Christopher Columbus

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Christopher Columbus : biography

c. 1451 – 20 May 1506

Columbus called the island (in what is now The Bahamas) San Salvador; the natives called it Guanahani. Exactly which island in the Bahamas this corresponds to is unresolved. Prime candidates are San Salvador Island (so named in 1925 on the theory that it was Columbus’s San Salvador),William D. Phillips Jr., ‘Columbus, Christopher’, in David Buisseret (ed.), The Oxford Companion to World Exploration, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, online edition 2012). Samana Cay, and Plana Cays.

The indigenous people he encountered, the Lucayan, Taíno, or Arawak, were peaceful and friendly. Noting their gold ear ornaments, Columbus took some of the Arawaks prisoner and insisted that they guide him to the source of the gold. From the 12 October 1492 entry in his journal, in which he wrote of them, "Many of the men I have seen have scars on their bodies, and when I made signs to them to find out how this happened, they indicated that people from other nearby islands come to San Salvador to capture them; they defend themselves the best they can. I believe that people from the mainland come here to take them as slaves. They ought to make good and skilled servants, for they repeat very quickly whatever we say to them. I think they can very easily be made Christians, for they seem to have no religion. If it pleases our Lord, I will take six of them to Your Highnesses when I depart, in order that they may learn our language."Robert H. Fuson, ed., The Log of Christopher Columbus, Tab Books, 1992, International Marine Publishing, ISBN 0-87742-316-4. He remarked that their lack of modern weaponry and even metal-forged swords or pikes was a tactical vulnerability, writing, "I could conquer the whole of them with 50 men, and govern them as I pleased."Columbus (1991, ). Or "for with fifty men they can all be subjugated and made to do what is required of them." (Columbus & Toscanelli, 2010, )

Columbus also explored the northeast coast of Cuba, where he landed on 28 October. On 22 November, Martín Alonso Pinzón took the Pinta on an unauthorized expedition in search of an island called "Babeque" or "Baneque", which the natives had told him was rich in gold. Columbus, for his part, continued to the northern coast of Hispaniola, where he landed on 5 December.Keith A. Pickering,

There, the Santa María ran aground on Christmas Day 1492 and had to be abandoned. Columbus was received by the native cacique Guacanagari, who gave him permission to leave some of his men behind. Columbus left 39 men, including Luis de Torres, the Converso interpreter, who spoke Hebrew and Arabic, and founded the settlement of La Navidad at the site of present-day Môle-Saint-Nicolas, Haiti. Columbus took more natives prisoner and continued his exploration. He kept sailing along the northern coast of Hispaniola with a single ship, until he encountered Pinzón and the Pinta on 6 January.

On 13 January 1493, Columbus made his last stop in the New World. He landed on the Samaná Peninsula, where he met the hostile Ciguayos who presented him with his only violent resistance during his first voyage to the Americas. The Ciguayos had refused to trade the amount of bows and arrows that Columbus desired; in the ensuing violence two were stabbed to death. Because of this and because of the Ciguayos’ use of arrows, he called the inlet where he met them the Bay of Arrows (or Gulf of Arrows).Oliver Dunn and James Kelly, The Diario of Christopher Columbus’s First Voyage to America (London: University of Oklahoma Press), 333–343. Today, the place is called the Bay of Rincón, in Samaná, the Dominican Republic.Robert Fuson, The Log of Christopher Columbus (Camden, International Marine, 1987) 173. Columbus kidnapped about 10 to 25 natives and took them back with him (only seven or eight of the native Indians arrived in Spain alive, but they made quite an impression on Seville).

Columbus headed for Spain, but another storm forced him into Lisbon. He anchored next to the King’s harbor patrol ship on 4 March 1493 in Portugal. After spending more than one week in Portugal, he set sail for Spain. He crossed the bar of Saltes and entered the harbor of Palos on 15 March 1493. Word of his finding new lands rapidly spread throughout Europe.