Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings. Francis Augustus MacNutt
Christopher Columbus
From an engraving by P. Mercuri after a contemporary portrait
The deductions of both these learned writers would seem to require more positive corroboration. Not only are they destitute of confirmation, but in the second chapter of his Historia General, Las Casas gives the names of many persons who did accompany Columbus in 1493, describing several incidents connected with that expedition and concluding by saying that he heard all these things “from my father who returned [to America] with him, when he went to found settlements in Hispaniola.” In the preface which he wrote in 1552 to accompany the publication of his history, Destruycion de las Indias, which had been composed ten years earlier, he speaks of his experience extending over more than fifty years, but in his Historia General, which is almost a diary of the first half of his life in America, the first voyage that he mentions is that of Don Nicholas de Ovando in 1502. Las Casas was most careful in describing every particular of the events in which he had a part and he nowhere mentions that he accompanied Columbus on any voyage, whereas he dwells at length upon the expedition of Ovando, and in the third chapter of the second book of the Historia General he affirms, “I heard this with my own ears for I went on that voyage with the Comendador de Lares [Ovando] to this island.” The phrase is characteristic, for the positive note is rarely absent [pg 9] in the affirmations of Las Casas, nor is it admissible that his experiences on any voyage previous to that of Ovando should find no place in the exact and scrupulous narrative he has left us of his relations with America and his beloved Indians.
In consequence of the persistent and bitter complaints of Columbus against the second Governor of Hispaniola, whose appointment violated the rights secured to the Admiral and his successors by the capitulations of Granada, the catholic sovereign decided to recall Francisco de Bobadilla, whose administration gave cause for dissatisfaction in other respects, and to send Don Nicholas de Ovando to replace him. Ovando was at that time Comendador de Lares and was later raised to the supreme commandership of the Order of Calatrava. He is described as a most prudent man, worthy to govern any number of people, but not Indians; man in word and deed, an avowed enemy of avarice and covetousness; not wanting in humility, as shown in his habits of life, both public and private, though he maintained the dignity and authority of his position.3
The new Governor was endowed with full powers to judge the accusations against his predecessor and to dispose of the nettlesome questions which had provoked the Roldan rebellion.
The preparations for his departure were delayed by many causes; his fleet was the most considerable one that had thus far been organised to sail for America, being composed of thirty-two vessels on [pg 10] which were to sail some two thousand five hundred persons, many of whom were knights and noblemen. Twelve Franciscan friars under the direction of their leader, Fray Alonso del Espinal, formed part of the company.
It was this brilliant expedition that Fernando Cortes intended to join when he was prevented by injuries incurred while engaged in an amorous adventure which led him over garden walls into risky situations where he ended with broken bones, and was consequently left behind. The fleet sailed from San Lucar de Barrameda on February 13, 1502, which according to Las Casas was the first Sunday in lent of that year.4
The usual course, by way of the Canary Islands, was followed, but after eight days at sea, a violent tempest wrecked one ship, La Rabida, with one hundred and twenty people on board, and scattered the remainder; some vessels were obliged to throw most of their cargo overboard, but all, after many dangers, gradually found refuge in various ports of the neighbouring islands.
The wreckage of La Rabida, and that of some other vessels which had also foundered while carrying sugar from the islands, drifted back to the Spanish coast and gave rise to the rumour that the entire fleet was lost. This caused such a general sense of affliction that the sovereigns, on receipt of this false report, shut themselves up in the palace at Granada and mourned for eight days.
The vessels which had weathered the tempest [pg 11] united after some delay in the port of the island of Gomera, and being joined there by another, fitted out in the Canaries by people eager to go to America, the fleet was thus brought up to its original complement. The commander divided his squadron in to two sections, the first of which, composed of the fastest vessels, he kept under his command, while the second was placed under command of Antonio de Torres. Ovando's division reached Hispaniola on the fifteenth of April and the second squadron came safely to port some twelve days later. Thus did Bartholomew de Las Casas first land in the New World.
CHAPTER II. - THE DISCOVERIES OF COLUMBUS. CHARACTER OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS. THE BEGINNINGS OF SLAVERY AND THE SLAVE-TRADE
In the ever-memorable month of October, 1492, Christopher Columbus landed on the shores of the New World he had discovered by sailing westward. To this great undertaking Columbus had advanced through a long career during which he had had unusual adventures and experiences in almost every part of the known world. A Genoese by birth, he had studied at Pavia,5 where he had acquired some knowledge of Latin, and was introduced to the study of those sciences to which his inclinations and his opportunities enabled him later to devote himself. He knew the Atlantic Coast from El Mina in Africa,6 to England and Iceland,7 and he had visited the Levant8and the islands of the Grecian Archipelago.
Writing of himself to the Catholic sovereigns, he says that he had been a sailor from his earliest youth, and curious to discover the secrets of the [pg 13] world. This same impulse led him to the study of navigation, cosmography, and kindred sciences, and his son Ferdinand states that the book which most influenced his father was the Cosmographia of Cardinal Aliaco in which he read the following passage: Et dicit Aristoteles ut mare parvum est inter finem Hispanicæ a parte Occidentis, et inter principium Indiæ a parte Orientis. Et non loquitur de Hispaniâ citeriori quæ nunc Hispania communiter dicitur sed de Hispaniâ ulteriori quæ nunc Africa dicitur.9
The illustrious Florentine, Paolo Toscanelli, definitely encouraged the conviction Columbus had formed from his reading of Marco Polo's descriptions of Cipango, Cathay, and the Grand Khan, that the lands might be reached by sailing west, and there was doubtless little the ancients had written concerning the existence of islands and continents lying beyond the Pillars of Hercules with which he was not acquainted.
The story of his attempts to secure the necessary means and authority for undertaking his great enterprise does not belong to our present subject, but before hearing his own description of what and whom he found in the western hemisphere when first he landed there, it is necessary to consider the arguments by which his friends finally prevailed on the sovereigns of Castile to grant him their patronage. That they did this contrary to the the counsels of the learned cosmographers of the age and in defiance of contemporary common-sense, [pg 14] is in itself a most noteworthy fact which testifies both to the singular qualities of Columbus and to the rare sagacity of the Catholic Queen who, in her momentous decision, acted alone, there being little in the scheme to commend it to the colder temperament of King Ferdinand.
By almost no intellectual effort can we of to-day realise the chimerical stamp which the proposition of Columbus bore, and which served to mark him as an adventurer and a visionary or, to use a forceful Americanism, as a “crank” in the estimation of sensible, practical people. He has himself recorded that he believed he was acting under inspiration and was merely fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah. The council of cosmographers summoned by the Queen's confessor, Fray Hernando de Talavera, to study the project which Columbus, through the exertions of his friends, the Prior of Santa Maria de la Rabida, and Alonso de Quintanilla, treasurer of the royal household, had succeeded in presenting to the sovereigns, decided “that it was vain and impossible, nor did it belong to the majesty of such great Princes to decide anything upon such weak grounds of information.”10
Spain was at that time engaged in a costly war against the Moors, who still held Granada; hard pushed as the sovereigns were for money to carry on the necessary military operations, it is not strange that no funds were forthcoming to finance the visionary schemes propounded by an obscure foreigner. After some years