Columbus Lands in New England 1492

Point of Divergence ... In 1492, Columbus crossed the Atlantic Ocean and landed on what is known today as San Salvador Island. He met on the island the Lucayan tribe and he described them as "A sweet and gentle people." After meeting the Lucayans, he spent a span of days searching the islands he had landed in for gold. Then upon his return to Spain, he kidnapped and forcibly brought several Lucayans back with him on his ships. The resulting kidnapping and removal of the Lucayans from the Bahamas left the islands severely depleted, and by 1520 the islands only had eleven Lucayans. Once they were removed, the Bahamas remained uninhabited for 130 years.

What if a change in the weather or navigation had directed Columbus to land on the shores of New England, say roughly in the same area as the Pilgrims would 200 years later? If he had landed there, based on tribal maps, he would have encountered the Massachuset tribe. Would Columbus have been able to enslave the native population there as well, or would the Massachuset fight back? And if Columbus had been successful, how would that have effected North America today?
 
Prevailing winds and currents make this rather unlikely.

Exactly - at the latitude of New England, the wind and currents are almost entirely from west to east, from North America toward Europe, and ships in Columbus' time (and long after) couldn't sail directly against the wind, at least not for long distances. That's why Columbus sailed to a more tropical latitude - the prevailing winds and currents there headed west.

One possibility is that Columbus takes a northern route at subarctic latitudes instead. At those latitudes, the wind and currents were usually moving toward Europe, but they sometimes shifted enough for ships to make headway westward. That's how the Norse got to Iceland, Greenland, and Vinland, and how John Cabot got to Newfoundland from England just a few years after Columbus.

If Columbus does take this route, though, he would make first landfall in Labrador or Newfoundland, though, not New England. He might have tried to sail south and ended up along the New England coast.

Problem is, if he had taken the northern route he would have found even less sign of easily exploitable wealth than he did in the Caribbean OTL. Remember that Columbus was looking for wealthy lands to trade with, not temperate lands to settle on. The Spanish sovereigns might have lost interest quickly. If they had financed further expeditions, I suspect Columbus would have done what he did in OTL except on a smaller scale - gone around futilely looking for signs of the wealth of Asia, while trying to help fund his expeditions by grabbing unfortunate Native Americans as slaves to ship back to Spain.
 
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