Francisco de Orellana
Francisco de Orellana made the first descent of the Amazon and gave the river its name. Born in Trujillo in Extremadura around 1511, a kinsman of the Pizarros, he went to the Indies as a teenager, fought in Peru, lost an eye, and became governor of Guayaquil. In 1541 he joined Gonzalo Pizarro's expedition east from Quito to find the land of cinnamon and El Dorado. The party of some 220 Spaniards and thousands of indigenous porters crossed the Andes into the rainforest and was starving within months. Pizarro sent Orellana ahead with about fifty men in a brigantine to find food and return. The current made returning impossible, and Orellana continued downstream, an act Pizarro afterwards denounced as desertion and which a court later cleared. The voyage lasted from February to August 1542 and covered some 4,800 kilometres to the Atlantic. They built a second boat from the forest, survived on roots and boiled leather, and were attacked repeatedly by riverside peoples. The friar Gaspar de Carvajal kept a journal describing large settlements, roads and pottery along the banks — evidence of dense populations that later travellers did not find, and which archaeology has increasingly supported, the populations having collapsed from disease. He also recorded a battle with warriors who included women, which the Spanish likened to the Amazons of Greek myth. The name attached to the river. Orellana reached Spain, was granted the right to return and govern the region, and sailed in 1545 with four ships in poor order. The expedition disintegrated, and he died of illness on the river in 1546.
- Lived: 1511 CE – 1546 CE
- Nationality: Spanish
- Roles: explorer, conquistador
