Columbus_ The Four Voyages - Laurence Bergreen [152]
Once a wellborn Spaniard established himself as the lord of an estancia (“I think in Seville they call this a country home or a farm or a property,” Las Casas noted), he treated the local cacique and the Indians as serfs. If they failed to obey him quickly enough to suit his taste, said Las Casas, he whipped them, cut off their ears, or killed them. At the same time, he took the wives and daughters of the caciques as concubines. Indians bold enough to attempt to flee, or, as the Spaniards put it, rise up, were hunted down and killed. Others were sold as slaves, or loaded into ships bound for Spain and further degradation in a distant land.
“What right did the Admiral have to give them lands, farms, or properties of the unfortunate Indians?” Las Casas asked. By divine right and by order of the Sovereigns, Columbus would have replied.
Among the recipients of Columbus’s scandalous bounty was Francisco Roldán, who demanded a settlement known as Ababruco, claiming it already belonged to him. As before, Columbus yielded to Roldán, and soon the estate, the ancestral land of Indians, belonged to the Spanish master, who put the Indians to work for him while he lived a life of indolence. The Indian name was discarded, and the settlement given the name Esperanza (“Hope”), although Robo (“Theft”) would have been more appropriate. “He also gave him two cows, two young bulls, two mares, and twenty sows, all from the king’s stock, so that he could begin raising them, because Roldán asked it of him,” said Las Casas of Columbus. “He did not dare deny him anything.”
Columbus’s lack of decisiveness damaged his credibility and encouraged the Spaniards’ basest instincts. “The Spaniards learned—even the laborers and those who came on salary to dig and work the land and extract the gold from the mines—to loaf and walk proudly, eating from the sweat of the Indians and seizing each by force, three, four, and ten to serve them, because of the gentleness of the Indians, who neither could nor knew how to resist,” Las Casas noted of the arrangement, known as the repartimiento or encomienda system. To Las Casas, Columbus, Roldán, and the other rebels degraded innocent Indians, and in doing so, made “a sacrilege and unpardonable mockery of the Christian religion itself.” Fuming, Las Casas declared those Spaniards to blame “deserved to be quartered not just once but fourteen times.”
Of the five ships sailing that day in October 1498, two conveyed Roldán’s supporters back to Spain. Three others were reserved for Bartholomew to return to the Paria Peninsula and its precious pearls. Roldán remained in Hispaniola, meditating on his next move.
Columbus, meanwhile, reached the lowest point of his career as an explorer. Returning to Hispaniola, he had, once again, been undone by the wily and relentless Roldán. It seemed Columbus had discovered his “other world” only to lose it to a charlatan and thief whose chief aim was the humiliation of the Admiral of the Ocean Sea. Las Casas imagined that “the pain he suffered because of the anger that would come upon the king and queen tormented him most!” Because of his reverses, Columbus’s adversaries at court would conspire to make him an outcast, not because of his harsh treatment of the Indians, but because the Spanish rebels had outmaneuvered him.
On October 26, Roldán received a safe-conduct pass from Columbus, and the adversaries convened. After repeating his demands, the rebel leader returned to his supporters without an agreement. Still hoping to reconcile, Columbus sent one of his aides, Diego de Salamanca, to accompany Roldán and negotiate an end to the conflict. On November 6, Roldán finally sent his terms for Columbus’s signature, claiming they were “the best he could get from his men,” Ferdinand recorded. “If His Illustrious Lordship approved of it, he should send his acceptance to Concepción.”
Roldán demanded a swift reply from Columbus. In his son’s words, “Having seen this letter and the articles, with their insolent demands, the Admiral would on no account sign them lest he