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

by Justin Winsor

There is nothing strange in the excitement of an officer who finds his undoubted supremacy thus obstinately spurned, and we must trace to such excitement the somewhat overstrained conduct which made a show of carrying by assault the fortress in which Guevara and the other prisoners were confined. Miguel Diaz, who commanded the fort,—the same who had disclosed the Hayna mines,—when summoned to surrender had referred Bobadilla to the Admiral from whom his orders came, and asked for copies of the letters patent and orders, for more considerate attention. It was hardly to be expected that Bobadilla was to be beguiled by any such device, when he had a force of armed men at his back, aided by his crew and the aroused rabble, and when there was nothing before him but a weak citadel with few defenders. There was nothing to withstand the somewhat ridiculous shock of the assault but a few frail bars, and no need of the scaling ladders which were ostentatiously set up. Diaz and one companion, with sword in hand, stood passively representing the outraged dignity of command. Bobadilla was victorious, and the manacled Guevara and the rest passed over to new and less stringent keepers.

Bobadilla in full possession.

Bobadilla was now in possession of every channel of authority. He domiciled himself in the house of Columbus, took possession of all his effects, including his papers, making no distinction between public and private ones, and used what money he could find to pay the debts of the Admiral as they were presented to him. This proceeding was well calculated to increase his popularity, and it was still more enhanced when he proclaimed liberty to all to gather gold for twenty years, with only the payment of one seventh instead of a third to the Crown.

Columbus hears of Bobadilla.

Columbus and the Franciscans.

Let us turn to Columbus himself. The reports which reached him at Fort Conception did not at first convey to him an adequate notion of what he was to encounter. He associated the proceedings with such unwarranted acts as Ojeda's and Pinzon's in coming with their ships within his prescribed dominion. The greater audacity, however, alarmed him, and the threats which Bobadilla had made of sending him to Spain in irons, and the known success of his usurpation within the town, were little calculated to make Columbus confident in the temporary character of the outburst. He moved his quarters to Bonao to be nearer the confusion, and here he met an officer bearing to him a copy of the letters under which the government had been assumed by Bobadilla. Still the one addressed to Columbus, commanding him to acquiesce, was held back. It showed palpably that Bobadilla conceived he had passed beyond the judicial aim of his commission. Columbus, on his part, was loath to reach that conclusion, and tried to gain time. He wrote to Bobadilla an exculpating and temporizing letter, saying that he was about to leave for Spain, when everything would pass regularly into Bobadilla's control. He sent other letters, calculated to create delays, to the Franciscans who had come with him. He had himself affiliated with that order, and perhaps thought his influence might not be unheeded. He got no replies, and perhaps never knew what the spirit of these friars was. They evidently reflected the kind of testimony which Bobadilla had been accumulating. We find somewhat later, in a report of one of them, Nicholas Glassberger,—who speaks of the 1,500 natives whom they had made haste to baptize in Santo Domingo,—some of the cruel insinuations which were rife, when he speaks of "a certain admiral, captain, and chief, who had ill treated these natives, taking their goods and wives, and capturing their virgin daughters, and had been sent to Spain in chains."

Bobadilla sends the sovereigns' letter to Columbus.

Columbus as yet could hardly have looked forward to any such indignity as manacles on his limbs. Nor did he probably suspect that Bobadilla was using the signed blanks, entrusted to him by the sovereigns, to engage the interests of Roldan and other deputies of the Viceroy scattered through the island. Columbus, in these uncertainties, caused it to be known that he considered his perpetual powers still unrevoked, if indeed they were revocable at all. This state of his mind was rudely jarred by receiving a little later, at the hands of Francisco Velasquez, the deputy treasurer, and of Juan de Trasierra, one of the Franciscans, the letter addressed to him by the sovereigns, commanding him to respect what Bobadilla should tell him. Here was tangible authority; and when it was accompanied by a summons from Bobadilla to appear before him, he hesitated no longer, and, with the little state befitting his disgrace, proceeded at once to Santo Domingo.