Francisco Hernández de Córdoba (died 1517) was a Spanish conquistador, known to history mainly for the ill-fated expedition he led in 1517, in the course of which the Yucatán Peninsula was discovered by Europeans for the first time. Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, the governor of Cuba, asked a permission to allow him to make an expedition. Francisco Hernández de Córdoba left the harbour of Santiago de Cuba on February 8, 1517, to explore the shores of South Mexico with three ships. He was the captain of the ships. The main pilot was Anton de Alaminos, the other pilots were Juan Álvarez and Camacho de Triana. During his journey many of his men were killed. He himself was injured and died a few days later after his return to Cuba. Bernal Díaz del Castillo was a member of the expedition and wrote about his journey. Events January 22 - Battle of Ridanieh. ... Conquistador (meaning Conqueror in the Spanish language) is the term used to refer to the soldiers, explorers, and adventurers who brought much of the Americas under Spanish rule between the 15th and 17th centuries. ... The Yucatán Peninsula separates the Caribbean Sea from the Gulf of Mexico. ... This article is about the continent. ... Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar ( 1465 - 1524), Spanish Conquistador, conqueror and governor of Cuba for Spain. ... Santiago de Cuba is the capital city of Santiago de Cuba Province in eastern Cuba. ... February 8 is the 39th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... Juan Álvarez (1790-1867) was a general and interim president of Mexico from 1855 to 1856. ... Bernal Díaz del Castillo (1492 or 1493 - 1581) was a conquistador, who wrote an eyewitness account of the conquest of Mexico under Hernán Cortés. ...

This was also Europeans' first encounter with an advanced culture in the Americas, with solidly built buildings and social organization of a complexity comparable to those of the Old World; they also had reason to expect that this new land would have gold. All of this encouraged two further expeditions, the first in 1518 under the command of Juan de Grijalva, and the second in 1519 under the command of Hernán Cortés, which led to the Spanish exploration, military invasion, and ultimately settlement and colonization known as the Conquest of Mexico. Hernández did not live to se 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 had given preference to Grijalva as the captain of the next expedition to Yucatán. The word culture comes from the Latin root colere (to inhabit, to cultivate, or to honor). ... The Americas (sometimes referred to as America) is the area including the land mass located between the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean, generally divided into North America and South America. ... General Name, Symbol, Number Gold, Au, 79 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 11 (IB), 6, d Density, Hardness 19. ... Juan de Grijalva (born around 1489 in Cuéllar - January 21, 1527) was a Spanish conquistador. ... Hernán Cortés Hernán Cortés (1485–December 2, 1547) (who was known as Hernando or Fernando Cortés during his lifetime and signed all his letters Fernán Cortés) was the conquistador who conquered Mexico for Spain. ... Velázquezs 1643 self-portrait This article pertains to the artist. ...

This article centers on the expedition that led to the discovery of Yucatán, which is really all we have of a biography of Hernández de Córdoba. All we know of his earlier life is that he was a Spaniard residing in Cuba in 1517, by which we can be certain that he had participated in its conquest, and that he was the wealthy owner there (an hacendado) of a landed estate including a native town, as well as associates with sufficient economic resources to finance the expedition that gave him at the same time immortality and death.

Origin of Hernández's expedition: Slave-hunting or exploration?

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", because it was three years since they had arrived in a Cuba, from Castilla del Oro of Pedrarias Dávila, and they complained that "they hadn't done a single thing worth the telling". Bernal Díaz del Castillo (1492 or 1493 - 1581) was a conquistador, who wrote an eyewitness account of the conquest of Mexico under Hernán Cortés. ...

From Bernal Díaz del Castillo's narrative it appears possible to deduce — possibly against the narrator's own pretenses, because he would prefer to keep this hidden — that the original goal of the project was to capture Indians as slaves 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. The word slave has at least two meanings: People who are owned by others, and live to serve them without pay. ...

