that took place in Europe and Africa, they remained essentially frozen in time
for thousands of years. When they were rediscovered, they were first noted
on a sea chart in 1389. To the Europeans, they appeared utterly alien.
Although the Guanche looked Mediterranean, as indeed they were in origin,
they were described by the Spaniards as living in caves, wearing only skin
and rush clothing, illiterate, without coherent government or civic institu-
tions, and—disastrously for them—armed only with sticks and stones. The
Spaniards dealt with them by conquering, enslaving, and ultimately extermi-
nating them—setting the pattern for later relations with the American
Indians.
Determined as he was to land on the mainland of Cathay (China) or
at least on Cipangu ( Japan), Columbus had a shock when he saw the
first group of inhabitants of the New World. They were not the silk-robed
men of Marco Polo’s tale. Like the Guanche of the Canaries, they were a
primitive people. As he sailed on and landed on Hispaniola he remarked,
“The people of this island and of all the other islands which I have found
and seen, or have not seen, all go naked, men and women, as their mothers
bore them, except that some women cover one place only with the leaf
of a plant or with a net of cotton which they make for that.” Columbus
noted also that their “skin is the color of the Canary Islanders.” That is,
they were very like the Guanche, toward whom the Spaniards had already
adopted a policy.
However they appeared to him, the natives saved Columbus’s life. On
Christmas eve the Santa Maríastruck a reef. Had the ship been of the
Mediterranean shape, curved on the bottom, it could have been rocked
backward and forward, by moving men and cargo, until it floated free. But
theSanta Maríawas not a Mediterranean ship, and it quickly began to
break up. Had it not been for the Arawak Indians, everything might have
been lost.
The people, equipment, and stores were saved, but Columbus could
not crowd forty more people into the tiny Niña.Thus the accidental com-
bination of a shipwreck and the Indians’ hospitality forced him to establish
the first European settlement in the New World.
Gathering up the few gold trinkets the natives had acquired from some
distant and unknown source and taking several Indians along as hostages,
Sugar, Slaves, and Souls 43