Before First Contact - Background History, Part four

The Americas

While Columbus was doing his thing, more people began to sail west, thinking they were headed to Asia. An Italian cartographer and explorer named Amerigo Vespucci, on his third voyage to what many then believed was Asia, wrote in 1502 that the Asian land mass on maps was very different from what he had just visited, meaning that the place may not be Asia after all, but a whole new continent. This became big news back in Spain, where in 1504, inspired by tales of treasures, women, and empire in what people were beginning to call the New World, a man named Hernán Cortés left his hometown in Spain and sailed to Hispaniola, looking for adventure, we'll get into him in he next parts. Columbus would die on May 20, 1506, still believing he had reached Asia.

Columbus' map, showing the outline of Africa and Europe as well as the Celestial Spheres. - Wikipedia

By 1507, new maps had been updated to include what they believed the new continents might  look like. In honor of Vespucci's light bulb moment, a German cartographer named Martin Waldseemuller in his updated world map book gave the continent the name of "America", believing it was Vespucci who had “discovered” it, not Columbus. Though the maps were still inaccurate at this time, it allowed future explorers a guide in which to travel.

First real world map by Martin Waldseemuller - http://bookhaven.stanford.edu

A closeup of the lower left hand side of the map - Wikipedia

Though it was big news, the "discovery" of the Americas still wasn't good news. This meant the western path to Asia was blocked by these large landmasses stretching from north to south. to make it worse, they had no idea how large the continents were. At first, attempts were made to sail around the southern tip of the continents, but it was shown that the voyage would be way too long to be practicable. Explorers then decided to see if they could find a passage through it, since there was a skinny sliver of land in the middle. This led to the belief that somewhere on one of the continents was a water route that led straight from the Atlantic, to Asia.

With the collision of the cultures, came the first truly global trade, which included an exchange of crops, animals, people, and diseases. The old world, which represents Afro-Eurasia, had never experienced the marvels of corn, potatoes, tomatoes, pumpkins, turkeys, toucans, lamas, coffee beans, cocoa beans, or syphilis before the Columbus expedition, while the new world, representing America, had never heard of oranges, horses, cattle, pigs, chickens, cats, smallpox, measles, the bubonic plague or Christianity. The biodiversity of both worlds changed so much after Columbus, that the diet and populations of humanity would never be the same again. Also so many Natives would later die of diseases entire cities were abandoned and in time, forests regrew over them. With more jungle and forests in South America, CO2 levels dropped worldwide. This makes the year 1492CE a candidate for the beginning of a whole new epoch called the Anthropocene.

Queen Califia

From Wikipedia

In around 1510, a Spanish writer, man named Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo wrote a romance novel named "Las sergas de Esplandián" or "The Exploits of Esplandian". It was the fifth book in a series of popular books called “Amadis of Gaul”, and is sort of a take on the Crusades. This specific story seems to be a side story in the series. The story featured a large but beautiful black woman named Califia, a take on the Arabic word “khalifa” meaning leader, who ruled over a kingdom of cave dwelling amazon women from a mythical island that went by the name of "California". The Island was situated east of the Java Sea (the sea Columbus had actually been looking for) and was full of steep cliffs, rocky shores and creatures called griffins. These griffins ate only one thing: Men. It was fabled that gold was the only metal found there, and that it was used to make everything from jewelry to harnesses. Califia and her kingdom of amazon women were great warriors, but knew nothing of Christianity, or Islam, or about any other religion of the outside world: They were pagans. In order to stay wealthy and to fulfill her zeal for exploration, Califia had many fleets of ships built and would set up expeditions to plunder surrounding areas. Any man who stood in their way, they fed to the griffins.

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In one of her expeditions, she ends up in Constantinople and meets a Muslim warrior, named Radiaro. Califia agreed to help the Radiaro and the Muslims take Constantinople from the Christians without really knowing which side stood for what. Confident of her skills either way, she tells him to sit back and let her do her work.

Queen Califia is depicted as the woman in the center of a building facade in Balboa Park.

During the siege, she releases the griffins, but rather than eat or kill all of the Christian men, they simply ate any man, regardless of religion. After realizing that many Muslims were also being killed, Califia pulled back her griffins and engaged the enemy hand to hand. While fighting, she hears of a very handsome man -- I guess all of the fighting must have bored her. She then meets the Christian Esplandian and falls in love with him at first sight. Love stricken, she loses the will to fight, and gives up her war, admitting that her pagan faith was inadequate to fight against the Christian faith and pledges allegiance to it. She and her people were then baptized as Christians and I would guess... married off? She married one of Esplandian’s relatives, since he was already set to marry another woman. Califia seemed to have no issue with being passed down, and returned with her new husband to the island of California to rule it as a Christian nation, the end.

