Rewriting Columbus From The Taino View with Andrew Rowen

Why does mainstream history completely erase the stories of the Indigenous leaders who actively fought back against European conquest? How did the fluid, complex politics of the Caribbean reshape global history long before the fall of the Aztecs and Incas ? In this episode of Varn Vlog, we sit down with historical researcher and novelist Andrew Rowen to explore the unsparing, bicultural reality of ground zero in the Americas. 


Andrew Rowen has spent over a decade parsing through dense anthropological records and reading between the lines of heavily biased Spanish primary sources to reconstruct the authentic perspective of the Taino people. In this deep-dive conversation, Andrew illuminates the life of Anacaona—a shrewd, competent ruler, poetess, and the first female Native American chieftain to resist the Spanish conquest. We explore her brilliant and tragic political strategies of separate coexistence, tracking how her chiefdom leveraged food logistics and made uneasy alliances with Spanish mutineers to stave off total annihilation. 


We also turn the lens toward the European side of the equation, dissecting the conflicting motivations of Christopher Columbus and Queen Isabella. Rowen traces Isabella’s internal journey of conscience regarding the enslavement of her Indigenous "vassals," , contrast to the craven extraction methods of the commoner conquistadors who disobeyed her orders to establish the roots of centuries-long forced labor networks like repartimiento and encomienda. 

Finally, we confront the raw data behind the catastrophic Indigenous population collapse—sorting through the realities of forced gold mining slavery and the merciless spread of European diseases like smallpox and typhus . If you want an objective, unromanticized framework for how the transatlantic world was truly forged, this bicultural breakdown is an absolute must-watch. 

 Explore Andrew Rowen's acclaimed historical novel series (Encounters Unforeseen, Columbus and the Caonabó, and Isabel Anacaona and Columbus's Demise) on AndrewRowen.com! 

Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to Bitterlake

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Welcome And Guest Background

C. Derick Varn 0:48

Hello, and welcome to Barn Block. And today I'm with Andrew Wowen. He has been a researcher in the history of encounters between the European and the Caribbean peoples for over a dozen years, both in terms of novels and in terms of things that are based on anthropological studies and primary source research. His works include Encounters Unforeseen, 1492 Retold, Columbus and the Calabino, 1493 to 1498 retold, and most recently Isabel Anacalma and Columbus's demise 1498 to 19 uh to 19 1498 to 1502 retold. And we will be talking about the his the historical works that you're pulling from, why you felt the need to retell these tales, what anthropolog what anthropology informs your your your work, etc. etc. So you mentioned that you're you're using primary sources to reconstruct the Taino perspective. Given that the written record is overwhelmingly European, how do you utilize this anthropological data to read uh into the Spanish accounts and to reconstruct the Taino reasoning and political strategies?

SPEAKER_00 2:38

Good question. The sources, the primary sources for the period are all European. The Taino peoples of the Caribbean didn't have a written language to record history by. So the only resort is

Reading Conquest Sources Against The Grain

SPEAKER_00 2:57

this writings by the invaders, in fact, the conquerors. Those primary sources, which include Columbus's writings, writings of Spaniards who accompanied him, writings of Spaniards who rebelled against him, records of investigation, the orders of his principals, Queen Isabella and Fernando of Spain, orders of his ministers, and so forth, do contain information about the Taino peoples, including their political organization, their religion, and their leadership. Obviously, the information contained is just a fraction of what the contemporary sources tell you about Columbus and Queen Isabella and King Fernando. It's also biased. It's all written from a kind of Spanish male conquistador viewpoint, and it contains the biases you'd expect from that. Biases about the cultural inferiority of the Taino people, and biases about the submission of Taino women to conquest. So you you read them and you can find information about the Taino leadership and what happened and their perspective, but then you have to filter it through the learning of anthropologists. And anthropologists have studied the Taino peoples for over two centuries now, and there's quite a lot of learning about their religion and their polity and their sociology and customs and so forth. And by reading their interpretations of the Spanish primary sources, you can kind of reach a more bias-free understanding. There obviously is speculation involved. I write my books as historical novels so that the reader can appreciate what the leaders of both the European and Native peoples thought from their own perspective, in the heat of the moment, so to speak, without the hindsight of history, with a 15th-century perspective and without moral judgments. I leave historical judgments and moral judgments for the reader. But along with the novel, you can see at the end of the novel, I include a sources section. It's about 40, 50 pages long, and it contains a bibliography, obviously, of all the sources, but it also contains the analog of what a historian would write in his book about the caveats. Why have I interpreted certain things certain ways? Why I've speculated this, what are alternative interpretations. So there's obviously speculation involved, but it's a reasoned speculation. And I point out the reasoning in the sources section. Try hard to stick to history. So all the people and the events depicted are real. The stories are set forth chronologically between protagonists, either European or native, sometimes mixed, obviously. And I I don't try to, I don't stray from history to create drama, I don't create overarching literary plots. I don't try to stick to the primary sources that not embellish hero or villain. And I try to get practical about it. So when the Europeans are describing a practice which they don't consider slavery, but it really is for servitude, I you know present the Taino viewpoint of that as being for servitude, slavery.

C. Derick Varn 7:12

I mean your books are interesting to me because they are a lot like historical fiction. They are novels, but you are pretty rigorous in documenting not just your sources, but also your methodology and your choices. And you rely a lot on comparing historical sources with anthropological knowledge. And what in what way do you think you distinguish her work from both traditional historical fiction and from narrative history?

