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By Root 555 0

that Bartholomew was cruel and greedy in his treatment of both Indians and Christians; he demanded impossible tributes and broke the spirit and drained the resources of everyone with whom he came into contact. Even if the Indians complied with the onerous tributes, the vicious Adelantado would only demand more, despite the Sovereigns’ objections—an unlikely scenario. Roldán, in contrast, proclaimed himself the Indians’ champion; if they were unable or unwilling to stand up for their rights, he and his supporters would take up their cause. His unjustified promises persuaded the Indians to defy the tribute system. In reality, Bartholomew received nothing from distant villages, and he was afraid to demand it from those nearby and so push the Indians even deeper into Roldán’s camp.

Roldán found a potent ally in the chieftain Guarionex, who formed clandestine alliances with the other caciques and pledged to kill the Spanish invaders. The Indians felt confident that they could exterminate the outsiders who had come from the ships in a series of coordinated surprise uprisings. “Their only way of reckoning time or anything else being their fingers,” Ferdinand explained, “the Indians agreed to launch the attack on the first day of the next full moon.”

All was ready, until one of the chieftains decided to attack prematurely, either to portray himself as a hero to his people, or, less likely, because he was “too poor an astronomer to know for sure the first day of the full moon.” The attack failed miserably. Seeking safety, the disgraced chieftain skulked back to Guarionex, who had him executed for carelessness.

The reversal of fortune reached all the way to Roldán, whose men had expected the Indians to do the slaughtering. Scuttling the pact with Guarionex, they retreated once again to Xaraguá, where they maintained the pretense that they, the Spanish rebels, protected the Indians from the predatory colonial policies of Columbus. “Actually, they were naught but plain thieves,” observed Ferdinand, although much the same thing could be said of many of the men who served under Christopher Columbus, men who had exploited and underestimated the Indians for nearly eight years, and counting.

Roldán’s misstep occurred when he renewed his promise to protect the Indians from Bartholomew’s demands for a tribute, and then seized an even greater tribute for himself. He insisted that the chieftain Manicaotex offer “a calabash filled with gold dust worth three marks every three months,” in Ferdinand’s words. To ensure that Manicaotex obeyed, even though the supply of gold dust was nearly depleted by this time, Roldán took the chieftain’s son and nephew hostage. With characteristic duplicity, he maintained that his gesture demonstrated friendship.

Faced with an impossible situation, Bartholomew and his allies stood by helplessly as their support from their Indian and Spanish allies wilted in the tropical heat. It appeared increasingly likely that either the Spanish rebels or disenchanted Indians, or perhaps an unholy alliance between the two, would wipe out Bartholomew and the loyalists, and claim the island of Hispaniola, bringing a violent end to the Columbian experiment.

Amid the gathering despair, the men at Santo Domingo spotted two Spanish ships on the horizon. They constituted the supply fleet from Spain, carrying food, men, weapons, and provisions needed for survival in the Indies. Roldán and his men intended to plunder the new arrivals as soon as they reached Santo Domingo, but Bartholomew had the advantage of superior intelligence, and he happened to be closer to the port. He placed sentries along the paths leading to the little town to deter Roldán’s men so that he, not the rebels, would welcome the supply ships to the troubled realm. And so he did.

Even then, Bartholomew tried to improvise a fragile, temporary peace with the rebels to present a unified front to the newcomers. He dispatched one of the captains, Pedro Fernández Coronel, reputed to be “a man of worth and honor,” according to Ferdinand. From the moment he confirmed