Andrew’s Current Blog

Columbus died in Valladolid, Spain, on May 20, 1506—515 years ago. In his will of February 1498, he had directed his heirs to build a church on “Española” dedicated to Santa María de Concepción. On his deathbed, he instructed that the church lie in the valley he’d...

The sequel to Encounters Unforeseen will depict Queen Isabella’s decisions from 1493–1498 with respect to the enslavement of each of four shipments of Native American captives that Columbus or his brother dispatched to Spain during this period. Isabella and King...

In early January 1494, the fleet of Columbus’s second voyage anchored at the site where he founded “Española’s” first permanent European settlement—named Isabela in honor of the queen. Most modern historians roundly criticize Columbus’s selection of the site, but my...

This October 14—528 years ago—Columbus seized his first seven slaves in the Caribbean, only two days after arriving on the island he named “San Salvador,” the Taíno Guanahaní. They were to serve as guides and interpreters. He wrote in his Journal that the island’s...

526 years ago, on July 7, 1494, an elderly, indigenous man on Cuba’s southern coast admonished Columbus for inspiring great fear and warned that the souls of the enemies of the human race traveled to a dark place on death. Some locations where Columbus and Taíno...

Encounters Unforeseen: 1492 Retold dramatizes 1492 from the perspective of both Taíno and European protagonists, including depicting Taíno geographic knowledge, Columbus’s cartographic and scriptural arguments that he’d arrive in the “Indies,” and his reliance on...

In early January (before the pandemic hit NYC!), I spent two weeks in Cuba researching events I’m dramatizing in Encounters Unforeseen’s sequel (1493-98), including visiting sites along the island’s southern coast where Columbus and Taíno chieftains met on his second...

The first major battle in the Americas between Spanish conquerors and indigenous peoples occurred 525 years ago, in late March 1495, near the pilgrimage now known as Santo Cerro (Holy Hill), north of the city of La Vega in the Dominican Republic’s fertile Cibao...

Encounters Unforeseen: 1492 Retold dramatizes the history leading to 1492 from the perspective of both Taíno and European protagonists, including depicting the weddings and marriages of three couples—Spain’s Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand, Columbus and his...

Last November, I spent two weeks in the Dominican Republic researching events I’m dramatizing in Encounters Unforeseen’s sequel (1493-98), visiting sites of battles, forts, the first missionary efforts and resistance thereto, and—the subject of this blog—Santo...