1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created (68 page)

NOTES

CHAPTER
1 /
Two Monuments

    1
Location of La Isabela: Colón 2004:314; Léon Guerrero 2000:247–51; Las Casas 1951:vol. 1, 362–63; Anghiera 1912:87; Chanca 1494:62–64; Colón, C. 1494(?). Relation of the Second Voyage. In Varela and Gil eds. 1992:235–54 (“a very suitable area of high land … not a closed port, but rather a very large bay in which all the vessels in the world will fit,” 247 [my thanks to Scott Sessions for helping me with the translation]). As Morison noted, though, the harbor is open to the north, “rendering the anchorage untenable” in winter storms, and potable water was about a mile away (1983:430–31).

    2
Description of La Isabela: Author’s visit; Deagan and Cruxent 2002a:chap. 3; 2002b:chap. 4 (esp. fig. 4.2).

    3
Colón’s life: Recent biographical studies include Abulafia 2008; Wey Gómez 2008; Fernández-Armesto 2001, 1991; Taviani 1996; Phillips and Phillips 1992. Useful but dated is Morison 1983. Biographies by contemporaries are Colón 2004; Las Casas 1951:vol. 1; vol. 2:1–200 (the two frequently are identical). See also the notes to p. 12.

    4
Shuttle flight: I owe this simile to William Kelso.

    5
First and second voyages: Abulafia 2008: 10–30, 105–212; Colón 2004:chaps 13–63; Fernández-Armesto 2001:51–114; Léon Guerrero 2000; Las Casas 1951:vol. 1 (“bailiff posthaste,” 170; Colón’s share of budget, 175–76); Phillips and Phillips 1992:120–211 (ship lengths, 144–45); Varela and Gil eds. 1992:95–365 (Colón’s and other letters); Gould 1984 (Colón’s crew); Oviedo y Valdés 1851:bks. 1–4; Cuneo 1495:50–63. Las Casas says the second voyage had “1,500 men, all or almost all paid by Their Highnesses” (1951:vol. 1, 346); court historian Andrés Bernáldez says (1870:vol.2, 5) that the ships had “one thousand two hundred fighting men in them, or a little less,” a tally that seems not to include seamen, priests, artisans, etc.

    6
“magnificent walls”: Scillaccio, N. 1494. The Islands Recently Discovered in the Southern and Indian Seas. In Symcox ed. 2002:162–74, at 172.

    7
Worldwide spread of tobacco: See Chaps. 2, 5; Satow 1877:70–71 (Tokyo gangs).

    8
Early pan-Eurasian trade: Overviews include Bernstein 2008:1–109; Abu-Lughod 1991.

    9
Colón as beginning of globalization: I adopt this point from Phillips and Phillips (1992:241), who say that the admiral “placed the world on the path” to global integration.

  10
Exceptions: Decker-Walters 2001 (bottle gourds); Zizumbo-Villarreal and Quero 1998 (coconuts); Montenegro et al. 2007 (sweet potatoes).

  11
Torn seams of Pangaea: Crosby 1986: 9–12.

  12
Columbian Exchange: Crosby 2003.

  13
Comparison to death of dinosaurs: Crosby 1986: 271. Crosby’s point (2003:xxvi) is increasingly accepted: “Even the economic historian may occasionally miss what any ecologist or geographer would find glaringly obvious after a cursory reading of the basic original sources of the sixteenth century: the most important changes brought on by the Columbian voyages were biological in nature.”

  14
Santa María,
La Navidad: Abulafia 2008:168–71; Colón 2004:108–13; Morison 1983:300–07; Colón 1493:177–86. La Navidad may have been near the town of Caracol, in northern Haiti; the anchor of the
Santa María
may have been found there in the eighteenth century (Moreau de Saint-Méry 1797–98:vol. 1, 163, 189, 208).

  15
Taino: Rouse 1992.

  16
Destruction of La Navidad: Abulafia 2008: 168–71; Las Casas 1951:vol. 1, 356–59; Chanca 1494:51–54 (“grown over them,” 54—I translate
yerba
as “weeds” and “vegetation”). Las Casas (1951:vol. 1, 357) gives the number of bodies as “seven or eight”; Colón’s son (2004:312) gives the figure as eleven. Michele de Cuneo (1495) says that the Spaniards feared they had been eaten.

  17
Creation of La Isabela: Abulafia 2008:192–98; Las Casas 1951:vol. 1, 363–64, 376–78; Anghiera 1912:88 (gardens); Cuneo 1495:178 (“roofed with weeds”).

