Álvarez de Pineda, Alonso << AL buh rays thay pee NAY duh, uh LAN zoh >> (?-1520), a Spanish explorer, led the first expedition to map the Gulf Coast between Florida and Mexico. Most historians believe that he and his followers were the first Europeans to set foot in Texas.
Little is known about Álvarez de Pineda’s early life. In March 1519, Francisco de Garay, the Spanish governor of Jamaica, sent him to explore the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Álvarez de Pineda and 270 men departed Jamaica with four ships. They mapped the coastline, starting with the Florida region that Juan Ponce de Leon had claimed for Spain in 1513. The expedition established that Florida was a peninsula, not an island as Ponce de Leon had believed. In the fall of 1519, expedition members returning to Jamaica presented Garay with the first known map of the Gulf Coast.
From Florida, Álvarez de Pineda sailed west and south. He passed what are now the states of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. The ships reached Villa Rica, near modern-day Veracruz, Mexico, by August 1519. The settlement had been newly founded by Hernán Cortés of Spain. Cortés was suspicious of Álvarez de Pineda’s expedition and arrested the messengers it had sent. Álvarez de Pineda then sailed his ships north and started a settlement near modern-day Tampico, Mexico. In 1520, however, local Huastec Indians attacked the colony. Álvarez de Pineda and most of the colonists were killed.
