Antonio Sedeño

Antonio Sedeño (* before 1495; † 1537 in the province of Paria, Venezuela) was a Spanish conquistador , Royal Spanish official, encomendero in Puerto Rico and the first governor of the island of Trinidad .

Royal Official and Encomendero in Puerto Rico

The first mention of Antonio Sedeño dates back to 1514, when he was given the post of Royal Accountant of the island of San Juan de Puerto Rico in a Royal Decree (Real Provisión). Since one can assume that Sedeño was not younger than 20 years at this point in time, his year of birth before 1495 is very likely.

Together with the Kgl. Treasurer Andrés de Haro and the royal factor Baltasar de Castro, Sedeño belonged to that generation of privileged Spanish immigrants who, in the anarchic first phase of the Spanish Conquista, benefited from the spatial distance to the motherland, the encomienda system at the expense of their Indian wards took advantage of personal enrichment. The indigenous population of the Caribbean, weakened and decimated by epidemics introduced from Europe, was completely wiped out within a few decades by excessive exploitation in the gold mines and on the fields and pastures of the Encomienderos. When an examining magistrate was supposed to investigate the suspicious behavior of the royal officials in Puerto Rico in 1520, the officials concealed their actions by setting fire to the archive with the written documents. As an encomendero, Sedeño became one of the richest citizens of Puerto Rico and had enough wealth to finance the development of his own province.

Governor of the island of Trinidad

In 1529, Sedeño were made Adelantado and governor of the island of Trinidad in Spain . On September 18, 1530, he set off from Sanlúcar de Barameda in Spain with two caravels , including 70 soldiers ("hombres de guerra"), heavy artillery, large quantities of food and barter to trade with the Indians. On November 8th, 1530 the ships reached his province and Sedeño was proclaimed "Captain General and Governor of the Royal Province of the Island of Trinidad" by his crews. On the other side of the mainland, he won the friendship and support of the cacique Turiparí, who helped him as a guide and interpreter in exploring the island of Trinidad. The island was ruled by several petty kings who, despite all expressions of friendship and gifts, appeared reserved to hostile to the Spaniards. In view of the large population and their willingness to fight, Sedeño and his 70 men could not think of staying permanently on the island or establishing a settlement.

He built a fort on the mainland side in the area of ​​his ally Turiparí, which he equipped with the cannons of the ships and in which he left 35 of his people under the command of a Portuguese named Joan Gonzalez from Sosa. He himself left for Puerto Rico with the caravels to hire more fighters.

During his absence, the veteran conquistador Diego de Ordáz took the fort by surprise and imprisoned Joan Gonzalez and his crew. Ordáz, like Sedeño, had just come from Spain, wearing the title of "Governor of the islands in the Rio Marañón" (the Rio Amazon ). Apparently because of navigation errors, however, he had missed the Amazon estuary and had now come across the Rio Orinoco and the fort on the estuary delta. After Sedeño's people were settled, he occupied the fort himself and drove up the Orinoco with most of his people.

Antonio Sedeño has meanwhile sent a caravel with 30 new settlers and equipment to the fort. The Ordáz 'people turned them away and the newcomers were therefore forced to land on the Trinidad. There, after a few days, 24 of them were massacred by the locals. The six survivors - including "a black woman" - managed to escape to Puerto Rico with the caravel.

In 1532 Sedeño returned to Trinidad with 80 soldiers. Perhaps just as revenge for the deaths of his 24 subordinates, he attacked a coastal settlement called Cumucurapo and caused a bloodbath among the locals. He burned the settlement down. However, due to a lack of food supply and his still low strength, he had to leave the island again. The Ordáz'schen garrison of his fort on the mainland side - the mainland side called "Pariah" did not belong to Sedeños province - he was turned away and had to retreat to the next Spanish settlement on the island of Margarita off the South American Caribbean coast.

After the death of Diego de Ordáz, Sedeño made the next attempt to take possession of Trinidad. He brought the Fort of Pariah back under his control and forced the occupation, together with their leader Alonso de Herrera , a former officer of Diego de Ordáz ', to join him and his troops in taking possession of Trinidad. He built a fort near the Indian settlement of Cumucurapo, which was attacked a few weeks after landing by a force of 3,000 Indian warriors. The Spaniards were able to keep the fort with heavy losses, but then received the disturbing information that all the tribes of the island had made an alliance against them. At the same time they received instructions from the Real Audiencia of Santo Domingo, the appellate court and at the same time the highest Spanish authority overseas. In it, Sedeño was ordered to release Alonso de Herrera immediately. At the same time Herrera was appointed (interim) governor of the province of Paria. Faced with the threat from the locals on the island, a group of Spaniards first deserted on canoes and took Herrera to Fort Paria on the mainland. In a mutiny that took place afterwards, some of the Spaniards - mainly, but not only Herrera's people - seized the equipment, the ships and the artillery and forced Sedeño and his most loyal followers to embark with them to Fort Paria. Sedeño never returned to Trinidad.

Search for the gold rich of the "Province on the Meta"

In Fort Paria - the chronicler Fernández de Oviedo calls it "the fortress of discord" - Sedeño was arrested by Alonso de Herrera, although he had been assured of freedom and the return of his ships in Trinidad. After a few weeks, during which he became seriously ill, he was released by his followers, who in turn arrested Alonso de Herrera and set about setting fire to the prison building. Sedeño prevented the assassination attempt and justified this in front of his angry people by saying that he had promised to spare Herrera and his people when he was liberated. The real reason could have been political: In the meantime, it was known that a new governor had been appointed for Pariah directly by the crown, Hierónimo Dortal , who - like Herrera, who was a friend of his - had been an officer of Diego de Ordáz and who was responsible for him accompanied the Orinoco expedition into the interior of the continent in 1531. Antonio Sedeño from then on pursued a policy that he and Dortal should help each other to take possession of their provinces, a project that was not implemented. In any case, Sedeño set Herrera free again and in 1534 drove his ships and his followers back to Margarita Island.

