The Eighth Hungarian Tribe, 1983 (10. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1983-09-01 / 9. szám
Page 6 THE EIGHTH HUNGARIAN TRIBE September, 1983 HUNGARIAN—AMERICANA-BYPAUL PULITZER THE FIRST HUNGARIAN TO VISIT NORTH AMERICA Who was the first Hungarian to visit North America? The elusive answer to this (intriguing question continues to tickle the curiosity of many Hungarian historians and scholars. Unfortunately, however, their ongoing search for it in archives the world over has yet to result in a definitive conclusion reached in conformity with established guidelines for modem historiography. For this reason, several schools of historical opinion, in rhetorical opposition to each other, have emerged to make it almost impossible to separate factual wheat from fictional chaff. One school of historical opinion, for example, claims that the first Hungarian to step ashore in the New World was a man named “Tyrker”, which meant “Turk” (Török?) in the language of the early Vikings. He must have been a Hungarian, they insist, because the early Magyars were called “Turks” by the Norsemen and because, at that time, the early magyars enjoyed friendly relations with them. The advocates of this theory buttress it further by claiming that “Tyrker” discovered grapes at a site christtened “Vinland” and by referring to that section of the “Heimskringla” (Lives of the Norse Kings) which quotes him as saying “Wines and grapes, I have found. I have come from a land in which wines and grapes are abundant!” Alleged to be the foster-father of Leif Ericson, the Viking explorer, this “small in stature, ugly, but dexterous in all feats man from the South Country” (Pannonia?) was a member of the Norseman’s 35-man crew when he sailed south from Greenland in the year 1,000 A.D. Whether “Tyrker” was really a Hungarian as claimed has yet to be proven beyond the shadow of doubt. Strange as it may seem, however, seven countries, including Hungary and Rumania, claim him as a native son! While claims and counter-claims in regards to the origin of “Tyrker” continue to be orchestrated among rival factions involved, there is no scholarly argument over who was the first Hungarian on record as having visited North America. He was Stephen Parmenius of Buda, or Stephanus Parmenius Budaeous (Budai István). A poet, humanist, and scholar, he was the official chronicler of Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s expedition to the New World in 1583. That “Budai István” did sail with this illfated expedition aboard the British explorer’s flagship, the “Delight”, was confirmed, in writing, by Richard Hakluyt, the British geographer (1552-1616), in his famous “The Principal Navigations, Voiages, and Discoveries of the English Nation”. On August 29, 1583, the “Delight” went dow n in a violent storm off Cape Sable. One hundred members of When Sir Humprey Gilbert claimed Newfoundland for Queen Elizabeth of England in 1583, a witness to the event was Stephen Parmenius of Buda (Budai István).
