Columbus's Gift: Representations of Grace and Wealth and the Enterprise of the Indies

Abstract

At the start of Spain’s colonial enterprise, the itinerant court of Ferdinand and Isabella was the first stage where travel accounts and specimens of all kinds coalesced and where the New World “yielded wonder on top of wonder.”1 In May 1493, upon returning from his first voyage, Columbus presented at the royal court in Barcelona a procession of naked Indians adorned with gold and accompanied by multicolored parrots. This spectacle previously astonished crowds in Lisbon and Seville, and a similar display would follow his second voyage. After spending three years in La Espanola, in October 1496, the explorer brought to Burgos a cavalcade of Indians and mules loaded with gold objects (Bernaldez 600, 678). Inscribed as wonders—that which exceeds the ordinary—and inserted in the ambiance of court spectacles, these subjects and objects represented the