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Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón
Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1478 |
| Died | October 18, 1526 (aged 47–48) |
| Occupations | explorer, conquistador, discoverer |
Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón (Toledo, c. 1478 – San Miguel de Gualdape, Atlantic coast of North America, October 18, 1526) was a Spanish military officer, oidor, adelantado and explorer.
He served as Oidor of the Real Audiencia of Santo Domingo and took an active part in organizing the first Spanish expeditions to the north of the American continent. He is known mainly for having promoted and led, in 1526, the expedition that founded the short-lived colony of San Miguel de Gualdape, considered the first documented European settlement in the present-day territory of the continental United States.
The colony, which had European, African and Caribbean Indigenous settlers, was the first attempt to establish a stable settlement on the North American Atlantic coast, probably in the region of present-day Georgia or South Carolina. The project failed within a few months owing to disease, lack of supplies and internal conflicts, and Vázquez de Ayllón himself died in the settlement.
His enterprise preceded by 33 years the failed settlement led by Tristán de Luna y Arellano at Pensacola, Florida; by 39 years the founding of San Agustín, the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement to the present day in the current territory of the United States; by 61 years the English colony of Roanoke; and by 81 years that of Jamestown, in Virginia.
Biography
Vázquez de Ayllón was born in Toledo around the year 1478, into a noble family of Mozarabs. His parents were Juan de Ayllón, Regidor of that city, and Inés de Villalobos.
In 1506 he went to La Española with the appointment of Alcalde Mayor of Concepción de la Vega, in order to assist in the administration of justice the Licentiate Alonso Maldonado, Alcalde Mayor of Santo Domingo. The island having been divided for that task into two zones, north and south, the first fell to Vázquez de Ayllón, with residence in Concepción de la Vega and jurisdiction over the towns of Santiago, Puerto Plata, Puerto Real and Lares de Guahaba.
He remained in Concepción de la Vega until 1510, the year in which he returned to Spain to answer for the juicio de residencia that, by order of Diego Colón, the Licentiate Francisco de la Fuente had conducted on him.
He was by then married, in his second marriage, to Ana Becerra, daughter of the Licentiate Juan Becerra, discoverer of gold mines, wealthy rancher and Regidor of the Town of Santiago; and he had received from Ovando an encomienda of more than four hundred Indians.
Narváez expedition
In 1520, the Real Audiencia of Santo Domingo sent him to Cuba to make Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar desist from sending Pánfilo de Narváez to arrest Hernán Cortés in Mexico, having determined that the mission was illegal. Seeing his attempts fail, Vázquez joined Narváez's expedition with his own ship, intending to mediate between Cortés and him.[1][2]
Irritated by his interference, Narváez ended up ordering the arrest of Ayllón and his servants, together with other expeditionaries opposed to his orders, and shipping them to Spain by force. However, the judge managed to escape by convincing the crew to take him back to Santo Domingo, where he reported what had happened, and other expeditionaries sympathetic to him deserted Narváez's expedition and took refuge in Veracruz with Cortés's contingent, commanded there by Gonzalo de Sandoval. Vázquez's reports were slow to reach the Real Audiencia, but they would be decisive in the litigation between Cortés and Velázquez.[3]
Other projects
In 1521 he sent an expedition to the west, commanded by Francisco Gordillo, which landed at Cape Fear, on the Atlantic coast of present-day North Carolina.
That same year, Vázquez sent another expedition to Florida, which strayed from its course owing to unclear setbacks and arrived at Veracruz. The story is recounted by Bernal Díaz del Castillo, who nevertheless mistakenly assumes that Vázquez led and died on that expedition.[4] In any case, its members joined the army of Hernán Cortés, who at that moment was in the midst of the Siege of Tenochtitlan.[5]
In 1523, with the authorization of the Emperor Charles I of Spain, he organized an expedition to search for the Northwest Passage to the Spice Islands, exploring the eastern coast of the present-day United States (the states of Virginia and North Carolina).
Settlement in North America and death
In 1526, after receiving from the Emperor rights over the discovered lands, he organized an expedition of 600 people to colonize the coast of the present-day state of Virginia, where he founded San Miguel de Guadalupe, the first European town in the present-day United States.
The town would have been located near the present-day Chesapeake Bay, which Vázquez de Ayllón called «bahía de Santa María» (Bay of Saint Mary), not too far from present-day Jamestown. Ayllón brought black slaves to work the land, this being the first occasion on which African slaves arrived in North America. Taking advantage of the political disputes among the colonists, the slaves rose up and fled into the interior, where they probably mixed with the Native Americans.
Finding no local Indians with whom to barter for food, after three months Vázquez de Ayllón abandoned the settlement and set course south, toward the island of La Española. Of the 600 men who had set out, only 150 returned, who said they had suffered privation, hunger, disease and attacks by the local Indigenous people, and stated that Vázquez de Ayllón had died in the arms of a Dominican friar and been cast into the sea.[6]
References
- ↑ Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España, chapter CIX
- ↑ THOMAS, Hugh (1993). La conquista de México, el encuentro de dos mundos, el choque de dos imperios, chaps. 24–25. Mexico, Planeta, ISBN 970-690-163-9
- ↑ Díaz, chapter CXIII
- ↑ Díaz, chapter CCX
- ↑ Díaz, chapter CLVI
- ↑ Luis., Conde-Salazar Infiesta,; Manuel., Lucena Giraldo, (2009). Atlas de los exploradores españoles (in español). GeoPlaneta. ISBN 9788408086833. OCLC 556943554. Retrieved December 1, 2018.
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Bibliography
- Gómez Gómez, José María, «El toledano Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón y la empresa de América», in Alcalibe: revista Centro Asociado a la UNED Ciudad de la Cerámica, No. 2, 2002, pp. 79–108.
- Maura, Juan Francisco. Españoles y portugueses en Canadá en tiempos de Cristóbal Colón. Valencia: Universidad de Valencia, 2021. https://parnaseo.uv.es/Lemir/Textos/Juan_Maura_Lemir.pdf
External links
- Macías Domínguez, Isabelo (2018). "Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón". Diccionario Biográfico Español (in español). Real Academia de la Historia.
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