Francisco Hernández de Córdoba (discoverer of Yucatán)

There were two Spanish conquistadors at the start of the 16th century named Francisco Hernández de Córdoba. 1.) The one described here is the generally credited as the first European to discover the Yucatán Peninsula
Yucatán Peninsula
The Yucatán Peninsula, in southeastern Mexico, separates the Caribbean Sea from the Gulf of Mexico, with the northern coastline on the Yucatán Channel...

. 2.) The other founded Nicaragua
Nicaragua
Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...

: see Francisco Hernández de Córdoba (founder of Nicaragua)
Francisco Hernández de Córdoba (founder of Nicaragua)
Francisco Hernández de Córdoba is usually reputed as the founder of Nicaragua, and in fact he founded two important Nicaraguan cities, Granada and León. The currency of Nicaragua is named the córdoba in his memory....

.

Francisco Hernández de Córdoba (died 1517) was a Spanish

Spanish people

The Spanish are citizens of the Kingdom of Spain. Within Spain, there are also a number of vigorous nationalisms and regionalisms, reflecting the country's complex history....

conquistador
Conquistador
Conquistadors were Spanish soldiers, explorers, and adventurers who brought much of the Americas under the control of Spain in the 15th to 16th centuries, following Europe's discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus in 1492...

, known to history mainly for the ill-fated expedition he led in 1517, in the course of which the first Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

an accounts of the Yucatán Peninsula

Yucatán Peninsula

The Yucatán Peninsula, in southeastern Mexico, separates the Caribbean Sea from the Gulf of Mexico, with the northern coastline on the Yucatán Channel...

were compiled.

1517 Expedition

Together with some 110 discontented Spanish settlers in early colonial Cuba, Hernández de Córdoba petitioned the governor, Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar

Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar

Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar was a Spanish conquistador. He conquered and governed Cuba on behalf of Spain.-Early life:...

, for permission to launch an expedition in search of new lands and exploitable resources. This permission was granted after some haggling over terms, and the expedition consisting of three ships under Hernández de Córdoba's command left the harbor of Santiago de Cuba

Santiago de Cuba

Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city of Cuba and capital city of Santiago de Cuba Province in the south-eastern area of the island, some south-east of the Cuban capital of Havana....

on February 8, 1517, to explore the shores of southern Mexico

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

. The main pilot was Antón de Alaminos, the premiere navigator of the region who had accompanied Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents in the...

on his initial voyages; The pilots of the other two ships were Juan Álvarez and Camacho de Triana.

During the course of this expedition many of Hernández' men were killed, most during a battle near the town of Champotón

Champotón

Champotón is a small city in Champotón Municipality in the Mexican state of Campeche, located at , about 60 km south of the city of Campeche where the small Champotón river meets the coast of the Gulf of Mexico...

against a Maya

Maya civilization

The Maya is a Mesoamerican civilization, noted for the only known fully developed written language of the pre-Columbian Americas, as well as for its art, architecture, and mathematical and astronomical systems. Initially established during the Pre-Classic period The Maya is a Mesoamerican...

army. He himself was injured, and died a few days shortly after his return to Cuba. Bernal Díaz del Castillo

Bernal Díaz del Castillo

Bernal Díaz del Castillo was a conquistador, who wrote an eyewitness account of the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards for Hernán Cortés, himself serving as a rodelero under Cortés.-Early life:...

was a member of the expedition and wrote about his journey. This was the Europeans' first encounter with an advanced civilization
Civilization
Civilization is a sometimes controversial term that has been used in several related ways. Primarily, the term has been used to refer to the material and instrumental side of human cultures that are complex in terms of technology, science, and division of labor. Such civilizations are generally...

in the Americas, with solidly built buildings and a complex social organization which they recognized as being comparable to those of the Old World

Old World

The Old World consists of those parts of the world known to classical antiquity and the European Middle Ages. It is used in the context of, and contrast with, the "New World" ....

. They also had reason to expect that this new land would have gold

Gold

Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a...

.

Little is known of Córdoba's life before his exploration of the Yucatán. A native of Spain, he was living in Cuba in 1517, indicating that he had participated in the conquest of the island. He was also quite wealthy, as he both owned a landed estate, including a native town, and financed his expedition to Mexico.

Origin of Hernández's expedition:

Bernal Díaz del Castillo

is the chronicler who gives the most detail about the voyage of Hernández de Córdoba; his is also the only first-person account by someone who was present for the entire process. Also, Bernal declares in his chronicle that he had been himself a promoter of the project, together with another hundred or so Spaniards who said they had to "occupy themselves". These soldiers and adventurers had been three years now in the newly-settled territory of Cuba

Cuba

The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

, many also having moved there from the colony of Castilla del Oro

Castilla de Oro

Castilla de Oro was the name given by the Spanish settlers at the beginning of the 16th century to the Central American territories from the Gulf of Urabá, near today's Colombian-Panamanian border, to the Belén River. Beyond that river, the region was known as Veragua, and was disputed by the...

