Page 511 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

Two days later he noted in his journal, for the islands or Indies, about which he had learned of Hispaniola, believing that he had shown Cuba
benefit of his sovereigns: "These people are from classical literature and from medieval to be a peninsula leading to China.
very naive about weapons with 50 men all travel accounts. 10 On his third (1498-1500) and fourth (1502-
of them could be held in subjection and can be On Christmas Eve of 1492 Columbus' flag- 1504) voyages, this time seeking a more south-
made to do whatever one might wish/' 6 ship, the Santa Maria, struck a reef and sank erly passage through the islands to the Indies,
Columbus' route led him right toward the near the present city of Cap Haitien in northern Columbus reached Trinidad, just off the coast of
more highly developed Tamo heartland. His Haiti. With materials salvaged from that ship South America and the southern part of Middle
itinerary was dictated by his pressing need to he erected a fort, naming it La Navidad, and left America including present-day Costa Rica and
locate the gold which, from his researches, there the sailors unable to crowd into his two Panama, encountering Indians different from
he believed was available in abundance in Japan, remaining vessels. He returned to Spain by way those he knew in the Antilles. He died in Valla-
the island Marco Polo had called "Cipango." of the northern coast of the Dominican Repub- dolid, Spain, in 1506, never realizing that he
On 13 October he wrote: lic, where one of his captains had been able to had reached not the Far East, but a New World
verify the presence of gold. undreamed of by the classical geographers
I was attentive and labored to find out if
there was any gold; and I saw that some of His finds aroused great enthusiasm in Spain. whose works provided the basis for his "enter-
them wore a little piece hung in a hole that He presented the six Tamo captives he had prise of the Indies."
they have in their noses. And by signs I was brought back with him to Ferdinand and Isabella In the journal of his first Caribbean voyage
able to understand that, going to the south or when he first reported to them in Barcelona in Columbus left accurate descriptions of the land-
April
for Co-
their physical
scape the Tainos inhabited,
1493. In the initial
enthusiasm
rounding the island to the south, there was
there a king who had large vessels of it and lumbus' discovery, these Tamos were treated as appearance, and some of their customs. Wishing
culture, he commis-
to know more about their
celebrities: they were baptized, with the king,
had very much gold And so I will go
sioned Fray Ramon Pane, who accompanied him
to the southwest to seek gold and precious the queen, and the infante Don Juan acting as on his second voyage, to make a study of the
godparents, and one of them
remained attached
stones... I want to go to see if I can find the
island of Cipango. 7 to the royal household until his death two years religious rituals and beliefs on the island of
later. Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, a Milanese Hispaniola. Pane spent four years among the
This search for gold took Columbus from the humanist at the Spanish court whose writings Tainos, learning their language by listening to
Bahamas to eastern Cuba, which he believed to helped to spread news of the New World their stories and their songs, and prepared a
be a peninsula attached to the Chinese main- throughout Europe, immediately connected the report entitled Relation acerca de las antigue-
land, and thence to the island of Hispaniola. Tamos with classical accounts of the Golden dades de los indios ("Report about the antiqui-
Columbus would not abandon the misconcep- Age, in which early man lived in innocence, ties of the Indians"), which he submitted to
tion that he was somewhere off the coast of without property or social controls, in complete Columbus around 1498. In it he faithfully
China, possibly in the China Sea that Marco happiness. 11 recorded his observations and the statements
Polo had described as dotted with 7,448 islands, For his second voyage, in the fall of 1493, that had been made to him, showing none of
8
most of them inhabited. When his Tamo guides Columbus was provided by the crown with a the prejudices that characterized the accounts
described their enemies, the Caribs, as the large fleet manned by 1,500 men. This time he of the more militant Christians.
people of "Caniba," Columbus [11 December sailed a more southerly route to the Lesser Father Pane's report was read by three con-
1492] recognized them immediately as the sub- Antilles, because his Tamo pilots had told him temporary authors —Peter Martyr d'Anghiera,
jects of the Chinese emperor: "And thus I say that its islands extended out into the Atlantic Fray Bartolome de Las Casas, and Columbus'
again how other times I said... that Caniba is Ocean, making possible a shorter crossing. He son Fernando, all of whom made use in their
nothing else but the people of the Grand Khan, stopped at Guadeloupe, which he found to be own writings of the information it contained.
9
who must be here very close to this place/' He occupied by Island-Caribs, the southern neigh- An inadequate Italian translation of the report
12
was also aware that he might be in the spice bors of the Tamos. Rescuing several Tafno was published in 1571, after which the original
women who were being held captive there, he was lost. Arrom has reconstructed it by trans-
took them back to their homeland in Puerto lating the Italian version back into Spanish, col-
Rico and proceeded to La Navidad in Hispaniola, lating it with the information cited by Peter
only to find that all the men he had left there Martyr, Las Casas, and Fernando Columbus,
had been killed by the local Tainos. He then correcting errors, and studying the meaning of
turned his attention to the goldfield in the the Indians' own words for the nature and
northern part of the Dominican Republic and attributes of their deities as recorded by Pane.
established a base, which he named Isabela, Other sixteenth-century observers, such as
from which to exploit the field, hoping, though Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes, have
as it turned out, vainly, that significant quanti- also contributed to our knowledge of Tamo
ties of gold could be produced. Having thus ful- culture. 14
filled the crown's instruction to found a new Further information about the Tainos has
colony, he resumed his search for a passage to been difficult to obtain. They were not literate,
the Chinese mainland, sailing westward to Cuba and their culture disappeared by the mid-six-
and exploring its south coast until he passed teenth century, too soon for their oral tradi-
from Tamo territory into that of a people known tions, customs, and beliefs to be recorded in
fig. i. Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes, as Guanahatabeys. 13 He halted shortly before detail. Nevertheless, archaeologists and lin-
Tamo Dwelling. Drawing from Historia general y guists have been able to confirm and correct
natural de las Indias, i: fol. 41, manuscript. Hunt- reaching the far end of the island and returned
ington Library, San Marino to Isabela by way of Jamaica and the eastern tip the accounts of the conquistadors and to learn

510 CIRCA 1492