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Juan de la Cosa
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Juan de la Cosa (c. 1460 - February 28, 1510), was a Spanish cartographer, conquistador and explorer. He made the earliest extant European world map to incorporate the territories of the Americas that were discovered in the 15th century, sailed first 3 voyages with Columbus, and was the owner/captain of the Santa María.
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According to tradition he was born in 1460 at Sta. Maria del Puerto (Santoña), in Cantabria, Spain. From early childhood he spent time on the water. From the waters of his native country, which he knew thoroughly, he soon ventured on to the coast of Western Africa, which was at that time the goal of many Spanish expeditions. The first reliable references place him in Portugal in 1488, meeting the explorer Bartolomeu Dias who had just sailed around the Cape of Good Hope.
De la Cosa sailed with Christopher Columbus on his first three voyages to the New World. He owned and was master of Santa María, the flagship of Columbus' first voyage in 1492. On Columbus' second voyage, in 1493, de la Cosa was master and cartographer of the Marigalante. On Columbus' third voyage, in 1498, de la Cosa was on the ship La Niña.
On his fourth voyage, in 1499, de la Cosa was the first pilot for the expedition of Alonso de Ojeda and Amerigo Vespucci, and with them was among the first to set foot on the South American mainland on the Gulf of Paria. At the same time they explored the coast from Essequibo River to Cape Vela.
On the fifth voyage, in 1500, de la Cosa, Rodrigo de Bastidas and Vasco Núñez de Balboa explored the lands of present-day Colombia and Panama. He explored further along the South American coast to the isthmus of Panama, and returned to Haiti in 1502. When the Spanish court found soon afterwards that the Portuguese had made several incursions into the newly discovered country, Queen Isabella sent Juan de la Cosa at the head of a delegation to Portugal to protest this incursion.
De la Cosa was nominated alguazil major, and in 1504-05(?) (or 1506) was commander of an expedition to the Pearl Islands and the Gulf of Uraba to found settlements there. At the same time he visited Jamaica and Haiti.
In 1509 Juan de la Cosa set out for the seventh and last time for the New World. He carried two hundred colonists on three ships, and on reaching Haiti placed himself under the command of Alonso de Ojeda, who added another ship with one hundred settlers to the expedition. After having settled an old border dispute between Alonso de Ojeda and Diego de Nicuesa, they went with Francisco Pizarro into de Ojeda's territory and landed at Cartagena against the warnings of de la Cosa, who proposed to disembark on the more peaceful coast of the Gulf of Uraba. They were attacked by the natives and de la Cosa was shot with poison arrows and killed by Indians.
Juan de la Cosa made several maps of which the only survivor is the famous map of the world, the Mappa Mundi of 1500. It is the oldest known European cartographic representation of the New World. Of special interest is the outline of Cuba, which Christopher Columbus never believed to be an island. Walkenaer and Alexander von Humboldt were the first to point out the great importance of this chart. It is now in the Museo Naval in Madrid. Reproductions of it were first given by Humboldt in his Atlas géographique et physique.
- This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913.