Juan Ponce de León
Juan Ponce de León was a Spanish explorer and conquistador known for leading the first official European expedition to Puerto Rico in 1508 and Florida in 1513. He was born in Santervás de Campos, Valladolid, Spain, in 1474. Though little is known about his family, he was of noble birth and served in the Spanish military from a young age. He first came to the Americas as a "gentleman volunteer" with Christopher Columbus's second expedition in 1493.
By the early 1500s, Ponce de León was a top military official in the colonial government of Hispaniola, where he helped crush a rebellion of the native Taíno people. He was authorized to explore the neighbouring island of Puerto Rico in 1508 and to take office as the first Governor of Puerto Rico by appointment of the Spanish crown in 1509. While Ponce de León grew quite wealthy from his plantations and mines, he faced an ongoing legal conflict with Diego Colón, the late Christopher Columbus's son, over the right to govern Puerto Rico. After a long court battle, Colón replaced Ponce de León as governor in 1511. Ponce de León decided to follow the advice of the sympathetic King Ferdinand and explore more of the Caribbean Sea.
In 1513, Ponce de León led the first known European expedition to La Florida, which he named during his first voyage to the area. He landed somewhere along Florida's east coast, then charted the Atlantic coast down to the Florida Keys and north along the Gulf coast. Though in popular culture he was supposedly searching for the Fountain of Youth, there is no contemporary evidence to support the story, which most modern historians consider a myth.
Ponce de León returned to Spain in 1514 and was knighted by King Ferdinand, who also reinstated him as the governor of Puerto Rico and authorized him to settle Florida. He returned to the Caribbean in 1515, but plans to organize an expedition to Florida were delayed by the death of King Ferdinand in 1516, after which Ponce de León again travelled to Spain to defend his grants and titles. He did not return to Puerto Rico for two years.
In March 1521, Ponce de León finally returned to Southwest Florida with the first large-scale attempt to establish a Spanish colony in what is now the continental United States. However, the native Calusa people fiercely resisted the incursion, and Ponce de Léon was seriously wounded in a skirmish. The colonization attempt was abandoned, and he died from his wounds soon after returning to Cuba in early July. He was interred in Puerto Rico; his tomb is located inside the Cathedral of San Juan Bautista in San Juan.
Biography
Spain
Juan Ponce de León was born in the village of Santervás de Campos in the northern part of what is now the Spanish province of Valladolid. Although early historians placed his birth in 1460, and this date has been used traditionally, more recent evidence shows he was likely born in 1474. The surname Ponce de León dates from the 13th century. The Ponce de León lineage began with Ponce Vélaz de Cabrera, descendant of count Bermudo Núñez, and Sancha Ponce de Cabrera, daughter of Ponce Giraldo de Cabrera.Before October 1235, a son of Ponce Vela de Cabrera and his wife Teresa Rodríguez Girón named Pedro Ponce de Cabrera married Aldonza Alfonso, an illegitimate daughter of King Alfonso IX of León. The descendants of this marriage added the "de León" to their patronymic and were known thereafter by the name Ponce de León.
Although the identity of Juan Ponce de León's parents is still a matter of conjecture, according to Fuson and Arnade, citing Puerto Rican historian Aurelio Tió, Pedro Ponce de León and Leonor de Figueroa were most likely the parents of Juan Ponce de León. Thus, Ponce appears to have been a member of a distinguished and influential noble family.
His relatives included Rodrigo Ponce de León, Duke of Cádiz, a celebrated figure in the Moorish wars, and Juan Ponce de León's first cousin. Aurelio Tió, in his Nuevas fuentes para la historia de Puerto Rico, made a vigorous case for Juan Ponce's aristocratic heritage, determining that Juan Ponce's father was Pedro Ponce de León, the Fourth Lord of Villagarcía, and his mother was Leonor de Figueroa, the daughter of Lorenzo Suárez de Figueroa, Lord of Salvaleón, and María Manuel; consequently Juan Ponce's paternal grandmother, Teresa de Guzmán, was La Señora de la Casa Toral, making Juan Ponce a Ponce de León on both sides of his family.
