NATIVES OF THE NEW LAND
Columbus christened his little coral island San Salvador. The natives
called it Guanahani; but should you look for it on your map you may not
find it under either its native or its Spanish name, for there was no
way, at that early date, of making an accurate map of the whole Bahama
group, and the name San Salvador somehow became shifted in time to
another island. Thus was the original landfall long lost sight of, and
no two writers could agree on the subject. Recently, however, the most
careful students have decided upon the reef now called Watling's Island,
to-day an English possession, as Columbus's first landing-place.
When you see that it is but a tiny dot in the ocean, you may think it an
insignificant spot to have been the scene of the most momentous event of
the Renaissance; you may feel inclined to scold at that well-meaning
Martin Pinzon for asking to have the rudders changed in order to find
his Cipango. But it must be remembered that to have found anything at
all was an unparalleled feat; and furthermore, that wee San Salvador was
not the end of Columbus's expedition; it was merely the beginning,
merely the lighting of that great torch of enterprise and investigation
which was not to be extinguished till the whole American continent and
the whole Pacific Ocean had been explored and mapped out. Columbus that
day started an electric current through the brain of every European
mariner. To discover something across the Atlantic was henceforth in the
very air, and the results were tremendous.
But to return to those happy Spanish sailors who on that October morn of
1492 at last planted their feet on _terra firma_. To explore the
little island did not take long. They found it to be full of green trees
and strange luscious fruits. There were no beasts, large or small, only
gay parrots. The natives, guiltless of clothing, were gentle creatures
who supposed their strange visitors had come from Heaven and reverenced
them accordingly. As the two groups stood looking at each other for the
first time, the natives must have been by far the more astonished.
Spanish eyes were used to races other than the white; they all knew the
brownish Moor; and alas, many of them knew the black Ethiopian too; for,
once the Portuguese started slave-snatching down the African coast, the
Spaniards became their customers, so that by this time, 1492, there were
a good many African slaves in Spain. But the Bahama natives knew of no
race but their own; so what could these undreamed-of visitors be but
divine? Here is Columbus's own description of what happened when the
white man and the red man had scraped acquaintance with each other:--
"As I saw that they were very friendly to us, and perceived that they
could be much more easily converted to our holy faith by gentle means
than by force, I presented them with some red caps and strings of beads
to wear upon the neck, and many other trifles of small value, wherewith
they were much delighted and became greatly attached to us. Afterwards
they came swimming to the boats, bringing parrots, balls of cotton
thread, javelins, and many other things which they exchanged for glass
beads and hawks' bells, which trade was carried on with the utmost good
will. But they seemed on the whole a very poor people. They all were
completely naked. All whom I saw were young, not above thirty years of
age, well made and with fine shapes and faces; their hair short and
coarse like that of a horse's tail, combed towards the forehead except a
small portion which they suffer to hang down behind and never cut. Some
paint themselves with black, others with white, others with red, others
with such colors as they can find. Some paint the face, some the whole
body. Others only the eyes, others only the nose. Weapons they have
none; nor are they acquainted with them. For I showed them swords which
they grasped by the blades and cut themselves through ignorance. They
have no iron, their javelins being without it, and no thing more than
sticks with fishbones or other thing at the ends. I saw some men with
scars of wounds upon their bodies and inquired by signs the cause of
these. They answered me by signs that other people came from islands in
the neighborhood and tried to make prisoners of them and they defended
themselves. ....It appears to me that these people are ingenious and
would make very good servants, and I am of the opinion that they would
readily become Christians as they appear to have no religion. They very
quickly learn such words as are spoken to them. If it please our Lord, I
intend at my return to carry home six of them to your Highnesses that
they may learn our language."
In this brief entry in the Admiral's diary there is a whole volume to
those who can read between the lines, and a painful volume too, as much
history is. Glass beads and little tinkling bells, you see, were all
ready to be distributed from the caravels; a proof that Columbus had not
expected to reach the Asiatic Indies, for those Indians were known to be
sharp and experienced traders. How did Columbus happen to know that it
would be wise to carry rubbish along with him? Ah, that was something
found out when he left Porto Santo to accompany the Portuguese
expedition to Guinea; had he not seen the Portuguese commander exchange
ounces of bright beads for pounds of ivory and gold?
And so he, Christopher Columbus, came prepared for similar trade in his
western lands; the world, we see, was hunting for bargains, trying to
get much for little in the fifteenth century, just as it still is in the
twentieth! Then again, look at the Admiral's innocent remark, "I think
they would make excellent servants." That is still the rule to-day; the
trained man sees in the untrained only a servant. It was perfectly
natural that the Spanish eye should instantly see that little island
converted into a Spanish plantation with those simple, gentle creatures
who "learn easily" working it. And lastly, let us look into this
sentence: "I intend taking some of them home to show your Majesties." It
never occurred to the Admiral to add, "if they are willing to come with
me." Indeed, it seldom occurred to any Christian of Christopher
Columbus's day that a non-Christian, and especially a savage one, had
the same human instincts as a Christian, and that he would have
preferred staying in his own land and with his own family. Out of that
horrible but common mistake grew up the whole miserable business of
kidnapping, buying, and selling human beings. Let us not be too greatly
shocked at our fifteenth-century hero for talking so unfeelingly.
