The Voyages of Columbus

Long before 1492, the Caribbean was home to the Taíno, an Arawak-speaking people with a well-established society, defined social structures, and trade networks among their communities. The Lucayan people of the Bahamas were part of this broader Taíno world. In Europe, Portugal was searching for a sea route to Asia around Africa, and Spain was willing to fund a rival scheme.

Columbus believed that Asia could be reached by sailing west and badly underestimated the distance. After years of seeking support, he won the backing of Ferdinand and Isabella, who hoped for access to the trade in spices and gold and for the spread of Christianity.

Columbus sailed from Spain in August 1492 and made landfall on October 12 on Guanahani. Which modern island this was is still debated; the most popular identification is the island renamed San Salvador in 1925. He went on to Cuba and Hispaniola before returning to Spain. On later voyages he established Spanish settlements on Hispaniola and explored more of the Caribbean and the coast of Central and South America, always insisting he had reached Asia.

The Taíno were friendly when they first encountered the newcomers, but Spanish demands for gold, labor, and submission soon led to armed resistance against Spanish efforts to kill, enslave, or assimilate them.

Columbus and the colonists who followed imposed forced labor and tribute on the Taíno. Violence, enslavement, and above all epidemic diseases brought from Europe — to which Native peoples had no immunity — caused a devastating collapse of the Indigenous population of the Caribbean within a few decades.

Columbus’s voyages opened the way to Spanish conquest of the Aztec and Inca empires, to colonies of other European powers, and to the transatlantic slave trade. In the United States, Columbus was long celebrated as a discoverer and an emblem of Italian American heritage; today his legacy is fiercely debated, and many states and cities also or instead observe Indigenous Peoples’ Day. The language of “discovery” itself is now recognized as describing only the European side of an encounter between peoples who had long been there.