One morning on the island of Guanahani, men arrived from the sky, men who were not used to walking on the earth. Well, we thought they were from the sky. Later we found out that if you held them under water long enough they died and, even after three days, did not come back to life.
They came on three boats. There were maybe a hundred of them.
Their leader was a man with red hair who wore shiny clothes and a red cape. When he got on shore, he sank to his knees and cried. He kissed the earth. Then he got up and looked at the white sands, the turquoise sea, the green trees, the birds of many colours. And he looked at us, at our bodies.
He had a big picture of a black bird. Two men beside him each had a picture of a green cross.
He went down on one knee and looked up at the sky. He said the same thing three times – isabella-iferdinand – while a man next to him was drawing something. We did not know it at the time, but they were claiming the island for their queen and king.
He and another man started talking to us. It seems they were asking us questions, something about oro, but we did not know what they were saying. He got angry and started cursing.
He was not angry for long. They gave us beads made of a clear stone, which we hung around our necks, and red hats. Later we traded birds, spears, balls of cotton thread and so on for clear beads, small musical balls (pictured below) and other things.
News spread throughout the islands to come see the men from the sky, to bring them food and drink.
They were fairly short, some with big bellies. Their hair was sometimes brown or red or even yellow – and thinnish. They wore their hair long, but did not let it hang over their foreheads or down their backs. One man had dark brown skin, most had pale skin, completely unpainted. They smelled, as if they needed a bath, and had no women. They wore clothes regardless of the heat and carried weapons everywhere.
Even after we told them we were the People of the Islands (Lukku-Cairi), they kept calling us Indians (Indios). Even after we told them the island was Guanahani, they called it Sansalvador.
They were looking for yellow gold, which they worship. Their gold was mainly white or brown, not yellow. Their white gold was hard and shiny and sometimes so sharp it cut you to the quick.
They were also looking for Quinsay, a town in the land of the Great Khan. It seems they were lost.
Note: The morning was Friday October 12th 1492 (October 21st on the Gregorian calendar) and the man with red hair was Columbus looking for Hangzhou, China. Guanahani, where he first set foot in the Americas, was in the Bahamas. He was off by over 13,700 km.
– Abagond, 2017.
Sources: mainly “The Four Voyages” by Christopher Columbus; “Memory of Fire: Genesis” (1982) by Eduardo Galeano; CRW Flags; Google Images.
See also:
- Welcome Hispanic Heritage Month 2017
- Columbus
- Tainos – of which the Lukku-Cairi were those who lived in the Bahamas
- The Spanish
- The term “Indian”
- The term “America”
- Gregorian calendar
606
Columbus Day should just be scrapped from the calendar. I read that many are replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous People Day.
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