Columbus_ The Four Voyages - Laurence Bergreen [150]
Roldán complicated matters by insisting that he would hold discussions only with Alonso Sánchez de Carvajal, whom he believed to be sensible. The assertion immediately aroused Columbus’s suspicions. According to Ferdinand, the Admiral doubted that Sánchez de Carvajal was an out-and-out traitor; after all, he was a person of standing, a hidalgo, and a thoughtful one at that. More likely he sought to be a diligent conciliator, not a double agent. Columbus polled his aides about the best course of action: Columbus would send Sánchez de Carvajal together with Ballester to negotiate with the slippery Roldán.
Roldán refused to meet with the two, citing Columbus’s failure to release the Indians he held. Sánchez de Carvajal took up the cause and eventually convinced Roldán, accompanied by several of his men, to speak directly with Columbus. But the rebel leader’s own men interfered with the mission, to the point of surrounding him. They did not want their leader making secret arrangements with Columbus; they preferred to convey their “conditions for peace in writing,” said Ferdinand, who characterized the terms as “immoderate and insolent,” and no doubt they appeared that way to Columbus. Even the combined forces of Ballester and Sánchez de Carvajal failed to convince the rebels to negotiate. Running out of strategies for compromise, the loyalist delegation abruptly conceded to the rebels. Ballester in particular justified the capitulation on the basis of the dwindling morale among Columbus’s men, who teetered on the verge of joining the bold and determined rebels. Although Columbus trusted his servants and aides, even they seemed susceptible to Lucifer’s blandishments.
Day by day, the number of rebels increased, and loyalists diminished. Preparing to do battle against the renegades, Columbus had only seventy men at his side, and after eliminating those who feigned illness or injury to avoid service, only forty men, or even less, could be considered entirely loyal.
In this vulnerable condition, he dispatched Sánchez de Carvajal with a surprising message for Roldán: Columbus expressed confidence in his worthy antagonist and promised that he would give a “favorable account” of his actions to Ferdinand and Isabella. None of this was put in writing, Columbus explained, to protect Roldán from “the common people” who might be inspired to harm him. Rather, he should talk directly with Columbus’s representative, Ballester, “as if he were the Admiral himself,” in the words of Columbus’s son.
At about the same time, October 17, 1498, Roldán and his outlaw allies sent an oddly conciliatory letter to the Admiral claiming they had “quit the Adelantado because he had plotted to slay them.” They implored Columbus to consider their actions “a service to him” and buttressed this strange logic by reminding him that they had protected him and his possessions when they could have resorted to violence. They wished only to act “honorably” and to enjoy their idea of “freedom of action.”
The day after this ambiguous negotiation with Roldán, Columbus dispatched five ships to Spain. Those aboard recalled it as a dangerous crossing, filled with “great trials” endured by the six hundred Indians in the convoy. Accompanying them were two emotional letters from Columbus to Ferdinand and Isabella about Roldán’s rebels, “of the damage they had done and were continuing to do on the island, plundering and acting violently, killing whomever they pleased for no reason at all, taking other men’s wives and daughters and perpetrating many other evil deeds.” Las Casas was convinced that matters on Hispaniola had degenerated into a state of anarchy in which Spaniards “traveled from village to village and from place to place, eating at their discretion, taking the Indian men that they wanted for their service and the Indian women who looked good to them.” Rather than walking, they commanded Indian