Bernal tells first how he, like the other 110 Spaniards, who lived in Castilla del Oro, decided to ask permission of Pedro Árias Dávila to travel to Cuba, and that Pedrarias granted this willingly, because in Tierra Firma "there was nothing to conquer, that every thing was peaceful, that Vasco Núñez de Balboa, Pedrarias's son-in-law, had conquered it". Tierra Firma (also Tierra Firme, Spanish from the Latin terra firma, dry land) served in Spanish colonial times as the name of the Isthmus of Panama, which was a province of New Granada. ... Vasco Núñez de Balboa - Wikipedia /**/ @import /skins/monobook/IE50Fixes. ...

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 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". Darién is a province in eastern Panama. ...

Bernal Díaz del Castillo barely tried to conceal that the much-repeated Indians had something to do with the project, although authors such as Salvador de Madariaga 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 withthree boats to some little islets that are between the island of Cuba and Honduras, that are now known as the islands of Los Guanaxes, 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. Don Salvador de Madariaga (July 23, 1886, A Coruña, Spain - December 14, 1978, Locarno, Switzerland) was a Spanish diplomat and writer. ...

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 objevtive 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 and Emperor Charles V (Charles I of Spain) by the constable and town authorities of la Rica Villa de la Vera Cruz, 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 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 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. Joanna (Spanish: Juana) (November 6, 1479 - April 11, 1555), called the Mad (la Loca), queen of Castile and mother of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, was the second daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, king and queen of Spain, and was born at Toledo on November 6, 1479. ... Charles V Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain Charles V (Spanish: Carlos V) (24 February 1500–21 September 1558) was effectively (the first) King of Spain from 1516 to 1556 (in principle, he was from 1516 king of Aragon and from 1516 guardian of his insane mother, queen of... Veracruz is the name of both a state in Mexico and that states largest city. ... Diego de Landa ( 1524 - 1579) was Bishop of the Yucatán. ... Bartolomé de Las Casas Bartolomé de Las Casas ( 1484 – July 17, 1566) was a 16th century Spanish priest, the first ordained in the New World and the first Bishop of Chiapas. ...

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 — 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, 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. For other uses, see Reconquista (Disambiguation). ...

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 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 in two warships and a brigantine, crewed by over 100 men. The captain of the expedition was Francisco Hernández de Córdoba, the pilot Antón de Alaminos, from Palos. Camacho de Triana (the name suggests he was from Seville) and Joan Álvarez de Huelva (nicknamed "el manquillo", which indicates that he was missing a limb), piloted the other two ships. February 8 is the 39th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... Havana (Spanish: San Cristóbal de La Habana) is the capital of Cuba and, with a population of 2. ... In sailing, a brigantine is a vessel with two masts, at least one of which is square rigged. ... Palos de la Frontera is a town located in the Spanish province of Huelva, 13 km away from the province capital. ... This article is about the city in Spain. ... Huelva is a city in southwestern Spain, the capital of the province of Huelva in the autonomous region of Andalusia. ...

Until February 20 they followed the coast of "Isla Fernandina" (Cuba). At the point of San Antón, they took to the open sea. February 20 is the 51st day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ...

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". The Maya are people of southern Mexico and northern Central America (Guatemala, Belize, western Honduras, and El Salvador) with some 3,000 years of history. ... A mosque is a place of worship for followers of the Islamic faith. ...

It is reasonable to designate this momento 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, which was returning to Hispaniola, wrecked near the coast of Yucatán, and some of its ocupants 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, were living in the area of Campeche, speaking the Mayan 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 devoured by native cannibals ended up enslaved.-1... Diego de Nicuesa was a Spanish conquistador and explorer. ... Hispaniola (from Spanish, La Española) is the second-largest island of the Antilles, lying east of Cuba. ... The word Maya or maya can refer to: The Maya – a Native American people of southern Mexico and northern Central America the modern Maya people the pre-Columbian Maya civilization the Maya language Maya – a concept in Hindu/Vedic philosophy a state of misperception of reality the inherent force of... Cannibalism is the act or practice of eating members of the same species, e. ...

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 canoes, using both sails and oars. Making themselves understood by signs — the first interpreters, Julián and Melchor, 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. March 4 is the 63rd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (64th in leap years). ... Canoe at El Nido, Philippines A canoe is a relatively small human-powered boat. ... These are small flat hulled boats used primarily by the Cajuns of the Louisiana marsh to travel around. ...

