Columbus Shows Clemency To Locals: On Second Voyage, later April 1494

The son of Christopher Columbus in his biography of his father, took the opportunity at this point in the chronology to give example of the kind of clemency he offered to the locals. Also to show their fear of horses. Columbus had sent the man Hojeda inland with more than 400 men to relieve Pedro Margarit at the new settlement of Santo Tomas.

Bad news had been arriving about uprisings and conflicts with the locals and Columbus needed to reassure his men both about their own strength but also the justice of their methods. When the captain Hojeda, after marching inland and had crossed the aforementioned Rio del Oro, he captured the local chieftain and a couple of his relatives and sent them back to Isabela in chains. Additionally, he

"... took one of their chieftains too and had one of his ears cut off in the centre of his village because of his treatment of three Christians on their way from Isabela to Santo Tomas: this chieftain had lent them [the Christians] five Indians to carry their clothing across the river ford, and when the Christians were half-way across these Indians had run off to his village with their clothes and the cacique instead of punishing theor crime had taken the clothing himself and refused to return it."

One could make a case here, even with this scant evidence or testimony that these locals were being punished for betraying the trust bestowed on them by these Christian explorers. Whether cutting off the ear of a chief was appropriate justice for this betrayal is an entirely different matter. But the cacique on the near side of the river, closer to Isabela, decided to take this opportunity to show his merit in the matter, according to Hernan Colon.

"The cacique who ruled on the other side of the river, however, relying on the services he had rendered to the Christians, decided to accompany the prisoners to Isabela and intercede for them with the Admiral. The Admiral received him politely and ordered that the Indians with their hands tied should be sentenced to death by public proclamation. The good cacique wept at the sight and their lives were granted him, the guilty Indians promising by signs that they would never commit another crime."

Remember this is an example of how the son showed that his father the Admiral provided justice on the locals. This is all he says about the matter. If only we knew more. Still more messages arrived from Santo Tomas.

"No sooner had the Admiral set these Indians at liberty than a horseman from Santo Tomas arrived with bad news. On passing through the town of the cacique who had been made prisoner he had found that this man's subjects had seized five Christians on their way back from Sannto Tomas to Isabela. Arriving suddenly on his horse he had terrified the Indians and freed his fellow-Christians, putting more than 500 of the natives to flight, and wounding two of them in the chase. He [this messenger] said that on reaching the further side of the river he had seen the Indians coming back to attack the Christians, but when they saw his horse they had again run away, terrified that the creature might fly back across the river."

 Here, Colon has given example to the idea that the locals could not be trusted left to their own devices, that Christians were under attack - a common Spanish claim back in Spain as well - and that the appearance of a horse could scare hundreds of locals. Never mind that this was not India, so the locals were not actually Indian and that horses were known and common in actual India.
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quotes, from p. 167 in: The Four Voyages, Christopher Columbus, edited, translated and with an introduction by JM Cohen, 1969 and for The Penguin Group, London, 1969