Shull School RENAISSANCE

Columbus called the colony La Navidad, Christmas, because it was founded on Christmas day.

When he landed, however, he saw eleven corpses of his men on the beach and discovered that La Navidad had been destroyed. He was told by nearby Tainos that the settlers had mistreated the natives, who retaliated by killing all of them.

After Columbus sailed away a second time, the site apparently was forgotten until a Haitian farmer led Dr. William Hodges to it in 1977. Hodges, an amateur archaeologist and American medical missionary, received permission from the Haitian government to excavate a tennis-court-size section of the marshland, and he and his helpers found some artifacts of La Navidad