Columbus waited in Spain for several years for Spain’s war of reconquest against the Moors to end before receiving funding for his voyage. Ferdinand and Isabella promised to finance his voyage but only after the last Moorish Kingdom had been captured and Islam driven from their realm.
The exploration process was too slow for Christopher Columbus, who was born in the Italian seaside city of Genoa in 1451 to a family of weavers. Learning to sail from Portuguese seamen, Columbus sailed for many years before moving to Lisbon, Portugal, to try to gain support for a voyage to find a route to India, China, and Japan by sailing west across the Atlantic. Unsuccessful finding funding in Portugal, Columbus moved to Spain. In 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabell, the joint monarchs of Spain, agreed to finance Columbus’s voyage in return for the gold, spices, and riches that he might find.
The Voyage of 1492
While historians disagree about Columbus’s intended destination, most assume he was seeking Japan and the East Indies. While his destination is disputed, his goals were apparent. He intended to explore and trade, as well as conquer and exploit.
Columbus left Spain with ninety men aboard three vessels: the Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria. Both the Niña and the Pinta were caravels. The Santa Maria was a larger, slower rig. After several weeks at sea, the expedition finally landed in October of 1492 on an island off the Bahamas, and named it San Salvador, meaning “blessed savior.” Columbus’s next stop was Cuba. The expedition then continued to present-day Haiti, a part of an island that Columbus called Hispaniola. Columbus promptly claimed the area for the Spanish crown. The expedition was met with friendly natives bearing gifts for the newcomers. Columbus’ group immediately began interacting with los indios, as he called them, claiming in his journal that they were friendly people and willing allies.
Finding the land beautiful and the people agreeable, Columbus left about forty men behind and sailed home with news of success. Believing that he had reached Asia, Columbus was eager to return to Europe with samples of the people and treasure to be had. On this first voyage, Columbus seized about twenty natives and took them back to Spain. Only seven or eight survived the trip. Click on the following map to see the route Christopher Columbus traveled.
Columbus didn’t call the native peoples Indians because he thought he was in India. He actually thought he was in Japan. He called these natives Indios, the Spanish word for people who live on a chain of islands—in this case, the Indies. English explorers later took this Spanish word and Anglicized it to Indian.
Amerigo Vespucci
The Americas are named quite accidentally not for Columbus but for another early Italian explorer, Amerigo Vespucci, who first sailed near the mainland of America in 1497. Vespucci’s accounts of his explorations were widely distributed, including his acknowledgement that an unknown continent had been discovered.
Columbus’s Return Trip to Americañ
Columbus reached Spain in March 1493, immediately receiving titles and riches. The published report of his successful voyage made him a hero throughout Europe. He was made Admiral of the Ocean Sea and Governor of the Indies. The success of the voyage was immediately recognized, and Columbus was quickly outfitted for a second voyage with seventeen ships, more than 1,200 men, and instructions from the King and Queen to treat the natives well. While Columbus had been gone, the forty men he had left on Hispaniola had raped and murdered the natives and pillaged their villages. The natives struck back, killing ten Spaniards. Columbus counterattacked with crossbows, guns, and ferocious dogs and loaded five hundred natives on a ship bound for the slave market in Spain. These events set a trend of savage exploitation for the rest of Columbus’s explorations in the Americas.
Conjecture of Columbus’s image by Sebastiano del Piombo in the Gallery of Illustrious Men, Uffizi, Florence
No one knows what Columbus looked like. Not one of the countless images of Columbus was made during his life time. Written descriptions of Columbus’s appearance say that he had reddish hair that turned gray early in life and had a pale complexion that stayed red from too much exposure to the sun. Despite this, most paintings show him with dark hair. Learn more about Columbus at the Florida Museum of Natural History and the Mariner’s Museum.
Columbus made two more trips to the Americas (four total), each time becoming more greedy for gold and treating the natives more savagely. To the end, he refused to believe that he had discovered anything other than the outlying lands of Asia. Eventually he was charged with mismanagement of lands in the New World, arrested, and taken back to Spain in chains.
Columbus is celebrated yearly in the United States as the man who “discovered America,” but he never actually set foot on the mainland of North America. Columbus’ “discovery” of the Americas is significant because it initiated the trans-Atlantic exchange of slaves, diseases, goods, crops, and immigrants that characterized the future relationship between the Old and New Worlds.
