The Conquest and Its Consequences
The First Voyage
Columbus's Reckoning
[Columbus was] a figure in transition from the dying Middle Ages to the rising world of capitalism and science, blindly credulous and boldly questioning, a medieval mystic incongruously eager for gold and worldly honors.
Benjamin Keen, The life of the Admiral Christopher Columbus, vi
The more Columbus studied and dreamed the more certain he became that he was right about the possibility of sailing west to Asia.
Logic had small place in his thinking. Without going into technical details, it may be enough to say that he convinced himself the ocean was narrower than it is, and that Asia was wider than it is. He sifted through the literature, the maps, the charts produced by scholars and seafarers from ancient times to his time, and wherever figures differed from his concept, he “corrected” them.
Milton Meltzer, Columbus and the World Around Him, 57
Cristoforo Columbo (Cristobal Colon) son of a weaver from Genoa, went to sea as a young man, probably as a trader or clerk, and turned up in Lisbon, Portugal, the center of European navigation and exploration, around 1476. The long (and growing) list of authors who have written about him disagree about many aspects of his, but most would say he was driven by an obsession to explore the world.
The Conquest and Its Consequences
Teaching Strategies
The expressions listed below are terms which you have probably encountered often in reading about the history of Columbus. Reading history with a critical eye and ear entails questioning terms very carefully. Review the following terms. Discuss how they have been used in textbooks in talking about this period. For each term write or discuss ways in which the term might not be altogether true.
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Discovery |
When is a discovery not a discovery? |
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New World |
In what way was this “new world” really and “old world”? |
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Explorer |
How could Columbus, Cortes, Lewis and Clark, et.al., be called explorers of lands, rivers, mountains, valleys, and territories occupied for centuries by nations of people? |
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Wilderness |
What concepts were conveyed to the Europeans when the “virgin land” voyages perceived this land as a wild, uninhabited place? |
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The West |
To whom was the West not west? To whom was this land north? South? East? |
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Pagans/Infidels/ Cannibals/Hostile Primitive vs. Civilized |
In what way were these terms absolutely false about indigenous people? Which terms were used by the Europeans and why? Which terms have you seen in textbooks describing the people Columbus encountered? |
- How does terminology become important in conveying an historical, geographic, and political perspective in a text book?
- What perspectives were/are fostered by those who use these terms to define Columbus’s and the colonialists’ activity in the Americas? Whose perspectives are left out?
- What other terms would be more accurate in describing what Columbus and the colonialists did?
To Name = To Own = To Subjugate
The Conquistadors
Language can be powerful. To give a new name to people or places is symbolically to exercise power and authority over them.
- Brainstorm a list of the names Columbus and the Europeans “gave” to the people they met. If you can, try to write the names the indigenous used for those same people and places.
- Discuss the way in which Columbus’s act of naming the indigenous people (Indians) and the land he encountered (West Indies, capes, mountains, ports, islands) was a powerful act on the part of the Europeans. How did it influence beliefs of ownership over these groups of people and this land for centuries?
- Research how indigenous people of the Americas today feel about being called “Indians.” What did they call themselves before Columbus arrived? How do they refer to themselves today? How might it alter our thinking if people could be called by names which they have chosen for themselves rather than names which are superimposed on them (e.g., the slaves being given names of their masters)?
- Talk about how this phenomenon works in your own life or experience. How are powerful images of you created by others, by history, or by society?
Invasion Timekeepers
As you read this chapter create a timeline which charts events related to the invasion of the continent which came to be known as America. Though you may want to concentrate on the beginning years of the invasion, be sure to show in some way the history of the millions of people who were here prior to Columbus’s landing (as a reminder that American history did not begin in 1492).
One kind of specific timeline to construct as you read this chapter is a detailed summary of the events which occurred surrounding the four voyages of Columbus. As you develop this timeline, create a map of the Caribbean to track Columbus’s travels and the territories invaded by the Europeans.