(Tierra Firme, present-day Panama

Panama

Panama , officially the Republic of Panama , is the southernmost country of Central America. Situated on the isthmus connecting North and South America, it is bordered by Costa Rica to the northwest, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. The...

) under its governor Pedrarias Dávila

Pedrarias Dávila

Pedrarias Dávila y Ortiz de Cota , was a Spanish colonial administrator...

, where they were apparently surplus to requirements; they complained that "they hadn't done a single thing worth the telling".

From Bernal Díaz del Castillo's narrative, it appears possible to deduce — possibly against the narrator's own pretences because he would prefer to keep this hidden — that the original goal of the project was to capture Indians as slave

Slavery

Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...

s to increase or replace the manpower available to work the agricultural land or the mines of Cuba, and so that the Spaniards resident on the island who did not have Indians for their own exploitation of the land, such as Bernal himself, could establish themselves as hacendados.

Bernal tells first how he, like the other restless 110 Spaniards who lived in Castilla del Oro, decided to ask permission of Pedrarias to travel to Cuba, and that Pedrarias granted this willingly, because in Tierra Firma

Tierra Firma

Tierra Firma served in Spanish colonial times as the name of the Isthmus of Panama, which was a province of New Granada....

"there was nothing to conquer, that every thing was peaceful, that Vasco Núñez de Balboa

Vasco Núñez de Balboa

Vasco Núñez de Balboa was a Spanish explorer, governor, and conquistador. He is best known for having crossed the Isthmus of Panama to the Pacific Ocean in 1513, becoming the first European to lead an expedition to have seen or reached the Pacific from the New World.He traveled to the New World in...

, Pedrarias's son-in-law, had conquered it".

Those Spaniards from Castilla del Oro presented themselves in Cuba to Diego Velázquez, the governor (and relative of Bernal Díaz del Castillo), who promised them "...that he would give us Indians when some were available". Immediately after this allusion to the promise of Indians, Bernal writes, "And as three years had already passed [...] and we haven't done a single thing worth the telling, the 110 Spaniards who came from Darién

Darién Province

Darién is a province in eastern Panama. It is also the largest province in Panama. It is hot, humid, heavily forested, and sparsely populated, having 48,378 habitants...

and those who in the island of Cuba do not have Indians" — again an allusion to the lack of Indians — they decided to join up with "an hidalgo [a title of nobility or gentry, derived from hijo de algo, "son of someone"] known as Francisco Hernández de Córdoba [...] and that he was a rich man who had a village of Indians on this island [Cuba]", who had accepted to be their captain "to go on our venture to discover new lands and in them to employ ourselves".

Bernal Díaz del Castillo barely tries to conceal that the much-repeated Indians had something to do with the project, although authors such as Salvador de Madariaga

Salvador de Madariaga

Salvador de Madariaga y Rojo was a Spanish diplomat, writer, historian and pacifist. He had two daughters....

prefer to conclude that the objective was a much more noble one, "to discover, to occupy ourselves and do things worthy of being told". But, in addition, governor Diego Velázquez himself wanted to participate in the project and he lent the money to build a boat, "...with the condition that [...] we had to go with three boats to some little islets that are between the island of Cuba and Honduras

Honduras

Honduras is a republic in Central America. It was previously known as Spanish Honduras to differentiate it from British Honduras, which became the modern-day state of Belize...

, that are now known as the islands of Los Guanaxes [Guanajes], and we had to go in arms and fill up the boats with a cargo of Indians from those islets to serve as slaves" (here Bernal uses the word esclavos, "slaves", against Velázquez, whereas he had previously avoided speaking of the Indians who Velázquez had promised to him). The chronicler immediately denied that he admits this pretension of Velázquez's: "we responded to him that what he said was not the command of God nor king, to make free men into slaves". If we are to believe Bernal, the governor sportingly admitted the denial and despite all this lent the money for the boat.

To evaluate the vague and even contradictory form in which Bernal treats the matter of kidnapping Indians as a possible objective of the voyage, one must take into account that he wrote his history of the conquest some fifty years after the occurrence of these events, and that at least in part his objective was to have his services and those of his fellow soldiers recognized by the Crown. It would have been difficult in these circumstances for him to have clearly stated that this had originally been a slaving expedition.

Most of his contemporaries, who also wrote earlier, are less evasive: in the letter sent to Queen Joanna

Joanna of Castile

Joanna , nicknamed Joanna the Mad , was the first queen regnant to reign over both the Crown of Castile and the Crown of Aragon , a union which evolved into modern Spain...

and Emperor Charles V

Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor

Charles V was ruler of the Holy Roman Empire from 1519 and, as Charles I, of the Spanish Empire from 1516 until his voluntary retirement and abdication in favor of his younger brother Ferdinand I and his son Philip II in 1556.As...

(Charles I of Spain) by the constable and town authorities of la Rica Villa de la Vera Cruz
Veracruz, Veracruz
Veracruz, officially known as Heroica Veracruz, is a major port city and municipality on the Gulf of Mexico in the Mexican state of Veracruz. The city is located in the central part of the state. It is located along Federal Highway 140 from the state capital Xalapa, and is the state's most...

