In the fifteenth century, the richest European countries wanted to find new water routes to Asia because they wanted to trade buy or sell things with other countries and become richer. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of spain sent explorers men looking for new lands and routes for ships across the oceans to find a western route to Asia. One of these men was the explorer Christopher Columbus, born in Italy, but who worked for the Spanish king and queen. He arrived in the Bahamas, islands southeast of Florida, on October 12,1492. There he met people who painted their bodies and wore animal skins. He called the native people "Indians" because he thought he was in India, and they continued to be wrongly called Indians for more than four hundred years. Today they are called Native Americans.