Vicente Yáñez Pinzón

Vicente Yáñez Pinzón
Oil on canvas by Julio García Condoy. Naval Museum of Madrid.
Born	1462 (1462) Palos de la Frontera
Died	1514 (aged 51–52) Seville
Occupations	Mariner, explorer, discoverer

Vicente Yáñez Pinzón (Palos de la Frontera, c. 1462–1514) was a Spanish navigator and explorer, co-discoverer of America and the first European navigator to reach Brazil. He sailed with Christopher Columbus on his first voyage to the New World in 1492, as Captain of the caravel La Niña. He discovered the coasts of the far north of Brazil in January 1500, three months before the arrival of Pedro Álvares Cabral at Porto Seguro.

Early years

Vicente Yáñez was born around 1462 in Palos de la Frontera, Spain, which made him by far the youngest of the Pinzón brothers. It is very likely that he took the byname Yáñez from Rodrigo Yáñez, an Alguacil of Palos who would have been his godfather, as was the local custom. Tradition in Palos places his family home on the Calle de la Ribera. From early childhood he learned the art of navigation from his elder brother, one of the most outstanding navigators of the age, and from his adolescence, which was a time of war, he took part in combats and raids. He married twice: first to María Teresa Rodríguez, who bore him two daughters, Ana Rodríguez and Juana González. The second time, on his return from his last voyage to Yucatán in 1509, he married Ana Núñez de Trujillo, with whom he lived in Triana until his death.

The first documented records concerning Vicente Yáñez are several complaints about raids he carried out on Catalan and Aragonese ships, from the time he was only fifteen, between 1477 and 1479, a period of war with Portugal in which Palos took an active part and which worsened its habitual shortage of wheat. Its inhabitants complained of going hungry, and the royal orders to various places to allow the supply of grain to Palos were disobeyed. The Pinzóns, assuming their responsibilities as the natural leaders of the district, attacked caravels that were mainly carrying wheat.

Captain of the caravel La Niña

Replica of the caravel La Niña at the "Muelle de las Carabelas" in Palos.

Vicente Yáñez was the first to accept his brother's invitation to enlist when Martín Alonso decided to support the expedition of Christopher Columbus. Together they went from house to house visiting their relatives, friends and acquaintances, encouraging the most distinguished sailors of the area to embark. They rejected the ships embargoed by Columbus, hiring more suitable vessels, and contributed half a million maravedís from their own wealth.

As Captain of the Niña, his interventions were crucial during the voyage, encouraging the continuation of the expedition when even Columbus himself wanted to turn back. He quelled the protests of the sailors of the nao Santa María, came to their rescue when the nao was wrecked, and brought the Admiral back to Spain.

In 1495 he fitted out two caravels, the Vicente Yáñez and the Fraila, to take part in the fleet that Alonso de Aguilar, elder brother of the Gran Capitán, was to lead against North Africa; but the wars of Naples broke out and they headed for Italy, from where they did not return until 1498, sailing along the coasts of Algiers and Tunis on the way.

The discovery of Brazil

That same year, the Crown decided to allow private individuals to undertake voyages of discovery. After signing a capitulation in Seville with the all-powerful Bishop Fonseca on behalf of the Catholic Monarchs, Yáñez set sail from the Port of Palos on November 19, 1499, with four small caravels, on his own initiative and at his own expense. He was accompanied by a large number of relatives and friends, among them, as scribe, Garcí Fernández, the famous physician of Palos who supported Columbus when no one else did; his nephews and captains Arias Pérez and Diego Hernández Colmenero, respectively the eldest son and the son-in-law of Martín Alonso; his uncle Diego Martín Pinzón with his cousins Juan, Francisco and Bartolomé; the prestigious pilots Juan Quintero Príncipe, Juan de Umbría, Alonso Núñez and Juan de Jerez; as well as the sailors Cristóbal de Vega, García Alonso, Diego de Alfaro, Rodrigo Álvarez, Diego Prieto, Antón Fernández Colmenero, Juan Calvo, Juan de Palencia, Manuel Valdobinos, Pedro Ramírez, García Hernández and, of course, his brother Francisco Martín Pinzón.

