Francisco Hernández de Córdoba (Yucatán conquistador)

Template:SpanTransWeek es:Francisco Hernández de Córdoba, descubridor de Yucatán

There were two Spanish conquistadores at the start of the 16th century named Francisco Hernández de Córdoba. The one described here discovered the peninsula of Yucatán. The other founded Nicaragua: see Francisco Hernández de Córdoba (founder of Nicaragua). Neither of their birth dates are known.

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.

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.

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 (a 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 their persons", 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" ("no habían hecho cosa alguna que de contar fuera").

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.

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".

Those Spaniards from Castilla del Oro presented themselves in Cuba to Diego Velázquez, the governor (and familiar of Bernal Díaz del Castillo), who promised them "...that he would give us Indians, en vacando". 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 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".

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.

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 la justicia y regimiento de la Rica Villa de la Vera Cruz, Cortés's captains narrate the origin of Hernández's expedition saying: "as 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, para se servir dellos, enviaron los susodichos Francisco Fernández de Córdoba and his associates Lope Ochoa de Caicedo and Cristobal Morante] two boats and a brigantine because said islands trujesen 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.

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 knowledgable 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 inthe 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. On the other hand, given that Bernal Íñiguez no era sino un soldado más, al que se habían otorgado the functions of veedor, his naming indicates that there was at least some thought of the possibility of exploration.

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 islotes Guanajes, February 8, 1517 they left Havana in two warships and a brigantine, crewed by over 100 men. The captain of hte expedition was Francisco Hernández de Córdoba, the pilot Antón de Alaminos, from Palos. Camacho de Triana (the name suggest he was from Seville) and Joan Álvarez "el manquillo" de Huelva (the nickname indicates that he was missing a limb), piloted the other two ships.

Until February 20 they followed the coast of isla Fernandina (Cuba). At the point of San Antón, they took to the open sea.

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 "mosques".

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 Nicuesa, which was returning to Hispañola, 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. Eso no quita el mérito del descubrimiento a Hernández: al descubrimiento suele exigírsele que el hallazgo sea un acto voluntario, no un naufragio, y se le requiere también cierta prestancia y superioridad; los náufragos de Nicuesa que no fueron devorados por los nativos caníbales acabaron esclavizados.

Los navegantes adelantaron los dos barcos de menor calado, para investigar si podían fondearlos con seguridad junto a tierra. Bernal data el 4 de marzo de 1517 el primer encuentro con indios de Yucatán, que acudieron a esos barcos en diez canoas grandes, tanto a remo como a vela. Entendiéndose por señas —los primeros intérpretes, Julián y Melchor, los habría de obtener precisamente esta expedición— los indios, siempre con alegre cara y muestras de paz, comunicaron a los españoles que al día siguiente acudirían más piraguas, para llevar a los recién llegados a tierra.

The supposed etymology of Yucatán, and the more probable etymology of Catoche

Este momento en que los indios subieron a las naves españolas y aceptaron las sartas de cuentas verdes y demás baratijas preparadas al efecto fue uno de los pocos contactos pacíficos que tuvo el grupo de Hernández con los indios, e incluso en este las muestras de paz eran fingidas. Precisamente durante estos contactos del 4 de marzo podrían haber nacido dos topónimos,Yucatán y Catoche, cuya historia sorprendente y divertida —acaso demasiado para ser del todo cierta— se cita a menudo: sea historia o leyenda, ésta quiere que los españoles hayan preguntado a los indios por el nombre de la tierra que acababan de descubrir, y que al escuchar su respuesta, bastante predecible: "no entiendo lo que dices"... "esas son nuestras casas"... pusieran a la tierra por nombre justo lo que escuchaban: Yucatán, que querría decir "no te entiendo", para la "Provincia”" completa (o isla, según creían ellos), y Catoche, que significaría "nuestras casas", a la población donde desembarcaron y al cabo.

Fray Diego de Landa dedica el segundo capítulo de su Relación de las cosas de Yucatán a la Etimología del nombre de esta Provincia. Situación de ella y en él nos confirma el caso del cabo Catoche, que procedería efectivamente de cotoch, “nuestras casas, nuestra patria”, pero no parece en cambio que confirme lo de que Yucatán signifique "no entiendo".

