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In 1497, newly crowned King Manuel I of Portugal sent an exploratory fleet eastwards, fulfilling his predecessor's project of finding a route to the Indies. In July 1499 news spread that the Portuguese had reached the "true indies", as a letter was dispatched by the Portuguese king to the Spanish Catholic Monarchs one day after the celebrated return of the fleet.[55] The third expedition by Columbus in 1498 was the beginning of the first successful Spanish colonization in the West Indies, on the island of Hispaniola. Despite growing doubts, Columbus refused to accept that he had not reached the Indies. During the voyage he discovered the mouth of the Orinoco River on the north coast of South America (now Venezuela) and thought that the huge quantity of fresh water coming from it could only be from a continental land mass, which he was certain was the Asian mainland. As shipping between Seville and the West Indies grew, knowledge of the Caribbean islands, Central America and the northern coast of South America grew. One of these fleets, that of Vicente Yáñez Pinzon, was blown off course by a storm and explored what is now the north east coast of Brazil in January 1500 as far south as the present-day state of Pernambuco, and his fleet was the first to enter the Amazon River estuary which he named Río Santa María de la Mar Dulce (Saint Mary's River of the Sweet Sea).[56] However, the land was too far east for the Spanish to claim under the Treaty of Tordesillas, but the discovery created Spanish interest, with a second voyage by Pinzon in 1508 and a voyage in 1515–16 by a navigator of the 1508 expedition, Juan Díaz de Solís. The 1515–16 expedition was spurred on by reports of Portuguese exploration of the region (see below). It ended when de Solís and some of his crew disappeared when exploring a River Plate river in a boat, but what it found re-ignited Spanish interest, and colonization began in 1531. Only slightly less than three months after Pinzon's voyage in 1500, the second Portuguese India Armada, captained by Pedro Álvares Cabral, encountered the Brazilian coast as it swung westward in the Atlantic while performing a large "volta do mar" to avoid becalming in the Gulf of Guinea. On 21 April 1500 a mountain was seen and was named Monte Pascoal, and on the 22 April Cabral landed on the coast. On the 25 April the entire fleet sailed into the harbor they named Porto Seguro (Port Secure). Cabral perceived that the new land lay east of the line of Tordesillas and at once sent an envoy to Portugal, with the discovery in a letter. Believing the land to be an island, he named it Ilha de Vera Cruz (Island of the True Cross).[57] Some historians have suggested that the Portuguese may have encountered the South American bulge earlier while sailing the "volta do mar", hence the insistence of John II in moving the line west of Tordesillas—so his landing in Brazil may not have been an accident; although John's motivation may have simply been to increase the chance of claiming new lands in the Atlantic.[58] At the invitation of king Manuel I of Portugal, Amerigo Vespucci [59]—a Florentine who had been working for a branch of the Medici Bank in Seville since 1491, fitting oceanic expeditions and travelling twice to The Guianas with Juan de la Cosa in the service of Spain[60]—participated as observer in these exploratory voyages to the east coast of South America. The expeditions became widely known in Europe after two accounts attributed to him, published between 1502 and 1504, suggested that the newly discovered lands were not the Indies but a "New World",[61] the Mundus novus, Latin title of a contemporary document based on Vespucci letters to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, which had become widely popular in Europe.[62] It was soon understood that Columbus had not reached Asia but had found a new continent, the Americas. America was named in 1507 by cartographers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann, probably after Amerigo Vespucci. In 1501–1502, the Portuguese expedition of Gonçalo Coelho sailed south along the coast of South America to the bay of present day Rio de Janeiro. If Amerigo Vespucci`s account is to be believed, the expedition reached the latitude "South Pole elevation 52º [S]" in the cold latitudes of Patagonia before turning back. This seems doubtful, since only one large part of the Brazilian coast appears to have been properly mapped (to the south of present-day Cananéia) at 25°S, so this may represent the southernmost extent of Their voyages.[63] In 1513–1514, Portuguese captains João de Lisboa and Estevão de Fróis reached the River Plate estuary and possibly went as far south as the Gulf of San Matias at 42ºS, according to the manuscript Newen Zeytung auss Pressilandt in the Fugger archives of the time. The Flemish financier Christopher de Haro of the expedition along with D. Nuno Manuel, bears witness to the trip to the cape which they called of "Santa Maria" (still bearing this name) and to the great Gulf of Santa Maria (the first name given by the navigators to the Plate estuary), penetrating 300 km (186 mi) inside the estuary and the river. Also gives the first news of the legendary White King to the interior and to the west, the Inca emperor - including the ax of silver (Rio do machado de prata); news and gift obtained from the Charrúa Indians and offered to King Manuel by the navigators.[64] Christopher of Haro, who would serve the Spanish Crown after 1516, believed that Lisboa and Frois had discovered a major route in the southern New World to the west or a strait to Asia. In 1519, an expedition sent by the Spanish Crown to find a way to Asia was led by the experienced Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan. The fleet explored the rivers and bays as it charted the South American coast until it found a way to the Pacific Ocean through the Strait of Magellan. In 1524–1525, Aleixo Garcia, a Portuguese conquistador, led a Spanish expedition that recruited Guaraní Indians. Garcia and his men explored the territories of present-day southern Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia, using the native trail network, the Peabiru. They were the first Europeans to cross the Chaco and reach the outer territories of the Inca Empire on the hills of the Andes, near Sucre.[65] |
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