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Updated: June 15, 2025
La Navidad showed the Indians Europeans cursing one another, giving blows, only held back by those around from rushing at each other, stabbing and cutting. Finally they saw Tomaso Passamonte kill one Jacamo. Diego de Arana hung Tomaso Passamonte. But what were the Indians to think? Not what they thought when first we came from the winged canoes to their beaches.
Clear under sail we saw it, dimmed by the moon, but evident, a light as it were of a fire on a beach. Diego de Arana came up also and saw it. It was, we thought, more than a league away, a light that must be on land and made by man. It dwindled, out it went into night and there ran only plain silver.
The first complaint arose about the gods or the giants and women. Guacanagari came to La Navidad with Guarin and several old men his councilors. Diego de Arana received them and there was talk under the great tree within our gate. Then all the garrison was drawn up, and in the presence of the cacique Arana gave rebuke and command, and the two that had done the outrage had prison for a week.
Upon the 1st of January, I received of our Dispensero, as was my due, six thousand reals, for the month's dispense, and six thousand more in part of arrears. On the 5th, here came, among other diversions of sports we had this Christmas, Juan Arana, the famous comedian, who here acted about two hours to the admiration of all that beheld him, considering that he was near upon eighty years of age.
He thought we were too few in this land to be ridding of life the violent and lustful. But the Indians seemed to think that he said that he could not. They still doubted, I think, our mortality. As yet they had seen no mighty stranger bleed or die. Arana would have kept his garrison within the walls. But indeed it was not healthful for them there, and at the very word of confinement faction rose.
Roderigo Sanchez saw this first and brought him to the Admiral. The latter, taking up an armlet of green glass and a hawk bell, touched the gold in the ear. "Do you trade?" Glad enough was the Indian to trade. It lay in the Admiral's palm, a piece of gold as great as a filbert. Juan Lepe watched him make inquisition, Diego de Arana, Sanchez and Escobedo at his elbow.
The Spaniards, with the exception of their leader, Arana, had behaved very badly toward each other and toward the natives. They wanted wives, and had stolen all the young women from Guacanagari's village and then had fought with each other for the prettiest. Having obtained wives, some deserted the little European colony and went to live as savages among the Indians.
I then dispatched James de Arana the provost, and Peter Gutieres, your highnesses secretary, to acquaint the king with what had happened, and to inform him, that as I was bound to his own port to pay him a visit, according to his desire, I had lost my ship on a flat opposite his town.
There were squabbles and fights in which one or two of the Spaniards were killed; and Pedro Gutierrez and Rodrigo de Escovedo, whom Columbus had appointed as lieutenants to Arana, headed a faction of revolt against his authority, and took themselves off with nine other Spaniards and a great number of women.
And the more to impress the natives with awe and respect, and to take away all hopes that they might be able to do now as they had done with Arana and the thirty-eight Christians who had been left with him at the Nativity, he carried all the men that he could along with him, that the natives might see and be sensible of the power of the Christians, and that if any injury should be offered even to a single individual of our people, there was a sufficient force to ensure due and severe chastisement.
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