Columbus's Second Voyage (1493–1496): La Isabela and Colonisation

Columbus’s second voyage (1493–1496) turned a voyage of discovery into a colonising enterprise. Sailing from Cádiz on 25 September 1493 with 17 ships and well over a thousand men, Christopher Columbus founded La Isabela on the island of Hispaniola, the first planned European town in the Americas. The voyage marked the start of permanent Spanish settlement in the Caribbean and of the conquest and exploitation of its Indigenous Taíno people.

Background

When Columbus returned to Spain in March 1493 from his first voyage, he brought reports of gold, captive Taíno people and claims to have reached the edge of Asia. Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile and Aragon received him with honours and confirmed his titles of admiral, viceroy and governor of the lands he had found.

The monarchs moved quickly to secure their claim. In May 1493 Pope Alexander VI issued the bull Inter caetera, which granted Castile lands west of a line in the Atlantic. At the same time the crown, through the cleric Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, organised a far larger expedition than the first.

The aims were to occupy the new lands, find and extract gold, convert the inhabitants to Christianity and establish a trading base. The fleet carried horses, pigs, cattle, sheep, seeds, wheat, vines and sugar cane, the first large shipment of Old World life to the Americas.

The crossing and the end of La Navidad

The 17 ships left Cádiz on 25 September 1493. Most estimates put the company at roughly 1,200 to 1,500 people, almost all men. They included soldiers, farmers, craftsmen, officials, several priests and the physician Diego Álvarez Chanca, whose letter is one of the main eyewitness accounts. Columbus’s younger brother Diego, the cartographer Juan de la Cosa and the soldier Alonso de Ojeda also sailed.

After a stop in the Canary Islands, the fleet took a more southerly route than in 1492 and made a fast crossing. On Sunday 3 November 1493 the lookouts sighted an island that Columbus named Dominica, after the day of the week.

The fleet then passed through the Lesser Antilles, naming Marie-Galante, Guadeloupe, Montserrat, Antigua, Nevis, St Kitts and others. At St Croix the Spaniards fought a skirmish with the islanders, often called Caribs (Kalinago). Columbus named the Virgin Islands and landed in Puerto Rico in November 1493.

On 27 November 1493 the fleet reached the site of La Navidad, the small fort on Hispaniola where Columbus had left 39 men in January. It had been burned and all of its garrison were dead.

According to the accounts gathered at the time, the Spaniards had quarrelled among themselves and abused Taíno communities, seizing women and goods. They were killed in attacks associated with the cacique (chief) Caonabo. Columbus chose not to retaliate immediately and looked for a new settlement site.

Founding La Isabela

In early January 1494 the colonists landed on the north coast of Hispaniola, in what is now Puerto Plata province of the Dominican Republic, and founded La Isabela, named after the queen. They built stone and tapia (rammed earth) structures, including a church, a storehouse and a house for Columbus, along with huts for the settlers.

The site proved poor. The harbour was exposed, fresh food was scarce, and many settlers fell ill within weeks, probably from a mix of infectious diseases and malnutrition. Many expected quick riches rather than farming. Archaeological excavations, led from the 1980s by José María Cruxent and Kathleen Deagan, have revealed much of the town’s layout and daily life.

In February 1494 Columbus sent 12 ships back to Spain under Antonio de Torres with requests for supplies and some Indigenous captives. He sent Ojeda and others inland to the gold-bearing Cibao region and built a fort there, Santo Tomás.

Exploring Cuba and Jamaica

From April to September 1494 Columbus explored the south coast of Cuba and visited Jamaica. Convinced that Cuba was part of the Asian mainland, in June 1494 he had his crews swear a formal oath that it was a continent. He returned to Isabela ill and exhausted.

In his absence his brother Bartholomew Columbus had arrived with supply ships, and Columbus appointed him adelantado (governor). Meanwhile discontented settlers, including the military commander Pedro Margarit and the friar Bernardo Buil, had left for Spain to complain about the Columbus brothers’ rule.

War, tribute and the return to Spain

Spanish raids for food and gold provoked Taíno resistance. In 1494 or 1495 Alonso de Ojeda captured Caonabo by a ruse; he later died on a ship bound for Spain. In March 1495 a Spanish force with horses and dogs defeated a large Taíno army in the Vega Real, the fertile central valley.

