Columbus_ The Four Voyages - Laurence Bergreen [160]
To minimize humiliating confrontations with Spaniards angry with Columbus, Ferdinand confided, he and his half brother “carefully avoided their presence.” So it was that the offspring of Spain’s most influential, transformative explorer went about the countryside incognito, out of fear for their lives.
Mindful of his descent into royal disfavor, Columbus recalled that he prayed “many times” to the Sovereigns to send “someone who might have charge of the administration of justice,” and he asked others to make the request on his behalf “since my reputation is such that although I were to build churches and hospitals, they would always be called liars or robbers.”
Ferdinand and Isabella listened to the many complaints about Columbus reaching Spain, and they acted as political leaders do: they appointed a special prosecutor. The date was May 21, 1499, and their choice was a man of impeccable credentials: Francisco de Bobadilla, a knight of the Order of Calatrava, the military wing of the Cistercian order, a venerable religious community of monks and nuns. His record reverberated with the pieties of Reconquista, and his new orders expanded on them, making him “Governor of the Islands and Mainland of the Indies.” On this basis, he had every right to believe that he, not Columbus, would soon rule the Indies. His mission would be to rid Hispaniola of the corruption wrought by Columbus. On arrival in the Indies, Bobadilla was to investigate Columbus—the presumption in Spain was strong that the Admiral would be found blameworthy—and, Ferdinand related, “should he find the Admiral guilty, he should send him back to Castile and take over the island.”
No one, not even Columbus, believed that the administration of Hispaniola had been handled properly. But no one besides Columbus was willing to leave Spain to manage it. Each voyage—and there were now three—demonstrated that Columbus was a brilliant navigator, canny, determined, able to learn from experience and mistakes with breathtaking speed—his Chinese delusion notwithstanding—but that he was ill equipped to serve as a governor of the lands he had conquered. Nearly every landfall showcased his brilliant and fearless navigation even as it exposed his inability to guide men, settle disputes, or instill loyalty.
At the moment Bobadilla’s fleet approached Santo Domingo in August 1500, Columbus was at Concepción, putting down the latest Indian revolt. His brother Bartholomew, the Adelantado, was in Xaraguá with Roldán, arresting the allies of Guevara, who had attempted to kill the mutineer. And Diego Columbus remained behind in Santo Domingo, ordering the execution of other rebels. “The Admiral and the Adelantado,” explained Las Casas, “anxiously went about arresting those who had again rebelled. They hanged those that they could arrest, and he brought a priest with him to confess them so that he could hang them wherever he might find them.” At that point, “he could subject the Indians and constrain them to pay the tribute that he had imposed upon them and that Francisco Roldán had relieved them of during his rebellion.” He did all this simply to send money to Ferdinand and Isabella to repay them for their expenses, and to silence his critics. His master plan consisted of baptizing every Indian in the major towns and hamlets of Hispaniola so they could “serve Their Highnesses like the vassals in Castile,” in the opinion of Las Casas, who estimated that the scheme would generate sixty million maravedís a year for Spain. If Columbus’s plans came to fruition, AD 1500 would mark the turning point in the economics of the Indies, the year the empire began sending revenue to Castile. “But, while preparing his loom, God cut the thread of the cloth that he planned to weave.” The instrument was Bobadilla.
At about seven o’clock in the morning of Sunday, August 23, Bobadilla’s ships—La Gorda, named for her master, Andrea Martín de la Gorda, accompanied by Antigua—appeared at the entrance to the harbor, but were forced to tack one way and then another