Columbus sets foot on American soil

It is known that Columbus, when he set foot on American soil on 12 October 1492, believed, according to the cosmographic ideas of the time, that he had arrived at the first islands of India: hence the name that was then employed to designate these new lands and the appellation of Indians applied to the aborigines. These terms have persisted in spite of their absurdity, and thus the name of West Indies (Indes occidentales) has remained among the English applied to the Antilles. The name of Greater Antilles applies to the four large islands of the North: Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica and Porto-Rico; the rest of the chain, which comprises only islands of relatively small extent, is included under the name of Lesser Antilles. The Spaniards early distinguished the islands of the Wind, Barlo Vento (from where the wind blows) and the islands under the Wind, Soto Vento. The first denomination applies to the eastern part of the chain, that is to say to the Lesser Antilles, which run from north to south, from Porto-Rico to the Côte Ferme: this denomination comes from the fact that the trade winds…

Rouzier tells this under the entry Antilles (les).