Columbus recorded that the island he called San Salvador was flat, green, and had a large lagoon. The trouble is that several Bahamian islands fit that description. The prevailing scholarly consensus places the landfall at present-day San Salvador Island, about 65 miles to the northwest. But Samana Cay has had its champions. Gustavus Fox, who had served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy during the American Civil War, first proposed Samana Cay as Guanahani in 1882, analyzing Columbus's log entries with a sailor's eye for distances and bearings. The argument resurfaced a century later when Joseph Judge of National Geographic Magazine recalculated Columbus's route in 1986 and concluded that Samana Cay was the more plausible candidate. His methodology drew both support and criticism, and the debate remains unresolved. No physical evidence -- no anchor, no artifact, no inscription -- has settled the question.

Long before European navigators argued over coordinates, the Lucayan people made Samana Cay their home. In the mid-1980s, archaeologists discovered figurines, pottery shards, and other artifacts on the island that were attributed to the Lucayans, placing their presence around the time of Columbus's voyages. The Lucayans were an Arawak-speaking people who had migrated northward through the Caribbean from South America. They called this island something close to "Samana," a word meaning "small middle forested land" -- an accurate description that has survived in the island's modern name through centuries of Spanish and British colonial administration. The Lucayans who greeted Columbus, on whichever island it happened, were among the first indigenous Americans to encounter Europeans. Within decades, their population across the Bahamas was devastated by enslavement and disease.

Samana Cay was not always empty. During the first half of the twentieth century, a small settlement existed on the island's south side near the western end. The ruins of that community are still visible -- crumbling walls and foundations slowly being reclaimed by vegetation. Why the residents left is part of a broader Bahamian story: the Out Islands, as the less developed islands are known, have been losing population for generations as people migrate to Nassau or abroad for work and education. Today, the only regular visitors come from nearby Acklins Island, 22 miles to the southwest, to harvest cascarilla bark. This aromatic bark from the Croton eluteria shrub grows abundantly on Samana Cay and is shipped to Italy, where it serves as an ingredient in fragrances, medicines, and Campari. The island's economy, such as it is, lives in its wild shrubs.

From the air, Samana Cay is a slender green brushstroke on deep blue canvas, its shores fringed by the lighter turquoise of shallow reef systems. The reefs that encircle the island have protected it from easy access for centuries -- the same reefs that would have complicated any fifteenth-century landing. No airport serves the island. No ferry runs a schedule. The nearest significant settlement is on Acklins Island. This isolation has preserved Samana Cay in a state that Columbus himself might still recognize: dense low forest, empty beaches, and water so clear that the bottom is visible from dozens of feet above. Whether or not this particular island is where European colonization of the Americas began, it remains a place where the Caribbean looks as it did before anyone thought to argue about it.