CHAPTER III
THE FIRST SPANISH ENTRADAS INTO YUCATAN
THE First Spaniards in Yucatan. Although Fernando Cortes was the first Spaniard to penetrate the region occupied by the Itzas, he was not, of course, the first of his race to become acquainted with Yucatan and its inhabitants. It will be remembered that Columbus received a hint of the existence of Yucatan from some Indian traders at the Isla de Guanajo (Isla de Piños) in the year 1502. (Cogolludo, lib. i, cap I.)[1] Although he failed to find it, we may say that from July, 1502, Yucatan was known to the Spaniards. The first Spaniards who actually coasted the shore of Yucatan were Juan Diaz de Solis and Vicente Yañez Pinzon, in the year 1506.
In 1511 or 1512 Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, whose expedition was in Darien, found it necessary to send to Hispaniola for supplies. He chose a certain Valdivia for the errand, intrusted him with a caravel, and sent him off. Valdivia was shipwrecked on Las Viboras, a reef near Jamaica, and only about twenty of his men escaped. (Molina, p. 11 ff.; Montesinos, vol. ii, p. 28 ff.; Landa, p. 15.) They were all captured by some Indians from Yucatan, who sacrificed all except Jerónimo de Aguilar and Gonzalo Guerrero. The latter of these learned the language and went to Chectemal, where he married an Indian woman and became a member of the tribe. (Landa, pp. 14-16. Chectemal = Salamanca = Bacalar = Bakhalal.)
Francisco Hernandez de Cordoba, 1517. All the Spaniards
- ↑ The claim of the Portuguese to have visited and mapped Yucatan is not founded on historical fact. Dr. Roger Merriman of Harvard was so kind as to put at my disposal his historical infomation on the subject of early voyages to Yucatan. It in his unqualified opinion that the map reported on by Valentini, and discussed in the list of maps in Appendix III, is greatly misdated, being placed about twenty to thirty years too early.
