Sancho de Tovar

[1] His father's open support for Afonso V of Portugal in his claim to the Castilian throne made him an enemy of Ferdinand and Isabella I of Castile, and he was convicted of high treason and beheaded around 1480, after a long imprisonment.

He lived in Lisbon and attended the royal court, where he stood out as a gifted musician and poet (Garcia de Resende collected a few of his songs in his famous Cancioneiro Geral).

The Portuguese effort towards maritime expansion was at its peak, and in 1499 Tovar was appointed by the king himself subcaptain of a large fleet led by Pedro Álvares Cabral, made famous by its discovery of Brazil.

He also writes of Sancho's attempt to give wine to the natives, and of their negative reaction to the beverage, and mentions his gift of a boar's tusk to a young Indian [4].

During his stay in there, Sancho improved and expanded the Portuguese fortress of São Caetano, which had been started by Pêro de Anaia in 1505, and organized and led a great number of exploratory missions around the area of present-day Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Madagascar.