Columbus_ The Four Voyages - Laurence Bergreen [114]
The limited value of the cotton and spices to harvest and ship to Castile hardly justified the expense and danger of maintaining a distant outpost. Most important of all, the gold that had seemed to glisten in every riverbed and hillside in the Cibao had run out. Columbus and his men had picked the mines and waterways clean. He thought there would be an endless supply of gold on Hispaniola, but in fact he had rapidly depleted the island’s modest store. To justify his continued presence and his rich entitlements, he turned to the resource of last resort: slaves.
Since February, Columbus had planned to inaugurate a regular slave trade between the Indies and Spain. It would focus on the menacing Caribs, thereby allowing the more peaceful Taínos to remain in place, and it would last until the gold mines functioned. With gold in short supply, the slave trade gradually took on greater urgency. If Columbus had misgivings about his decision, he kept them to himself. Portugal and Genoa had their slave trade; why not Spain? The Sovereigns, no strangers to cruelty, kept their distance from the idea, which was certain to offend the church, political rivals, and even their own sense of morality. “This subject has been postponed for the present until another voyage has come thence, and let the Admiral write what he thinks about it.” Ignoring the sentiment expressed in this response, Columbus set about establishing a slave trade including both Caribs and Taínos. Despite his intermittent regard for the more peaceful of the two tribes, he would send them all to the busy and profitable slave market in Seville.
According to Michele de Cuneo, Columbus ordered the seizure of fifteen hundred men and women on Hispaniola. Of these, five hundred deemed the most desirable for the slave trade were confined to one of four caravels bound for Spain. He invited his men to select from those left ashore; about six hundred Indians disappeared into captivity this way. The remaining four hundred Indians managed to escape with their lives, among them women who were nursing. Describing the appalling spectacle, Cuneo wrote, “They, in order to better escape us, since they were afraid we would turn to catch them again, left their infants anywhere on the ground and started to flee like desperate people; and some fled so far that they were removed from our settlement of La Isabela seven or eight days beyond mountains and across huge rivers.”
In retribution, the Spanish captured Guatiguaná, a cacique believed to have killed Spanish intruders, along with two of his chiefs, and bound them all, but before the Indians could be shot for their misdeeds, the captives chewed through their restraints and fled.
On February 24, 1495, their less fortunate brethren sailed with the fleet, along with Michele de Cuneo, who had finally seen enough of the New World, and Columbus’s brother Diego, who had been given the task of defending the Admiral against the charges being prepared in Spain by Columbushaters led by Father Buil and Pedro Margarit. At that moment, Columbus was ruminating bitterly on the trumped-up charges and outright “falsehoods reported to Your Highnesses by some wretches who came here, and those whom they spoke to.” He raged against his accusers, an untrustworthy, ignorant, depraved lot who had no business participating in this noble enterprise: “At dice and other pernicious, infamous vices they lost their inheritances, and since they could no longer find any land that could sustain them they came on this voyage through lies and deception, thinking to get rich quick on the seashore without any work or effort so they could return to their former way of life. This happened no less among the religious [orders] than among the laity; they were so blinded by wicked cupidity that they would not believe me in Castile when I predicted that they would have to work for everything. They were so greedy they thought I was lying.”
No matter