The lands discovered by Columbus, from the illustrated letter to Gabriel Sánchez,Basel, 1493 Institute of Texan Cultures, 74-632

In 1500 the New World was just beginning to be defined by Europeans. Something was west of Europe, across the Atlantic Ocean, but it was vague. Christopher Columbus had sailed three times to a strange-looking collection of islands and a questionable mainland, and he stoutly maintained he had reached Asia. To be sure, however, he had seen only the easternmost edge, peopled with bright birds and—in European terms—savages. He had not seen the sprawling cities and markets Marco Polo had visited by going the other way, but that it was Asia could not be in doubt.

At first there was no new world, and there were no new names such as Caribbean or Mexico or America. The first maps, showing “Part of Asia” or “Terra Incognita” on their western edges, were kept jealously as royal secrets. The log books and reports of the first explorers, including those of Columbus, were confiscated and filed away by rulers—most never to be seen again.

The first maps also included splendid guesses. Many people—most navigators and scientists and humanists—knew that the earth was spherical. That had been known, off and on, for two thousand years before Columbus’s voyages. And something, in theory, had to be on the other side of the Atlantic.

Although various legends existed about Atlantic or Pacific crossings, there were few stories about ordinary mariners circumnavigating the globe. Not many people had thought about the real possibility, much less considered if anything might be in the way.

But Europe, since the fourteenth century, did know what Asia looked like and where it was. Famous explorers and travelers, although few in number, were well known. Giovanni da Pian del Carpini, in 1245 to 1247, traveled to the Mongol empire both as a political spy and Catholic missionary. Europe had been thoroughly scared by the prospect of Mongol conquest and information was necessary. Carpini’s Liber Tartarorum (Book of the Tartars) was known in manuscript form in Europe and printed in summary form by 1473. His work is still regarded as a highly accurate account of central Asia and Mongol history. His geography is second only to William of Rubruquis (Rubrouck), who made a similar journey after Carpini.

Naturally, the most famous account of a journey to China from Europe, in 1271-1295, was that of Marco Polo. His book, Il milione (The Million, named for a now forgotten reason and known in English as The Travels of Marco Polo) was a bestseller. Polo worked on the book until his death in 1324. It immediately was copied in manuscript form into most European languages and was printed as soon as printing presses appeared. The work is partially responsible for creating the Far East as an attainable goal for voyagers. Columbus owned a Latin version of Polo’s work and well knew where he was going.

Other famous travelers added their share of knowledge. Perhaps the greatest medieval traveler was the Arab Ibn Battutah (1304-1369), who traveled all of his life to nearly all Muslim countries from Spain to Delhi and on to China and Sumatra. An idealistic, professional traveler, Ibn Battutah was often supported by generous monarchs and for many years journeyed with a retinue that included friends, scholars, servants, and a moderate-sized harem of wives and concubines. Later, he experienced everything from shipwreck to solitary journeys, murderous sultans to the necessity of marrying into a ruling family to ensure his fortunes. His book, Rihlah (the Travels) was known marginally in Europe, but the knowledge in it was repeated over the entire reach of Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.

Europeans knew what the land on the other side of the Atlantic should look like. And to a few, logic held that one could reach Asia by sailing west. For a time, however, such a journey seemed so much more risky than the known land routes east—until political conditions made the eastern passage almost impossible.

Christopher Columbus Institute of Texan Cultures, 72-1890

But no one knew how far one had to sail west. The earlier, reasonably accurate measurement of the circumference of the earth had been lost. Columbus, however, thought Asia was close and finally convinced the rulers of emerging Spain to finance a trip.

The stories Columbus told on his returns were delightful and confusing. What he reported on the part of Asia he had seen—when he was not talking about an earthly paradise—did not seem much like the India or China that Europeans knew about. (1) The bronzed people Columbus brought back were called Indians, sure enough, but they fit no known description of Asians. To make matters worse, some of the sailors and pilots who sailed with Columbus did not support his observations. They swore, under Columbus’s glittering eye, they had been to Asia’s mainland, but privately they denied their oath. (2) Columbus, after the third voyage (1498-1500), mentioned he had annexed a new southern continent but otherwise maintained he was in Asia.