It was a side story to the main plot of the novels, but it became a very popular book. It wasn’t long before people began to believe that such an island full of women and gold may indeed exist, and some soon began to search for this mysterious island of California... or maybe not. Maybe the way the name from this novel became attached to the land was through a mark of sarcasm... I'll fill you in on it later...

Vasco Núñez de Balboa

From Wikipedia

On Columbus' second voyage, he brought Rodrigo de Bastidas with him. When Bastidas returned to Spain, he petitioned the Crown for his own voyage and in 1499, permission was granted. In his voyage, he traveled to South America and is sometimes credited as the "discoverer" of a thin strip of land that connected the Americas, later known as the Isthmus of Panama, despite the fact that Columbus had landed there during his fourth voyage... and despite the native people. During that voyage however Bastidas' leaky ships forced them to trade their way back to Hispaniola. He brought the former captain of the Santa Maria, Juan de la Cosa, and a Spanish man named  Vasco Núñez de Balboa with him. Balboa traveled up and down the American coast for a few years gaining experience and knowledge of the area during this time.

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Meanwhile, Vasco de Gama was the first explorer to ACTUALLY reach India from the ocean. He also left a for a second voyage to start a factory in Calicut. Pedro Alvarez Cabral reached modern day Brazil in South America from Portugal before crossing back over the Atlantic, around South Africa, and landing in India. Once they had set a foothold into India, they sent Francisco de Almeida in 1505 to take control of the Spice trade in India. Almeida then became its Viceroy.

Back in Hispaniola, Balboa had returned from his voyages rich but had soon gone into debt. He decided to stow away on a ship, hiding in a barrel, to get away from his debtors... because back then, it really was that easy to get away from creditors! The ship soon departed, headed for the South American mainland.  Balboa was eventually discovered, but since he knew a lot about the area, they decided to put him to use. A colony called "San Sebastian" was established, but was destroyed by natives in the region who probably remembered that one time when Columbus came and set up a post where he weren't supposed to and kidnapped their King. Balboa suggested a new site for a camp and so they moved to the site and fought the natives there, enriching themselves in the process, and in 1510, Santa Maria la Antigua del Darién was established by Balboa, and was the first permanent Spanish colony in the American mainland.

Balboa Park, named after Vasco Núñez de Balboa

In 1511, it was decided that the island of Cuba would be invaded from Hispaniola. A man named Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar was sent to keep order and become the Island's governor. To prepare, he asked his buddy Pánfilo de Narváez for thirty crossbowmen. Narvaez recruited a man named Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo as an assistant, but his skills on the crossbow impressed Narvaez, who would bring him on a future voyage.

Meanwhile in 1513, while exploring more of the Caribbean Sea, Ponce de Leon "discovered" what he believed was an island. After seeing its bright, flowery landscape, he named it, “La Florida”. The same year Florida was being “discovered”, Vasco Núñez de Balboa, now a well liked and successful governor, successfully crossed over the mountains in the isthmus of Central America, the same mountains Columbus declined to cross on his fourth voyage, becoming the first European to behold a new ocean from there, which he called, “Mar del Sur”, or the South Sea, later the Pacific Ocean. They soon founded a city on the west coast of the Isthmus named Nuestra Señora de la Asunción de Panamá, or Our Lady of the Assumption of Panama. The word Panama does not mean PAN-AMericA, but is believed to be named after a Native American fishing village. In this village, the word "panama" means "many fish".

The next events set up the scene for the next part of this blog. Finding riches in the Darién and in Panama, Balboa sent ships from Panama full of the Crown's share of the treasures to Hispaniola in the year 1511. Once again, a hurricane caused the ships to wreck off the coast of Jamaica. 15 men survived making it to the Yucatán Peninsula on life boats where they were captured by the Maya. All but two died in the hands of the Maya:  Geronimo de Agular, and Gonzalo Gurrero. Agular will matter in the next blog.

After Balboa confirmed the Isthmus to be narrow enough to pass to the South Sea, it became a major crossroad for Spain's expanding empire. Ships would anchor off the east, travel from the Darién to Panama by land, and from there, sail either up and down the coast, or across the ocean. For a while, the route was known as "Camino de Cruces", or "Road of the Crosses", because of the grave sites one would pass as they walked through the dangerous land. By 1538, the isthmus and old city would become part of the Viceroyalty of Peru.

Stay Tuned for Background History Part five, coming November 15, 2015

Sources:

The Origin of the name America:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americas#Etymology_and_naming

The Origin of the name California:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_California

The Story of Calafia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calafia

Balboa:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasco_N%C3%BA%C3%B1ez_de_Balboa