Panfilo de Narvaez

Pánfilo de Narváez (Navalmanzano, Corona de Castilla, ca. 1470 - West Florida coast, near the Mississippi delta, Spanish Empire, 1528) was a Spanish soldier, advance and conquistador, named Florida Governor.

Birth

The origin of its birth has been discussed for centuries, considering Navalmanzano (Segovia). Already in the 17th century, the chronicler Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas wrote in his Decades: « Pánfilo de Narváez, a native of Tierra de Cuéllar to go to Diego Velázquez, because he is from Cuéllar, and Pánfilo, not from Valladolid, as some want, but from Tierra de Cuéllar, from Navalmancano, where there are noblemen of this last name ".

His Segovian origin, as a native of Navalmanzano, is among historians the most accurate option. On the other hand, Bernal Díaz del Castillo is one of the few who points to his birth in Valladolid or Tudela de Duero. It has also been demonstrated the neighborhood of the Narváez family in Navalmanzano at the time of the adelantado, belonging to this family and being Pánfilo's nephew, Antonio Velázquez de Narváez, also a conquistador, who was the son of María de Narváez (*Navalmanzano) sister of the adelantado and Rodrigo Velázquez (*Cuéllar), a relative of Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, adelantado and first governor of Cuba. Jacobo de la Pezuela makes him a native of Cuéllar, and not of his land.

Your service in the Caribbean

He served in Jamaica, under the command of Juan de Esquivel. Later, in 1510, he was promoted to lieutenant of the Governor General of Cuba, Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, with whom he actively collaborated in the conquest of the island.

He participated in the "Matanza de Caonao", a town located in the center of Cuba. During the event, he and his men massacred hundreds of indigenous people who had come with food to receive them. The inexplicable frenzy with which Narváez and his men attacked the stunned Indians was portrayed by a witness to the scene, the priest Bartolomé de Las Casas. Together with this priest and Juan de Grijalva, Narváez carried out expeditions that took him to the most extreme west of the island in 1514.

In 1519, disobeying the orders of Governor Velázquez, Hernán Cortés embarked for Mexico and he, angry, sent Narváez to follow him with instructions to capture him dead or alive.

Confrontation with Cortés and captivity

After the landing of Narváez in Veracruz at the command of an expedition that consisted of about 900 people, a period of fighting ensued, during which some of his followers went over to the ranks of Hernán Cortés, among them Sancho de Barahona « el Viejo», an ancestor of Manuel José Arce from Extremadura; Finally Narváez was defeated in Cempoala, Veracruz on May 24, 1520, wounded with a spear in the eye by the pikeman Pedro Sánchez Farfán, a soldier of Cortés, and when he was left one-eyed he was taken prisoner and transferred to Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz., where he stayed for about two years. The rest of his men joined the army of Cortés.

According to the discoveries and the information provided by Cortés himself, in June 1520, while Narváez was wounded, a caravan of his expedition made up of 52 people including Spaniards, blacks, and mestizos fell into the hands of warriors from the kingdom of Texcoco. All the men, women and children ended up sacrificed in Mexica rituals. Some twenty Spaniards (eight women and twelve men), seven blacks and two mulatto women have been identified among those who were sacrificed. The finds include items such as boiled human bones, which suggests that the members of the captured caravan were victims of ritual cannibalism. The skulls were exhibited by the Mexicas and Texcocans as a warning message to the invaders.^{[citation needed]}

Governor of Florida

Once free, he was commissioned by King Carlos I of Spain to conquer Florida with the title of advance, in addition to the title of governor of all the lands he discovered from the Río de las Palmas to the confines of the aforementioned peninsula.

He went to sea in Sanlúcar de Barrameda (Cádiz) on June 17, 1527 at the head of a fleet of five ships and six hundred men. In Cuba, they were surprised by storms and desertions, which weakened the expedition and it did not reach the coast of Florida until April 1528.

Narváez disembarked with three hundred of his men, sent his ships to a port known to his pilots near the Las Palmas river, and entered the territory of hostile natives in search of gold. Near Tampa Bay, the Spanish captain befriended a cacique named Hirrihigua. He then set sail and sailed north to Florida.

After the captain left, a Spanish patrol arrived from Cuba looking for him. The chief Hirrihigua managed with bad arts to get four members of the patrol crew to disembark there, and he captured them. The remaining Spaniards fled, but Hirrihigua had four prisoners with whom he could plot his revenge. One holiday he made the Spaniards undress, and then ordered them to run, one by one, around the village square. The Indians fired arrows at them that stuck in their bodies, but avoided hitting vital organs. Thus they slowly and painfully killed three of the Spaniards.^{[citation required]}

Narváez did not find great wealth, and tired of fighting against the natives, he had five canoes built in which he descended from inland to the sea. Following the coast to the west, he tried to reach Mexico, but the fragile vessels were surprised by a great storm, very close to the Mississippi River delta, Narváez and most of his companions drowned.

Epilogue

Four men survived the shipwreck, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Alonso del Castillo Maldonado, Andrés Dorantes de Carranza and a Berber slave named Esteban (Estebanico), who was probably the first person born in Africa to reach what is now the United States.

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca wrote a narrative entitled Shipwrecks and Comments in which he describes his experiences and those of his three companions, who crossed the southwestern United States on foot for eight years and northern Mexico until they reached Culiacán, in Sinaloa, where they finally found a Spanish villa.