After Guadeloupe, the fleet explored the archipelago of islands to the north. Columbus named one for the Virgin of another Spanish monastery, Montserrat, a second for the Virgin who worked miracles in Seville’s cathedral, Saint Antigua, and a third—as the day of anchorage was the feast of Saint Martin of Tours—for him, as well (now Nevis). Before midday on November 14, 1493, 528 years ago, the fleet anchored at an estuary on the northern coast of an island the Taínos aboard called Ayay, which Columbus named for the holy cross, Santa Cruz (Saint Croix). St. Croix is now one of the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the estuary is known as Salt River Bay.
As depicted in Columbus and Caonabó, Columbus dispatched two dozen armed voyagers ashore, and after plundering trophies from Caribe homes, the sailors took more Caribes captive. More Taínos enslaved by Caribes also sought asylum with Columbus (again, unwittingly to be held captive by him). Hand-to-hand combat broke out between the sailors and a few Caribes—men and women—in a canoe caught between the shore and the fleet, with two sailors gravely wounded. The canoeists were outnumbered and captured, to be executed or enslaved. Columbus awarded one of the women to a friend, who raped her.
The first photo is of Salt River Bay from afar, the second looking inland from its mouth, and the third of the shallows at the mouth where the hostilities occurred. The final image (contained in Columbus and Caonabó) is a portion of a sketch taken from Honorius Philoponus, 1621, depicting a European perception of hostilities between Europeans and Caribes (courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library, Providence, Rhode Island).
