"I found the people of this island and all the other islands to be very naked, as I have said, men and women, just as their mothers bore them, but they know not what it is to be shameful, nor to cover …"

"It was the Lord who put into my mind (I could feel His hand upon me) the fact that it would be possible to sail from here to the Indies."

"The people here are simple in war-like matters... I could take them all with 50 men and subjugate them to my will."

"I should not proceed by land to the East, as is customary, but by a Westerly route."

"They are so simple, that they believe that all the world and all the people are in heaven, and that they come from there, and that they are the first that ever came from there, and that they are the f…"