There are many ways of doing timelines. You can construct one in a linear fashion, write a timeline as a kind of diary (with a page per day or week or month), or make a kind of storyboard which can later be illustrated. A group could divide this project into smaller tasks.
Late 1400s: Shipboard Life
It is well to remember, as an antidote to romantic sea tales written in warm libraries, that ships were then floating slums and floating sweat ships. The common fate of crew and officers gave a certain solidarity that would not have been found on land among such disparate men, but they were still masters and servants, and no nonsense. The captain was lord over life and death, and any man who evoked his displeasure could be lashed, locked in irons, keelhauled, or hanged. The food for the crew was vile—though on a normal voyage probably no worse than what they were used to on land. As for their quarters, there weren’t any. The men simply had to bunk down for the night wherever they could find a dry spot, which is not easy on a sailing boat; and those who had one change of dry clothes with them were the fortunate ones.
Those were the men who did the work, though. It has been said that the great explorers of Africa were simply the first white men carried around that continent by blacks; likewise, those famous captains were the first men sailed across the oceans by their crews.
Hans Koning, Columbus: His Enterprise, 44
Strong Determination
Columbus with Ferdinand and Isabella
The schoolbook story that Columbus knew the earth was round although everyone else thought it was flat is simply not true. Five hundred years earlier, the Greeks knew that the earth is a sphere, and educated Europeans of the fifteenth century shared that knowledge.
What stopped seamen from sailing west across the sea was primarily fear of the unknown. Ships hugged the coastlines, the captains not trusting navigational aids enough to venture forth into uncharted seas. Also, everyone assumed the distance to land was too great to traverse. And, at least in theory, they were right.
Columbus’s reckonings of the distance between Europe and Asia, if one traveled across the sea to the west, was dead wrong. He believed, and finally able to convince others, that Japan was about twenty-four hundred sea miles from the Canary Islands, about the quarter of the actual distance. If he had to distort facts and figures to fit in with his notion of the size of the ocean, he didn’t hesitate to do so. He was so sure he could do what he dreamed of that finally his dream became more real to him than reality.
In 1484 Columbus began a long period of arguing, cajoling, pressuring, and begging private investors and heads of governments to finance his proposed endeavor to sail west to Asia. Failing to find backers in Portugal, he went to Spain in 1485, where he soon realized he needed the support of the powerful monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella.
Somehow, he managed to get an audience at court in May, 1486. It is known that he spent time in a monastery near the castle; possibly he had the attention of church leaders who persuaded the king and queen to listen to his plans. “Even in that religious and bigoted age, Columbus stood out as a very fierce Catholic. When he discussed his westward voyage, he always dwelt on its religious aspects: to convert the Asian ‘heathens’ to Catholicism, and/or to use their gold for the reconquest of the Holy Land from the Moslems” (Koning, 35).
Success
The monarchs took the plan under advisement. While waiting for their answer, Columbus and his brother Bartolome petitioned the kings of Portugal, France, and England—in vain. After a long time with no response, the report from the royal advisors finally came: it cautioned that the westward-to-Asia plan appeared impossible to any learned person because the ocean was much wider than Columbus supposed. Isabella, however, held out a little hope to the discouraged dreamer. If Spain was victorious in the war with the Moors for Granada, Columbus could apply again.
After the Moors surrendered in January, 1492, Luis de Santangel, the royal treasurer, scraped up enough money from Italian bankers to finance the expedition. Isabella also agreed to Columbus’s rather outlandish demands: ten percent of all the wealth that would pour into Spain from his new route to Asia; not only the riches he would personally bring in, but all that everyone else might gather, and for all time, for both himself and his heirs; the title of viceroy and Admiral of the Ocean Sea, together with other honors. With the title of admiral he would become the commander of the Western Atlantic, and would receive a share in all the naval booty to be drawn from that vast region.
http://womenshistory.about.com/cs/medrenqueens/p/p_isabella_i.htm
October 11, 1492: Somewhere in the Western Part of the Ocean Sea
Clear skies, the moon a few days past full. Three ships from the port of Palos, in Spain, sailed before a brisk wind of about ten knots. The ships, the largest about the size of a tennis court, had been at sea for thirty-two days. In spite of fear and tension built up during the long journey, the crew felt a growing anticipating, for increasingly in the last few days had seen signs of land.
