He was the First Greek in America

                                       

A Greek Conquistador 

and explorer

AFTER the fall of Constantinople in 1453, 
in the hands of the Ottomans many Greeks migrated to European countries. 

Many of them went to Italy, France, Austria, Russia and Spain. 

Most of them managed to prosper in various sectors, such as merchants, artists, scholars, soldiers or even officers in foreign armies. 

Many Greeks migrated to Spain, one of the most famous was El Greco (whose name was Dominikos Theotokopoulos), a great artist and distinguished painter (he is considered as the father of Expressionism). 

But besides El Greco there were others who even served in the Spanish army. Many of those Greek soldiers were mercenaries, or Condottieri, who helped the Spanish against the Ottomans in many battles. Greek soldiers even traveled to the New world in the 16th century, where they served as shipmasters, sailors, soldiers and especially as artillerymen, conquistadors and explorers. Many of those Greeks knew how to manufacture gunpowder and could operate cannons and firearms.

Don Theodoro Griego

theodoro Griego was a Greek explorer and conquistador, he was born in the Aegean and later moved into Spain. 

He then set sailed from the spanish port of Sanlucar de Barrameda and followed Panfilo de Narvaez in his expedition to North America in 1527. 

He was one of the first Greeks to reach the new continent (America) in the modern era. 

The expedition sailed from Cuba in 1527 and reached Florida. Narvaez ordered his men to explore Florida and march further to the north, in 1528 they reached the Apalachee, but Narvaez arrogantly attacked the Indians and destroyed their settlements. 

Soon after they were attacked by the Apalachee warriors 
and they run out of resources. At that difficult moment 
Don Theodoro made 5 rafts, using liquid from pines, wood 
and leather and saved most of his companions. 

Eventually Don Theodoro Griego was killed searching for water in a nearby Indian settlement. Most of the men who participated in the Narvaez expedition were killed, including Narvaez himself and only 4 survived to tell the story. Today a statue has been erected in Florida in the city of Tampa in honor of this great Greek Conquistador and explorer.

Theodore's story was told in 1542 by Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, a Spanish explorer who left for Florida as an officer in an expedition of 300 men, including Theodore.  Only four returned.  Theodore wasn't among them.

The expedition landed on the west coast of Florida in the spring of 1528, according to Cabeza de Vaca's official report of the adventure, which has been translated by Wake Forest University history professor emeritus Cyclone Covey.

Just how close the expedition came to Clearwater is open to debate. Some historians place the landing in the Tampa Bay area. Some accounts even have the Europeans landing in Boca Ciega Bay and making their way east across the Pinellas peninsula to what is now Safety Harbor. Others put the landing as far south as Port Charlotte.

Servos said his study of the historical accounts convinces him that Clearwater is the best place to honor Theodore with a statue.

"He came to Tampa Bay, most likely Clearwater, so I think Clearwater is the best place to put it," Servos said.

In Cabeza de Vaca's history of the expedition, Theodore doesn't make an appearance early on. That's probably a good thing, considering what historians say happened once the Europeans arrived. Upon landing, the commander of the conquistadors, the ruthless Panfilo de Narvaez, claimed the whole area for Spain. A fight broke out, and the Europeans cut off the nose of a local Indian chief, hacked the chief's mother to death and fed parts of her body to Narvaez's pet greyhounds.

Later on and hundreds of miles away, Theodore emerges in the story as a bold and ingenious character.

After disembarking from their ships, the explorers set out over land for northern Florida, where Indians had told them there "was much gold and plenty of everything we wanted," according to Cabeza de Vaca's report to the king of Spain.

By August, the group decided to take to the sea again. Theodore played a key role.

"A Greek, Don Teodoro, made pitch from certain pine resins," Cabeza de Vaca wrote. 
"Even though we had only one carpenter, work proceeded so rapidly from Aug. 4, when it began, that by Sept. 20 five barges, each 22 elbow-lengths (30 to 32 feet long), caulked with palmetto oakum and tarred with pine-pitch, were finished."

In late October, however, Theodore disappeared near Mobile Bay after accompanying two Indians in a search for fresh water.

"That Greek, Doroteo Teodoro, whom I spoke of before, said he would go,"Cabeza de Vaca wrote. "The Governor and others failed to dissuade him. He took along a Negro, and the Indians left two of their number as hostages.
lt was night when the Indians returned, without water in the containers and without the Christians.
When these returning lndians spoke to our two hostages, the latter started to dive into the water; but some of our soldiers held them back in the barge. The canoe sped away, leaving us very confused and dejected over the loss of our comrades."

Twelve years later, according to Covey, soldiers with Hernando de Soto encountered Indians who remembered the Greek and produced a dagger that had belonged to him. Some accounts say the Indians claimed they killed both men. Covey has speculated that Theodore might have gone ashore willingly because he thought, in the long run, it was his best chance to survive.

In describing Theodore's claim to fame, the Panhellenic federation is careful to describe him as the first known Greek to arrive in America after Columbus.

That's an important qualification, said Covey, whose specialties are ancient and colonial history. 
There are archaeological indications of Greek and Greek-speaking people reaching the interior of North America more than a dozen centuries before Columbus, he said.

Some researchers are skeptical of at least one of the discoveries Covey mentioned, but the possibility that pre-modern Greeks reached America doesn't surprise Servos.

"We believe that Ulysses came to America," he said, "because 20 years to get lost in the Mediterranean, that's a lot of years."

Regardless of who came before, Servos said, Theodore should be remembered and honored as a pioneer.

"The history of the Greeks in America," he said, "starts from here."