Moved by this fear, on the 4th of January, 1493, he spread the sails of the one caravel left to him, and turned its prow towards Europe, to carry thither the news of the greatest maritime discovery the world had ever known. Thus ended in success and triumph the first voyage of Columbus to the "New World."
ALONSO DE OJEDA AND THE CARIB CACIQUE.
Of the three ships with which Columbus made his first voyage, the "Pinta" deserted the others and went off on a voyage of discovery of its own, and the "Santa Maria," the flag-ship of the admiral, ran ashore on the coast of Hispaniola and proved a hopeless wreck. Only the little "Niña" (the "girl," as this word means in English) was left to carry the discoverer home. The "Santa Maria" was carefully taken to pieces, and from her timbers was constructed a small but strong fort, with a deep vault beneath and a ditch surrounding. Friendly Indians aided in this, and not a shred of the stranded vessel was left to the waves. As the "Niña" was too small to carry all his crew back to Spain, Columbus decided to leave a garrison to hold this fort and search for gold until he should return. That the island held plenty of gold he felt sure. So Captain Ardua was left, with a garrison of forty men, and the "Niña" spread her sails to the winds to carry to Spain the wonderful news of the great discovery.
La Navidad, or The Nativity, he named the fort, in remembrance of the day of the wreck, and when he came back in 1493 he hopefully expected to find its garrison awaiting him, with a rich treasure in the precious yellow metal. He reached the spot to[pg 018] find the fort a ruin and the garrison a remembrance only. They had been attacked by the Indians and massacred during the absence of the admiral.
In fact, the mild, gentle, and friendly Indians whom Columbus had met with on his first voyage were not the only people of the islands. There were on some of the West Indies a warlike race called Caribs,—cannibals, the Spaniards said they were,—who gave the invaders no small trouble before they were overcome.
It was a band of these fierce Caribs that had attacked La Navidad and destroyed the fort and its garrison, impelled to this, likely enough, by some of the ruthless acts which the Spaniards were much too ready to commit. The leader of these warriors was a bold cacique named Caonabo, chief of a warlike mountain tribe. It is with this chieftain that we are at present concerned, as he was the hero, or victim rather, of the first romantic story known to us in Indian life.
In addition to the forts built by the Spaniards on the coast of Hispaniola, there was one built far in the interior, called Fort Santo Tomas. This stood in the mountainous region of Cibao, the reputed land of gold of the island. Its site lay within the territory of Caonabo, who ruled over a great district, his capital town or village being on the southern slope of the Cibao Mountains.
The first conflict between the Spaniards and the natives, after the massacre of the garrison of La Navidad, was in the district of the Vega, where a[pg 019] fierce fight took place in the spring of 1495, the natives suffering a severe defeat. The next was at Fort Santo Tomas, which was commanded by Alonso de Ojeda, a young man who had come out with Columbus in his second voyage. He was a man of great courage and unusual daring, one of the chief among those dauntless spirits who had to do with the conquest of the New World.