Balls of cotton and parrots' feathers

SUMMER BOOKS

J. H. PLUMB

The only version that we possess of the log- book of Christopher Columbus's discovery of the West Indies is derived from a copy made by Las Casas, the great champion of the Indians, probably in 1552. The original presented to Ferdinand and Isabella has

long disappeared. About the existing version —The Journal of Christopher Columbus.

here translated by Cecil Fane, with an appendix by R. A. Skelton (Blond 50s}— scholarly acerbities get razor-edged. Several suspect that Las Casas doctored the journal to strengthen his own case; others will not hear of it, conceding only that Las Casas 'did introduce some remarks of his own into the text of the Journal, but he did so in good faith'. I am no specialist, but it does seem to me that a man who can add place names and events is not above inserting an adjec- tive or expanding a remark so that it glows with his own fervour. Of course, we shall never know unless another copy is un- earthed in Spain.

However, it does not matter overmuch whether we are reading Columbus pure or Columbus adulterated, for the fascination of the Journal lies in its revelation of motive, and these were largely constant over the great period of the Spanish conquest of America which started with Columbus's discovery to the subjection of the Incas by Pizarro. And these motives, so strong, so powerful, so naive in Columbus, have ever since pervaded the life of Europe in its in- volvement with the Americas, and, indeed, with primitive people everywhere.

Firstly, there was the sheer fascination, a sort of wonder at finding human beings in so totally different a state. Men and women were going about their daily lives completely naked, with the simplest weapons and tools, living what at first sight seemed like an idyll of bliss in islands that appeared to the hard- bitten salt-weakened sailors near to parad- ise. The Admiral says that it is impossible to believe that anyone has seen a people with such kind hearts and so ready to give and so timorous that they deprive them- selves of everything in order to give the Christians all that they possess'. Columbus believed, perhaps rightly, that the natives be- lieved that he and his ships came from heaven. But the simplicity and spontaneous generosity of the Indians recur again and again in Columbus's Journal and this aspect of his discovery is suffused with a kind of wonder. If Las Casas inserted these passages, he must have possessed great literary skill and marvellous empathy.

This contrast between primitive simplic- ity amidst natural abundance and the strife, violence and double-dealing of Europe was to haunt the minds of sensitive men for centuries. They shut their eyes to the dis- ease, the savageries, the brutalities of Indian existence and dwelt, as in a dream, on what seemed the depressing contrast that civilised and sophisticated life made with the primi- tive and the natural. This illusion fortified the sense of loss, the concept of a Fall which had haunted Europe for millennia. And even when America had been raped and sub- jected, it still remained. It can be found in the novels of Fenimore Cooper as well as

in the poetry of Henry Longfellow, not only in their glorification of the noble Indian, but also in the sense that living close to nature in all its wildness and majesty may bring out the finer qualities of mankind, that simple living is conducive to virtue. Even today such illusions are far from dead.

The first question, however, that Colum- bus asked of the simple and generous people whom he had discovered was 'Do you know where gold can be found?' It was always on the next island, or further to the West, for these West Indians possessed only a little that they got by trade. Their few ornaments were happily traded by them for glass beads and bits of cloth. There was not enough either to satisfy Columbus or, as he rightly feared, to please his royal masters. He had come for gold and spices, to fulfil that dream of greed which haunted the more adventurous men of his time. Their imagi- nations had been overheated by the wond- rous stories of Marco Polo. As Columbus went from island to island in his small leaky boats, first Hispaniola, and then Cuba and back again, he could not have felt anything but disappointment. There was no gold; there were no spices: only balls of cotton and parrots' feathers. And rumours! Rumours of lands to the West where there was gold in plenty. Denied gold and spices, Columbus was forced to write of the ferti- lity of the islands and of the sweetness .4 the Indians' nature; particularly the latter: indeed, he said, all they lacked was know- ledge of Christ.

But once given the opportunity, how could these good, these simple, sweet-natured Indians become anything but devout Christ- ians and, therefore, a heavenly feather in the Spanish Crown. Even if there was no gold, there were souls in plenty. Columbus,

and all who sailed with him were pro- foundly Christian, deeply superstitious, with

a need for the rituals that threaded the daily life of Europeans. They expected not only the solid rewards of this world, but also the benediction of heaven in the life to come.

It never occurred to Columbus, nor to most of those who were to follow him in Europe's quest for distant worlds, that he could be conferring anything but benefit on the Indians whom he was to rob and convert.

He was amazed when men and women gave him all the simple trinkets which they possessed or brought food; and his delight knew no bounds when they accepted a few trivial glass beads in return. He never thought of consequences; few makers of empire have.

Yet the signs were there. Evil lurked in this garden of Eden. There were Caribs who ate men, which obviously put them beyond the pale of humanity. And towards the end of his journey, the Indians became distinctly less friendly and seemed to be on the point of attacking the Christians, but seven of the latter were able to rout with consummate ease more than fifty of the former. As Columbus well knew, Indians were not hard to terrify and would be easy enough to kill. He had witnessed their fears when he dis- charged his cannon. They possessed no metal. The future belonged, through force, to Europe. The world of the Indians was at an end.

So the future is contained in this simple journal. It is, in a curious way, a very mov- ing book. Not only in the obvious ways, al- though these are powerful enough. Colum- bus conveys a sense of the endless waste of the sea, the growing strain on the men, the tininess of his vessels, their dangerous con- ditions, the tight-rope of disaster along which they sailed, and the underlying dis- appointment that grew and grew as the mirage of gold disappeared as island followed island. Certainly this makes it a gripping book to read, but it moves one in a deeper, less obvious sense than this. Its simplicity possesses an almost childlike inno- cence. Here are the motives—greed and re- ligious conviction that. unleashed, were to bring death and destruction to millions of men, women and children and to topple Empires. They were to lead not only to the rape of America, but also Africa and to cen- turies of servitude and misery for blacks and mainland Indians.

The Indians of the islands had a quicker and more terrible fate. Soon these seemingly innocent and very primitive peoples whom Columbus discovered were to be obliterated, wiped right off the face of the globe by disease and by violence. Hence these simple words of Columbus are latent with the problems that were to haunt Europe for centuries. That dream of riches in this world and a harvest of souls in the next quickly turned into a nightmare of brutality and ex- tinction.

This journal has not been reprinted, ex- cept for private circulation to the Hakluyt Society in an identical edition in 1961, since before the war. It is beautifully illustrated and possesses an admirable introduction. It deserves wide circulation, for Columbus's Journal is not only immensely readable, but also it raises fundamental problems. Again we are voyaging into unknown seas: per- haps they will be empty and barren, but if they, too, should contain life totally different from our own, one can only hope that we shall not make the same blunders, or enter into so complex a situation with the naiveté of the sixteenth century Spaniards.