, Cortés's captains narrate the origin of Hernández's expedition saying: "as it is the custom in those islands that in the name of your majesties are peopled with Spaniards to go for Indians to the islands that are not peopled with Spaniards, to obtain services from them [i.e. to obtain their forced labor], they sent the abovementioned... [Francisco Fernández de Córdoba and his associates Lope Ochoa de Caicedo and Cristobal Morante with]... two boats and a brigantine in order that from said islands they would bring Indians to the so-called Fernandina Island, and we think [...] that said Diego Velázquez [...] has the fourth part of said armada". In his Relación de las cosas de Yucatán ("Relation of the Things of Yucatán"), Fray Diego de Landa

Diego de Landa

Diego de Landa Calderón was a Spanish Bishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Yucatán. He left future generations with a mixed legacy in his writings, which contain much valuable information on pre-Columbian Maya civilization, and his actions which destroyed much of that civilization's...

writes that Hernández de Córdoba went... "to gather slaves for the mines, now that in Cuba the population is getting smaller", although a while later he adds, "Others say that he left to discover land and that he brought Alaminos as a pilot..." Bartolomé de Las Casas

Bartolomé de Las Casas

Bartolomé de las Casas O.P. was a 16th-century Spanish historian, social reformer and Dominican friar. He became the first resident Bishop of Chiapas, and the first officially appointed "Protector of the Indians"...

also says that even if the original intent was to kidnap and enslave Indians, at some point the objective was broadened to one of discovery, which justifies Alaminos.

The presence of Antón de Alaminos on the expedition is, in effect, one of the arguments against the hypothesis that the objective was exclusively one of slaving. This prestigious pilot, veteran of the voyages of Columbus and even, according to some, a man knowledgeable of places not published on the mariners' maps, would seem an excessive resource for a slaving expedition to the Guanajes islets.

There was another member of the expedition whose presence conforms still less to this hypothesis: the Veedor ("Overseer" or "Supervisor") Bernardino Íñiguez. This public office had functions that we would now call fiscal and administrative. It was his job to count the treasure gathered by the expeditions, in metals and precious stones, in order to assure the correct allotment of the quinto real
Quinto Real
The Quinto Real or the Quinto del rey, the "King's fifth", was a 20% tax established in 1504 that Spain levied on the mining of precious metals. The tax was a major source of revenue for the Spanish monarchy. In 1723 the tax was reduced to 10%....

— the "royal fifth": 20% of all treasure gained in the conquests was destined for the Spanish royal treasury, a fiscal norm that originated in the Reconquista
Reconquista
The Reconquista was a period of almost 800 years in the Middle Ages during which several Christian kingdoms succeeded in retaking the Muslim-controlled areas of the Iberian Peninsula broadly known as Al-Andalus...

, the re-conquest of Spain from the Muslims — and of other legal requisites, such as reading to the Indians, before attacking them, a declaration of intentions and a warning, to legalize the aggression in the face of possible future investigations. (Cortés was especially scrupulous with this formal requirement, useless when one lacked interpreters who could translate the message to the Indians). If the expedition went to Guanajes to kidnap Indians, the Veedor's presence would have been downright inconvenient for them. Although, on the other hand, according to Bernal, Íñiguez was nothing but a soldier who carried out the role of veedor, his being so designated in advance indicates that there was at least some thought of the possibility of exploration.

In short, from the data in hand one could make the case that Hernández de Córdoba discovered Yucatán by accident, upon finding his expedition — initially headed on a shorter voyage to kidnap Indians for the haciendas of Cuba — driven from its course by a storm. Or one could suppose that after some evil thoughts by Diego Velázquez, promptly rebuked and found blameworthy by the other Spaniards, who furthermore were willing to continue without Indians in Cuba, the voyage was planned exclusively as one of discovery and conquest, and for that purpose they brought the Veedor, and such a good pilot. One could also believe, with Las Casas, that the project proceeded with both objectives in mind.

The European discovery of Yucatán: the Gran Cairo

Whether or not they were in search of Indians of the Guanajes islets, on February 8, 1517 they left Havana

Havana

Havana is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of — making it the largest city in the Caribbean region, and the most populous...

in two warships and a brigantine

Brigantine

In sailing, a brigantine or hermaphrodite brig is a vessel with two masts, only the forward of which is square rigged.-Origins of the term:...

, crewed by over 100 men. The captain of the expedition was Francisco Hernández de Córdoba, the pilot Antón de Alaminos, from Palos

Palos

Palos may refer to:Places*Palos de la Frontera, a municipality in Spain*Cape Palos, cape on the Mediterranean coast of Spain*Palos Township, Cook County, Illinois*Palos Heights, Illinois*Paloş , a village in Caţa Commune, Braşov County, RomaniaEvents...

. Camacho de Triana (the name suggests he was from Seville

Seville

Seville is the artistic, historic, cultural, and financial capital of southern Spain. It is the capital of the autonomous community of Andalusia and of the province of Seville. It is situated on the plain of the River Guadalquivir, with an average elevation of above sea level...

