Juan Ponce de León, born in Santervás de Campos, Valladolid, Spain, around 1474, was a Spanish explorer and conquistador. Of noble birth, he served in the Spanish military from a young age and first came to the Americas as a "gentleman volunteer" with Christopher Columbus's second expedition in 1493.

By the early 1500s, Ponce de León was a top military official in the colonial government of Hispaniola, where he helped suppress a rebellion of the native Taíno people.