The oldest chronicles of the Amazon, by Florentine navigator Amerigo Vespucci
For some historians, the Genoese Christopher Columbus was nothing more than a cunning adventurer capable of convincing the kings of Spain to finance his enterprises in the name of Faith in Christ, when in reality he was motivated by strong desires for wealth and power. For many, Columbus was just a miserable slave trader who began the genocide of indigenous people: a restless and rootless wanderer, devoid of affection for his loved ones, interested only in leaving his descendants a name, titles and an estate. He had an indefinite name, which he changed at his whim and deformed according to the country where he lived, until he ended up turning it into an indecipherable and cabalistic signature. He was incapable of speaking a language correctly; he expressed himself by mixing rudimentary Spanish with Catalan, Genoese and Portuguese words. In any case, The Admiral of the Ocean Sea had the merit of having been the first to open the new oceanic route, although he did not fully understand the relevance of his discoveries.
In conclusion, he was never aware of the importance of his own findings; He always allowed himself to be guided by superstitions and biblical beliefs, and with this he demonstrated that he was a man of the Middle Ages, or perhaps, the last man of the Middle Ages.
The Florentine Americo Vespucci, on the other hand, was not obsessed with the search for a route to the Indies, nor was he possessed by the excessive ambition of finding gold and riches, much less by the idea of being the bearer of the faith or the disseminator of the Christian religion, attributing the right to evangelize the natives. His mind was free. During his travels he acquired precious information that, added to his geographical knowledge, convinced him that he was facing a new continent. For all the above reasons and because of his open-mindedness, Amerigo Vespucci can be considered the first man of the modern era.
During his first voyage (May 1497-October 1498), the Tuscan navigator described the current Venezuelan coasts and the Guajira peninsula, which today is part of Colombia. He entered a lagoon and noticed some cabins on the shore. The following is the description he made, extracted from the Letter of Americo Vespucci about the islands newly found in four of his voyages (1504):
And continuing from there, always along the coast, with various and diverse navigation routes, and dealing throughout this time with many and different peoples of those lands, after a few days we arrived at a certain port in which God wanted to free us from great dangers. We entered a bay and discovered a village that looked like a city, placed on the waters like Venice, in which there were twenty large houses, not very distant from each other, built and supported on thick sticks. In front of the entrance to these houses there were drawbridges, through which one passed from one to another, as if they were all united.
The immense territory that was inside this lagoon was called “Venice”, a name that later became “Venezuela”.
At the end of 1498, when the Florentine returned to Seville, the city where he had lived for 7 years, he immediately thought about participating in another expedition. The desire to know the world, to check if the new lands discovered were part of Asia or were really a new continent, did not leave him alone.
Vespucci was a man of science and, before jumping to conclusions, he wanted to consider again the observations he made during the first voyage. He had described the natives, who according to him, were not like the Asians, outlined by Marco Polo in the book Million, and had perceived a fauna and flora quite different from that described by the famous Venetian. Perhaps the lands discovered were a New World, different from Asia, but he was still not sure of this.
When he learned that the Castilian Alonso de Ojeda was about to organize a trip to the Indies (that is what the lands discovered by Christopher Columbus were called at that time), and above all, that the Cantabrian Juan de la Cosa would be the second commander of the company, became interested in participating in the expedition.
As in that period Americo Vespucci was an agent of the Medici in the city of Seville and as he had contacts with preeminent people such as Juanoto Berardi, it is possible that the influential Florentine community was responsible for assembling at least two of the three ships.
They set sail from the port of Santa Catalina in Cádiz, on May 18, 1499. After stopping at the Canary Islands, they continued in a southeasterly direction, not towards the Antilles, but further south, always towards the mainland.
Ojeda was convinced that the fabulous kingdom of Cathay was much further south than Columbus thought, and he believed that he would manage to find it before the Genoese admiral did. In his conversations, loaded with an excessive desire for power and blind greed, he expressed his intention to take over without any difficulty those Asian kingdoms in which Columbus had failed.
Juan de la Cosa and Américo Vespucio listened to him perplexed, since their vision of the world, more modern and knowledgeable about geography, made them aware of the real difficulties of arriving in the Indies.
