We learn that, after these ceremonies on the shore, the natives began fearlessly to gather about the strangers. Columbus, by causing red caps, strings of beads, and other trinkets to be distributed among them, made an easy conquest of their friendship. Later the men swam out to the ship to exchange their balls of thread, their javelins, and parrots for whatever they could get in return.
The description which Columbus gives us in his journal of the appearance and condition of these new people is the earliest, of course, in our knowledge of them. His record is interesting for the effect which the creatures had upon him, and for the statement of their condition before the Spaniards had set an impress upon their unfortunate race.
They struck Columbus as, on the whole, a very poor people, going naked, and, judging from a single girl whom he saw, this nudity was the practice of the women. They all seemed young, not over thirty, well made, with fine shapes and faces. Their hair was coarse, and combed short over the forehead; but hung long behind. The bodies of many were differently colored with pigments of many hues, though of some only the face, the eyes, or the nose were painted. Columbus was satisfied that they had no knowledge of edged weapons, because they grasped his sword by the blade and cut themselves. Their javelins were sticks pointed with fishbones. When he observed scars on their bodies, they managed to explain to him that enemies, whom the Admiral supposed to come from the continent, sometimes invaded their island, and that such wounds were received in defending themselves. They appeared to him to have no religion, which satisfied him that the task of converting them to Christianity would not be difficult. They learned readily to pronounce such words as were repeated to them.
On the next day after landing, Saturday, Columbus describes again the throng that came to the shore, and was struck with their broad foreheads. He deemed it a natural coincidence, being in the latitude of the Canaries, that the natives had the complexion prevalent among the natives of those islands. In this he anticipated the conclusions of the anthropologists, who have found in the skulls preserved in caves both in the Bahamas and in the Canaries, such striking similarities as have led to the supposition that ocean currents may have borne across the sea some of the old Guanche stock of the Canaries, itself very likely the remnant of the people of the European river-drift.