ABSTRACT
Since early explorers learned to harness the wind to power their journey across the sea, the world has never been the same. These small acts of departure from one’s homeland and arrival in a new world have occurred millions of times in the last few hundred years—each with a story often left untold. The most famous of these narratives is that of Christopher Columbus, the “Great Navigator” whose departure and arrival changed the course of human history. While the broad outline of Columbus’s story is well known, the details remain obscure to many. In grade school, US students are taught that Columbus discovered America in 1492 without understanding that he never walked the land-of-the-free-home-of-the-brave. Rather, Columbus established the first permanent European settlement in the “New World” on Haitian soil.1
