It names two Texas or Louisiana features, P de Arrecifes and R de Arboledas, names occasionally repeated by later mapmakers. la Palma')-the Soto la Marina River of Tamaulipas, which has often been confused with the Rio Grande. The map is the first to show the RГo de las Palmas ('R. He would have omitted the 'Provincia de Amichel,' which represented Garay's rival claim. Were CortГ©s the author, he certainly would have shown Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz, the town he himself had founded. Quite likely, it was drawn in Spain, on the basis of information from the ГЃlvarez de Pineda voyage. The authorship of this map is not known, but it seems fairly certain that it was not CortГ©s. The first map of the Gulf of Mexico to be printed appeared with a 1524 edition of HernГЎn CortГ©s's second letter to the crown. Thus the early maps reflect the explorers' remarkable understanding of Texas coastal geography. In the Padre Island vicinity, where three Spanish ships ran aground in a storm a quarter century later, Ribeiro notes malabrigo, indicating lack of shelter for ships or an unsafe anchorage. Ribeiro's Weimar map contains notations describing the Texas coast in terms that still hold true: playa baxa and anegadizo, suggesting a low, level beach subject to flooding. On two 1529 world maps Ribeiro brought forth another feature related to ГЃlvarez de Pineda's voyage: the RГo de los Gigantes, or 'Giants' River,' an apparent reference to the eight-foot Indians described by the explorer, possibly the Karankawas of the middle Texas coast. In 1527 an anonymous map, believed to have been the work of Diogo Ribeiro, placed the RГo Escondido ('Hidden River') about where the mouth of the Nueces River of today is concealed from the sea by barrier islands. Reflecting ГЃlvarez de Pineda's claim of gold-bearing rivers, Juan Vespucci introduced the name RГo del Oro ('River of Gold') on his 1526 planisphere, on what appears to be the Texas shore. Both the real and fancied soon began appearing on maps produced in Spain. Some of the things reported were fanciful, but others were real. The patent relates that the voyagers had seen gold-bearing rivers and natives wearing gold ornaments on their noses and earlobes some were giants almost eight feet tall, others like pygmies. Virtually the only record of what the explorers reported after the voyage is a summary contained in a royal patent granting Francisco de Garay (governor of Jamaica and ГЃlvarez de Pineda's patron) authority to settle the area of the discovery, which was named Amichel. Yet, before there was another known voyage to the northern Gulf, maps began appearing with names attached to the Texas features, descriptive of what ГЃlvarez de Pineda's crew had observed, or imagined. While showing several river mouths along the Texas coast, it names none of them. The ГЃlvarez de Pineda sketch gave representation to the Mississippi River (called RГo del EspГritu Santo) and to the RГo PГЎnuco, which enters the Gulf at the site of present-day Tampico, dividing the Mexican states of Tamaulipas and Vera Cruz. A true cartographic landmark, it was the first European map portrayal of the Gulf based on actual exploration, as well as the first to show any part of what is now the state of Texas-hypothetical concepts of the Gulf of Mexico before its actual discovery notwithstanding. This crude rendering, which survives in the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, represents the beginning of the Spanish mapping of Texas. Early in 1520 the pilots who had sailed the previous year with Alonso ГЃlvarez de Pineda laid before the Spanish crown an outline sketch of the Gulf of Mexico.

Mapa de tx