SPEAKER_00 7:52

I think they're kind of a combination of both. And it's unusual, but it's not

Building Rigorous Historical Novels

SPEAKER_00 7:59

unique. When I decided to write my books, I obviously have read history all my life and I've read historical fiction. And there are other authors, not that many, but there are other authors who write this way to try to stick very closely to history and write it as an historical novel so the reader experiences rather than just understands. And for example, William Bowman. I don't know whether you're aware of his books, but he wrote a series. Okay, so he wrote a series of books, commencing with the ice shirt, which is the story of the Norse settlement in North America. And that really was kind of like the model of how and why I approached the books I did. I really liked the ice shirt. When you read it, you get to understand what Leif Erickson felt, and you get to understand what other people felt from their perspective. And I'm not, I'm not, yeah, you know, he's a very famous author and so forth. But it's that feel that I wanted to give. And I would say another influence was my mother, who was a grade school history teacher, and she was, you know, very keen in teaching her kids, including myself, not only to like reading history, but to understand that history is written by the conqueror, and there's another side to every story. You have to understand that.

C. Derick Varn 9:39

I I I smirked when you said William Bowman's has actually devoted some solo show specifically to his work. So I that does kind of make it clear what the aims are. And I find it interesting in that what you are doing in this kind of liminal space between traditional narrative history and and what we might call traditional historical fiction does enable you to kind of bridge disciplines. I mean, because you can get into discipline rabbit holes about interpretations. I think about in anthropology, Columbus's view somewhat. I mean, I wouldn't say history has a kind of view in him today either, but like differently than he is in history, partly because of the focus of study. What kinds of display?

SPEAKER_00 10:33

Well, that is a very accurate and correct perception.

C. Derick Varn 10:37

Oh, good. So so what did you pull the most from in creating these books? I mean, how did you how did you bridge that? Because it it I could I can see the the threads in the book I read of the anthropological study, but uh you know, and definitely the primary source data, but what other work did you include?

SPEAKER_00 10:56

Uh I try hard to write a good novel so the reader enjoys it. So let me give it an example of fictionalization that I that I think answers your your question. In history, you would read a description of a written order that Isabel gave one of her ministers about what to do in the Indies. In my books, I create a scene with a dialogue between Isabelle and the minister that reflects the terms of the order and gets to it. Or so that there's a dialogue that pretty accurately tells you what was ordered instead of just a discussion of the order. Or if in the primary source you see that there is a parley between a Taino chieftain and a European Columbus or someone else that reaches a result, I do the same thing. I create a dialogue between the chieftain and the European that reaches the result. Columbus is is almost easier because he was a voluminous writer. He'd put down his thoughts and his ruminations, and some of them are not true, but you can see lots of what he was thinking. You can put those thoughts in the soliloquies in the novel, which I sometimes do, or in dialogues. So what I'm doing is that I'm fictionalizing the day-to-day with dialogues, but the events that occurred can be can all be documented. It's not unique, but there are no overarching literary plots that you'd find in you know romantic historical fiction. It sticks to history.

C. Derick Varn 12:52

I guess it gets me to some of the key figures in, and particularly your most recent of these retold novels, and and that is Anakalna, who is often in later, although pre-contemporary secondary sources, romanticized or martyred, uh treated as more of a almost a mythical figure. In in your reconstruction, what do you how what do you think her actual political strategy was for separate coexistence? And and then how did you come to that conclusion? Was she attempting a balance of power or some kind of task or retreat? I mean,

Anacaona And Separate Coexistence Strategy

C. Derick Varn 13:39

you know, what what do you think from the evidence that you amassed she was thinking?

SPEAKER_00 13:49

That the answer to that question contains a couple of elements to it. Let me just give a a little bio of her first. Okay, and then try to directly answer your question. She was born into the Cakel family, the the ruling family of one of the five large chiefdoms in Espaniola at the time of conquest, 1492, when Columbus came by first. And you know, the primary sources don't record the ages of the Taino chieftains, but she was born somewhere around 1468, making her 30 years old at the beginning of the book. And in her youth, and you can see this in all the primary sources, she was renowned as the island's most beautiful woman, and she then became renowned as the island's greatest poetess. The Tenos recorded their history and their spiritual stories and so forth in song and dances that they called Areetos, and she was renowned for that. When she was a young teenager, she was married to the chieftain in the in the neighboring chiefdom, Keanabo, and went to live with him and his chiefdom, Zaragua. For those I assume no one knows, but Zaragua is in the southwestern portion of the island of Hispaniola. It would be the southern half of the country of Haiti now. So it's a fairly large territory. When Columbus invaded in 1494, the Tainos resisted his invasion just like Native Americans did throughout the Americas. They tried to expel the invasion from the island, and she assisted her husband, Kayanobo, in creating an alliance, and Kayanobo led a war to expel Columbus from the island. That war failed in 1495, and Kayanobo's chieftain was conquered when, and Columbus basically conquered the central portion of the island. But he didn't conquer the other portions of the island, the western portion or the eastern portion. Most remained unconquered. When Anacona learns of her husband's death, she goes back to Zaragua and becomes the advisor to the chieftain, who is her brother, her elder brother by about four years. And the chieftains in the unconquered territory at that point saw that they couldn't expel Columbus's invasion from the island, but they did not surrender. They wanted to maintain their own chieftains separate from the conquest in the center, and they had some leverage to do so. And that leverage was the Spanish settlements in the center, both under Columbus and his successors, couldn't produce enough food to survive. So they had to make deals with Indian chieftains to get food. And the basic deal made then, this is 1496, 1497, and even 1498 and beyond, was we'll give you food if you don't bother us, if you don't invade us. And she advises her brother, Chieftain Baquio, to accept that deal in 1497. There were about less than 500 Spaniards on the island when Columbus returns to the island on his third voyage. He's been in Spain for two years. And over a hundred of them rebelled against his rule. They found him, you know, they felt cheated that they hadn't become rich with the gold he promised. They thought his rules too harsh and cruel of them, not the Indians, of them, the Spanish settlers. And, you know, they didn't like the fact that he was a nobleman, even though he was a foreigner to Spain. He was Genoese. But anyway, he lands on the island, and the rebels who had rebelled while he was in Spain flee to Zaragua, where Beecchio and Anaconda have their chiefdom. And Behecchio and Anaconda are displeased. You know, they thought they were going to be left alone, but they make a deal, it's kind of forced upon them, to house the rebels, and the rebels say to them, if you house us and harbor us, we will release you from the obligation to deliver food to Columbus, and we will also protect you from his invasion. Now, this was a bitter pill to swallow, but the strategy was to ally with rebels to prevent the conquest from coming into Zaragua. And the central story of my book is essentially how that strategy worked. During the period uh 1498 to 1502, a number of Spaniards, the rebels, lived in Zaragua. It was a bitter pill for Bejequin Anaconda because they abused people where they lived. They, you know, abused women for sex, they forced men and women to labor for them as, quote, butlers and maids was the word they would use to describe it. But it was only a hundred men out of a territory the size of half of Haiti. And they were spared conquest. Behekio and Anaconna continued to rule. Anacona succeeded Bahekio in 1501 on his death to rule as a separate unconquered chiefdom. So getting back to your original question, I think much of the literature romanticizes feminine qualities about Anacona, you know, her beauty, her stature as a poetess, her ability to negotiate with conquerors, which she did. She negotiated with the Europeans to maintain these deals of separateness. And there were a number of friction points there that she was instrumental in negotiating. And she did so without the experience of the next five centuries of conquest and treating breaking to guide her. I mean, this was a virgin experience for the people on Hispaniola.

