María de Estrada (perhaps identical with María (or Marina) de la Caballería) was a woman to arrive in
MexicoThe United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
with the expedition of
Hernán CortésHernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro, 1st Marqués del Valle de Oaxaca was a Spanish conquistador who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec empire and brought large portions of mainland Mexico under the King of Castile, in the early 16th century...
as well as the one of the very few women of European descent to take part in and survive the
Spanish conquest of MexicoThe Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire was one of the most important campaigns in the Spanish colonization of the Americas. The invasion began in February 1519 and was acclaimed victorious on August 13, 1521, by a coalition army of Spanish conquistadors and Tlaxcalan warriors led by Hernán Cortés...
.
She is mentioned as the only woman in Cortés's party in the sources of
ConquistadorConquistador is the term widely used to refer to the Spanish soldiers, explorers, and adventurers who brought much of the Americas under the control of Spain in the 15th through the 17th centuries following Europe's discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus in 1492...
Bernal Díaz del CastilloBernal Díaz del Castillo was a conquistador, who wrote an eyewitness account of the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards under Hernán Cortés, himself serving as a rodelero under Cortés. Born in Medina del Campo , he came from a family of little wealth and he himself had received only a minimal...
and
TlaxcallanTlaxcala was a pre-Columbian city state of central Mexico.Tlaxcala was a confederation of four altepetl — Ocotelolco, Quiahuiztlan, Tepeticpac and Tizatlan — which each took turns providing a ruler for Tlaxcala as a whole.- History :Tlaxcala was never conquered by the Aztec empire, but was engaged...
chronicler
Diego Muñoz CamargoDiego Muñoz Camargo was the author of History of Tlaxcala, an illustrated codex that highlights the religious, cultural, and military history of the Tlaxcalan people.-Life:...
. She also is mentioned by
Francisco Cervantes de SalazarFrancisco Cervantes de Salazar was a Spanish man of letters.He was born and raised in Toledo. He first attended Alejo Venegas’s Grammar School and then studied at the University of Salamanca. In 1539 he accompanied Licenciado Pedro Giron to the Low Countries where he met, among other luminaries,...
. Each of these sources describe her as a very bold and warlike woman who "was as good a warrior as any man".
María de Estrada (perhaps identical with María (or Marina) de la Caballería) was a woman to arrive in
MexicoThe United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
with the expedition of
Hernán CortésHernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro, 1st Marqués del Valle de Oaxaca was a Spanish conquistador who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec empire and brought large portions of mainland Mexico under the King of Castile, in the early 16th century...
as well as the one of the very few women of European descent to take part in and survive the
Spanish conquest of MexicoThe Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire was one of the most important campaigns in the Spanish colonization of the Americas. The invasion began in February 1519 and was acclaimed victorious on August 13, 1521, by a coalition army of Spanish conquistadors and Tlaxcalan warriors led by Hernán Cortés...
.
She is mentioned as the only woman in Cortés's party in the sources of
ConquistadorConquistador is the term widely used to refer to the Spanish soldiers, explorers, and adventurers who brought much of the Americas under the control of Spain in the 15th through the 17th centuries following Europe's discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus in 1492...
Bernal Díaz del CastilloBernal Díaz del Castillo was a conquistador, who wrote an eyewitness account of the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards under Hernán Cortés, himself serving as a rodelero under Cortés. Born in Medina del Campo , he came from a family of little wealth and he himself had received only a minimal...
and
TlaxcallanTlaxcala was a pre-Columbian city state of central Mexico.Tlaxcala was a confederation of four altepetl — Ocotelolco, Quiahuiztlan, Tepeticpac and Tizatlan — which each took turns providing a ruler for Tlaxcala as a whole.- History :Tlaxcala was never conquered by the Aztec empire, but was engaged...
chronicler
Diego Muñoz CamargoDiego Muñoz Camargo was the author of History of Tlaxcala, an illustrated codex that highlights the religious, cultural, and military history of the Tlaxcalan people.-Life:...
. She also is mentioned by
Francisco Cervantes de SalazarFrancisco Cervantes de Salazar was a Spanish man of letters.He was born and raised in Toledo. He first attended Alejo Venegas’s Grammar School and then studied at the University of Salamanca. In 1539 he accompanied Licenciado Pedro Giron to the Low Countries where he met, among other luminaries,...
. Each of these sources describe her as a very bold and warlike woman who "was as good a warrior as any man". She is mentioned as surviving the
Noche Triste as well as the
Battle of Otumba- Background :Around the end of March 1519, Hernán Cortés landed with a Spanish conquistador force at Potonchán on the coast of modern-day Mexico. Cortés had been commissioned by Governor Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar of Spanish-controlled Cuba to lead an expedition in the area, which was dominated by...
. The sources disagree about the identity of her husband; some claim him to have been Pedro Sanchéz Farfán and others Cortés's treasurer
Alonso de EstradaAlonso de Estrada was a colonial official in New Spain during the period of Hernán Cortés's government, and before the appointment of the first viceroy...
. In the chronicle of
Diego DuránDiego Durán was a Dominican friar best known for his authorship of one of the earliest Western books on the history and culture of the Aztecs, The History of the Indies of New Spain, a book that was much criticized in his lifetime for helping the "heathen" maintain their culture.Also known as the...
she is described as being instrumental in the defeat of the
NahuaThe Nahuas are a group of indigenous peoples of Mexico. Their language of Uto-Aztecan affiliation is called Nahuatl and consists of many more dialects and variants, a number of which are mutually unintelligible....
Indians of
HueyapanSanto Domingo Hueyapan is a small town in the rural northeastern part of the Mexican state of Morelos, which belongs to the municipality of Tetela del Volcán. It lies at an elevation of ca 2000-2500 metres above sea level on the southern slopes of the active volcano Popocatépetl...
, charging head first and screaming "Santiago!" Some truth may be in this for Cortés gave her an
encomiendaThe encomienda is a trusteeship labor system that was employed by the Spanish crown during the Spanish colonization of the Americas and the Philippines. In the encomienda, the crown granted a person a specified number of natives for whom they were to take responsibility. The receiver of the grant...
in
OcuitucoOcuituco is a city in the Mexican state of Morelos.It stands at .The city serves as the municipal seat for the surrounding municipality of the same name.The municipality reported 15,090 inhabitants in the year 2000 census.-External links:...
near
HueyapanSanto Domingo Hueyapan is a small town in the rural northeastern part of the Mexican state of Morelos, which belongs to the municipality of Tetela del Volcán. It lies at an elevation of ca 2000-2500 metres above sea level on the southern slopes of the active volcano Popocatépetl...
after the conquest. In 1533, when widowed, she filed a petition to the king of Spain to ask for lighter taxation of her lands. Eventually, however, the land originally given her was taken from her heirs entirely and laid directly under the King.
Part of her description is probably exaggerated and twisted, and she has sometimes by historians been confused with
Doña MarinaLa Malinche , known also as Malintzin, Malinali or Doña Marina, was a woman from the Mexican Gulf Coast, who played an active and powerful role in the Spanish conquest of Mexico, acting as interpreter, advisor and intermediary for Hernán Cortés...
, but it seems reasonable to assume that the varying stories of Lady María Estrada have a core of truth.