They are very well made, with very handsome bodies, and very good countenances. All I saw were youths, none more than thirty years of age. They go as naked as when their mothers bore them, and so do the women, although I did not see more than one young girl. It appeared to me to be a race of people very poor in everything. In fine, they took all, and gave what they had with good will. They afterwards came to the ship’s boats where we were, swimming and bringing us parrots, cotton threads in skeins, darts, and many other things and we exchanged them for other things that we gave them, such as glass beads and small bells. “I,” he says, ” that we might form great friendship, for I knew that they were a people who could be more easily freed and converted to our holy faith by love than by force, gave to some of them red caps, and glass beads to put round their necks, and many other things of little value, which gave them great pleasure, and made them so much our friends that it was a marvel to see. What follows is in the actual words of the Admiral in his book of the first navigation and discovery of the Indies. …Presently many inhabitants of the island assembled. He also predicted easy success for missionaries seeking to convert these people to Christianity. In this account we see the assumptions and intentions of Christopher Columbus, as he immediately began assessing the potential of these people to serve European economic interests. First encounters between Europeans and Native Americans were dramatic events.
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