Columbus kept a diary or log of his first voyage to the New World. He used the diary to record details of navigation and, once he arrived in the Caribbean, to note the people and places he observed. When Columbus returned to Spain, he presented his diary as a gift to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. The monarchs arranged to have a copy made of the diary. The original diary disappeared, but in the 1530s a priest had access to the copy, which he transcribed, summarized, and occasionally quoted. The copy then vanished as well, but the priest’s manuscript has survived. In the quoted passage from the priest’s manuscript, excerpted here, Columbus describes his first encounters with indigenous Americans. Columbus’s remarks illustrate the understandings and misunderstandings as Europeans and Native Americans “discovered” one another.