The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 98, July 1994 - April, 1995 Page: 371
682 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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1995 Alonso Alvarez de Pineda and the Rio de las Palmas 371
jalva had acquired twenty thousand pesos of gold in Yucatan, and a con-
versation with Ant6n Alaminos, who had served as a pilot with C6rdoba
and Grijalva, prompted Garay to petition the crown's West Indies ad-
ministrators on Santo Domingo for a license to sponsor an expedition.
Garay's petition won approval, and he immediately began to organize a
seaborne undertaking.'
Four ships described as navios armados, or ships armed for war, were
placed under the command of Alonso Alvarez de Pineda. On board the
four vessels were 270 men. Beyond these bare facts, there are few details
of the expedition. No log of it has survived, nor has Garay's account of it
sent to the king; and Pineda, himself, remains a "mystery man." Efforts
by researchers to discover Pineda's family ties or personal information
about him in the archives of Spain have failed completely.8
Pineda set sail from Jamaica in March 1519, a few weeks after Cortes
had departed for the Yucatan Peninsula and Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz.
He passed through the Yucatan Channel and then proceeded north-
ward until he struck the mainland on the west coast of Florida. His ships
then turned southeastward and attempted to find the "strait" that sepa-
rated the mainland from Ponce de Le6n's "island." When he failed to
find the expected channel, Pineda turned back in the face of strong
winds and currents. But his expedition definitely established the penin-
sularity of Florida.9
After turning westward, Pineda ran the Gulf Coast from Florida to Ve-
ra Cruz, a distance estimated at more than three hundred leagues, or
about one thousand miles. Along the way, someone, perhaps Pineda or
one of his pilots, drew a sketch map of Cuba and the Gulf Coast from
Florida to the Yucatan Peninsula. The map, dated 1519, is the oldest
known document that relates to the Texas and Mexican coastlines.
Ibid., 96-97, 99. The West Indies administrators were three Jeronymite friars, commissioned
in Spain by Cardinal Jim6nez de Cisneros. They arrived at Santo Domingo in December 1516.
See Clarence H. Haring, The Spanish Empire in America (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World,
1947), 45.
8 Weddle, Spanish Sea, 99. Alvarez de Pineda was evidently an uncommon surname, but an
archivist at the Archivo Hist6rico Nacional in Spain has speculated that it was peculiar to the
Burgos area. For an account of unsuccessful efforts by Robert S. Weddle and his associate re-
searcher, David Block, to discover information on Alvarez de Pineda in Spanish archives, see
ibid., 107. The author, without positive results, supplemented Weddle and Block's search in the
Spanish Naval Archive and the Archivo Hist6rico Nacional, both in Madrid. Clotilde P. Garcia,
in Captain Alonso Alvarez de Pineda and the Exploration of the Texas Coast and the Gulf of Mexico
(Austin: Jenkins Publishing Co., 1982), 16, cites Joaquin Meade, "El adelantado Francisco de
Garay," Boletin de la Sociedad Mexicana de Geografia y Estadisthca, LXIV (1947), 406, as the source of
her statement that Pineda was born in Centernera, Spain, in 1494. That information is not con-
tained in Meade's work.
9 Weddle, Spanish Sea, 99-loo; David J. Weber, The Spanash Frontier in North America (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 34.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 98, July 1994 - April, 1995, periodical, 1995; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101216/m1/427/: accessed April 27, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.