Columbus had meanwhile submitted to Ferdinand and Isabella a detailed plan for the colonization of the Indies. Hispaniola would first be settled by some 2,000 volunteer emigrants who would build and live in three or four towns. Priests were to be sent out to these settlements, not only for the benefit of these Spaniards, but also to convert the heathen Indios. Only permanent settlers should be allowed to look for gold, and then only under strict supervision and the express authority of the governor, who would personally hallmark all ingots. Since it was expected that most people would sooner look for gold than do other essential work, all prospecting would be limited to certain times of each year; all illegal – that is, unmarked – gold found in anyone’s possession would be confiscated. And the Admiral concluded that all who wished to go to the Indies should be allowed to do so – all, that is, except Jews, and heretics and foreigners!
At the beginning of June 1493, Spain’s most prominent foreigners, Christopher Columbus and his younger brother Diego, set out for Seville, where preparations for a great new expedition to the Indies were already in progress. On their way there, they passed through Trujillo, in the province of Estramadura, where a 13-year old boy named Francisco Pizarro was taking care of his father’s herd of swine. The boy may well have watched the procession, and perhaps he already dreamed of those far-off lands with their promise of riches and adventure. And in the same province, in a little town called Medillin, another boy, 8-year old Hernando Cortes saw him pass by, hardly suspecting that his own destiny would one day follow in the path of this man.
By the end of September, an impressive fleet was ready to depart from Cadiz. Columbus’ flagship, again named Santa Maria, led a convoy of 16 ships, carrying more than 1,200 soldiers, sailors, colonists and officials. Also aboard were six priests who would concentrate on the conversion of the natives. And while in the previous year it had been difficult to find even the ninety men who had participated in the first voyage, thousands had now applied to be allowed to go with the Admiral. They also carried seeds and agricultural tools, cattle, pigs, and the first horses about to be reintroduced to America. But everyone aboard seems to have dreamed mostly of the palaces of China, the islands of spices, and the treasures of the legendary Prester John. Even the Spanish Sovereigns had once again wept for joy as they envisioned the incredible wealth yet to come; they also were certain that this was their reward for overcoming the Moors at Granada and for banishing the Jews from their kingdom.
Columbus himself shared such views completely, and he was prepared to do his part. He had already vowed to equip, within the next seven years, at his own expense a crusading army of 50,000 men and 5,000 horses to rescue the Holy City of Jerusalem from the oppression of the Ottoman Turks; now he was prepared to follow up with yet another army of the same size should the first one fail to produce the desired results. Ambitious plans, indeed, for a man who only two years earlier had been threatened with an arrest over some outstanding debts.
The fleet stopped once again at the Canary Islands, and on October 12, 1493, the first anniversary of the discovery, they set out for the second voyage across the Atlantic. On this crossing, Columbus instinctively found the shortest route from Europe to the West Indies, a course that would be used by ships for centuries thereafter. After only 22 days of fair weather sailing, one-third less than the first voyage, the cries of “Tierra, tierra!” passed from ship to ship. They had reached an island in the Lesser Antilles chain; since this was a Sunday, Columbus called the island Dominica.
They had already spotted other islands to the north, and after a brief stop at one which Columbus named Maria Galante, they anchored in a sheltered bay of Santa Maria de Guadeloupe. The fleet had planned to stay there for only one night, but a shore party got lost in the dense tropical jungle and several search parties had to be sent out to find them. In the course of their wanderings on Guadeloupe, the Spaniards for the first time came across grisly evidence of the feared Carib. In deserted huts they found great chunks of human flesh and bones; later they found castrated boys from other tribes who had been specially fattened, and captive girls whose job it was to bear children. Two of the boys and “twelve very beautiful plump girls from 15 to 16 years old” were taken back to the ships by the Spaniards. The girls told the Spaniards that all male children they had born while in captivity had immediately been eaten by the Carib.
Suddenly plagued by dark visions about the fate of the Navidad colony that had been left behind on Hispaniola earlier in the year, Columbus became anxious to return there. On November 10, the fleet set sail again, and for three days cruised among the Antilles islands, all of which Columbus named after Spanish saints – Santa Maria de Montserrat, Santa Maria la Antigua, San Martin (now Nevis), San Jorge (St. Kitts), Santa Anastasia (St. Eustasius), San Cristobal (Saba). On the morning of November 14, they anchored off the black reefs of Santa Cruiz (St. Croix), and it was on this island that the Spaniards had their first encounter with the Carib. Peter Martyr, the first historian of the Americas, gave an eyewitness account of these hostile Indians who displayed an amazing courage and fearlessness: “They were dark-skinned and of a wild and terrible aspect, whose effect was heightened by a red and highly colored paint with which they daubed themselves. Their heads were on one side shaven, from the other there hung long black hair.” Six of these Carib, two of them women, attacked a landing part of twenty-five Spaniards and were overpowered only after a fierce fight. Even after they had been brought aboard the ships, they “laid not aside their savagery nor their terrible fury and comported themselves like Libyan lions in chains. No man was able to tame them, the beholders’ bowels were turned with horror at the terrible, menacing, grisly aspect with which Nature had endowed them.” It was such encounters that gave the Spaniards a healthy respect for these savage natives, and they generally left them alone, visiting their islands only with strongly armed parties.