The Corte Real Brothers (1500-1503)
Wytfliet, Corneille (ca1599-1607). Histoire universelle des Indes occidentales [...]. Dovay: Francois Fabri, 1607.
In 1500, spurred on, no doubt, by the results of John Cabot's first voyage, King Manuel I of Portugal granted to Gaspar Corte Real the privilege of discovering islands and land and deriving benefits from them. Gaspar, a son of the governor of Terceira (in the Azores), set sail in the spring of the same year and found some land in the northwest Atlantic which he called "Terra Verde" because the land "is very cool and has big trees." In May 1501 Gaspar undertook a second voyage with three ships, only two of which returned safely, bringing back, against their will, about 50 Natives. The third ship, with Gaspar himself on board, never reappeared.
In 1502 Miguel Corte Real sailed from Lisbon in search of his brother; he did not return either. The following year Vasco Añes Corte Real sailed in turn in search of his two missing brothers; he returned without having found a trace of them or of their ships.
It is impossible to reconstruct the exact itinerary of the Corte Real voyages, but it is agreed that they reached the shores of Greenland, Labrador and Newfoundland. After finding these inhospitable lands, Portuguese explorers lost interest in that region.
Nevertheless, the Corte Real voyages provided Europe with the first ethnographic report on North American Natives, thanks to the Indians of North America brought back to Portugal in 1501. "I have seen, touched and examined them", wrote a contemporary. Portuguese fishermen also benefited a great deal from the Corte Real explorations. Their activity on the Newfoundland banks developed at such a rate that from 1506 on Portugal imposed a tax on codfish from the region.
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