Columbus_ The Four Voyages - Laurence Bergreen [117]
At first, the “infantry squadrons,” as Ferdinand grandly called them, attacked the Indians, beating them back with crossbows and arquebuses. At that point, the “cavalry and hounds” interceded to sow panic amid the enemy, which they did, chasing the Indians into the jungle, and pursuing them wherever they went, “killing many,” according to Ferdinand, “and capturing others who were also killed.”
The Spanish soldiers chased the Indians into the subtropical thickets, and when they could no longer advance, they unleashed twenty greyhounds. The ravenous beasts, wrote Las Casas, “fell on the Indians at the cry of tomalo.” Take it! “Within an hour they had preyed on 100 of them. As the Indians were used to going completely naked, it is easy to imagine the damage caused by these fierce greyhounds, urged to bite naked bodies and skin much more delicate than that of the wild boars they were used to.”
The Spanish forces succeeded in capturing Caonabó alive, together with his wives and children. Ferdinand exaggerated the number of Indian warriors participating in the battle, although they greatly outnumbered the Spanish, whose victory, aided by horses and superior weapons, inspired confidence that had been lacking ever since Columbus first arrived in the Indies. “There is not a single one of our weapons which does not prove highly damaging when used against the Indians,” Las Casas reported from the front, while the Indians’ weapons amounted to “little more than toys.”
After the battle, Caonabó “confessed that he had killed twenty of the Spaniards who remained under Arana in La Navidad when the Admiral returned to Spain from his discovery of the Indies.” So he had been the prime malefactor all along. And, if his confession was to be believed, there was worse. He had subsequently visited the Spanish at La Isabela “feigning friendship,” but with “the true design (which our men suspected) of seeing how he might best attack and destroy it as he had done to the town of La Navidad.” Columbus’s obdurate aide, Alonso de Ojeda, at first tried to broker a “pact of friendship” between Caonabó and Columbus, Peter Martyr related, and wound up threatening the chieftain “with the massacre and ruin of his people if he would choose war rather than peace with the Christians.”
The Italian chronicler skillfully analyzed the chieftain’s political dilemmas and pretensions, as they appeared to Columbus. “Understandably, Caonabó was like a reef in the middle of the sea, tossed this way and that by opposite currents, distressed also by the memory of the crimes he had committed, since he had deceitfully murdered twenty of our defenseless men; although he seemed to desire peace, he was nonetheless afraid to go to the Admiral. Finally, after elaborating a plot with the intention of killing the Admiral and the others when the opportunity presented itself and pretending to want to make peace, he set out to meet the Admiral with all his retinue and many others, armed according to their custom.” With effort, Ojeda enticed the exhausted Caonabó to appear before Columbus and make peace. As a reward, Caonabó would receive a coveted bronze bell from the church.
Ojeda brandished steel handcuffs and foot restraints, explaining that no less a personage than King Ferdinand wore these decorative items on horseback. Out of special consideration, Caonabó could try them on and see how it felt to be a king. Ojeda arranged for Caonabó to be mounted on horseback directly behind him, as the Spaniards tightened the restraints so that Caonabó would remain securely astride the horse. At that moment