Columbus_ The Four Voyages - Laurence Bergreen [161]
Diego dispatched a canoe bearing three Christians and several Indians to meet the newcomers. One was Cristóbal Rodríguez, a sailor known as the first visitor to master the Indian language. The other two Christians were Juan Arráez and Nicolás de Gaeta. The Indians, whose names have not been recorded, paddled.
As the canoe approached, Bobadilla, “who had traveled in the caravel Gorda, then leaned out and said he was sent by the king and queen as judicial investigator of those who were rebelling on this island.” Andrea Martín de la Gorda demanded news of Hispaniola, and learned that “seven Spanish men had been hanged that week.” Five more were incarcerated, awaiting hanging. The fact that all the victims were Spanish alarmed Bobadilla. What sort of rebellion had occurred? Had Columbus allowed it to get out of hand? The investigator immediately asked for the Admiral and his two brothers, but only Diego was nearby. The Admiral was in Xaraguá, busy preparing still more executions. And to whom did he have the pleasure of speaking? Cristóbal Rodríguez inquired.
Francisco de Bobadilla, the judicial investigator.
The canoe returned to the shore, where expectations ran high that the arrival of the two ships meant better days ahead for the long-suffering colony: supplies, or women, or weapons, or other comforts from home. When they learned that the ships carried a “judicial investigator,” said Las Casas, “those who felt guilt reacted with fear and sadness. Those who felt aggrieved by the admiral and his brothers were bursting with joy, along with those who were there involuntarily, mostly those who earned their salary from the king, who had not been and were suffering great need of food, clothing, and necessities from Castile.”
When the wind died down, the caravels rode the tide into the harbor. Two scaffolds came into view, “one on this side of the river, which is the western shore where the city has now been built, and the other on the opposite side.” Two hanged Christians, imprisoned several days before, dangled from the gallows.
Amid this macabre scene, “people came to and from the ships. They made their courtesies and reverences to the investigator Bobadilla. They asked and they answered, but always with some reserve until they saw what in the world was going to happen.”
The next day, August 24, Bobadilla disembarked to hear Mass in the small, ragged settlement that claimed to be the capital of a new global empire. The contrast between the empire of the Indies’ aspirations and its shabby reality could hardly have been greater. Bobadilla walked among flimsy, thatched structures housing the Europeans and compact stores of supplies. Most of the business of the settlement was still conducted aboard the ships, in tightly confined spaces, where men felt safer in fetid holds than on land, exposed to mercurial Indians and menacing snakes, flies, and mosquitoes. To an outsider, the settlement would have appeared more of a negligible, makeshift eyesore than an outpost of Christianity and the might of Spain. In contrast, the Indians’ villages, huts, hammocks, drums, and fires, graceful canoes and tiny cemís, and especially their carefully tended fields of cassava plants, appeared thoroughly in place. Only the Europeans’ expansive ships riding at anchor in the harbor or offshore suggested that these white men from afar were capable of better things than violence, rape, and an obsessive quest for gold.
When the observance concluded, the investigator ordered the king’s scribe, who had traveled across the ocean with him, to read a letter from Ferdinand and Isabella, in which they summarized the rebellions of Roldán and others, and stated their purpose for sending Bobadilla to Hispaniola: “As we see it, because it was and is a bad example, worthy of punishment and chastisement, and because it pertains to us as king and queen and lords to provide the resolution of it, we command you to go to these islands