Francisco de Orellana (Trujillo, Spain, 1511 - Amazon River, November 1546) was a Spanish explorer and conquistador. He completed the first known navigation through the length of the Amazon River. He named this river and founded Guayaquil.

Background

Orellana may have been a relative of Francisco Pizarro, the Trujillo-born conquistador of Peru (cousin, according to some historians). He traveled to the Indies when he was seventeen (1527). Orellana served in Nicaragua until joining Pizarro's army in Peru in 1533, where he supported Pizarro in his conflict with Diego de Almagro (1538). After the victory over Almagro's men, he was appointed governor of La Culata and re-established the town of Guayaquil, previously founded by Pizarro and repopulated by Sebastián de Belalcázar.

First exploration of the Amazon River

s from Francisco de Orellana's expedition building a small brigantine, the San Pedro.]] He was one of Gonzalo Pizarro's lieutenants during his 1541 expedition east of Quito into the South American interior. Gonzalo Pizarro ordered him to explore the Coca River and return when the river ended. When they arrived at the confluence with the Napo River, his men threatened to mutiny if they did not continue. On December 26, 1541, he accepted to be elected chief of the new expedition and to conquer new lands in name of the king. The 49 men began to build a bigger ship for riverine navigation. During their navigation on Napo River they were threatened constantly by the Omaguas. They reached the Negro River on June 3, 1542 and finally arrived on the Amazon River. The icamiabas Indians dominated the area close to the Amazon river. When Orellana went down the river in search of gold, descending from the Andes (in 1541), the river was still called Rio Grande, Mar Dulce or Rio de Canela (Cinnamon), because of the great trees of cinnamon located there. The story of the fierce ambush launched by the icamiabas, that nearly destroyed the Spanish expedition, was narrated to the king, Charles I, who, inspired by the Greek legend of the Amazons, named the river the Amazon.

In one of the most improbably successful voyages in known history, Orellana managed to sail the length of the Amazon, arriving at the river's mouth on 24 August 1542. He and his party sailed along the Atlantic coast until reaching Cubagua Island, near the coast of Venezuela.

Second voyage and its preparation

After this exploration, Orellana returned to Spain to obtain from the Crown the governorship over the discovered lands, that he named New Andalusia. After a difficult navigation, he touched first the shores of Portugal. The king received him in a friendly way and made him an offer to go back to the Amazon under a Portuguese flag. Orellana's exploration produced an international issue. According to the Treaty of Tordesillas, the majority of the Amazon River should belong to Spain, but the mouth should be ruled by Portugal. Orellana refused the Portuguese offer and went to Valladolid. After nine months of negotiations, Charles I appointed him governor of New Andalusia on February 18, 1544. The charter established that he should explore and settle the Amazonian lands with less than 300 men and 100 horses, and found two cities, one in the mouth and another in the interior of the basin. Orellana married Ana de Ayala, who accompanied him in the voyage.

The four vessels of the expedition set sail on May 11, 1545, but only one succeeded in reaching the Amazon mouth just before Christmas 1545. Then, they built a river boat and explored 500 km of the Amazon delta. Only 44 of the 300 men survived when they were rescued by another Spanish ship. Orellana was one of the casualties: he died in November 1546.

Places named after Orellana

• Puerto Francisco de Orellana, Ecuador
• Orellana Province, Ecuador
• Francisco de Orellana, Maynas, Loreto, Peru
• Amazon river was once called the Orellana river^{[citation needed]}

Orellana in popular culture

Orellana's voyages served as part influence for the film Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972). An earlier script penned by director Werner Herzog also deliberately included Orellana in the movie, but was ultimately left out. Orellana's role in the search for Akator (El Dorado) also forms part of the plot of the film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008).

Bibliography

Gaspar de Carvajal, the chaplain of the first expedition, wrote a chronicle of the voyage (Relación del nuevo descubrimiento del famoso río Grande que descubrió por muy gran ventura el capitán Francisco de Orellana), which was partly reproduced in Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo's Historia general y natural de las Indias (1542), who included in addition statements by Orellana and some of his men. The Carvajal's work was published in 1894 by the Chilean historian José Toribio Medina, as part of his book Descubrimiento del Río de las Amazonas (Seville: Imprenta de E. Rasco, 1894).

William Ospina's novel The Country of the Cinnamon includes a novelated version of Orellana's trip.

More bibliography:

• Dalby, A., "Christopher Columbus, Gonzalo Pizarro, and the search for cinnamon" in Gastronomica (Spring 2001).
• Smith, A. (1994). Explorers of the Amazon. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226763374

External links

• (Spanish) "Francisco de Orellana: descubriendo el gran río", article in viajeros.com´
• "Natal home of Francisco de Orellana. Discoverer of the Amazon River."
• The Secrets of El Dorado and the Magic of Terra Preta