Columbus_ The Four Voyages - Laurence Bergreen [176]
The Spaniards paid close attention to the Maya watercraft. “Amidships it had a palm-leaf awning like that which the Venetian gondolas carry; this gave complete protection against the rain and waves. Under this awning were the children and women and all the baggage and merchandise. There were twenty-five paddlers aboard, but they offered no resistance when our boats drew up to them,” said Ferdinand. The reception was especially welcome after the unpleasantness of Nicolás de Ovando and near extinction in the hurricane. When the flagship got close enough, Columbus offered “thanks to God for revealing to him in a single moment, without any toil or danger to our people, all the products of that country.” Time and again on his voyages he had encountered fleeing Indians, deserted hamlets, and, on occasion, pots and skewers containing human body parts. This time, he had found the opulence he had sought for so long.
Columbus claimed the “costliest and handsomest things in that cargo: cotton mantles and sleeveless shirts embroidered and painted in different designs and colors; breechclouts of the same design and cloth as the shawls worn by women in the canoe, being like the shawls worn by the Moorish women of Granada; long wooden swords with a groove on each side where the edge should be, in which were fastened cord and pitch; flint knives that cut like steel; hatchets resembling the stone hatchets used by the other Indians, but made of good copper.” The haul even included crucibles to melt copper.
One other item, mentioned only in passing by Ferdinand, was, if anything, even more valuable than the others: the cacao leaf. When a handful of dried cacao beans used for currency fell to the floor, he noted, “all the Indians squatted down to pick them up as if they had something of great value—their greed driving out their feelings of terror and danger at finding themselves in the hands of such strange and ferocious men as we must have seemed to be.”
Columbus and his men were the first Europeans to behold the cacao, traditionally associated with trade and currency in the Americas. A thousand cacao beans could purchase a slave, for example, but beyond monetary value, the cacao itself was prized by the Maya, who called it ka’kau and believed it was discovered by the gods. The Spanish word cacao also derived from another Maya term, chocol’ha, or the verb chokola’j, meaning “to drink chocolate together.” The Maya used cacao for a variety of medicinal and spiritual purposes; they roasted the beans, mixed them with spices and water, and heated the concoction until it was piping-hot chocolate. Among the Maya, drinking the brew was a privilege reserved for royalty, wealthy princes, shamans, and artists.
Chastened by the Sovereigns’ disapproval of slavery, Columbus no longer regarded his dignified hosts as potential serfs and trophies to send to Spain, and his son considered them delegates of a remarkable, highly accomplished civilization. Impressed, Columbus “detained only one, an ancient named Yumbé, who seemed to be the wisest man among them and of greatest authority,” who would reveal “the secrets of the land” and persuade his people to talk with the visitors from afar. Satisfied, Ferdinand reported that the elder served them “willingly and loyally.” Too willingly, in fact. The more items Columbus displayed, according to Las Casas, “the more the Indians readily agreed that they knew where they were available simply because . . . to say so gave