by Andrew Rowen | | Haiti
As the Santa María and Niña continued east along the Taíno Haiti’s northern coast, word traveled among the locals that it was safe to meet the pale beings. On December 16, likely near modern Port-de-Paix, more than five hundred Taínos gathered at a beach to behold and...
by Andrew Rowen | | Haiti
Columbus brought the Santa María and Niña to anchor—in his view—in the greatest harbor he had yet entered (Baie de l’Acul, Haiti), perhaps the most populated area in Guacanagarí’s chiefdom of Marien. Columbus named the harbor Mar de Santo Tomás as the day was the...
by Andrew Rowen | | Haiti
Guacanagarí dispatched a canoe with nitaínos (Taíno noblemen) to invite Columbus to meet in Guacanagarí’s village. In the Taíno tradition described in Encounters Unforeseen, he sent as a gift a face mask inlaid with gold and woven to a tightly knit cotton girdle...
by Andrew Rowen | | Haiti
Guacanagarí’s noblemen offered to guide the Santa María and Niña to his village. But the wind was too weak to sail, and Columbus dispatched an embassy in the ship’s launch led by the expedition’s royal secretary to accompany the noblemen back to meet Guacanagarí....
by Andrew Rowen | | Haiti
With a light breeze permitting departure, Columbus’s two ships sailed from Baie de l’Acul to retrace the route his embassy had taken the prior day to visit Guacanagarí. The ships progressed slowly. Columbus turned to his Journal, taken by the Taínos’ friendliness,...
by Andrew Rowen | | Haiti
Around midnight on Christmas Eve, the Santa María foundered on a reef off Point Picolet. Columbus took various measures to try to save the ship, including sawing off a mast to lighten it, but the tide was receding and the Santa María impaled on the reef and began to...
