chapter 1-8._

AMERICA: A. D. 1497-1498. The first Voyage of Americus Vespucius. Misunderstandings and disputes concerning it. Vindication of the Florentine navigator. His exploration of 4,000 miles of continental coast.

"Our information concerning Americus Vespucius, from the early part of the year 1496 until after his return from the Portuguese to the Spanish service in the latter part of 1504, rests primarily upon his two famous letters; the one addressed to his old patron Lorenzo di Pier Francesco de' Medici (a cousin of Lorenzo the Magnificent) and written in March or April, 1503, giving an account of his third voyage; the other addressed to his old school-fellow Piero Soderini [then Gonfaloniere of Florence] and dated from Lisbon, September 4, 1504, giving a brief account of four voyages which he had made under various commanders in the capacity of astronomer or pilot. These letters … became speedily popular, and many editions were published, more especially in France, Germany, and Italy. … The letter to Soderini gives an account of four voyages in which the writer took part, the first two in the service of Spain, the other two in the service of Portugal. The first expedition sailed from Cadiz May 10, 1497, and returned October 15, 1498, after having explored a coast so long as to seem unquestionably that of a continent. This voyage, as we shall see, was concerned with parts of America not visited again until 1513 and 1517. It discovered nothing that was calculated to invest it with much importance in Spain, though it by no means passed without notice there, as has often been wrongly asserted. Outside of Spain it came to attract more attention, but in an unfortunate way, for a slight but very serious error in proof-reading or editing, in the most important of the Latin versions, caused it after a while to be practically identified with the second voyage, made two years later. This confusion eventually led to most outrageous imputations upon the good name of Americus, which it has been left for the present century to remove. The second voyage of Vespucius was that in which he accompanied Alonso de Ojeda and Juan de la Costa, from May 20, 1499, to June, 1500. They explored the northern coast of South America from some point on what we would now call the north coast of Brazil, as far as the Pearl Coast visited by Columbus in the preceding year; and they went beyond, as far as the Gulf of Maracaibo. Here the squadron seems to have become divided, Ojeda going over to Hispaniola in September, while Vespucius remained cruising till February. … It is certainly much to be regretted that in the narrative of his first expedition, Vespucius did not happen to mention the name of the chief commander. … However … he was writing not for us, but for his friend, and he told Soderini only what he thought would interest him. … Of the letter to Soderini the version which has played the most important part in history is the Latin one first published at the press of the little college at Saint-Dié in Lorraine, April 25 (vij Kl' Maij), 1507. … It was translated, not from an original text, but from an intermediate French version, which is lost. Of late years, however, we have detected, in an excessively rare Italian text, the original from which the famous Lorraine version was ultimately derived. … If now we compare this primitive text with the Latin of the Lorraine version of 1507, we observe that, in the latter, one proper name—the Indian name of a place visited by Americus on his first voyage—has been altered. In the original it is 'Lariab;' in the Latin it has become 'Parias.' This looks like an instance of injudicious editing on the part of the Latin translator, although, of course, it may be a case of careless proof-reading. Lariab is a queer-looking word. It is no wonder that a scholar in his study among the mountains of Lorraine could make nothing of it. If he had happened to be acquainted with the language of the Huastecas, who dwelt at that time about the river Panuco—fierce and dreaded enemies of their southern neighbours the Aztecs—he would have known that names of places in that region were apt to end in ab. … But as such facts were quite beyond our worthy translator's ken, we cannot much blame him if he felt that such a word as Lariab needed doctoring. Parias (Paria) was known to be the native name of a region on the western shores of the Atlantic, and so Lariab became Parias. As the distance from the one place to the other is more than two thousand miles, this little emendation shifted the scene of the first voyage beyond all recognition, and cast the whole subject into an outer darkness where there has been much groaning and gnashing of teeth. Another curious circumstance came in to confirm this error. On his first voyage, shortly before arriving at Lariab, Vespucius saw an Indian town built over the water, 'like Venice.' He counted 44 large wooden houses, 'like barracks,' supported on huge tree- trunks and communicating with each other by bridges that could be drawn up in case of danger. {53} This may well have been a village of communal houses of the Chontals on the coast of Tabasco; but such villages were afterwards seen on the Gulf of Maracaibo, and one of them was called Venezuela, or 'Little Venice,' a name since spread over a territory nearly twice as large as France. So the amphibious town described by Vespucius was incontinently moved to Maracaibo, as if there could be only one such place, as if that style of defensive building had not been common enough in many ages and in many parts of the earth, from ancient Switzerland to modern Siam. … Thus in spite of the latitudes and longitudes distinctly stated by Vespucius in his letter, did Lariab and the little wooden Venice get shifted from the Gulf of Mexico to the northern coast of South America. Now