Schmidel (Schmidl, Schmidt), Ulrich b. (?) 1510/11; Straubing, Bavaria d. (?) 1581; Regensburg, Bavaria
Lived for eighteen years the life of a conquistador in South America. Schmidel was born of a patrician family, both his father and half-brother serving as mayor and city councilmen of Straubing.
Though almost certainly guaranteed a position in his family’s successful mercantile business, Schmidel chose instead to accompany a Spanish expedition to the Rio de la Plata region of Argentina and Paraguay. His account of travels to, within, and from South America (1534—1554), Warhafftige und liebliche Beschreibung etlicher furnemen In- dianischen Landschafften und Insulen... (True and Lovely Description of Several Fine Indian Territories and Islands), was published in 1567 in Frankfurt.In 1534 Emperor Charles V made Don Pedro de Mendoza viceroy, commissioning him both to claim lands on the east coast of South America surrounding La Plata and to establish three cities therein
Illustration from Ulrich Schmidel's account of his South American travels in the sixteenth century. (Schmidel, Ulrich. Fahrt in die Neue Welt: Die Reise eines Straubingers, der 1534 aufbrach, die Welt zu entdecken und 20 Jahre spater zuruckkam.)
for the Spanish Habsburg crown. Mendoza assembled a flotilla of fourteen ships manned by 2,500 Spaniards and 150 Germans, Dutch, and Saxons. Schmidel signed on to the one ship belonging to Nuremberg financiers Sebastian Neidhart and Jakob Welser. The expedition set off on September 1, 1534, landed near Rio de Janeiro, then proceeded to Rio de la Plata, arriving on January 26, 1535. Here Schmidel helped to found the city of Buenos Aires. Nevertheless, overwhelming attacks by indigenous tribes and ensuing hunger compelled a party of 350, Schmidel among them, to travel up the Rio Parana in search of food. Half of this party starved, the other half returned to Buenos Aires, only to face an onslaught of 23,000 natives from neighboring tribes.
Within a year the original expedition of 2,650 had been reduced to 560 men.Schmidel then accompanied Mendoza’s successor, Juan de Ayolas, to Asuncion (Paraguay) to establish another settlement, this time in the middle of land inhabited by the Guarani tribe. While on an exploratory excursion, Ayolas was killed and Schmidel, under the leadership of Martin Domingo Irala, attempted to gather the remaining Europeans at Asuncion. After extensive travel and conquests along the Parana and Paraguay rivers, and further adventures under Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, Schmidel received a letter from his ailing half-brother in July 1552 requesting that he return home to continue the family line. Arriving at Lisbon in 1553, he made his way to Seville, a shipwreck off of Cadiz having bereft him of the treasure he had plundered in South America, and continued to Antwerp, before finally reaching Straubing. Schmidel married in 1558
and pursued his family’s business, practicing the Protestant faith until the CounterReformation compelled him to relocate to Regensburg. He lived there as a respected citizen until his death. Though married three times and widowed twice, he left no descendants.
Perhaps Schmidel’s most important legacy, however, lies in his travel narrative, which contains descriptions, corroborated by modern ethnographers, of the various tribes—their names, physical appearances, diets, and customs—then occupying the Rio de la Plata region. The Warhafftige und liebliche Beschreibung... was eventually translated into several European languages; Latin (1597), French (1599), English (1625), Dutch (1706), and Spanish (1731). A 1599 edition by Nuremberg printer Levinus Hulsius contained sixteen copper engravings illustrating various episodes and native people treated in the text. In 1889 Valentin Langmantel published the narrative with extensive notes and explanatory apparatus, while the research of Argentinian president, poet, and historian Bartolome Mitre was crucial in South America in bringing recognition to Schmidel.
A bust of the explorer, originally dedicated in 1968, stands today in Buenos Aires and bears the inscription, “The people of Argentina to Germany and Ulrich Schmidel. Straubing—Buenos Aires 1536, first geographer and historian.”Richard John AscArate
See also Argentina; Brazil; Conquista; Staden, Hans; Travel Literature, German-U.S.
References and Further Reading
Bolanos Cardenas, Alvaro Felix. “The Requirements of a Memoir: Ulrich Schmidel’s Account of the Conquest of the River Plate, 1536—54.” Colonial Latin American Review 11, no. 2 (2002): 231-250.
Classen, Albrecht. “Ulrich Schmidel in the Brazilian Jungle: A Sixteenth-Century Travel Account.” Archiv fur das Studium der Neueren Sprachen und Literaturen. 230, no. 2 (1993): 241-260.
Schmidel, Ulrich. The Conquest of the River Plate (1535—1555). I. Voyage of Ulrich Schmidt to the Rivers la Plata and Paraguai. Translated for the Haklyut Society. New York: Burt Franklin, 1964, pp. 1-81