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Undeveloped Florida shoreline as seen through the eyes of Ponce De Leon |
My understanding is that Christopher Columbus discovered a couple of the Caribbean Islands, starting with the Bahamas, and then sailed down to Cuba and Hispaniola.
Of course there were already people living on his new found lands, which he originally mistook for India, thus bequeathing the natives with a misnomer that still sticks: Indians.
But no, he never stepped foot in Florida.
More broadly:
Why isn’t the continent called “New India” instead?
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Doesn't Florida look like India on this map? |
In steps Amerigo Vespucci (c. 1454 – 1512).
He took sail seven years after Columbus, was only a visitor (not a captain), and only saw the south American coast … let alone coming anywhere close to Florida,
Somehow it’s his name – not Columbus’s – that made the map, for both the north and the south “new found lands!”
The red area (and beyond) was what Ponce De Leon had in mind when he dubbed the land "La Floride." |
(Had only he landed in Florida he could have grown oranges instead!)
He never found it, but he did name the great peninsula on which we stand, united, as Floridians.
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Reenactment of landing at beach |
The under-reported truth is that Ponce De Leon had a bit of Vespucci in him:
Yes, he only saw a thin sliver of the Florida coast – east and southwest – but it wasn’t the coast or even the peninsula he had in mind when he decreed – “I dub thee Florida” … or however it was in Spanish he said it;
He meant the entire land mass, as far as it stretches:
Or in other words, all of North America.
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Fountain of Youth Archaeological Park St Augustine, Florida |
It has a nice ring to it, and had a cartographer so long ago only penned the map differently, it may very well have been …
The United States of Florida!
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