LITMIR.BIZ

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a man ambitious and seditious by nature, but who owed Columbus many favors. Others, disgusted because their dreams of gold had not been realized, followed him and the insurrection was soon well under way. The rebels took Isabela and sacked the government storehouse and then took steps to besiege Bartholomew Columbus at Concepcion de la Vega. The arrival of fresh troops and stores from Spain enabled the governor to hold the rebels in check.

      Such was the deplorable state of affairs when Columbus returned to the island on August 30, 1498. Realizing Roldan's strength, he consented to make terms under which the insurgents were to receive stores and other property and return to Spain. By the time their vessels were ready most of them had changed their mind and declined to go, but they wrote letters to Spain bitterly complaining of the admiral and his brothers, and accusing them of oppression and despotism. Columbus found himself obliged to agree to the most humiliating terms with the rebels, conceding a complete pardon, restoring them to their official posts, promising to pay their salary in arrears and distributing lands and Indians among them. Nevertheless, other quarrels followed, Columbus was forced to take severe measures and the complaints against him grew.

      Little by little the stories of arrogance and oppression circulated with reference to the Columbus brothers undermined the esteem in which they were held by the sovereigns, who were also disappointed at not seeing the fabulous wealth they had expected from the new discoveries. They determined to send to the island of Española a person authorized to investigate conditions and decide all disputes.

      Their choice for the mission was unfortunate; it fell on Francisco Bobadilla, a spiteful, arrogant and tactless man. On arriving in Santo Domingo on August 23, 1500, he immediately began to annul dispositions made by Columbus and sent for the admiral who was in the interior. As soon as Columbus appeared, Bobadilla, far exceeding his authority, caused him to be put in chains and confined in a cell of the fortress of Santo Domingo. He also imprisoned the brothers of Columbus and sent them to Spain together with the Discoverer, all chained like infamous criminals. At the same time he made a report attributing malfeasance, injustice and fraud to all.

      The administration of Bobadilla was disastrous. In his efforts to ingratiate himself with Columbus' enemies he heaped favors on Roldan and his followers and gave them franchises and lands. He made the slavery of the Indians more galling than ever, obliging them to labor in the fields and mines. Columbus' property and papers were confiscated and Columbus' friend, the explorer Rodrigo de Bastidas, was imprisoned and his property seized.

      The captain of the vessel bearing Columbus treated his distinguished prisoner with all possible deference and offered to take off the chains, but the Discoverer, whose heart was breaking under the indignities heaped upon him and the injustice of which he was the victim, proudly refused. When the vessel arrived in Spain the sovereigns, shocked at Bobadilla's proceedings, commanded the immediate release of Columbus, ordered that his property be restored and overwhelmed him with distinctions, though providing that his dignities as viceroy were to remain temporarily suspended; probably because the calculating spirit of King Ferdinand believed that too much power had been vested in his subject. Bobadilla was removed from office, and Nicolas de Ovando, a member of the religious-military order of Alcantara, was appointed governor in his place.

      Ovando arrived in Santo Domingo on April 15, 1502, with a fleet of thirty vessels, the largest which up to that time had arrived in the new world, carrying stores of every kind and over 1500 persons, among them many who later attained distinction in conquests on the mainland. He was courteous to Bobadilla, but took measures to send Roldan and the most turbulent of his companions back to Spain on the return of his fleet, the largest vessel of which was placed at the disposition of Bobadilla.

      Just before the sailing of the fleet, on June 30, 1502, Columbus unexpectedly appeared before the city on his fourth voyage, and asked permission to enter the port for protection from a hurricane which he believed was approaching. Ovando, either because he had secret orders, or perhaps because he feared Columbus' presence might cause renewed disturbances, denied the request, and the great man, deeply wounded by the refusal, sought shelter further up the coast.