Remember, it was only about fifty years ago that we saw the last of
slavery in these United States, and even then it died hard. Christopher
was, on most moral questions, merely a man of his time, a fact to be
kept in mind as we read of his later voyages.
"They answered me by signs," wrote Columbus. In other words, the
linguist of the expedition, the man learned in Asiatic tongues, had not
been able to make himself understood on San Salvador; and neither was he
when they sailed on among the other islands. Clearly, these little
specks of land in the ocean were not the large and extravagantly rich
island of Japan which Martin Alonzo Pinzon had hoped to find. When
Columbus asked these friendly people for "Cipango," they looked blank
and shook their heads; so did all the other islanders he met during his
three months' cruise among the West Indies. All of the new-found people
were of the same race, spoke the same language, and were equally
ignorant of Cipango and Cathay and India,--lands of rich cities and
temples and marble bridges, and pearls and gold. Columbus had found only
"a poor people," with no clothes and hardly a sign of a golden ornament.
True, when he "inquired by signs" where their few golden trinkets came
from, they pointed vaguely to the south as if some richer land lay
there. And so the Admiral, as we must now call him, never gave up hope.
If, as Pinzon still believed, they had discovered Asiatic islands,
somewhere on the mainland he must surely come upon those treasures which
the Moors had been bringing overland by caravan for centuries past. He
could not go for the treasure this trip; this was nothing more than a
simple voyage of discovery; but he would come and find the wealth that
would enable the Spanish monarchs to undertake a new crusade to the Holy
Land.
October ran into November and November into December, and the Admiral
was still finding islands. He had come, on October 21, to such a far-
reaching coast that he agreed with Martin Pinzon that it must be the
mainland, or Cathay, and started eagerly to follow it west. But the
natives near the shore were timid and fled at the approach of the
strangers. No splendid cities of marble palaces, nor even any mean
little villages of huts, were in sight; so two of the sailors were sent
inland to explore and find the capital of the country. After three days
the explorers returned and reported that all they had seen were many,
many naked savages who dwelt in tiny huts of wood and straw, and who had
the curious custom of rolling up a large dry leaf called tobago,
lighting it at one end, and drawing the smoke up through their nostrils.
Obviously, another "poor people" like those of San Salvador; they were
not the rich and civilized Chinese that Marco Polo had written about.
Neither capital nor king had they, and their land, they told the
explorers, was surrounded by water. They called it Colba. It was, in
fact, the modern Cuba which Columbus had discovered.
Instead of continuing west along Cuba's northern shore till he came to
the end of it, the Admiral preferred to turn east and see what lay in
that direction. It was one of the few times when Columbus's good
judgment in navigation deserted him; for had he kept west he might have
learned from the natives that what we call Florida lay beyond, and
Florida was the continent; or, even if the natives had nothing to
communicate, west would have been the logical direction for him to take
after leaving the extremity of Cuba, had he fully shared Pinzon's belief
that Asia lay beyond the islands. But no, without waiting to get to the
extremity of Cuba, Columbus retraced his course east, as if expecting to
find there the one, definite thing which, according to his friend, Las
Casas, he had come to find.
On November 12 he writes: "A canoe came out to the ship with sixteen
young men; five of them climbed aboard, whom I ordered to be kept so as
to have them with us; I then sent ashore to one of the houses and took
seven women and three children; this I did in order that the five men
might tolerate their captivity better with company." No doubt he treated
the natives kindly, but one can readily understand that their families
and friends back on the island must have felt outraged at this conduct
on the white man's part.
The strange thing is that Columbus, so wise in many ways, did not
understand it too, in spite of the miserably mean ideas which prevailed
in his day regarding the heathen. But the very fact that he notes so
frankly how he captured the natives shows that neither he, nor those who
were to read his journal, had any scruples on the subject. All moral
considerations aside, it was tactless indeed to treat the natives thus
in islands where he hoped to have his own men kindly received.
On Cuba the boats were calked and scraped, and the Admiral superintended
the operations. He was always a busy, busy man, on land or sea. Being a
great lover of nature, he left this nautical business for a while and
traveled a few days inland; and of every native he met he asked that
same question that he had been asking among all these lovely islands,
"Is there any gold or pearls or spices?" No, that land lies west, far
west; thus Columbus understood the sign answer; but after following a
native in that direction for a long time, he had to give it up, for the
time being. When he returned to the beach, Martin Pinzon showed him a
big stick of cinnamon wood for which, in his absence, one of the sailors
had traded a handful of beads.
"The native had quantities of it," Martin assured his Admiral.
"Then why didn't the sailor get it all?"
"Because," and here Martin grew malicious, "you ordered that they could
trade only a little, so that you could do most of it yourself!"
And now the native had gone, and the rueful Admiral never saw him nor
his cinnamon again!
At last, sailing along Cuba, he came to its end; and from there he could
see another island eighteen leagues off. This was what we call Haiti, or
San Domingo. The ships sailed over to Haiti, and the Admiral was so
pleased with its aspect that he christened it Hispaniola, or little
Hispania, which is Latin for Spain; but as Spain is called by its own
people Espana, Hispaniola soon became Espanola.