SO I have been in a debate with a few friends at university over this topic. Traditionally it is said Native peoples are called Indian because Columbus thought he landed in India. However, I have been told by multiple professors at my university that the real reason was due to Columbus reffering to the population as "In Dios" meaning people of god, due to how he felt they were very close with God. This is further supported with the fact that India is refereed to as Hindustan on his maps.
Which is correct?
Oddly, this question just came up the other day - check it out
and this older one, which is archived now...
This is further supported with the fact that India is refereed to as Hindustan on his maps.
I didn't think to check the maps at the time when answering the previous question, but it's a good place to look. This is the Martellus World Map produced in Italy shortly before Columbus' first voyage (in 1490, or maybe early 1491). Allegedly Columbus had a copy with him. Like Columbus himself, this map thinks Japan (the big island off in the northeast) is much further away from mainland Asia than it is. It's difficult to read this map now, but some features do stand out. Most importantly for our discussion: Mare Indicum ("the Indian Sea", now called the Indian Ocean; also v's on that map are actually u's) and the Oceanus Indicus Orientalis ("the Eastern Indian Ocean", which doesn't have a direct analogy in modern geography, but it's something like the Pacific mixed with the various seas just east of mainland Asia. There are some place in mainland Asia that are overtly referred to as India (and not just in the region we'd think of as India today) but they're impossible to make out in this image - at least for me.
As I mentioned in the other post, Columbus didn't think he had reached India or anywhere else in mainland Asia. But he did think he was in the Indies - somewhere among all those islands of the Oceanus Indicus Orientalis.