) and Joan Álvarez de Huelva

Huelva

Huelva is a city in southwestern Spain, the capital of the province of Huelva in the autonomous region of Andalusia. It is located along the Gulf of Cadiz coast, at the confluence of the Odiel and Tinto rivers. According to the 2010 census, the city has a population of 149,410 inhabitants. The...

(nicknamed "el manquillo", which indicates that he was missing a limb), piloted the other two ships.

Until February 20 they followed the coast of "Isla Fernandina" (Cuba). At the point of San Antón

San Antón

San Antón is one of the 31 barrios of the municipality of Ponce, Puerto Rico. Along with Canas Urbano, Machuelo Abajo, Magueyes Urbano, and Portugués Urbano, San Antón is one of the municipality's five originally rural barrios that are now also part of the urban zone of the city of Ponce. It is...

, they took to the open sea.

There followed two days and nights of furious storm, according to Bernal so strong as to endanger the boats, and in any case sufficient to consolidate the doubt about the objective of the expedition, because after the storm one may suspect that they did not know their location.

Later they had 21 days of fair weather and calm seas after which they spotted land and, quite near the coast and visible from the ships, the first large populated center seen by Europeans in the Americas, with the first solidly built buildings. The Spaniards, who evoked the Muslims in all that was developed but not Christian, spoke of this first city they discovered in America as El gran Cairo, as they later were to refer to pyramids or other religious buildings as mezquitas, "mosques".

It is reasonable to designate this moment as the discovery of Yucatán — even "of Mexico", if one uses "Mexico" in the sense of the borders of the modern nation state — but it should be noted that Hernández's expeditionaries were not the first Spaniards to tread on Yucatán. In 1511 a boat of the fleet of Diego de Nicuesa

Diego de Nicuesa

Diego de Nicuesa was a Spanish conquistador and explorer. In 1506, he was given the job of governing Costa Rica, but ran aground off the coast of Panama. He made his way north overland, against resistance from the native population...

, which was returning to Hispaniola

Hispaniola

Hispaniola is a major island in the Caribbean, containing the two sovereign states of the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The island is located between the islands of Cuba to the west and Puerto Rico to the east, within the hurricane belt...

, wrecked near the coast of Yucatán, and some of its occupants managed to save themselves. At the moment in which the soldiers of Hernández saw and named El gran Cairo, two of those shipwrecked sailors, Jerónimo de Aguilar and Gonzalo Guerrero

Gonzalo Guerrero

Gonzalo Guerrero was a sailor from Palos, in Spain who shipwrecked along the Yucatán Peninsula and was taken as a slave by the local Maya. Earning his freedom, Guerrero became a respected warrior under a Maya Lord and raised three of the first mestizo children in Mexico...

, were living in the area of Campeche, speaking the Mayan

Mayan languages

The Mayan languages form a language family spoken in Mesoamerica and northern Central America. Mayan languages are spoken by at least 6 million indigenous Maya, primarily in Guatemala, Mexico, Belize and Honduras...

dialect of the area, and Gonzalo Guerrero even seems to have been governing an indigenous community. This does not remove the merit of Hernández as a discoverer: one may insist that merit of discovery ought to involve a voluntary act, not a shipwreck; Nicuesa's shipwrecked sailors who were not sacrificed

Human sacrifice

Human sacrifice is the act of killing one or more human beings as part of a religious ritual . Its typology closely parallels the various practices of ritual slaughter of animals and of religious sacrifice in general. Human sacrifice has been practised in various cultures throughout history...

or worked to death by their Maya

Maya peoples

The Maya people constitute a diverse range of the Native American people of southern Mexico and northern Central America. The overarching term "Maya" is a collective designation to include the peoples of the region who share some degree of cultural and linguistic heritage; however, the term...

captors ended up enslaved.

The two boats of shallower draft went on ahead to investigate whether they could anchor securely near land. Bernal dates March 4, 1517 as the first encounter with the Indians of Yucatán, who approached those boats in ten large canoe

Canoe

A canoe or Canadian canoe is a small narrow boat, typically human-powered, though it may also be powered by sails or small electric or gas motors. Canoes are usually pointed at both bow and stern and are normally open on top, but can be decked over A canoe (North American English) or Canadian...

s (called pirogues), using both sails and oars. Making themselves understood by signs — the first interpreters, Julián and Melchior, were obtained by precisely this expedition — the Indians, always with "happy face and gestures of peace", communicated to the Spaniards that the next day more pirogues would come to bring the recent arrivals to land.

The supposed etymology of Yucatán, and the more probable etymology of Catoche

This moment in which the Indians came up to the Spanish boats and accepted strings of green beads and other trifles fashioned for this purpose was one of the few peaceful contacts that Hernández's group had with the Indians, and even these gestures of peace were feigned on the part of the Indians. These contacts of March 4 may have been the birth of the toponyms Yucatán and Catoche, whose surprising and amusing history — perhaps too amusing to be true — is often cited. Be it history or legend, the story is that the Spaniards asked the Indians for the name of the land they had just discovered and on hearing the predictable replies to the effect of "I don't understand what you said", "those are our houses" gave the land names based on what they had heard: Yucatán, meaning "I don't understand you" for the whole "province" (or island, as they thought), and Catoche, meaning "our houses", for the settlement and the cape where they had debarked.

