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

by Justin Winsor

1504. December 13.

Ten days later (December 13), he writes again to Diego, recurring to his bitter memories of Ovando, charging him with diverting the revenues, and with bearing himself so haughtily that no one dared remonstrate. "Everybody says that I have as much as 11,000 or 12,000 castellanos in Española, and I have not received a quarter. Since I came away he must have received 5,000." He then urges Diego to sue the King for a mandatory letter to be sent to Ovando, forcing immediate payment. "Carvajal knows very well that this ought to be done. Show him this letter," he adds. Then referring to his denied rights, and to the best way to make the King sensible of his earlier promises, he next advises Diego to lessen his expenses; to treat his uncle with the respect which is due to him; and to bear himself towards his younger brother as an older brother should. "You have no other brother," he says; "and thank God this one is all you could desire. He was born with a good nature." Then he reverts to the Queen's death. "People tell me," he writes, "that on her death-bed she expressed a wish that my possession of the Indies should be restored to me."

1504. December 21.

A week later (December 21), he once more bewails the way in which he is left without tidings. He recounts the exertions he had made to send money to his advocates at Court, and tells Diego how he must somehow continue to get on as best he can till their Highnesses are content to give them back their power. He repeats that to bring his companions home from Santo Domingo he had spent twelve hundred castellanos, and that he had represented to the King the royal indebtedness for this, but it produced no reimbursement. He asks Diego to find out if the Queen, "now with God, no doubt," had spoken of him in her will; and perhaps the Bishop of Palencia, "who was the cause of their Majesties' acquiring the Indies, and of my returning to the Court when I had departed," or the chamberlain of the King could find this out. Columbus may have lived to learn that the only item of the Queen's will in which he could possibly have been in mind was the one in which she showed that she was aroused to the enormities which Columbus had imposed on the Indians, and which had come to such results that, as Las Casas says, it had been endeavored to keep the knowledge of it from the Queen's ears. She earnestly enjoined upon her successors a change of attitude towards the poor Indians.

Columbus writes to the Pope.

Columbus further says that the Pope had complained that no account of his voyage had been sent to Rome, and that accordingly he had prepared one, and he desired Diego to read it, and to let the King and the bishop also peruse it before it was forwarded to Rome. It is possible that the Adelantado was dispatched with the letter. The canonizers say that the mission to Rome had also a secret purpose, which was to counteract the schemes of Fonseca to create bishoprics in Española, and that the advice of Columbus in the end prevailed over the "cunning of diplomacy."

1505. February 23. Columbus allowed to ride a mule.

There had been some time before, owing to the difficulty which had been experienced in mounting the royal cavalry, an order promulgated forbidding the use of mules in travel, since it was thought that the preference for this animal had brought about the deterioration and scarcity of horses. It was to this injunction that Columbus now referred when he asked Diego to get a dispensation from the King to allow him to enjoy the easier seat of a mule when he should venture on his journey towards the Court, which, with this help, he hoped to be able to begin within a few weeks. Such an order was in due time issued on February 23, 1505.

1504. December 29.

On December 29, Columbus wrote again. The letter was full of the same pitiful suspense. He had received no letters. He could but repeat the old story of the letters of credit which he had sent and which had not been acknowledged. No one of his people had been paid, he said, neither the faithful nor the mutineers. "They are all poor. They are going to Court," he adds, "to press their claims. Aid them in it." He excepts, however, from the kind interest of his friends two fellows who had been with him on his last voyage, one Camacho and Master Bernal, the latter the physician of the flagship. Bernal was the instigator of the revolt of Porras, he says, "and I pardoned him at the prayer of my brother."