Francisco Hernández

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Francisco Hernández de Córdoba (died 1517) was a Spanish conquistador, known to history mainly for the ill-fated expedition he led in 1517, in the course of which the Yucatán Peninsula was discovered by Europeans for the first time. Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, the governor of Cuba, asked a permission to allow him to make an expedition. Francisco Hernández de Córdoba left the harbour of Santiago de Cuba on February 8, 1517, to explore the shores of South Mexico with three ships. He was the captain of the ships. The main pilot was Anton de Alaminos, the other pilots were Juan Álvarez and Camacho de Triana. During his journey many of his men were killed. He himself was injured and died a few days later after his return to Cuba. Bernal Díaz del Castillo was a member of the expedition and wrote about his journey.

This was also Europeans' first encounter with an advanced culture in the Americas, with solidly built buildings and social organization of a complexity comparable to those of the Old World; they also had reason to expect that this new land would have gold. All of this encouraged two further expeditions, the first in 1518 under the command of Juan de Grijalva, and the second in 1519 under the command of Hernán Cortés, which led to the Spanish exploration, military invasion, and ultimately settlement and colonization known as the Conquest of Mexico. Hernández did not live to se the continuation of his work: he died in 1517, the year of his expedition, as the result of the injuries and the extreme thirst suffered during the voyage, and disappointed in the knowledge that Diego Velázquez had given preference to Grijalva as the captain of the next expedition to Yucatán.

This article centers on the expedition that led to the discovery of Yucatán, which is really all we have of a biography of Hernández de Córdoba. All we know of his earlier life is that he was a Spaniard residing in Cuba in 1517, by which we can be certain that he had participated in its conquest, and that he was the wealthy owner there (an hacendado) of a landed estate including a native town, as well as associates with sufficient economic resources to finance the expedition that gave him at the same time immortality and death.