On his first voyage, Columbus claimed San Salvador, Cuba and Hispaniola as Spanish possessions. He built a fort and left behind Spanish soldiers to hunt for gold on Hispaniola, while he returned to Spain. (These men were later murdered by the inhabitants of the island for mistreating them.) On his second voyage, Columbus took a thousand Spanish colonists to settle in Hispaniola. This was the first European colony in the ‘New World’. These colonists fought among themselves and with the inhabitants of the island. They were greedy and complained that there was not enough gold to make them all rich. They were given land and allowed to force the indigenous people to work for them, but they were still not satisfied. The colonists were also responsible forintroducing foreign epidemic diseases such as influenza, smallpox, measles and typhus, which drastically reduced the indigenous population in the Caribbean within 50 years.