He was appointed governor:

Be it known: in remuneration for the services and expenses and the losses that befell you on the said voyage, you, the said Bicente Yáñes, for as long as it be our grace and will, shall be our Captain and Governor of the said lands named above, from the said point of Santa María de la Consolación following the coast as far as Rostro Fermoso, and from there all the coast that runs to the Northwest as far as the said river to which you gave the name Santa María de la Mar Dulce, with the islands that are at the mouth of the said river, which is named Mariatanbalo; which said office and charge of Captain and Governor you may use and exercise, and shall use and exercise, by yourself or through whoever holds your power, with all the things annexed and pertaining to the said charge, according as our other captains and governors of similar islands and newly discovered lands use it and can and must use it.

"The Spanish ships commanded by Vicente Iañez Pinzon enter the river of the Amazons (year 1500)"

The account of this voyage appears in several chronicles. Of these, the Decades of the New World, written in 1501 by the Milanese Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, are the closest in time and are based on reports from eyewitnesses, among them Vicente Yáñez himself, but above all Diego de Lepe, the Palos-born Captain who made a "twin" voyage to Pinzón's, left Palos a month and a half or two months later and followed his course until overtaking him at the Amazon River. Also quite interesting is the version of Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo in his Historia general y natural de las Indias, since he "knew and dealt with" Pinzón, who provided him with much of the information he narrates. As for the respective Chronicles of Father Bartolomé de las Casas and Antonio de Herrera, Fray Bartolomé's is based on Anglería and Herrera's on the Dominican.

In his peculiar and florid language, Anglería reports that, having passed the Canary Islands and the islands of Cape Verde, Vicente Yáñez's ships took a southwesterly course until they lost sight of the Pole Star. For the first time, Spanish sailors crossed the equator and entered the Southern Hemisphere. A serious contingency, because naturally they did not know how to guide themselves by the stars of the southern sky.

Oviedo does not narrate the voyage. As for Las Casas, he substantially follows Anglería, though with more austere expressions, stating that "having taken the route of the Canaries and from there to those of Cape Verde, and having departed from that of Santiago, which is one of them, on the 13th day of January of the year 1500, they took the way of the Auster and afterwards to the Levant, and having sailed, as they said, 700 leagues, they lost the North and crossed the equinoctial line. Having passed it, they had a most terrible storm in which they thought they would perish; they went along that route of the Orient or Levant another 240 leagues". Herrera says the same, but records, when narrating the crossing of the equinoctial line, that Vicente Yáñez was "the first subject of the Crown of Castile and of León to cross it". Finally, Anglería tells us:

(...) on January 26 they saw land from afar, and observing the turbidity of the seawater, they cast the sounding line and found a depth of 16 cubits, which are commonly called fathoms. They approached and landed and, having remained there two days, since in that time they found no man although they saw their footprints on the beach, they carved on the trees and rocks near the shore the names of the Monarchs and their own, with notice of their arrival, and departed.

— Peter Martyr d'Anghiera (Decades of the New World, 1501)

Nothing more. Astonishing is the brevity of words of the exuberant Peter Martyr, especially compared with the preceding long passage and with what Las Casas says of the same event when he states that on "January 26 they saw land quite far off; this was the cape that is now called Sant Agustín, and by the Portuguese the Land of Brazil: Vicente Yáñez then gave it the name Cape of Consolación".

The Sevillian friar inserted two very important statements in his work: first, that the cape Pinzón reached and named Consolación was the cape known as San Agustín. Second, that Vicente Yáñez took possession of the land. Fray Bartolomé follows the Milanese's account, but does not hesitate to complete it with the information and convictions he had gathered over the course of the years. For him there was not the slightest doubt: the Cape of Santa María de la Consolación was that of San Agustín, the first land discovered in Brazil by Vicente Yáñez Pinzón, who took possession of it. Faced with the hostile attitude of the natives, they decided to hoist sail and continue sailing until they reached:

(...) another river, but not deep enough to be navigated with the caravels, for which reason they sent ashore to reconnoiter it four service skiffs with armed men. These saw on a height near the coast a multitude of natives, whom, sending ahead an infantry soldier, they invited to parley. It seemed that they intended to seize our man and carry him off with them, for just as he had thrown them a hawk's bell to attract them, they, from afar, did the same with a gilded little stick a cubit long; and when the Spaniard bent down to pick it up, they quickly surrounded him with the intent of capturing him; but our foot soldier, protecting himself with the shield and sword with which he was armed, defended himself until his companions helped him with the boats.

