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By Root 599 0

the settlement’s inhabitants were seriously ill and starving. The little food they had rotted in the heat and humidity. Columbus blamed the ships’ captains, who he claimed had neglected to take necessary precautions. He pressed the demoralized survivors—everyone from hidalgos to servants, and even clerics—into service to construct a canal and watermill to grind wheat. Under this regimen, gentlemen had to cook their own meals, if they could find anything edible. The sick received a single egg and a pot of stewed chickpeas, a meager ration considered sufficient to sustain five patients. Death stalked every man at the settlement, including the nobles who had never before had to cope with deprivation.

To enforce his will, Columbus constantly threatened violence. He agonized over how to portray his inglorious efforts before the court of Castile, where jealous bureaucrats waited to discredit him. Success for Columbus meant, above all, identifying with divine will, but for the time being he was in danger of losing the way. Accusations of Columbus’s cruelty and “hatred for Spanish,” in Las Casas’s words, gained credence in the royal court—“accusations that gradually wore him down, ensured he never knew a day’s happiness through the rest of his life, and sowed the seeds of his eventual fall.”

Columbus and his backers were coming to terms with the fatal calculus of discovery. Despite strenuous efforts to ascribe his motives and deeds to a higher power, the quest remained intensely personal, especially when Columbus confronted sickness, suffering, and the prospect of death. At times like these, he seemed to purchase glory with the suffering of his crew members. The first voyage’s unlikely success emboldened Columbus to believe that establishing trade with China could be swift and painless, but that no longer appeared true. It was one thing, he realized, to visit a strange harbor, drop anchor, ask the priests on board to bless their cause, and sail away when the wind and tide permitted, another to establish a permanent, selfsustaining settlement: that was the difference between discovering an empire and maintaining it. Empire building required an innovative and different skill set, as essential as the navigational instincts and abilities he had spent a lifetime acquiring. It meant adding the skills of military commander, merchant, politician, and even spiritual leader—all roles he was barely qualified to play. Grumble though they did, threatening mutiny and retribution for perceived slights, no one else among the hundreds of men on the voyage’s roster displayed an aptitude for them or was willing to risk taking them on.

But there was worse to come.

“With the Admiral on the very brink of his tribulations and anguish,” a messenger from Fort Santo Tomás appeared with alarming news. The Indians on whom the Spaniards had come to rely were abandoning their settlements. A warrior named Caonabó was vowing to kill every Christian. Roused from his torpor, Columbus immediately assembled seventy of his ablest men to protect the fort. He appointed Alonso de Ojeda to command another group, with orders to proceed to Fort Santo Tomás, which they would use as a staging area to aid the surrounding settlements “in a show of the strength and power of the Christians, which might cow the Indians into learning to obey.”

Energetic and responsive, Ojeda ingratiated himself with Columbus and his adjutants, but the decision to put the reckless young man in charge soon proved questionable. Las Casas paid tribute to Ojeda’s charisma, and to his fatal flaw. “He was slight of body but very well proportioned and comely, handsome in bearing, his face good-looking and his eyes very large, one of the swiftest of men,” the historiador sighed. “All the bodily perfections that a man could have seemed to be united in him.” For instance, “he was very devoted to Our Lady,” and yet, “he was always the first to draw blood whenever there was a war or a quarrel.” His fiery temperament would soon pose problems for Columbus.

On April 9, 1494, Ojeda led four hundred men