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. March 4 is the 63rd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (64th in leap years). ... In geography and cartography, a toponym is a place name, a geographical name, a proper name of locality, region, or some other part of Earths surface or its natural or artificial feature. ...

Fray 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". Diego de Landa ( 1524 - 1579) was Bishop of the Yucatán. ...

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, Julianillo y Melchorejo, 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), the Mayan Indians explaining that theirs was called "tlati", and from the repetition of "yuca" (a Carib word, not a Mayan word) and "tlati" during this conversation the Spaniards falsely deduced that they had intended to teach the name of their land: Yuca-tán. Binomial name Manihot esculenta Crantz Cassava or manioc (Manihot esculenta; also yuca in Spanish, and mandioca, aipim, or macaxera in Portuguese) is a woody perennial shrub of the spurge family, that is extensively cultivated as an annual crop for its edible starchy tuberous root. ... The Carib languages are an indigenous language family of South America. ... The Mayan languages are a family of related languages spoken from South-Eastern Mexico through northern Central America as far south as Honduras. ...

It is probable that the first narrator of the "I don't understand" story was Fray Toribio de Benavente, Motolinia, who at the end of chapter 8 of the third chapter of his Historia de los indios de la Nueva España (History of the Indians of New Spain) 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.

The anecdote is so attractive that this story of the etymology of Yucatán (together with an exactly parallel story that kangaroo comes from an aboriginal Australian's saying "I don't understand the question") is often repeated as trivia without much concern as to whether it is true. Species Macropus rufus Macropus giganteus Macropus fuliginosus A kangaroo is any of several large macropods (the marsupial family that also includes the wallabies, tree kangaroos, wallaroos, pademelons and the quokka: 45 species in all). ... Note: This article is about the common English term, trivia. For the poem by the same name, see Trivia (poem). ...

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, portending that the desembarcation might be dangerous. Nonetheless, they landed as they were asked to by their until-now friendly host, the chief of El gran Cairo, although as a precaution they used their own launches rather than accept to be transported by the Indians in their canoes, and it appears they armed themselves with crossbows and escopetas (the modern meaning of escopetas is "shotguns", but that seems unlikely for the time; "fifteen crossbows and ten escopetas", if we credit the remarkably precise memory of Bernal Díaz del Castillo). Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ...

The Spaniards' fears were immediately confirmed. The chief had prepared an ambush for the moment the Spaniards touched land. They were attacked by a multitude of Indians, armed with pikes, bucklers, slings (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 armor. Only the surprise produced in the Indians by the strong, sharp swords, the crossbows, and the firearms was able to put them to flight, allowing the Spaniards to re-embark, albeit having suffered the first injuries of the expedition. A pike is a pole weapon once used extensively by infantry principally as a counter-measure against cavalry assaults. ... A buckler (French bouclier shield, from old French bocle, boucle boss) is a small shield gripped in the fist -- it was generally used in hand-to-hand combat during the Middle Ages, as its size made it poor protection against missile weapons (e. ... A sling is a projectile weapon typically used to throw a blunt missiles such as a stone or bullet. ... Cotton is a soft fibre that grows around the seeds of the cotton plant, a shrub native to the tropical and subtropical regions of both the Old World and the New World. ... Alternative meanings: vehicle armour, Armor (novel) A hoplite wearing a helmet, a breastplate and greaves (and nothing else). ...

During this battle of Catoche two things occurred that were to have a great future influence. One was that having taken two Indians prisoner, who, once baptized, were named Julián and Melchor, more often called Julianillo and Melchorejo: they became the first interpreters for the Spanish in the Mayan lands, on Grijalva's expedition. The other was 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 Mayan idols and he brought away with him pieces "half of gold, and the rest copper", which in all ways would suffice to excite the covetousness of the Spaniards of Cuba upon the expedition's return. General Name, Symbol, Number copper, Cu, 29 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 11 , 4, d Density, Hardness 8920 kg/m3, 3. ...

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. Also, the travellers greatest hardship began: the lack of potable water aboard. The stores of water, casks and jugs, were not of the quality required for long voyages; they lost water and they also did not do a good job of keeping it frest, requiring frequent stops to renew the supply.

