María de Estrada was a woman to arrive in Mexico

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

 with the expedition of Hernán Cortés

Hernán Cortés

Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro, 1st Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca was a Spanish Conquistador who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of mainland Mexico under the rule of the King of Castile in the early 16th century...

 as well as one of the very few women of European descent to take part in and survive the Spanish conquest of Mexico

Spanish conquest of Mexico

The Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire was one of the most important campaigns in the Spanish colonization of the Americas. The invasion began in February 1519 and was acclaimed victorious on August 13, 1521, by a coalition army of Spanish conquistadors and Tlaxcalan warriors led by Hernán Cortés...

.

She is mentioned as the only woman in Cortés's party in the sources of Conquistador

Conquistador

Conquistadors were Spanish soldiers, explorers, and adventurers who brought much of the Americas under the control of Spain in the 15th to 16th centuries, following Europe's discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus in 1492...

 Bernal Díaz del Castillo

Bernal Díaz del Castillo

Bernal Díaz del Castillo was a conquistador, who wrote an eyewitness account of the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards for Hernán Cortés, himself serving as a rodelero under Cortés.-Early life:...

 and Tlaxcallan

Tlaxcala (Nahua state)

Tlaxcala was a pre-Columbian city state of central Mexico.Tlaxcala was a confederation of four altepetl — Ocotelolco, Quiahuiztlan, Tepeticpac and Tizatlan — which each took turns providing a ruler for Tlaxcala as a whole.-History:Tlaxcala was never conquered by the Aztec empire, but was...

 chronicler Diego Muñoz Camargo

Diego Muñoz Camargo

Diego Muñoz Camargo was the author of History of Tlaxcala, an illustrated codex that highlights the religious, cultural, and military history of the Tlaxcalan people.-Life:...

. She also is mentioned by Francisco Cervantes de Salazar

Francisco Cervantes de Salazar

Francisco Cervantes de Salazar was a Spanish man of letters.He was born and raised in Toledo. He first attended Alejo Venegas’s Grammar School and then studied at the University of Salamanca. In 1539 he accompanied Licenciado Pedro Giron to the Low Countries where he met, among other luminaries,...

. Each of these sources describe her as a very bold and warlike woman who "was as good a warrior as any man". She is mentioned as surviving the Noche Triste as well as the Battle of Otumba

Battle of Otumba

- Background :Around the end of March 1519, Hernán Cortés landed with a Spanish conquistador force at Potonchán on the coast of modern-day Mexico. Cortés had been commissioned by Governor Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar of Spanish-controlled Cuba to lead an expedition in the area, which was dominated by...

. The sources disagree about the identity of her husband; some claim him to have been Pedro Sanchéz Farfán  and others Cortés's treasurer Alonso de Estrada

Alonso de Estrada

Alonso de Estrada was a colonial official in New Spain during the period of Hernán Cortés's government, and before the appointment of the first viceroy...

. In the chronicle of Diego Durán

Diego Durán

Diego Durán was a Dominican friar best known for his authorship of one of the earliest Western books on the history and culture of the Aztecs, The History of the Indies of New Spain, a book that was much criticized in his lifetime for helping the "heathen" maintain their culture.Also known as the...

 she is described as being instrumental in the defeat of the Nahua Indians of Hueyapan

Hueyapan

Santo Domingo Hueyapan is a small town in the rural northeastern part of the Mexican state of Morelos, which belongs to the municipality of Tetela del Volcán. It lies at an elevation of ca 2000–2500 metres above sea level on the southern slopes of the active volcano Popocatépetl...

, charging head first and screaming "Santiago!" Some truth may be in this for Cortés gave her an encomienda

Encomienda

The encomienda was a system that was employed mainly by the Spanish crown during the colonization of the Americas to regulate Native American labor....

 in Ocuituco

Ocuituco

Ocuituco is a city in the Mexican state of Morelos.It stands at .The city serves as the municipal seat for the surrounding municipality of the same name.The municipality reported 15,090 inhabitants in the year 2000 census.-External links:...

 near Hueyapan

Hueyapan

Santo Domingo Hueyapan is a small town in the rural northeastern part of the Mexican state of Morelos, which belongs to the municipality of Tetela del Volcán. It lies at an elevation of ca 2000–2500 metres above sea level on the southern slopes of the active volcano Popocatépetl...

 after the conquest. In 1533, when widowed, she filed a petition to the king of Spain to ask for lighter taxation of her lands. Eventually, however, the land originally given her was taken from her heirs entirely and laid directly under the King.

Part of her description is probably exaggerated and twisted, and she has sometimes by historians been confused with Doña Marina

La Malinche

La Malinche , known also as Malintzin, Malinalli or Doña Marina, was a Nahua woman from the Mexican Gulf Coast, who played a role in the Spanish conquest of Mexico, acting as interpreter, advisor, lover and intermediary for Hernán Cortés...

, but it seems reasonable to assume that the varying stories of Lady María Estrada have a core of truth.

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