The island’s Taíno chieftains scrutinized Isabela’s construction in early 1494 and the permanent presence apparently intended—but they didn’t attack.
The chieftains then traded peacefully among themselves and with other peoples in the Caribbean (excepting Caribes), and a few of them had traded goods with Columbus or sailors on his first voyage and hoped to continue to do so (as dramatized in Encounters Unforeseen: 1492 Retold). Isabela’s site didn’t usurp territory of the island’s principal chieftains (see post of January 1) and—like various rulers through history—many chieftains may have perceived that the limited incursion didn’t yet pose a threat and that a decision to war was premature. This was their first encounter with Europeans, and the European aggression of the next five centuries had yet to be understood. Chief Caonabó was the most prescient, and Columbus and Caonabó: 1493–1498 Retold depicts his decision to not attack Isabela at this time.
Columbus did face his first mutiny of voyagers in late February/early March 1494 (528 years ago). The chief royal accountant stationed at Isabela, Bernal de Pisa, led a plot to commandeer ships home and deliver to Queen Isabella written charges accusing Columbus of cruel and incompetent treatment of voyagers and lying about the abundance of gold and presence of Asian kingdoms. Columbus ordered Pisa and four assistants seized and incarcerated. One of the assistants—a commoner—was publicly hung, and Pisa was held indefinitely for surrender to Isabella and King Ferdinand when ships next sailed. Historians disagree about when the assistant’s execution occurred.
The following sixteenth century de Bry illustration (included in Columbus and Caonabó) critically portrays Columbus’s corporal punishment of Spaniards for minor offenses later occurring (1594, courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library, Providence, Rhode Island). Mutiny, of course, was among the gravest offenses.
