Juan+Ponce+De+LeonHRHaley+Rolland

Welcome to Juan Ponce de Leon's journal.

The reason why Juan Ponce de Leon ever wanted to be a sailor was because he wanted to find kingdoms of gold. Now the country that would ever make this happen was Spain. The same country that helped Columbus be a sailor also. In that case, for Juan Ponce de Leon's first journey was with Columbus in 1492.On Juan's second's journey he went to Hispaniola with Columbus again. While Juan was here he heard of the neighbouring island of Buriquien ( Porto Rico) that had very weathly Indians. Since he wanted to go so bad to Buriquien he asked and obtained permissian to visit in 1508. While he was here he discovered lots of rich treasures that he could bring back to Spain. Because he did this work he was prononcenced Governor of Buriquien. Later on he was removed from the office. Now at this time stories of Eastern Asia were being told of famous spring waters that you could drink. Juan also herd that who ever drank from the fountain would never grow old.Then the Indians told the Spaniards about this and the Spaniards got the idea that this fountain was sitauted on an island called Bimini, one of the islands in the Bahamas. On March of 1513 Juan planned an expedition to find the fountain which he thought was on Bimini.

Later on he landed on which is now Florida. But Juan never realized that he was actually in North America. Juan thought that he had landed on an island, thats why he didn't know he was in North America. Now Juan decided to call it Florida because he saw so many flowers there ( florida in Spanish means flowery). Also Juan was the first European to ever explore Florida so then Europe new that Florida existed, which is now North America so he became very famous for that in history. He decided that he wanted this land and so the next day he claimed it for the King of Spain. After all this happened he sailed through the Florida keys and Cuba but found nothing. Since he had no luck finding anything he decided he would start heading back home to Spain.

A couple a years later after going back to Spain he decided to go back out for another voyage to Bimini in Febrary of 1521. This time they landed on the west coast of Florida. But this time when they went on the shore the encountered a large group of Native Americans. All of these feirce Indians had poison arrows that they were shooting at Juan and all of his men. One of the Native Americans shoot Juan in the thigh. The poison started to spread very fast through Juan's body. All of his crew men got him onto the boat as fast as possible. They brought him to Cube were he was nursed for a long. Then sadly in July of 1521 Juan died from his horrible wounds.

This is a picture of Juan's route

Timeline - Haley