
And the hidalgo replied, “By the life of Our Lady, it is true that you are going aboard.”
Columbus experienced overwhelming relief at the realization that he was being led not to his death but to the ship and to life.
The departure of the caravel La Gorda, bearing the Columbus brothers, provoked ugly scenes. The inhabitants of the island realm that the Admiral once ruled now insulted Columbus in the public squares and posted vicious notices on street corners. In the harbor, formerly loyal servants of the Spanish throne blew horns in derision.
Bobadilla feared that Columbus might find some way to escape, and ordered the shipmaster, Andrea Martín de la Gorda, to keep the prisoner shackled tightly throughout the voyage to Spain, until the moment they entered the presence of Bishop Fonseca, charged by the Sovereigns with overseeing the Enterprise of the Indies. Even Columbus’s enemies were appalled by this treatment. “A most absurd thing,” Las Casas charged, and launched into a stirring defense of the explorer whom he vehemently denounced on other occasions. “At once disdainful, detestable, and wretched. He was, after all, viceroy and perpetual governor of this part of the world and, by most deserved renown, Admiral of the Ocean Sea. He had won those titles—chosen by the singular privilege of God—by enduring so many trials, dangers, and labor, and by revealing to the world this world that had been hidden for many centuries.” For that reason, Ferdinand and Isabella owed him “perpetual gratitude. It was unworthy of good reason and more than monstrous that a man in such a lofty position had been treated so inhumanely and shamefully.” With his adamantine nature and unflagging purpose, Columbus impressed even his critics, and never more than when he was shackled.
No one could be found who was willing to chain the Admiral of the Ocean Sea, said Las Casas, except for the lowly cook, Espinosa, who attached the manacles “as if he were serving him some plates of new and precious foods.” His punishment would mean enduring weeks in a dark, stuffy, sweltering, swaying hold, vulnerable to the elements and to the unpredictable behavior of the crew, who would be tempted to vent their frustration on their two prisoners.
The sails of La Gorda slipped below the horizon one day in early October. The Admiral of the Ocean Sea was now a prisoner on his own vessel, waiting to be judged by his Sovereigns.
At sea, the shipmaster offered to strike the chains binding Columbus’s wrists and ankles, but Ferdinand reported that his father “would not permit it, saying only that they had been put on him by royal authority and only the Sovereigns could order them struck off.” He drew strength from this humiliation, becoming stronger in defeat than in victory. The explorer in chains represented the ideal tableau to express his sense of martyrdom, and he would sustain it as long as possible. Columbus knew the dynamics of redemption, and played his part, even as he resented it. Said his son, “He was resolved to keep those chains as a keepsake of how well he had been rewarded for his many services.” Columbus never forgot the ordeal. “I always saw those irons in his bedroom,” Ferdinand revealed, “which he demanded be buried with his bones.”
On landing in Cadiz, Columbus chose to exhibit himself in chains to elicit sympathy from the curious crowds that had gathered there to watch him and who were duly impressed by the sight of the great explorer humbled. Later, when the chains were finally removed, he would substitute the habit of a Franciscan friar, keeping the sleeves short enough to reveal the marks made by manacles on his wrists as signs of mortification. The spectacle he made of himself was not as bizarre as it sounded, not in a country in which pilgrims on bare, bloody knees paraded through the streets of Seville as part of their Easter observance. Columbus knew what notes to strike with his public acts of penance, and to appear both pious and loyal.
Still manacled, Columbus arrived at the monastery of Santa María de las Cuevas, a fortress of faith on the island of La Cartuja, near Seville. According to legend, an image of the Virgin had appeared in a cueva, or cave, beneath the monastery in the thirteenth century.
On December 12, Ferdinand and Isabella ordered Columbus freed from his shackles, provided him with funds, and invited him to court, located, for the moment, at Granada.
Five days later, Christopher, Bartholomew, and Diego Columbus received a cordial reception by the Sovereigns. They let it be known they had not ordered the Admiral to be imprisoned; responsibility belonged to Bobadilla, who had exceeded his authority. Throughout the poignant tableau, “the most serene queen was the one who excelled in consoling him about this and assuring him of her pain for, in truth, she was always the one who favored and defended him more than the king.” It was no wonder that “the Admiral placed all of his hope in her.”
Columbus’s emotions, held in check for months, suddenly burst forth. He knelt before the queen, sobbing. At length, the Sovereigns commanded him to rise, and in a halting voice he conveyed his “deep love and desire to serve them with all the faithfulness that he had always had.” He avowed that he had never done anything to give them offense, echoing a letter he had written to them in which he declared, “I swear . . . that I have been more diligent in serving Your Highnesses than in gaining paradise.”
In this act of mutual absolution, Columbus acknowledged that he had permitted the misdeeds exposed by Bobadilla’s investigation, revealed the pain of being shackled and publicly humiliated, professed his undying love for and loyalty to the Sovereigns, excusing his lapses and abuses on the basis of excessive zeal rather than malice, and begged forgiveness, thereby setting the stage for the possibility of a fourth voyage, as unlikely as that seemed after the lapses of the previous three. His honor was at stake, as were his titles, riches, and role in the Enterprise of the Indies, and he wished to redeem them all before it was too late.
