He was therefore pleased to hear reassurance from many islanders that whereas there were many things wrong with Cristóbal Colón, principally that he and his brothers were Italians, it was good to know he wasn’t also Jewish, and one afternoon he gave his scribes forthright instructions: ‘We will say nothing in our report regarding the scandalous rumors that the viceroy was a secret Jew, still practicing and warranting the attention of the Inquisition.’ And no notes on that delicate subject were transcribed.
But there was another matter regarding Colón which involved a question of somewhat similar moral gravity for which Ocampo was quite unprepared. It was presented to him by a most unusual visitor who came unannounced to his office, a young priest of twenty-six named Father Gaspar, a nervous sort of fellow, with stringy hair, a bad complexion and fidgety hands, whose awkward behavior betrayed the fact that he knew he was stepping outside his field of responsibility. But there he was, sitting in the witness chair, showing every indication of staying there until he had said his piece: ‘With your permission, Excellency …’
As always, Ocampo declined that title: ‘I’m like you, Father, a worker in the vineyard.’ The disclaimer reassured the young priest, and he said with a rush of words: ‘Sir, everyone is aware by now of what you’re doing, and what I have to relate is important in the completion of your portrait of the Great Admiral.’
‘That’s well said, Father. Very aptly phrased. That’s what I’m trying to do, paint a portrait of the viceroy as he conducted his important office on this island.’ Leaning forward, he added: ‘So what are the brush strokes you think I might have missed?’
‘The natives.’
‘You mean the Indians?’ Ocampo asked.
‘Indians, if you wish, Excellency.’
‘It’s not important,’ Ocampo said as he leaned back.
The priest continued: ‘We in the church have been told that a principal mission, especially insofar as Queen Isabella of sacred memory was concerned, of any Spanish activity in our New World is the conversion of Indians to Christianity …’
‘No higher mission on earth, Father. Why do you raise the subject?’
‘Because the admiral did not try to convert the Indians …’
‘That’s not true, young man, and I hope you’ll withdraw such an accusation. Everyone tells me how devout Colón was and how assiduous in bringing Indian souls to Christ. The testimony’s unanimous.’
‘Not from members of the church,’ the young man said stoutly, and when Ocampo started to reprimand him again, the priest astonished him by interrupting: ‘Please let me finish my statement.’ The licenciado, slowly awakening to the fact that he had a rather difficult situation on his hands, nodded to the young man as if the latter were a cardinal: ‘Please continue.’
‘I was saying that Colón was supposed to convert the Indians but instead he slaughtered them.’
‘An appalling statement.’
‘I have made bold to bring before you the figures which none of your other people would dare even to discuss.’ And the young priest unwrapped a silken cloth tied at the corners and brought forth a carefully prepared summary of what had happened to the Taino Indians‡ in the years since Admiral Colón’s arrival in 1492. And he proceeded to recite the dismal figures: ‘In 1492 this island seems to have had about three hundred thousand Tainos.’
‘How can anyone state a fact like that?’
‘Church records. Our priests went everywhere. Four years later, in 1496, the population—and this figure we know for sure, because as a very young priest I helped assemble it—the population had dropped by a third to two hundred thousand.’
‘What do you mean by the word dropped? Who dropped what?’
‘I mean senseless slaughter.’ The ugly word struck the placid witness room like the explosion of a carelessly piled sack of black powder, and Ocampo was singed. From this moment forward, the interview took on entirely different dimensions, with young Father Gaspar assuming the role of accuser and Ocampo that of the Great Admiral’s defender.
The licenciado coughed, adjusted uneasily in his chair, and asked: ‘Now what do you mean by the words senseless slaughter?’
Undaunted, the priest said: ‘Unnecessary, barbarous killing.’ And Ocampo snapped: ‘But if our frontiers had to be protected, certainly the viceroy had every right to defend the king’s lands?’
‘Were they the king’s?’ Father Gaspar asked with an almost boyish simplicity. ‘The Tainos had occupied them for centuries.’
