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Christopher Columbus: His First Voyage of Discovery.
Columbus made 4 voyages across the Atlantic without once setting foot in the present day USA. Instead, spending all of his time around the Caribbean going from one Island to another thinking he was in Asia. On his third voyage to the Dominican Republic / Haiti he found it had disintegrated into chaos. Spain sent a governor who sent Columbus and his 2 brothers back to Spain in chains.
Originally Columbus’s mission was to look for a new route to Asia, and right up until he died he thought the areas he had visited were part of Asia. “I reached a land… very low and fertile… I named it Cabo de Gracias a Dios… The Indians here trade with gold… I believe this is near the Malay Peninsula,” he said after his 4th and last visit to the Caribbean. He was actually in Honduras and the gold he saw were ornaments the Indians wore.
At the time of Columbus the Americas were not known. Asia was known because of land routes. Columbus was the first to say he reached Asia, others that followed also thought they were in Asia. John Cabot for example, who claimed parts of Canada for Henry V11 in 1497 also said he was in Asia. It would be another 15–25 years before it was realised that the Americas was a continent.