Through this grandmother, Ponce de León was related to another notable family, the Núñez de Guzmáns; a contemporary chronicler, Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, says that as a young man he served as a page and then as a squire to Pedro Núñez de Guzmán, Knight Commander of the Order of Calatrava. Devereux says Ponce de León probably joined the Spanish campaigns against the Muslims in the Granada War in which the Catholic Monarchs finally conquered in 1492 the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada, the last Muslim polity surviving in the Iberian peninsula. Puerto Rican historian Vicente Murga Sanz states that as the squire of Pedro Núñez de Guzmán, it is possible that Juan Ponce de León fought on the side of Rodrigo Ponce de León at the Battle of Granada. Fernandez de Oviedo writes that when Juan Ponce de León arrived in the Americas he was a military man who had gained his experience in the Granada War, but Arnade cautions, "Without proof the biographers of the conquistador state that he accompanied Pedro Núñez de Guzmán in the war against the Moors during the Granada campaign".
Arrival in the New World
In September 1493, some 1,200 sailors, colonists, and soldiers joined Christopher Columbus for his second voyage to the New World. Ponce de León, nineteen years old, was able to get passage in this expedition, with Núñez de Guzmán's help, as one of 200 "gentleman volunteers".The fleet reached the Caribbean in November 1493. They visited several islands before arriving at their primary destination in Hispaniola, and anchored on the coast of a large island the native people called Borikén, "the land of the brave lord", which would eventually become known as Puerto Rico. This was Ponce de León's first glimpse of the place that would play a major role in his future. Historians are divided on what he did during the next several years, but it is possible that he returned to Spain at some point and made his way back to Hispaniola with Nicolás de Ovando.
Hispaniola
In 1502 the newly appointed governor, Nicolás de Ovando, arrived in Hispaniola, with the Spanish Crown expecting him to bring order to a colony in disarray, a task in which he succeeded. Ovando interpreted his instructions as authorizing subjugation of the native Taínos, and consequently authorized the Jaragua massacre in November 1503. In 1504, when Taínos overran a small Spanish garrison in Higüey on the island's eastern side, Ovando assigned Ponce de León to crush the rebellion.Ponce de León was actively involved in the Higüey massacre, about which friar Bartolomé de las Casas attempted to notify Spanish authorities. Ovando rewarded his victorious commander by appointing him frontier governor of the newly conquered province, then named Higüey also. Ponce de León received a substantial land grant with an encomienda of sufficient Indian labour to farm his new estate.
Ponce de León prospered in this new role. He found a ready market for his farm produce and livestock at nearby Boca de Yuma, where Spanish ships stocked supplies before the long voyage back to Spain. In 1505, Ovando authorized Ponce de León to establish a new town in Higüey, which he named Salvaleón. In 1508, King Ferdinand authorized Ponce de León to conquer the remaining Taínos and exploit them by forcing them to mine gold.
Around this time, Ponce de León married Leonora, an innkeeper's daughter. They had three daughters, Juana, Isabel and María, and one son, Luis. The large stone house Ponce de León ordered built for his growing family still stands today near the city of San Rafael del Yuma; he named it Salvaleón after his grandmother's estate in Castile.
