Samana Cay is a now uninhabited island in the

Bahamas The Bahamas, officially the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, is an archipelagic and island country within the Lucayan Archipelago of the Atlantic Ocean. It contains 97 per cent of the archipelago's land area and 88 per cent of its population. ...

believed by some researchers to have been the location of

Christopher Columbus Christopher Columbus (; between 25 August and 31 October 1451 – 20 May 1506) was an Italians, Italian explorer and navigator from the Republic of Genoa who completed Voyages of Christopher Columbus, four Spanish-based voyages across the At ...

's first landfall in the Americas on October 12, 1492. It is an islet in the eastern Bahamas, northeast of

Acklins Island Acklins is an island and Districts of the Bahamas, district of the Bahamas. It is one of a group of islands arranged along a large, shallow lagoon called the Bight of Acklins, of which the largest are Crooked Island, Bahamas, Crooked Island () ...

. About long and up to wide with an area of about it is bound by reefs. The verdant cay has long been uninhabited, but figurines, pottery shards, and other artifacts discovered there in the mid-1980s have been ascribed to Lucayan Indians, who lived on the cay around the time of Columbus's voyages. The indigenous people of the island on which Columbus first landed called it "

Guanahani Guanahaní (meaning "small upper waters land") was the Taíno language, Taíno name of an island in the Bahamas that was the first land in the New World sighted and visited by Christopher Columbus' Voyages of Christopher Columbus#First voyage (14 ...

." Samana Cay was first proposed to be Guanahani by Gustavus Fox in 1882, but the predominant theory gives the honour to San Salvador Island. However, in 1986, Joseph Judge of ''

National Geographic Magazine ''National Geographic'' (formerly ''The National Geographic Magazine'', sometimes branded as ''Nat Geo'') is an American monthly magazine published by National Geographic Partners. The magazine was founded in 1888 as a scholarly journal, nine ...

'' made different calculations based on extracts from Columbus's logs and argued for Samana Cay as the location, but his methodology has also been criticised. ''Samana'' was a name of apparent Lucayan origin (meaning "small middle forested land") used by the Spanish to designate one of the islands in the Bahamas. Granberry and Vesceliuus identify that island as the present-day Samana Cay.Julian Granberry and Gary S. Vescelius. (2004) ''Languages of the Pre-Columbian Antilles.'' The University of Alabama Press. p. 83 Samana Cay had a permanent population during the first half of the 20th century, and the ruins of the settlement are visible on the south side of the island, near the western end. The island is now uninhabited, but residents of nearby

Acklins Acklins is an island and district of the Bahamas. It is one of a group of islands arranged along a large, shallow lagoon called the Bight of Acklins, of which the largest are Crooked Island () in the north and Acklins () in the southeast, and ...

Island visit occasionally to collect cascarilla bark, which grows in abundance on the island.

Notes

External links

Paleogeographic evaluation furthering the Samana Cay landfall theory
Uninhabited islands of the Bahamas Former populated places in the Bahamas {{Bahamas-geo-stub