Mapping the Conquistador Voyages
Read the following accounts about Christopher Columbus and Hernán Cortes, and retrace their voyages on the attached world map.
On the evening of August 3, 1492, Columbus departed from Palos, Spain with three ships; one larger "Nao", the Santa Maria and two smaller "caravels", the Niña and the Pinta (The ships were never officially named)...Columbus first sailed to the Canary Islands… where he restocked the provisions and made repairs, and on September 6, he started what turned out to be a five-week voyage across the Atlantic Oceanalong 29N.
Land was sighted at 2 a.m. on October 24, by a sailor named Rodrigo de Triana (also known as Juan Rodriguez Bermejo) aboard Pinta. It was the northeast coast of Cuba, and they landed on October 28 close to present-day Havana. The indigenous people [Columbus] encountered, the Taíno, were peaceful and friendly.
Columbus continued to sail southeast and then along the northeastern coast of Haiti (Hispaniola) which he reached by December 5. Here, the Santa Maria ran aground on Christmas morning 1492 and had to be abandoned. He was received by the native cacique Guacanagari, who gave him permission to leave some of his men behind. Columbus founded the settlement La Navidad and left 39 men.
Columbus headed [back] for Spain from the northeast coast of Hispaniola northeast up to38N and east towards the Azores Islands, but another storm forced him into Lisbon, Portugal instead. He anchored next to the King's harbour patrol ship on March 4, 1493 in Portugal. After spending more than one week in Portugal, he set sail for Spain. Word of his finding new lands rapidly spread throughout Europe. He reached Spain on March 15.
The Spaniard Hernán Cortés led an expedition to Mexico in 1519, sailing northwest along the coast from Santiago, Cuba, to land on the eastern tip of the Yucatán Peninsula with a tiny fleet of 11 ships. He then sailed west following the coastline of Mexico to a point that he named Vera Cruz. The landing party consisted of 400 men, 13 horses and some artillery. He soon came into contact with a number of tribes who resented the Aztec rule; Cortés skirmished with some of these natives, defeating them easily and earning an alliance with them against the Aztecs. In particular, his horses, firearms and iron armor made Cortés and the Spaniards seem otherworldly enough to be mistaken for the god Quetzalcoatl, who was prophesied to return. When Cortés was informed by the Tlaxcalans of an ambush by the Aztec emperor Moctezuma, and was thus able to avoid it, this solidified the emperor's belief that Cortés was a god. Cortés entered the capital city of the Aztec Empire,Tenochtitlan (present-day Mexico City), on November 8, 1519. Montezuma, the Aztec emperor, initially welcomed Cortés, but Cortés soon imprisoned Montezuma, and by 1521 he had conquered the Aztecs.
Taken from: from