Puerto Rico
As provincial governor, Ponce de León heard stories from Island Caribs who had been captured when they raided Spanish colonies. They told him of gold on the neighbouring island of San Juan, now Puerto Rico, which he had first seen as a member of Christopher Columbus's second voyage in 1493, describing a fertile land with much gold to be found in the many rivers. Inspired by the possibility of riches, Ponce de León requested and received permission from Ovando to explore the island.The official settlement of San Juan by Spaniards is often dated to 1508, when Ponce landed in a caravel with about fifty men on the southern coast of the island, but there is documentation in the Archive of the Indies that he had led an expedition there with several hundred men as early as 1506, under orders by Governor Ovando to explore, settle, and conquer the island. Puerto Rican scholar Aurelio Tió wrote two books which contain much archival material concerning Ponce de León, including documentation he discovered in Spain and in Puerto Rico. He writes in detail of the Probanza de Juan González, according to which a temporary base was established on the west coast of Puerto Rico near the Bay of Añasco in 1506. This earlier trip was said to have been done quietly because the Spanish crown in 1504 had commissioned Vicente Yáñez Pinzón to explore the island and build a fort. Pinzón did not fulfil his commission,and it expired in 1507, leaving the way clear for Ponce de León.
His earlier exploration had confirmed the presence of gold and given him a good understanding of the geography of the island. In 1508, Ferdinand II of Aragon gave permission to Ponce de León for the first official expedition to the island, which the Spanish then called San Juan Bautista. Ponce de León led a small exploratory party to Puerto Rico in 1508 that found placer deposits of gold in the western end of the island. This expedition, consisting of about 50 men in one ship, left Hispaniola on 12 July 1508 and eventually anchored in San Juan Bay, near today's city of San Juan.
Ponce de León searched inland until he found a suitable site about two miles from the bay. Here, he erected a storehouse and a fortified house, creating the first settlement in Puerto Rico, Caparra. Although a few crops were planted, the settlers spent most of their time and energy searching for gold. By early 1509, Ponce de León decided to return to Hispaniola. His expedition had collected a good quantity of gold but was running low on food and supplies.
The expedition was deemed a great success, and Ovando appointed Ponce de León governor of San Juan Bautista. This appointment was later confirmed by Ferdinand II on 14 August 1509. He was instructed to extend the settlement of the island and continue mining for gold. The new governor returned to the island as instructed, bringing with him his wife and children. The rush of Spaniards from Hispaniola wanting to mine gold disrupted the way of life of the Taíno native people.
Back on his island, Ponce de León parcelled out the native Taínos among himself and other settlers using the system of forced labour known as encomienda. The Indians were put to work growing food crops and mining for gold. Ponce put those assigned to his personal encomienda, Hacienda Grande, to work searching for gold in the Toa Valley just east of San Juan. Many of the Spaniards treated the Taínos very harshly, and death rates were very high. The demand for slaves kidnapped from other islands grew. By June 1511, the Taínos, pushed to the limits of their endurance, began a short-lived rebellion, which was forcibly put down by Ponce de León and a small force of troops armed with crossbows and arquebuses.
Even as Ponce de León was settling the island of San Juan, significant changes were taking place in the politics and government of the Spanish West Indies. On 10 July 1509, Diego Colón, the son of Christopher Columbus, arrived in Hispaniola as acting Viceroy, replacing Nicolás de Ovando. For several years, Diego Colón had been waging a legal battle over his rights to inherit the titles and privileges granted to his father. The Crown regretted the sweeping powers that had been granted to Columbus and his heirs and sought to establish more direct control in the New World. In spite of the Crown's opposition, Colón prevailed in court, and Ferdinand was required to appoint him Viceroy.
Although the courts had ordered that Ponce de León should remain in office, Colón circumvented this directive on 28 October 1509 by appointing Juan Ceron chief justice and Miguel Diaz chief constable of the island, effectively overriding the authority of the governor. This situation prevailed until 2 March 1510, when Ferdinand issued orders reaffirming Ponce de León's position as governor. Ponce de León then had Ceron and Diaz arrested and sent back to Spain.
The political struggle between Colón and Ponce de León continued in this manner for the next few years. Ponce de León had influential supporters in Spain, and Ferdinand regarded him as a loyal servant. However, Colón's position as Viceroy made him a powerful opponent, and eventually it became clear that Ponce de León's position on San Juan was not tenable. Finally, on 28 November 1511, Ceron returned from Spain and was officially reinstated as governor.