C. Derick Varn 21:35

This leads me also to another key figure in this book, which is Queen Isabel. And I wanted to ask you, you know, uh, Isabel is a much more documented figure. We have lots of sources for her. But how did you construct her decisions and and what surprised you as you constructed them from the sources?

SPEAKER_00 22:03

Good good question, Derek. I write my books from the bottom up, meaning I read the primary sources, obviously, I read all the secondary sources too, and decide what I think is important to portray. And the title of the book has all three of them in it because I

Queen Isabella And The Limits Of Reform

SPEAKER_00 22:22

think all three of the characters were fundamental to what happened in those years. Isabel, you know, is known as a warrior queen. When she began her rule, she was ruthless in dispelling challengers to her throne. She was firm in imposing law and order in a fairly chaotic kingdom. She reconquered the Southern portion of Spain from the Muslim Emirates that lived there at the time in the Kingdom of Granada. And she instituted the Inquisition, she expelled the Jews from Spain and the Muslims from Spain for not converting to Christianity. Those who didn't convert had to leave. So she's a pretty tough cookie. But when it came to the Indians, she was conquering. She conquered as a warrior queen. There's no doubt she was going to conquer. But there is a softer side to this woman. And that side is that she wanted the Indians to be treated as her vassals, as free men, kind of like poor Spanish farmers. There's no doubt that, like the other conquistadores, she thought Spanish civilization was superior. Christianity was superior. She wanted the Indians to be assimilated into that and that they would be improved by that assimilation. The feeling of superiority was complete, but it was also benign. They were to be treated as free men as her vassals. They weren't to be punished like Jews or Muslims who didn't convert. They were to be assimilated. You know, in modern America, we think of race. Isabel wanted her favorite marriage between Spaniards and Tainos, so long as it was voluntary. Now she was ahead of her time because no one else around her really cared about the treatment of the Indians. So this is something about her that I think it's understood, but it's not emphasized in the biographies of her. And I wanted to bring that out. I don't know what this is video two, right? Okay, so here's the cover of my book. And this is what I believe is the first depiction of Columbus's greatest enslavement of Indians. When he arrives in Hispaniola in 1498, he finds the rebellion. The idea of settling the rebellion with land grants hadn't been thought of at that point. But both the rebels and Columbus discuss and tentatively agree upon a deal whereby Columbus pardons them and they will return to Spain and get out of his hair, so to speak, get out of Espaniola if he grants them slaves. So he gathers up 800 non-resistant Taino Indians and awards them to the slaves as you know the inducement to leave Espanola. He loads them on the ships in the Ozama River, which is at the colonial zone of modern Santo Domingo, where the settlement was. And the rebels don't trust his pardon, so they don't make themselves available of it and don't come to Santo Domingo. So some of Columbus's loyalists leave with the slaves awarded to them. And this is that they reach Spain in December of that year. 500 of them have been died and thrown overboard from disease and the conditions and so forth. But Isabel learns of it, and this is when she says, furiously, her famous remark, what authority does my admiral have to give my vassals to anyone? You know, a year and a half after that is when she writes her famous decree in June 1500, after she's decided to demote Columbus and bring him home, freeing the slaves he sent to Spain, manumetting them. And my book traces the decision she made to send a courtier around Andalusia, southern Spain, to find the some thousand people who Columbus had sent to Spain over the years that were slaves, free them, and send them back to Hispaniola. Now, unfortunately, almost all of them had died, only two dozen of them were rounded up. Nineteen were actually repatriated. History doesn't record what happened to them. But that was something she did. And there are other conquistadors in the book who are conquering South America for her at that point, and they bring back slaves. And after she's made this ruling, she throws, I forget whether it's one or two of them in jail during the period of the book for doing that. So she was kind of ahead of her time. None of her ministers, none of her financiers cared about the fate of the Indians. They all thought the conqueror could do what he wanted with a conquered person. All the men, maybe not, maybe not all, but most of the men, virtually all, I think, who went to settle in Espaniola, went there to find gold, went there to get these land grants, and to have the servitude of a conquered people. They wanted to be, and these were the words in the primary sources, princes among savages. So regardless of her efforts, and my book traces her numerous orders to try to prevent what happened from happening, no one on the island paid attention to her, be it the leadership there, including Columbus and his successors, or be it the rank and file settlers, or being the merchants who brought the boats over, or whatever. So, you know, Isabel is a very studied person. You can find this in the biographies of her, but I think I trace her journey of conscience, so to speak, more closely with respect to the enslaved Indians that you'll find in in other sources.