Columbus then imposed a tribute. Every Taíno adult in the gold region was required to deliver a set quantity of gold dust every three months, while others paid in cotton. Those who could not pay were punished. Columbus also shipped several hundred Taíno to Spain to be sold as slaves, a practice Queen Isabella later restricted.

Forced labour, war, hunger and disease caused a steep population decline. Estimates of Hispaniola’s Taíno population in 1492 vary greatly, from around 100,000 to well over a million, but by 1514 a Spanish census recorded only about 26,000 Taíno under Spanish control.

Complaints about the Columbus brothers led the crown to send an investigator, Juan Aguado, who arrived in 1495. A hurricane that year sank ships in the harbour of Isabela, and the colonists built a new vessel, the India, one of the first European ships built in the Americas.

Columbus sailed for Spain on 10 March 1496, leaving Bartholomew in charge, and reached Cádiz on 11 June 1496. Soon afterwards Bartholomew moved the colony’s centre to the south coast, where Santo Domingo was founded in the late 1490s. La Isabela was abandoned by about 1498.

Consequences

The second voyage changed the character of Spanish involvement in the Caribbean. The first voyage had been a small exploring expedition; the second created a colony with a governor, officials, soldiers and settlers, and with the expectation that the land and its people would produce wealth for the crown.

The crops and animals carried in 1493 began the biological transformation later called the Columbian Exchange. Pigs and cattle multiplied rapidly on Hispaniola, and sugar cane planted in these early years eventually became the basis of the island’s plantation economy.

Politically, the voyage damaged Columbus’s standing. Returning settlers spread complaints about hunger, harsh punishments and the favouritism shown to the Columbus brothers. The crown began to limit his monopoly, licensing other captains to sail west from 1495. These tensions continued during his third voyage and led to his arrest in 1500.

For the Taíno, the years 1494 to 1496 marked the shift from contact to conquest. The tribute system broke down the island’s farming routines, and many people fled to the mountains, which contributed to famine. Some historians see the tribute and the distribution of Taíno labour that followed as the direct ancestors of later colonial labour systems.

How we know: the eyewitness accounts

The second voyage is better documented than the first. Diego Álvarez Chanca wrote a long letter to the city council of Seville describing the crossing, the islands and the discovery of La Navidad. The Italian Michele da Cuneo, a friend of Columbus, wrote a letter in 1495 with vivid and often brutal details, including his own abuse of a captive Indigenous woman.

The memorandum Columbus sent with Antonio de Torres in 1494, together with the monarchs’ replies, survives and shows the colony’s needs and Columbus’s proposals, including a plan to pay for supplies by selling captives as slaves. Later historians, notably Bartolomé de las Casas, whose father sailed with the fleet, and Columbus’s son Ferdinand, used documents that are now partly lost.

Key people

• Christopher Columbus (c. 1451–1506): admiral and governor, whose leadership was widely criticised by settlers.
• Bartholomew Columbus (c. 1461–1515): his brother, who governed Hispaniola as adelantado.
• Caonabo: a Taíno cacique of the Maguana region who resisted the Spanish and died in captivity.
• Alonso de Ojeda (c. 1466–c. 1515): soldier and explorer who led expeditions inland and captured Caonabo.
• Diego Álvarez Chanca: the fleet’s physician, author of an important eyewitness letter.

Timeline

• 1493, 25 September: The fleet of 17 ships leaves Cádiz.
• 1493, 3 November: Dominica is sighted.
• 1493, 27 November: The fleet finds La Navidad destroyed.
• 1494, early January: La Isabela is founded on Hispaniola.
• 1494, February: Antonio de Torres sails for Spain with 12 ships.
• 1494, April–September: Columbus explores Cuba and Jamaica.
• 1495, March: Spanish victory over Taíno forces in the Vega Real.
• 1496, 10 March: Columbus leaves Hispaniola.
• 1496, 11 June: Columbus reaches Cádiz.

Why it matters

The second voyage began the European colonisation of the Americas. It introduced Old World crops and animals, set up the first Spanish town and created the tribute and forced labour systems that later developed into the encomienda. For the Taíno of Hispaniola, it marked the beginning of a catastrophe from which their society did not recover.