Columbus_ The Four Voyages - Laurence Bergreen [164]
Columbus had no choice but to return to Spain immediately to face his impatient Sovereigns and envious rivals. His exploring, his quest for wealth for the glory of Spain, his awe at the discovery of lands and creatures for which he had no words, the whole magnificent panoply of realms no European before him had visited, had come to a sudden end. Columbus’s behavior suggests that he realized that retribution for the excesses he had permitted was coming, but he never imagined it would be so swift and severe.
It was now early October 1500, nearly eight years after Columbus first spied the glittering white shores of the Indies and claimed them in the name of Ferdinand and Isabella. He hastened to Santo Domingo with his brother Diego to confront Francisco Bobadilla, who placed the two in chains and kept them under guard aboard ship. To reinforce the seriousness of the proceedings, Bobadilla insisted on secrecy from everyone with knowledge of the arrest.
And then he confiscated Columbus’s gold, a deed certain to torment its target. “Of this gold I had put aside certain specimens, grains as large as a goose’s egg, and a hen’s egg, and pullet’s egg, and of many shapes.” Now it all belonged to Bobadilla, who melted down much of it. A large gold chain disappeared. As the days passed, the Comendador raided Columbus’s house for silver, jewels, and decorations, appropriating everything for himself. Livestock, books and writings, and personal effects all wound up in his grip. In sum, said Columbus, Bobadilla “showed energy always in everything that he thought would injure me.” It seemed incredible, laughable that this man had been sent to “inquire into my conduct,” knowing that if he sent back a “very damaging report” he would “remain in charge of the government.” If only Bobadilla had appeared two years earlier, “I should have been free from scandalous abuse and infamy.”
His influence undermined by rebellions, Columbus felt powerless to resist Bobadilla. The standard by which he was judged was unjust, he insisted. He was being treated as an administrator of “a city or two under settled government, without fear of all being lost.” But Hispaniola posed entirely different and greater challenges. “I ought to be judged as a captain who went from Spain to the Indies to conquer a people, warlike and numerous, with customs and beliefs very different from ours, a people living in highlands and mountains, having no settled dwellings, and apart from us.” Because of his efforts, “I have brought under the dominion of the king and queen, our Sovereigns, another world, whereby Spain, which was called poor, is now most rich.” That was his claim, backed by three perilous voyages of exploration.
Heedless of Columbus’s elaborate self-justifying arguments, Bobadilla ordered a “farcical inquest,” or so it appeared to Ferdinand Columbus, “taking testimony from their open enemies, the rebels, and even showing public favor.” Even a blind man, he said, would recognize that the depositions were “dictated by prejudice rather than truth.”
Much later, when passions cooled, the Sovereigns came to agree with this assessment, and “ultimately cleared the Admiral of these charges,” and even “regretted having charged such a man”—Bobadilla—“with that mission.” But for now, Ferdinand Columbus noted, the Comendador preferred “hobnobbing with the richest and most powerful men on the island,” and awarded himself a share of the pay earned by the Indians he assigned to work for the Europeans. And he angrily reported that Bobadilla auctioned off the possessions he had seized, “while making sure some of his cronies acquired ownership of the properties for one third of their value.”
Columbus was not quite the innocent victim he proclaimed himself to be. He maintained that he silently endured the investigator’s challenge to the point of submitting to shackles and even jail, but witnesses testified that the Admiral had actually assembled a militia composed of Spanish settlers and Indians to resist Bobadilla. If true, Columbus enlisted Indians