Who is francisco de orellana

The king gave the explorer permission to govern the land he discovered. Orellana called it New Andalusia. He left Spain with a flotilla of four ships. They reached the mouth of the Amazon in December The expedition, however, was unlucky. They lost two ships crossing the Atlantic and a third one ran aground at the mouth of the river. In spite of all this, Orellana sailed down the river, looking for its main branch. The adventurers proceeded to the Amazon mouth and then to the Spanish island of Cubagua, which they reached early in September During their descent of the Amazon, Orellana's Spaniards underwent frequent attacks by Indians, and in one region women fought and surpassed males in valor.

Gaspar de Carvajal, chaplain of the expedition, describes the women as being very white and tall and doing as much fighting as 10 Indian men. Such formidable strength brought to mind the Amazons of Greek mythology, and the Spaniards gave this name to their land; only afterward was "Amazon" gradually applied to the river.

In Spain, Orellana sought and obtained a concession to explore and govern New Andalusia, meaning roughly the land south of the great river. But Orellana died of sickness and fatigue about November , and the fleet went to pieces.

A river-going vessel was constructed, but 57 men died from hunger and the remaining seagoing vessel was driven ashore. The marooned men found refuge among friendly indigenous people on an island in the delta, while Orellana and a boat delegation set off to find food and locate the principal arm of the Amazon. On returning to the shipwreck camp, they found it deserted, the men having constructed a second boat in which they had set out to find Orellana. The second boat eventually gave up the search and made its way along the coast to the island of Margarita near Venezuela coast.

Orellana and his boat crew, who had set out again to locate the principal channel, were subsequently attacked by natives. The second boat crew, on arriving at Margarita, found 25 of their companions, including Ana de Ayala, who had arrived there on a ship of the original fleet. The total of 44 survivors of an estimated were eventually rescued by a Spanish ship. Many of them settled in Central America, Peru and Chile, while Ana de Ayala befriended another survivor, Juan de Penalosa, with whom she lived with for the rest of her days in Panama.

She is last heard of in When Orellana went down the river in search of gold, descending from the Andes in , the river was still called Rio Grande, Mar Dulce or Rio de Canela Cinnamon , because cinnamon trees were once thought to be located there. The story of the fierce ambush launched by the Icamiabas that nearly destroyed the Spanish expedition was narrated to the king, Charles I, who, inspired by the Greek legend of the Amazons, named the river the Amazon. In one of the most improbably successful voyages in known history, Orellana managed to sail the length of the Amazon, arriving at the river's mouth on 24 August He and his party sailed along the Atlantic coast until reaching Cubagua Island, near the coast of Venezuela.

The BBC documentary Unnatural Histories presents evidence that Orellana, rather than exaggerating his claims as previously thought, was correct in his observations that an advanced civilization was flourishing along the Amazon in the s. It is believed that the civilization was later devastated by the spread of diseases from Europe, such as smallpox. The evidence to support this claim comes from the discovery of numerous geoglyphs dating from between 0 and AD and terra preta.

By , the population had fallen to 1 million and by the early s, it was less than , The New York Times. His expedition was a fiasco from the start. More than a year after gaining his charter, Orellana set sail for the Amazon on May 11, He had four ships carrying hundreds of settlers, but provisions were poor.

He stopped in the Canary Islands to refit the ships but wound up staying there for three months as he sorted out various problems. When they finally set sail, rough weather caused one of his ships to be lost. He reached the mouth of the Amazon in December and began his plans for settlement.

Orellana began exploring the Amazon, looking for a likely place to settle. Meanwhile, hunger, thirst, and native attacks weakened his force constantly. Some of his men even abandoned the enterprise while Orellana was exploring.

Sometime in late , Orellana was scouting an area with some of his remaining men when they were attacked by natives. Orellana is best remembered today as an explorer, but that was never his goal. He was a conquistador who accidentally became an explorer when he and his men were carried off by the mighty Amazon River. His motives were not very pure, either: he never intended to be a trailblazing explorer.

Rather, he was a veteran of the bloody conquest of the Inca Empire whose considerable rewards were not enough for his greedy soul. He wished to find and loot the legendary city of El Dorado in order to become even wealthier. He died still seeking a wealthy kingdom to plunder. Still, there is no doubt that he led the first expedition to travel the Amazon River from its roots in the Andean mountains to its release into the Atlantic Ocean.

Along the way, he proved himself as shrewd, tough, and opportunistic, but also cruel and ruthless. For a time, historians deplored his failure to return to Pizarro, but it seems that he had no choice in the matter. Today, Orellana is remembered for his journey of exploration and little else. He is most famous in Ecuador, which is proud of its role in history as the place from which the famed expedition departed.

There are streets, schools, and even a province named after him.