Columbus_ The Four Voyages - Laurence Bergreen [165]
Meanwhile, Bobadilla’s inquiry got under way. A priest testified that Columbus ordered Roldán not to baptize Indians without express permission. And another priest, who identified himself as Mateo Valenciano, beseeched the Admiral for permission to baptize a “female servant,” only to be denied. Instead, Columbus permitted the Spaniards to take the Indians as slaves to be bought and sold rather than baptized. Stories circulated that Columbus sold attractive Indian boys and girls as slaves rather than converting them to Christianity.
Rodrigo Manzorro, another witness, stated that he heard priests complain that they were unable to convert Indians to Christianity unless Columbus specifically permitted them, insisting that all the Indians of the island belonged to him. This accusation was echoed by Columbus’s antagonist Ojeda, who was said to have presided over mass conversions, a practice that upset the Admiral, who insisted that he, and only he, would decide who would be converted and who would be sold into slavery. Capturing a cacique with three hundred followers, the story ran, Columbus decided to send the lot to Castile to offer them as slaves to be bought and sold at auction, even though they were under Roldán’s protection. The Admiral’s conviction that all slaves belonged to him drove him to inform the island’s settlers that they must assign every other servant to him. No longer were they souls to be saved, they were human commodities whose value would be decided by Columbus.
Another witness, Francisco de Sezé, testified that in the previous six and a half years, the Admiral had ordered a dozen or more Spaniards to be whipped in public, tied by the neck, and bound together by the feet because they had traded gold for “a bit of pork and for some wine and bread” when starving. Columbus subjected them to this extreme punishment “because they bartered and gave gold without the Admiral’s permission.”
More examples of his viciousness surfaced. In one instance, he ordered a woman to be stripped and placed on the back of a donkey, “stark naked,” to be whipped because she falsely claimed to be pregnant. In another case, he ordered a woman’s tongue cut out because she had “spoken ill of the Admiral and his brothers.” She had said that his father had been a weaver—which was true—and that his brothers were “journeymen,” a vague insult, perhaps, but hardly a crime.
In La Isabela, a Spanish official arrested a woman named Teresa de Vaeça. With another Spaniard, Rodrigo Pérez, the Spanish official tortured her in secret because the governor had had an affair with a married woman allied with Teresa, who, it was claimed, “deserved the punishment for pimping.” Without trial, she received a hundred lashes “naked and on foot” and had her tongue cut out to chastise her for her transgressions, real or imagined, but in reality—from the context of the accusation—for daring to dishonor a Spanish official.
Columbus punished homosexuality with the same severity. He ordered Juan de Luxan’s throat cut for being a “traitor” and “sodomite.” The accused objected to the former accusation but not the latter.
Other testimony revealed that Columbus ordered Spaniards to be hanged for stealing bread when they were hungry. He even ordered the ears and nose cut off one miscreant, who was also whipped, shackled, and banished from the island. He ordered a cabin boy’s hand nailed in public to the spot where he had pulled a trap from a river and caught a fish.
Whippings for minor infractions occurred with alarming frequency. Columbus ordered one wrongdoer to receive a hundred lashes—which could be fatal—for stealing sheep, and another for lying about the incident. An unlucky fellow named Juan Moreno received a hundred lashes for failing to gather enough food for Columbus’s pantry. He received his lashings “on foot and naked” at the hands of an Indian, who was told to proclaim that Moreno was a “scoundrel.”
There were hangings, as Bobadilla had seen. And many others that he had not seen.