  18
Reiter’s syndrome (footnote): Disease at La Isabela: Allison 1980; Aceves-Avila et al. 1998; Chanca 1494:66–67; Las Casas 1951:vol. 1, 376. Colón’s sickness: Colón 2004:329; Las Casas 1951:vol. 1, 396–97; and Colón, C. 1494. Letter to the Monarchs, 26 Feb. In Varela and Gil eds. 1992:313. Rheumatologist Gerald Weissmann has written up Colón as a case study (1998:154–55). According to Las Casas (1951:vol. 1, 363–64), whose father and brother were eyewitnesses, the admiral also fell sick in January; the summer attack may have been a second, worse bout. Colón described “a sickness that deprived me of all sense and understanding, as if it were pestilence or
modorra
” (313). Reiter’s is not linked to
modorra
(swoony somnolence, then regarded as its own disease), but has been associated with high fever and confusion, which may be close enough. Colón’s later symptoms, such as inflammation, match more closely.

  19
Margarit’s betrayal: Abulafia 2008:202–03; Phillips and Phillips 1992:207–08; Poole 1974; Las Casas 1951:vol. 1, 399–400; Oviedo y Valdés 1851:vol. 1, 54. Poole argues that Margarit’s departure was less a betrayal than the action of a dutiful royal servant reporting the chaos in the colony, but this is a difference of nuance—his report was strongly anti-Colón.

  20
War with Taino: Abulafia 2008:201–07; Colón, C. Letter to the Monarchs, 14 Oct. 1495. In Varela and Gil eds. 1992:316–30 (“the land,” 318); Castellanos 1930–32:vol. 1, 45 (Elegía II [chemical warfare]).

  21
Dominican Republic in Columbian Exchange: E-mail to author, Bart Voorzanger (gross); Hays and Conant 2007 (mongoose); Eastwood et al. 2006 (swallowtail); Guerrero et al. 2004 (swallowtail); Martin et al. 2004 (forest understory); Rocheleau et al. 2001 (forest change); Parsons 1972 (African grass [bedding, 14]); Hitchcock 1936 (African grasses, 161, 259).

  22
Fire ant onslaught: Wilson 2006, 2005; Williams and Matile-Ferraro 1999:146 (African scale insects); Las Casas 1951:vol. 3, 271–73 (all other quotes); Oviedo y Valdés 1851 (“depopulated,” vol. 1, 453 [bk. 15, chap. 1]; plantains, vol. 1, 291–93 [bk. 8, chap. 1]); Herrera y Tordesillas 1601–15:vol. 2, 105–06 (Dec. 2, bk. 3, chap. 14). The plantains were imported from the Canary Islands, off the West African coast. Most of the scale insects involved were mealybugs. Oviedo reported that “the ants in these parts are very good friends” of plantains (vol. 1, 291).

  23
“millions of them”: Colón, C. Letter to the Catholic Monarchs, Apr.-May 1494. In Varela and Gil eds. 1992:284.
Cuento de cuentos
literally means “a million millions,” or one trillion. But
trillón
did not enter Spanish until the seventeenth century. Colón clearly intended “a whole lot,” so I use “millions upon millions” to convey this indeterminacy with a period term. My thanks to Scott Sessions for help with this translation.

  24
Estimates of Hispaniola population fall: Livi-Bacci 2003 (table of estimates, 7; “a few hundred thousand,” 48; 1514 count, 25–34); Las Casas 1992:29 (“three million”). Geographer William Denevan, author of many studies of pre-contact demography, believes (pers. comm.) the figure is 500,000–750,000.

  25
Fewer than five hundred Taino: Oviedo y Valdés 1851 (“no one believes in this year of 1548 there are as many as 500 persons,” vol. 1, 71 [bk. 3, chap. 6]). Las Casas claimed that “not 1000 souls could have survived or escaped this misery” by 1518–19 (1951:vol. 1, 270). Oviedo lived on the island from 1514 to 1556, Las Casas from 1502 to about 1540.

  26
Santo Domingo in poverty: Bigges 1589:32. When Sir Francis Drake sacked the city, it was too poor “for lacke of people to worke in the Mines” to give him much ransom.

  27
Absence of diseases in Americas, incursion of new diseases: A summary is Mann 2005:86–133.

  28
Taino genes: E-mail to author, Juan Carlos Martinez-Cruzado (University of Puerto Rico). Martinez-Cruzado reported in July 2009 “finding Native American mtDNA at ~15% in the Dominican Republic,” but at the time of writing was still trying to distinguish what fraction was Taino.

  29
Charges against Colón: See, e.g., Sale 2006. Index entries under “Colón” indicate his general tone: “complaining,” “deceptive,” “exaggeration and boasting,” “preoccupation with glory, with lineage,” “self-pity,” “self-serving.” For reactions to Colón over time, see Stavans 2001.

