The Spanish Pioneers Part 1

The Spanish Pioneers.

by Charles F. Lummis.

PREFACE.

It is because I believe that every other young Saxon-American loves fair play and admires heroism as much as I do, that this book has been written. That we have not given justice to the Spanish Pioneers is simply because we have been misled. They made a record unparalleled; but our text-books have not recognized that fact, though they no longer dare dispute it. Now, thanks to the New School of American History, we are coming to the truth,--a truth which every manly American will be glad to know. In this country of free and brave men, race-prejudice, the most ignorant of all human ignorances, must die out. We must respect manhood more than nationality, and admire it for its own sake wherever found,--and it is found everywhere. The deeds that hold the world up are not of any one blood. We may be born anywhere,--that is a mere accident; but to be heroes we must grow by means which are not accidents nor provincialisms, but the birthright and glory of humanity.

We love manhood; and the Spanish pioneering of the Americas was the largest and longest and most marvellous feat of manhood in all history.

It was not possible for a Saxon boy to learn that truth in my boyhood; it is enormously difficult, if possible, now. The hopelessness of trying to get from any or all English text-books a just picture of the Spanish hero in the New World made me resolve that no other young American lover of heroism and justice shall need to grope so long in the dark as I had to; and for the following glimpses into the most interesting of stories he has to thank me less than that friend of us both, A. F. Bandelier, the master of the New School. Without the light shed on early America by the scholars.h.i.+p of this great pupil of the great Humboldt, my book could not have been written,--nor by me without his generous personal aid.

C. F. L.

I.

THE PIONEER NATION.

It is now an established fact of history that the Norse rovers had found and made a few expeditions to North America long before Columbus. For the historian nowadays to look upon that Norse discovery as a myth, or less than a certainty, is to confess that he has never read the Sagas.

The Nors.e.m.e.n came, and even camped in the New World, before the year 1000; but they _only_ camped. They built no towns, and practically added to the world's knowledge nothing at all. They did nothing to ent.i.tle them to credit as pioneers. The honor of giving America to the world belongs to Spain,--the credit not only of discovery, but of centuries of such pioneering as no other nation ever paralleled in any land. It is a fascinating story, yet one to which our histories have so far done scant justice. History on true principles was an unknown science until within a century; and public opinion has long been hampered by the narrow statements and false conclusions of closet students. Some of these men have been not only honest but most charming writers; but their very popularity has only helped to spread their errors wider. But their day is past, and the beginnings of new light have come. No student dares longer refer to Prescott or Irving, or any of the cla.s.s of which they were the leaders, as authorities in history; they rank to-day as fascinating writers of romance, and nothing more. It yet remains for some one to make as popular the truths of American history as the fables have been, and it may be long before an unmistaken Prescott appears; but meantime I should like to help young Americans to a general grasp of the truths upon which coming histories will be based. This book is not a history; it is simply a guideboard to the true point of view, the broad idea,--starting from which, those who are interested may more safely go forward to the study of details, while those who can study no farther may at least have a general understanding of the most romantic and gallant chapter in the history of America.

We have not been taught how astonis.h.i.+ng it was that one nation should have earned such an overwhelming share in the honor of giving us America; and yet when we look into the matter, it is a very startling thing. There was a great Old World, full of civilization: suddenly a New World was found,--the most important and surprising discovery in the whole annals of mankind. One would naturally suppose that the greatness of such a discovery would stir the intelligence of all the civilized nations about equally, and that they would leap with common eagerness to avail themselves of the great meaning this discovery had for humanity. But as a matter of fact it was not so. Broadly speaking, all the enterprise of Europe was confined to one nation,--and that a nation by no means the richest or strongest. One nation practically had the glory of discovering and exploring America, of changing the whole world's ideas of geography, and making over knowledge and business all to herself for a century and a half. And Spain was that nation.

It was, indeed, a man of Genoa who gave us America; but he came as a Spaniard,--from Spain, on Spanish faith and Spanish money, in Spanish s.h.i.+ps and with Spanish crews; and what he found he took possession of in the name of Spain. Think what a kingdom Ferdinand and Isabella had then besides their little garden in Europe,--an untrodden half world, in which a score of civilized nations dwell to-day, and upon whose stupendous area the newest and greatest of nations is but a patch! What a dizziness would have seized Columbus could he have foreseen the inconceivable plant whose unguessed seeds he held that bright October morning in 1492!

