Married to King Ferdinand, Isabella the Catholic saw to it that Christopher Columbus got the Church funding and boats he needed for his famous 1492 expedition to the New World, and later took steps to protect the American Indians.

According to the 1917 Catholic Encyclopedia, “Not only did Isabella the Catholic always show herself the protectress of Columbus, but she was also the protectess of the American aborigines against the ill-usage of the colonists and adventurers. In 1503, she organized the Secretariate of Indian Affairs, which was the origin of the Supreme Council of the Indies . . . . Her heart was filled with sympathy for the fate of the American Indians, she charged her successors to protect them and to regard them as they regarded their other subjects”

Queen Isabella