Around ten o’clock in the evening the captain general of the little fleet thought he saw a light on the western horizon. However, he wrote in his log that he was too uncertain to confirm it as land. He called the royal steward, who said he too saw the light, and the royal inspector, who said he couldn’t see anything.
The captain general kept looking, still thinking he could see something out there, “like a little wax candle that was lifting and rising.” Since no one on either of the two other ships called out, the captain general went to bed, after telling his crew to keep a good watch and “to look well for the land.” He promised a doublet of silk to the first man to see land. This promise was in addition to the other reward the King and Queen had offered: ten thousand maravedis as a yearly stipend, a little less than a seaman’s annual wages.
Sometime around two o’clock in the morning the lookout on the Pinta, Juan Rodriquez Bermejo, gave out the cry of “Tierra!” A cannon was fired as a signal to the other ships. And there, “at a distance of two leagues,” they saw their long-anticipated goal. They lowered sails and lay-to until daylight.
Shortly after dawn the crew of the flagship prepared a display of ceremonial grandeur, including banners, pennants, and the royal standard. Their theatrical efforts were soon appreciated, fortunately, by an audience of naked people on the sands. The captain general boarded the flagship’s longboat, taking with him the two royal observors to take notes, the official interpreter, and probably a few armed soldiers, and they were all rowed ashore.
Eduardo Galeano imagines how the scene might have played itself out:
He falls on his knees, weeps, and kisses the earth. He steps forward, staggering because for more than a month he has hardly slept, and beheads some shrubs with his sword.
Then he raises the flag. ON one knee, eyes lifted to heaven, he pronounces three times the names of Isabella and Ferdinand. Beside him the scribe Rodrigo de Escobedo, a man slow of pen, draws up the document.
From today, everything belongs to those remote monarchs; the coral sea, the beaches, the rocks all green with moss, the woods, the parrots, and these laurel-skinned people who don’t yet know about clothes, sin, or money and gaze dazedly at the scene.
Luis de Torres translates Christopher Columbus’s questions into Hebrew: “Do you know the kingdom of the Great Khan? Where does the gold you have in your noses and ears come from?
The naked men stare at him with open mouths, and the interpreter tries out his small stock of Chaldean: “Gold? Temples? Palaces? King of kings? God?”
Then he tries his Arabic, the little he knows of it “Japan? China? Gold?”
The interpreter apologizes to Columbus in the language of Castile. Columbus curses in Genovese and throws to the ground his credentials, written in Latin and addressed to the Great Khan. The naked men watch the anger of the intruder with red hair and coarse skin, who wears a velvet cape and very shiny clothes.
Soon the word will run through the islands:
“Come and see the men who arrived from the sky! Bring them food and drink!”
Eduardo Galeano, Memory of Fire: Genesis, 45-46
The lookout who first called out the sighting, Juan Rodriquez Bermejo, didn’t collect the doublet of silk or the ten thousand maravedi annuity. Columbus kept the reward to himself, although it was a small amount compared to the fortune he would later amass. His rationale was that he must have seen the lights of the landfall earlier in the evening. After all, the royal steward said he saw the lights, too.
See Kirkpatrick Sale, “What Columbus Discovered,” The Nation, 444, 446
The First Voyage
Although he didn’t rhapsodize about the physical splendor at first, Columbus had no hesitation about taking possession of all he came across, no question about the possibility that someone else might already have a proprietary relationship with the landscape. Significantly, he assigned names to sixty-two physical features on the islands—capes, ports, mountains—as he possessed them for his king and queen, instead of asking whether or not they had names.