It was Spain, too, that sent out the accidental Florentine whom a German printer made G.o.dfather of a half world that we are barely sure he ever saw, and are fully sure he deserves no credit for. To name America after Amerigo Vespucci was such an ignorant injustice as seems ridiculous now; but, at all events, Spain sent him who gave his name to the New World.

Columbus did little beyond finding America, which was indeed glory enough for one life. But of the gallant nation which made possible his discovery there were not lacking heroes to carry out the work which that discovery opened. It was a century before Anglo-Saxons seemed to waken enough to learn that there really _was_ a New World, and into that century the flower of Spain crowded marvels of achievement. She was the only European nation that did not drowse. Her mailed explorers overran Mexico and Peru, grasped their incalculable riches, and made those kingdoms inalienable parts of Spain. Cortez had conquered and was colonizing a savage country a dozen times as large as England years before the first English-speaking expedition had ever seen the mere coast where it was to plant colonies in the New World; and Pizarro did a still greater work. Ponce de Leon had taken possession for Spain of what is now one of the States of our Union a generation before any of those regions were seen by Saxons. That first traveller in North America, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, had walked his unparalleled way across the continent from Florida to the Gulf of California half a century before the first foot of our ancestors touched our soil. Jamestown, the first English settlement in America, was not founded until 1607, and by that time the Spanish were permanently established in Florida and New Mexico, and absolute masters of a vast territory to the south. They had already discovered, conquered, and partly colonized _inland_ America from northeastern Kansas to Buenos Ayres, and from ocean to ocean. Half of the United States, all Mexico, Yucatan, Central America, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Paraguay, Peru, Chile, New Granada, and a huge area besides, were Spanish by the time England had acquired a few acres on the nearest edge of America. Language could scarcely overstate the enormous precedence of Spain over all other nations in the pioneering of the New World. They were Spaniards who first saw and explored the greatest gulf in the world; Spaniards who discovered the two greatest rivers; Spaniards who found the greatest ocean; Spaniards who first knew that there were two continents of America; Spaniards who first went round the world! They were Spaniards who had carved their way into the far interior of our own land, as well as of all to the south, and founded their cities a thousand miles inland long before the first Anglo-Saxon came to the Atlantic seaboard. That early Spanish spirit of _finding out_ was fairly superhuman. Why, a poor Spanish lieutenant with twenty soldiers pierced an unspeakable desert and looked down upon the greatest natural wonder of America or of the world--the Grand Canon of the Colorado--three full centuries before any "American" eyes saw it!

And so it was from Colorado to Cape Horn. Heroic, impetuous, imprudent Balboa had walked that awful walk across the Isthmus, and found the Pacific Ocean, and built on its sh.o.r.es the first s.h.i.+ps that were ever made in the Americas, and sailed that unknown sea, and had been dead more than half a century before Drake and Hawkins saw it.

England's lack of means, the demoralization following the Wars of the Roses, and religious dissensions were the chief causes of her torpidity then. When her sons came at last to the eastern verge of the New World they made a brave record; but they were never called upon to face such inconceivable hards.h.i.+ps, such endless dangers as the Spaniards had faced. The wilderness they conquered was savage enough, truly, but fertile, well wooded, well watered, and full of game; while that which the Spaniards tamed was such a frightful desert as no human conquest ever overran before or since, and peopled by a host of savage tribes to some of whom the petty warriors of King Philip were no more to be compared than a fox to a panther. The Apaches and the Araucanians would perhaps have been no more than other Indians had they been transferred to Ma.s.sachusetts; but in their own grim domains they were the deadliest savages that Europeans ever encountered. For a century of Indian wars in the east there were three centuries and a half in the southwest. In one Spanish colony (in Bolivia) as many were slain by the savages in one ma.s.sacre as there were people in New York city when the war of the Revolution began! If the Indians in the east had wiped out twenty-two thousand settlers in one red slaughter, as did those at Sorata, it would have been well up in the eighteen-hundreds before the depleted colonies could have untied the uncomfortable ap.r.o.n-strings of the mother country, and begun national housekeeping on their own account.

