Adventurers flock to New World

Cortés, Pizarro join Spaniards seeking their fortunes in colonies

By Miguel Encinias
For the Journal
After Spain had settled in Hispaniola -- now the Dominican Republic and Haiti -- all kinds of adventurers and courtiers flocked to the new colonies. Among them was Hernán Cortés, son of a locally prominent but poor hidalgo from the town of Medellin, Spain, in Extremadura near the Portuguese border.
He and his cousin, Francisco Pizarro, who lived in Trujillo just a few kilometers away, soon answered the siren call of the New World.
Cortés arrived in Hispaniola in 1504, and as the son of a minor nobleman was given land and some natives to work it. In 1511, he participated in the settlement of Cuba and soon became one of its wealthiest landowners.
In 1517, sailing out of Hispaniola, Hernandez de Cordoba discovered the magnificent Maya world in the Yucatán peninsula. The gold ornaments he brought back and his descriptions of their city centers excited the Spaniards.
Gov. Diego de Velazquez sent a larger expedition under Juan de Grijalva to explore more thoroughly. They touched land at Cozumel, then continued westward inadvertently entering into Meshica or Aztec territory in the vicinity of modern Vera Cruz. The natives invited the Spaniards to land and to join in a sumptuous meal. Grijalva gave them glass beads, and they reciprocated with an impressive amount of gold.
Lacking imagination and perhaps courage, he returned to Cuba instead of penetrating inland.
Cortés, through intrigue and aggressiveness, convinced the governor to give him command of the next expedition.
The governor, who did not fully trust Cortés, withdrew his appointment, but Cortés left in secrecy for another port in Cuba and on to modern Havana, where he set sail on Feb. 10, 1519, for the mainland with 653 men and 16 horses on 11 ships.
The fleet made first landfall at the island of Cozumel, where two castaways from a previous expedition made their appearance. One of them refused to leave his wife and family, but the other, named Aguilar, joined the Spaniards as a soldier and interpreter.
Sailing on to the west, at Tabasco, they won a brief skirmish with some Mayas, who came back the next day offering gifts that included an aristocratic Meshican lady who had been sold to the Mayas when her mother remarried after the death of her first husband.
Marina, as the Spaniards called her, with her two languages and her high intelligence, would prove very valuable later on.