I guess this is very old and from the IMBD board, but anyway:
At the time, in 1492, Europeans knew very little about east Asia and southeast Asia, and how far it extended. Indies was the name of all of the southern parts of Asia (named after Indus) and at the time there was no country called India. So when the Spaniards met the Indigenous people of the Antilles, they called it the West Indies, they thought they were Southeast Asian people, similar to Filipinos and Malay. Even though Indus is in Pakistan, the naming of the indigenous peoples of the Americas as "Indians" had nothing to do with the country now called India.
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