The naked natives, wrote Columbus, were “well-​built people, with handsome bodies and very fine faces.”

The odyssey continued, this time toward the east. He discovered a large mountainous island near Cuba that he named La Isla Española (Hispaniola). And at last the Spaniards found a fair quantity of gold. But a few days later, disaster struck. His flagship Santa María went aground on a sandbank and could not be refloated. The natives willingly helped the crew to salvage everything possible. “They love their neighbors as themselves, and they have the softest and gentlest voices in the world and are always smiling,” said Columbus.

Columbus decided to establish a small settlement on Hispaniola. Earlier, he had ominously observed in his log: “These people are very unskilled in arms. . . . With 50 men you could subject everyone and make them do what you wished.” He also envisioned a religious colonization: “I have great hope in Our Lord that Your Highnesses will convert all of them to Christianity and they will all belong to you.” Once the settlement was organized in a place he called La Villa de la Navidad (The Town of the Nativity), Columbus decided that he and the rest of his men should make haste to Spain with news of their great discovery.