Francisco Hernández de Córdoba (discoverer of Yucatán)

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 first European accounts of the Yucatán Peninsula were compiled.

Together with some 110 discontented Spanish settlers in early colonial Cuba, Hernández de Córdoba petitioned the governor, Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, for permission to launch an expedition in search of new lands and exploitable resources. This permission was granted after some haggling over terms, and the expedition consisting of three ships under Hernández de Córdoba's command left the harbor of Santiago de Cuba on February 8, 1517, to explore the shores of southern Mexico. The main pilot was Antón de Alaminos, the premiere navigator of the region who had accompanied Christopher Columbus on his initial voyages; The pilots of the other two ships were Juan Álvarez and Camacho de Triana.

During the course of this expedition many of Hernández' men were killed, most during a battle near the town of Champotón against a Maya army. He himself was injured, and died a few days after his return to Cuba. Bernal Díaz del Castillo was a member of the expedition and wrote about his journey. This was the Europeans' first encounter with an advanced civilization in the Americas, with solidly built buildings and a complex social organization which they recognized as being comparable to those of the Old World. They also had reason to expect that this new land would have gold.

Little is known of Córdoba's life before his exploration of the Yucatán. A native of Spain, he was living in Cuba in 1517, indicating that he had participated in the conquest of the island. He was also quite wealthy, as he both owned a landed estate, including a native town, and financed his expedition to Mexico.

Bernal Díaz del Castillo is the chronicler who gives the most detail about the voyage of Hernández de Córdoba; his is also the only first-person account by someone who was present for the entire process. Also, Bernal declares in his chronicle that he had been himself a promoter of the project, together with another hundred or so Spaniards who said they had to "occupy themselves". These soldiers and adventurers had been three years now in the newly settled territory of Cuba, many also having moved there from the colony of Castilla del Oro (Tierra Firme, present-day Panama) under its governor Pedrarias Dávila, where they were apparently surplus to requirements; they complained that "they hadn't done a single thing worth the telling".

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Wikipedia