C. Derick Varn 30:23

How much do you think his his demotion and subsequent falling out of favor was a result of an inability to transition from a mariner to a colonial administrator? And how much of it was just being too craven in his methods of extraction?

SPEAKER_00 30:44

That's a very pressant question and has a couple elements to it. Let me start. He promised Isabel, who appointed him and removed him, that he would do two basic things. He would find territory for which contained gold and he'd bring back gold.

Why Columbus Loses Power

SPEAKER_00 31:12

Two, he'd find a shortcut to Cathay. At the time, most Europeans then didn't understand, in fact, I think virtually all Europeans then didn't understand the American continents between Spain and China. Isabel certainly didn't. The Portuguese didn't certainly didn't. They didn't know of the existence of the American continents. And Columbus thought he was going to sail directly across. So he doesn't find that for her. He doesn't find the kingdoms of the Grand Con. He finds something where people are illiterate and much poorer, and there isn't the gold there. So that's reason number one that she's disappointed. Reason number two is, as you said, he was ineffective as a governor. The Spaniards, who he ruled on her behalf, you know, for a large part didn't like him. They thought he, you know, had lied to them about the gold. They thought he had too strict a regimen of work and was cruel in his punishments of them for not working hard enough. And they resented his nobility that Isabella forged him. He couldn't surmount that. But the end result was he was ineffective. There were rebellions that we've talked about. There were three rebellions in the period, actually. I don't think any of them were particularly fair against Columbus, and Columbus's ultimate successor, Nicolas Alvando, punished the people who rebelled against him. So, you know, that is kind of the crown view of whether the rebels were justified or not. He disobeyed her orders. It wasn't only disobeying her orders on enslavement. The men under his command committed atrocities. And you can see in her orders in 1500, we've talked about, but thereafter, when she instructs his successors, you know, an insistence that the conduct and treatment of Indians be improved, that they not be forced into servitude, that they be given Christian instruction in a kindly way, according to her definition of kindness, which was kind of strict, but so I think it was a combination of failing his basic promises, not producing gold, the inability to command his subjects. And the final straw, I think, was the land grants. Do you want me to spend a moment on that? Because that's okay. So when he he was sent over in the third voyage, his instruction was to jumpstart the financial success of the settlement by authorizing and granting land grants to Spanish settlers. Until 1498, land conquered had been the crown, and Isabel wanted to incent Spaniards to emigrate there and build their own homes and farms with the dreams that they would own them. So he was authorized to grant Spanish settlers land. What actually happened was he settled the rebellion by granting Indian land and labor to the rebels, and then did the same with his own men to keep the balance of power. And that further infuriated her when she learned of that. It wasn't just the enslavements, it was the land grants that he was supposed to grant to Spanish settlers, side by side with treating the Indians as her free men vassals, that had entirely gone beyond her intent. The institutions that Columbus established with these land grants became known as Repartimiento and Encomiendo, and they would stretch on for centuries through the Spanish Americas. Repartimiento was the award of Indian land and the labor of the resident Indians to a Spanish settler. Encomienda was the grant of Indian labor alone to Spanish settlers. And during the period of my book, gold eventually is discovered in large part in Columbus, then begins to grant encomiendas, in effect, the right to use Indian labor and force mining, which is a substantial contributor to the population decline that occurred. At any rate, Isabel learned of that, and that was another factor, perhaps one of the final straws that led her to dismiss him. She had disobeyed him.

C. Derick Varn 37:03

This period that you you chose for this third book is the same period that the South American coast is more properly discovered. How did the shift of the conquistadors from isling from islandhopping to encountering a massive landmass change the ambitions of the Spanish crown during the four years you covered in this book?

SPEAKER_00 37:36

When Isabel learns that Columbus has located what he believes to be a continental landmass, she commences a process of dispatching

Mainland Sightings And New Ambitions

SPEAKER_00 37:51

explorers and conquistadors other than Columbus to explore it and claim it for Spain. And they start with the island of Trinidad, which Columbus named as such. It was called Carriani by its local people. And over the period 1498 to 1502, there are about seven or eight voyages dispatched. Now these voyages are three or four ships, some one ship. It's not a lot of people to conquer a landmass that is now known as Venezuela and Colombia, stretching through to Panama. So basically, what occurs is they trade for pearls, which excites the Spanish interest in the wealth of the area, and they slave raid. So the conquistadors, since Isabel has prohibited slavery, always claimed, well, they resisted your conquest, your majesty. She believes some of them, she doesn't believe others of them. But you're talking about seven or eight voyages, small numbers of people. So the notion that anything was conquered during this period of the book is just not true. Nothing was conquered. There were settlements built and abandoned. What happened was that the peoples in the areas invaded learned a lot quicker than the Taino Indians on Espaniola that Europeans were coming to conquer and enslave. In the beginning, the Tainos and Espaniola in 1492 and 1493, it was all a virgin experience, and Columbus traded goods with them, and they were actually excited in the beginning. They didn't realize that he would come to conquer. But it became pretty clear that the Europeans had an invasion intent in the Americas.