Fray Diego de Landa

Diego de Landa

dedicated the second chapter of his Relación de las cosas de Yucatán to "Etymology of the name of this province. Its situation," and in it he confirms that Catoche derives from cotoch, "our houses, our homeland", but does not confirm that Yucatán means "I don't understand".

Finally, Bernal Díaz del Castillo also takes up the matter. He confirms the etymology of Catoche as "our houses", but for Yucatán he provides an even more surprising explanation than "I don't understand". According to his account, the Indians captured in the Battle of Catoche, Julian and Melchior, in their first conversations with the Spanish in Cuba, at which Diego Velázquez was present, had spoken of bread (Spanish: "pan"). The Spaniards explaining that their bread was made of "yuca" (cassava

Cassava

Cassava , also called yuca or manioc, a woody shrub of the Euphorbiaceae native to South America, is extensively cultivated as an annual crop in tropical and subtropical regions for its edible starchy tuberous root, a major source of carbohydrates...

), the Maya Indians explaining that theirs was called "tlati", and from the repetition of "yuca" (a Carib word, not a Mayan

Mayan languages

word) and "tlati" during this conversation the Spaniards falsely deduced that they had intended to teach the name of their land: Yuca-tán.

It is probable that the first narrator of the "I don't understand" story was Fray Toribio de Benavente

Toribio de Benavente Motolinia

Fray Toribio de Benavente also known as Motolinia was a Franciscan missionary and among the first 12 clerics to arrive in New Spain in May 1524.-Life and times:...

, a.k.a. Motolinia, who at the end of chapter 8 of the third book of his Historia de los indios de la Nueva España (History of the Indians of New Spain, written c. 1541) says: "because speaking with those Indians of that coast, to that which the Spaniards asked the Indians responded: Tectetán, Tectetán, which means: I don't understand you, I don't understand you: the Christians corrupted the word, and not understanding what the Indians meant, said: Yucatán is the name of this land; and the same happened with a cape made by the land there, which they named the Cape of Cotoch, and Cotoch in that language means house."

A similar version is given by Francisco López de Gómara

Francisco López de Gómara

Francisco López de Gómara was a Spanish historian who worked in Seville, particularly noted for his works in which he described the early 16th century expedition undertaken by Hernán Cortés in the Spanish conquest of the New World...

, writing about eleven years later in his biography of Cortés. However, there is no clear cognate in 16th century Yucatec which closely matches this phonology (although t'an or t'aan is a common Mayan

Mayan languages

root for "language, speech"); it has also been suggested that the derivation comes from the Chontal word yokatan meaning "language" or the region where the language is spoken.

The anecdote is so attractive that this story of the etymology of Yucatán (together with an exactly parallel, but apocryphal, story that kangaroo
Kangaroo
A kangaroo is a marsupial from the family Macropodidae . In common use the term is used to describe the largest species from this family, especially those of the genus Macropus, Red Kangaroo, Antilopine Kangaroo, Eastern Grey Kangaroo and Western Grey Kangaroo. Kangaroos are endemic to the country...

comes from some Aboriginal Australian

Indigenous Australians

Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands. The Aboriginal Indigenous Australians migrated from the Indian continent around 75,000 to 100,000 years ago....

's expression for "I don't understand the question") is often repeated as trivia

Trivia

The trivia are the three lower Artes Liberales, i.e. grammar, rhetoric and logic. These were the topics of basic education, foundational to the quadrivia of higher education, and hence the material of basic education, of interest only to undergraduates...

without much concern as to whether it is true.

Battle of Catoche, exploration of the "island" of Yucatán, discovery of Lázaro (Campeche)

The following day, as promised, the natives returned with more canoes, to transfer the Spaniards to land. They were alarmed that the shore was full of natives, and that consequently the landing might prove to be dangerous. Nonetheless, they landed as they were asked to by their until-now friendly host, the cacique
Cacique
Cacique is a title derived from the Taíno word for the pre-Columbian chiefs or leaders of tribes in the Bahamas, Greater Antilles, and the northern Lesser Antilles...

(chief) of El gran Cairo, deciding however to land en masse using also their own launches as a precaution. It also appears they armed themselves with crossbow

Crossbow

A crossbow is a weapon consisting of a bow mounted on a stock that shoots projectiles, often called bolts or quarrels. The medieval crossbow was called by many names, most of which derived from the word ballista, a torsion engine resembling a crossbow in appearance.Historically, crossbows played a...

s and muskets (escopetas); "fifteen crossbows and ten muskets", if we credit the remarkably precise memory of Bernal Díaz del Castillo.