The sad outcome of this first bloody clash was, according to all the chroniclers, eight Spaniards dead and more than a dozen wounded, with considerably more casualties among the natives. The chroniclers agree in the narration, with the nuance of Oviedo, who says that it was a "worked piece of gold" that the Indians used as bait.

From this episode some authors rashly deduce that the natives knew of the Christians' ambition for gold. In the first place, the "little stick of gold" which, little by little, from chronicler to chronicler, became a "worked piece of gold" was not recovered, so we will never know whether it really was gold or not. However, this fact, together with a cross found by the expedition of Diego de Lepe, which according to Professor Juan Manzano would not have surprised them so much, nor would Juan de la Cosa have recorded it on his famous map, had they believed it had been placed there by Yáñez's men, are the flimsy arguments with which this author casts doubt on Pinzón being the true discoverer of Brazil, and attributes that merit, without further ado, to the expedition of the Portuguese Duarte Pacheco in 1498, of which no one knows exactly where it went, because political circumstances advised keeping it secret.

A hypothesis with which, according to the historian Julio Izquierdo Labrado, we cannot agree because it is too rash and gratuitous, not only because the arguments, we repeat, are very flimsy, but because secrecy and discovery are not concepts that go well together. To discover is not only to arrive; it is to take possession, carve names, leave a record of having arrived, have a scribe draw up a record of the event, know with greater or lesser accuracy where one has arrived, measure, map and, above all, inform kings, cosmographers, chroniclers, sailors, to name a few professions, and the general public, in such a way that the lands reached become incorporated into the general knowledge of the culture, of the civilization that sends that expedition. That is discovering. And that did not happen from the arrival, if he arrived at all, of Duarte Pacheco on the Brazilian coast, but from that of Vicente Yáñez Pinzón, the only mariner who deserves the title of discoverer of Brazil. A title which, incidentally, as we shall see, his contemporaries, neither Spanish nor Portuguese, neither begrudged nor disputed him.

Nor did anyone dispute his title of discoverer and first explorer of the Amazon River, the place where the clash described took place, at the mouth of the Pará, and from which they departed saddened by their dead, until they reached what they believed to be another river located 40 leagues away. In reality, as Oviedo already states in his chronicle, it was the other bank, the other mouth of the immense Amazon. Amazed, they found that the fresh water extended 40 leagues into the sea, and they renewed all the water in their vessels. Determined to investigate the secret of so mighty a river, they headed toward it and, according to Anglería:

they discovered that from some great mountains rivers of rapid currents rushed down with great force. They say that within that sea there are numerous islands, fertile for the richness of their soil and full of peoples. They relate that the natives of this region are peaceful and sociable, but of little use to our men, since they obtained from them no desirable profit, such as gold or precious stones; in view of this, they took 30 captives from there. The natives call that region Mariatambal; however, the one situated to the east of the river is called Camamoro, and the western one Paricora. The natives indicated that in the interior of that coast there existed no small quantity of gold.

— Peter Martyr d'Anghiera (Decades of the New World, 1501)

Old map of Brazil.

Oviedo categorically states that Vicente Yáñez Pinzón was "the first Christian and Spaniard to give news of this great river", which he already calls the Marañón, a name also used by Las Casas, although he states that he does not know who named it so and why. The Dominican also adds the surprise caused them by the phenomenon of the bore, "for being in the river, with the great impetus and force of the fresh water and that of the sea which resisted it, they made a terrible noise and lifted the ships four estados high, where they suffered no small danger".

