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Pedrarias Davila (Pedro Arias de Avila) ( Segovia, Castille, c. 1440 – León, March 6, 1531), was a Spanish colonial administrator. He led the first great Spanish expedition in the New World.
He married an intimate friend of queen Isabella I of Spain (whence probably his preferment) and saw some service in Europe. Davila served as soldier in wars against Moors at Granada, in Spain, and in North Africa. At the age of nearly seventy years he was made commander in 1514 by king Ferdinand II of Aragon of the largest Spanish expedition (19 vessels and 1,500 men) sent to America. He reached Santa Marta in Colombia. Thence he went to Darién, where the discoverer of the Pacific Ocean and his son-in-law, Vasco Núñez de Balboa, governed. Pedrarias superseded him, gave him his daughter in wedlock, and afterwards had him judicially murdered.
In 1519 he founded the Panama City and moved his capital there in 1524, abandoning Darién. Davila sent Gil Gonzáles Dávila to explore northward. In 1524 he sent another expeditions with Francisco Hernández de Córdoba.
He was a party to the original agreement with Francisco Pizarro and Diego de Almagro which brought about the discovery of Peru, but withdrew (1526) for a small compensation, having lost confidence in the outcome. In the same year he was superseded as Governor of Panama and retired to León in Nicaragua, where he died, over eighty years old.
He left an unenviable record, as a man of unreliable character, cruel, and unscrupulous. Through his foundation of Panama, however, he laid the basis for the discovery of South America's west coast and the subsequent conquest of Peru.
This article incorporates text from the public domain Catholic Encyclopedia.
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