Amerigo Vespucci

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The biography of Amerigo Vespucci (1451-1512), the Italian explorer whose discoveries led to the continent of America being named after him. Amerigo Vespucci made four voyages during which he discovered a lot of the coastline and rivers of South, Central and North America. The first of Amerigo's voyages has been disputed since he first described it, because it meant that Amerigo Vespucci had reached the mainland of America before Christopher Columbus. So instead of the continent of America being named after Columbus, it came to be named America after Amerigo. Often out of resentment at the lessening of Columbus's achievements, allegations have persisted for centuries that Amerigo or somebody else has either fabricated much of what was described of his voyages, or has been mistaken in what was written. Amerigo saw peoples, plants and animals never seen before by Europeans. His crew found the bird song so melodious, and the trees so beautiful and sweet smelling, that they imagined themselves in a terrestrial paradise. His voyages brought him in to contact with thousands of naked natives, who met with Amerigo's crew with anything from a warm and curious welcome to vicious warfare. He described some of the natives as being lascivious beyond measure, especially the women, and that the men took as many wives as they pleased, often marrying their mothers or their sisters. Amerigo wrote that the natives had neither laws nor religion. Many of them were cannibals, some of whom smoked the meat of their victims before eating it. Even some of Amerigo's own men were killed by being pulled to pieces, before being eaten in view of the rest of the crew. Included are all of the first hand accounts of the four voyages, detailed in letters written by Amerigo Vespucci to his friend Pietro Soderini who was Gonfaloniere of the Republic of Florence, and to Lorenzo di Piero Francesco de Medici, who was an Italian banker and politician.