Engraving of Amerigo Vespucci Institute of Texan Cultures, 72-1907

Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, the rulers of what was becoming Spain, decided to check on things. A few years after Columbus’s initial voyage, they needed a person who would be an objective observer, a reporter who could accompany a voyage of exploration, a navigator with enough experience to know where he was, and an individual who would not personally benefit from the trip. They chose a Florentine merchant living in Spain at that time, Amerigo Vespucci. (3)

This Florentine, by a curious chain of events, would become perhaps the first European known by name to sail the coast of Texas as well as to have his name applied to the lands of a new hemisphere. (4) The naming was a chance act by a young cartographer who did not personally know Vespucci, but Vespucci, or his words printed by others, would popularize the concept that across the Atlantic was not Asia but a new land—the New World. (5)

Southern Europe, by the late fifteenth century, was a hotbed of activity: political, scientific, artistic, and mercantile. The century held in many ways the creation of worldwide trade and banking. It was the pivotal century of the Renaissance and the creation of art as we know it today. These were the years of Leonardo da Vinci and Botticelli, (6) of the Medici, of the growth of modern political nations, increasing populations, and the establishment of the power of the church in governments as well as in the minds of humans. This was the creation—but for some scientific theories and assorted technologies—of the modern world.

And it was a world based much on fact—empirical fact—that could be checked and proven. Ferdinand and Isabella, hearing Columbus’s stories of his first voyages—and the stories of other less publicized early voyagers—sent out an expedition in 1497 to confirm reports of the land beyond the sea.

Vespucci was then forty-three years old. (7) He had been educated in the scientific and humanistic traditions of Florence and had served both as businessman and political agent for the Medici. (8) He counted as friends many of the politicians, artists, geographers, and scientists of the day. To Spain he had originally come as an agent investigating Florentine investment, but he stayed to become a businessman in his own right. (9) Opportunities were obviously greater in what must have seemed a frontier country to Vespucci.

He became known as an outfitter of ships and a cosmographer, a dependable businessperson and a convivial conversationalist—talents he had acquired in Florence. He was, apparently, more of a humanist than a person after quick honor or profit and was thus a good choice as reporter to the king and queen.

Contemporary artist's concept of Amerigo Vespucci off the Texas coast, 1497-98 Institute of Texan Cultures, 74-1456

Sailing as a pilot or navigator, Vespucci left Cadiz in May of 1497. However knowledgeable Vespucci was and however directly in the service of royalty, he led neither this voyage nor any other expedition, and the names of the captains have been lost. (10) Very much in the spirit of the time, or at least for those voyages he was on, Vespucci describes himself as simply “one of that company of explorers.” (11)

Sailing southwest, the expedition stocked final provisions in the Canary Islands, then crossed the Atlantic with favorable winds. (12) The ships, four in all, sailed through the islands described by Columbus, across the Caribbean, and made landfall at 16^o north latitude.

Vespucci was later to become one of the foremost cosmographers of his day; appointed Pilot Major of Spain some years later, his job was to certify maps and navigational equipment for Spanish voyages. He even calculated longitude at least once with remarkable precision in an age when longitude was routinely considered impossible to calculate directly. (13) On this voyage he missed the longitude by about five degrees.(14) But latitude was easier. With the quadrants of the day, he could figure his angular distance from the equator within an error of about half a degree. On a coast tending north and south, a half-degree error in latitude could mean a thirty-mile difference. But at latitude 16^oN in the Caribbean, with east-west coasts at that location, he could have landed in present-day Belize, Guatemala, or Honduras. (15)

Allegorical engraving of Vespucci the explorer Institute of Texan Cultures, 72-115

Wherever Vespucci first saw the continent, from that point on, he was entranced. This was understandable. His voyage was not one of conquest. These explorers were not charged with finding piles of gold and spices, great cities and eastern potentates. They were to observe and report on what they actually saw. The voyage was therefore the earliest known scientific voyage, or pure exploration, to the New World. This feeling of entrancement shows in Vespucci’s letters. His reports on the voyages, naturally given to king and queen, naturally disappeared. But some of his letters remain.

