Juan de Grijalva

Interview between Grijalva and the Maya Tabscoob cacique in Potonkan.

Juan de Grijalva (Cuéllar (Castilla), 1490-Ilancho, Honduras, 1528) was a Spanish discoverer and conqueror who participated in the exploration and conquest of Cuba with the advance Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar (1511), of whom he was captain. He also participated in the exploration of the Mexican coast in which they highlighted the exploration of Yucatán and Tabasco (1518); in the exploration of Francisco de Garay of the Coasts and Territories of the North in the current state of Veracruz and Gulf of Mexico (1522-1523) and finally in the conquest of Honduras with pedrarias Dávila (1527), in which he perished.

Biography

Very young accompanied Pánfilo de Narváez to the island of the Spanish, from where he left in 1511 with the expedition of Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar to Cuba, participating in the conquest and exploration of the island.

In January 1518 Velázquez de Cuéllar, already by then governor of Cuba, excited for the news of the discovery of new lands (Yucatan) during the unsuccessful and unfortunate expedition of Francisco Hernández de Córdoba in 1517, organized another expedition composed of four ships and two hundred and forty men, and the command of the expedition fell to Juan de Grijalva, which some sources cite as his nephew.

The expedition to the coasts of Mexico

Exploration of the Yucatan Peninsula

The expeditionaries left the port of Matanzas (Cuba) on April 8, 1518 and discovered the coasts of the island of Cozumel on May 3, which they called Santa Cruz de Puerta Latina . The squad pilot, Antón de Alaminos, thought that he was sailing between two islands and appointed the Yucatan Peninsula as a rich island.

explored the entire northern coast of the Peninsula and part of the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. In one of the landings, Grijalva and his companions maintained a bloody fight and defeated the natives of Chakán Putum (champoton), in the same place where the expedition of Hernández de Córdoba had been defeated and decimated a year earlier.

During the trip they needed to fix some ships of the ships so they diverted and crossed a narrow.

Tabasco discovery

On the journey of June 8, 1518, they discovered what would later be the Province of Tabasco, the river that today bears their name in Tabasco (Río Grijalva), which passes in the middle of the city of Villahermosa. Grijalva decided to enter it, and disembarked in the Mayan city of Potonchan, capital of the Tabscoob manor, a cacique whom he greeted and even gave him his green velvet doublet.

«...Another day in the morning came the cacique or master in a canoe, and told the captain to enter the boat, then he told some Indians to clothe the captain with a sewing and a pair of gold bracelets, brushed to half a leg with gold ornaments, and put a golden crown on his head. The captain sent his men to wear the cacique with a green velvet coop, pink limestones, a sayo, alpargates and a velvet cap.».

Juan Díaz. "Itinerary of the Navy." 1518

After resting for a few days and stocking up on provisions, they continued their expedition towards the north and discovered the Dos Bocas river, which they named it that way because it empties into the sea through two mouths» then they discovered an Indian town called Ayagualulco (Ahualulco) where «its inhabitants wore bucklers made of turtle shells, which shone in the sun and we named it "La Rambla", and that is how it is in the sea charts...". >for being its discoverer" and finally they landed in Veracruz. Grijalva named the tongue of land that opens the bay as San Juan de Ulúa, for having arrived there on the day of San Juan in June 1518. From there he continued navigating to the Pánuco River located in what is now the state of Tamaulipas (Mexico)..

Grijalva confronted Pedro de Alvarado, one of his lieutenants, for having separated from the expedition, sent him back to Cuba, while he continued his adventure.

Expedition of Juan de Grijalva 1518.

Aztec Empire

During the exploration trip along the Mexican coasts of the Gulf of Mexico, in Tabasco they heard news of the Aztec empire, ruled by Moctezuma II, since the native Maya-Chontales informed Grijalva that " towards where the sun sets, in "Culúa" and "Mexico" there is a very powerful and gold-rich empire", however, they had been traveling for more than five months and supplies were scarce, so Grijalva decided to return to Cuba.