  30
Lighthouse first proposed: Del Monte y Tejada 1852–90:vol. 1, 316–19 (“divine decree,” 316).

  31
Colón’s collected writings: Varela and Gil eds. 1992.

  32
Signature: Colón, C. Entail of estate, 22 Feb. 1498. In Varela and Gils eds. 1992:356. See also, Morison 1986:356–57; Milhou 1983:55–90.

  33
“San Fernando”: Colón 2004:238. See also, Las Casas 1951: Vol. 1, Chap. 2. My brief biography relies on the sources cited in the notes to p. 4.

  34
Two constants: Here I follow Fernández-Armesto 2001. For Colón’s attempts to found a dynasty, see, e.g., his instructions for dynastic succession in Colón 1498. See also the determined efforts to preserve the records of his noble privileges in what has come to be known as the
Book of Privileges
(Nader 1996:10–13). The best analysis of his religious beliefs I have seen is Milhou 1983; see also, Delaney 2006; Watts 1985.

  35
“conquest of the Holy Land”: Colón 1493:181. Colón amplified his hopes in a 1493 letter to the monarchs: “Divine grace permitting,…seven years from today, I will be able to pay to Your Highnesses the costs of five thousand cavalry and fifty thousand infantry in the war and conquest of Jerusalem, which was the reason for undertaking this enterprise” (Varela and Gil eds. 1992:227–35, at 232). See also, Delaney 2006; Rusconi ed. 1997:71–77 (unsent Colón missive exhorting the monarchs to take Jerusalem); Colón 1498:360 (instructing his heirs to help with the conquest). My thanks to Scott Sessions for helping me with this material.

  36
“pear-shaped Earth”: Colón, C. Relation of the Third Voyage, Aug.(?). 1498. In Varela and Gil eds. 1992:377 (“put there”); 380 (“by divine will”). Reporting to the monarchs about his third voyage, Colón claimed to have found the Paradise nipple. At the mouth of the Orinoco River, in Venezuela, he had ascended the slopes that led to “this protruding part” (ibid.:377). Heaven was presumably near the river’s headwaters. Such ideas were widely shared; Dante put Paradise on top of a huge projection he called Mount Purgatory (Lester 2009:292–95). My thanks to Scott Sessions for translation help.

  37
Islam, Venice, Genoa as middlemen: My thanks to Dennis Flynn for straightening me out. See, e.g., Bernstein 2008:70–76; Hourani 1995:51–87ff.

  38
Eratosthenes: Crease 2003:chap. 1 (“around the globe,” 3). Eratosthenes’s actual figure was probably closer to 29,000 miles, which most science historians view as remarkably accurate.

  39
Colón’s geography: Wey Gómez 2008:65–99, 143–58; Varela and Gil eds. 1992:90–91 (quadrant); Nunn 1924:chap. 1. Colón also relied on the cosmographer Pierre d’Ailly, who argued that East Asia had to be near West Africa (Nunn 1935). D’Ailly took his ideas from Roger Bacon (1962:311), who in turn based his on a mistaken reading of Aristotle. (Aristotle in fact wrote [1924:II.14], “[M]athematicians who try to calculate the size of the earth’s circumference arrive at the figure 400,000 stades”—about 45,500 miles, twice its actual size.) Colón knew nothing of such scholarly niceties, and there is no evidence that he would have cared. Old Spanish nautical miles are close enough to current terrestrial miles that I ignore the difference.

  40
“in the Apocalypse”: Colón, C. 1500. Letter to Dona Juana de la Torre. In Varela and Gil eds. 1992:430–37, at 430.

  41
Converting emperor of China: Colón, C. 1503. Relation of the Fourth Voyage, 7 Jul. In Varela and Gil eds. 1992:485–503, at 498.

  42
Inuits in Ireland (footnote): Varela and Gil eds. 1992:89 (marginalia). The story is brushed aside by Morison (1983:25), mentioned without comment by Phillips and Phillips (1992:105), and dismissed by Quinn (1992:282–85). By contrast, Jack Forbes (2007:9) calls the marginalia “solid, indisputable evidence that Columbus and others had seen Native Americans at Galway.” My thanks to Scott Sessions for helping me translate Colón’s note.

  43
History of lighthouse project: González 2007; Roorda 1998:114–18, 283–85; Farah 1992; French 1992a, b (protests); Wilentz 1990; Gleave 1952.

  44
Homogenocene: Samways 1999. It is more often called the Anthropocene.

  45
Legazpi and Urdaneta before expedition: Rubio Mañé 1970, 1964; Mitchell 1964 (Urdaneta selects Legazpi, 105); De Borja 2005:chap. 3. Enriquez, M. 1561. Letter to Philip II, 9 Feb. In B&R 3:83–84 (Urdaneta and Legazpi as relatives); idem 1573. Letter to Felipe II, 5 Dec. In B&R 3:209–22, at 216–17 (Legazpi sells property). A popular account is Sanz y Díaz 1967:3–17.