The Spaniards' fears were almost immediately confirmed. The chief had prepared an ambush for the Spaniards as they approached the town. They were attacked by a multitude of Indians, armed with pikes

Pike (weapon)

A pike is a pole weapon, a very long thrusting spear used extensively by infantry both for attacks on enemy foot soldiers and as a counter-measure against cavalry assaults. Unlike many similar weapons, the pike is not intended to be thrown. Pikes were used regularly in European warfare from the...

, buckler

Buckler

A buckler is a small shield, 15 to 45 cm in diameter, gripped in the fist; it was generally used as a companion weapon in hand-to-hand combat during the Medieval and Renaissance, as its size made it poor protection against missile weapons but useful in deflecting the blow of...

s, slings

Sling (weapon)

A sling is a projectile weapon typically used to throw a blunt projectile such as a stone or lead "sling-bullet". It is also known as the shepherd's sling....

(Bernal says slings; Diego de Landa denies that the Indians of Yucatán were familiar with slings; he says they threw stones with their right hand, using the left to aim; but the sling was known in other parts of Mesoamerica, and the testimony of those at whom the stones were aimed seems worth crediting), arrows launched from a bow, and cotton

Cotton

Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective capsule, around the seeds of cotton plants of the genus Gossypium. The fiber is almost pure cellulose. The botanical purpose of cotton fiber is to aid in seed dispersal....

armor. Only the surprise resulting from the effectiveness of the Spaniards' weapons — swords, crossbows, and firearms — put the more numerous Indians to flight, and allowed the Spaniards to re-embark, having suffered the first injuries of the expedition.

During this battle of Catoche two things occurred that were to greatly influence future events. The first was the capture of two Indians, taken back on board the Spanish ships. These individuals, who once baptized

Baptism

In Christianity, baptism is for the majority the rite of admission , almost invariably with the use of water, into the Christian Church generally and also membership of a particular church tradition...

into the Roman Catholic faith received the names Julianillo and Melchorejo (anglicized, Julián and Melchior), would later became the first Maya language

Mayan languages

interpreters for the Spanish, on Grijalva's subsequent expedition. The second originated from the curiosity and valor of the cleric González, chaplain of the group, who having landed with the soldiers, undertook to explore — and plunder — a pyramid and some adoratorios while his companions were trying to save their lives. González had the first view of Maya idols and he brought away with him pieces "half of gold, and the rest copper

Copper

Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; an exposed surface has a reddish-orange tarnish...

", which in all ways would suffice to excite the covetousness of the Spaniards of Cuba upon the expedition's return.

At least two soldiers died as a result of their injuries in this battle.

Returning in the ships, Antón de Alaminos imposed slow and vigilant navigation, moving only by day, because he was certain that Yucatán was an island. The travellers' greatest hardship, a scarcity of potable water aboard, added to their woes. The stores of water, casks and jugs were not of the quality required for long voyages ("we were too poor to buy good ones", laments Bernal); the casks were constantly losing water and they also failed to keep it fresh, and so de Córdoba's ships needed to replenish their supplies ashore. The Spaniards had already noted that the region seemed to be devoid of freshwater rivers.

Fifteen days after the battle at Catoche, the expedition landed to fill their water vessels near a Maya village they called Lázaro (after St Lazarus' Sunday, the day of their landing; "The proper Indian name for it is Campeche", clarifies Bernal). Once again they were approached by Indians appearing to be peaceable, and the now-suspicious Spaniards maintained a heavy guard on their disembarked forces. During an uneasy meeting, the local Indians repeated a word (according to Bernal) that ought to have been enigmatic to the Spaniards: "Castilian". This curious incident of the Indians apparently knowing the Spaniards' own word for themselves they later attributed the presence of the shipwrecked voyagers of de Nicuesa's unfortunate 1511 fleet. Unbeknownst to de Córdoba's men, the two remaining survivors, Jerónimo de Aguilar and Gonzalo Guerrero

Gonzalo Guerrero

, were living only several days' walk from the present site. The Spaniards would not learn of these two men until the expedition of Hernán Cortés

Hernán Cortés

Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro, 1st Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca was a Spanish Conquistador who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of mainland Mexico under the rule of the King of Castile in the early 16th century...

, two years later.

The Spaniards found a solidly-built well used by the Indians to provide themselves with fresh water and they could fill their casks and jugs. The Indians, again with friendly aspect and manner, brought them to their village, where once more they could see solid constructions and many idols

Idolatry

Idolatry is a pejorative term for the worship of an idol, a physical object such as a cult image, as a god, or practices believed to verge on worship, such as giving undue honour and regard to created forms other than God. In all the Abrahamic religions idolatry is strongly forbidden, although...

(Bernal alludes to the busts of serpents on the walls, so characteristic of Mesoamerica

Mesoamerica

Mesoamerica is a region and culture area in the Americas, extending approximately from central Mexico to Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, within which a number of pre-Columbian societies flourished before the Spanish colonization of the Americas in the 15th and...

). They also met their first priests, with their white tunics and their long hair impregnated with human blood; this was the end of the Indians' friendly conduct: they convoked a great number of warriors and ordered them to burn some dry reeds, indicating to the Spaniards that if they weren't gone before the fire went out, they would be attacked. Hernández's men decided to retreat to the boats with their casks and jugs of water before the Indians could attack them, leaving safely behind them the discovery of Campeche.

