Juan Ponce de León
Juan Ponce de León y Figueroa (Santervás de Campos, Valladolid, April 8, 1460-Havana, July 1521), advanced, was a Spanish explorer and conquistador, the first ruler of Puerto Rich and discoverer of Florida (current United States).
Origin in Spain
Juan Ponce de León was born on April 8, 1460 in Santervás de Campos, a town in the province of Valladolid. The surname of León does not refer to its place of origin, but was added by the descendants of Pedro Ponce de Cabrera, husband of the Infanta Aldonza, illegitimate daughter of King Alfonso IX of León, in the XIII. He was educated in the house of a relative in Seville, Ramiro Núñez.
Of noble descent, he was a page for Ferdinand the Catholic at the court of Juan II of Aragon. He was in the army for ten years and fought in the conquest of the kingdom of Granada together with his uncle Rodrigo de él when he was 32 years old. Granada was taken on January 2, 1492 and Juan participated in the triumphant march into the city. Another of the people who attended that march was Christopher Columbus, who would discover the New World on October 12 of that same year. Ponce de León, although at the end of the Reconquest he could have moved to the land of León, to continue with a life within the feudal system, he preferred to participate in the Spanish company abroad.
Travel
Arrival in the New World
It is doubtful whether his first voyage to America was with Christopher Columbus on his second voyage in 1493 or with Nicolás de Ovando in 1502. On Columbus's second voyage, he traveled to an island guided by some Arawak Indians who they wanted Columbus to protect them from the Carib Indians. On November 19, 1493, when the ships entered Bahía Boquerón, the Indians jumped into the water and swam towards the coast. Columbus named that island San Juan Bautista and 18 years later Ponce de León would name his port town, Cáparra, Puerto Rico.
The Second Voyage of Columbus, in which Ponce de León is believed to have actively participated, served to conquer the island of Hispaniola, the turning point being the Battle of Vega Real. After the dismissal of Christopher Columbus and his brother Bartolomé and the death at sea of Francisco de Bobadilla, Nicolás de Ovando was appointed governor of Hispaniola in 1502.
Others suggest that Ponce de León first arrived in the New World with Nicolás de Ovando in 1502, disembarking where Cockburn Town now stands on Grand Turk Island in the Turks and Caicos, but soon settled in La Spanish.
In 1502 he collaborated with Nicolás de Ovando and stopped a rebellion by the Taíno people in eastern Hispaniola. For this performance he was rewarded with the position of governor of the recently created province of Higüey. In that position, he hired Indians to search for gold or to work in the abundant cassava crops. Ponce de León became rich serving as governor and above all thanks to the cultivation of yucca. The port of Higüey, in the Paso de la Mona, was an obligatory stop for Spanish ships returning to Europe, since the bread made with cassava kept very well with humidity, was nutritious and had a very good flavor. Due to this prosperity, Ponce built a villa in Higüey that he named Salva León and sent for his wife and children.
In 1502 he had married an indigenous woman in Santo Domingo who served as an innkeeper in Santo Domingo, who changed her name to Leonor with her baptism. With her he had three daughters, Juana, Isabel and María, and a son named Luis.
Governor of Puerto Rico and subsequent retirement
During his stay in Higüey, he listened to the stories of the riches existing in Borinquén, the Island of San Juan. From that moment he concentrated all his efforts on being able to go to that site, being granted the necessary permission. On August 12, 1508, Ponce de León left Higüey to explore Borinquén. He gave orders to plant yucca in case the exploration missions in search of gold were failing.
He was received with open arms by Agüeybaná, a Taíno cacique, and quickly took control of the island. For this fact, Ponce de León was appointed Governor of the same in 1509.
In 1506, after the death in the Convent of San Francisco in Valladolid of Christopher Columbus —who had been appointed military governor of his discoveries—, the Spanish authorities refused to grant the same privilege to his son Diego. Despite the opposition of Diego Colón, Ponce managed to be appointed governor.
