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Updated: June 8, 2025
He had formerly sailed on discovery along with Bastidas, and had afterwards obtained a good settlement in Hispaniola; but had committed some excesses in that island, for which he was in danger of being put to death.
Bishop Bastidas, Manso's successor, was less favorably disposed toward them, and demanded payment of tithes of the produce of their agricultural establishments. He reported to the king in 1548: "There is a Dominican monastery here large enough for a city of 2,000 inhabitants, and there are many friars in it.
This voyage, so absurd in its motive but so fertile in its results, might well be considered to be simply imaginary, were it not vouched for by historians of such high repute as Peter Martyr, Oviedo, Herrera, and Garcilasso de la Vega. Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, who was fifteen years younger than Ponce de Leon, had come to America with Bastidas and had settled in Hispaniola.
In 1503, Roderigo Bastidas of Seville went with two caravels at his own cost, to the Antilles, where he first came to the Isla Verde, or the Green island, close by Guadaloupe; whence he sailed westwards to Santa Martha and Cape do la Vela, and to the Rio Grande or Great river.
In the same year, Roderigo de Bastidas was sent to discover and reduce the country of Santa Martha; but refusing to allow the soldiers to plunder a certain town, he was assassinated in his bed by Peter Villaforte, formerly his fast friend, who joined in the conspiracy against him.
Bishop Bastidas called the Government's attention to the fact in a letter dated March 20, 1544, in which he says: " ... The new tax to be paid on sugar in this island, as ordained by your Majesty, will still further reduce the number of mills, which have been diminishing of late.
In 1655 when an English fleet under Admiral William Penn appeared before the city and landed an army under General Venables, there was great excitement and fear in Santo Domingo, and the archbishop ordered that the sacred ornaments and vessels be hidden and that "the sepulchres be covered in order that no irreverence or profanation be committed against them by the heretics, and especially do I so request with reference to the sepulchre of the old Admiral which is on the gospel side of my holy church and sanctuary," That other tombs were hidden, whether at this time or another, was shown in 1879, when, on repairing the flooring in the chapel of the "stone bishop" in the cathedral, the slab indicating the grave of the Adelantado Rodrigo de Bastidas, the explorer, was found concealed under a stone, and it was discovered that the epitaph of Bastidas on a board which from time immemorial had hung on the wall of the chapel was an incorrect copy of the original graven on the burial slab.
He told them that he had been upon this coast formerly with Bastidas, when they sailed to the bottom of the gulf, where they found a fine large town, in a fruitful soil and salubrious climate, inhabited indeed by warlike Indians, but who did not use poisoned arrows. He exhorted them, therefore, to bestir themselves in getting off their stranded vessels, and to sail to that place.
In 1543 it was ordained by an Order in Council that all Indians still alive in Cuba, la Española, and Puerto Rico, were as free as the Spaniards themselves, and they should be permitted to loiter and be idle, "that they might increase and multiply." Bishop Rodrigo Bastidas, who was charged to see to the execution of this order in Puerto Rico, still found 80 Indians to liberate.
In one of the lateral chapels, which belonged to the Bastidas family, the resting place of Bishop Bastidas, who in the early days was bishop in Venezuela, Porto Rico and Santo Domingo, is marked by a large marble recumbant figure of a bishop and the chapel is therefore known as "the chapel of the stone bishop."
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