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By Root 547 0

only with the leaf of a plant or with a net of cotton,” he warned, and appraised them as an avaricious Genoese might. “They have no iron or steel or weapons, nor are they capable of using them, although they are well-built people of handsome stature, because they are wondrous timid” and even refused to use the flimsy little sharp sticks they occasionally carried. When Columbus landed, “people without number” were drawn to the sight, only to flee. “Even a father would not stay for his son, and this was not because wrong had been done to anyone.” In all, they were “timid beyond cure.” And generous beyond reason. “Of anything they have, if you ask them for it, they never say no; rather they invite the person to share it, and show as much love as if they were giving their hearts; and whether the thing be of value or of small price.”

He described the efforts he made to prepare for their conversion to Christianity: “I gave them a thousand pretty things that I had brought, in order to gain their love and incline them to become Christians. I hoped to win them to the love and service of Their Highnesses and of the whole Spanish nation and to persuade them to collect and give us of the things which they possessed in abundance and which we needed”—such as their young women, he might have added, if he were to be completely truthful, which he was not. He boasted that he, the Admiral of the Ocean Sea, received a “good reception everywhere, once they had overcome their fear . . . because they have never before seen men clothed or ships like these.”

He learned to communicate with them “either by speech or signs,” but no matter what passed between them, the Indians “believe very firmly that I, with these ships and people, came from the sky.” The conviction remained unshakeable, and ubiquitous. Wherever he journeyed, the startled inhabitants “went running from house to house and to the neighboring towns with loud cries of ‘Come! Come! See the people from the sky!’ ”

Cheered by the adulation, Columbus portrayed his empire building in grandiose terms; he proclaimed that he had discovered the gold mines associated with the Grand Khan, although the claim was based on his having caught glimpses of a few strands of gold. As if trumpet flourishes were sounding all around him, Columbus announced that he had “taken possession of a large town to which I gave the name La Villa de Navidad, and in it I have built a fort and defenses, which already, at this moment, will be all complete.”

In fact, this was neither a town nor a citadel, as he implied; it was a modest stronghold cobbled together with timber salvaged from the scuttled Santa María and staffed by thirty-nine seamen ill equipped for survival in a strange environment. As the first European settlement in the New World, it served as a powerful symbol. In his Sovereigns’ imagination, it would appear as a castle with banners and battlements, a militant monastery in the midst of heathens. It was, in other words, an excellent selling point, secured by the hostages he had deposited there. Columbus insisted that they were not in any danger, and that they enjoyed the protection of the local king, who “took pride in calling me and treating me as a brother.” Even if the king underwent a change of heart, “neither he nor his people know the use of arms,” Columbus said.

One more thing: he wanted to assure the Sovereigns that “I have not found the human monsters that many people expected. On the contrary, the whole population is very well made.” He admitted to hearing reports concerning “a people who are regarded in all the islands as very ferocious and who eat human flesh”—the fierce Caribs, who marauded vulnerable islands and practiced ritual human sacrifice—“they have many canoes with which they range all the islands of India and pillage and take as much as they can,” but even these warriors “are no more malformed than the others, except that they have the custom of wearing their hair long like women.” Their ferocity derived from the cowardice of their victims. In other words, they were not to be