Caribbean Map

Pietro Martire d' Anghiera, (Peter Martyr)
"Martyris Angli mediolanensis opera, legatio
babylonica, oceani decas, poemata, epigrammate"
Seville:1511
Rare Book & Special Collections Division
Bequest of Mrs. John Boyd Thacher, 1925

The large island of Hispaniola, today shared by the countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, became the first site for permanent European settlement in America. And it remained so, until occupation of the other large islands of Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and Cuba took place during the years 1508-11. By 1525 a Milanese humanist at the court of the Spanish crown, Pietro Martire d'Anghiera, also known as Peter Martyr, reported to his friend Gaspare Contarini of Venice that the islands of Hispaniola, Cuba, and Jamaica contained a million persons or more at the time of Columbus, but then, because of cruel treatment, despair, disease, or infanticide, there were almost none left.