February – March 1517
Hernández de Córdoba
On 8 February 1517 Francisco Hernández de Córdoba sails from Cuba with two ships, a brigantine and about 110 men, Bernal Díaz del Castillo among them. The governor of Cuba, Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, has a share in the venture, which sets out to explore and to take slaves. Antón de Alaminos, who sailed with Columbus, is the pilot.
From the ships the Spaniards see a large town two leagues inland and call it Gran Cairo. Bernal Díaz places it at Cape Catoche, Sharer and Traxler at Isla Mujeres. On 4 March ten large canoes come out to the ships, and the next day the Maya leader returns with twelve canoes to take the Spaniards ashore.
Cape Catoche, the northeastern tip of Yucatán, from the air, with Holbox Island behindWikimedia Commons, P199, CC BY-SA 3.0 (Cabo Catoche aerial.JPG)
On the path to the town, warriors with spears, bows, slings and cotton armour fall on the landing party. Thirteen Spaniards are hit by arrows, two of them fatally. Swords, crossbows and muskets drive the Maya back. The Spaniards take objects of low-grade gold and copper from temples at the edge of the town and leave with two prisoners, who are baptised Julián and Melchor and become their first Maya interpreters.
The fleet follows the coast west and then south. On 22 March it lands for water at Campeche, which the Spaniards call Lázaro, and the people there repeat the word "Castilan". At a blood-stained altar, priests set fire to a pile of reeds and warn the Spaniards to be gone before it burns out. They withdraw to the ships with their water.
Idols of Campeche and Yucatán as Bernard Picart drew them from Spanish accounts, in Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses, Amsterdam, 1723Wikimedia Commons, Bernard Picart, Public domain (Idoles de Campeche et de Iucatan.jpg)
Sources
- Inga Clendinnen, Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517 to 1570 (2nd ed. 2003), pp. 4 to 10.
- Robert S. Chamberlain, The Conquest and Colonization of Yucatan, 1517 to 1550 (1948), pp. 11 to 12.
- Bernal Díaz del Castillo, The Conquest of New Spain, tr. J. M. Cohen (1963), pp. 16 to 21.
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