page_title: Sierra de la Plata
section_title: Pedro de Mendoza
hierarchical_section_title: Sierra de la Plata / Search for Sierra de la Plata / Pedro de Mendoza
caption_attribution_description: Español: Vista de Buenos Aires poco después de su fundación (Pedro de Mendoza) en 1536. English: View of Buenos Aires shortly after its founding by Pedro de Mendoza y Luján in 1536.
context_page_description: The Sierra de la Plata was a mythical source of silver in the interior of South America. The legend began in the early 16th century when castaways from the Juan Díaz de Solís expedition heard indigenous stories of a mountain of silver in an inland region ruled by the so-called White King. The first European to lead an expedition in search of it was the castaway Aleixo Garcia, who crossed nearly the entire continent to reach the Andean altiplano. On his way back to the coast, Garcia died in an ambush by indigenous tribespeople in Paraguay, but survivors brought precious metals back to corroborate their story. The legend inspired other expeditions, all of which ended in failure.
  The Río de la Plata and the modern country of Argentina both take their names from the myth. The legend of the Sierra de la Plata may have been based on the Cerro Rico de Potosí in Bolivia, which was discovered by a Spanish expedition traveling from Peru in 1545.
context_section_description: In 1534, King Charles I authorized Pedro de Mendoza to "conquer and populate the lands and provinces around the Solís River, which some call the Plate". With fourteen ships and some 1,200 men, it was at the time the largest and most important expedition that had left Europe for America.
  In 1536 Pedro de Mendoza founded the port of Santa María de los Buenos Ayres, which was probably located in what is now the Parque Lezama in Buenos Aires. Resources were in short supply to support such a population, and after the Spaniards mistreated the local Querandís, they stopped supplying food to the settlement. Mendoza decided to send out two fleets in search of food: the first, led by his nephew Gonzalo de Mendoza, headed toward Brazil, and the second, led by Juan de Ayolas, went up the River Paraná with three ships and 270 men. Meanwhile, Mendoza ordered his brother Diego to take 300 soldiers and 30 cavalrymen to fight the Querandís. The battle was a failure. Diego de Mendoza was killed, and the Querandís began a long-lasting siege of Buenos Aires. Cut off from supplies, the settlers began to eat their horses and their dead. Finally, the Querandís withdrew, and in a few days, the Juan de Ayolas expedition returned with the news that they had managed to build a fort called Corpus Christi upriver near the modern-day town of Gaboto and had encountered some indigenous people who talked about the Sierra de la Plata. Pedro de Mendoza decided to travel to the fort with Ayolas and some 400 men.
  During the voyage, some 200 men died of sickness and hunger, and once they reached Corpus Christi, Mendoza consulted Cabot's map to find that they were still far from their destination. These major setbacks, along with the syphilis he had contracted, convinced Mendoza to return to Europe after a short stop in Buenos Aires.
  Pedro de Mendoza died on the open sea on June 23, 1537. Juan de Ayolas, who had left Corpus Christi on October 14, 1536 with a fleet of three brigantines and 170 soldiers, inherited his title of adelantado. Meanwhile, Buenos Aires had overcome its famine thanks to provisions Gonzalo de Mendoza brought from Brazil, and was left under the provisional command of Captain Francisco Ruiz Galán, who ordered the first planting of corn with the goal of making the fort self-sustainable.
caption: Santa María de los Buenos Ayres, shortly after its foundation in 1536.
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