Later he succumbed to the natural beauty around him. In Cuba, toward the end of his journey, he came upon a large harbor which he named Puerto Santo. “As I went along the river,” he writes on November 27, “it was marvelous to see the forests and greenery, the very clear water, the birds, and the fine situation, and I almost did not want to leave this place. I told the men with me that, in order to make a report to the Sovereigns of the things they saw, a thousand tongues would not be sufficient to tell it, nor my hand to write it, for it looks like an enchanted land” (Fusion, 119).
First Reports from Columbus
Arrival of Columbus in the “New World”
…with this act two vastly different cultures, which had evolved on continents that had been drifting apart steadily for millions of years, were suddenly joined. Everything of importance in the succeeding five hundred years stems from that momentous event: the rise of Europe, the triumph of capitalism, the creation of the nation-state, the dominance of science, the establishment of a global monoculture, the genocide of the indigenes, the slavery of people of color, the colonization of the world, the destruction of primal environments, the eradication and abuse of species, and the impending catastrophe of ecocide for the planet Earth.
Kirkpatrick Sale, “What Columbus Discovered,” The Nation, 446
No sooner had we concluded the formalities taking possession of the island than people began to come to the beach, all as naked as their mothers bore them….
The people here called this island Guanahani in their language, and their speech is very fluent, although I do not understand any of it. They are friendly and well-dispositioned people who bare no arms except for small spears, and they have no iron. I showed one my sword, and through ignorance he grabbed it by the blade and cut himself. Their spears are made of wood, to which they attach a fish tooth at one end, or some other sharp thing.
I want the natives to develop a friendly attitude toward us because I know that they are a people who can be made free and converted to our Holy Faith more by love than by force. I therefore gave red caps to some and glass beads to others. They hung the beads around their necks, along with some other things of slight value that I gave them. And they took great pleasure in this and became so friendly that it was a marvel. They traded and gave everything they had with good will, but it seems to me that they have very little and are poor in everything. I warned by men to take nothing from the people without giving something in exchange.
This afternoon the people of San Salvador came swimming to our ships and in boats made from one log. They bought us parrots, balls of cotton thread, spears, and many other things, including a kind of dry leaf [probably tobacco] that they hold in great esteem. For these items we swamped them little glass beads and hawks’ bells.
Many of the men I have see have scars on their bodies, and when I made signs to them to find out how this happened, they indicated that people from other nearby islands come to San Salvador to capture them; they defend themselves the best they can. I believe that people from the mainland come here to take them as slaves. They ought to make good and skilled servants. For they repeat very quickly whatever we say to them. I think they can easily be made Christians, for they seem to have no religion. If it pleases Our Lord, I will take six of them to your Highnesses when I depart, in order that they may learn our language.
Robert H. Fuson, trans., The Log of Christopher Columbus, 75-77
Columbus' Log
Coat of Arms of Columbus
During the ninety-six days he spent exploring the lands he encountered, Columbus keep a daily log which he gave to Isabella on his return. In spite of many misadventures the record survived and was translated by Fray Bartholome de Las Casas, an early admirer of Columbus who later migrated to the “new world” and became the most outraged reporter of the atrocities committed by the Spaniards against the natives.
In his log, Columbus raves about the generosity and simplicity and good-nature of the islanders and refers to the beauty of the scenery, but he is quick to possess the land and think what good slaves the people would make.
Given prevailing European attitudes toward nature, it is not surprising that Columbus’s descriptions of the landscape lag behind his descriptions of the people. The handsome, naked, trusting islanders understandably grabbed his immediate attention; they were as strange and fascinating to him as the Spaniards were to them. But in the early days he slights what must have been spectacular scenery around them.
“Here he was, in the middle of an old-growth tropical forest the likes of which he could not have imagined before, its trees reaching sixty or seventy feet into the sky, more varieties than he knew how to count much less name, exhibiting a lushness that stood in sharp contrast to the sparse and denuded lands he had known in the Mediterranean, hearing a melodious multiplicity of bird sons and parrot calls—why was it not an occasion of wonder, excitement, and the sheer joy at nature in its full, arrogant abundance?” (Sale, 101).
