by Andrew Rowen | Jul 24, 2026 | New York City
As depicted in Isabel, Anacaona & Columbus’s Demise, the ink on Queen Isabel’s decree of June 20, 1500, freeing “Indians” enslaved by Columbus (see prior post) had barely dried when Alonso de Hojeda sold two hundred Indians in Cádiz’s slave market. Isabel had...
by Andrew Rowen | Jun 20, 2026 | New York City
On June 20, 1500, five hundred twenty-six years ago today, Queen Isabel and King Fernando issued their sparse royal decree freeing “Indian” slaves whom Columbus had shipped to Spain and directing that the Indians be returned to “Española.” Previously, Isabel and...
by Andrew Rowen | May 20, 2026 | New York City
Columbus died in Valladolid, Spain, on May 20, 1506, five hundred twenty years ago today. During his lifetime, Queen Isabel’s court chroniclers and others who knew and wrote of him said that he was Genoese, from Genoa or its environs, and when they discussed his...
by Andrew Rowen | Apr 12, 2026 | New York City
My first two books trace the life of the Taíno Indian Diego Colón, Columbus’s longest-serving enslaved interpreter, and Diego continues as a protagonist in Isabel, Anacaona & Columbus’s Demise. As depicted in Encounters Unforeseen, Diego was a Lucayan Taíno born...
by Andrew Rowen | Mar 8, 2026 | New York City
The historical record is largely silent as to what Queen Isabel and Chief Anacaona understood about each other. They were separated by an ocean and of different civilizations just met. For Women’s History Month, I deduce or speculate what each had come to know of the...
by Andrew Rowen | Feb 7, 2026 | New York City
Isabel, Anacaona & Columbus’s Demise depicts the origin of the system of repartimiento through which Spain would rule its American conquests, whereby Spanish settlers were awarded “Indian” lands and the Indians resident thereon as laborers. As related in Columbus...
