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.