Perhaps the history of the western hemisphere has never furnished a more
wonderful example of the self-made man than may be found in the person
of Francisco Pizarro, a gentleman who came to America about 1510,
intending to grow up with the country.
Mr. Pizarro was born at Truxillo, Spain, about 1471. His father was a
Spanish colonel of foot and his mother was a peasant girl who admired
and respected the dashing colonel very much, but felt that she had
scruples about marriage, and so, although years afterward Francisco
tried his best to make a match between his father and mother, they were
never married. It is said that this embittered his whole life. None but
those who have experienced it can fully realize what it is to have a
thankless parent.
Pizarro's mother's name was Estramadura. This was her maiden name. It
was a name which seemed to harmonize well with her rich, pickled-olive
complexion and so she retained it all her life. Her son did not have
many early advantages, for he was neglected by his mother and allowed to
grow up a swineherd, and it is even said that he was suckled by swine in
his infancy while his giddy mother joined in the mad whirl at the
skating-rink. We can hardly imagine anything more pitiable than the
condition of a little child left to rustle for nourishment among the
black-and-tan hogs of Spain while his father played old sledge on the
frontier in the regular army and his mother stood on her Spanish head
and wrote her cigar-box name in the atmosphere at the rink.
Poor little Pizarro had none of the modern advantages, therefore, and
his education was extremely crude. The historian says that he grew up a
bold, ignorant, and brutal man. He came to what was then called Spanish
America at the age of 39 years and assisted Mr. Balboa in discovering
the Pacific ocean. Having heard of the existence of Peru with all its
wealth, Pizarro secured a band of self-made men like himself and lit out
for that province for the purpose of conquering it if he liked it and
bringing home some solid silver teapots and gold-lined card-receivers.
He was engaged in gathering this line of goods and working them off on
the pawnbroker for twenty-one years, during which time he did not get
killed, but continued to enjoy a reasonable degree of health and
strength.
Although Peru at that time was quite densely populated with an
industrious and wealthy class of natives, Pizarro subdued her with 110
foot soldiers armed with old-fashioned muskets that had these full-blown
barrels, with muzzles on them like the business end of a tuba horn,
sixty-seven mounted men, and two toy cannon loaded with carpet-tacks.
With no education, and, what was still harder to bear, the inner
consciousness that his parents were plain, common, every-day people
whose position in life would not advance him in the estimation of the
Peruvians, he battled on. His efforts were crowned with success,
insomuch that at the close of the year 1532 peace was declared and he
could breathe the free air once more without fear of getting a bronze
arrow-head mixed up with his kidneys when his back was turned. "For the
first time in two years," says the historian, "Pizarro was able to take
off his tin helmet and his sheet-iron corset at night when he lay down
to rest, or undismayed to go forth bareheaded and wearing only his
crinkled seersucker coat and a pair of sandals at the twilight hour and
till midnight wander alone amid the famous guano groves of Peru."
Such is the history of a man who never even knew how to write his own
name. He won fame for himself and great wealth without an education or a
long, dark-blue lineage. Pizarro was like Job. You know, we sometimes
sing:
Oh, Job, he was a fine young lad,
Sing glory hallelujah.
His heart was good but his blood was bad,
Sing glory hallelujah.
So Pizarro could not brag on his blood and his education was not
classical. He could not write his name, though he tried faithfully for
many years. Day after day during the campaign, and late into the night,
when the yaller dogs of Lima came forth with their Peruvian bark, he
would get his orderly sergeant to set him the copy:
"Paul may plant and Apollinaris water, but it is God that giveth the
increase."
Then Pizarro would bring out his writing material and his tongue and try
to write, but he never could do it. His was not a studious mind. It was
more on the knock-down-and-drag-out order.
Pizarro was made a marquis in after years. He was also made a corpse. He
acquired the latter position toward the close of his life. He, at one
time, married the inca's daughter and founded a long line of grandees,
marquises, and macaroni sculptors, whose names may be found on the
covers of imported cigar boxes and in the topmost tier of the
wrought-iron resorts in our best penitentiaries.
Pizarro lived a very busy life during the conquest, some days killing as
many as seventy and eighty Peruvians between sun and sun. But death at
last crooked his finger at the marquis and he slept. We all brag and
blow our horn here for a few brief years, it is true, but when the grim
reaper with his new and automatic twine-binder comes along he gathers us
in; the weak and the strong, the ignorant and the educated, the plain
and the beautiful, the young and the old, those who have just sniffed
the sweet and dew-laden air of life's morning and those who are footsore
and weary and waiting--all alike must bow low to the sickle that goes on
cutting closer and closer to us even when we sleep.
Had Pizarro thought more about this matter, he would have been ahead
to-day.
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