The first lasting contact between indigenous Americans and Europeans came as Arawak, Taino, and Lucayan peoples encountered the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus and his Spanish ships.
The lyrics come from the Defence of Fort M'Henry, a poem written on September 14, 1814, by the then 35-year-old lawyer and amateur poet Francis Scott Key after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry by British ships of the Royal Navy in Baltimore Harbor during the Battle of Baltimore in the War of 1812.