C. Derick Varn 40:24

So we've mentioned a couple of things that have alluded to the fact that the Spanish weren't really all that monolithic. You have mentioned that you did that there were three factions of rebels that opposed Columbus. And you also mentioned that a lot of their grievances weren't weren't fair. How did the internal class structures or status conflicts between these groups affect affect the indigenous population? How did these factions and the contending between the various Spanish factions affect the Taino?

SPEAKER_00 40:58

From Anna Kaona's viewpoint, she saw a conquest occurring and then dwindling and the conquerors fighting among themselves.

Spanish Factions And Taino Survival

SPEAKER_00 41:11

So Columbus lands in 1494 on a second voyage to begin the invasion with 1,200 people. By 1498, when the book begins, my current book begins, that number has dwindled to between 470 and 500 people. And by the end of the book, it's less than 400. So Anacona is beholding an effort that is declining. And it's disorganized in that the first rebellion is of settlers in her territory against Columbus. Another rebellion is with another conquistador who comes in and tries to dispose Columbus. A third is in her own territory again. Another person wants to kill Columbus. And with the decline in the Spanish settlement population and with their disorganization, it fueled the hopes in the unconquered chieftains, both her chieftain of Zaragua, and we haven't talked about it, there was another large chieftain in the east, that eventually the Spaniards, who appeared only to really want gold, their conquest might wither and go away. So the ideal was to survive, to continue to survive, to see if they reached a point where the invasion could be expelled. The European weapons were superior. They knew that.

C. Derick Varn 43:29

Oh, you asked about class. Yeah, and the class differences that might that how did Taino respond to that?

SPEAKER_00 43:37

I don't think that Tainos had a good hand on the difference in class. I do portray Anacona as understanding it. She was royalty, in effect, she was the royalty of the island, and she evaluates the Spaniards just like a royal person would evaluate a commoner. She she realizes that some of them are just menial laborers. Of course, most of them are illiterate, just as Latinos. So she doesn't draw a big distinction about, you know, one or two of the leaders could read books or something like that. That's not apparent to her. But she understands that the people she's dealing with really aren't nobility. But from the Spanish view of themselves, most of the settlers who came to Hispaniola were commoners. They were either tradesmen or farmers. There were obviously a few missionaries that were sailors, but most of them came for a new life. They they worked with their hands in Spain for noblemen. They thought they had no ability to advance. The ability to get the land grants and become princes of savages, so to speak, really did entice them. And you know, I think part of the rebellions isn't, in fact, a rebellion against Spanish society. And many Spanish historians have written it this way. These people were coming here and they didn't want to be bossed around by Columbus. They didn't want to be bossed around by noblemen in Spain and Isabel's ministers. They were sweating blood, they were dying of diseases, they were fighting Indians, they wanted to have their own society. So you can read quite a few Spanish historians who characterize this as kind of a class revolt.

C. Derick Varn 45:56

So, as you mentioned, that the discovery of the South American mainland was not really a conquest in this time, but you you do strongly hint that this indicates where a lot of conquests are going to be going. What specific institutional innovations or or failures do you that occur between 1498 and 1502 do you think have a major effect on the later conquest of the Mexica, the Aztecs, and the Incas?

SPEAKER_00 46:33

There really two. The first is the system of land grants. That became a staple for organization of Indian labor

Repartimiento Encomienda And Mestizo Society

SPEAKER_00 46:43

in the Spanish conquests in America, both in South America and in particular in Central America. It began right there in Hispaniola in the period of the book, 1492 1502. The next thing that happened, the other important thing that happened, was that mestizo society really began. Spaniards cohabitated with Taino women and had children. And most of the unions in the beginning were quite ugly. They were forced or with the threat of force. But over time, the Taino woman incorporated her custom into family life. And Spanish men, some Spanish men, and then more growing numbers of men wanted to marry their partners. Most people back then believed you had to be of the same religion to marry, and they wanted their partners to be Christians, and they wanted their children to be Christians. And so Mestizo society really begins on Hispaniola and it grows throughout the Americas. So there are plenty of people of millions of people of Caribbean ancestry who have a mestizo background that stem from what happened in Zaragua and the rest of Hispaniola during these years. And that too was mirrored in the conquest of Mexico and South America. And you can see the initial debate about it in this period. I mean, Isabel favored marriage of willing partners and assimilation. Others thought it was wrongful. And that debate continued throughout the Americas.

C. Derick Varn 48:49

One thing that I would I'm struck by reading off this book, and I suspect I'm gonna go back and read the first two and probably still be struck by this. How much this seems to be a battle between what is beginning to coalesce as modern notions of sovereignty and people, and what are what we would view as late medieval, early modern notions of sovereignty and a people. And there's two ways in which I want to ask you this, and one goes back to the vassalage distinction that you raised. Yeah, it's pretty clear that the conquistadors and the settlers in general viewed the

Sovereignty Faith And Premodern Worldviews

C. Derick Varn 49:36

defeated people as just a refor a resource for accumulation. And Queen Isabel was insisting that they were vassals, but this vassalage implies both a a Catholic and frankly feudal subject relation. Was some of the brutality related to the way in which this was almost a proving ground for kinds of conflict that are gonna emerge even in Europe, as this sort of feudal structure of governance is really beginning to weaken in the next hundred to two hundred years.

