columbus day

Each year on the 12th of October, I feel a little sad. Columbus Day is a big event in some parts of the world, presumably Columbus Ohio is a major one.But for me it is a day of sadness. Having worked and researched for over ten years on Quisqueya - saving paradise, I feel I know what those exhausted and terrified sailors encountered. The Taino, the happy people, thronged onto the beaches of their paradisacal homeland offering fresh water, fruits unknown to the European palate and barbacued fish.
But his own words say it better

Friday October 12^th 1492

At dawn, we reached a small island, which we later discovered was called Guanahani. I went ashore in the launch with Martin Alonzo Pinzon, Captain of the Pinta and Vincent Yanes Pinzon, Captain of the Nina. I brought out the Royal standard and the captains each had a flag.

 In the presence of all, I took possession of the island for the King and Queen. I had set up a large, wooden cross as a token of Jesus Christ our Lord and I called on Rodrigo Sanchez of Segovia, comptroller of the whole fleet, as witness, I named the island San Salvador. Declarations were written in my presence.

We saw great trees, streams of water and fruit of many varieties. The people gathered to watch me declaim, naked as their mothers bore them, they are a well built people with handsome bodies and fine faces, but their appearance is marred by their very broad heads and foreheads.

In order that they might be friendly to us and would be better converted to our Holy Faith by love rather than by force, I gave them red caps and glass beads and other things of small value which they delighted in, laughing and showing them around.

Later, they came swimming to the ship in dugouts made from the trunk of one tree, like a longboat all of one piece and so big, forty or forty five men could fit into it. They rowed with a paddle like that of a baker and went fast. If they turned over, they jumped in the water and righted it, bailing them out with calabashes. They brought many green parrots and great balls of spun cotton thread, spears and other goods which they traded for glass beads and small bells or hawks bells, such as jesters use. It seemed they were a people very poor in everything.

All whom I saw were young, not above thirty years, their hair was short and coarse like a horse’s tail, they wore it long, combed towards the forehead, except for a few locks behind which were never cut. Some were painted black, others white, others red and other colours. Some painted the face, others the whole body, others only around the eye and others around the nose. Their skin colour was neither black nor white. Some of them had wounds on their bodies and by signs I asked them what these were and they gestured saying people from nearby islands came and would try to kidnap them and they had to fight them off.

They had no weapons. They did not know iron for when one grasped a sword he cut himself. Their spears were made without iron; some had a fish tooth in the end or a sharpened shell. It appeared the people were ingenious and would make good servants and would readily be converted, for they seemed to have no religion.

I laboured to find out if there was any gold. One man had a piece hung in a hole they have in their noses – they gestured there was gold to the south, that a King there had a great deal.

Within around 80 years they were all dead.