For the first two weeks of the beginning of his voyage through the Bahamas to Cuba, only a third of the lines of description recorded in the log have anything to do with the natural phenomena around him. And some sights he seems not to have noticed at all. He mentions the nighttime sky in terms of navigation but never describes the sharp, glorious configurations of stars that must have been visible practically every night of his journey.
Wednesday, 17 October 1492, on "Long Island"
Columbus Point on Long Island
The houses look like Moorish tents, very tall, with good chimneys, but I have not seen a village yet with more than 12 or 15 houses. I also learned that the cotton coverings were worn by married women or women over 18 years of age. Young girls go naked. And I saw dogs, mastiffs and pointers. One man was found who had a piece of gold in his nose, about half the size of a castellano, and on which my men say they saw letters.
Log, 86
Tuesday, 6 November 1492, on Cuba
The Spaniards said that the Indians received them with great solemnity, according to Indian custom, and all the men and women came to see them and lodged them in the best houses. The Indians touched them and kissed their hands and feet in wonderment, believing that we Spaniards came from Heaven, and so my men led them to understand. The Indians gave them to eat what they had.
Log, 103
Monday, 3 December 1492, on Cuba
I saw and entered a beautiful house, not very large and with two doors, such as they are all built. I saw a wonderful arrangement of chambers, built in a way that I do not know how to describe. The chambers were formed by mats and shells hanging from the ceiling. I thought it was a temple, and I called them and asked by signs if they prayed in it and they said no. One of them went overhead to a loft and gave me all they had there, and I took some of it.
Log, 123-124
Taking Possession
Although he didn’t rhapsodize about the physical splendor at first, Columbus had no hesitation about taking possession of all he came across, no question about the possibility that someone else might already have a proprietary relationship with the landscape. Significantly, he assigned names to sixty-two physical features on the islands—capes, ports, mountains—as he possessed them for his king and queen, instead of asking whether or not they had names.
Later he succumbed to the natural beauty around him. In Cuba, toward the end of his journey, he came upon a large harbor which he named Puerto Santo. “As I went along the river,” he writes on November 27, “it was marvelous to see the forests and greenery, the very clear water, the birds, and the fine situation, and I almost did not want to leave this place. I told the men with me that, in order to make a report to the Sovereigns of the things they saw, a thousand tongues would not be sufficient to tell it, nor my hand to write it, for it looks like an enchanted land” (Fusion, 119).
25 December 1492: A Chief’s Kindness
On Christmas Day, 1492, an incident occurred that led to the establishment of the first settlement in the “new world.” Columbus had been sent a present from a leader, or cacique, named Guacanagari, a belt and mask with features of hammered gold, and a promise of “all that he had” if the Admiral would visit him.
On Christmas Eve, the Niña and the Santa Maria made their way along the coast. The entire crew, including the Admiral went to sleep, and the Santa Maria hit a coral reef a few miles from shore, was quickly stuck firmly, and broke up and sank as the sun arose. Columbus sent a messenger to Guacanagari to ask fro help. The cacique wept when he heard of the shipwreck.
The Cacique was unwearied in his attentions; his grief at the disaster was so manifest, and his attempts to divert [the sailors] from their trouble so delicately proffered, that finally hope returned to cheer them, and they thought upon their blessings.
The little Niña lay anchored off the village of Guarico, and at sunrise of the day after Christmas, the Cacique paid a visit of state to the Admiral, when Columbus was so pleased with his frank and manly bearing that he repeated his encomiums, declaring him preeminent in virtue.
While the king was on board, his Indian subjects swarmed in canoes around the caravel, holding out pieces of gold, and crying out, “Chug, chug!” intimating that they wished to barter the nuggets for hawks-bells, over which they went wild with joy. Seeing that such trifles brought in exchange great pieces of gold, Columbus was delighted, and at the sight of the pleasure expressed in his countenance, Guacanagari, quick to note the change, assured him that if gold was the object of his desires, he would direct him to a region where the very stones were golden, and where it was in such abundance that the people dwelling there held it in light esteem. This region he called Cibao, which Columbus construed to mean Cipango [Japan], so long the goal before him in his voyagings.
