Pineda explorer biography
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Alonso Alvarez dem Pineda.
Spanish explorer and mapmaker Captain Alonso Alvarez dem Pineda and his crew were probably the first Europeans in Texas, claiming it for Spain. Little is known of Pineda’s early life, but in 1517, he sailed for the Spanish Governor of Jamaica, Francisco de Garay. The Spanish thought there must be a sea lane from the Gulf of Mexico to Asia. In 1517 and 1519, Pineda led several expeditions to map the western coastlines of the Gulf of Mexico, from the Yucatan Peninsula to the Panuco River, just north of Veracruz, Mexico.
On June 2, 1519, Alvarez dem Pineda entered a large bay with a sizable Native American settlement on one shore. He sailed upriver for 18 miles and observed as many as 40 villages on the banks of the large, deep river he named “Espíritu Santo.” It has been long assumed that he was the first europeisk to report on the mouth of the Mississippi River. Pineda continued his journey westward, and one of the regions he explored and
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Texas Originals
Alonso Álvarez de Pineda
1494–1520
Spanish explorer Alonso Álvarez de Pineda was the first European to set eyes on the land that would become Texas. His 1519 expedition mapped the American Gulf Coast, creating the very first document of Texas history.
Scholars know little of Álvarez’s background. He first appears in the record amid the intrigues of the Spanish conquest of North America. In 1519, as fellow conquistador Hernán Cortés began his fateful campaign against the Aztecs, Álvarez set sail from Jamaica, journeying north to Florida and then following the Gulf Coast west and south all the way to Veracruz.
Álvarez did not find what he sought—a passage to the Pacific. He did, however, prove to Spain that Florida and the Yucatan belonged to the same continent. He also mapped the Gulf Coast, making him the first European to document the mouth of the Mississippi River and the land that became Texas.
At the end of his journey, Álvarez settled in Mexico on the Pá
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Alonso Alvarez de Piñeda
1494-1519
Spanish Navigator
According to meager historical references, Captain Alonso Alvarez de Piñeda's life was short but exceedingly eventful and productive. The only actual mention of his date of birth appears in a biography of his immediate superior, Francisco de Garay. It states that Piñeda was born in Spain in 1494 in the village of Centernera.
His adventures began when Garay (who was then governor of Jamaica in the Caribbean) commissioned Alvarez de Piñeda to command a flotilla of four vessels with the express purpose of finding the imagined Southwest Passage water route to the Orient and the subsequent treasures of China and other Asian civilizations. It was a huge responsibility for a captain who was only 25 years of age.
Alvarez de Piñeda took his assignment seriously. He spent the next nine months sailing along the coast of present-day western Florida and all around the gulf to Vera Cruz, Mexico. The remarkable talent of this young e