1938-00-00: (The National Museum Established in Port-au-Prince, Housing Artifacts From the Pre-Columbian Period to the 1940s, Including the Anchor From Colum…
1938-00-00: (The National Museum Established in Port-au-Prince, Housing Artifacts From the Pre-Columbian Period to the 1940s, Including the Anchor From Columbus’s Santa Maria): In 1938, the national museum was established in Port-au-Prince as a repository of Haitian historical artifacts spanning from the pre-Columbian period to the twentieth century. Among its most significant holdings was the anchor from the Santa Maria, Christopher Columbus’s flagship, which ran aground off the coast of present-day Cap-Haïtien on Christmas Eve, 1492. The anchor was a relic of the moment when European colonization of Hispaniola began, the artifact that linked every subsequent century of conquest, enslavement, revolution, and independence to a single event on a single night. The museum also housed Taíno artifacts, colonial-era objects, and materials from the revolutionary and post-independence periods.