Hernando de Alarcon

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Misrepresentation of Baja California as an island
Correct representation of Baja California on a world map from 1579.

Hernando de Alarcón was a 16th century Spanish explorer . His life dates are not known.

Find Coronado

He was commissioned by the Viceroy of New Spain, Antonio de Mendoza , to explore the Baja California peninsula . He should finally determine whether this was an island or a peninsula. However, his most important task was to support Francisco Vásquez de Coronado's expedition . The plan was that Hernando de Alarcón should sail his ships as far north as possible into the Gulf of California. There he was supposed to supply Coronado with weapons and food and to receive the gold he had captured. He should then bring it safely south on his ships.

On May 9, 1540, Alarcón gave the order to set sail. The expedition set off with two ships and a tender.

Alarcón sailed into the Gulf of California , which had been explored for the first time by Francisco de Ulloa the previous summer . He carefully drew the coastline on maps. On September 26th he reached the Colorado . He called it the Río del Tizón or Río de Buena Guía . The men went upstream in boats looking for Coronado's troops. For the first 85 miles in Spain, they were the first Europeans to ever navigate this river. They probably came close to today's Yuma .

However, Alarcón wrote an unusually sensitive account of his first encounter with indigenous people: At his first encounter with natives armed with bows and arrows, Alarcón, unlike Coronado, " threw his sword and shield to the ground and stepped on them with his feet, all the more so and by other signs to mean that I didn't want to go to war. " He ordered his men to sit down. After a moment of uncertainty and murmuring deliberations, one of the locals stepped out of the circle with a stick with clams attached to it. Alarcón hugged him and gave him a few pearls. Then Alarcón and his men crossed unmolested densely populated territories along the Colorado. Despite the indigenous interpreters, communication was difficult and was often limited to gestures, gifts, pantomime or drawings. Alarcón, like Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro , made use of the myth of being sent by the sun. The indigenous people did not believe him, however, and troubled with questions like "how the sun could have sent me, since it travels so high up and never stands still". And why hadn't the sun sent someone earlier and why children of the sun don't understand everyone? Alarcón admitted in his notes that "I soon couldn't think of anything" . "I told him that God lived in heaven and was called Jesus Christ. I was careful not to get entangled in theology with him."

However, Coronado and his men could not find Alarcón's expedition because they reached the river much earlier. It was only a few months after them that García López de Cárdenas discovered the Grand Canyon and thus the Colorado River. When the rapids of the Colorado River made any further advance impossible, Alarcón left a wooden cross in a special place. There he buried messages in a container that were later found by Melchior Díaz , another explorer.

When Alarcón returned to New Spain in 1541, he was able to produce an accurate map of the Gulf of California. On this map, the country was shown as a peninsula. However, he had not achieved the main goal of his expedition. He had n't been able to help Coronado in his search for the seven cities of Cibola .

See also

source

  • Spanish Archives of New Mexico

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Tony Horwitz: The true discoverers of the New World - from the Vikings to the Pilgrim Fathers Pieper Verlag, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-492-25462-5 , p. 212f
  2. ↑ Tony Horwitz: The true discoverers of the New World - from the Vikings to the Pilgrim Fathers Pieper Verlag, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-492-25462-5 , p. 213

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Alarcón, Hernando de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION New Spanish explorer
DATE OF BIRTH 15th century
DATE OF DEATH 16th Century