Pánfilo de Narváez (1470-1528)
N 27° 47.307 W 082° 45.157
17R E 327327 N 3074999
A Spanish conqueror and soldier in the Americas. He is most remembered as the leader of two expeditions, one to Mexico in 1520 to oppose Hernán Cortés, and another, disastrous, one to Florida in 1527. The Florida expedition made landfall here.
Waymark Code: WM1F5R
Location: Florida, United States
Date Posted: 04/24/2007
Views: 136
"Here landed Panfilo De Narvaez, April 15, 1528. From the site of this ancient Indian village was launched by white man of the North American Continent."
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Narváez was subsequently appointed adelantado (governor) of Florida by Charles V. He sailed from Sanlúcar de Barrameda on June 17, 1527 with a fleet of five ships and 700 men. The expedition arrived on the coast of Florida in April 1528, weakened by storms and desertions. He landed with 300 men near the Rio de las Palmas—thought to be somewhere near Tampa Bay—among hostile natives.
From there, his expedition marched northward through interior Florida until it reached the territory of the powerful Apalachee Indians. Unable to find the gold and other riches he sought and tired of the hostilities with the Indians, Narváez ordered the construction of four rafts to return to the sea from the interior. He intended to rejoin the ships and continue to Mexico, but the vessels were destroyed in a storm. Narváez and almost all the members of his expedition died. The storm wrecked two of the four rafts. The eighty men who survived the storm began an overland trek for Mexico. Starvation claimed most of their lives. Only four men survived the trek — Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Alonso del Castillo Maldonado, Andrés Dorantes de Carranza and one Berber slave named Estebanico (Esteban). Estabanico was the first person born in Africa to set foot in what is today the United States.
Cabeza de Vaca wrote a narration entitled Naufragios (Shipwrecks), in which he described the journey made by these four survivors on foot across the southeastern United States. This trek took eight years before they arrived in Culiacán (Sinaloa), where they found a Spanish settlement.
See Narváez expedition waymark nearby.
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