When you know that the greatest of English text-books has not even the name of the man who first sailed around the world (a Spaniard), nor of the man who discovered Brazil (a Spaniard), nor of him who discovered California (a Spaniard), nor of those Spaniards who first found and colonized in what is now the United States, and that it has a hundred other omissions as glaring, and a hundred histories as untrue as the omissions are inexcusable, you will understand that it is high time we should do better justice than did our fathers to a subject which should be of the first interest to all real Americans.

The Spanish were not only the first conquerors of the New World, and its first colonizers, but also its first civilizers. They built the first cities, opened the first churches, schools, and universities; brought the first printing-presses, made the first books; wrote the first dictionaries, histories, and geographies, and brought the first missionaries; and before New England had a real newspaper, Mexico had a seventeenth-century attempt at one!

One of the wonderful things about this Spanish pioneering--almost as remarkable as the pioneering itself--was the humane and progressive spirit which marked it from first to last. Histories of the sort long current speak of that hero-nation as cruel to the Indians; but, in truth, the record of Spain in that respect puts us to the blush. The legislation of Spain in behalf of the Indians everywhere was incomparably more extensive, more comprehensive, more systematic, and more humane than that of Great Britain, the Colonies, and the present United States all combined. Those first teachers gave the Spanish language and Christian faith to a thousand aborigines, where we gave a new language and religion to one. There have been Spanish schools for Indians in America since 1524. By 1575--nearly a century before there was a printing-press in English America--many books in _twelve_ different Indian languages had been printed in the city of Mexico, whereas in our history John Eliot's Indian Bible stands alone; and three Spanish universities in America were nearly rounding out their century when Harvard was founded. A surprisingly large proportion of the pioneers of America were college men; and intelligence went hand in hand with heroism in the early settlement of the New World.

II.

A MUDDLED GEOGRAPHY.

The least of the difficulties which beset the finders of the New World was the then tremendous voyage to reach it. Had that three thousand miles of unknown sea been the chief obstacle, civilization would have overstepped it centuries before it did. It was human ignorance deeper than the Atlantic, and bigotry stormier than its waves, which walled the western horizon of Europe for so long. But for that, Columbus himself would have found America ten years sooner than he did; and for that matter, America would not have waited for Columbus's five-times-great-grandfather to be born. It was really a strange thing how the richest half of the world played so long at hide-and-seek with civilization; and how at last it was found, through the merest chance, by those who sought something entirely different. Had America waited to be discovered by some one seeking a new continent, it might be waiting yet.

Despite the fact that long before Columbus vagrant crews of half a dozen different races had already reached the New World, they had left neither mark on America nor result in civilization; and Europe, at the very brink of the greatest discovery and the greatest events in history, never dreamed of it. Columbus himself had no imaginings of America. Do you know what he started westward to find? _Asia._

The investigations of recent years have greatly changed our estimates of Columbus. The tendency of a generation ago was to transform him to a demiG.o.d,--an historical figure, faultless, rounded, all n.o.ble. That was absurd; for Columbus was only a man, and all men, however great, fall short of perfection. The tendency of the present generation is to go to the other extreme,--to rob him of every heroic quality, and make him out an unhanged pirate and a contemptible accident of fortune; so that we are in a fair way to have very little Columbus left. But this is equally unjust and unscientific. Columbus in his own field was a great man despite his failings, and far from a contemptible one.

To understand him, we must first have some general understanding of the age in which he lived. To measure how much of an inventor of the great idea he was, we must find out what the world's ideas then were, and how much they helped or hindered him.

In those far days geography was a very curious affair indeed. A map of the world then was something which very few of us would be able to identify at all; for all the wise men of all the earth knew less of the world's topography than an eight-year old schoolboy knows to-day. It had been decided at last that the world was not flat, but round,--though even that fundamental knowledge was not yet old; but as to what composed half the globe, no man alive knew. Westward from Europe stretched the "Sea of Darkness," and beyond a little way none knew what it was or contained. The variation of the compa.s.s was not yet understood.

Everything was largely guess-work, and groping in the dark. The unsafe little "s.h.i.+ps" of the day dared not venture out of sight of land, for there was nothing reliable to guide them back; and you will laugh at one reason why they were afraid to sail out into the broad western sea,--they feared that they might unknowingly get over the edge, and that s.h.i.+p and crew might fall off into s.p.a.ce! Though they knew the world was roundish, the attraction of gravitation was not yet dreamed of; and it was supposed that if one got too far over the upper side of the ball one would drop off!

