When Christopher Columbus thought the Caribbean Islands was India, was this misconception an accurate portrayal of how they viewed Indians?
What did Europeans really know about India and it's people back then to make Christopher Columbus treat the native peoples of the Americas the way he did when he thought he was in India?
I've read a few books that typically state "Columbus thought he had reached India, and believed so until the day he died". I think the reality is a bit more nuanced.
Columbus thought he'd reached India, but not India proper. On his first voyage, he touched land in San Salvador and then went on to navigate part of the coastlines of Cuba and Hispaniola. He came across various tribes, but this did not match the stories Europeans had heard of India via the Arabs - cities and multitudes of people. And he did not find spices.
So he concluded that he must have reached islands west of India - the "Indies". The east Indies were already known in Europe as the spice islands, so Columbus called his discovery the "West Indies", and the inhabitants Indians.
This was confirmed in his mind in his second voyage, when he explored the coastlines of Cuba and Hispaniola in more detail, and went as far south as Domenica and Guadelupe as well as the Virgin Islands. These were obviously islands, some quite small, and not the mainland. There were no cities, no signs of what the Europeans would call "civilization".
In his third voyage, Columbus reached the northern coast of South America, near Trinidad. He acknowledged that this was too far south to be India, and he believed he had discovered a new land previously unknown to Europeans. But he still thought that the islands up north were the West Indies.
In his fourth voyage, Columbus was determined to find his way through the islands to the Indian mainland beyond. He navigated past the islands and reached the coast of Central America, which he followed all the way from the Yucatan to almost South America, looking for a passage through the Panamanian isthmus. Since he thought he was near India, he believed he was searching for the Straits of Malacca and the Indian Ocean beyond. He never found it.
Although Columbus believed he had found India, many Europeans doubted him right from the very first voyage. His descriptions of the land and people did not match what people had heard about India.