SPEAKER_00 50:35

Columbus and Isabel and all the people in my book are pre-scientific revolution. They all believe with varying degrees of certitude that a ruler is divinely appointed. That's true of the Tainos as well as Isabel. She ruled as God's agent in Spain. Columbus had theories, mathematical theories. I mean, he'd studied Ptolemy and Marinus and Alfragonus and the other great classic geographers, but he summed up his theory as being a biblical prophecy that one could sail from Spain to the Indies. And Isabel accepted that. We're in the pre-scientific revolution period. And I don't think we've reached the Enlightenment where you know the divine rule of a ruler is questioned. What is happening is that it's a virgin experience for all involved. And the Europeans come over, absolutely certain of their superiority, totally dismissive of Tano culture and religion, and see it's easy pickings to get rich. And that's basically what's happening. That's basically what's driving the conquistadors. Very little attention is paid to spreading their religion. That's clear in the primary sources. That's clear in Isabella's orders how disappointed she is. That's clear in 1509 and Fernando's letters about how Christianization has failed. This was about a 15th-century perspective of improving oneself by getting rich, and it really didn't matter that you were doing it off someone else's back. The people on both sides couldn't read books. It wasn't a thought-out thing like, you know, John Locke says the government should be this way and someone else says the government should be that way, and so forth. This is common men pursuing their own dreams in some ugly fashion times, and arriving at solutions for problems they had with each other. And from that, from that chaos springs the things we've talked about.

C. Derick Varn 54:06

Yeah. The the other way that I I've I wanted to think about this is because we I mean we often forget that the Reconquista and the unification of Spain is actually relatively new, too. I mean, it it's actually kind of amazing how quickly we move from just getting Spain together to a global empire. And I I wanted to ask you what ways do you think the memory of the Reconquista would play into this? Because some people make a a lot of hay of that, some people say it doesn't play as as much of a role as it seems. I just wanted your take on the effects of the in historical memory, the relatively recent Reconquista

Reconquista Memory And Colonial Policy

C. Derick Varn 54:53

in this, you know, in these affairs.

SPEAKER_00 54:59

I fall in the camp of historians who uh believe it had less practical relevance than some people give it weight. It obviously comes to the person of Isabelle. She led the Reconquista, she awarded noblemen who fought for her grants of land that they conquered. The word repartimiento was used to describe that. In 1497, when she issues her order authorizing Columbus to grant repartimientos, she is defined it in a way that fits Espaniola. And that is, if you emigrate to Espanola and work on your repartimiento, you're granted land for four years, you get to own it. This is a practical order about settling a very distant colony. And then, as we've talked about, her order is completely disobeyed, and something totally unintended results from it. So that's why I kind of fall in the camp. I think this was an organic development that was unintended by its principle. And you can only really understand it through understanding the chaos which which led it, which goes back to my point that you know the history was made by the people on the ground in Hispaniola who weren't that educated and didn't give a shit, excuse my French, what what Isabel thought.

C. Derick Varn 57:13

Yeah, one thing that I think this book really put me in mind of is the the intersections of peoples and leaders and whatnot, the great history, not just the focus on Columbus, you know, the pro and anti-Columbus side of these debates tend to see this as the actions of a man when they were when they at least a lot of a lot of the the historians are smarter than that, to be quite honest. But like when they present it to the public, it's we we focus on this as an event about Columbus. And your book, you know, and it showed up in the questions that have asked you today, is as much about Isabel on account of

Beyond Columbus Toward Bicultural History

C. Derick Varn 58:01

the the the inability to control the the Spanish settlers, et cetera, et cetera. In what ways do you think the narrative changes when we're not just focusing on Columbus and we're focusing on the entire play of the field and all the various peoples and factions that are actually driving this?

SPEAKER_00 58:29

It's an anomaly, but most literature about the period remains Eurocentric and Columbus-centric. Either pro or anti-Columbus, it remains Eurocentric. In other words, you see writers who are positive on Columbus, and you see writers who are extremely negative on Columbus, but they ignore the native side of the story. And that really is an anomaly because you can read history of the Indian Wars throughout the settlement of the Americas, both North, Central, and South, from you know both perspectives. There are tons of books you can read about Sitting Bull and Custer side by side. There's even books going farther back to Montezuma and Cortez. But it still remains, other than the anthropological studies and the few dark novels from the Taino side, something where people haven't tried to write a bicultural history. The first thing you know when you do a bicultural history is that the native peoples did have leaders of stature. And most importantly, and this is something that I certainly wasn't taught at school. I don't think most people were taught in school, the Taino Indians resisted conquest. What we've talked about has a lot of volition. It's not always successful. In fact, it's almost all almost always unsuccessful, other than Anacaona, who try to resist conquest. And when you understand that the Taino Indians resisted conquest and what they did, you know, deals for food for being left alone, allying with rebels to mean separate coexistence, it it changes the understanding of the history. It's not just a biography of Columbus, it's not just a Columbus story or a Spanish Empire story, it's a clash of two civilizations. And they're later meters of stature who had their own volitional acts. And, you know, the conquest of the island wasn't complete in 1498. It wasn't even complete in the beginning of 1502. It took until 1505 for Columbus's successor, Nicolas Levando, to totally crush them. Anacona survives during the entire period of my book to rule her chiefdom. And all primary sources, Spanish primary sources, all recognized that her people adored her and obeyed her, and she was the ruler of Zaragua. Yes, there were Spanish settlers there, and they abused her people in part, but you know, from her perspective, it was a very small portion of the population and a small price to pay, and she maintained her chiefdom. She was the first Native, female Native American chieftain to resist the Spanish conquest. You know, where is that in your childhood education? It's it's you know, you've read about Sacagawee, you've read about Pocahontas, but here at the very beginning, ground zero, what I call it, there is a resistance figure. Her husband was the first Native leader to resist the Spanish conquest, Kayana Boe. She assisted him in creating the alliance. Years later, she becomes the first female leader to do so. So I, you know, I think to answer your question very directly, understanding that the Taino side leads to a more accurate understanding of what happened. It also gives some people that have never been recognized, some do, that I think they ought to be afforded in history. And you know, it it presents a losing side, but that losing side had some dignity to it.

