PROLOGUE
THE PROMISE
October 12th, 1492.
“Tierra!” cried Rodrigo de Triana from his lookout on the forecastle of the caravel Pinta.
“Tierra! – Tierra !” – Land ! “Then, at two hours after midnight, the Pinta fired a cannon, my prearranged signal for the sighting of land.” With that simple entry, the captain of the little fleet recorded in his logbook one of the most momentous events in human history.
“Tierra!” – the word every crew member on the three little ships had been waiting to hear, and ninety pairs of eyes now strained desperately through the autumn night, hoping for a glimpse of the anticipated reward.
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Land! Could it be true? Could it really be true, at long last? After all these weeks of doubts and fears, of countless days and nights filled with apprehension, cursing the very moment they had agreed to join in this ludicrous adventure dreamed up by an eccentric foreigner – could it really be true – had they now reached the Orient after all?
And there it was, indeed. Far off in the distance rose a shadowy coastline, barely visible at first, but as night gave way to a clear, bright Caribbean dawn, everyone could clearly see it. Overwhelmed with relief and joy, the sailors fell to their knees, thanking their God for His immeasurable mercy in having delivered them safely to these shores. They begged for forgiveness, too, from their Captain-General. Never again would they doubt his word, they swore – not now, not when he had brought them to these marvelous lands, these legendary Indies, with all that fabulous wealth within easy reach.
One can well imagine the emotions of the captain, standing on the deck of the Santa Maria, looking out across the water towards the land that had at long last appeared during the night. Out there, past the beaches, past the dim line of green, he no doubt already saw the Kingdom of the Great Khan, the fabled cities of Cathay and Cipango, the immense treasures of the Orient – all the wonders of the East, so tantalizingly described by Marco Polo some two hundred years earlier. A lifetime of dreaming and scheming and planning, of being rejected, of being ridiculed by so many of Europe’s most influential men, had now paid off. And he had done it – he, Don Cristobal Colon, Captain-General of Spain, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, Viceroy of the Indies !
They had not, of course, come anywhere near the lands they were so confident of having found. Japan, the Orient, the Indies of spices and gold, lay still half a world away, across a vast continent and a still vaster ocean. Christopher Columbus and most of the European adventurers who followed in the wake of his discovery, would spend their lives in futile attempts at finding so much as a trace of that ever-elusive Oriental splendor. Most found neither wealth nor fame, and thousands paid with their very lives in the bargain.
Only a very few lucky – and very ruthless – men actually did realize their fondest expectations when they blundered across a few extraordinary civilizations in this exotic new land. And the astounding treasures which flowed into Spain’s treasury after the conquests of the native empires of Mexico and Peru served only to encourage thousands more to risk it all in the search for still greater worlds to conquer. For nearly a century after Columbus, the conquistadors and explorers of Spain, of France, of England, and adventurers of nearly every other European nation, all tramped across the islands and mainland of the New World, driven by a restless greed and by visions of ever-greater prizes. Many generations would come and go before anyone realized that they had already found the grandest prize of them all.
Yet, despite countless stories of failures and disappointments, and of outright disasters, the lure of this New World soon acquired a life of its own. Gradually its appeal grew and expanded, fed by the hopes of desperate people around the world – men, women and children who abandoned their families, their friends, and their homelands to find their destinies in the promise of a New World. That promise soon acquired a name, one that has spelled magic ever since, becoming the envy of the world, a goal for the ambitious, a haven for the persecuted. It has continued to shine down through the centuries as a beacon of hope for the world’s despairing populations. It still lights the way today, never having ceased to cast its magic spell over uncounted millions.
This, then, is the story of that promise called America.
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