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[edit] Early European exploration and Spanish conquest attempts (1520-1584)
The region of Patagonia was to be first noted in European accounts in 1520 by the expedition of Ferdinand Magellan, who on his passage along the coast named many of the more striking features -- Gulf of San Matias, Cape of 11,000 Virgins (now simply Cape Virgenes), and others. However, it is also possible that earlier navigators such as Amerigo Vespucci had reached the area (his own account of 1502 has it that he reached its latitudes), however his failure to accurately describe the main geographical features of the region such as the RĂo de la Plata casts some doubt on whether he really did so.
Rodrigo de Isla, sent inland in 1535 from San Matias by SimĂłn de Alcazaba Sotomayor (on whom western Patagonia had been conferred by Carlos V of Spain), is presumed to have been the first European to traverse the great Patagonian plain. If the men under his charge had not mutinied, he might have been able to cross the Andes to reach the Chilean side.
Pedro de Mendoza, on whom the country was next bestowed, lived to found Buenos Aires, but not to carry his explorations to the south. Alonzo de Camargo (1539), Juan Ladrilleros (1557) and Hurtado de Mendoza (1558) helped to make known the western coasts, and Sir Francis Drake's voyage in 1577 down the eastern coast through the strait and northward by Chile and Peru was memorable for several reasons; but the geography of Patagonia owes more to Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa (1579–1580), who, devoting himself especially to the south-west region, made careful and accurate surveys. The settlement which he founded at Nombre de Dios and San Felipe were neglected by the Spanish government, the latter being abandoned before Thomas Cavendish visited it in 1587 and was so desolate that he called it Port Famine.
The district in the neighbourhood of Puerto Deseado, explored by John Davis about the same period, was taken possession of by Sir John Narborough in the name of King Charles II of England in 1669.
[edit] Patagonian giants: early European perceptions
According to Antonio Pigafetta,[1] one of the Magellan expedition's few survivors and its published chronicler, Magellan bestowed the name "PatagĂŁo" (or PatagĂłn) on the inhabitants they encountered there, and the name "Patagonia" for the region. Although Pigafetta's account does not describe how this name came about, subsequent popular interpretations gave credence to a derivation meaning 'land of the big feet'. However, this etymology is questionable. The term is most likely derived from an actual character name, "PatagĂłn", a savage creature confronted by PrimaleĂłn of Greece, the hero in the homonymous Spanish chivalry novel (or knight-errantry tale) by Francisco Vázquez.[8] This book, published in 1512, was the sequel of the romance "PalmerĂn de Oliva," much in fashion at the time, and a favourite reading of Magellan.[9] Magellan's perception of the natives, dressed in skins, and eating raw meat, clearly recalled the uncivilized PatagĂłn in Vázquez's book.
1840s illustration (somewhat idealised) of indigenous Patagonians from near the Straits of Magellan; from "Voyage au pole sud et dans l'Oceanie ....." by French explorer Jules Dumont d'UrvilleThe main interest in the region sparked by Pigafetta's account came from his reports of their meeting with the local inhabitants, who they claimed to measure some nine to twelve feet in height —"...so tall that we reached only to his waist"—, and hence the later idea that Patagonia meant "big feet". This supposed race of Patagonian giants or Patagones entered into the common European perception of this little-known and distant area, to be further fuelled by subsequent reports of other expeditions and famous-name travellers like Sir Francis Drake, which seemed to confirm these accounts. Early charts of the New World sometimes added the legend regio gigantum ("region of the giants") to the Patagonian area. By 1611 the Patagonian god Setebos (Settaboth in Pigafetta) was familiar to the hearers of The Tempest.
The concept and general belief persisted for a further 250 years, and was to be sensationally re-ignited in 1767 when an "official" (but anonymous) account was published of Commodore John Byron's recent voyage of global circumnavigation in HMS Dolphin. Byron and crew had spent some time along the coast, and the publication (Voyage Round the World in His Majesty's Ship the Dolphin) seemed to give proof positive of their existence; the publication became an overnight best-seller, thousands of extra copies were to be sold to a willing public, and other prior accounts of the region were hastily re-published (even those in which giant-like folk were not mentioned at all).
However, the Patagonian giant frenzy was to die down substantially only a few years later, when some more sober and analytical accounts were published. In 1773 John Hawkesworth published on behalf of the Admiralty a compendi |
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