C. Derick Varn 1:02:51

Um that did bring up something that I I've often thought about because we don't talk about, you know, I I was an adult before I was taught that the red, I wasn't even taught it, that the Tino resisted, and that they resisted for a long time. I I I was thinking about what what do you think led to Anacona's people being able to hold out for so much longer than a lot of the other chiefdoms in on the island?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:25

There are a number of things. First, the Spanish presence was small, and they made these deals we talked about for separate coexistence and aligned with rebels.

Disease Gold And Why Zaragua Holds Out

SPEAKER_00 1:03:39

The the smallness of the Spanish presence is real important because we we talk about forced laborers being you know the source of a lot of Taino death and the war, obviously, and other brutalities and so forth. But the main cause of death on the island, taking it from three million people to 60,000 two decades later, was disease. The Europeans brought disease strains like typhus and chickenpox and measles that the native peoples, Amerindians, weren't immune to. And so the small size of the Spanish population in Zaragua, as opposed to the central part of the island, I think helped that there wasn't as much disease spread there. The population wasn't as affected as quickly. Also, when gold was discovered, it was discovered closer to Santo Domingo, which is toward the more central part, a little further east than the central part. And the Spanish focus remained there. And not Zaragua. It was perceived that Zaragua didn't have gold, which was a correct perception. So that was another reason it wasn't invaded. Being spared disease, being spared forced mining was was very helpful.

C. Derick Varn 1:05:24

Yeah. All forms of slavery in this time period are pretty brutal, but mining slavery going back for as long as we've known mining slavery to existed has always been one of the most brutal forms of slavery. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. But if you had to identify one specific series of events or a specific series of decisions that happened specifically in 1501 or 1502, that acted as the point of no return for both Caribbean history and the establishment of what we might call the transatlantic world. What do you think that might be?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:21

I'd say there are two inflection points where history could have changed from what we see now. The first inflection point is before the book begins. It's in 1494 when Columbus comes across in his second voyage to commence the conquest

Inflection Points That Shaped The Atlantic

SPEAKER_00 1:06:42

of the island. The Taino Indian leadership. Didn't perceive that he came to conquer until it was too late to expel him. And some people attach blame to that. I really don't. It was, you know, this is a virgin experience. They thought they came to trade first and were only interested in gold. And if they got the gold, they'd go away. They didn't bring their women. Spaniards didn't bring women, so it didn't look like they were going to settle. But anyway, it took them a couple of months to realize that yes, this guy at Columbus is coming to conquer us. And if they had figured that out instantly, and I don't blame them for not figuring it out instantly, they might have masked on his initial settlement and thrown him out. And there are a number of historians who think that I kind of am in that camp. The second inflection point, I think, is when Isabel sends Columbus's second replacement. There was an interim guy, Francisco de Bobadilla, who ruled Spaniola from 1500 to 1502. But then Nicolas Avando came, and he is generally understood by historians as the man who conquered the island. The inflection point was that he bore Isabel's orders to treat the Indians as her vassals and to assimilate them into society. And by that point, she had gotten quite a bit more detailed about what she wanted to that end. But he was, I think he understood what Isabel wanted, but he didn't think it was feasible to implement it. Certainly not in a way that could be he would remain respected by the people on Hispaniola. So maybe a different person then could have done something, but I think it's quite doubtful. I mean, people debate what would history have happened if Columbus had observed Isabel's orders to not enslave Indians. I'm not sure Columbus, I mean, in fact, I'm pretty sure Columbus wasn't unique as a merchant or financier. They all wanted to enslave Indians. So I don't think Columbus himself is an individual that I mean, obviously he's affected history like you know, as few other people in history have, but he was very much like other people who Isabel might have put in his place, other than for his extraordinary ability as a mariner.

C. Derick Varn 1:09:54

So as we wrap up, I wanted to ask you a question on, in addition to your three three novels, which I do think people should go out and read, obviously. That's why you're here. What else do you think uh people should be reading to get a better understanding of this time period?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:16

Well, I'd start with my books, but then I'd probably go on to the anthropological studies. There's some famous historians in the area. There's you Thomas, there's uh Felipe Fernandez Amesto, and they've both written, you know, books from the European conquistador side. Again, the the reason I

What To Read Next

SPEAKER_00 1:10:41

wrote my books, and I don't mean to pin reading readers on reading them, is that the literature that exists in this Columbus voyage period is really biographies about Columbus. And that's you know, you can read a biography about Columbus, but you're not going to read about the Taino side of it. And you if you read the anthropological studies, you have to be able to stomach that in the first place because they're kind of dense. But if you can, you will learn about the Spanish side to the extent that the orders affect the Taino people. So I think my books, kind of like Bolman's book on the Norse, the ice shirt, fill a an unfortunate vacuum. You can read, you know, if you want to learn about uh Isabel, you can read lots of biographies about her that are going to deal with the Indies as part of her long career. My book really deals with her her rule of the her conquest of the Indies.