In 1508, Ponce de León founded the first settlement in San Juan, Cáparra, now San Juan, and would also found a town in San Germán. In Cáparra he established a home for his family, ordered the construction of a gold smelter, distributed workers among the Spanish followers and established a hacienda in Toa.
Ponce de León, along with other conquistadors, forced the Taínos to work in the mines and build forts. Many Tainos died from exposure to diseases brought by European sailors and from lack of immunity to those diseases.
Although the Crown had by then selected Ponce de León to colonize and rule the island of San Juan, Diego Columbus had filed a claim in the high court in Madrid and won his rights. Ponce de León was removed from office in 1511.
To demonstrate royal favour, however, Ferdinand the Catholic sent 30 men, Catholic religious from Seville, cattle and horses to Ponce, granting the island its own coat of arms, the first in the New World. To celebrate this gesture of the King, Ponce called Cáparra, his town, Puerto Rico. Among those commissioned by the Catholic King, was Captain Don Diego Guilarte de Salazar, later appointed Councilor of the Cabildo de San Juan, and hero of the Battle of Aymaco.
After the death of the indigenous cacique Agüeybaná, who gave his blessing to Ponce, he was replaced by his nephew Agüeybaná II the Brave, who established resistance. The Arawaks joined the Caribs to fight the Spanish, paralyzed gold production and killed half the Spanish. After this, Ponce de León organized the defense, managing to kill Agüeybaná II and causing many Indians to flee. Due to the shortage of workers, noting that gold production had reached its maximum and not wanting to serve Diego, he asked King Ferdinand for a title to explore the areas north of Cuba. This title was given to him thanks to his intervention on his behalf by Bartolomé Colón.
The first trip and the discovery of Florida
Ponce de León went to Salva León, where he equipped two boats, the larger one at the hands of Juan Bono de Quejo and the smaller one at the hands of a helmsman named Antón de Alaminos, who had participated in the Fourth Voyage of Columbus and who was the one who knew the Caribbean best. The two ships left for San Germán, where they ready the flagship, the caravel San Cristóbal de Juan. In 1513 the three ships left and sailed through the Bahamas, arriving at the island of San Salvador.
On March 27, Easter Sunday, he sighted an island, but there was no possibility of docking. On April 2, Ponce de León got into a boat to head for land, which he thought would be a very large island. He disembarked, crossed the beach and climbed into the dunes. From above he saw a flat, wooded landscape that stretched to the horizon. Said landing must have occurred on the eastern coast of the Florida peninsula, at a still disputed point between Melbourne beach, near Cape Canaveral, and Ponte Vedra beach, in north Florida, near Jacksonville. It was there that on April 8 he claimed all that land for Spain, and called it "Florida," because it was the Easter holiday.
They sailed up the eastern shoreline to an area where the St. Johns River now flows. At a place he called the Canas River, in present-day Cape Kennedy, friendly natives invited them ashore. In a cross-shaped lagoon, which Ponce named the Crucis River, he gave the order to erect a carved stone pillar crowned with a wooden cross and they began to pray, after which they suffered an indigenous attack that forced them to flee. They decided to continue exploring and sail south, skirting the current Florida Keys and going up the west coast to Cape Romano. In said navigation to the south, on April 21, they noticed a current that, despite having the wind in their favor, did not allow them to advance, but instead made them go back. The two ships closest to land anchored, but the current was so strong that it caused the anchor cables to reel.
That was the discovery of the Gulf Stream, already intuited by Christopher Columbus. The current ran from the Caribbean to the Atlantic and from then on allowed a quick sea route back to Europe from the Spanish possessions in America.
On May 23, 1513, they stopped near present-day Fort Myers, where some Indians approached and one, who knew some Spanish, possibly learned from other Indians who had fled there, warned them that on the coast his boss had a lot of gold to trade. However, once they disembarked, they suffered another indigenous attack. In Florida there were Appalachians, Calusas and Matacumbes, who moved a lot from one place to another. The Indians used arrows with tips that were either fishing hooks, or normal tips soaked in animal blood mixed with cobra venom.
