In a classic case of confirmation bias, Columbus interpreted everything he saw as indicating he was in Asia. He was puzzled by the lack of high civilizations (in the regions he found) but was always convinced that Japan and China must be just a few islands over. On his fourth voyage in 1502-1504 he sailed down the coast of Central America searching for the Straits of Malacca so he could finally sail east to India.
Other explorers began to have their doubts fairly soon, but it was Vespucci who widely promoted the idea of a new continent.
When Magellan finally reached the Far East by sailing west in 1521, he first encountered the Mariana Islands and the Philippines. These islands weren’t too far off in their level of civilization from what Columbus found in the West Indies. But the Spanish were eventually able to make their way to the Spice Islands (Moluccas) and to the higher civilizations to the west.
The 14th century was the 1300’s, ending in 1400. So Columbus, 15th century, etc.
Columbus promoted the idea (a contrary ancient Greek calculation) that the world was only about 4500 miles diameter, not 8000. Therefore, taking into account Marco Polo’s travel journal, the distance west to the Indies and China should be about 3,000 miles. he was soundly rejected because the educated elite believed the majority view, that the earth was 8000 miles diameter and China was 12,000 miles or more west, beyond the reach of the vessels of the time. Spain decided to take a chance because Portugal was monopolizing the eastward circum-African route. He found a land with brown-skinned occupants, but not with the eyes characteristic of China, so it must be the other side of India. Having had his successes, he did not really want to admit he was wrong. Further exploration gradually showed that this was not at all India or China.
IIRC Amerigo Vespucci’s name stuck to the new continents because he was one of the first to proclaim that these were different, new continents. However, by then the name “Indians” for the locals, and “Indies” for the island chain, had already stuck.
Emphasis added. Do you have a cite for this? American Indians look more like Chinese than they do Indians from India (assuming Columbus would even know the difference). I have not heard that Columbus called the people “Indians” because he thought the looked like Indians, but that he thought he was in India.
At least in his first letter, Columbus provides no real physical description of the Indians, except to say that they are “well built and of handsome stature,” wear their hair long, and are not “negroes as in Guinea.”
In his letter, Columbus does not attempt to prove he reached India. He just accepts as a given that he had reached the Indies, since there was land where he expected to find them.
As soon as another dude led a team. The realization that Columbus hadn’t reached Asia (1) came after several trips, both his own and others’.
1: not just India; las Indias Orientales refers to India and SE Asia, all the way to the Philippines.
Good question -worthy of its own thread or hijack… How likely that Columbus, a career sailor in the Mediterranean, would have seen Orientals or Indians from India? I’m guessing there were a small number of the latter in some eastern ports. Did the locals make a point of genocide of the ruling Mongolians when they removed the empire of Genghis Khan, or would a few surviving ethnics be found in Turkey and Lebanon? I haven’t read what Marco Polo wrote describing the various ethnic groups encountered along the way to China.
How much did the west know about general geography? They were vaguely aware that China sat facing an ocean to the east, I assume; and that India was south of China and parts were a bit closer. By the 1490’s did they really know about Indonesia? Certainly not the Philippines. (OTOH, Islam had spread as far as the Philippines so there must have been some vague descriptions floating around about the geography.)
Ignoring “yellow man” crap, and the fact that China is a vast country with many ethnic types, Chinese from the Chinese empire were whiter than many Caucasians in southern Europe, whereas South Asians were noticeably browner in general. Would Columbus have known this? I always assumed the colour of the locals and the southern latitude was why he assumed he’d hit outlying India, not China.
So why did you say it was the shape of their eyes in your earlier post? Anyway, I thought you might have a cite, but it appears not. As noted, Columbus thought he was in India, hence he called the locals Indians. He didn’t first think the locals looked like folks from India and the figure out he was in that country.
Right, that’s another point – “The Indies” was not one specific nation or place, it was the entirety of South and Southeast Asia and at the time the Westerners had but the foggiest notion of how spread out that was, especially if you throw in Columbus’ crank numbers for the distances involved.
And it is interesting that physical depiction of the natives basically as “they are not negroes”. Seems he’s saying, I’m pretty sure I did not hit the other side of Africa instead.
On Jacques Cartier’s second voyage down the St. Lawrence, he went as far as he could until he hit rapids. The place he landed he named La Chine (China) and there is a town called Lachine there today. Also the Lachine Rapids. This was in 1535 so the idea that this was a new continent still hadn’t taken hold everywhere.
Columbus’s log contains somewhat more detailed descriptions of the people.
October 12, 1492.
By “the continent” Columbus evidently means the mainland of Asia.
October 13
Columbus adds:
October 21
“Cipango” was the name used for Japan. So Columbus had clearly concluded he was somewhere near it by his second day in the West Indies. And he thought he was within reach of the domains of the Great Khan in China.
So Columbus attributed the brown color of the people to the latitude. But he also knew he was still well east of India itself (since Japan was known to be east of India). He just believed that he was in some unknown part of the “Indies.” He had no clear idea of how far he might be from Japan or China but thought they were within a fairly short sail.
Fairly trivial and peripheral; but I recall reading, quite a long time ago, a novel about Britain’s first tentatively beginning to settle in Australia, 200+ years ago. Novel – by Thomas Kenneally?? – struck me as solid and well-researched and likely accurate, not phoned-in trash: it had the Brits referring to their local Aborigines, as “Indians”.
This could, of course, have been the author’s giving his imagination a bit of play; and even if it was historically accurate for the time, it would plainly have been a term which did not last long in those parts.
The Caribbean islands are still called the West Indies, but Columbus never landed in North America. How did Columbus’s label of “Indian” get expanded to places nowhere near where Columbus ever went? e.g. Plains Indians?
Because everyone started calling the folks on the islands “Indians”. And even when people were pretty sure this wasn’t India, they still kept calling them Indians. And when they moved from the islands to the mainland like Mexico, they kept calling them Indians. And when people who weren’t even Spanish started arriving on the East Coast of North America, they called the people there “Indians” because that’s what people in the Americas were now called, even though everyone knew for sure this wasn’t India.
The word “Indian” had come to mean “the inhabitants of the new continent we’re exploring and invading”, rather than “a person from India”. And that practice continues to this very day, despite the fact that we’ve known for literally 500 years that the Americas are not India.
