Christopher Columbus made four Atlantic voyages under the Spanish Crown between 1492 and 1504. The voyages linked European maritime networks with Caribbean and Central American regions already inhabited by Indigenous societies. His own letters and contemporary accounts are central evidence, but they are not neutral or complete records.
The original day-by-day log of the first voyage has not survived. What researchers call the journal is known chiefly through a sixteenth-century abstract prepared by Bartolomé de las Casas. The distinction matters: a later transcription or summary is not the same thing as the surviving autograph of Columbus.
For a document-led account, start with the 1493 announcement letter, the surviving correspondence about subsequent voyages, contemporary reports, and editions that predate 1890. Richard Henry Major’s Select Letters of Christopher Columbus (1847; revised 1870) is a practical English-language gateway with the documents it translated, while earlier Spanish editions and the original-language witnesses remain especially important.
The routes should be presented as documented departure points, island visits, and historical voyage legs, not as a continuous GPS track. Early navigational descriptions, island names and modern identifications can be disputed; disputed landfalls must be labeled rather than assumed.
The entire story also includes the encounters and consequences for Indigenous communities, Spanish colonization, forced labor and conflict, maritime science, ship construction, winds and currents, royal sponsorship, and the circulation of geographic knowledge. Claims about any of these should be tied to the specific historical source and its perspective.
Our editorial rule for this collection is to privilege original records and editions published before 1890. Where such records are incomplete, later scholarship may help check translations, chronology and disputed details, but should never silently replace the source record.