Hernández (Fernández) de Córdoba, Francisco (?–1526)

Francisco Hernández (Fernández) de Córdoba (d. 1518), Spanish navigator and conquistador from the province of Córdoba. (He is not to be confused with Francisco Fernández de Córdoba [d. 1526], the conqueror of Nicaragua.) A leading settler of Cuba under Governor Diego Velásquez, Hernández agreed to lead the first major effort to conquer the Maya on the Yucatán Peninsula (1517). The Maya defeated him, however, killing more than half his expedition. Hernández suffered thirty-three wounds, from which he died soon after his return to his home at Villa de Sancti-Spiritus. Although it failed, this expedition stimulated new interest in Mexico, which led eventually to the expedition of Cortés in 1519. News of the expedition also reached and worried the Aztec emperor, Motecuhzoma II.

See alsoExplorers and Exploration: Spanish America.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bernal Díaz Del Castillo, The True History of the Conquest of New Spain, translated by Alfred P. Maudslay, vol. 1, (1908–1916), pp. 14-26.

John H. Parry and Robert G. Keith, New Iberian World: A Documentary History of the Discovery and Settlement of Latin America to the Early Seventeenth Century, vol. 3, (1984), pp. 131-143.

Additional Bibliography

Benavente, Fray Toribio de ("Motolinía"). Colección Crónicas de América. Madrid: Dastin, 2000.

Kirkpatrick, Frederick Alex. Los conquistadores españoles. 3rd edition. Madrid: Rialp, 2004.

Thompson, I.A.A., and Bartolomé Yun Casalilla. The Castilian Crisis of the Seventeenth Century: New Perspectives on the Economic and Social History of Seventeenth—Century Spain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Wagner, Henry Raup. The Discovery of Yucatan by Francisco Hernández de Córdoba. Berkeley, CA: The Cortes Society, 1942.

                             Ralph Lee Woodward Jr.