Of course, the chief’s promise, made out of a desire to please, was never fulfilled.
Frederick Ober, In the Wake of Columbus, 2224-225
http://www.millersville.edu/~columbus/data/ark/KEEGAN07.ARKFirst Colony
Columbus didn’t find what he was looking for: gold. The natives answered his constant questions the only way they could. They were puzzled by these strangers, but they tried to please them by giving them information about possible stores of the shiny metal they admired so much. He also didn’t find Asia. To make up for those failures he began to consider building a colonial outpost, a military fortress:
“I wanted to see if I could find a place to build a fort. I saw a piece of land that looked like an island, even though it is not, with six houses on it. I believe that it could be cut through and made into an island in two days. I do not think this is necessary, however, for these people are very unskilled in arms. Your Highnesses will see this for yourselves when I bring you the seven that I have taken. After they learn of our language I shall return them, unless Your Highnesses order that the entire population be taken to Castile, or held captive here. With fifty men you could subject everyone and make them do what you wished” (Fuson, 79-80). Colonization and slaves began to have as much appeal as gold and a passage to Asia.
The shipwreck of the Santa Maria gave the explorers an excuse to build a colony, named “La Navidad” in honor of the Day of Nativity (Christmas) on which its inadvertent founding occurred. Using salvaged timber, with the help of the willing Tainos, the Spaniards in a few days constructed some buildings, and thirty-eight or forty of the men agreed to stay in the fortress. The rest of the crew, plus Indian captives, set sail in the two remaining ships on the homeward journey.
Sunday, 13 January 1493: A Show of Strength
Columbus claiming Hispaniola
After three months on the islands, the Spaniards for the first time discovered some natives with bows and arrows “as if ready for war.” Since the Admiral (Columbus quickly began referring to himself by his new title) had given standing orders that his men should buy or barter away any weapons the Indians might have, the sailors dickered with a few of these men of ferocious aspect and persuaded them to come on board to talk with the Admiral, who sent them ashore to induce the other to bring gold.
Following are two versions of the story, the first written by Columbus’s son, the second a commentary on the significance of the episode:
How the First Skirmish Between the Indians and Christians Tool Place in Samana Bay on the Island of Espanola
The Indian who had visited the ship persuaded the others to lay down their bows and arrows and the large cudgels which they use as swords, for they have no iron. The Christians began to buy swords and arrows as the Admiral had instructed them to do, but after the Indians had sold two of their bows they disdainfully refused to sell any more; instead they ran toward the place where they had deposited their weapons, with the design of picking them up and also of getting cords with which to tie our men’s hands. But the Christians were prepared for their attack, and though only seven in number, fell upon the Indians with so much spirit that they gave one Indian a slash on the buttocks with a sword and wounded another in the breast with an arrow. Terrified by the valor of our men and the wounds inflicted by our arms, the Indians turned and fled, leaving behind most of their bows and arrows. Many would certainly have been killed had not the pilot of the caravel, who was in charge of the landing party, restrained our men.
The Admiral was not displeased by this incident; for he was convinced these were the Caribs whom the other Indians feared so greatly, or if not Caribs, at least their neighbors. Their appearance, arms and actions showed them to be a daring and courageous people. The Admiral hoped that when the islanders learned what seven Spaniards had done against 55 ferocious Indians, they would feel more respect for the men left behind the town of Navidad and would not dare annoy them.
