Texas Originals

Alonso Álvarez de Pineda

1494–1520

Spanish explorer Alonso Álvarez de Pineda was the first European to set eyes on the land that would become Texas. His 1519 expedition mapped the American Gulf Coast, creating the very first document of Texas history.

Scholars know little of Álvarez’s background. He first appears in the record amid the intrigues of the Spanish conquest of North America. In 1519, as fellow conquistador Hernán Cortés began his fateful campaign against the Aztecs, Álvarez set sail from Jamaica, journeying north to Florida and then following the Gulf Coast west and south all the way to Veracruz.

Álvarez did not find what he sought—a passage to the Pacific. He did, however, prove to Spain that Florida and the Yucatan belonged to the same continent. He also mapped the Gulf Coast, making him the first European to document the mouth of the Mississippi River and the land that became Texas.

At the end of his journey, Álvarez settled in Mexico on the Pánuco River inland from Tampico. He then journeyed to Veracruz to inform Cortés of his activities. Fearing Álvarez’s colonial ambitions in Mexico, Cortés turned him away.

Their rivalry would be short. In 1520, Huastec natives wiped out the settlement on the Pánuco, killing Álvarez. In some ways, he remains a "mystery man" of the Spanish conquest, but his contributions to the exploration of Texas stand.

For More about Alonso Álvarez de Pineda

While there is consensus on Álvarez’s mapping of the mouth of the Mississippi, we know little else regarding the details of his Gulf voyage. Corpus Christi is one of many port cities that has laid claim to the explorer, and it is fair to assume that he would have noted Corpus as one of the rich bays along the Texas coast. The city erected a statue of Álvarez in the Plaza de Pineda in 1984.

Other sites along Álvarez’s voyage have also memorialized the explorer, including a marker in Mobile Bay near the intersection of I-10 and Battleship Parkway. That marker makes claim to Mobile Bay as the Bahía de Espiritu Santo that most historians regard as a reference to the mouth of the Mississippi River. While such disagreements will likely never be resolved given the sparse available evidence, the larger truth is that Álvarez expanded European navigational and cartographic knowledge throughout the Gulf of Mexico with his pioneering 1519 expedition.

Selected Bibliography

Chipman, Donald E. and Harriett Denise Joseph. Spanish Texas, 1519–1821. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010.

Díaz del Castillo, Bernal. The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico. New York: Da Capo Press, 1996.

Weber, David. The Spanish Frontier in North America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.

Weddle, Robert. Spanish Sea: The Gulf of Mexico in North American Discovery, 1500–1685. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1985.

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Statue of Alonso Álvarez de Pineda in Corpus Christi's Plaza de Pineda. Courtesy of Tess Allan and the City of Corpus Christi.