In the letter written to the royal treasurer, Santangel, Columbus invariably speaks in terms of similar confidence. “In conclusion, and to speak only of what I have performed,” says he, “this voyage, so hastily despatched, will, as their Highnesses may see, enable any desirable quantity of gold to be obtained, by a very small assistance afforded me on their part.” On the eve of sailing for Spain, after referring to the opposition he had received from the clergy and others about the court, he says: “These last have been the cause that the royal crown of your Highnesses does not possess this day a hundred millions of reals more than when I entered your service, from which time it will be seven years the 20th day of this month of January.”
The reader will hardly fail to observe that these promises, so comprehensive in their nature, rested upon a very slender foundation. Very little gold had been seen by the explorers, and the mines had all baffled their most diligent search. The ardent nature of Columbus found no difficulty in converting hopes into confident expectations. How painfully these were destined to be disappointed, we shall have occasion hereafter to see.
Another matter that is worthy of notice is the general attitude of Columbus toward his crew and toward the islanders. It may be difficult to determine how far it was Columbus’s fault; but the fact is unmistakable that there are no indications of any attachment to him by any of the members of his crew. His habit of deceiving them in regard to the distance passed over, and in regard to the needle, is likely to have occasioned general distrust. Certain it is that Martin Alonzo Pinzon, the ardent friend whose support at Palos made the expedition possible, deserted him without warning soon after the fleet reached the first land. The Admiral himself says, in his journal of November 21st, that Pinzon, “incited by cupidity,” sailed away with the “Pinta” “without leave of the Admiral,” and that “by his language and action he occasioned many other troubles.”
But the conduct of Pinzon was even to Columbus something of a mystery; for elsewhere in his journal he “confesses himself unable to learn the cause of the unfavorable disposition which this man had manifested toward him throughout the voyage.” Elsewhere the Admiral says Pinzon “was actuated solely by haughtiness and cupidity in abandoning him.” Again he says that both of the Pinzon brothers “had a party attached to them, the whole of whom had displayed great haughtiness and avarice, disobeying his commands, regardless of the honours he had conferred upon them.”
It is evident that Columbus was quite devoid of tact in the management of men; for the bitterness that at a later period manifested itself could not otherwise be accounted for.
Toward the natives Columbus seems not to have been actuated by any motives of cruelty. He is not to be harshly judged, moreover, if his methods were simply those of the fifteenth rather than those of the nineteenth century. But human nature is ever essentially the same, and it is therefore easy to understand the history of the change that rapidly came over the spirit of the natives. Immediately after he arrived at the islands, Columbus took a number of the natives by force, and kept them upon the ship. On the 12th day of November he writes: “Yesterday a canoe came to the ship with six young men; five of them came on board, whom I ordered to be detained, in order to have them with me. I then sent ashore to one of the houses and took seven women and three children; this I did that the Indians might tolerate their captivity better with their company.” In the same connection the Admiral adds: “These women will be of great help to us in acquiring their language, which is the same throughout all these countries, the inhabitants keeping up a communication among the islands by means of their canoes.” Again, on the 14th of January, only two days before taking final leave, Las Casas says that, “wishing to make prisoners of some Indians, he intended to despatch a boat in the night to visit their houses for this purpose; but the wind blowing strong from the east and northeast occasioned a rough sea, which prevented it.” On the following day he says: “There came four young Indians on board the caravel, where they gave so good an account to the Admiral of the island to the east that he determined to take them along with him.”
It is impossible to reflect upon this habit of the Admiral without realizing that, however friendly and hospitable the natives had shown themselves at first, the impression soon made upon their minds must have been one of the utmost repugnance and enmity. To indulge in any other supposition would be to suppose that the natives were not human beings. The captives seem for the most part to have been kindly treated, and they may not have manifested an unconquerable aversion to their captivity; but this unscrupulous policy of kidnapping the natives whenever opportunity offered, could not have been otherwise than disastrous to all friendly relations. It is impossible to conceive that the islanders were so devoid of all human sensibilities as to see with indifference their husbands and wives, their sons and daughters, stolen from them for the gratification of the lust and the cupidity of their visitors. Nor, aside from all moral considerations, on the part of the wisest historian of the time was there any failure to understand the disastrous consequences of such a policy. Las Casas was fully alive to all the political significance of this course of action. While this great moralist, whose nobility of character raises him far above all the other public men of his time, fully acquits Columbus of any wrong intent, he does not hesitate to indict him for initiating a policy that was the cause of all the crimes and disasters that ensued. The right to kidnap was of course resented by the natives. The consequence was a war of extermination. The sad fate of the colony of La Navidad can never be fully understood, for reasons which in due time we shall see; but it would have been strange indeed if men, endowed with even the feeblest attributes of human nature, had not been desirous of exterminating a race actuated by such a policy. The words of Las Casas are at once so judicious and so just that they ought not to be abridged. After speaking of the ardent desire of Columbus to bring as much profit as possible to Ferdinand and Isabella, he uses these admirable words:—
“For this cause the Admiral thought and watched and worked for nothing more than to contrive that there might come advantage and income to the sovereigns.... Ignoring that which ought not to be ignored concerning divine and natural right and the right judgment of reason, he introduced and commenced to establish such principles and to sow such seeds that there originated and grew from them such a deadly and pestilential herb, and one which produced such deep roots, that it has been sufficient to destroy and devastate all these Indies, without human power sufficing to impede or intercept such great and irreparable evils.”
And then, with a charming discrimination and charity, the same benignant author continues,—
“I do not doubt that if the Admiral had believed there would succeed such pernicious detriment as did succeed, and had known as much of the primary and secondary conclusions of natural and divine right as he knew of cosmography and other human doctrines, he would never have dared to introduce or establish a thing which was to produce such calamitous evils; for no one can say that he was not a good and Christian man.”