by Andrew Rowen | | Haiti
Guacanagarí dispatched a canoe with nitaínos (Taíno noblemen) to invite Columbus to meet in Guacanagarí’s village. In the Taíno tradition described in Encounters Unforeseen, he sent as a gift a face mask inlaid with gold and woven to a tightly knit cotton girdle...
by Andrew Rowen | | Haiti
Guacanagarí’s noblemen offered to guide the Santa María and Niña to his village. But the wind was too weak to sail, and Columbus dispatched an embassy in the ship’s launch led by the expedition’s royal secretary to accompany the noblemen back to meet Guacanagarí....
by Andrew Rowen | | Haiti
With a light breeze permitting departure, Columbus’s two ships sailed from Baie de l’Acul to retrace the route his embassy had taken the prior day to visit Guacanagarí. The ships progressed slowly. Columbus turned to his Journal, taken by the Taínos’ friendliness,...
by Andrew Rowen | | Haiti
Around midnight on Christmas Eve, the Santa María foundered on a reef off Point Picolet. Columbus took various measures to try to save the ship, including sawing off a mast to lighten it, but the tide was receding and the Santa María impaled on the reef and began to...
by Andrew Rowen | | Haiti
At dawn on December 26, Guacanagarí rode by canoe to meet Columbus aboard the Niña. That afternoon and over the next week, the two men would have a series of conversations—dramatized in Encounters Unforeseen—resulting in understandings that Columbus would leave a...
