Columbus_ The Four Voyages - Laurence Bergreen [78]
During the delay, Columbus, seemingly unafraid of the Caribs, ordered his men ashore to wash their clothes and to procure still more wood and water. Later, he sent a company of forty men under the command of a spirited young captain, Alonso de Ojeda, “to search for the strays and learn the secrets of the country.” They found no lost crew members, or their bones, but they did note an abundance of maize, aloe, cotton, ginger, and fowl resembling falcons, herons, crows, pigeons, partridges, geese, nightingales, and twenty-six rivers on this bedeviled isle. “Several times we went ashore, exploring all dwellings and villages that lay along the coast,” Chanca revealed, “where we found quite a few human bones and skulls hanging inside the houses and used as containers to hold things.” Despite these stark displays, “these people seemed to us more civilized than those living on other islands we had seen.” Their straw huts were sturdier; they had more yarn and cotton stored, so much “that they have nothing to envy of those from our country.”
More testimony about the voyage came from the pen of Peter Martyr d’Anghiera, a chronicler “tied in close friendship,” in his words, to Columbus. Peter Martyr, as he is usually known, was an Italian in residence at the Spanish court. He had originally met the explorer in April 1493, at the conclusion of the first voyage. A month later, in a state of excitement, Martyr dashed off a note to a friend. “There returned from the western antipodes”—that is, India—“a certain Christophorus Colonus of Genoa who had with difficulty obtained from my Sovereigns three ships [to visit] this province, for they considered what he said fabulous; he has returned and brought proofs of many precious things, especially of gold, which these regions naturally produce.”
Among the first to recognize the importance of Columbus’s discoveries, Peter Martyr related the explorer’s latest findings to members of the highest echelons of the church. “I chose these accounts from the originals of Admiral Columbus himself,” he said, and went on to explain to Cardinal Ascanio Sforza the ingenious construction of Indian homes and their furnishings: “First, they draw the circumference of the house with logs of very tall trees, set in the ground like piles; then shorter beams are placed inside to prevent the taller ones from falling in; finally they place the ends of the taller posts much like a military tent, thus all the houses have pointed roofs. Next, interwoven leaves from palm trees and some other similar trees are used to protect them very ingeniously from the rain. Across from the short planks and the inside posts are strung cotton ropes or certain twisted roots similar to esparto”—a tough fiber prevalent in southern Spain—“on top of which they lay cotton blankets. Since the island spontaneously produces cotton, they make use either of suspended beds made of raw cotton . . . or heaps of leaves. The courtyard surrounded by these ordinary dwellings is used for gathering and play.”
The courtyard, or batey, as the Indians called it, served as the arena for games. Ten or twenty athletes clustered at opposite ends of the batey, where they served and passed a ball from one player to another. Men and women competed separately. Indian rules prevented athletes from guiding the ball with their hands or feet, so they bounced it off their bodies, taking care to keep it within bounds. During these contests, ordinary spectators sat on the ground, the Indian ruling caste on benches or stools. The raucous games went on day after day, with caciques as well as the players themselves betting on the outcome. Often the teams represented chiefdoms, and took on a political slant, coinciding with significant