La Navidad
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La Navidad was the colony Columbus and his men and some help from Guacanagari built in 1492.
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[edit] The wreck of the Santa Maria
The Santa Maria was Columbus`s flagship on his first voyage to the West Indies. On the morning of December 25, 1492, the Santa Maria was wrecked as it lay at anchor. While all the crew slept after a night of revelry with the Tainos, the ship settled so gently on a coral reef that none of its sleeping crew was awakened. Although the Spaniards and Indians tried to save her, they soon turned their efforts to saving her cargo. It was unloaded and left on the beach. Columbus recorded that nothing was stolen.
[edit] The building of La Navidad
At a place now called Caracol Bay in present-day Haiti, Christopher Columbus decided to build a colony out of the timbers from the wrecked ship and called it Navidad (Christmas Town). Forty men had to be left behind because the Pinta was stolen by Martin Pinzon (who deserted the expedition to look for gold) and the remaining ship, the Nina, coludn`t carry all the explorers. Bartolomeo Columbus, Christopher Columbus`s brother, was left in charge of the colony. Guacanagari and his fellow natives helped the colony. The first permanent link had been forged between America and Europe.
[edit] Later years
When Columbus came back form Spain during his second voyage, on November 27, 1493 he arrived to see a bustling village. When he landed, however, he saw eleven corpses of his men on the beach, and that La Navidad had been destroyed. The only Spaniard who was alive was Bartolomeo Columbus. Bartolomeo had warned La Navidad's inhabitants not to interfere with the Arawaks, but they probably disregarded this and angered them. The Arawaks retaliated and destroyed the Spanish settlement.
Columbus decided to build a settlement farther east and named it La Isabela after the Queen.
[edit] Rediscovery
After Columbus sailed away a second time, the site apparently was forgotten until a Haitian farmer led Dr.William Hodges to it in 1977. Hodges, an amateur archaeologist and American medical missionary, received permission from the Haitian government to excavate a tennis-court-size section of the marshland, and he and his helpers found some artefacts of La Navidad.