there is no question that Vespucius in his second voyage, with Ojeda for captain, did sail along that coast, visiting the gulfs of Paria and Maracaibo. This was in the summer of 1499, one year after a part of the same coast had been visited by Columbus. Hence in a later period, long after the actors in these scenes had been gathered unto their fathers, and when people had begun to wonder how the New World could ever have come to be called America instead of Columbia, it was suggested that the first voyage described by Vespucius must be merely a clumsy and fictitious duplicate of the second, and that he invented it and thrust it back from 1499 to 1497, in order that he might be accredited with 'the discovery of the continent' one year in advance of his friend Columbus. It was assumed that he must have written his letter to Soderini with the base intention of supplanting his friend, and that the shabby device was successful. This explanation seemed so simple and intelligible that it became quite generally adopted, and it held its ground until the subject began to be critically studied, and Alexander von Humboldt showed, about sixty years ago, that the first naming of America occurred in no such way as had been supposed. As soon as we refrain from projecting our modern knowledge of geography into the past, as soon as we pause to consider how these great events appeared to the actors themselves, the absurdity of this accusation against Americus becomes evident. We arc told that he falsely pretended to have visited Paria and Maracaibo in 1497, in order to claim priority over Columbus in the discovery of 'the continent.' What continent? When Vespucius wrote that letter to Soderini, neither he nor anybody else suspected that what we now call America had been discovered. The only continent of which there could be any question, so far as supplanting Columbus was concerned, was Asia. But in 1504 Columbus was generally supposed to have discovered the continent of Asia, by his new route, in 1492. … It was M. Varnhagen who first turned inquiry on this subject in the right direction. … Having taken a correct start by simply following the words of Vespucius himself, from a primitive text, without reference to any preconceived theories or traditions, M. Varnhagen finds" that Americus in his first voyage made land on the northern coast of Honduras; "that he sailed around Yucatan, and found his aquatic village of communal houses, his little wooden Venice, on the shore of Tabasco. Thence, after a fight with the natives in which a few tawny prisoners were captured and carried on board the caravels, Vespucius seems to have taken a straight course to the Huasteca country by Tampico, without touching at points in the region subject or tributary to the Aztec confederacy. This Tampico country was what Vespucius understood to be called Lariab. He again gives the latitude definitely and correctly as 23° N., and he mentions a few interesting circumstances. He saw the natives roasting a dreadfully ugly animal," of which he gives what seems to be "an excellent description of the iguana, the flesh of which is to this day an important article of food in tropical America. … After leaving this country of Lariab the ships kept still to the northwest for a short distance, and then followed the windings of the coast for 870 leagues. … After traversing the 870 leagues of crooked coast, the ships found themselves 'in the finest harbour in the world' [which M. Varnhagen supposed, at first, to have been in Chesapeake Bay, but afterwards reached conclusions pointing to the neighbourhood of Cape Cañaveral, on the Florida coast]. It was in June, 1498, thirteen months since they had started from Spain. … They spent seven-and-thirty days in this unrivalled harbour, preparing for the home voyage, and found the natives very hospitable. These red men courted the aid of the white strangers," in an attack which they wished to make upon a fierce race of cannibals, who inhabited certain islands some distance out to sea. The Spaniards agreed to the expedition, and sailed late in August, taking seven of the friendly Indians for guides. "After a week's voyage they fell in with the islands, some peopled, others uninhabited, evidently the Bermudas, 600 miles from Cape Hatteras as the crow flies. The Spaniards landed on an island called Iti, and had a brisk fight," resulting in the capture of more than 200 prisoners. Seven of these were given to the Indian guides, who paddled home with them. "'We also [wrote Vespucius] set sail for Spain, with 222 prisoners, slaves; and arrived in the port of Cadiz on the 15th day of October, 1498, where we were well received and sold our slaves.' … The obscurity in which this voyage has so long been enveloped is due chiefly to the fact that it was not followed up till many years had elapsed, and the reason for this neglect impresses upon us forcibly the impossibility of understanding the history of the Discovery of America unless we bear in mind all the attendant circumstances. One might at first suppose that a voyage which revealed some 4,000 miles of the coast of North America would have attracted much attention in Spain and have become altogether too famous to be soon forgotten. Such an argument, however, loses sight of the fact that these early voyagers were not trying to 'discover America.' There was nothing to astonish them in the existence of 4,000 miles of coast line on this side of the Atlantic. To their minds it was simply the coast of Asia, about which they knew nothing except from Marco Polo, and the natural effect of such a voyage as this would be simply to throw discredit upon that traveller."

_J. Fiske, The Discovery of America,

ALSO IN: _C. E. Lester and A. Foster, Life and Voyages of Americus Vespucius, part 1, chapter 7_.

_J. Winsor, Christopher Columbus,