Then he and his men hunted everywhere for the glittering yellow metal.
They fished for it in the streams; they dug for it in the earth; they
drove the Indians to hunt for it also until the poor redmen learned to
hate the very sound of the word gold, and believed that this was all the
white men lived for, cared for or worked for; holding up a piece of
this hated gold the Indians would say, one to another: "Behold the
Christian's god!" And so it came about that the poor worried natives,
who were not used to such hard work, took the easiest way out of it all,
and told the Spaniards the biggest kind of lies as to where gold might
be found--always away off somewhere else--if only the white men would go
there to look for it.

On the thirteenth of January, 1494, Columbus sent back to Spain twelve
of his seventeen ships. He did not send back in them to the king, and
queen, the gold he had promised. He sent back the letters that promised
gold; he sent back as prisoners for punishment some of the most
discontented and quarrelsome of his colonists; and, worst of all, he
sent to the king and queen a note asking, them to permit him to send to
Spain all the Indians he could catch, to be sold as slaves. He said that
by doing this they could make "good Christians" of the Indians, while
the money that came from selling the natives would buy cattle for the
colony and leave some money for the royal money-chests.

It is not pleasant to think this of so great a man as Columbus. But
it is true, and he is really the man who, started the slave-trade in
America. Of course things were very different in his time from what they
are to-day, and people did not think so badly of this horrible business.
But some good men did, and spoke out boldly against it. What they said
was not of much use, however, and slavery was started in the new world.