The question was difficult, and Ocampo knew it, but he had strong and reassuring doctrine to fall back upon: ‘The pope has decreed that all savages who know not God or the salvation of Jesus Christ are to be civilized by us and brought into the safety and sanctity of the church.’
‘Yes. That’s why I’m here, and the others, and we labor mightily to achieve that salvation.’
‘And so did Colón. Everyone says so.’
‘Not those of us who work in true conversion.’
‘And what do you mean by that?’
‘Conversion of men’s souls. The bringing of light to dark places so that even the Indians can know the love of Jesus Christ.’
‘Isn’t that what we all work toward? Isn’t that the mission of Spain in the New World?’
Father Gaspar, only twenty-seven that year, made bold to smile at this idealistic version of Spanish goals: ‘I would rather say that our mission in the New World is fourfold: finding new lands, conquering them, finding gold, and Christianizing the savages, in that exact order. The hundred thousand Indians missing in this first four violent years were needlessly slaughtered under the orders of Admiral Colón.’
Profoundly agitated, Licenciado Ocampo rose from his heavily ornamented chair, strode about the room, and returned to stand over the priest: ‘I cannot accept that word needlessly. Surely Colón chastised the Indians for their own good.’ He stopped abruptly, realizing the essential foolishness of that statement, and as a man of good sense he altered his argument: ‘I mean, weren’t the savages threatening our settlement?’
Father Gaspar broke into a nervous laugh: ‘Excellency, did your ship stop at Dominica on the way here? Did the sailors tell you of how those fierce Carib Indians, cannibals all, killed every Spaniard who tried to land on their island? That’s what the word savage means. Our Tainos are not like that at all. They fled the Caribs. Gentlest people in the islands. At no time did Colón have any excuse for destroying them.’
‘Now just a minute, Father. I’ve sat here for days listening to how your gentle Indians killed every one of the thirty-nine men Colón left at La Navidad in 1493. And how they killed so many of our men at Isabela in those bad years around 1496. Don’t tell me that your precious Indians were gentle—’
To Ocampo’s astonishment, the young priest broke in unceremoniously to make a point he deemed so relevant it could not wait: ‘But your men stole their food, for one thing. Their women, for another.’
Ocampo recalled that memorable phrase of the sailor Céspedes reporting what his friend from Cádiz had said: ‘Maybe we’ll take the women we need from the natives …’ but he said: ‘I would hope that self-respecting Spanish men would not have—’
But again the fiery young priest interrupted: ‘Let me complete my figures. Last year, in 1508, we took another census, this time very accurate, seventy-eight thousand Tainos left. Down from three hundred thousand only a few years ago. Soon, at the rate we’re going, there will probably be less than a thousand.’§
‘I cannot accept those figures,’ Ocampo said, and suddenly Father Gaspar became all humility: ‘Excellency, forgive me. I’ve been most rude and I’m ashamed. But you’re preparing an important document and the truth really must be respected.’
‘Thank you, young man. I shall pray that what you’ve been telling me isn’t the truth.’
‘With your permission, Excellency. Could I recite the details of an incident, a typical one, I believe? I served as chaplain to an expeditionary for
ce sent out from this capital and I was a witness to it myself.’
‘Proceed,’ and the licenciado, a somewhat chastened man, leaned forward once more to hear what this ardent young fellow had to say, for what he’d heard so far was certainly disturbing but also curiously convincing:
‘In the summer of 1503, I was ordered by my superiors to report to Governor Nicolás de Ovando, who was about to launch an expedition of many soldiers to discipline the Tainos on the far western tip of Española. We marched for many days before we reached that distant and dangerous part of our realm, but when we arrived there we began a systematic punishment of those caciques, or native rulers, who had hitherto refused to obey orders issued by our governor, the said Ovando.
‘In every instance, before the killings started, I begged the governor for permission to visit the Tainos, because I was certain I could resolve their worries, explain the new laws, and pacify them as I had done so often before. But always the governor said: “They’ve disobeyed my pronouncements and must be punished.”