On the margarita, he has to hand over all his people to the authorities of Nueva Cádiz de Cubagua , who are planning an inland expedition - the destination was probably the "province on the Meta", to which the other conquistadors in the Caribbean had long drawn their attention. On his way up the Rio Orinoco, Diego de Ordáz had heard of one or two powerful "gold empires" in the interior of the continent who could be reached via the Rio Meta, a tributary of the Orinoco. Sedeño was forced to return to Puerto Rico alone after his soldiers were forcibly recruited. In Cubagua he left a letter to Herónimo Dortal in which he offered this a future collaboration.

In Puerto Rico, Antonio Sedeño again set up a force - apparently his possessions on the island had remained profitable even during his absence. Before he went back to Pariah himself, he sent teams ahead twice, once 130 men with 30 horses, once 70 men with 24 horses. The units came into conflict with Hierónimo Dortal, the rightful governor of Paria, who wanted to continue the enterprise himself on an expedition into the hinterland in 1535 and 1536, which he had failed a few years earlier on the expedition under Ordáz.

On August 2, 1536, Sedeño took three ships to today's Venezuelan mainland to Puerto Maracapaná, a natural, but not permanently populated port, which was around 150 km (30 leguas ) west of Cubagua and undertook an expedition with 450 conquistadors and 98 horses Inland. The goal was the Indian kingdoms of the "Province on the Meta". Sedeño had no permission to be active in this area, which had belonged to the province of Paria since 1535 - he was only entitled to the island of Trinidad. On the expedition, Sedeño crossed the densely populated country of the Cumanagotos (Fernández de Oviedo speaks of "Camanagoto") in what is now the Venezuelan state of Anzoátegui , which was ruled by an influential prince named Guaramental , whose "palace district", consisting of seven houses, was surrounded by a triple wall was surrounded by very thick tree trunks, which impressed the Europeans very much.

At the end of 1536 Hierónimo Dortal wanted to expel Antonio Sedeño with the help of an examining magistrate from Santo Domingo. Sedeño wasn't about to back down, however. He had the examining magistrate arrested and probably planned, like Dortal shortly before him, to get to the Meta by land. But he died, probably at the beginning of 1537, in his army camp. The cause of death is not entirely clear. While Aguado narrates that an Indian servant poisoned him, Fernández de Oviedo writes oracularly that he "died a not very Catholic death, which is what those say who mean him ill. Others say otherwise."

classification

Antonio Sedeño is one of the protagonists of the era of the American Conquest, in which the Spanish crown opened up northern South America. For this purpose, the crown divided the continent into provinces between around 1525 and 1535, the northern part of which the coastlines were already well mapped. These provinces were given to private entrepreneurs like Sedeño, who then had to develop them at their own expense and risk. Sedeño also belongs to the generation of conquistadors who first followed the news of one or two "gold countries" in the interior of the continent from which the search for El Dorado later developed.

literature

• Archivo General de Las Indias
• Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés : Historia General y Natural de las Indias. Vol. II, Book 24, Chapters II - IV Edition Madrid 1959.
• Fray Pedro Aguado: Recopilación Historial, Part 2, Vol. III. Book 4, Chapter 7 - 27th edition Bogotá 1957.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Archivo General de Las Indias↵↵Signature: ↵↵ES.41091.AGI / 1.16403.15.413 // ↵↵Indiferente, 419, L.5, F.334R (2) ↵↵Nota de despacho. Fecha Creación: 1514
2. ↑ Jörg Denzer: Death in the gold mines. In: Spectrum of Science Special. Archeology, history, culture, 03/2019.
3. ↑ Archivo General de Las Indias↵↵AGI, Justicia 44, Pliego suelto, fol. 1. ↵↵Carta del Juez de Residencia en la Isla de San Juan, Licdo. Antonio de la Gama, aSM (Carlos I). Puerto Rico 30-IV-1520
4. ↑ Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdéz: Historia General y Natural de Las Indias . tape 2 . Madrid 1959, p. 386 .
5. ↑ Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdéz: Historia General y Natural de Las Indias . tape 2 . Madrid 1959, p. 406 .
6. ↑ Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdéz: Historia General y Natural de Las Indias . tape 2 . Madrid 1959, p. 407 .
7. ↑ Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdéz: Historia General y Natural de Las Indias . tape 2 . Madrid 1959, p. 406-409 .
8. ↑ Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdéz: Historia General y Natural de Las Indias . tape 2 . Madrid 1959, p. 409 .
9. ↑ Fray Pedro Aguado: Recolpiliación Historial . Bogotá 1957, p. 449 ff . (Original edition: Vol. 3, Book 6, Chapter 10). Sedeño's and Dortal's troops stole horses and weapons from each other during raids, but avoided a major confrontation
10. ↑ Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdéz: Historia General y Natural de Las Indias . tape 2 . Madrid 1959, p. 426 .
11. ↑ Fray Pedro Aguado: Recolpiliación Historial . Bogotá 1957, p. 490 (original edition: Vol. 3, Book 6, Chapter 10).
12. ↑ Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdéz: Historia General y Natural de Las Indias . tape 2 . Madrid 1959, p. 431 .