On April 16, the first significant exploration of Florida occurred when Spanish soldier, explorer, and Indian fighter Panfilo de Narvaez saw Indian houses near what is now Tampa Bay. Florentine explorers kidnapped an Indian child to bring to France. On July 8, the first kidnapping in America took place. In a fight with the Calusa, de Leon captured four warriors.
In May, Ponce de Leon encountered Calusa Indians while exploring the Gulf Coast of Florida near Charlotte harbor. Columbus wrote of the Indians he encountered, "They all go around as naked as their mothers bore them and also the women." However, he noted that "they could easily be commanded and made to work, to sow and to do whatever might be needed, to build towns and be taught to wear clothes and adopt our ways." Although Columbus also wrote that "they are the best people in the world and above all the gentlest," his record of the first encounter between Europeans and New World Indians was filled with accounts of enslavement, murder, and rape. North American Indian Timeline (1492-1999)įrom their nakedness, Columbus inferred the native people to be an inferior race.
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