Guanahaní (meaning "small upper waters land") was the Lucayan name of an island in the Bahamas that was the first land in the New World sighted and visited by Christopher Columbus' first voyage, on 12 October 1492. It is a bean-shaped island that Columbus called San Salvador. Guanahaní has traditionally been identified with Watlings Island, which was officially renamed San Salvador Island in 1925 as a result, but modern scholars are divided on the accuracy of this identification and several alternative candidates in and around the southern Bahamas have been proposed as well.
Primary sources
Letter from Columbus himself Upon his return to Spain in the spring of 1493, Columbus wrote a letter to Luis de Santangel, one of his patrons at the Royal Court of Castile. The letter was printed widely and translated into many languages, spreading the news of the discovery throughout Europe. In the letter, Columbus mentions Guanahani as the name of the first island he discovered, but provides no other details. Nevertheless, this single mention in a widely printed letter would have been enough to make the name Guanahani widely known at an early date.
Map of Juan de la Cosa
Juan de la Cosa was the owner and master of the Santa María and as such sailed with Columbus on the first voyage. He was also a cartographer, and in 1500 de la Cosa drew a map of the world which is widely known as the earliest European map showing the New World. The Caribbean portion of the map shows Cuba and Hispaniola clearly, and a much more confused rendering of the Bahamas. Nevertheless, Guanahani is drawn in the Bahamas in a form that appears to show a group of islets rather than a single island, lying due north of the Windward Passage between Cuba and Haiti, in the central part of the Bahamas islands chain.
Diario
Columbus' so-called log, more properly referred to as the Diario, is an abstract made by Bartolomé de las Casas, a Spanish monk and friend of the Columbus family, probably sometime in the 1540s. When Columbus returned to Spain after his first voyage, he reported to the royal court at Barcelona and presented his original log to the Spanish sovereigns. Queen Isabella ordered that the log be copied. The original soon disappeared, but the so-called 'Barcelona copy' was returned to Columbus prior to his second voyage and was in his possession at the time of his death in 1506. It then passed to his son Fernando and remained in his vast library for many years. At some point, Las Casas obtained the Barcelona copy and made the abstract now called the Diario. Although most of the Diario is written in the third-person of Las Casas, nearly all of that portion dealing with Columbus' movements in the Bahamas is in the first person of Columbus himself, and is (according to Las Casas) a direct quote from the Barcelona copy. The Barcelona copy disappeared late in the 16th century, but Las Casas' Diario was discovered intact in 1795 by Ferdinand de Navarette and published 30 years later. The Diario remains the most authoritative and detailed account of Columbus' movements and activities on the first voyage.
Biography by Sebastian LaFrance and Fernando Colón In 1571, a biography of Christopher Columbus, written in Italian, was published in Venice. The book was a translation of a Spanish manuscript written by Columbus' second son, Fernando Colón, between 1537 and 1539. The Spanish manuscript eventually was translated into Italian and published by Alfonso Ulloa, a Spaniard making his living in Venice as a professional translator. It is clear from the context that Fernando must have been working from the Barcelona copy when he wrote the portion of the biography describing the first voyage, as many details in the biography agree precisely with the Diario. In that sense, the primary utility of the biography is as a validity check on the Diario, a test which vindicates Las Casas in many respects. However, there are a few descriptions in the biography that are not already in the Diario. Most importantly, the biography asserts that Guanahani was fifteen leagues (45 miles) long, which seems contrary to Columbus' implication in the Diario that he had seen the entire island on a single day's boat trip.
Description of San Salvador/Guanahani Columbus calls the island "very flat and with very green trees", which is true for all of the islands proposed by historians. His next statement is more problematic. He says Guanahani has "muchas aguas y una laguna en medio muy grande" – many waters and a very large laguna in the middle (or "in between"). The word laguna creates many problems. It is uncertain whether it means lagoon or pond. In any case, most of the proposed islands have either a lagoon or a pond; only East Caicos lacks one. On 14 October, Columbus made a boat trip to "the other part, which was the eastern part" of Guanahani. Therefore, he went the length of the island in a north-northeast direction. This is possible only at Plana Cays, Conception and Egg, and to a very minor extent at Samana Cay. Columbus noticed a reef that completely surrounded the island. All proposed islands have a reef, but the ones on Cat and Watling's do not completely surround the island. Between the reef and the island was a harbor "large enough to store all ships of Christendom." This could easily have been an exaggeration. The harbor on Egg is definitely too small, although it is fairly appropriate for the impressive harbor at the neighboring islet of Royal Island, which could have been considered part of the same larger island he named "San Salvador" (the other "part, which is the eastern part"). Columbus went on land and saw "a piece of land, that looked like an island, but actually wasn't one." This is difficult to track, because it may have become a real island in the past 500 years.
Number of islands One question in dispute is whether Guanahani was one island or more than one. Evidence is said to be inconclusive. Columbus never says specifically that Guanahani consisted of more than one island, something which is surely worth noting. But he does say that Guanahani had "another part, which is the eastern part"; and to explore that eastern part, he used a boat rather than walking, which may be significant. On reproductions of the map by Juan de la Cosa, who was with Columbus, Guanahani looks to some researchers like a string of small islands.
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
