The 1492 "voyage of discovery" is, however, hardly all that is
at issue. In 1493 Columbus returned with an invasion force of
seventeen ships, appointed at his own request by the Spanish Crown to
install himself as "viceroy and governor of [the Caribbean islands]
and the mainland" of America, a position he held until
1500. Setting up shop on the large island he called Espa–ola (today
Haiti and the Dominican Republic), he promptly instituted policies of
slavery (encomiendo) and systematic extermination against the native
Taino population. Columbus's programs reduced Taino numbers from as
many as eight million at the outset of his regime to about three
million in 1496. Perhaps 100,000 were left by the time of the
governor's departure. His policies, however, remained, with the
result that by 1514 the Spanish census of the island showed barely
22,000 Indians remaining alive. In 1542, only two hundred were
recorded. Thereafter, they were considered extinct, as were Indians
throughout the Caribbean Basin, an aggregate population which totaled
more than fifteen million at the point of first contact with the
Admiral of the Ocean Sea, as Columbus was known.
Eat me.