When they landed to fill their water vessels, near a village they called Lázaro ("In the Indians' language it is called Campeche, clarifies Bernal), once again the Indians approached them, appearing peaceful, and they repeated a word that ought to have been enigmatic to them: "Castilian". Later they attributed the word to the presence of Jerónimo de Aguilar and Gonzalo Guerrero, the shipwrecked sailors from Nicuesa, in the area. The Spaniards encountered 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 (Bernal aludes to the busts of serpents on the walls, so characteristic of Mesoamerica). 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, and to do so before the Indians could attack them, leaving safely behind them the discovery of Campeche. The term idol (from Latin idolum: image, form) is used in various contexts: In religion, man-made worshipped articles are idols; their worship is called idolatry. ...

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. Beyond this time their supply of good drinking water was once again exhausted, because of the poor state 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, where the river of the same name meets the sea. When they had filled the jugs, they found themselves surrounded by squadrons of Indians. They passed the night on land, with great precautions and wakeful vigilance.

This time the Spaniards decided they ought no take flight as in Lázaro-Campeche: they needed water, and retreat, in hindered by the Indians, seemed more dangerous than attack. They decided to fight, but the result was bad for them: when the battle had barely begun 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 squadrons of Indians were being continually replenished by reinforcements, and if good swords, crossbows, and arquebusses had astonished them at first, they had now overcome the surprise and maintained a certain distance from the Spaniards, to keep a distance from their swords. At the cry of "Calachumi", which the conquistadores soon learned to translate as "to the chief", the Indians were particularly merciless in attacking Hernández de Córdoba, who was hit by ten arrows. The Spanish also learned the commitment 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". The Arquebus (sometimes spelled harquebus or hackbut) was a primitive firearm used in the 15th to 17th centuries. ...

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 break out of the 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 could have. 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 rather than head directly for Cuba. Alaminos remembered his exploration of Florida with Juan Ponce de León, 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 who had been places 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 that alleviated 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. Juan Ponce de León - Wikipedia /**/ @import /skins/monobook/IE50Fixes. ...

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 debark in the port of Carenas (Havana).

Consequences of the 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, or the promises of Columbus, which prophesied Cathay, or even the Garden of Paradise, just past every cape or river. Even more than the later encounters with the Aztec and Inca cultures, El Gran Cairo resembled the conquistadores' dream. 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 and Vespasian". Marco Polo, after a painting in Badia, Rome Marco Polo (September 15, 1254 – January 8, 1324) was a Venetian trader and explorer who, together with his father and uncle, was one of the first Westerners to travel the Silk Road to China (which he called Cathay) and visited the Great... No authentic contemporary portrait of Columbus has been found; this late 19th-century engraving is one of many conjectural images For information about the director, see the article on Chris Columbus. ... Cathay is the name that was given to northern China by Marco Polo. ... Paradise is a Persian loanword into English (from the Persian word پرديس Pardis, hebrew PaRDeS). ... The Aztecs were a Mesoamerican people of central Mexico in the 14th, 15th and 16th century. ... For other meanings of Inca, see Inca (disambiguation). ... Jerusalem (Hebrew: יְרוּשָׁלַיִם Yerushalayim; Arabic: القدس al-Quds; see also names of Jerusalem) is an ancient Middle Eastern city of key importance to the religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. ... This is about the emperor of ancient Rome. ... Emperor Vespasian Caesar Vespasianus Augustus (November 18, CE 9 – June 23, 79), originally known as Titus Flavius Vespasianus and best known as Vespasian, was the emperor of Rome from 69 to 79. ...

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. In charge of this expedition, Diego Velázquez placed his relative Juan de Grijalva, who had his entire confidence. The news that this "island" of Yucatán had gold, confirmed also with enthusiasm ny Julianillo, the native prisoner taken at the battle of Catoche, fed the series of events that was to end with the Conquest of Mexico by the third flotilla sent, that of Hernán Cortés. Juan de Grijalva (born around 1489 in Cuéllar - January 21, 1527) was a Spanish conquistador. ... Hernán Cortés Hernán Cortés (1485–December 2, 1547) (who was known as Hernando or Fernando Cortés during his lifetime and signed all his letters Fernán Cortés) was the conquistador who conquered Mexico for Spain. ...

