• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 533 0

of the council established by the Admiral obey his orders, and sending them insolent letters.” Frustrated in his plan to usurp Columbus, “to whom he would have had to account for his actions in office,” he had caught the first ship bound for Spain, without explanation or placing someone else in charge of the 376 men left behind, who rapidly deteriorated into predators. “Each one went where he willed among the Indians, stealing their property and wives and inflicting so many injuries upon them the Indians resolved to avenge themselves on any they found alone or in small groups.” As a result, “the Admiral found the island in a pitiful state, with most of the Christians committing innumerable outrages for which they were mortally hated by the Indians, who refused to obey them.” Still inflamed, Guatiguaná slaughtered ten Spanish guards and stealthily set ablaze a shelter containing forty others, all of them ill. Peter Martyr wrote in anguish of the Spanish “injustices” that had occurred in Columbus’s absence: “Kidnapping women of the islands under the eyes of their parents, brothers and husbands . . . rape and robberies.”

With Margarit gone, Columbus had no choice but to apprehend Guatiguaná. Failing to accomplish that task, he seized some of his followers and sent them as prisoners to Spain aboard the fleet led by Antonio de Torres. The four ships departed on February 24, 1495.

But troubles with the Indians were just beginning.

At La Isabela, Columbus belatedly learned that the Indians served four chiefs, Caonabó, Higuanamá, Behechio, and Guarionex, each of whom commanded “seventy or eighty caciques who rendered no tribute but were obliged to come when summoned to assist them in their wars and in sowing their fields.”

One of these many caciques stood out—Guacanagarí—Columbus’s occasional ally and overseer of that part of Hispaniola where La Isabela was located. Hearing that Columbus had returned after a long absence, Guacanagarí immediately visited to declare his innocence. He had done nothing to aid or encourage the Indians who had slaughtered the Spanish, and to demonstrate his longstanding goodwill, recalled the goodwill and hospitality he had always shown the Christians. He believed that his generosity toward these visitors from afar had provoked the hatred of the other caciques, especially the notorious Behechio, who had killed one of Guacanagarí’s wives, and the thieving Caonabó, who had stolen another. Now he appealed to the Admiral to restore his wives and obtain revenge. As Guacanagarí narrated this tragic tale he “wept each time he recalled the men who had been killed at La Navidad, as if they had been his own sons.”

Guacanagarí’s tears won over Columbus, restoring the bond between the Admiral and the cacique.

As he considered the situation, Columbus realized that the emotional cacique had provided valuable intelligence about conflicts among the Indians, conflicts that Columbus could exploit to punish enemies of them both. An alliance with Guacanagarí would enable him to settle all scores.

Recovering from his breakdown, Columbus “marched forth from Isabela in warlike array together with his comrade Guacanagarí, who was most eager to rout his enemies,” Ferdinand wrote. It was March 24, 1495, almost six months after the Admiral had arrived. The military task ahead presented impossible odds. Columbus and Guacanagarí jointly commanded a regiment of two hundred Spanish guards, bolstered by twenty horses and twenty hounds—beasts who were far more terrifying to the enemy than any European biped. But they faced an immense force, “more than one hundred thousand Indians” defending their own territory against a small band of invaders. Given the Indians’ growing anger at the Spanish, it seemed this battle would be the last of Columbus, his mission, his men, and his ships. A massacre in the making, the plan had an air of doom about it, as if Columbus, too skillful a navigator to perish at sea, had deliberately chosen instead to martyr himself—and his men—on land.

Believing that he now understood “the Indian character