Pedro de Castaneda (c.1510-c.1570)

Pedro de Castañeda de Nájera, also known as Pedro de Castañeda, was a Spanish chronicler of the mid-16th century, who came from Nájera in northern Spain.

Life and work

He was a member and chronicler of the expedition of the Spanish conquistador Francisco Vásquez de Coronado (1510–1554) through North America. At the time of the organization of the expedition, he was at a Spanish outpost in Culiacán in northwestern Mexico. He was married and had at least eight children. [1]

Relación de la jornada de Cíbola of 1540

Castañeda’s original report, Relación de la jornada de Cíbola compuesta por Pedro de Castañeda de Nácera donde se trata de todas aquellos poblados y ritos, y costumbres, la cual fué el año de 1540 (Report on the journey to Cíbola written by Pedro de Castañeda de Nájera, who reports on all these settlements, rites and customs, in 1540), has been lost, but a copy from 1596[2] is in the Lenox Library in New York City. The transcript of a report on the expeditions of Conquistador Francisco Vásquez de Coronado to conquer the Siete Ciudades de Cíbola (Seven Cities of Cíbola) describes the journey of Coronado and his army through present-day Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, and contains descriptions of the expedition’s encounters with members of the Apache tribes, Navajo, Comanche, and Cheyenne, as well as an early description of the Grand Canyon. [3]

Henri Ternaux-Compans (1807–1864) translated Castañeda’s journey into French under the title Relation du voyage de Cibola entrepris en 1540 par Pédro de Castañeda de Nagera (Paris, 1838). It was translated into English and edited by George Parker Winship (1871–1952).

References

George Parker Winship (editor and translator): The Journey of Coronado, 1540–1542, from the City of Mexico to the Grand Canon of the Colorado and the Buffalo Plains of Texas, Kansas and Nebraska, As Told by Himself and His Followers. New York: A.S. Barnes & Company, 1904 digitized copy (also included in the March of America Facsimile Series 13)

Castañeda de Nágera, Pedro de: Relation du voyage de Cibola, entrepris en 1540; ou l’on traite de toutes les peuplades qui habitent cette contree de leurs murs et coutumes. Bertrand, Paris 1838 (Voyages, relations et mémoires originaux pour servir à l’histoire de la découverte de l’Amérique 9) (Digitalisat)

Frederick Webb Hodge (ed.): “The narrative of the expedition of Coronado, by Pedro de Castañeda”, in: Frederick W. Hodge (ed.): Spanish explorers in the southern United States, 1528–1543: The narrative of Alvar Nuñez Cabeça de Vaca. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York 1907 (Digitalisat)

C. de Mora: Las siete Ciudades de Cíbola: Textos y testimonios de la expedición de Vázquez Coronado. Alfar, Sevilla 1992
Juan Manuel Escudero Baztán: La Relación de la jornada de Cíbola de Pedro Castañeda de Nájera como una poética del fracaso

Source: Wikipedia, The text is available under the Creative-Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license