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| | ==Fourth Voyage== | | ==Fourth Voyage== |
| | When rumors of the confusion in Isabella reached Spain the king and queen sent Francisco de Bobadilla to investigate. Bobadilla arrested Columbus and his brother in the name of the crown, took charge of Isabella forcefully and sent them back to Spain. Columbus begged for one more chance to explore “Asia”. The monarchs gave him four broken down ships. His fleet was beaten with storms and he was forced to give up his last journey. He started back for Spain, but his ships were on the verge of collapse and he was forced to stay at Jamaica. He sent one of his crew to Isabella in a canoe to get rescue ships. Seven months later the ships came and took him back to Spain. | | When rumors of the confusion in Isabella reached Spain the king and queen sent Francisco de Bobadilla to investigate. Bobadilla arrested Columbus and his brother in the name of the crown, took charge of Isabella forcefully and sent them back to Spain. Columbus begged for one more chance to explore “Asia”. The monarchs gave him four broken down ships. His fleet was beaten with storms and he was forced to give up his last journey. He started back for Spain, but his ships were on the verge of collapse and he was forced to stay at Jamaica. He sent one of his crew to Isabella in a canoe to get rescue ships. Seven months later the ships came and took him back to Spain. |
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| | + | ==Establishment of Slavery== |
| | + | Following his arrival, Columbus established ruthless slavery, including sexual slavery, of the natives. He wrote to a friend in 1500: "A hundred castellanoes (a Spanish coin) are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten (years old) are now in demand." His enslavement of the natives in his gold mines was so brutal that within 2 years, 125,000 natives (half the population) were dead. Columbus himself wrote: "We shall take you and your wives, and your children, and shall make slaves of them, and we shall take away your goods, and shall do you all the mischief and damage that we can, and we protest that the deaths and losses which shall accrue from this are your fault." |
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| | + | Bartolome de las Casas, a Catholic priest wrote, in the "History of the Indies" published in 1875, "... Slaves were the primary source of income for the Admiral (Columbus) with that income he intended to repay the money the Kings were spending in support of Spaniards on the Island. They provide profit and income to the Kings. (The Spaniards were driven by) insatiable greed ... killing, terrorizing, afflicting, and torturing the native peoples ... with the strangest and most varied new methods of cruelty." |
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| | + | Also documenting Columbus' cruel legacy, Father Fray Antonio de Montesino, a Dominican preacher, in December 1511 said this in a sermon that implicated Christopher Columbus and the colonists in the genocide of the native peoples: "Tell me by what right of justice do you hold these Indians in such a cruel and horrible servitude? On what authority have you waged such detestable wars against these people who dealt quietly and peacefully on their own lands? Wars in which you have destroyed such an infinite number of them by homicides and slaughters never heard of before..." |
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| | + | Local inhabitants who resisted Columbus and his crew had their ears or noses cut off, were mauled by attack dogs, skewered with pikes and shot. Reprisals were so severe that many of the natives committed mass suicide and women began practicing abortions in order not to leave children enslaved. The population of Haiti at the time of Columbus's arrival was between 1.5 million and 3 million. Sixty years later, every single native had been murdered. |
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| | + | For his cruelty, Christopher Columbus and his brothers were sent back to Spain (on August 23, 1500) in chains by Spanish Governor Francesco de Bobadilla for mistreating Natives in the section of Hispaniola now known as Haiti. When they arrived in Spain, however, they were immediately released and graciously received at the royal court. |
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| | ==Death== | | ==Death== |