If Columbus did not make up his account of cotton he found in the West Indies, he did not see any cotton
at all, but only silk-cotton, the product of the Bomhax ceiba, which grows in all tropical America. He
specifi- cally tells us that the cotton was not sowed, but grew on high trees. As the Gossypium arhoreum,
mentioned in Arabia in the twelfth century^ by Ibn-al-Awam and known to exist from India to the
Senegal, is totally unknown to America, Columbus' reference to high cot- ton trees puts it beyond any
possible doubt that he saw only ceibas, but the silk-cotton of these trees does not twist and cannot be
used by itself as a textile. It is known in trade under the Javanese name of kapok, and is used as a
stuffing for mattresses and life belts.
The Franciscan monks who were in Hispaniola in 1500 apparently refer to ceiba cotton from which cloth
was made: ''The Indians have a great abundance of wool which grows on trees, and yet they go naked.
From this wool a certain Brother from necessity spun threads and made garments for himself and his
com- panion."^ "Lana arboribus procreata" may be a translation of the German "Baumwolle" and so may
refer to real cotton, but the fact that the monk out of necessity had to spin his own threads and weave
his own cloth, while the Indians went naked, shows con- clusively that the Franciscans found no cotton
cloth in use in Hispaniola.
Cotton is frequently mentioned afterwards, but that is of no consequence since we have the definite
statement that in 1493 Columbus loaded his ships in the Canaries with animals and seeds, ^ which may
have included cotton seed as well. Three years later the Indians who did not work in the gold mines were
compelled to pay their tribute in cotton, twenty-five pounds per person, that is, the Indians were
compelled to raise cotton for the white man.^ Authors from Oviedo until the present time unanimously
assert that under the Span- iards the cultivation of cotton declined very rapidly, but this is contradicted
by Columbus' law of 1496, which made every effort to introduce cotton on a large scale, but completely
failed because the Indians had not been used to it.
In 1498 Columbus, according to the Journal of the Third Voyage, wrote to the King of Spain that he sent
him *'agul, lacar, ambar, algodon, pimienta, canela, brasil infinito, estoraque, sandalos blancos y
cetrinos, lino, aloes, gengibre, incensio, mirabolanos de toda especie."^ As most of these products do
not grow in America, Columbus simply applied the names of spices to similar plants, hence it is not
certain that algodon refers to "cotton." It may have been ceiba or any other textile fiber, such as maguey.
This is made the more certain by the letter itself, which is lost, but which Herrera apparently quotes
more fully, when he says: "se hallaua azul,ambar, a^grorfon, pimienta, canela,brasil,
estoraque,sandalosblancos,ycetrinos,linaloes,gengibre, encienso, mirabolanos de toda especie, y la
Cahuya, que es una yerua que haze pencas como cardo, de que es puede hazer muy buena tela, por el
buen hilo que deella se saca."^ The addition cabuya, that is, "a variety of maguey, an herb producing
spiny leaves like a thistle, from which a very fine cloth can be made, on account of the fine thread which
is gotten from it," shows that by that time Columbus knew that the Indians made their cloth from the
maguey, and not from cotton. But, having committed himself to cot- ton, he or his editor cut out the
damaging sentence in his letter when the Journal of the Third Voyage was made up.
In 1526 Oviedo wrote: ''(The Indians of the main- land) fish with nets, for they have very good ones, of
cotton, with which nature has provided them abundant- ly, and many woods are full of them; but the
whitest and best is that which they plant in their settlement close to their houses or places, where they
live."^ In 1535 we have a different story: ** There is much wild cotton in Hispaniola, and there are also
cultivated fields, and here it is better than in the open, and whiter and taller, and some of these plants
grow one cubit and a half or two and send out new shoots from the ground. And thus it continues to
produce cotton without being taken care of. But since people do not cultivate it in this island, it does not
grow as in Indian times. The Christians do not busy themselves on their farms, al- though it is very good
and would increase as well as on the mainland, where it produces ordinary shoots every year, and where
it is sowed and reaped ; hence it is small in comparison with the cotton there, although I have seen there
some high plants."
