Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean Read Online Free PDF

is heard of the sixty-three gold pendants, but Chief Huero’s mine begat the legend of Columbus’s “secret golden mine, which hath not yet been opened by the King of Spain or any other.” 23
    To lead the Jamaica expedition, Diego had appointed Juan d’Esquivel, a converso who served under Bartholomew. 24 Landing on the coast of Huero’s domain, Esquivel founded Melilla, which is the name of a Spanish port in Morocco that—coincidentally or not—alone in the empire was exempted from the expulsion order and remained a haven for Jews after the port was captured by Spain in 1497. 25 When Esquivel returned to Hispaniola, and, it is thought, delivered the sixty-three medallions to Bartholomew, Diego appointed him Jamaica’s governor and directed the loyal conversos to return to the island. Thus began the settlement of Jamaica, a Caribbean island that, like Melilla in Morocco, would henceforth serve as a haven for Jews.
    In 1511, a flotilla of ships, carrying more than a thousand settlers, dropped anchor in Santa Gloria near the beach where Columbus was marooned. Expecting to find gold and create a New World capital rivaling Seville, the settlers laid out a city two miles long and named it Nueva Sevilla del Oro (New Seville of Gold). Unlike the Portugals, the newcomers were of minor Spanish nobility and had come to seek their fortune. A contemporary wrote, “They fancied that gold was to be gathered as easily and readily as fruit from trees.” 26 However, when they realized they had to dig for it, and even then with rare success, disillusion quickly set in. The toilsome job of excavating the ore from the bowels of the earth was given over to the Indians.
    Within a decade, gold was being mined in Jamaica. But after Diego Columbus and the king had taken their share, the amount from the smelting house was not enough to satisfy the hidalgos, among whom were some former mutineers and their leader, Francisco Poras. 27 That these rebels chose to return to the island they had risked their lives to leave suggests they believed there was more gold in Jamaica than what was being mined. 28 It is therefore not surprising that the Columbus family and their allies, the Portugals, kept Huero’s mine a secret.
    Despite the paucity of gold, island life was pleasantly rewarding. Jamaica was a fertile land, and the average allotment of 150–200 pacified Indians per settler meant that one could have a successful ranching operation, made all the more comfortable by a modest harem of baptized Indian women. Jamaica was developing nicely as a food depot supplying passing ships and breeding horses for the conquistadors. But then the Indians started dying. Unused to the white man’s germs, they expired when they got sick, and a plague of smallpox finished them off. Soon everyone wanted to leave.
    In 1513, Esquivel reported that many of New Seville’s colonists had left for Cuba, leaving behind their
caiguaes
(Portuguese servants), who had moved to “the south side of the island to carry on the cultivation of foodstuffs.” 29 The
caiguaes
had been considered personal baggage, and as such did not have to produce the “clean blood” certificates required of other settlers in the colony. Later developments indicate they were conversos.
    While New Seville struggled, the south coast settlement flourished. Though the community was never formally recognized, a cryptic remark by Peter Martyr—from 1511 the “Royal Chronicler of the Indies”—makes an oblique reference to the conversos. After being made abbot of Jamaica in 1514, he wrote the king: “There are two settlements but only one will have my church.” 30 The following year, a report from Jamaica’s new governor, Francisco Garay, pointedly referred to the community. Having replaced Esquivel, Garay wrote his sovereign on the state of the island, and underlined his intention “to see the country and the site of the town on the other side. ” 31 Later, he too would desert the island to