Christopher Columbus and How He Received and Imparted the Spirit of Discovery

by Justin Winsor

1494. June 7. Treaty of Tordesillas.

To the Admiral came a letter, dated August 16, from Ferdinand and Isabella, giving him notice that all the difficulties with Portugal had been amicably adjusted. The court of Lisbon, finding that Pope Alexander was not inclined to recede from his position, and Spain not courting any difference that would lead to hostilities, both countries had easily been brought to an agreement, which was made at Tordesillas, June 7, 1494, to move the line of demarcation so much farther as to fall 370 leagues west of the Cape de Verde Islands. Each country then bound itself to respect its granted rights under the bull thus modified. The historical study of this diplomatic controversy over the papal division of the world is much embarrassed by the lack of documentary records of the correspondence carried on by Spain, Portugal, and the Pope.

The sovereign's letter to Columbus,

This letter of August 16 must have been very gratifying to Columbus. Their Majesties told him that one of the principal reasons of their rejoicing in his discoveries was that they felt it all due to his genius and perseverance, and that the events had justified his foreknowledge and their expectations. So now, in their desire to define the new line of demarcation, and in the hope that it might be found to run through some ocean island, where a monument could be erected, they turned to him for assistance, and they expected that if he could not return to assist in these final negotiations, he would dispatch to them some one who was competent to deal with the geographical problem.

and to the colonists.

Torres had also brought a general letter of counsel to the colonists, commanding them to obey all the wishes and to bow to the authority of the Admiral. Whatever his lack of responsibility, in some measure at least, for the undoubted commercial failure of the colony, its want of a product in any degree commensurate both with expectation and outlay could not fail, as he well understood, to have a strong effect both on the spirit of the people and on the constancy of his royal patrons, who might, under the urging of Margarite and his abettors, have already swerved from his support.

1495. February 24. The fleet returns to Spain.

Carrying slaves.

Columbus and slavery.

Reasons of this kind made it imperative that the newly arrived ships should be returned without delay, and with such reassuring messages and returns as could be furnished. The fleet departed on February 24, 1495. Himself still prostrate, and needing his brother Bartholomew to act during this season of his incapacity, there was no one he could spare so well to meet the wishes of the sovereigns as his other brother. So armed with maps and instructions, and with the further mission of protecting the Admiral's interest at Court, Diego embarked in one of the caravels. All the gold which had been collected was consigned to Diego's care, but it was only a sorry show, after all. There had been a variety of new fruits and spices, and samples of baser metals gathered, and these helped to complete the lading. There was one resource left. He had intimated his readiness to avail himself of it in the communication of his views to the sovereigns, which Torres had already conveyed to them. He now gave the plan the full force of an experiment, and packed into the little caravels full five hundred of the unhappy natives, to be sold as slaves. "The very ship," says Helps, "which brought that admirable reply from Ferdinand and Isabella to Columbus, begging him to seek some other way to Christianity than through slavery, even for wild man-devouring Caribs, should go back full of slaves taken from among the mild islanders of Hispaniola." The act was a long step in the miserable degradation which Columbus put upon those poor creatures whose existence he had made known to the world. Almost in the same breath, as in his letter to Santangel, he had suggested the future of a slave traffic out of that very existence. It is an obvious plea in his defense that the example of the church and of kings had made such heartless conduct a common resort to meet the financial burdens of conquest. The Portuguese had done it in Africa; the Spaniards had done it in Spain. The contemporary history of that age may be said to ring with the wails and moans of such negro and Moorish victims. A Holy Religion had unblushingly been made the sponsor for such a crime. Theologians had proved that the Word of God could ordain misery in this world, if only the recompense came—or be supposed to come—in a passport to the Christian's heaven.