Columbus_ The Four Voyages - Laurence Bergreen [76]
The wind suddenly shifted, bringing bouts of dense mist and torrential rain. Columbus spent a strenuous day battling high winds and heavy seas. When the weather lifted slightly, he produced his spyglass and observed people barely visible through a clearing in the trees. He gave the order to drop anchor, but the panicky island dwellers fled well before the Spaniards could make contact with them. “I reached the north side,” Columbus wrote, “where most of the population lives, and I went in very close to land and anchored the whole fleet.”
Columbus sent a captain ashore, where he “found a good deal of unspun cotton, yarn, and edible provisions,” in Chanca’s words. But where were the people?
“Our men,” Ferdinand wrote, “found only some children, in whose hands they put hawk’s bells in order to reassure the parents when they returned.” The Spaniards inspected the structures, and noted “geese resembling our own” and unearthly parrots as large as roosters bristling with feathers of brilliant vermilion, azure, and white. Emboldened, they sampled a fruit similar to melon but sweeter in taste and smell. They noted bows and arrows, hammocks, and took care to restrain themselves from removing anything from the abandoned hamlet so that “the Indians might have more trust in the Christians.”
On closer inspection, the peaceful domestic scene turned into a nightmare. “In their houses,” Columbus wrote, “I found hanging baskets and great arches of human bones as well as heads hanging up in every house.” He was startled to come across “a large piece from the stern of a Spanish ship; I believe it was from the one I left at La Navidad last year.” An unnerving silence enveloped the explorers. They assumed they were being watched, but by whom?
“As for the people,” Columbus wrote to his Sovereigns, “few were taken and few seen; all of them fled into the countryside, and because the trees were thick could not be captured except for some women, which I am sending to Your Highnesses.” They were refugees, victims of brutality and cannibalism. “In my opinion, they were taken as slaves or concubines.” By means of gestures they indicated that “their husbands had been eaten and that other women had had their sons and brothers eaten, and that they themselves had been forced to eat them.” There was more, sadly. “I also found some boys who had been brought there, and each of them had had his penis cut off.” At first, Columbus thought they had been castrated “out of jealousy for their women,” but, he learned, “they follow that practice to fatten them up, like capons in Castile, so they can be eaten for feasts; women they never kill.”
Had the men at La Navidad met with the same end as the horrifying human remains in the Indians’ dwellings indicated? Had Columbus allowed them to be sacrificed in this manner? Stricken with guilt and panic, he intended to go from one island to the next, destroying every canoe he encountered as retribution, “but the desire to aid those whom I had left behind here did not allow time for searches, nor did I have peace of mind.”
His exploration of Guadeloupe revealed a string of abandoned villages, but in one hamlet his men came across an “abandoned one-year-old baby who remained alone for six days in this hut.” Each day his men passed by the hut, “and they always found the little one next to a bundle of arrows, and he used to go to a nearby river to drink and then return to his hut, and he was always cheerful and content.” Consumed by the idea of this small child alone in the wilderness, Columbus intervened, pledging the boy “to God and fortune,” adding, “so I had him entrusted to a woman who had come here from Castile.” References to this woman and others like her are too skimpy to convey an idea of what role, if any, they played. In this instance, the abandoned Indian child flourished under the care of his nursemaid. “Now he is so well behaved,” Columbus boasted to Ferdinand and Isabella, “and he speaks and understands our tongue very well, and that is beautiful.” He would send him to Spain forthwith,