Finalmente, Bernal Díaz del Castillo también se ocupa del asunto. Confirma la etimología de Catoche como "nuestras casas", pero aporta para Yucatán una explicación todavía más sorprendente que la de "no te entiendo". Según ella, los dos indios capturados en la batalla de Catoche, Julianillo y Melchorejo, en sus primeras conversaciones con los españoles en Cuba, y estando presente Diego Velázquez, habrían hablado del pan. Los españoles explicando que su pan estaba hecho de "yuca", los indios mayas aclarando que al suyo le decían "tlati", y de la repetición de "yuca" (voz caribe, no maya) y "tlati" durante esta conversación los españoles habrían deducido falsamente que les estaban intentando enseñar el nombre de su tierra: Yuca-tán.

Es probable que el primer narrador de la historia del "no te entiendo" fuera Fray Toribio de Benavente, Motolinia, que al final del capítulo 8 del tratado tercero de su Historia de los indios de la Nueva España dice: "porque hablando con aquellos Indios de aquella costa, a lo que los Españoles preguntaban los Indios respondían: «Tectetán, Tectetán», que quiere decir: «No te entiendo, no te entiendo»: los cristianos corrompieron el vocablo, y no entendiendo lo que los Indios decían, dijeron: «Yucatán se llama esta tierra»; y lo mismo fue en un cabo que allí hace la tierra, al cual también llamaron cabo de Cotoch; y Cotoch en aquella lengua quiere decir casa.

La anécdota es tan atractiva que la historia de la etimología de Yucatán (junto con la de canguro, palabra australiana a la que se atribuye el mismo significado y la misma historia) se repite frecuentemente en los 'trivial' y '¿sabías qué...?', sin que su veracidad esté ni mucho menos confirmada.

Batttle of Catoche, exploration of the "island" of Yucatán, discovery of Lázaro (Campeche)

Al día siguiente, según lo prometido, los indios volvieron con más piraguas, para trasladar a los españoles a tierra. Éstos contemplaron bastante alarmados cómo la costa se llenaba de nativos, presintiendo que el desembarco podía ser peligroso. No obstante, bajaron a tierra como lo solicitaba su hasta ahora amable anfitrión, el cacique de El gran Cairo, aunque por precaución usaron sus propios bateles en lugar de aceptar ser llevados por los indios en canoas, y por supuesto salieron armados, procurando sobre todo llevar ballestas y escopetas ("quince ballestas y diez escopetas", si creemos en la increíble memoria de Bernal Díaz del Castillo).

Los temores de los españoles se confirmaron inmediatamente. El cacique les tenía preparada una emboscada en cuanto pisaran tierra. Multitud de indios los atacaron, armados con lanzas, rodelas, hondas (hondas dice Bernal; Diego de Landa niega que los indios de Yucatán conocieran la honda; sostiene que lanzaban las piedras con la mano derecha, utilizando la izquierda para apuntar; pero la honda era conocida en otros puntos de Mesoamérica, y el testimonio de los que recibían las pedradas merece sin duda más crédito), flechas lanzadas con arco, y armaduras de algodón. Sólo la sorpresa producida en los indios por las cortantes espadas, las ballestas y las armas de fuego pudo ponerlos en fuga, consiguiendo los españoles volver a embarcar, no sin sufrir los primeros heridos de la expedición.

Durante esta batalla de Catoche ocurrieron dos hechos que tendrían gran influencia futura: uno fue el haber hecho prisioneros a dos indios, a los que una vez bautizados se llamó Julián y Melchor, o más frecuentemente Julianillo y Melchorejo: habrían de ser los primeros intérpretes de los españoles en tierra maya, en la expedición de Grijalva. Otro fue la curiosidad y valor del clérigo González, capellán del grupo, que habiendo saltado a tierra con los soldados, se entretuvo en explorar —y desvalijar— una pirámide y unos adoratorios, mientras sus compañeros intentaban salvar la vida. El clérigo González vio por primera vez los ídolos, y recogió piezas "de medio oro, y lo más cobre", que de todos modos serían suficientes para excitar la codicia de los españoles de Cuba, al regreso de la expedición.

Al menos dos soldados murieron como resultado de las heridas de esa batalla.

De vuelta en los navíos, Antón de Alaminos impuso una navegación lenta y vigilante, moviéndose sólo de día, porque estaba empeñado en que Yucatán era una isla. Además, empezó la mayor penalidad de los viajeros, la falta de agua de boca a bordo. Los depósitos de agua, pipas y vasijas, no eran de la calidad requerida para largas travesías; perdían agua y no la conservaban bien, exigíendo frecuentes desembarcos para renovar el imprescindible líquido.