While occupied with this exploration of the Amazon, they were overtaken by the expedition of Diego de Lepe, which had been following them from Palos. Thus, strictly speaking, Pinzón's discoveries in Brazilian lands concluded at the Amazon. From there, Anglería tells us, they followed the coast on a course "to the west toward Paria, over a distance of 300 leagues, as far as the point of land where the Arctic pole is lost". This point is especially interesting and we shall return to it later, when dealing with the controversy surrounding the location of the Cape of Santa María de la Consolación.

Anglería continues reporting on Pinzón's voyage and his arrival at the Marañón (the Orinoco, although Las Casas gives that name to the Amazon). From there they continued to the Gulf of Paria (present-day Venezuela), where they loaded precisely three thousand pounds of brazilwood, one of the few products that yielded profits on this voyage. With a northwest wind they sailed among several islands, very fertile but sparsely populated because of the cruelty of the cannibals. They landed on several of them, discovering the Isla de Mayo, but the natives fled. They found enormous trees and, among them, an astonishing marsupial animal.

They had already covered 600 leagues, and had already passed Hispaniola, when in the month of July they suffered a terrible storm, which wrecked two of the four caravels they had on the Babueca shoals, and carried off another, violently tearing it from its anchors and taking it out of sight. They were in despair when, fortunately, as the storm abated, the caravel they believed lost returned, crewed by 18 men. The chronicler Peter Martyr states that "With these two ships they set course for Spain. Battered by the waves and having lost not a few companions, they returned to their native soil of Palos, to their wives and children, on September 30".

Appointments as knight and governor

Main article: Governorate of Vicente Yáñez Pinzón

This voyage, which was the longest and most important made in the period in terms of its geographical results, was on the other hand an economic disaster. Despite everything, the Monarchs were very interested in possessing the immense coast discovered by Pinzón, and so they tried to encourage him to return to it; for this reason, on September 5, 1501, they signed with him a capitulation in which, among other things, they appointed him captain and governor of "the said point of Santa María de la Consolación and following the coast as far as Rostro Fermoso, and from there all the coast that runs to the Northwest as far as the said river to which you gave the name Santa María de la Mar Dulce, with the islands that are at the mouth of the said river, which is named Mariatanbalo". They also granted him a sixth part of all the products obtained from that land, provided that he returned to it "within one year, to be counted from the day of the date of this capitulation and agreement".

Undoubtedly, the Catholic Monarchs show that they attached great importance to Pinzón's discoveries and that they trusted in his worth to continue rendering them services. Therefore, to reward him for what he had achieved, while at the same time encouraging and helping him to continue serving them, on Friday, October 8, 1501, he was knighted by King Ferdinand the Catholic in the Comares Tower of the Alhambra, the Royal Palace of Granada.

It was all in vain; Vicente Yáñez Pinzón could not or would not make this voyage. It is generally said that the Palos Captain's lack of resources prevented him from undertaking it. That was surely so. However, Yáñez could obtain credit when necessary, even if at very high interest. Therefore, the possibility should not be dismissed that already at such an early date he doubted, as a result of the Portuguese voyages to those coasts, the sovereignty of the Spanish monarchs over it by reason of the Treaty of Tordesillas and, consequently, their power to grant him its governorship.

Juan Manzano y Manzano attempts to show that Pinzón returned to those lands he had discovered in 1504, in a great effort to clarify Anglería's confused narration of Vicente Yáñez's last voyage, in which he mixes his adventures with Solís in the Gulf of Mexico with a return to the lands found in 1500, in an absurd and senseless circuit. Why would Pinzón have returned to Brazil? To verify that the Portuguese calculations were correct and report on them to the Monarchs? This is possible, but the 1501 capitulation said that Pinzón was to go at his own expense, bearing costs that his dire financial situation made very burdensome, and that effort for what? To confirm that neither he nor Spain had rights over this land? Sailing in such secrecy that none of his contemporaries found out? Risking his life and that of his crew more than usual by taking only one caravel? Had he perhaps not recorded the data properly on his first voyage, so that he had to repeat it and pass through the same places again? And when in 1513 he gave testimony, with such accuracy and honesty that he clearly distinguished the coast he had discovered from that which he had merely "run along", since he acknowledged that its finding belonged to his fellow townsman Diego de Lepe, why is he not equally specific about his arrival at the Cape of San Agustín, without the slightest reference to his having been there the second time and not the first?