Still, it was a matter of general belief that there was land in that unknown sea. That idea had been growing for more than a thousand years,--for by the second century it began to be felt that there were islands beyond Europe. By Columbus's time the map-makers generally put on their rude charts a great many guess-work islands in the Sea of Darkness. Beyond this swarm of islands was supposed to lie the east coast of Asia,--and at no enormous distance, for the real size of the world was underestimated by one third. Geography was in its mere infancy; but it was engaging the attention and study of very many scholars who were learned for their day. Each of them put his studious guessing into maps, which varied astonis.h.i.+ngly from one another.

But one thing was accepted: _there was land somewhere to the west_,--some said a few islands, some said thousands of islands, but all said land of some sort. So Columbus did not invent the idea; it had been agreed upon long before he was born. The question was not if there was a New World, but if it was possible or practicable to reach it without sailing over the jumping-off place or encountering other as sad dangers.

The world said No; Columbus said Yes,--and that was his claim to greatness. He was not an inventor, but an accomplisher; and even what he accomplished physically was less remarkable than his faith. He did not have to teach Europe that there was a new country, but to believe that he could get to that country; and his faith in himself and his stubborn courage in making others believe in him was the greatness of his character. It took less of a man to make the final proof than to convince the public that it was not utter foolhardiness to attempt the proof at all.

Christopher Columbus, as we call him (as Colon[1] he was better known in his own day), was born in Genoa, Italy, the son of Dominico Colombo, a wool-comber, and Suzanna Fontanarossa. The year of his birth is not certain; but it was probably about 1446. Of his boyhood we know nothing, and little enough of all his early life,--though it is certain that he was active, adventurous, and yet very studious. It is said that his father sent him for awhile to the University of Pavia; but his college course could not have lasted very long. Columbus himself tells us that he went to sea at fourteen years of age. But as a sailor he was able to continue the studies which interested him most,--geography and kindred topics. The details of his early seafaring are very meagre; but it seems certain that he sailed to England, Iceland, Guinea, and Greece,--which made a man then far more of a traveller than does a voyage round the world nowadays; and with this broadening knowledge of men and lands he was gaining such grasp of navigation, astronomy, and geography as was then to be had.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Autograph of Christopher Columbus.]

It is interesting to speculate how and when Columbus first conceived an idea of such stupendous importance. It was doubtless not until he was a mature and experienced man, who had become not only a skilled sailor, but one familiar with what other sailors had done. The Madeiras and the Azores had been discovered more than a century. Prince Henry, the Navigator (that great patron of early exploration), was sending his crews down the west coast of Africa,--for at that time it was not even known what the lower half of Africa was. These expeditions were a great help to Columbus as well as to the world's knowledge. It is almost certain, too, that when he was in Iceland he must have heard something of the legends of the Norse rovers who had been to America. Everywhere he went his alert mind caught some new encouragement, direct or indirect, to the great resolve which was half unconsciously forming in his mind.

About 1473 Columbus wandered to Portugal; and there formed a.s.sociations which had an influence on his future. In time he found a wife, Felipa Moniz, the mother of his son and chronicler Diego. As to his married life there is much uncertainty, and whether it was creditable to him or the reverse. It is known from his own letters that he had other children than Diego, but they are left in obscurity. His wife is understood to have been a daughter of the sea-captain known as "The Navigator," whose services were rewarded by making him the first governor of the newly discovered island of Porto Santo, off Madeira. It was the most natural thing in the world that Columbus should presently pay a visit to his adventurous father-in-law; and it was, perhaps, while in Porto Santo on this visit that he began to put his great thoughts in more tangible shape.

With men like "the world-seeking Genoese," a resolve like that, once formed, is as a barbed arrow,--difficult to be plucked out. From that day on he knew no rest. The central idea of his life was "Westward!