Cuando fueron a tierra para llenar las pipas, cerca de un pueblo, al que llamaron Lázaro (En lengua de indios se llama Campeche, nos aclara Bernal), los indios se les acercaron una vez más con apariencia pacífica, y les repitieron una palabra que debería haberles resultado enigmática: "Castilian". Luego se atribuyó la palabra a la presencia de Jerónimo de Aguilar y de Gonzalo Guerrero, los náufragos de Nicuesa, en las proximidades. Los españoles encontraron un pozo "de cal y canto" utilizado por los indios para abastecerse de agua dulce, y pudieron llenar sus pipas y vasijas. Los indios, otra vez con aspecto y maneras amigables, los llevaron a su poblado, donde una vez más pudieron ver construcciones sólidas y muchos ídolos (Bernal alude a los "bultos de serpientes" en las paredes, tan característicos de Mesoamérica). Conocieron además a los primeros sacerdotes, con su túnica blanca y su larga cabellera impregnada de sangre humana; estos sacerdotes les hicieron ver que las muestras de amistad no continuarían: convocaron a gran cantidad de guerreros, y mandaron quemar unos carrizos secos, indicando a los españoles que si no se marchaban antes de que se extinguiera el fuego, los atacarían. Los hombres de Hernández decidieron retirarse a los barcos, con sus pipas y aljibes de agua, y consiguieron hacerlo antes de que los indios los atacaran, saliendo bien librados del descubrimiento de Campeche.

Champotón - Potonchán, y la "mala pelea"

Pudieron navegar unos seis días de buen tiempo y otros cuatro de temporal que a punto estuvo de hacerlos naufragar. Pasado ese tiempo el agua dulce se les volvió a agotar, por culpa del mal estado de los depósitos. Estando ya en situación extrema, se detuvieron a recoger agua en un lugar que Bernal a veces llama Potonchán y a veces por su nombre actual de Champotón, donde discurre el río del mismo nombre. En cuanto habían henchido las pipas se vieron rodeados de muchos escuadrones de indios. Pasaron la noche en tierra, con grandes precauciones y guardados por "velas y escuchas".

Esta vez los españoles decidieron que no debían escapar, como en Lázaro-Campeche: necesitaban agua, y la retirada parecía más peligrosa que el ataque si los indios la estorbaban. Así que decidieron luchar, con resultado muy adverso: nada más empezar la batalla ya habla Bernal de ochenta españoles heridos. Recordando que los originalmente embarcados eran un centenar de personas, no todos soldados, eso da idea de que estuvieron muy cerca de terminar en ese momento la expedición. Pronto descubrieron que los escuadrones de indios se multiplicaban con nuevos refuerzos, y que si bien espadas, ballestas y arcabuces los asustaban al principio, conseguían superar la sorpresa procurando asaetear a distancia a los españoles, para mantenerse alejados de sus espadas. Al grito de "Calachumi", que los conquistadores pronto supieron traducir como "al jefe", los indios se ensañaron especialmente con Hernández de Córdoba, que llegó a recibir diez flechazos. También aprendieron los españoles el empeño de sus oponentes por capturar personas vivas: dos fueron hechas prisioneras y seguramente sacrificadas después; de una sabemos que se llamaba Alonso Boto, y a la otra Bernal sólo es capaz de recordarla como "un portugués viejo"

Llegó un momento en que sólo quedaba un soldado ileso, el capitán debía estar prácticamente inconsciente, y la agresividad de los indios se multiplicaba. Decidieron entonces como único recurso romper el cerco de los indios en dirección a los bateles, y volver a abordarlos —sin poder ocuparse de sus pipas de agua— para ganar los barcos. Afortunadamente para ellos, los indios no se habían preocupado de retirar o inutilizar las barcas, como habrían podido hacer. Se ensañaron, en cambio, en el ataque con flechas, piedras y lanzas a los bateles en fuga, que se desequilibraron por el peso y movimiento, y acabaron dando al través o volcando. Los supervivientes de Hernández tuvieron que desplazarse asidos a las bordas de las lanchas, medio nadando, pero al final fueron recogidos por el barco de menor calado, y puestos a salvo.

Los supervivientes, al pasar lista, tuvieron que lamentar la falta de cincuenta compañeros, incluyendo los dos que se llevaron vivos. El resto estaban muy malheridos, con excepción de un soldado llamado Berrio, que resultó sorprendentemente ileso. Cinco murieron en los días siguientes, siendo arrojados al mar sus cadáveres.

Los españoles llamaron al sitio "costa de la mala pelea", y así figuró en los mapas durante algún tiempo.

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 debark. 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.

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 Levantine 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".

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.

References

• This article draws heavily on the corresponding article in the Spanish-language Wikipedia, which was accessed in the version of November 28, 2004.