Allegorical engraving showing Vespucci "disembarking in the New World." The background shows the often-illustrated cannibal account; the foreground shows Vespucci, astrolabe in hand, confronting "America" in her hammock. Institute of Texan Cultures, 74-420

Reaching a green and, compared to European standards, a primitive land, Vespucci summarizes his first landfall:

Vespucci, unlike many explorers, was always able to recognize the viewpoint of the people he met and realize the shortcomings of his own culture:

The voyage moved north and west, apparently circling Yucatán and coasting the Gulf of Mexico. (17)

Vespucci gives no description that can be linked specifically to that part of the coast which is present-day Texas. Perhaps he had less to say, because from offshore the Texas coast is not greatly spectacular or interesting, if one likes lush tropical forests or geographical relief. Later voyagers called the Gulf coasts low, barren, and inhospitable. (18))

Unless one arrives on the barrier island called Padre as a well-equipped tourist, the land will be felt as a very hostile environment for humans.
Recent human and coyote tracks line Padre Island. Photographs courtesy of Two Dog Woman Graphics.

Vespucci’s letters are always those of an explorer, not a conqueror. And he is not above humor:

The first voyage, continued for eight hundred and seventy leagues, found little evidence of gold, took thirteen months to complete, and collected much data. (19) Peaceful contacts as well as battles between the sailors and the natives took place. The expedition took a few prisoners and products of the new land and sailed for home. What they had seen was not Asia.

Vespucci was to make other voyages to the new continents. His reports—including comments on cannibalism, hammocks, and geography—gave rise to some of the first European impressions of the New World. Vespucci had a talent which almost brought his reputation to ruin (though not during his lifetime) and placed his accomplishments in academic doubt: he was a good writer.

Perhaps the first European Woodcut of American Indians, c. 1505 Institute of Texan Cultures, 72-112

Columbus’s reports of his voyages did not stir the imagination. For one thing, most of Columbus’s words were kept secret or, along with his journals, officially lost. For another, Columbus did not correspond extensively with anyone other than his king and queen. Vespucci did. (20) He was reared in a humanistic tradition where one composed essays or poetry, painted pictures or church murals, designed machinery, schemed about investment, and serenaded one’s love in the evening. He had been taught that in life one was expected to perform, to report, to create, to be an artist in the Greek meaning of the word poet—to be a maker. Vespucci wrote letters to his Italian friends, and these friends quickly made the letters public.

They were as popular in Europe—in many translations—as newspapers are today. In fact, they were the newspapers of the day. (21) Vespucci, like any good writer of the time, blended personal speculation and fact, travel notes and scientific observations, and laced this with enough curiosities, sex, atrocities, and honest poetical beauty to catch anyone’s attention.

And Vespucci knew full well that the land he had seen was not Asia. He said what had been seen was a new world, unknown to the ancients and wreathed with the mystery and challenge of the unknown. And here, Vespucci touched on a constant, common feeling in the minds of most later arrivals to the places that would receive strange-sounding names like Florida, Mexico, Coahuila, and Texas.

Vespucci’s letters—circulating in Europe in a handful of “editions” and languages, print and manuscript—created a great interest and an equally great controversy.

In 1507 a small group of scholars—printers, geographers, poets—gathered at Saint-Dié, Lorraine, for the purpose of publishing learned works under the sponsorship of the Duke of Lorraine, René II. (22) This was not a unique venture considering the spirit of the day and new and potent inventions such as the printing press. Here, in April, the young priest and geographer Martin Waldseemüller, or the vicar and writer Jean Basin, or the poet Matthias Ringmann decided that “America” would be a fine name for those lands across the Atlantic. Basin or Ringmann christened the land America in the production Cosmographiae Introductio, intended to update the geographical concepts of the young century in the light of the new transatlantic discoveries. Waldseemüller put the name on his huge world map issued at the same time (on the South American section).

The name, rendered feminine to parallel the Old World continents of Asia, Africa, and Europa, sounded good.