Champotón–Potonchán, and the "bad fight"

They sailed some six days in good weather and another four in a tempest that almost wrecked their ships. Their supply of good drinking water was now yet again exhausted, owing to the poor condition of the containers. Being now in an extreme situation, they stopped to gather water in a place that Bernal sometimes calls Potonchán and sometimes by its present-day name of Champotón
Champotón
Champotón is a small city in Champotón Municipality in the Mexican state of Campeche, located at , about 60 km south of the city of Campeche where the small Champotón river meets the coast of the Gulf of Mexico...

, where the river of the same name meets the sea. When they had filled the jugs, they found themselves surrounded by great assemblies of Indians. They passed the night on land, with great precautions and wakeful vigilance.

This time the Spaniards decided not to take flight as in Lázaro-Campeche: they needed water, and any retreat, hindered by the Indians, seemed more dangerous than attack. They decided to stay and fight, but the outcome was bad for them: when dawn broke, they were evidently vastly outnumbered ("by two hundred to one", claims Bernal), and only shortly into the ensuing battle Bernal speaks of eighty injured Spaniards. Keeping in mind that the original number of the expedition was about a hundred, not all soldiers, this suggests that at that moment the expedition was close to destruction. They soon discovered that the legions of Indians were being continually replenished by fresh reinforcements, and if good swords, crossbows, and musket

Musket

A musket is a muzzle-loaded, smooth bore long gun, fired from the shoulder. Muskets were designed for use by infantry. A soldier armed with a musket had the designation musketman or musketeer....

s had astonished them at first, they had now overcome the surprise and maintained a certain distance from the Spaniards. At the cry of "Calachumi", which the conquistadors soon learned was a word for "chief" or "captain", the Indians were particularly merciless in attacking Hernández de Córdoba, who was hit by ten arrows. The Spanish also learned the dedication of their opponents to capturing people alive: two were taken prisoner and certainly sacrificed afterwards; of one we know that his name was Alonso Boto, and of the other Bernal is only able to say of him that he was "an old Portuguese

Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

".

Eventually, with only one Spanish soldier remaining unhurt, the captain practically unconscious, and the aggression of the Indians only increasing, they decided then that their only recourse was to form a close phalanx

Phalanx formation

The phalanx is a rectangular mass military formation, usually composed entirely of heavy infantry armed with spears, pikes, sarissas, or similar weapons...

and break out of their encirclement in the direction of the launches, and to return to board them — leaving behind the water jugs — and get back to the ships. Fortunately for them, the Indians hadn't concerned themselves to take away the boats or to render them useless, as they might easily have done. When attacking the retreating boats with arrows, stones, and pikes they made a particular effort to interfere with their balance by weight and impact, and ended up dumping some of the Spaniards into the water. The survivors of Hernández's men had to get quickly out to their ships, half swimming and hanging onto the edges of the launches, but in the end they were recovered by the boat with the shallowest draught, and reached safety.

The Spaniards had lost fifty companions, including two who were taken alive. The survivors were badly injured, with the sole exception of a soldier named Berrio, who was surprisingly unscathed. Five died in the following days, the bodies being buried at sea.

The Spanish called the place the "costa de la mala pelea" "coast of the bad fight", a name it would have on maps for many years.

Thirst, and return by way of Florida

The expeditionaries had returned to the ships without the fresh water that had been the original reason to land. Furthermore, they saw their crew reduced by more than fifty men, many of them sailors, which combined with the great number of the seriously injured made it an impossibility to operate three ships. They broke up the ship of least draught burning it on the high sea, after having distributed to the others two its sails, anchors, and cables.

The thirst began to become intolerable. Bernal writes that their tongues and throats cracked, and of soldiers who were driven by desperation to drink sea water. Another land excursion of fifteen men, in a place which they called Estero de los Lagartos, "Lizards' Estuary", obtained only brackish water which increased the desperation of the crew.

The pilots Alaminos, Camacho, and Álvarez decided, on the initiative of Alaminos, to navigate to Florida

Florida

Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

rather than head directly for Cuba. Alaminos remembered his exploration of Florida with Juan Ponce de León

Juan Ponce de León

Juan Ponce de León was a Spanish explorer. He became the first Governor of Puerto Rico by appointment of the Spanish crown. He led the first European expedition to Florida, which he named...

, and believed this to be the safest route, although promptly upon arriving in Florida he advised his companions of the bellicosity of the local Indians. In the event, the twenty people — among them, Bernal and the pilot Alaminos — who debarked in search of water were attacked by natives, although this time they came out victorious, with Bernal nonetheless receiving his third injury of the voyage, and Alaminos taking an arrow in the neck. One of the sentries who had been placed on guard around the troop disappeared: Berrio, precisely the only soldier who had escaped unscathed in Champotón. But the others were able to return to the boat, and finally brought fresh water to alleviate the suffering of those who had remained with the boat, although one of them (according to Bernal, as always) drank so much that he swelled up and died within a few days.

