Fortún Ximénez Bertandoña (; died 1533) was a Spanish sailor of
Basque
Basque may refer to:
* Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France
* Basque language, their language
Places
* Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France
* Basque Country (autonomous co ...
origin who led a mutiny during an early expedition along the coast of
Mexico
Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...
and is the first
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
an known to have landed in
Baja California
Baja California (; 'Lower California'), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Baja California ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Baja California), is a state in Mexico. It is the northernmost and westernmost of the 32 federal entities of Mex ...
.
Ximénez was the pilot of a ship, the ''Concepción'', sent by
Hernán Cortés
Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro Altamirano, 1st Marquess of the Valley of Oaxaca (; ; 1485 – December 2, 1547) was a Spanish ''conquistador'' who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of w ...
and captained by Diego de Becerra. The ship set out November 30, 1533, to travel north along the coast of
New Spain
New Spain, officially the Viceroyalty of New Spain ( es, Virreinato de Nueva España, ), or Kingdom of New Spain, was an integral territorial entity of the Spanish Empire, established by Habsburg Spain during the Spanish colonization of the Am ...
from present-day
Manzanillo, Colima
Manzanillo () is a city and seat of Manzanillo Municipality, in the Mexican state of Colima. The city, located on the Pacific Ocean, contains Mexico's busiest port, responsible for handling Pacific cargo for the Mexico City area. It is the larges ...
, in search of two ships that had been lost without a trace on a similar voyage the previous year. The previous voyages had been in search of the "Strait of Anián" (the western end of the much-hoped-for
Northwest Passage
The Northwest Passage (NWP) is the sea route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the Arctic Ocean, along the northern coast of North America via waterways through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. The eastern route along the Arct ...
) and the
Island of California
The Island of California ( es, Isla de California) refers to a long-held European misconception, dating from the 16th century, that the Baja California Peninsula was not part of mainland North America but rather a large island (spelled on ea ...
, named for the mythical places in the romance novel, ''
Las sergas de Esplandián
''Las Sergas de Esplandián'' (''The Adventures of Esplandián'') is a novel written by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century. The novel is a sequel to a popular fifteenth century set of chivalric romance n ...
'' previously published in Spain and popular among the
conquistador
Conquistadors (, ) or conquistadores (, ; meaning 'conquerors') were the explorer-soldiers of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires of the 15th and 16th centuries. During the Age of Discovery, conquistadors sailed beyond Europe to the Americas, O ...
s. The fictional California was a terrestrial paradise populated only by dark-skinned women.
During the voyage, Ximénez led a revolt in which the captain was killed. The mutineers then landed near present-day
La Paz
La Paz (), officially known as Nuestra Señora de La Paz (Spanish pronunciation: ), is the seat of government of the Bolivia, Plurinational State of Bolivia. With an estimated 816,044 residents as of 2020, La Paz is the List of Bolivian cities ...
, on the southern tip of the
Baja California Peninsula, which the mutineers believed to be the Island of California. Ximénez was killed in a clash with the local
natives
Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...
. The survivors returned to New Spain with the story of having black
pearl
A pearl is a hard, glistening object produced within the soft tissue (specifically the mantle) of a living shelled mollusk or another animal, such as fossil conulariids. Just like the shell of a mollusk, a pearl is composed of calcium carb ...
s, which prompted further exploration of the "Island" of Santa Cruz, as Cortés named the peninsula.
The stories of the survivors prompted several follow-up expeditions by Cortés in the following years, which resulted in very short-lived pearl fisheries.
See also
*
Francisco de Ulloa
Francisco de Ulloa () (died 1540) was a Spanish explorer who explored the west coast of present-day Mexico and the Baja California Peninsula under the commission of Hernán Cortés. Ulloa's voyage was among the first to disprove the cartograph ...
Notes
Sources
*Caughey, John W. ''California'', second edition (Englewood: Prentice-Hall, 1953), 45-46.
*Chapman, Charles E. ''A History of California: The Spanish Period'' (New York: The MacMillan Co., 1921), 50-51.
*
1533 deaths
History of Baja California
Spanish explorers of North America
Spanish sailors
16th-century Spanish people
Explorers of Mexico
Year of birth unknown
Etymology of California
Basque sailors
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