      The pilots of the great fleet derided Columbus' prediction and the ships set sail. They had not reached the easternmost point of the island when a terrific hurricane broke loose. All but two of the vessels were lost, and by a strange coincidence one of these two bore Rodrigo de Bastidas, the friend of Columbus, while the other, the smallest and weakest vessel of the fleet, was the one that carried Columbus' property. Bobadilla, Roldan and other enemies of the admiral, and many other passengers and Indian captives perished and large stores of gold were lost. Columbus' squadron rode out the storm in safety in a cove of the bay of Azua, whereupon he continued his voyage.

      On land, too, the hurricane wrought great destruction. The houses of the town of Santo Domingo were demolished and as the right bank of the Ozama was higher and seemed more suitable, Ovando ordered that the town be rebuilt on that side, where it now stands.

      Ovando now inaugurated a period of general prosperity. He established peace and order, issued rules for the different branches of the public service, placed honest men in the posts of responsibility and encouraged industry and agriculture. Yet, strange mixture of energy and cruelty, of valor and bigotry that he was, his treatment of the Indians was most oppressive. To each Spanish landholder was assigned a number of Indians under the pretext that they were to be given religious instruction and accustomed to work; but so onerous and unremitting was the labor imposed that they succumbed to disease by thousands, while thousands of others perished by their own hand in an epidemic of suicide which swept through the country, and many fled to almost inaccessible mountain regions.

      But two Indian chieftains still reigned in the island, one the Indian queen Anacaona in the district of Jaragua, the other the chief of Higuey. Ovando's severe measures against the natives made him ready to believe the tales of conspiracies brought to him. He therefore sent a troop of 300 infantry under Diego Velazquez, the future conqueror of Cuba, and 70 horsemen, to the territory of Anacaona, where they were received with every mark of kindness. The Spaniards invited the natives to witness a military drill and when the queen, her principal caciques and a great crowd of Indians were assembled, the exercises commenced. The Indians were awed by the spectacle so new and imposing to them, when suddenly the trumpets gave a signal, the infantry opened fire and the cavalry charged on the defenseless spectators. All the Indians who could not escape by flight were massacred without respect to age or sex. Anacaona alone was spared and carried off to Santo Domingo where she was shortly afterwards ignominiously executed, on the pretext that she was not sufficiently sincere in the Catholic religion which she had recently professed! A tenacious persecution of the Indians who would not become slaves was instituted and but few were able to hide in the mountains of the interior.

      In 1503 the subjugation of the last remaining independent chieftain, Cotubanama, lord of Higuey, in the extreme eastern part of the island, was undertaken. Near this province a Spaniard wantonly set his hound upon one of the principal natives, and the Indian was torn to pieces, whereupon the chief, indignant at his friend's death, caused a boatload of Spaniards to be killed, thus giving Ovando a welcome excuse for the invasion. Four hundred Spaniards dealt death and desolation throughout the region, pursuing the Indians into the mountains and forests and sparing neither women nor children. When at last they captured and hung an aged Indian woman revered as a prophetess, the terrified aborigines sued for peace and agreed to pay a heavy tribute. A fortress was erected at Higuey, but the conduct of the Spanish garrison was so outrageous that the Indians in desperation again rose, and killed every Spaniard in the district. Ovando then began a war of extermination and the Indians were killed off by thousands, Cotubanama resisted heroically but in vain, and after being beaten in a number of desperate battles he withdrew to the island of Saona, southeast of Santo Domingo. Here he was surprised and captured by the Spaniards, his remaining warriors mercilessly shot and he himself taken to the city of Santo Domingo and hung. With his death the island was thoroughly pacified, though at a bloody cost, and the conquest proper ended.

      On August 13, 1504, Columbus once more arrived in Santo Domingo. On his ill-fated fourth voyage he had been shipwrecked in Jamaica and one of his men crossed the ocean in an open boat, to solicit aid of Ovando. The latter, after dallying for months, finally yielded to the murmurings of the colony and sent for the Discoverer. He

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