First Voyage To Venezuela
On returning to Spain, Ojeda was commissioned by the Catholic Monarchs, without the permission of Columbus, to sail for America again, which he did on 18 May 1499 with three caravels. He travelled with the pilot and cartographer Juan de la Cosa and the Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci. This was the first of a series of what have become known as the "minor journeys" or "Andalusian journeys" that were made to the New World.
On leaving Spain the flotilla sailed along the west coast of Africa to Cape Verde before taking the same route that Columbus had used a year before on his third voyage. After making landfall Vespucio decided to separate from the flotilla and he sailed south towards Brazil. The main flotilla arrived at the mouths of the rivers Essequibo and Orinoco in the Gulf of Paria. It also visited the peninsulas of Paira and Araya, the islands of Trinidad and Margarita and travelled along the continental coast, always in search of a passage towards India. The flotilla then sailed along the Paraguaná Peninsula and sighted the island of Curacao, which was named Giants Island as the indigenous people that were seen were thought to be giants. During the same journey, he constructed a ship and visited the islands of Aruba and the Islas Los Frailes archipelago.
During the voyage along the Paraguaná Peninsula the flotilla entered into a gulf (Gulf of Venezuela) where there were villages of the Wayuu people with palafito houses built over the water and supported on stilts made from tree trunks. These villages are said to have reminded Amerigo Vespucci of the city of Venice, (Italian: Venezia), and so the area was given the name Venezuela meaning Little Venice. (However, according to Martín Fernández de Enciso, who supported Ojeda's 1509 expedition, they found a local population calling themselves the Veneciuela, so "Venezuela" may derive from the local term.) The flotilla arrived at the entrance to Lake Maracaibo on 24 August 1499. The lake was originally named after Saint Bartholomew as this was his saints day. Ojeda also reached Cabo de la Vela, on the Guajira Peninsula, which he named Coquibacoa.
A few days later the expedition left Cabo de la Vela for Hispaniola with some pearls obtained in Paria, a little gold and a number of slaves. The scarcity of goods and slaves resulted in a poor economic return for investors in the expedition. However, the importance of the voyage comes from the fact that it was the first detailed reconnaissance of the coast of Venezuela and that Spanish explorers carried it out. This means that Ojeda is credited with being the first European to have visited Venezuela. The expedition also gave Juan de la Cosa the chance to draw the first known map of the area now known as Venezuela, as well as being possibly the first journey that Vespucio made to the New World.
However, when the expedition arrived in Hispaniola on 5 September the followers of Christopher Columbus were angry because they considered that Ojeda was infringing upon Columbus’ exploring privileges. This resulted in brawls and fights between both groups, which left a number of dead and wounded. Ojeda took many captives back to Spain whom he sold as slaves. Even so the voyage was not financially successful, netting some fifteen thousand maravedis in profit to be divided among the fifty-five crewmembers surviving from the original three hundred. Note, that since forty maravedis per day was an average wage for skilled labour at this time, they could have made more money staying at home. Returning on the heels of Peralonso Nino's smaller but far more lucrative voyage magnified this disappointment. The date of return is disputed: it is usually stated that Ojeda returned in June 1500 but the historian Demetrio Ramos has suggested the earlier date of November 1499.
Read more about this topic: Alonso De Ojeda