Ciboney, Arawak-speaking Taíno, and Carib Amerindians crisscrossed the islands of the Caribbean archipelago for a millennium prior to the arrival of Europeans. Columbus learned from the Lucaya, a subgroup of the Taíno, that the island in the Bahamas where he first alighted was named Guanahani. He nevertheless christened (and Christianized) it as San Salvador before taking six Lucaya back to Spain as exotica to present at court in 1492—the first transculturation between Europe and the Caribbean. In 1493 the second voyage carried sugar cane from Europe to Hispaniola (Isla Española), and the Taíno gave Europe tobacco in return—a further and consequential moment of transculturation. By 1501 Nicolás de Ovando, governor of Hispaniola, ordered the delivery of the first Africans (Spanish-speaking Ladinos already enslaved in Iberia) to the New World. The...