Isabel, Anacaona & Columbus’s Demise: 1498-1502 Retold

A historical novel, Isabel, Anacaona & Columbus’s Demise: 1498-1502 Retold dramatizes from both Native and European perspectives the European subjugation of Española’s indigenous peoples during the least studied period of the island’s brutal conquest. Based on primary sources, it strikingly sets a Native and European queen-the Taíno Anacaona and Spain’s Isabel-on comparable pedestals and tells Columbus’s demise through his eyes and those of Taíno chieftains and Spaniards who opposed him.

Queen Isabel and King Fernando struggle to bring their conquest of Española to profitability and order, and she sincerely seeks to curtail her conquerors’ enslavement of “Indians” and other abuses, including freeing Indians whom Columbus has enslaved. She and Fernando terminate Columbus’s governorship of Española, direct his successors to reorder settler-Indian relationships, and dispatch other explorers to claim the mainland. But Isabel’s conquerors mostly ignore her instructions regarding the Indians’ treatment.

Available on: