1493: STRANGE ENCOUNTER ON MARTINIQUE
UFO ROUNDUP Volume 4 Number 24 October 7, 1999 Editor: Joseph Trainor Masinaigan@aol.com

Everyone has heard of the legendary voyage of Christopher Columbus to the Americas in the autumn of 1492. But the man's later voyages through the Caribbean Sea are less well-known. Which is a pity because the self-styled "Admiral of the Ocean Sea" had a strange encounter in 1493.

On March 4, 1493, Columbus wrote that he had encountered "women warriors on the island of Matinino (today it's called Martinique--J.T.)" who "covered themselves with copper plates" and used "bows and arrows made of sugar cane."

Alfonso Ulloa, who accompanied Columbus on all four of his voyages, mentions the mysterious women warriors of Matinino in his book, Historia del Senor Don Fernando Colombo, adding that they were worshippers of the moon.

"They related that the day was for the Sun, and the night for the Moon; whence these women told the time by the other stars, or when the Great Bear rose, or another star set."

"One of them (a Taino or Carib Indian--J.T.) coming before the Admiral naked as as he was born from his mother's womb, said in a loud voice that he and the rest were Caribs, and that the gulf (Caribbean Sea) cut off Hispaniola from them. He said that the island of Matinino was peopled only with women to whom the Caribs went on certain days of the year. That the women sent the boys to their fathers to be brought up by them."

If the Taino canoes arrived at Matinino at the wrong time of year, the warrior women were said to flee into "vast caverns" at the foot of Mount Pelee that extended "deep into the earth."

Curiously, the first Spanish conquistadors to reach Cozumel, an island off the coast of Mexico's Yucatan peninsula encountered the same legend of warrior women who worshipped the moon and took refuge in vast caves. An island called Las Mujeres (Spanish for the women) was said to be their home, and the island was supposed to have large caverns running under the sea all the way to Cuba!

Vast underground caverns are a persistent legend among all of the indigenous people of the Americas. One wonders if it has any basis in fact. (See Secret Cities of Old South America by Harold T. Wilkins, reprint Adventures Unlimited Press, Kempton, Illinois, 1998, pages 152 to 156.)

(Editor's Comment: Imagine what would have happened if Columbus had landed in Mexico in 1492 instead of the Bahamas. Chris's last voyage would have been up the stone steps of the pyramid at Teotiahuacan. Meanwhile, up at the top, the high priest of the Aztecs, old Nezalhualpilli, whistles a little tune to himself and sharpens his obsidian knife. One slab--no waiting.)