C. Derick Varn 1:12:04

Do you have any forthcoming projects that you're working on?

SPEAKER_00 1:12:07

Yeah, there'll be a fourth book in the series.

C. Derick Varn 1:12:09

Oh, good.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:10

There'll be a book, a fairly dark book, about the final conquest of Hispaniola by Nicolas de Avando. It will include Anaconda's fate, it'll include Isabel's fate, it'll include Columbus's fate. It'll include, and he appears already appears as a minor character in the current book, Amerigo Vespucci, and what he did and why the whole place is named after him. A strange quirk of history. It'll tell you about the fate of one of the true

Next Book On Ovando And Aftermath

SPEAKER_00 1:12:52

characters I truly like writing about, and that is Columbus's full favorite enslaved interpreter, who he had baptized and named Diego Colomb. He was picked up in San Salvador on October 14, 1492, and forced to serve as Columbus's guide as interpreter for most of his life. But at the end of the current book, he ends up serving Ovando. And we'll follow him. I'll follow him in the next book. You can trace his life past Fernando's death. You can trace his life through 1517. And in fact, he may become the star of that book.

C. Derick Varn 1:13:35

Well, I'm looking forward to that. I'm also personally going to go back and read the first two since I started with number three.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:41

They all can be read independently, Derek. They all good. The first part of the of the second book, the first part of the current book, I'll bring you up to speed. And I did that intentionally because I think to some extent there are different audiences for them.

C. Derick Varn 1:13:58

So okay. Well, I really enjoyed this this book. It got my mind going on what I did not know about this and my own biases. Because I've read a lot of the in I've read a lot of the the key biographies in the Columbus debates because I'm interested in the formation of the transatlantic world and all that.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:22

But I which is your favorite Columbus historian, if I might ask you.

C. Derick Varn 1:14:29

Favorite Columbus historian? Ooh, that's tough. Let me see. Which one did I read most recently?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:40

So Matthew Restell has a new book, The Nine Columbus.

C. Derick Varn 1:14:45

Which I which I own but have not read.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:48

Well, that's more about his legacy than what he did. It's a very good book.

C. Derick Varn 1:14:53

Going back to I'm actually pulling up my Goodreads right now. This is the last couple I've read. So let's see here.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:07

Do you read Spanish?

C. Derick Varn 1:15:10

Un poco. A good bit, actually. I can read it pretty well. I speak it moderately okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:16

Well, I think one of the most interesting books about Columbus that's that's modern, in addition to Felipe Fernando Amesto's books, is a book by Consuelo Varela called The Downfall of Colón, La Caída de Colón. And it summarizes the investigation that was done against him, of him, by his successor, Francisco de Bobadilla, which was discovered in 2006. So, you know, if you read Spanish, I think that's a a good one.

C. Derick Varn 1:15:53

Yeah, that's a that's a good okay. Um let's see, I've read Bread Companion, which I did not like, and then the most recent one that I rated highly was uh uh Felipe Fernandez Armesto's 1492, The Year the World Began, which I did like.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:12

Yeah, that's a really good book.

C. Derick Varn 1:16:14

That's that's that's the one in my most recent mysteries. I also read some books about the debate itself. But it's I I've I and then I've read as far as the time period, I've read like the most popular books on on this, in addition to reading a whole lot about the Mexica, because I used to live in Mexico. So so and you may have noticed that I've referred to them as the Mexica and then had to correct myself so other people could understand me. But I uh have read all uh like the 1491 book, the 1493 book, the kind of those are excellent books to read too, but obviously they extend a lot beyond they're huge, they're they're so big in scope that it's like it's like it's not entirely it's not super relevant. So like I've had a very broad spectrum view of this, and then a very you know Columbus-centric view, and I haven't and and I've read other stuff on the on the later cartoquistors, but it's been your books open me up to thinking about like I just don't know that much about the Taino at all. And even though I have some background in anthropology, it's not anything that touches on Taino people, so I don't know that work.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:34

Well, if you want to read a good short anthropological book about the Taino, Samuel Wilson's book. Okay, let me see if I can find it here. Samuel Wilson's book, Hispaniola, Caribbean chieftains in the age of Columbus. All right, I rely upon him a lot.

C. Derick Varn 1:18:06

Okay, all right. We'll check that out.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:10

That won't get you into the Isabella part, but it tells you about the Danos.

C. Derick Varn 1:18:21

Yeah, I think the other book I read about I mean it's about way more than this time period, but read recently was Born to Die Disease in the New World Conquest, which starts from 1492 and goes to 16.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:35

That's an excellent book. I've relied upon that a lot in the analysis of disease.

C. Derick Varn 1:18:41

Um yeah, I did not I I I I am pretty much of the opinion that you you would not see so many pale faces in the Americas if it wasn't for smallpox. But um and that that book was the final nail in the coffin of convincing me for that. So I'm I'm I'm glad that you also like it. But I do like, like I said, people should should get your books, they are readily available. I found them on most of the major booksellers.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:08

And well, you can go to my website, Andrew Rowan, R-O-W-E-N, spelled with an E. And you know, I have purchase links to all the obvious places, including the one to bookshop.org, where you can go in and order it from your local bookstore if that's your persuasion.

C. Derick Varn 1:19:27

All right, sweet. Well, I'm I will put that website in the show notes. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:32

Thank you, Derek. This was a pleasure.