Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand spent May organizing the effort to dispatch Columbus’s second voyage promptly. They appointed Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, archdeacon of Seville, to administer the enterprise with Columbus, granting the two men broad authority to commission ships and enlist seamen, soldiers, and tradesmen suitable for colonization of “Española” and to provision supplies, weapons, and ammunition. A small horse cavalry was conscripted. They selected a Catalan friar, Bernaldo Buil, to lead the clerics chosen and sought his designation by Pope Alexander VI as papal nuncio to the “Indies.”
On May 29, the sovereigns rendered their written order to Columbus for the administration of the lands “discovered,” expressing that they desired the increase of the faith and directing Columbus to convert the inhabitants by all ways and means. Their order admonished that the objective of conversion might be better attained if Columbus compelled all who voyaged there to treat the “Indians” very well and lovingly and abstain from doing them any injury, arranging that both peoples hold much conversation and intimacy, each serving the other to the best of their ability. Columbus was to give the “Indians” gifts and punish severely those who maltreated them. Vassalage was then contemplated, slavery was not.
The order didn’t address what Columbus should do in the event the “Indians” chose to resist the sovereigns’ settlement on their homeland. But the pope had granted the Taíno homeland to the sovereigns, and there wasn’t a misunderstanding as to what was expected. Columbus was to establish and maintain the colony—if necessary, by using the weapons provisioned. While they wished the “Indians” brought into their realm peacefully, the sovereigns were to be the “Indians” rulers regardless of resistance.