Colony of Santiago
Santiago was a Spanish territory of the Spanish West Indies and within the Viceroyalty of New Spain, in the Caribbean region. Its location is the present-day island and nation of Jamaica.
Spanish SantiagoSantiago
Colony of Spain; part of the Spanish West Indies, Captaincy General of Santo Domingo
Ferdinand II of Aragon (First)
Charles II of Spain (Last)
Juan de Esquivel (First)
Cristóbal Arnaldo Isasi (Last)
1509
1655
Columbus[edit]
Christopher Columbus set sail on his second voyage to the Americas on September 24, 1493.[6] On November 3, 1493, he landed on an island that he named Dominica. On November 22, he landed on Hispaniola and spent some time exploring the interior of the island for gold. He left Hispaniola on April 24, 1494, and arrived at the island of Juana (Cuba) on April 30 and Jamaica (called "Xaymaca" by the indigenous Taíno, meaning "land of springs") on May 5. Columbus named the island Santiago and used it as a mini-state for his family.[7]
He explored the south coast of Juana before returning to Hispaniola on August 20. After staying for a time on the western end, present-day Haiti, he finally returned to Spain.[8] Columbus returned to Jamaica during his fourth voyage to the Americas. He had been sailing around the Caribbean nearly a year when a storm beached his ships in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica, on June 25, 1503.[9]
For a year Columbus and his men remained stranded on Jamaica. A Spaniard, Diego Mendez, and some natives paddled a canoe to get help from Hispaniola. The island's governor, Nicolás de Ovando y Cáceres, detested Columbus and obstructed all efforts to rescue him and his men. In the meantime, Columbus allegedly mesmerized the natives by correctly predicting a lunar eclipse for February 29, 1504, using the Ephemeris of the German astronomer Regiomontanus.[10] Help finally arrived from the governor on June 29, 1504, and Columbus and his men arrived in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Castile, on November 7, 1504.[11] In 1505 Juan de Guzman, Duke of Medina Sidonia, in an agreement with Columbus proposed a project to populate the island but King Ferdinand turned it down.
Etymology[edit]
The Taino referred to the island as "Xaymaca," but the Spanish gradually changed the name to "Jamaica."[12] In the so-called Admiral's map of 1507, the island was labeled as "Jamaiqua"; and in Peter Martyr's first tract from the Decades of the New World (published 1511—1521), he refers to it as both "Jamaica" and "Jamica."[12]