The Arrival Of The Spanish
On September 18, 1502, on his fourth and last voyage to the Americas, Columbus sighted Costa Rica, and four years later King Ferdinand of Spain despatched Diego de Nicuesa to govern what would become Costa Rica. From the start his mission was beset by hardship, beginning when their ship ran aground on the coast of Panama. Forced as a result to walk up the Caribbean shore, the expedition met native people who, unlike those who had welcomed Columbus tentatively but politely with their shows of gold, instead burned their crops rather than submit to the authority of the Spanish. This, together with the impenetrable jungles - and the creatures who lived in them - and tropical diseases, forced the expedition to turn back. Next came Gil Gonzalez in 1521-22, who sailed from Panama, where Spanish settlements had already been established, up the Pacific coast, which offered safer anchorages. The indigenous peoples, meanwhile, began a campaign of resistance that was to last nearly thirty years, employing guerrilla tactics, full-scale flight, infanticide, attacks on colonist settlements and burning their own villages. There were massacres, defeats and submissions on both sides, but by 1540 Costa Rica was officially a Royal Province of Spain, and a decade later the Conquest was more or less complete.
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