See also

• Spanish conquest of Yucatán

The Spanish Conquest of Yucatán was a long and involved process taking some 170 years to complete. ...

References

References used by the original Spanish-language article

This article draws heavily on the corresponding article in the Spanish-language Wikipedia, which was accessed in the version of December 4, 2004. That article, in turn, provides the following extensive set of references and external links. December 4 is the 338th day (339th on leap years) of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Bibliography

• Benavente, Fray Toribio de ("Motolinía"), Colección Crónicas de América. Dastin, Madrid, 2000, ISBN 8449202175. At the end of chapter VIII of the third chapter is the reference to the etymologies of Catoche and Yucatán. It is possible that Motolinía was among the first to promulgate the legend about "I don't understand you".
• Cortés, Hernán, Cartas de relación de la conquista de México. Colección Austral, Espasa-Calpe, 5ª ed., Madrid, 1970. The letter signed by the justicia y regimiento of Veracruz should be added to the letters of Cortés substituting for the lost first letter. It begins (after an introduction in accord with protocol) by mentioning the expedition described in this article.
• Díaz del Castillo, Bernal. Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España. Colección Austral, Espasa-Calpe, 3ª ed., Madrid 1975. Chapters I-VII. This is the primary reference, given the length at which it discusses the expedition and the fact of its author having participated in the preparation of the expedition.
• Kirkpatrick, Frederick Alex. Los conquistadores españoles, 3ª edición, February 2004, ISBN 843213242X. Only a few lines about the discovery of Yucatán, at the beginning of Chapter V, in this classic (the original English-language edition was in 1934) about the conquistadores.
• Landa, Fray Diego de, Relación de las cosas de Yucatán. Colección Crónicas de América, Dastin, Madrid, 2002, ISBN 8449202272. In the first chapters (the original was not separated into chapters, that was done by modern editors) it deals with the etymology of Yucatán and Hernández's expedition, which the author believes started as an expedition to gather slaves for the mines.
  • The Relación de las cosas de Yucatán (http://www.wayeb.org/download/landa.pdf) is also available online (in Spanish) as a PDF file on the web site of the European Association of Mayanists (http://www.wayeb.org).
• Madariaga, Salvador de, Hernán Cortés. Grandes biografías. Planeta de Agostini, Madrid, 1995, ISBN 8439538170 In Chapter VII, Madariaga makes a poetic elegy to the young conquistadores, to whose desire for adventure and disdain for leisure ("to occupy ourselves") he attributes the occasion of the voyage. He accuses only Velázquez of slaving, and believes that the governor had to surrender to the arguments of the rest of the expeditionaries.
• Miralles, Juan, Hernán Cortés, inventor de México. Tiempo de memoria, Tusquets, 4ª ed., Barcelona, 2002. ISBN 8483107589. In Chapter 1, "el trampolín antillano" ("The Antillean Trampoline"), he briefly describes Hernández's voyage. He writes about the contradiction between a slaving expedition and the presence of Alaminos on of the veedor, and the possibility that Alaminos had unrevealed information about Yucatán, that he had received from Columbus.
• Prescott, William H., Historia de la Conquista de México. Papeles del tiempo, Antonio Machado Libros, Madrid, 2004 ISBN 8477742375. In the first chapter of book II, Prescott briefly narrates the expedition. He gives it as certain that slaving was the object of the expedition, and also discusses the etymology of Yucatán.

Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format developed by Adobe Systems for representing documents in a manner that is independent of the original application software, hardware, and operating system used to create those documents. ...

External links

• Discovery of Yucatán (http://redescolar.ilce.edu.mx/redescolar/efemerides/febrero/conme8.htm), in Spanish, on the Mexican web site redescolar (http://redescolar.ilce.edu.mx).
• Discovery of Yucatán (http://www.mexicodesconocido.com.mx/espanol/historia/colonia/detalle.cfm?idpag=4166&idsec=2&idsub=13), in Spanish, on México desconocido (http://www.mexicodesconocido.com.mx).