The first Caribbean religious chronicle: the “Account of the Antiquities of the Indians” (c.1496), by the hieronymite Ramón Pané

Abstract

The document here presented is one of the first accounts made by Europeans about the Indians in the New World, just a few years after the arrival of Christopher Columbus. The author, Ramón Pané, was a hieronymite friar and stayed for a couple of years among the Taino Indians, producing the first account made by a religious writer about these people. Besides presenting some notices about the author and his work, we offer a key to the reading of the document.