He returned to Havana and then came back again, stopping at the Bahía de «Chequesta» (Bahía Vizcaína) before returning to Puerto Rico.
The existence of an Indian who spoke Spanish could be indicative that some Spaniard had arrived in that area before, although it is also possible that these Indians were informed of the Spanish presence in the area by others who had already been in contact with them.
Legends of Cíbola, the Seven Cities of Gold and the fountain of eternal youth existed at that time, so it is likely that they influenced Ponce de León's exploration.
Since then, it is said that he spent his life searching for the fountain of eternal youth, which according to legend was located in Florida. He never said anything about looking for the fountain, although the explorer Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda in his work Memory of things and coast and Florida Indians, from 1575, stated that he had gone looking for it because Indians from Cuba and Santo Domingo had told him about it. Also the historian "official" (and not at all reliable) Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas, in his Décadas, published in the early 1600s, attributes this search to Ponce de León.
It is known that these legends did influence other Spanish conquerors in North America, such as Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, although this influence was anecdotal.
Failed campaign against the Caribs
In 1514 he returned to Spain and received commissions to conquer the Caribbean, and the supposed "Isla de Florida". His expedition reached the island of Guadalupe in 1515 but was ambushed: when the women went ashore with some men to wash clothes, the islanders suddenly jumped on them and killed the men and captured the women. women. Ponce did not dare to counterattack from the ships and set sail for Puerto Rico where he stayed until 1521.
His last trip
Perhaps encouraged by the success that Hernán Cortés had had in Mexico in 1519, Ponce de León organized in 1521 an expedition to colonize Florida with two ships carrying approximately 200 men, including priests, farmers and artisans, 50 horses and other domestic animals as well as farm implements.
The expedition toured the southwest coast of Florida, somewhere around the Caloosahatchee River or Charlotte Harbor. Near a large indigenous camp in Bahía Espero he began to build a colony. For 5 months everything went smoothly but the settlers were soon attacked by the Calusa and Ponce de León was wounded by a poisoned arrow in the shoulder. Other sources suggest that it was really an arrow wound in the leg, which became gangrenous.
After this attack, he and the colonists went by boat to Havana, where he soon died of his wound. His tomb is in the cathedral of Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, in a monument erected and paid for by the Spanish Casino of San Juan. The remains had been exhumed on June 18, 1907 from the Church of San José in San Juan and were kept there, pending the construction of a mausoleum in the Cathedral.
Thought
According to Francisco Frías Valenzuela, Juan Ponce de León doubted the rationality of the natives (Indians), he maintained that they were not men but beasts and, therefore, incapable of receiving the faith and of governing themselves.
2011 - Celebration of the Fifth Centennial of the Governorship of Puerto Rico
In 2011, the Fifth Centennial of the Governorship of Puerto Rico was celebrated -Juan Ponce de León was the first governor- with various events in Spain, Puerto Rico and the United States (in Washington D.C.). In Spain, on January 21, 2011, various events were held in Santervás de Campos and the University of Valladolid with the presence of Governor Luis Fortuño, Rector Marcos Sacristán and other authorities, as well as historian István Szászdi, member of the Commission of the Fifth Centennial, and Professor Mercedes Gómez, Executive Director of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture.
2013 - Celebration of the Quincentennial of the Discovery of Florida
In the United States, various events have taken place to honor the discovery of Florida by Ponce de León. Among them was the traditional simulation of the landing on the two beaches where Ponce is believed to have first arrived in what is now the United States. Some of these representations have had a direct descendant of the conqueror interpreting Ponce de León. of Spanish Foreign Affairs, García Margallo, who with the United States representation of the Secretary of State for Florida, Kent Dentzer, made a wreath at a monument to Ponce de León. Tomás Regalado, mayor of Miami, was also present at the commemoration events, both in Madrid and Florida. Five Spaniards took advantage of the presence of the ship Juan Sebastián Elcano to swear flag in front of the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
In popular culture
- In the movie Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides reference is made to a map written by Ponce de León containing the place where the mythical source of eternal youth is found.
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