Despite being the most famous point of his career — if not the most famous historical instance of the Immortality Seeker trope, period — the story about the Fountain of Youth might have become associated with Ponce de León by honest mistake. It all came when a Spanish teenager, Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda, was shipwrecked in Florida and passed seventeen years as a slave of the Calusa natives before being rescued by a conquistador, who had married his owner's sister by reasons of Altar Diplomacy and could get him freed. Among all the lore Hernando had the chance to learn, there was the story of a nameless conquistador that came in the search of a magical river of youth before being killed by the Calusa, and as the circumstances and dating of the event seemed to fit Ponce de León, Escalante assumed they were one and the same. However, there's no proof that Ponce de León was interested in the legend of the Fountain, at least openly, and given that many other conquistadors landed and died in Florida at the time, nothing indicates this one was him.
What we know for real about his biography starts there. Ponce de León was born in Valladolid in the lower nobility, which got him educated and sent to the court of The Catholic Monarchs as a pageboy, and probably participated in the conquest of the last Muslim bulwark of Granada, capitalizing on the happenstance that one of his relatives, Rodrigo Ponce de León, Duke of Cádiz, was an accomplished general during the conflict. There he personally met Christopher Columbus, who shortly after became known for his discovery of the Americas, and as soon as he heard about it, the young and adventurous Ponce sailed off to the new world, even although he was already wealthy and did not need to seek greener pastures. There is controversy whether he embarked with Columbus in his second voyage in 1493, where they started conquering Hispaniola, or in 1502 with Nicolás de Ovando, who was dispatched with a large fleet that also included characters like Francisco Pizarro and Bartolomé de las Casas (or whether he did both travels). In any case, Ponce de León was deployed there around 1502.
He had his baptism of fire helping suppress a rebellion of Taíno natives, who had revolted since Columbus had disobeyed Queen Isabella's orders and enslaved them to work them to death. Ovando turned out to be only slightly better than Columbus, as he also laid an iron hand over the natives and committed several massacres (take this with a grain of salt, still, because a lot of the info about this comes from Bartolomé de las Casas, who hated Ovando and is generally a very hyperbolic source), and meanwhile Ponce de León got to be appointed governor of a province, where he got quite rich with yuca plantations. There was a royal order Ovando did follow closely, though, it being that of increasing mestizaje or intermarrying between Spaniards and natives, as Isabella was of the opinion that making love was more fun than making war. Ponce de León was himself one of the first to do the deed, marrying a native woman baptized as Leonor and having four children with her.note
Ponce de León had a Canine Companion as famous as himself, Becerrillo, a dog of the mighty Alano Español breed, so loyal and smart that he could differentiate between native allies and enemies during battles, in which he usually killed foes by the dozen (his record was apparently 33 kills in a single showing). He wore canine armor, had better food rations than many soldiers, and even received his own wage, equivalent to that of a crossbowman. Becerrillo was eventually slain in a mission that sounds like it should receive its own movie: he was sent in with the reinforcements against an attack by hostile tribes, during which he ended up helping defend the house of mulatto conquistador Pedro Mexía and his native chieftainess wife Luisa, but the attackers overwhelmed their defenses and killed the tri-racial Battle Couple, and Becerrillo ultimately died by a poisoned arrow in a Heroic Sacrifice to rescue his handler during the retreat. The heartbroken Spaniards hosted a secret funeral for the dog and buried him in order not to dispel native rumors that Becerrillo was a supernatural Hellhound, although he lived on, kind of, in his puppy Leoncico, who was owned by Vasco Núñez de Balboa.
He was later sent to settle the island later known as Puerto Rico, which he accomplished easily by befriending the indigenous chieftain Agüeybaná I. Unfortunately, the presence of gold soon drove many Spaniards to work the natives to death again, and a smallpox plague unwittingly brought by them ravaged the island and killed Agüeybaná, causing a revolt that spiraled into a small but bloody war. Although Ponce de León crushed it, his reputation was ruined and the incident caused him to clash against his new superior, Christopher's brother Diego Columbus, so in order to calm things, King Ferdinand encouraged Ponce de León to simply explore new lands away from Columbus' jurisdiction. Ponce the León took this chance to search for some northern islands he had heard about, and what he found was actually the peninsula of Florida, which he named that way because the day he arrived was the festival of Pascua Florida. Historians are still debating precisely where he landed, or whether he was really the first, as other Spaniards might have also unknowingly contacted the place.
Ponce de León returned to Cuba and then to Puerto Rico, where he found that natives had killed almost everybody and Columbus was using this to undermine him. The explorer then took the trouble to return personally to Spain and talk with King Ferdinand, who received him with honors due to all the knowledge, maps and notes he brought, allowing him to return to Puerto Rico with reinforcements to subject hostile indigenous forces and start settling Florida, but Ferdinand's death and succession by Charles V forced him to return again and made him waste two years. In the end, he managed to return to Florida at the head of a small fleet, but there they were received by the warlike Calusa natives, who killed him with a poisoned arrow just like his late dog. The surname Ponce de León would keep popping out here and there in the conquest of America, but there would not be another with his fame.note