The group almost certainly did not know Amerigo Vespucci personally, and they certainly knew about Columbus—as well as perhaps other voyages across the Atlantic—but Vespucci’s letters carried the day. They were exciting. Copies of his letters were altered to fit their work and published as part of the Cosmographiae Introductio. One of Vespucci’s originals was addressed to the Gonfalonier Piero Soderini of Florence, a friend. Vespucci’s comments to Soderini were altered, simply by a name switch, to refer to René II—and therefore rendered ludicrous. The personal references, left in, do not fit. But at the time, what reader would know? Further, copyright laws were unheard of in 1507. And such was the power of the printed (or engraved) word that the name stuck. (23)

And the name stuck much to the disgust of later “Columbians.” Years after Vespucci’s death, various writers decided that Amerigo had deliberately usurped the fame of Columbus and contrived to have the continents named after himself—and had in fact been on no voyages at all. Amerigo was then and since called a “lucky imposter,” a “fatuous personage,” and a “lying novelist.” Ralph Waldo Emerson considered it “strange . . . that broad America must wear the name of a thief . . . the pickle-dealer at Seville.”

Where did this side of the story start? Is there truth in such allegations? Is it of more than idle curiosity to know whether the person whose name was given to the New World continents might also have been the first European known by name to sail Texas waters? Or did he sail at all?

A world map by Petrus Vesconte, c. 1320 Institute of Texan Cultures, 74-226

Lodavicus Boulenger's map of the American Continents, 1514; the name "America" is being rapidly put in place. Institute of Texan Cultures, 75-806

Map of North and South America from a Ptolemy edition of 1512 Institute of Texan Cultures, 75-805

A drawing from Johann Schöner's globe of 1515. Schöner remarked that he was not only mapping "many countries discovered by Marco Polo . . ." but the "sea coasts of these countries have now recently again been explored by Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci in navigating the Indian Ocean." His conception is poor, he puts names in the wrong places, but he shows, as other maps do, the Gulf of Mexico region west of modern Cuba. Institute of Texan Cultures, 74-229

Tabula Terrae Nova from the 1513 printed edition of Ptolemy. On this map, Waldseemülller quite properly gives Columbus credit for discovery. Institute of Texan Cultures, 74-231

Father Bartolomé de Las Casas was the first to raise his voice against Vespucci, apparently through a desire to defend Columbus. He gave no reason or documentary proof for his charges that Vespucci was a usurper of fame not deservedly his. Las Casas, the sixteenth century defender of the American Indian and attacker of the brutal type of Spanish conquistador, took on Vespucci as an object of denigration. To Las Casas, Amerigo was a man of questionable liberal thought and a convenient scapegoat for the way Columbus had been officially treated. (24) That Columbus and Vespucci had been friends—as shown by their correspondence—was ignored. (25) If Las Casas had any proof for his opinion, he did not print it. Vespucci’s contemporaries apparently accepted his voyages as genuine and believed in the truth of his reports. (26)

But Las Casas’s opinion was not forgotten. As it became clear to later writers just how badly Columbus had been treated by Spain in return for his brilliant discovery, Amerigo apparently became an easy object of blame. Because copies of Amerigo’s letters had been translated and retranslated by others, they could easily be questioned as to their authenticity. (27) The originals are lost. Amerigo’s full manuscript report which he called “The Four Voyages” was given to the king and queen—and kept or lost. (28) Very few official maps, unfortunately not including the master map kept by the Spanish government, now exist. It was surprisingly easy—years later—to charge that Vespucci made only two voyages, or only one, or none. (29))

Columbus’s maps and journals likewise disappeared. Las Casas’s rewriting of Columbus’s log does exist but did not become an object of scrutiny as did Vespucci’s letters.

No body of evidence exists to contradict any of Vespucci’s presumed voyages, and most indications are that he could have made them. (30) And no remarks by Columbus or Columbus’s sons indicate that Vespucci was suspected of having usurped anything due Columbus. The remarks do indicate a friendship.

The maps that exist are ambiguous. Several before 1515 show what may be the Gulf of Mexico, but their interpretation depends a great deal upon the opinion of the observer. (31) That there was a continuous coastline to the west of Cuba, that it was concave to the Caribbean and Atlantic, was certainly known. (32) But that there were other voyages than Amerigo’s to bring reports to Europe before 1510 is certainly true. The officially recorded trips, the voyages of exploration known today, may be in the minority. (33)

In any case, Amerigo Vespucci is a strong contender for the title of the first European, known by name, to sail the Texas coast. (34) And if he did, he sailed it strictly in the name of exploration, not conquest.

Exploration . . . a large part of childhood (or adulthood) play; a Columbus Day engraving from 1875. Institute of Texan Cultures, 74-1561