The Life of the Admiral Christopher Columbus by His Son, 88-90
After just two bows were sold, the Indians turned and ran back to the cover of the trees where they kept their remaining weapons and, so the sailors assumed, “prepared…to attack the Christians and capture them.” When they came toward the Spaniards again brandishing ropes—almost certainly meaning to trade these rather than give up their precious bows—the sailors panicked and, “being prepared as always the Admiral advised them to be,” attacked the Indians with swords and halberds, gave one “a great slash on the buttocks,” and shot another in the breast with a crossbow. The Tainos grabbed their fallen comrades and fled in fright, and the sailors would have chased them and “killed many of them” but for the pilot in charge of the party, who somehow “prevented it.”
It may fairly be called the first pitched battle between Europeans and Indians in the “new world”—the first display of the armed power, and the will to use it, of the white invaders.
Kirkpatrick Sale, The Conquest of Paradise, 120-121
CaptivesColumbus had kidnapped citizens of the island villages he visited, realizing what good servants these gentle, agreeable people could become.
In one harbor, “five young Indian men came aboard for a last visit, and in return for their trust, Columbus held them captive. He wanted to train them as interpreters, he said. Then he sent a boat ashore to kidnap seven women and three boys. Seeing this, the husbands and fathers of some of the victims begged to be taken along with them, rather than suffer the pain of separation. Columbus kindly agreed. A little later two of the young men escaped. The others? All would die before the fleet reached Spain” (Meltzer, 99).
Although he captured a total of thirty-one islanders, the number he actually took with him isn’t known. Six survived the difficult voyage, especially difficult for inhabitants of a tropical climate who had never experienced cold weather, and were centerpieces of Columbus’s triumphant entry first into Portugal and then into Spain.
1493: Reaction
Engraving by Simon Grynaeus and Johann Huttich depicting Natives as cruel, bloodthirsty aggressors
Historians hardly knew what to make of the stories Columbus brought back from his first voyage. In an early interpretation, Peter Martyr focused on the riches of the land and the strangeness of the people:
A certain Christopher Columbus…followed the western sun from the Gades, with three ships furnished him by my sovereigns and proceeded to the Antipodes, about five thousand miles.
He ascertained that the land [he visited] produced naturally gold, cotton, spices in form like cinnamon and smooth like pepper, trees of scarlet dyes, the juices of which make a bluish-grey color, and many other things most precious to us, small samples of which things he bought away.
The island has many kings, but naked, as indeed all are of both sexes. This people, wholly content by nature, naked as they are, feed only on such nourishment as comes from trees, with a kind of bread made of roots. Notwithstanding, they are fond of government, and owing to this desire they wage wars against each other, with bows and with pikes burned into very sharp points. The King who is conquered is considered to be subject to the conqueror.
And the principles of Meum and Tuum [mine and thine] has a part in their lives as it has among us; and so the things belonging to luxury and the accumulation of money are sought by them, a thing you would hardly think necessary for naked people.
Peter Martyr of Anghara in John Boyd Thacker, Christopher Columbus: His Life, His Work, His Remains, 58
Later, however, Martyr’s views changed somewhat, and he described Cuba as a veritable Utopia:
It is certain, that among them, the land is as common as the sun and water: and the Mine and Thine (the seeds of all mischief) have no place with them. They are content with so little, that in so large a country, they have rather superfluity than scarceness. So that…they seem to live in the golden world, without toil, living in open gardens, not entrenched with dikes, divided with hedges, or defended with walls. They deal truly one with another, without laws, without books, and without Judges. They take him for an evil and mischievous man who takes pleasure in doing hurt to others.
Peter Martyr, quoted in Kirkpatrick Sale, The Conquest of Paradise, 199
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09740a.htm
Responses in Europe
Illustration by Léry depicting Natives
After hearing about the first voyage, other writers followed the lead of Columbus in describing the “new world.” In the words of Peter Martyr, an early historian, writing after a later journey, “This people are astonished at the sound of our trumpets and drums, stupefied by the thunder of our cannon, speechless at the prancing, running, and trappings of our horses; perplexed at the sight of everything belonging to us. They stand in open-mouthed astonishment. They think our people have come from heaven” (29 December 1494, letter in Thacher, 70).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Martyr_d%27Anghiera
