Describe the european view of columbus’s voyage and his encounter with the taino.

Students in Core Knowledge schools should have studied Christopher

Columbus in earlier grades, but it makes sense to review his voyage again in this

grade and place it in the larger context of the Age of Exploration.

Columbus was born in the Italian city of Genoa, but eventually became an

explorer for Ferdinand and Isabella, rulers of territories that joined together to

form the modern nation of Spain. As a young man, Columbus studied mapmaking

and became a sailor. He sailed with the Portuguese along the western

coast of Africa in the 1480s. About this time the Portuguese began looking for a

route around Africa to India and the Spice Islands. But Columbus had another

idea. He believed that Earth was smaller than in fact it is, and he concluded that

it should be possible to reach the Indies by sailing west.

In 1484 Columbus presented his idea to the Portuguese king. The king chose

not to support the mission. After several years of lobbying, Columbus succeeded

in convincing Ferdinand and Isabella to support his expedition.

Columbus sailed with three ships, the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria.

They left in August of 1492. After a stop in the Canary Islands, the ships began

sailing west. The crew soon grew nervous at how far they had sailed into

unknown territory. In early October, land was finally sighted.

Columbus landed on an island in the Bahamas on October 12, 1492

.

Columbus promptly renamed the island San Salvador (Saint Salvador) and

claimed it for Spain. The first native Americans whom Christopher Columbus

met in the New World were the Taino, speakers of the Arawak languages. The

Taino were nomadic hunters and gatherers who inhabited several islands in the

Caribbean.

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Teaching Idea

Discuss with students what the Taino

might have thought about the Spanish

and what the Spanish might have

thought about the Taino on that

momentous morning of October 12,

1492. Ask, “How might they have

described one another? What might

they have thought about the others’

helping or hurting them? Would they

even have thought about help or

harm?”

Note that the word Taino means

“gentle ones.” One of the early notes

that Columbus made in his journal

points out that the Taino had no iron

weapons.

Columbus described his impressions of the people and the land in his journal:

. . . [T]his people has no religion nor are they idolaters, but very mild

and without knowing what evil is, nor how to kill others, nor how to

take them, and without arms, and so timorous that from one of our men

ten of them fly, although they do sport with them, and ready to believe

and knowing that there is a God in heaven, and sure that we have come

from heaven; and very ready at any prayer which we tell them to repeat,

and they make the sign of the cross.

So your Highness should determine to make them Christians, for I

believe that if they begin, in a short time they will have accomplished

converting to our holy faith a multitude of towns. Without doubt there

are in these lands the greatest quantities of gold, for not without cause

do these Indians whom I am bringing say that there are places in these

isles where they dig out gold and wear it on their necks, in their ears and

on their arms and legs, and the bracelets are very thick.

In December of that year, on an island that Columbus renamed Hispaniola,

the Taino helped his crew build a fort, La Navidad, from the lumber of the

wrecked Santa Maria. Expecting to return with more ships, supplies, and

colonists, Columbus left some of his crewmen on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti

and the Dominican Republic) and sailed back to Spain. When he returned to La

Navidad a year later, Columbus found that the Taino had killed the sailors in

retaliation for the sailors’ demands for food, gold, and labor.

These killings, combined with attacks on the Spanish by small groups

of Taino and other native peoples on other Caribbean islands, provoked

Columbus to use force. As the newly appointed governor of all lands he discovered,

Columbus built a second fort on Hispaniola and assigned to it the soldiers

who had come on the expedition with him. The soldiers, with their metal armor,

guns, and horses, easily subdued the Taino. Columbus then demanded gold from

the Taino and ordered that 550 Taino be sent to Spain as slaves. 39

After two more voyages Columbus was relieved of his post as governor of the

new lands because of mismanagement and sent back to Spain. However, the brutal

precedent he set in regard to the treatment of native peoples was followed by

his successors, who enslaved them by the thousands.

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