After twenty-four days at sea, they sighted land and arrived on the coast of Guiana, near the Damerara River. They then headed north, towards the Gulf of Paria, where they landed to visit some indigenous villages. Here, Vespucio realized who Ojeda really was: the Spaniard wanted to take over all the pieces of gold and wealth that the indigenous people possessed at the cost of anything, including using force to achieve his goal. Neither the Cantabrian nor the Florentine sympathized with this shameless and greedy behavior, and they let him know so.
It is possible that the Florentine and the Cantabrian spoke about geography and exchanged points of view and real information about the true nature of that unknown mainland.
At that moment Vespucio decided to abandon Ojeda's ship and continue on his side with the exploration of the coasts located to the southeast. There are many interpretations regarding this decision. Some speak of disagreements with Alonso de Ojeda, while others maintain that Vespucci, precisely because he already knew the coast to the west of the Gulf of Paria, since he had visited it on his first trip, decided to explore the coasts to the east, which were unknown to him. he. On his journey to the southeast, along present-day Guiana and Brazil, Vespucci was the first European to discover the estuary of the Amazon River. He was impressed by its brown color, which can be seen going into the open sea for dozens of kilometers.
In this passage from the Letters of Him, the Florentine describes the discovery of two large rivers that could be the two main mouths of the Amazon River:
I believe that these two rivers are the cause of fresh water in the sea. We agreed to enter one of them and navigate through it until we found the opportunity to visit those lands and towns; Having prepared our boats with their provisions and twenty well-armed men, we entered the river and rowed for two days, overcoming the current for around eighteen leagues, sighting many lands. Navigating along the river, we saw very certain signs that the interior of these was inhabited. Therefore, we decided to return to our caravels, which we had left in a not very safe place and so we did.
Then, it continued south, reaching Cape San Agustín. During the return navigation, heading northwest, Vespucci perceived an inlet, a natural harbor, at the entrance to which there was an island. According to some researchers, Vespucio was located along the bay where San Luis de Maranhão is currently located. After being surrounded by canoes of aggressive natives, there was a skirmish and two natives were taken prisoner. Afterwards, the Europeans docked and disembarked on a beach where there were numerous natives. Below is the Florentine's story, extracted from his Letters:
We then released one of those we had captured and, giving him many signs of friendship and also many bells, bells and mirrors, we expressed our desire that the fugitives would abandon their fear, since we wanted to be their friends; And in fact, going to look for them, he diligently fulfilled our order, bringing all those people with him from the jungles, who were about four hundred men and many women. All of them came without weapons to where we were with our ships, and mutual friendship was established, we returned to them the other captive that we had in our possession and the canoe that we had seized and that was found where the ships were, in the power of our companions. This canoe was made from a single tree trunk and manufactured with great perfection: it was 26 paces long and two fathoms wide. After they recovered it and placed it in a safe place in the river, everyone suddenly fled, not wanting to deal with us again, a barbaric action that made their bad faith and condition known to us. Among them we only saw a few pieces of gold that they had hanging from their ears.
Subsequently, the ship led by Américo Vespucio headed north, sailing for approximately 80 leagues (400 kilometers), and reached some inlets, which probably correspond to the coasts located before the Pará, one of the main mouths of the Amazon River. Below is the story taken directly from the Florentine's letters:
Leaving, therefore, that beach and sailing along the coast for about 80 leagues, we found a safe cove for ships, and entering it, we met a wonderful number of people, with whom we made friends, and then we went to several of their towns, where they received us with complete confidence and courtesy. We bought five hundred pearls from them for a single bell, with a little gold that we gave them as a gift. In this country they drink wine squeezed from fruits and seeds, like citron or white beer and ink. But the best is the one made from myrrh apples, of which and many other excellent fruits, as tasty as they were healthy, we ate in abundance because they arrived at the opportune season. Many of the things necessary for life abound on this island and the people who live there are good-natured and conversational, and more peaceful than any we had encountered until then. We stayed in that port for seventeen days with great pleasure, many people coming daily to us who marveled at seeing our faces and whiteness, our weapons and clothing and the greatness of our ships. They told us that to the west there was a nation that was their enemy, which had an infinite amount of pearls; and that what they had had been taken away from them in the wars they had had. They also instructed us about how pearls are born; and, in fact, we learned that what they told us was true...
