Columbus and the "Indians".

• Position: PAIRING A PRIMARY & SECONDARY SOURCE

In 1492, Christopher Columbus set sail for the Indies (India, China, and Japan) but instead landed in the Americas. In March 1493, he arrived back in Spain and immediately put pen to paper. He wrote to Spain's King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, who had financed his journey, to describe what he had experienced. Below is a portion of that letter in which Columbus describes the native peoples he'd encountered on several Caribbean islands. (He calls them "Indians.") Read the letter along with the Upfront article about Columbus's legacy, then answer the guestions.

Letter From Christopher Columbus, March 1493

[The Indians] exhibit great love towards all others in preference to themselves: they also give objects of great value for trifles, and content themselves with very little or nothing in return. I however forbad that these trifles and articles of no value (such as pieces of dishes, plates, and glass, keys, and leather straps) should be given to them, although if they could obtain them, they imagined themselves to be possessed of the most beautiful trinkets in the world.

It even happened that a sailor received for a leather strap as much gold as was worth three golden nobles, and for things of more trifling value offered by our men, especially newly coined blancas,* or any gold coins, the Indians would give whatever the seller required.... Thus they bartered, like idiots, cotton and gold for fragments of bows, glasses, bottles, and jars; which I forbad as being unjust, and myself gave them many beautiful and acceptable articles which I had brought with me, taking nothing from them in return; I did this in order that I might the more easily conciliate them, that they might be led to become Christians, and be inclined to entertain a regard for the King and Queen, our Princes and all Spaniards, and that I might induce them to take an interest in seeking out, and collecting, and delivering to us such things as they possessed in abundance, but which we greatly needed.

They practice no kind of idolatry, but have a firm belief...