As I recall, the Europeans knew about the overland trade route to India and the eastern water route around the tip of Africa, but Old Chris was seeking a western water route to India

When he landed at some Caribbean Island, he thought he was in India; so he called the people "Indians".

Wikipedia says that  he planned to land in Japan in route to  the East Indies during his first voyage in 1492, but instead he landed at what is now the island of Haiti and Dominican Republic. Never admitting that he had reached a continent previously unknown to Europeans, rather than the East Indies he had set out for, Columbus called the inhabitants of the lands he visited indios (Spanish for "Indians").

Here's my question: When he didn't find any Indian spices and other trade goods, shouldn't he have gotten suspicious that it was not India and, therefore, the people were not Indians?

My second question: Why did the rest of Europe continue to call the newly found folks "Indians" when they eventually knew danged well that the new world inhabitants were not Indians? I can understand Chris calling them Indians initially, but why did the incorrect name stick?

I guess they had to call them something, but seems that a lots of confusion could have been avoided by calling the inhabitants something other than Indians.

Of course, we would now have a bunch of sports teams called something other than Indians . . . and the controversy about what to call them would be about whatever their name was.

Hind sight is 50/50.  Especially in your case.

Columbus was not the first. His journals say that he saw many American native artifacts in Guinea, he knew there was something west and not India

Because they didn't give a shit?

Yep as soon as this comes in men loose all subtlety

By the time he made his last trips, I'm pretty sure he knew he wasn't in india

Yep, fuck spices.
We got
Land
Gold
Pussy

Went to his grave believing that he had discovered a new route to Asia.   Once they saw a few gold artifacts, they were hooked on the place.   Columbus actually kept two logs of his first voyage.  A public one in which he estimated progress made that day and a private one in which was he recorded what he believe to be how far he really had gone.   As there was no way to measure latitude at sea at the time, all distances were estimated.  

In his public log he deliberately understated the distance they had gone so the sailors would not get to nervous at being so far from land.   It turns out that his public ships log was actually much more accurate than what his private log was.

OP, I take it you do not celebrate Enslavement of the New World Day in October with the rest of us?

Not to mention those Scandinavian settlements in Newfoundland...

And syphilis, don't forget syphilis.

Halloween?

Yeah, while there is still some controversy, it is a New World disease.  That and tobacco really fucked the Old World.

Small pox for the old world win!

That's one sneaky pun.

Or Egyptian mummies with traces of cocaine and other New World-only plant and spices in their wraps.

Columbus wasnt politically correct.  Neither were settlers, explorers or any civilization builders for that matter.

Besides, they called thme savages.

Think about the size of the southern pacific, 1000's of islands and uncontacted people. Add to that the amount of time it took to sail anywhere. When he landed, I'm sure he explored and kept trying to figure out where in the indies he had landed. Then went back to Spain.. How many more trips did he get in before he was too old? 3...7?

He probably had a good idea that he didn't make it but was probably too old by the time he came to that conclusion.

Let's face it, the "Indians" were an obsolete culture, living on borrowed time. If we hadn't "stolen" their land, then someone else would've.







 

I'm of the opinion that 'Indians' is an Anglicization of the Spanish word indigenos, literally 'indigenous ones'.

my contribution:

In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
he sailed so fast he skinned his ass
in 1492.


thank you, thank you very much.

Quite honestly I think it would have been cool to have lived in a time where knowledge of such things like North America was non existent...then to have someone go out and "discover it".  I mean, like what if during the search of the stupid fucking plane they found an entire island in the Indian or Pacific Ocean...and it was inhabited by people we all never knew about...

Nope.  He called them "indios", as in literally, from India.  His diaries make that very clear.

I had read a while back there were even non native settlements coming from the Pacific side, maybe there were more

I always wonder what North America would look like if those settlements had really taken off.

Just to throw this out there...

I have a Betamax tape from a series titled Ten Who Dared. I have the Christopher Columbus episode. Does anyone else remember this series?

CSB

I always felt the Portuguese sailors who were doing business in Guinea knew about that part of the New World, Colombo had sailed to Guinea and other countries with Portuguese sailors. He flew the Spanish flag for the Royalty and I look at it as a claim stake. He later got into a tiff with them because he wanted 10 points on everything.

I actually believe the "route to India" ploy was an excuse for Spain to lay claim to that part

I would just like to see the faces of British sailors if they encountered blonde-blue eyed viking warriors in the northeast.

The Kennewick Man dated at 7300 BC was first classified as Caucasoid. After lawsuits they watered it down to "Chatters et al. conducted a graphic comparison, including size, of Kennewick Man to 18 modern populations and showed Kennewick Man was most closely related to the Ainu. However, when size was excluded as a factor, no association to any population was established.[6] Chatters said that anthropologist C. Loring Brace classified Ainu and Polynesians as a single craniofacial Jomon-Pacific cluster and Chatters said "Polynesians have craniofacial similarities to Asian, Australian and European peoples".

Kennewick man must have been Italian, Mussolini and jimmy Durante would have said he had a nasabeak