Columbus and La Isabela

Abstract

This chapter describes the establishment of La Isabela by Christopher Columbus during his second voyage to America. La Isabela has captured the imagination of archaeologists and historians for centuries, as the first European attempt at colonization in the unknown Americas. This first European colony was outfitted and organized without any substantial information about the social or environmental circumstances of life in America other than the brief shipboard sojourn during Columbus's first voyage. La Isabela represents a medieval Iberian concept of colonization, and so provides us with an extremely important archaeological reference point from which to study the development of the diverse and distinctive cultural mosaic of the post-1500 Americas. The life conditions and social processes of fifteenth-century La Isabela were deeply influential in shaping subsequent Spanish colonial experiences in the Americas.