Now with fresh water, they headed to Havana in the two remaining ships, and not without difficulties — the boats were deteriorated and taking on water, and some mutinous sailors refused to work the pumps — they were able to complete their voyage and disembark in the port of Carenas (Havana).

Francisco Hernández de Córdoba barely reached Cuba; suffering from his mortal wounds, he expired within days of reaching the port, along with three other sailors.

Consequences of the European discovery of Yucatán

The discovery of El Gran Cairo, in March 1517, was without a doubt a crucial moment in the Spanish perception of the natives of the Americas: until then, nothing had resembled the stories of Marco Polo

Marco Polo

Marco Polo was a Venetian merchant traveler from the Venetian Republic whose travels are recorded in Il Milione, a book which did much to introduce Europeans to Central Asia and China. He learned about trading whilst his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, travelled through Asia and apparently...

, or the promises of Columbus

Christopher Columbus

, which prophesied Cathay

Cathay

Cathay is the Anglicized version of "Catai" and an alternative name for China in English. It originates from the word Khitan, the name of a nomadic people who founded the Liao Dynasty which ruled much of Northern China from 907 to 1125, and who had a state of their own centered around today's...

, or even the Garden of Paradise

Paradise

Paradise is a place in which existence is positive, harmonious and timeless. It is conceptually a counter-image of the miseries of human civilization, and in paradise there is only peace, prosperity, and happiness. Paradise is a place of contentment, but it is not necessarily a land of luxury and...

, just past every cape or river. Even more than the later encounters with the Aztec

Aztec

The Aztec people were certain ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, a period referred to as the late post-classic period in Mesoamerican chronology.Aztec is the...

and Inca cultures, El Gran Cairo resembled the conquistadors' dreams. When the news arrived in Cuba, the Spaniards gave new energy to their imaginations, creating again fantasies about the origin of the people they had encountered, whom they referred to as "the Gentiles" or imagined to be "the Jews exiled from Jerusalem by Titus

Titus

Titus , was Roman Emperor from 79 to 81. A member of the Flavian dynasty, Titus succeeded his father Vespasian upon his death, thus becoming the first Roman Emperor to come to the throne after his own father....

and Vespasian

Vespasian

Vespasian , was Roman Emperor from 69 AD to 79 AD. Vespasian was the founder of the Flavian dynasty, which ruled the Empire for a quarter century. Vespasian was descended from a family of equestrians, who rose into the senatorial rank under the Emperors of the Julio-Claudian dynasty...

".

All of this encouraged two further expeditions: the first in 1518 under the command of Juan de Grijalva

Juan de Grijalva

Juan de Grijalva was a Spanish conquistador. Some authors said he was from the same family as Diego Velázquez.He went to Hispaniola in 1508 and to Cuba in 1511....

, and the second in 1519 under the command of Hernán Cortés

Hernán Cortés

, which led to the Spanish exploration, military invasion, and ultimately settlement and colonization known as the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire and subsequent Spanish colonization

Spanish colonization of the Americas

Colonial expansion under the Spanish Empire was initiated by the Spanish conquistadores and developed by the Monarchy of Spain through its administrators and missionaries. The motivations for colonial expansion were trade and the spread of the Christian faith through indigenous conversions...

in present day Mexico

Mexico

. Hernández did not live to see the continuation of his work; he died in 1517, the year of his expedition, as the result of the injuries and the extreme thirst suffered during the voyage and disappointed in the knowledge that Diego Velázquez

Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar

Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar was a Spanish conquistador. He conquered and governed Cuba on behalf of Spain.-Early life:...

had given precedence to Grijalva as the captain of the next expedition to Yucatán.

The importance given to the news, objects, and people that Hernández brought to Cuba can be gleaned from the speed with which the following expedition was prepared. The governor Diego Velázquez placed his relative Juan de Grijalva

Juan de Grijalva

Juan de Grijalva was a Spanish conquistador. Some authors said he was from the same family as Diego Velázquez.He went to Hispaniola in 1508 and to Cuba in 1511....

in charge of this second expedition, who had his entire confidence. The news that this "island" of Yucatán had gold, doubted by Bernal but enthusiastically maintained by Julianillo, the Maya prisoner taken at the battle of Catoche, fed the subsequent series of events that was to end with the Conquest of Mexico

Spanish colonization of the Americas

by the third flotilla sent, that of Hernán Cortés

Hernán Cortés

External links

Discovery of Yucatán, on the Mexican web site redescolar.
Discovery of Yucatán, on México desconocido.

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

1517 Expedition

Origin of Hernández's expedition:

The European discovery of Yucatán: the Gran Cairo

The supposed etymology of Yucatán, and the more probable etymology of Catoche

Battle of Catoche, exploration of the "island" of Yucatán, discovery of Lázaro (Campeche)

Champotón–Potonchán, and the "bad fight"

Thirst, and return by way of Florida

Consequences of the European discovery of Yucatán

See also

Spanish-language references

External links