‘So without war ever having been either declared or conducted we rampaged through Xaraguá Province, burning villages and slaying inhabitants. In all we killed eighty-three of the caciques, and when I say killed I mean we racked them, garroted them slowly, dismembered them, and slowly burned them alive. When we wanted to show our benevolence, we hanged them swiftly and properly. Besides the important caciques, we must have slain forty thousand.
‘Among the caciques there was a most beautiful lady leader, Anacoana, not yet thirty, I judged, with long and graceful hair which flowed over her body that was otherwise naked. When she scorned Governor Ovando and refused to pledge obedience to his future pronouncements, he, in a rage, ordered her to be burned alive, but while he was attending other matters I ordered three soldiers to strangle her quickly and as painlessly as possible, and when she felt their merciful hands about her neck, she smiled at me, and it was I who wept, not she.’
The licenciado had listened to this narrative with close attention, then sent for local officials, whom he questioned on the spot with Father Gaspar listening: ‘Was there an expedition against Xaraguá Province?’ Yes. ‘Did Governor Ovando lead it?’ He did. ‘Were many caciques slain?’ There had to be. ‘Was a beautiful lady cacique burned alive?’ That was the order, but this good priest here signaled to me and two others to strangle her, which we did.
Ocampo sat silent for some moments, forefingers propping his chin as he tried to visualize what had happened, but then he coughed and leaned forward as if to say: Now let’s get to the facts in this case. ‘Tell me, Father Gaspar, are you one of those who hold that black men and Indians have souls?’
‘I am.’
‘What justification for such belief have you heard?’
‘That all men who live are human, all equal in God’s love and the care of Jesus.’
‘Even savage Indians who know not God … or Jesus?’
‘Jesus instructed us to teach them the truth, show them the light, so they could know.’
‘Then you hold that white men are wrong in making blacks their slaves?’
‘Yes. It would be better if they treated them as brothers.’
‘Then you condemn our king and queen for having slaves?’
‘I do.’
‘But if by making these savages slaves, we are able to bring them into the sheepfold of the Good Shepherd Jesus, is that not a path to salvation?’
Father Gaspar studied this neat dilemma for some moments, then conceded: ‘If that is the only avenue to salvation, yes, it would be justified. But I would think that as soon as the black man or the Indian became a Christian, he would have to be released from his bondage.’
‘To get back to my original question. Do you really believe that black men and Indians have souls, like you and me?’
‘I do. Else, by what means could they see the light of Christianity? Through their eyes? Their ears? Their stomachs? It can only be apprehended through their souls.’
This gave Ocampo trouble, and after a while he asked, almost tentatively: ‘You know, I suppose, that many learned doctors of theology deny that savages have souls?’
‘I’ve heard that argument, and all who make it have a lot to explain.’
‘I make it. I have tried incessantly since landing on this island to understand how the savage Indians I see, the ones our Great Admiral had to chastise so harshly, could possibly have souls. Nor can they be classified as human.’ He said this forcefully, then asked: ‘I suppose, then, you consider them human beings?’
‘I do,’ and before Ocampo could respond, he added: ‘And I do for this reason. I cannot believe that the uninstructed Indian standing over there under his tree has no soul, but if he comes over here and listens to my instruction and accepts baptism that somehow I confer a soul upon him. How? In the water I pour over him? I think not.’
‘What do you think?’
Very humbly Father Gaspar said: ‘Excellency, I do honestly believe that at birth every human being on earth arrives with a God-bestowed soul which can remain hidden in darkness until someone like our noble Queen Isabella, may God grant her peace in heaven, sends someone like Admiral Colón aided by men like you and me to explain Christianity and salvation to them.’
‘But at the beginning of our talk, you were very harsh with Colón.’
‘He lost sight of his primary mission. He was satisfied to become a killer, not a savior.’