«...They sahumed us all and presented certain gold jewels such as diadems and other jewels such as lizards, and three bead necklaces(...) and brought some blankets of which they use and told us that we received them in good will, that they had no more gold, than forward, where the sun sets, there is much, and they said: Collah, and Mexico, Mexico, and we didn't even know what Mexico was.».

Bernal Díaz del Castillo. "True History of the Conquest of New Spain".

Removal

Upon his return to Cuba, Grijalva was reproached and dismissed by Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar for not having established any colony in the lands visited, which motivated Grijalva to place himself under the orders of Pedro Arias de Ávila, also known as Pedrarias Dávila, which was just beginning the explorations of Central America.

There is a book written about this expedition, whose authorship has been attributed to Juan Díaz, Grijalva's chaplain, and also to Cortés and Pedro de Alvarado. The full name of the book is Itinerary of the army of the Catholic king to the island of Yucatan, in India, in the year 1518, in which he was by commander and captain general Juan de Grijalva, written for His Highness by the chief chaplain of the said army, and was used in the controversy between Cortés and Velázquez that had to be resolved in the courts of the Iberian Peninsula. Cortés sent as evidence the "ransoms" obtained by himself, as well as his Relation Letters. For his part, Velázquez sent as evidence the "ransoms" of Grijalva, and the Itinerary of the Navy . Previously Benito Martín, clergyman and attorney of the Velázquez government and also his envoy, transformed the document, which was widely known, knowing five editions between 1520 and 1522, two Latin, two Italian and one German.

The Grijalva expedition to the Gulf of Mexico

In 1523, he accompanied Francisco de Garay on a voyage of exploration to the Gulf of Mexico and the Florida peninsula. The expedition should meet with a garrison previously established by Diego de Camargo in the vicinity of the Pánuco River. However, the garrison had been attacked by the Huasteco people and the expeditionaries had met with the forces of Hernán Cortés in Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz. Garay left his son in command of the expedition while he met with Cortés in Mexico City. Garay reached an agreement with Cortés on Christmas 1523, but died unexpectedly from pneumonia.

While this was happening in Veracruz, Grijalva and other captains mutinied against Garay's son, harassed the native population causing an indigenous uprising. Cortés sent Gonzalo de Sandoval to control the situation of rebellious natives and mutinous Spaniards. Juan de Grijalva and the mutinous captains were returned to the island of Cuba.

Death in the conquest of Honduras

Juan de Grijalva later joined Pedrarias Dávila and traveled to Honduras and Nicaragua. He perished at the hands of the natives in Olancho, Honduras, in 1527.

In 1604, Viceroy Juan de Mendoza y Luna, III Marqués de Montesclaros, authorized the proposal of the colonial authorities of the Province of Tabasco, so that the town of Villahermosa de San Juan Bautista would be renamed by of San Juan de Villahermosa in honor of Juan de Grijalva, discoverer of Tabasco.

Grijalva's relatives

Other members of his family accompanied Grijalva to America. There is news of three of them:

• Francisco de Grijalva, a native of Cuéllar. In 1518 he was already in Cuba and appears on the list of the conquerors of Mexico who arrived with Hernán Cortés in 1519. He continued in the conquest of New Spain in 1520.
• Fernando de Grijalva, a native of Cuéllar. He resides in Cuba in 1518 and passes to the conquest of Mexico with Cortes in 1520. He was sent by Cortes to help Hurtado de Mendoza, who had gone to the front of an expedition in 1532. Zarpo de Manzanillo on July 30, 1533 and made important discoveries, such as the island that Santo Tomé and others called. On his return he explored the coasts of the Gulf of Tehuantepec. Later, Hernán Cortés sent him to help Francisco Pizarro and did not know of him again.
• Rodrigo de Grijalva, natural of Cuéllar. In 1519 he was in Cuba, from where he passed to New Spain with Narváez's Pofil in 1520.