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...
by Andrew Rowen | | Haiti
By New Year’s Day, Columbus selected almost forty crewmen—roughly equivalent in number to the sunken Santa María’s crew—to be left behind when he departed for Spain. Selection wasn’t difficult because many volunteered, enticed by the gold pieces they had traded for...
by Andrew Rowen | | Haiti
Columbus came ashore to say farewell to Guacanagarí and instill both “friendship and fear,” directing crewmen to conduct a mock battle between themselves using swords, crossbow, and artillery. They fired a lombard at some plank siding of the Santa María...
by Andrew Rowen | | Dominican Republic
Guacanagarí had alerted Columbus that the Pinta had been sighted to the east, whereupon Columbus dispatched a letter borne by Guacanagarí’s subjects entreating Martín Alonso Pinzón to reunite with Columbus, but refraining from asserting that Pinzón’s separation had...
by Andrew Rowen | | Dominican Republic
Sailing east, Columbus anchored in the bay Martín Alonso Pinzón had named for himself, renaming it Río de Gracia (River of Grace) in reference to Columbus’s pardon for Martín’s desertion. But the bay still bore Martín’s name a century later (see sketch at December...