Ferdinand and Isabella undid the work of Bobadilla and restored the Admiral’s rights and privileges, at least on paper, by forcing the investigator to disgorge the items he had confiscated. “We command that there be returned and restored to him all the furniture of his person and household, and provisions of bread and wine which the Comendador Bobadilla took from him, or their just value, without our receiving any part thereof,” ran part of the Royal Mandate, dated September 27, 1501. The same principle applied to the gold nuggets of Hispaniola (confiscated by Bobadilla), to livestock, expenses, and wages. Columbus’s loyal paymaster, Alonso Sánchez de Carvajal, would remain at his post. His books and records would be returned. Most important of all, the Admiral’s share of the island’s wealth—an eighth of the total, and in some cases a tenth—would remain in his hands.
Ferdinand and Isabella had rehabilitated Columbus, but not enough to suit his taste and vanity. He compiled his personal Book of Privileges in which he listed all the properties, titles, rights, awards, and offices that he believed he was still owed, but his grievance went unrecognized. The Sovereigns were in a difficult position as a consequence of the sprawling realm discovered by Columbus. To neutralize the threat he posed, Ferdinand and Isabella cut him down to size.
On September 3, 1501, they declared that he would not be able to return in triumph to Hispaniola, after all. In his place, they chose a younger man, Nicolás de Ovando, as the next governor and chief justice. The appointment meant Columbus no longer ruled the realm he had discovered. Playing to his vanity, they permitted him to retain hollow titles such as admiral and viceroy, and he was allowed to keep the money confiscated by Bobadilla. On one hand, the Sovereigns had honored Columbus; on the other, they had replaced him.
He entered a dark period. His health was declining, his eyesight failing, his body tormented by rheumatoid arthritis. His moods alternated among grandiose ambition, paranoia, and lucid intervals—all because he had lost control of the brave enterprise he had begun, and earned a reputation as a scoundrel rather than the hero of his imaginings.
Despite everything, the third voyage provided important results. Columbus had once again demonstrated his peerless navigational ability, crossing the Atlantic with such efficiency that the accomplishment, all but unthinkable before his first voyage, was becoming commonplace. He had survived a terrible tsunami. And he had finally located the mainland, touching Venezuela, the Orinoco, and the island of Trinidad, and found a region rich in valuable pearl fisheries.
But Ferdinand and Isabella had, in effect, sent the Admiral of the Ocean Sea into retirement. It seemed that his seafaring days were over, and the next shore he reached would be death.
His work done, Francisco de Bobadilla, Columbus’s nemesis, embarked on a passage home to Spain, sailing with a convoy of thirty vessels in June 1502. Aboard his ship were Francisco Roldán, the former rebel, now rotated back to Spain; Guarionex, the fierce cacique who had once challenged Columbus, soon to be presented to the Sovereigns as a trophy of the Indies; and the Admiral’s steadfast ally Antonio de Torres, the captain. In her hold, the ship carried 200,000 castellanos of gold, equivalent to 87,000,000 maravedís (more than ten million dollars), and a nugget said to be the biggest in the Indies, valued at 3,600 pesos.
Considered the least seaworthy of all the ships in the fleet was little Aguja (“Needle”), carrying Columbus’s personal store of gold, disgorged by Bobadilla. It was worth 4,000 pesos.
Conditions were forbidding on the day of departure; a swell, aceitoso y maloliente, rolled in from the southeast, where hurricanes often formed. A low-pressure system sapped the air of vitality. Shreds of high-altitude cirrus caught fire at sunset, but sea-level breezes did little to dispel the disquieting mood. Dolphins skimming the surface added to the sense of impending mayhem.
On July 11, the fleet was negotiating the Mona Passage, a strait running between Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. With its extensive sandbanks and riptides, the strait was difficult to navigate even in fair weather. On this occasion, wind from the northeast gathered strength until it attained hurricane force, scattering the fleet throughout the passage. There was nothing that anyone aboard these luckless ships could do except to give themselves up to the elements and pray. The flimsy wood and thatch buildings of little Santo Domingo blew apart. The hurricane drove ships ashore, where they broke up. A few shattered craft eventually limped to Santo Domingo, where they sank in the harbor. Twenty other ships foundered at sea, taking all hands to the bottom. More than five hundred colonists and caciques, criminals and nobles, Spaniards and Indians, drowned.
Torres the captain, Guarionex the Indian, Roldán the mutineer, and Bobadilla the judicial investigator all went down with their gold-laden ship.
Of the entire fleet, only fragile Aguja, carrying Columbus’s treasure, survived the hurricane, a sign of divine favor if there ever was one. The foes of Columbus believed that he had conjured the tempest to vanquish his enemies.