‘Are you still as harsh … after this exploration we’ve had?’
When the young man nodded, unwilling to yield an iota to his superior, Ocampo rose in some agitation, walked about his office, and stopped at a window that looked out upon the busy street, where his eyes fell upon an unfamiliar and startling sight—a big, handsome black man, his sweaty skin glistening in the sunlight as he strode along behind his master. The slave had come to Española on a Spanish trading ship, having been bought in a Portuguese port on the African coast since at this time only the Portuguese were engaged in that trade. From his viewpoint Ocampo had a sudden vision of what was to come—turbulent days when the streets of the town and the roadways of this island would be crowded with such black men and their women, and he was both fascinated and disturbed by this prospect.
In real perplexity he summoned Father Gaspar to stand beside him, and when he pointed to the black man, he asked: ‘Father, do you really believe that that one, the big black fellow … does he have a soul like you and me?’
‘Yes,’ Father Gaspar answered, and then the gift of prophecy came upon him, for he had brooded upon this matter since the day Admiral Colón started massacring the Tainos because they did not conform to his idea of what a subservient people should be, and he predicted: ‘The history of this island, and all of the islands Spain has captured in this lovely sea, will involve the slow and even reluctant admission that the big black man down there has a soul.’
Ocampo, in no way convinced by the young priest, now turned his attention to the most difficult part of the investigation, this matter of the great indignity Francisco de Bobadilla, his distinguished predecessor as special investigator, had visited upon Admiral Colón. As he started his intensive study, he felt like Bobadilla—both had been dispatched with roughly the same kind of commission—but Bobadilla’s task had been much the more difficult, and Ocampo realized that, so he started gingerly, and the testimony of the early witnesses was reported succinctly by the scribes:
Melchior Sánchez, an unpleasant man and an avowed enemy of Colón, gave it as his opinion that Bobadilla had arrived three years too late, had performed brilliantly in clearing up the mess, and had treated Colón justly and even mercifully. Sánchez thought that Bobadilla would have been justified in hanging the admiral, but this evidence was neutralized by Ocampo’s discovery that Colón had justly hanged the oldest Sánchez boy for repeated theft.
Alvaro Abarbanel, a responsible merchant in goods imported from Spain, whose trade the admiral had assisted by bringing in merchandise in
government ships, said briefly and harshly: ‘Bobadilla should have been horse-whipped for treating a great man as he did. The admiral would have been justified in shooting him, and I came close to doing so.’
And so it went, back and forth. After some sixteen witnesses had split about nine in favor of Bobadilla, seven supporting Colón, Ocampo told his scribes: ‘We had now better get some rational statements, no opinions, no heated animosities, as to what actually happened,’ and an official who had served each of the viceroys of the island, one Paolo Carvajal of good family and better reputation, laid out the facts: ‘Francisco de Bobadilla arrived here on 23 August 1500, bringing with him a complete set of papers from the king awarding him plenipotentiary powers, but the important thing was, none of us knew the extent of these powers, and Bobadilla conducted himself, I must say, brilliantly. No general, master of strategy, ever did better.
‘First he called us together and had the notary read out what one might call a standard commission to look into things generally. Men like that with letters like that visit Spanish territories, here and at home, frequently, so we thought little of it, and we helped him as he made routine examinations, which did not focus on the admiral at all. In fact, Colón showed his disgust for the whole affair by stalking out of town in the middle of the investigation. “I’m off to chase down Tainos,” he said with an insolence that infuriated Bobadilla.
‘What did he do? Nothing vengeful, but he did summon the people again to hear the reading of his second letter, and I remember standing in the sunlight beside him as citizens gathered in the square before the church, all three hundred of them. The fat fellow climbed onto the church steps, a rickety affair, for we didn’t even have a steeple in those days, and in a surprisingly strong voice, read words which shocked us all. They came from Ferdinand and Isabella: “Our good and faithful servant, Francisco de Bobadilla, is herewith appointed governor of Española.”