When authorizing Columbus’s second voyage, Spain’s Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand instructed him to convert “Española’s” peoples by all ways and means. Pope Alexander VI had pronounced that the Lord was pleased for barbarous nations to be overthrown and brought to...

Contemporary Spanish chroniclers of 1492—including Bartolomé de Las Casas—relate information about Chief Caonabó’s personality and his battle against Columbus’s invasion of “Española.” Most chroniclers derived this information largely through conversations with...

At last, the sequel to Encounters Unforeseen: 1492 Retold goes on sale this November! Titled Columbus and Caonabó: 1493–1498 Retold, it dramatizes Columbus’s invasion of “Española” and the bitter resistance mounted by its Taíno peoples during the period and aftermath...

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...