1492 from a Bicultural Perspective
Encounters Unforeseen was published in 2017, during the 525th anniversary of the first
encounters between Columbus and Native Americans. Andrew’s blogs posted in 2017 and 2018
to recount what happened on the same dates in 1492 and 1493 are archived below, reordered
chronologically. The archive also includes the sketches of the book’s protagonists and some
additional photos and commentary that Andrew concurrently posted on Facebook. Dates are
based on the Julian calendar used by Europeans in 1492.
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Chronology
Sunday, January 6, 1493
Guacanagarí had alerted Columbus that the Pinta had been sighted to the east, whereupon Columbus dispatched a letter borne by Guacanagarí’s subjects entreating Martín Alonso Pinzón to reunite with Columbus, but refraining from asserting that Pinzón’s separation had...
Thursday, January 10, 1493
Sailing east, Columbus anchored in the bay Martín Alonso Pinzón had named for himself, renaming it Río de Gracia (River of Grace) in reference to Columbus’s pardon for Martín’s desertion. But the bay still bore Martín’s name a century later (see sketch at December...
Friday, January 11, 1493
I suspect Columbus drew his famous sketch of Española’s northwestern coast on or about January 11, 1493, when the Niña would have progressed to the point where the map’s coastline ends in the east. The original sketch has been in the collection of the Duques de...
Sunday, January 13, 1493
The ships continued east offshore the Samaná Peninsula of the Dominican Republic, home to the Ciguayan people, and anchored there. A combat hostility occurred on January 13. Columbus had dispatched armed sailors to trade. The Ciguayans also were armed and fears and...
Wednesday, January 16, 1493
Columbus interpreted conversations with Samanáns aboard the Niña as indicating that islands named Matininó and Carib lay to the east and that Matininó was inhabited only by women and Carib only by men. The Tainos’ oral history included an ancestral hero, Guahayona,...
Tuesday, January 22, 1493
Sailing northeast in the Atlantic, the Niña and Pinta were becalmed at about N 26⁰ W 63⁰, having coursed over five hundred miles from their last anchorage off the Samaná peninsula (Dominican Republic). Columbus was aboard the Niña, together with about two dozen...
Friday, January 25, 1493
At about N 28⁰ W 60⁰, Columbus recorded in the Journal that they had caught a porpoise and a large shark, which he said was very welcome, because they had nothing left to eat but bread, wine, and “peppers from the Indies.” The bread included cazabi (a toast made from...
Sunday, February 3, 1493
At about N35⁰ W50⁰, Columbus reckoned that the North Star was as high in the sky as it appeared off Cape St. Vincent, Portugal (N 37⁰), indicating to him that he had sailed northeast from the Indies to approach the Azores (N 37-40⁰) from the southwest. What was his...
Sunday, February 10, 1493
After departing the Samaná peninsula, Columbus drafted two letters about the voyage, likely completing them before the Niña and Pinta were engulfed by a violent storm on February 12, 1493. The first is known as the “Letter to Santángel,” written to King Ferdinand’s...
Tuesday, February 12, 1493
The Niña and Pinta were engulfed by a “perfect storm”—multiple violent storm fronts colliding from different directions—that began on February 12 and continued for three days. The ships were separated, the men on both nearly perished, and the world-changing event of...
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