The sad story of Cortes's map

Maybe you’ve followed the debate about the accuracy of various news sources and the spread of misinformation during the pandemic.

The most recent skirmish in this endless war got me thinking about Cortes’s map.

Cortes’s map, which is in the Archives of the Indies in Seville, was not Cortes’s. It shows the Province of Amichel, which included Texas, but that name was used only by Cortes’s rival to the land claim, Francisco de Garay. Also, the map suspiciously omits Cortes’s own city, Veracruz.

The map was likely the work of pilots working for the leader of Garay’s expeditions, Alonzo Alvarez de Pineda. He explored the gulf in 1519.

The map shows the coast from Nombre de Dios, the silver port in Panama, to Bimyny, i.e. Florida, also called Juan Ponce after Ponce de Leon.

The map reflects a great discovery — that the Gulf of Mexico was a gulf, as opposed to a route to China. The Spaniards had run into so many islands they had a hard time fathoming that North America was a solid landmass.

The chart was compiled by sailors whose concern about accuracy was a matter of life and death. The captains of the expeditions tended to be army men, landlubbers. Sponsors of the expeditions often knew even less about navigation.

The pilots themselves knew nothing about the rivers on the coast so they charted them as accurately as they could but left them unnamed. The result was a map that shows a representation of the shoreline we can recognize today. But the map is virtually unlabeled.

The authorities in Spain sat on the map for a couple of years and then published it. They extolled the discovery as a feat of Spanish genius. They also claimed the unbroken shore was crowded with affectionate people who wore gold jewelry.

The map was a sensation throughout Europe. Printers couldn’t keep copies in stock. But each new edition of the map had to be the best, and so publication became a competition. Without any further exploration — any further reporting of the facts — publishers began to fill in the names of the rivers. They checked the chart against the accounts of explorers.

Some of the speculation was based in fact. Spaniards had seen the Karankawa people, who were much taller than Europeans. And so it was easy to conclude that this unnamed inlet must be the River of Giants. Some of the speculation was sheer fantasy: This must be the River of Gold!

Within a few editions, and without any further reporting, the map was labeled. A document that once reflected a healthy respect for the unknown had become an invitation to fantasy.

All this would be funny, except that the notions of affectionate natives and plentiful gold, once planted, were impossible to kill. Eighty years later Spaniards were still wandering around the continent, dying of self-induced hardship. I can’t help thinking that De Soto’s men, after four years of misery, enjoyed sinking his body in the river.

It seems to me that this is human nature. We value reporting, investigation and exploration. But if we don’t get a report, we make something up. Or believe something that someone else has made up.