29.8 America: a.d. 1401 to 1500  (Page 6/9)

The adventurers immediately encountered Taino Indians, speakers of what was later to be identified as an Arawak language. They used dugout boats, some carrying 40 to 45 men and they used hammocks for sleeping, a trick soon adopted by the Spanish seamen. Deeper on the island many of the Taino were kept captive for eating purposes by the cannibalistic Caribs. Taino boys were castrated and the girls were kept to raise babies, which the Caribs thought to be particularly tasty. (Ref. 150 ) The Indians went essentially naked, wearing a few trinkets of gold leaf. The latter, of course, greatly excited the Europeans and they sailed through the Bahamas to Hispaniola (Haiti) in pursuit of gold, as well as Japan and the Grand Khan of China. They decided Cuba was the Asiatic mainland and it was there that the Santa Maria went aground. By this time friction had developed among the ships' captains and Columbus and the skipper of the Pinta sailed her away, leaving Columbus with the Nina and the grounded Santa Maria. A fort was built on Cape Haitian Harbor and 39 men were left there while the Admiral and the Nina sailed on January 16, 1493 for Spain, going first north and then east. Again Columbus' attempts at celestial navigation were somewhat ludicrous, but with luck and dead reckoning he hit the Azores and finally, after some trouble with the Portuguese there, he went on to Lisbon in a storm. All thought that they had found Asiatic islands. (Ref. 150 , 222 )

The follow-up to the discovery voyage of Columbus is not so well known. Queen Isabella sent him back to the Indies in September of 1493, with 1,500 men in a fleet of 17 ships, with the declared prime object of conversion of the Indians to Christianity and a second object of establishing a trading colony, with Columbus as governor. The ships sailed through the smaller leeward islands to Porto Rico and finally to Haiti, where it was found that the men left there on the previous voyage were dead. The first battle with Indians took place on St. Croix Island on November 13th. Columbus was able to take some of these vicious, cannibalistic Caribs as prisoners and made them slaves. Then he explored southern Cuba, which he thought was part of China, and/or islands of Malay and then he went on to Jamaica. On this voyage he established another colony on Haiti, but his men, who had no women on their ships from Spain, raped, robbed and enslaved the Indians. Fray Buil, who had been sent as the Christian priest, participated in the Indian enslavement and Columbus, himself, eventually returned with some 500 Indians for the slave markets of Seville, when he got home again in the spring of 1496. Colonists who were left in the Caribbean built the city of Santo Domingo in 1496 or 1497, as the first American urban community. (Ref. 150 , 222 ) It has been estimated that the total population of Hispaniola (Haiti) in 1496 was 4,000,000, chiefly Indians, of course. (Ref. 267 )

Since the Spanish royalty was not too happy with the paucity of gold and silver brought back from the New World after 2 trips, Columbus had real difficulty in arranging his third. Finally in 1498 he sailed again, to land in Trinidad and Venezuela on the South American coast. Another fleet supposedly went directly to provision the colony on Santa Domingo. In Venezuela the men did find guanin or tumbaga , an alloy of gold, silver and copper, with the amount of gold varying from 9 to 89% and the copper from 11 to 74%. They also found more cannibalistic Caribs and big fighting-canoes, with cabins amidships, which may have been factors in making the Spaniards just miss an area of great pearl fisheries. Returning to Santo Domingo, Columbus found 160 of the European colony (20 to 30% of the total) ill with syphilis. The natives had been shamefully exploited, the provision fleet hadn't arrived and some mutineers had been hanged. Francisco de Bobadilla, who had been sent to the island by the Spanish monarchs as Chief Justice, blamed Columbus for the various problems, arrested him and had him returned to Spain in chains. The year was 1500.