Samuel M. Wilson
 
"The Admiral and the Chief," Natural History, pp. 14-19, 3/91.
 
Despite millennia of separation between Old World and New World
societies, Columbus and the Indian ruler Guacanagar! found
themselves on common ground.
 
     The new of the strange foreigners preceded them, but no one
knew what to make of it.  Were they gods, perhaps, or demons?
Were they superhumans or only ordinary men of a type never
encountered?  They had first appeared in the Bahamas in autumn
and had gone from there to Cuba and then to the northwest tip of
Hispaniola.  As their two vessels gradually made their way
eastward along the coast, they approached the region ruled by
Guacanagar!, and the reports reaching this relatively minor
cacique, or chief, of the Ta!no Indians became more numerous.
The foreigners' great boats seemed to be playing a strange game,
going out to the little island of Tortuga and then coming back
again.  Even after they passed Tortuga, they continued to push
far out to sea, and then come close to the land, as they
progressed into the wind without anyone paddling.
     Both Tortuga and the coast of Hispaniola were densely
populated.  Columbus, on this, his first voyage to the New World,
described the lands he saw in his journal.  His experiences are
retold in narrative form in Bartolom de las Casas's copy of the
original, now lost:
 
     That big island [Hispaniola] appeared to be very high
     land not closed in by mountains, but level like
     handsome and extensive farmland; and all, or a large
     part of it, appeared to be cultivated, and the planted
     fields looked like wheat in the month of May in the
     farmlands of Cordova.  They saw many fires that night
     and, by day, much smoke like signals that seemed to be
     warning of some people with whom they were at war.
 
     The Santa Mar!a, Columbus's lumbering flagship, was a
difficult vessel to sail into the northeasterly trade winds.  She
was not nearly so nimble as the Ni$a, the smaller caravel.  (The
expedition's third ship, the Pinta, had abandoned the others
before they reached Hispaniola and had not been heard from for
more than a month.)  The winds were a tricky mix of the trades
and on- and off-shore breezes.  Sometimes, late at night the
winds would die and the Santa Mar!a would drift on her own.  The
waters were unknown, and the dangers of hidden reefs and sandy
shallows were always on the minds of the sailors.  As winter
pushed down from the north, it strengthened the wind patterns,
and what are now known as the Christmas winds sometimes howled
out of the east.
     The slow progress of the strangers from west to east was
gradually forcing Guacanagar! into action.  How was he to deal
with them?  How could he avoid the problems they might bring, and
how might they be used to his advantage?  Whenever the ships
anchored or even came near land, dozens of canoes would go to
meet and trade with them.  They would crowd together, canoe
against canoes, until Spanish ships looked like high points on
small islands.
 
     [Columbus] says he believes more than a thousand
     persons to have come to the ship at that hour, and all
     of them brought something or what they possessed; and
     before they reached half crossbow shot from the ship,
     they rose to their feet in their canoes and took it in
     their hands what they brought, saying take it, take it.
     He believes also that more than five hundred came to
     the ship swimming because they had no canoes, and he
     was anchored nearly a league from land...He ordered
     that something be given to every one, because, he says,
     it was all well spent; and, he says, may Our Lord in
     His mercy guide me so that I will find this gold, I
     mean the mine, since I have here so many who say they
     know it.  These are his words.
 
