When Queen Isabella initially decided to remove Columbus as “Española’s” governor, she also began licensing other explorers to possess the continental coastline that Columbus had found on the outward portion of his third voyage. Eight voyages to the northern coast of what’s now called South America were licensed from 1499 to 1502.
The next sequel will include the stories of the three voyages mentioned in this post and the following map, marked with indigenous place names. The indigenous peoples whose homelands were on the coastline reconnoitered (modern Colombia and Venezuela and the offshore island Trinidad) shared ancestry with the Taíno peoples of Haiti/Quisqueya (Española) and Boriquén (Puerto Rico) and the Caribe peoples of Caloucaera (Guadeloupe) and Ouitoucoubouli (Dominica) related in my prior books. Some were Arawak, some Kalina (Mainland Caribes).
Departing May 18, 1499, the first licensee was Alonso de Hojeda, who’d served Columbus on Española and abducted Anacaona’s husband, Chief Caonabó. Hojeda explored from Paria through to Coquibacoa (Venezuela), constantly fighting with the locals, and then headed north to repair his ships in Chief Behecchio and Anacaona’s Xaraguá (southwestern Española), where he fomented a rebellion against Columbus. When that rebellion failed, he coursed north to slave raid in the Lucayan islands. His fleet berthed an unknown Amerigo Vespucci, who’d soon write a letter describing the voyage as his own.
The second licensee was Pero Alonso Niño, a pilot on Columbus’s first and second voyages. Niño sailed two weeks after Hojeda, traded for pearls on Paraguachoa Island (Margarita) and Cumana (Venezuela), and returned directly to Spain, where he was briefly jailed for secreting some pearls for himself.
Sailing in February 1501, the seventh licensee was Rodrigo de Bastidas, a Sevillian merchant. Bastidas sailed along the coast of Citurma, Caramari, and Urabá (Colombia and into Panama), traded for gold and abducted slaves, and then headed northeast to Xaraguá, where his ships sank. Bastidas was accompanied by Juan de la Cosa, who’d sailed on Columbus’s first and second voyages and on Hojeda’s in 1499.
The sequel speculates Anacaona’s perceptions of Hojeda and Bastidas when they intruded into her Xaraguá.