Too many unanswered questions in this supposed second voyage of Pinzón to Brazil, too many uncertainties arising from a confused and disordered account by Anglería. The truth is that Vicente Yáñez's movements between 1502 and 1504 have still not been clarified.

Expedition to Central America

His presence in America during those years is indeed confirmed, probably to fulfill his obligations as Captain General and Governor of Puerto Rico, the island that his brother Martín Alonso Pinzón had discovered during the second voyage of 1493. On the other hand, from the spring of 1505 we find him again in Spain, specifically at the Junta de Navegantes of Toro, at which, by a capitulation dated April 24, he was appointed captain and Corregidor of the Island of San Juan or Puerto Rico. He also took part, as an expert summoned by the Crown, in the Junta de Navegantes of Burgos of 1508, to take up again the question of the search for a passage to the Spice Islands. On his last voyage to the Indies in 1508, Captain Pinzón, together with Juan Díaz de Solís, sailed along the coasts of Paria, Darién and Veragua, in present-day Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala. Not finding the passage they sought, they rounded the Yucatán Peninsula and entered the Gulf of Mexico as far as 23.5° North latitude, making one of the first contacts with the Aztec civilization.

On returning from that voyage, Vicente Yáñez married for the second time and settled in Triana, testifying in 1513 in the Columbian lawsuits against the Admiral with his customary moderation. In 1514 he was ordered to accompany Pedrarias Dávila to Darién, but Vicente Yáñez was ill and asked to be excused. It was March 14, 1514, and this is the last document in which he is mentioned. According to his friend, the chronicler Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Vicente Yáñez died that same year, probably at the end of September, with the same discretion with which he had lived, without the place where he was buried being known, most likely the cemetery of Triana.

See also

• Pinzón brothers
• Francisco Martín Pinzón
• Treaty of Tordesillas
• The Vicente Yañez Pinzón River, today called the Oiapoque

Bibliography

• Gould, Alice Bache (1984). Nueva lista documentada de los tripulantes de Colón en 1492 (in español). Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia. ISBN 84-600-3829-7.
• HERNÁNDEZ-PINZÓN Y GANZINOTTO, José Luis, (direct descendant of Martín Alonso Pinzón), Vicente Yáñez Pinzón: sus viajes y descubrimientos, USA: University of Michigan Library, 1920.
• IZQUIERDO LABRADO, Julio Palos de la Frontera en el Antiguo Régimen.(1380-1830 ). Instituto de Cooperación Iberoamericana and Ayuntamiento de Palos de la Frontera, Huelva, 1987.
• MAJÓ FRAMIS, Ricardo, Vidas de los navegantes y conquistadores del siglo XVI. Navegantes, 2 volumes, Madrid: Aguilar, 1950.
• MAJÓ FRAMIS, Ricardo, Los Pinzones, Madrid: Editorial "Gran Capitán", 1947.
• MANZANO Y MANZANO, Juan; MANZANO FERNÁNDEZ-HEREDIA, Ana María, Los Pinzones y el Descubrimiento de América, 3 vols., Madrid: Ediciones de Cultura Hispánica, 1988.
• ORTEGA, Fray Ángel, La Rábida. Historia documental y crítica. 4 vols. Seville, 1925.

External links

• Vicente Yáñez Pinzón. Los Viajes Andaluces.
• Ayuntamiento de Palos de la Frontera,
• Cabo de Santo Agostinho,
• Hermanos Pinzón, Enciclopedia GER
• Capitulación otorgada a Vicente Yáñez Pinçón
• Vicente Yáñez Pinzón. Biografías y vida.
• Viajes y descubrimientos de los compañeros de Colón, por Washington Irving Archived at banrepcultural.org
• Vida y viajes de Cristóbal Colón, por Washington Irving