From these testimonies it is deduced that European sailors sometimes had contact with warlike and violent indigenous people, perhaps of Caribbean origin; other times (approaching the estuary of the Amazon River), they met friendly and curious ethnic groups (probably Arawak).
Next, Vespucci and his men, continuing towards the northwest, faced an aggressive and violent people who resisted his landing. They decided to continue towards the northwest. After sailing about 15 leagues, they sighted a huge island and decided to dock to find out if it was inhabited. For some historians and cartographers, it is the island of Marajó, the large fluvial-marine island that is located right in the center of the immense estuary of the Amazon River.
Here again is the Florentine's story:
Approaching it, then, with all speed, we found there certain people who were the most bestial and ignorant, but at the same time the most benign and peaceful of all, whose rites and customs I am going to relate: in their faces and body gestures they are very brutal. They all had their mouths full of a certain green grass that they chewed on, almost in the same way as animals, so that they could barely articulate a word. They also all had hanging from their necks two cured squashes, one filled with grass that they had in their mouths and the other with a certain whitish flour similar to ground plaster, and with a certain stick or small stick that they moistened and chewed in their mouths and put many times in the flour gourd, they took out enough to sprinkle on both sides that herb that they have in it; an operation that they repeated very frequently and very slowly... In these people we experienced as much familiarity and frankness as if they had negotiated many times before and had old friendships with us. Walking with them along the same beach in good conversation and we wishing to drink fresh water, they intimated to us by signs that they absolutely lacked such waters, and they willingly offered us the grass and flour that they carried in their mouths, from which we understood that they used of them to quench thirst because there is no water in that country... They are great fishermen and have an abundance of fish. They gave us many turtles and various other kinds of good fishing.
Analyzing this story, it is inferred that the natives of Marajó Island (perhaps the descendants of the ancient Marajoara people ?), used coca a lot, which they mixed with a powder rich in calcium, just as the Kogui of the island do today. Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta or the Ashaninka of Ucayali.
Vespucci then returned north, recognizing the mouth of the Orinoco, stopping at Trinidad and finally arriving at Hispaniola.
Alonso de Ojeda and Juan de la Cosa had toured the northern coast of present-day Venezuela, passing through the mouth of the Orinoco, the Gulf of Paria, the island of Trinidad and the island of the Giants, so called because they had observed tall indigenous people there. . Perhaps it corresponds to today's Curaçao. Both then headed to Cabo de la Vela, then continuing towards Hispaniola.
Arriving on this island with little gold and some rebellious and dangerous slaves, the island's colonists, who were all followers of Columbus, welcomed them with hostility for having traveled without the Genoese's approval. The return trip was made in June 1500.
These chronicles are of enormous importance, not only because they prove that Americo Vespucci was the first European to visit the estuary of the largest river on the planet some months before the official “discovery,” attributed erroneously to Vicente Yánez de Pinzón, but above all for his valuable descriptions, which tell about hitherto totally unknown peoples, probably of Caribbean or Arawak ethnic groups.
The Tuscan navigator, who made two other voyages in the New World, exploring the southern coasts of present-day Brazil and Argentina until almost reaching the famous strait that was discovered by Magellan 18 years later, was the first man who realized he had traveled along a new continent, different from Asia, as Christopher Columbus believed until the end of his days.
Below is a passage from the letter Mundus Novus where Vespucci, acknowledging having described a new continent, writes:
I arrived at the land of the Antipodes, and I recognized that I was facing a quarter of the Earth. I discovered the continent inhabited by a multitude of peoples and animals, more than our Europe, Asia or Africa itself.
The German cosmographer Martin Waldseemuller was the first to divulge the news of Vespucci in his Cosmographie Introductio, published in Lorraine in 1507.
After the publication of this work, the new discovered lands began to be called Americus, or America, in honor of the observations made by Vespucci.
At first people spoke of America only to refer to the territories south of the isthmus of Panama, but over time this term was also used for those territories located north of the isthmus.
In 1508, Américo Vespucio was appointed Chief Pilot of Castile by King Ferdinand of Aragon. This title recognized Vespucci as the most expert navigator in the kingdom of Spain, and therefore he was assigned the task of selecting and instructing future pilots and cartographers, teaching them the use of the astrolabe and knowledge of the winds.
YURI LEVERATTO
