Golds’ Lure
Jan 01, 2020
4 minutes
by Diana Childress
The promise of gold and a sea route to India. Those were the two main reasons why Spain’s King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella backed Christopher Columbus’s voyages. Columbus made four journeys across the Atlantic Ocean between 1492 and 1502. He didn’t find a trade route to India. Instead, he landed in the Americas. Thinking it was India, he called the land “the Indies” and the people there “Indians.” And he claimed the land for Spain.
Columbus also found gold. Gold was discovered in rivers on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), Cuba, and Puerto Rico. With
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