Robert Goodwin on Rewriting America

The original journal was lost but las Casas, who went down in history as the defender of the Indians against the barbarous Spanish conquistadors, was very interested in the history of the New World and he was given access to Columbus’s original diary, his on-board journal of that first journey. For his own purposes he made a partial transcription, partial paraphrase and that is now all we have left. The diary is a day-by-day account of the journey, written twice a day, from the moment Columbus left Spain in 1492 to the moment he got back. It’s amazing not only because it is an account of that discovery of America but it’s amazing just how tiny a bit of America he actually discovered. He saw a few of the Bahamas, a bit of Cuba and a bit of Haiti and then went home. Obviously, there is a sort of interest in what he discovers from a geographical and ethnological point of view … the journal contains the first ever description of someone smoking tobacco! He constantly discusses the colour of the Indians’ skin as he tries to decide whether to sophisticate them, in which case he lightens the colour of their skin in his writing, or whether to see them as merchandise in which case he darkens it. He knew the Indians would need to be black to be seen as merchandise – he was plugging into the established racial iconography of the day.

 

But more amazing is the personal side of the diaries. His men were threatening to mutiny at one point. In fact, one ship did mutiny and went back to Spain but the captain died on the way. He was possibly the first European ever to die of syphilis.

 

Did syphilis come from America?

 

Well, it’s probably a myth but syphilis blew up in Europe in the wake of the discovery of America. Anyway, you get this window on to a very anguished man. He talks a lot about the lizards, which were probably crocodiles. It’s an emotionally vivid picture, apart from the sailing direction, of how he’s been deserted by one of his ships. He’s in a big bay on the northern shore of Cuba where he’s taken refuge and he’s trying to make sense of where he is. He thought Cuba must be China and he actually sent an embassy of men inland to find the Great Khan. They found some primitive people smoking leaves. I mean, the atlases he was using were Marco Polo and Pliny. He had read about Marco Polo’s great sea of 7,000 islands and he’s sitting in what was basically a swimming pool in Cuba and he writes that he thinks he must be in the South China Sea. It’s science fiction – he really was on the edge of space, completely lost. He describes the utter stress he is under on the edge of the world, isolated from his crews, his desperation building up. It is a picture of an utterly lost human being.

 

Yes. This is an account of the first ever European, or I should say European and African, expedition to North America. Picking up on our ‘lost’ theme, an expedition of about 300 Spaniards and their African slaves landed at Tampa Bay in 1528. There were only a handful of Africans. I have found evidence for four, but there were almost certainly more. They knew so little about where they were that they assumed they were at Matagorda Bay in Texas. Everything went wrong and shipwreck, disease and Indian attacks left only four of them still alive – three noblemen and an African slave. At that time America was populated by between one million and 18 million Indians – the estimates vary that much. Anyway, these four went native and became Indian shamans. As a result of their status they were able to travel up the Rio Grande to North Mexico and then west to Arizona, south to the Gulf of California and to New Mexico where they ran into some conquistadors going in the opposite direction. This must have been one of the most incredible meetings in history. Fifty lost Spanish conquistadors on horses in the bush in New Mexico and out of the bush come 600 Indians led by three blonde men and a black man.

 

Had the slave become their equal?

 

He was temporarily equal. When they got back to Mexico City where the Spanish were based nobody remembered to free him. His name was Esteban Dorantes, originally from West Africa, enslaved in North Africa where he’d learned Arabic, brought to Spain and then to America where he learnt a number of Indian languages. He was clearly, reading between the lines of the Cabeza de Vaca account, the one who negotiated the men’s relationship with the Indians and who was relied on to sort things out. De Vaca has no motive for aggrandising Dorantes and yet he is present when anything important is happening and was obviously highly able. That the first ever crossing of North America was led by a black man, and that he led the expedition through Louisiana, Alabama and Texas, is the political irony of the century. Once they were back in Mexico City the viceroy put him in charge of an army of Mexicans and he led them back up into Arizona. Then he disappears. There is some suggestion that he was so taken with the Mayo (Indians of the Mayo River) women that he hid away from the other Spaniards and took a few Mayo wives.