When Ponce and his crew arrived at present-day Charlotte Harbor, the Calusa were anxiously waiting to meet their new neighbors. Ponce had barely made it through his speech welcoming the Calusa to Spanish rule when one of the Calusa warriors’ housewarming gifts—an arrow dipped in the sap of one of the most poisonous trees in the known world—pierced his thigh.* Ponce’s whole staff, crew, and record label hightailed it back to Cuba, and the thuggish conquistador who brought slavery, colonialism, genocide, and death to New World natives died from the wound. In the first case of whitesplaining,
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