Asia!" and he began to work for its realization. It is a.s.serted that with a patriotic intention he hastened home to make first offer of his services to his native land. But Genoa was not looking for new worlds, and declined his proffer. Then he laid his plans before John II. of Portugal. King John was charmed with the idea; but a council of his wisest men a.s.sured him that the plan was ridiculously foolhardy. At last he sent out a secret expedition, which after sailing out of sight of sh.o.r.e soon lost heart and returned without result. When Columbus learned of this treachery, he was so indignant that he left for Spain at once, and there interested several n.o.blemen and finally the Crown itself in his audacious hopes. But after three years of profound deliberation, a _junta_[2] of astronomers and geographers decided that his plan was absurd and impossible,--the islands could not be reached. Disheartened, Columbus started for France; but by a lucky chance tarried at an Andalusian monastery, where he won the guardian, Juan Perez de Marchena, to his views. This monk had been confessor to the queen; and through his urgent intercession the Crown at last sent for Columbus, who returned to court. His plans had grown within him till they almost overbalanced him, and he seems to have forgotten that his discoveries were only a hope and not yet a fact. Courage and persistence he certainly had; but we could wish that now he had been a trifle more modest. When the king asked on what terms he would make the voyage, he replied: "That you make me an admiral before I start; that I be viceroy of all the lands that I shall find; and that I receive one tenth of all the gain." Strong demands, truly, for the poor wool-comber's son of Genoa to speak to the dazzling king of Spain!

Ferdinand promptly rejected this bold demand; and in January, 1492, Columbus was actually on his way to France to try to make an impression there, when he was overtaken by a messenger who brought him back to court. It is a very large debt that we owe to good Queen Isabella, for it was due to her strong personal interest that Columbus had a chance to find the New World. When all science frowned, and wealth withheld its aid, it was a woman's persistent faith--aided by the Church--that saved history.

There has been a great deal of equally unscientific writing done for and against that great queen. Some have tried to make her out a spotless saint,--a rather hopeless task to attempt in behalf of any human being,--and others picture her as sordid, mercenary, and in no wise admirable. Both extremes are equally illogical and untrue, but the latter is the more unjust. The truth is that all characters have more than one side; and there are in history as in everyday life comparatively few figures we can either deify or wholly condemn.

Isabella was not an angel,--she was a woman, and with failings, as every woman has. But she was a remarkable woman and a great one, and worthy our respect as well as our grat.i.tude. She has no need to fear comparison of character with "Good Queen Bess," and she made a much greater mark on history. It was not sordid ambition nor avarice which made her give ear to the world-finder. It was the woman's faith and sympathy and intuition which have so many times changed history, and given room for the exploits of so many heroes who would have died unheard of if they had depended upon the slower and colder and more selfish sympathy of men.

Isabella took the lead and the responsibility herself. She had a kingdom of her own; and if her royal husband Ferdinand did not deem it wise to embark the fortunes of Arragon in such a wild enterprise, she could meet the expenses from her realm of Castile. Ferdinand seems to have cared little either way; but his fair-haired, blue-eyed queen, whose gentle face hid great courage and determination, was enthusiastic.

The Genoan's conditions were granted; and on the 17th of April, 1492, one of the most important papers that ever held ink was signed by their Majesties, and by Columbus. If you could see that precious contract, you would probably have very little idea whose autograph was the lower one,--for Columbus's rigmarole of a signature would cause consternation at a teller's window nowadays. The gist of this famous agreement was as follows:--

1. That Columbus and his heirs forever should have the office of admiral in all the lands he might discover.

2. That he should be viceroy and governor-general of these lands, with a voice in the appointment of his subordinate governors.

3. That he should reserve for himself one tenth part of the gold, silver, pearls, and all other treasures acquired.

4. That he and his lieutenant should be sole judges, concurrent with the High Admiral of Castile, in matters of commerce in the New World.

5. That he should have the privilege of contributing one eighth to the expenses of any other expedition to these new lands, and should then be ent.i.tled to one eighth of the profits.

It is a pity that the conduct of Columbus in Spain was not free from a duplicity which did him little credit. He entered the service of Spain, Jan. 20, 1486. As early as May 5, 1487, the Spanish Crown gave him three thousand maravedis (about $18) "for some secret service for their Majesties;" and during the same year, eight thousand maravedis more. Yet after this he was secretly proffering his services again to the King of Portugal, who in 1488 wrote Columbus a letter giving him the freedom of the kingdom in return for the explorations he was to make _for Portugal_. But this fell through.