     The Ta!no Indians of Hispaniola brought the foreigners food
and water, parrots, weapons, cotton, ornaments, and gold.  The
Spanish sailors would trade what were, to them, less precious
objects: old nails, bits of glass, coins of infinitesimal
denominations, bits of brightly painted majolica pottery, small
copper bells, and glass beads.  The Spaniards' interest was
clearly in gold; all their questions, as nearly as they could be
understood by signs and a few words, concerned the source of the
gold.  Gold was also important for the Ta!no.  One of their words
for gold had the same root as cacique, their word for ruler.  In
a strange parallel--one of many odd similarities between European
and Caribbean cultures--gold, kings, and the sun were tied
together in the same words and cultural categories.
     For more than two months, Columbus had been searching for
leads to the great cities of Cipangu (Japan) and the dominions of
the Great Khan.  He had abandoned his westward search along the
north coast of Cuba because he and his crew felt the restless
trades forcing them farther and farther from Spain.  In any case,
contrary to the expectations Columbus had built from an ambitious
reading of Marco Polo's travels, signs of what the Europeans
considered to be civilized life seemed to be decreasing as they
sailed westward.  Everything pointed to the island of Hispaniola
as the Ta!no's cultural center and the source of their gold.  And
as the ships tacked eastward along the northern shore of
Hispaniola, the evidence and stories of gold seemed to point to
the interior of the island--to what the natives called the Cibao,
a name close enough to Cipangu to warrant a closer look.
     When the strangers came within the territory he controlled,
Guacanagar! began to send envoys to invite them to his village.
He sent the most precious and enticing gifts he had, including
bits of gold and elaborately woven cotton belts (these gifts,
subsequently presented by the Spanish Crown to other European
royalty, no lie scattered in European museums).  Ranking higher
than other individuals whom Columbus had so far encountered, and
perhaps standing on a point of protocol, Guacanagar! would not go
to meet the ships but resolutely insisted that Columbus come to
his village.  Eventually, on December 23, Columbus and a large
party of Spaniards did pay him a visit.
 
          All of the Indians returned with the Christians to
     the village, which [Columbus] affirms to be the largest
     and best arranged with streets than any other of those
     passed through and found up to that time...Finally the
     cacique came to them and the whole town, more than two
     thousand persons, gathered in the plaza, which was very
     well swept.  This king was very courteous to the people
     from the ships, and each of the common people brought
     them something to eat and drink.  Afterward the king
     gave to each one some of the pieces of cotton cloth
     that the women wear, and parrots for the Admiral, and
     certain pieces of gold.  The common people also gave
     the sailors some of the same pieces of cloth, and other
     things from their houses, for small things that the
     Spaniards gave them, which, from the way they received
     them, seemed to be esteemed as sacred relics.   When
     Columbus and his people left the village, they gave the
     impression that they would soon move on.  They pointed
     to the east, asking constantly about Cipangu or Cibao
     or the island's source of gold, and seemed convinced
     that it lay in that direction.  They would move out of
     Guacanagar!'s small domain and into the territory ruled
     by far more powerful caciques.  The bizarre strangers,
     it appeared, would probably do him neither harm nor
     good.  But Guacanagar!'s fortunes, along with those of
     Columbus, took an unexpected turn.
 
