The promise of gold and a sea route to India. Those were the two main reasons why Spain’s King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella backed Christopher Columbus’s voyages. Columbus made four journeys across the Atlantic Ocean between 1492 and 1502. But instead of finding a trade route to India, he landed in the Americas. Thinking it was India, he called the land “the Indies” and the people there “Indians.” Sailing from island to island in the Caribbean Sea, he claimed them for the Spanish king and queen.
More than 1,000 years earlier, the Indigenous Taino people had migrated from the northern coast of or male chief. Their society was matrilineal and agricultural. Women made decisions related to families and local Taino village groups. Women also grew crops of pineapples, cassavas, and sweet potatoes, while men hunted and gathered seafood.
