For Indigenous Peoples’ Day, I relate what is known about the Taíno Indians enslaved and sent to Spain by Columbus in 1498 and 1499 and then liberated by Queen Isabel’s decree of June 20, 1500 (summarized in my post of June 20) and returned home to “Española.” Only...

Over the past months, I’ve been doing a podcast interview tour regarding Isabel, Anacaona & Columbus’s Demise: 1498–1502 Retold and my prior books. You can find links to the podcasts already released on my website at https://www.andrewrowen.com/educators-events/....

As depicted in Isabel, Anacaona & Columbus’s Demise, the ink on Queen Isabel’s decree of June 20, 1500, freeing “Indians” enslaved by Columbus (see prior post) had barely dried when Alonso de Hojeda sold two hundred Indians in Cádiz’s slave market. Isabel had...

On June 20, 1500, five hundred twenty-six years ago today, Queen Isabel and King Fernando issued their sparse royal decree freeing “Indian” slaves whom Columbus had shipped to Spain and directing that the Indians be returned to “Española.” Previously, Isabel and...

Columbus died in Valladolid, Spain, on May 20, 1506, five hundred twenty years ago today. During his lifetime, Queen Isabel’s court chroniclers and others who knew and wrote of him said that he was Genoese, from Genoa or its environs, and when they discussed his...

My first two books trace the life of the Taíno Indian Diego Colón, Columbus’s longest-serving enslaved interpreter, and Diego continues as a protagonist in Isabel, Anacaona & Columbus’s Demise. As depicted in Encounters Unforeseen, Diego was a Lucayan Taíno born...

The historical record is largely silent as to what Queen Isabel and Chief Anacaona understood about each other. They were separated by an ocean and of different civilizations just met. For Women’s History Month, I deduce or speculate what each had come to know of the...

Isabel, Anacaona & Columbus’s Demise depicts the origin of the system of repartimiento through which Spain would rule its American conquests, whereby Spanish settlers were awarded “Indian” lands and the Indians resident thereon as laborers. As related in Columbus...

The paperback edition of Isabel, Anacaona & Columbus’s Demise: 1498–1502 Retold releases February 9 and is now available for preorder. Find the book description, reviews, and purchase links on my website, www.andrewrowen.com

My earlier books set Queen Isabel and King Fernando’s missionary plan for “Española” within the intellectual framework of their actions to Christianize their Spanish kingdoms through the Inquisition, the expulsion of the Jews, and the completion of the Reconquista and...