Alonso de Ojeda's Voyage (1499): How Venezuela Got Its Name

Alonso de Ojeda’s voyage of 1499 was one of the first Spanish expeditions to the Americas not led by Christopher Columbus. Sailing with the cartographer Juan de la Cosa and the Florentine Amerigo Vespucci, Ojeda followed the northern coast of South America from the Guianas to the Guajira Peninsula. On the way the explorers saw villages built on stilts over the water, and the region came to be called Venezuela, “little Venice”.

Background

Columbus’s third voyage of 1498 had reached the Gulf of Paria and found Indigenous people wearing pearls. When his reports and pearl samples reached Spain, the crown’s official in charge of the Indies, Bishop Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, began granting licences to other captains, weakening Columbus’s monopoly.

Alonso de Ojeda, born around 1466 in Cuenca, was a natural choice. He had sailed on Columbus’s second voyage, had a reputation for daring in the fighting on Hispaniola, and enjoyed Fonseca’s patronage. He was given access to Columbus’s charts of the Paria coast.

The voyage

Ojeda left the Bay of Cádiz on 18 May 1499 with four ships. Juan de la Cosa, a Cantabrian navigator who had sailed with Columbus, served as chief pilot, and Amerigo Vespucci joined as a merchant and observer. After a stop in the Canary Islands the fleet crossed the Atlantic and reached the coast of South America, probably near present-day Suriname or Guyana, in June 1499.

The ships then worked north-west along the coast. They passed the mouths of the Essequibo and the Orinoco, entered the Gulf of Paria and reached the pearl island of Margarita. Continuing west, they called at Curaçao, which they named the Island of Giants, and passed Aruba.

In August 1499 the fleet rounded the Paraguaná Peninsula and entered the Gulf of Venezuela and the narrow strait leading to Lake Maracaibo, one of the largest lakes in South America. Here the explorers saw settlements of houses raised on piles above the water, linked by bridges and canoes. Tradition dates the arrival to 24 August, Saint Bartholomew’s day.

The expedition sailed on to Cabo de la Vela on the Guajira Peninsula, in present-day Colombia, before turning north to Hispaniola in September 1499. Vespucci, who seems to have separated from Ojeda with part of the fleet earlier, followed his own course along the coast of Brazil.

How Venezuela got its name

The best-known explanation is that the stilt villages reminded the explorers of Venice, the Italian city built on water, and so they called the place Venezuela, meaning “little Venice”. Vespucci is often credited with the comparison, though no source states this with certainty.

A different early account, by the geographer Martín Fernández de Enciso in 1519, says the name was taken from a local Indigenous settlement called Veneciuela. Both explanations remain in circulation. Stilt houses, known as palafitos, can still be seen today in places such as the Sinamaica Lagoon in western Venezuela.

The name first applied to the Gulf of Venezuela and the surrounding coast. Over time it extended to the Spanish province and, after independence in the nineteenth century, to the whole country.

Return and consequences

On Hispaniola, Ojeda’s men cut brazilwood and quarrelled with Columbus’s officials, who regarded the expedition as trespassing on the Admiral’s rights. Francisco Roldán was sent to confront them. Ojeda eventually sailed for Spain with Indigenous captives to sell as slaves and arrived back in Cádiz in June 1500. Financially, the voyage was disappointing.

Its geographic results were more important. Juan de la Cosa drew on what he had seen for his famous world map of 1500, the earliest surviving map to show the Americas. Vespucci’s later letters, drawing partly on this voyage, helped convince Europeans that a new continent lay across the Atlantic.

Ojeda returned to the coast in 1502 as governor of Coquibacoa, but his settlement there failed. In 1509–1510 he led an expedition to found a colony on the Gulf of Urabá, during which Juan de la Cosa was killed in fighting with Indigenous people. Ojeda was badly wounded and died in poverty in Santo Domingo around 1515.

Timeline

• 1498, August: Columbus reaches the Gulf of Paria and finds pearls.
• 1499, 18 May: Ojeda’s four ships leave the Bay of Cádiz.
• 1499, June: The fleet reaches the coast of the Guianas.
• 1499, August: The expedition enters the Gulf of Venezuela and sees the stilt villages near Lake Maracaibo.
• 1499, September: Ojeda arrives on Hispaniola and clashes with Columbus’s officials.
• 1500, June: The expedition returns to Cádiz.
• 1510: Juan de la Cosa is killed during Ojeda’s Urabá expedition.

Why it matters

Ojeda’s voyage turned Columbus’s brief sighting of the mainland into a long, mapped coastline and showed that the Spanish crown would license other explorers. It carried two men, de la Cosa and Vespucci, who did much to shape the European picture of the New World. And it left a lasting name on the map: Venezuela.