On October 12, 1492, five weeks after heading into the Atlantic Ocean, Christopher Columbus landed on an island in the West Indies that he named San Salvador. The exact location and name of the island where Columbus first made landfall is in dispute, but we do know that it is in the Bahamas, although Columbus believed it to be India. Columbus spent five days exploring the area where he and his men first encountered native people and kept a detailed journal of his experiences. Although the original journal was lost, large parts of it had been copied by the Catholic friar Bartolomé de Las Casas, including the following journal entry.

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