     It was Christmas Eve, a night upon which, it spite of the
date, the Christmas winds had died.  Possibly a bit more wine
than usual was opened, given the importance of the date to the
Europeans.  That and the long days of tacking into the wind and
trading with the Indians may have made the pilot and those on
watch somewhat less vigilant than usual.  Columbus gave the helm
to the ship's master, Juan de la Cosa, and went to his small
cabin, about the only private spot on the Santa Mar!a.  De la
Cosa gave the tiller to a young boy and tried to catch a nap on a
nearby coil of rope.  The Santa Mar!a drifted ever so slowly on
the current, with almost no wind.  Columbus remarked that the sea
was "as smooth as water in a bowl."  The boy felt the rudder
stiffen as the Santa Mar!a eased gently onto the sandbank.  With
the ebbing tide, her fate was already sealed.   A wooden craft
the size of the Santa Mar!a can seem fairly light when afloat
with a good wind, but on sand with the tide going out, it becomes
impossibly heavy.  Columbus ordered that the ship's  boat be used
to row the anchor some distance astern, so that they then could
try to winch the ship free.  Instead, the valiant sailors took
off for the Ni$a with all the speed they could manage.  Not
permitted to board, they returned along with the Ni$a's boat, but
it was too late.  In the middle of the night the Santa Mar!a
creaked back and forth across the low swells; finally her timbers
began to splinter as she broke up.
     Diego de Arana of Cordova and Pedro Gutirrez, two of the
Crown's representatives among the crew, were sent to
Guacanagar!'s village.  They were to enlist his help in salvaging
the wreck and got a more positive response than they expected.
Guacanagar! sent all the villagers and many large canoes to help
ferry ashore the contents of the disintegrating Santa Mar!a.  The
crew were alarmed that all their goods, food, weapons, and wine
might quickly and irretrievably disappear into the interior, but
everything made it to land and to Guacanagar!'s village "without
a needle missing."  Displaying sympathy in the Ta!no's customary
manner, Guacanagar! wept when he heard the news and "from time to
time sent one of his relative to the Admiral, weeping, to console
him, saying that he should not be sorrowful or annoyed because he
would give him all that he had."
     The Ni$a, despite a recaulking on Cuba, was still leaking.
The combined crews of the two vessels could not make the return
voyage in her.  Some would have to stay on hispaniola.  Volun-
teers were not lacking, however, because many felt that a year on
the island would allow them to stash away fortunes in gold.
     Guacanagar! seemed to be delighted by this turn of events
and showered hospitality on the Europeans.  he gave them two of
the large communal houses in his village and constantly pressed
them to stay with him.  The competition between Ta!no caciques
was a competition for prestige, and controlling access to these
possibly divine creatures could only enhance Guacanagar!'s power
and social status.  They all seemed to be warriors, possessing
incredible weapons; with luck, they would become powerful allies.
Both Guacanagar! and Columbus were operating in worlds where
elevated social status and political power were intensely de-
sired.  In both their cultures, high birth and personal achieve-
ment were critical components of success.  And the birthright or
inherited status of both was too low to match their aspirations.
So both manipulated the historical situation in which they lived
as much as possible, through talent and through luck.
     The people of the old World and the New World resembled each
other in  a great many ways.  Parallels could be found in their
kin groups, exploitation of domesticated plants and animals,
villages and cities, "governments" or political systems, social
hierarchies, markets, symbolic systems, writing systems, legal
systems, myths, hopes, and fears.  The words were different, but
to an uncanny extent, the people of the Old World and the New
World were speaking the same language, despite the ten to twenty
thousand years in which they had lived in virtual isolation from
each other.
     Although Columbus was reluctant to debark from the Ni$a, his
only means of returning to Spain, he made several visits to
Guacanagar!'s village.  In the days they had together, despite a
tremendous communication gap, the two developed a genuine rap-
port.  Their fortunes were intermeshed now.  Columbus's dream of
reaping the benefits of a new trade route to the orient depended
on getting safely back to Spain with most of his crew and con-
struing the wrecking of the Santa Mar!a as the successful estab-
lishment of a Spanish outpost in the Indies.  (Calling his
makeshift settlement La Navidad, Columbus had a small fort built
from the timbers of the Santa Mar!a.)  Guacanagar!'s rising
fortunes depended on a close and continuing relationship with
Columbus.  His small chiefdom could become centrally important in
the Ta!no world.
     They needed each other so much that when Columbus returned a
year later to find his small colony burned and all the Spaniards
who stayed behind killed, he did not retaliate against
Guacanagar!.  The chief claimed that more powerful caciques than
he had come to destroy La Navidad.  But his account (which
ultimately had several versions) was full of inconsistencies.
The details of what really happened remain a mystery.  Some of
the Ta!no had removed the Spanish presence by force.  Perhaps the
colonists' behavior proved intolerable; perhaps they introduced
epidemics that the Ta!no interpreted as punishment for upsetting
the world order.  Perhaps more powerful rulers wanted to return
Guacanagar! to his subordinate status by doing away with the
powerful strangers living with him.   The partnership between
Columbus and Guacanagar! continued for several years after the
destruction of La Navidad.  At first, the chief and his people
participated in the subjugation of the island, accompanying the
Spaniards as interpreters and allies.  But as Ta!no society
crumbled under the impact of Old World diseases and the demands
of the Spaniards, and as Columbus was increasingly entangled in
factional disputes among the conquerors, the alliance became
obsolete.
 
"With permission from Natural History, March 1991;
Copyright the American Museum of Natural History, 1991"
 
                                                     WILSON04.ART