Sebastian Cabot's Río de la Plata Expedition (1526-1530)

Sebastian Cabot’s Río de la Plata expedition of 1526–1530 was a Spanish voyage that set out for the Spice Islands but ended up exploring the great river system of southern South America. Lured by stories of a mountain of silver, Cabot sailed up the Río de la Plata, the Paraná and the Paraguay, and built the fort of Sancti Spiritus, the first Spanish settlement in present-day Argentina. The venture failed in its aims, but it helped fix the name “River of Silver” on the map.

Background

Sebastian Cabot, born in Venice in the 1470s or early 1480s (the date is uncertain), was the son of the Venetian navigator John Cabot, who had sailed for England to North America in 1497 (see John Cabot’s Voyage). He entered Spanish service and in 1518 became pilot major of Spain, responsible for training pilots and keeping the official chart of new discoveries.

After the return of Magellan’s ship Victoria in 1522 (see Magellan-Elcano Expedition), merchants in Seville backed a new trading voyage to the Moluccas along the same route. Charles V appointed Cabot to command it.

The voyage

Cabot sailed from Sanlúcar de Barrameda on 3 April 1526 with four ships and roughly 200 men. On the coast of Brazil he met Europeans left behind by earlier voyages, including survivors of Juan Díaz de Solís’s expedition, whose leader had been killed on the Río de la Plata in 1516. They told of a rich king and a Sierra de la Plata, a range of silver, somewhere inland.

At the island of Santa Catarina the flagship was wrecked. Cabot decided to give up the voyage to Asia and head for the Río de la Plata. Several officers objected, and he left three of them, Martín Méndez, Francisco de Rojas and Miguel de Rodas, marooned on the coast, an act later held against him.

Up the rivers

Early in 1527 the expedition entered the broad estuary of the Río de la Plata. Cabot built a small fort near the mouth of the San Salvador River, in present-day Uruguay, and then sailed up the Paraná. In mid-1527 he built the fort of Sancti Spiritus where the Carcarañá River joins the Paraná, near present-day Puerto Gaboto in Santa Fe province.

From there he sailed further north up the Paraná and into the Paraguay River, trading and fighting with local peoples and collecting pieces of silver and gold. These metals had come down trade routes from the Andes, from the realm of the Inca, which Cabot never reached. Small parties were sent inland; one, under Francisco César, made a journey westward whose route and results remain uncertain and later gave rise to legends of a hidden “City of the Caesars”.

In 1528 Cabot met another Spanish expedition under Diego García de Moguer, which had been sent to explore the same river, and the two leaders argued over who had the right to it.

Collapse and return

In September 1529 Sancti Spiritus was destroyed by an Indigenous attack. With his men reduced by fighting, hunger and disease, Cabot sailed home and reached Spain in the summer of 1530 with only a fraction of his original crews.

He was tried for disobeying his instructions and for the abandonment of his officers, and in 1532 was sentenced to exile in Oran, in North Africa. He was pardoned not long afterwards and restored as pilot major. In 1544 he published a world map that drew on his own knowledge of the Río de la Plata. In 1548 he moved to England, where he promoted voyages to Russia, and he died there around 1557.

Legacy

Cabot found neither a route to Asia nor the mountain of silver. Yet his voyage made the Paraná and Paraguay rivers known to Europeans, and the silver items he brought home helped fix the name Río de la Plata, River of Silver, on the region. The legend of inland silver encouraged later Spanish expeditions, including that of Pedro de Mendoza, which founded the first Buenos Aires in 1536. The actual silver lay in the Andes, where it was found in enormous quantities at Potosí in 1545.

Timeline

• 1526, 3 April: Cabot sails from Sanlúcar de Barrameda.
• 1526, late: The flagship is wrecked at Santa Catarina island, Brazil.
• 1527, early: The expedition enters the Río de la Plata.
• 1527, mid-year: The fort of Sancti Spiritus is built on the Paraná.
• 1528: Cabot explores the Paraguay River and meets Diego García.
• 1529, September: Sancti Spiritus is destroyed.
• 1530, summer: Cabot returns to Spain.
• 1532: Cabot is sentenced to exile, later pardoned.

Why it matters

Cabot’s expedition was the first major European exploration of the Paraná and Paraguay rivers and left the first Spanish settlement in Argentina. It also shows how rumours of wealth could pull even royal expeditions away from their goals, a pattern repeated across the Spanish conquest of the Americas.