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1492-12-21

Columbus notes that the people go naked and carry no weapons

Haitian

… and it is an easy thing to know (says the Admiral) when a thing is given with a heart very desirous to give.” These are his words: “These people have no spears nor darts, nor any other arms, nor do the others of all this island, and I hold that it is very great: they are as naked as their mother bore them, women as well as men, for in the other lands of the Juana, and the others of the other islands, the women wore before them some things of cotton with which they cover their nature, about as much as the codpiece of a man’s breeches, especially after they pass the age of 12 years, but here neither girl nor old woman; and in the other places all the men made their women hide from the Christians out of jealousy, but not here, and there are very handsome bodies of women, and they were the first who came to give thanks to heaven and to bring all they had, especially things to eat, bread of ajes and gonza avellanada, and five or six kinds of fruits,” some of which the Admiral ordered to be cured to bring to the Sovereigns. …

Source  ·  p. p. 251 Bartolomé de Las Casas, Diario del primer viaje (Las Casas’s abstract of Columbus’s log), in Navarrete, Colección de los viages y descubrimientos, t. I (1825), p. p. 251