CHAPTER I.

Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was

produced from images available at The Internet Archive)

THE GILDED MAN

(EL DORADO)

AND OTHER PICTURES OF THE SPANISH

OCCUPANCY OF AMERICA

BY

A. F. BANDELIER

AUTHOR OF MEXICO, THE PUEBLOS OF PECOS, ETC.

[Illustration: colophon]

NEW YORK

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

1893

COPYRIGHT, 1893,

BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.

PUBLISHERS’ NOTE.

As compared with the peopling of our Atlantic seaboard, the first

explorations of our Southwest by a white race have received

comparatively slight attention, the minor consequences of the latter,

and the inaccessibility of the early Spanish records, being the

sufficiently obvious causes which have combined to prevent minute and

exhaustive studies until within the past few years.

Dramatic and intensely interesting conditions have been revealed as Mr.

Bandelier--whose work under the auspices of the Archæological Institute

of America and on the Hemenway Survey has entitled him to stand first as

the documentary historian of this region, and also to rank as the most

exhaustive of its explorers--has brought the facts of this long-hidden

history once more to the light. It is the history of a search for the

Golden Fleece, which was full of strange and romantic episodes; a

history of the progress of the cross and the sword, which was

accompanied by deeds of superhuman endurance, dauntless courage, and a

pitiless bigotry and ravening cruelty that drove even the gentle Pueblos

to revolt, and to the attempted destruction and concealment of all

traces of their conquerors. The Southwest is the land of romantic

history, albeit the history is often dark and bloody, and the pictures

of Spanish exploration and domination which Mr. Bandelier presents in

this volume are of profound interest. The legends of the mysterious

Seven Cities of Cibola, and of the elusive Gran Quivira, are set forth

clothed in no other romantic garb than that due to the truth ascertained

by a learned explorer and archæologist; but the bare truth is so strange

and moving that it has needed no adornment. Directly from the records we

have the final facts in the after-life of one of La Salle’s murderers.

In the true story of El Dorado--that is to say, The Gilded Man--there is

settled definitely a matter that has undergone indeterminate dispute

through three hundred years. These several papers, with the others here

presented, selected from the records of Spanish conquest on both

continents of America, do not constitute a continuous nor a complete

history. Each, however, is complete in itself; each probably

crystallizes the subject that it embraces; and the interest and

historical value of the collection as a whole make it a necessary part

of every library in which American history is adequately represented.

Owing to Mr. Bandelier’s absence in Peru while this volume was passing

through the press, he has been unable to revise the proofs--a duty which

Mrs. Thomas A. Janvier, utilizing her familiarity with Mexican and

Spanish historical literature, very obligingly has performed in his

behalf. In accordance with her wish we add that to the inability of the

author to give his work this final revision must be attributed any

errors which may be found in the text.

D. APPLETON & CO.

CONTENTS.

THE GILDED MAN: PAGE

I.--CUNDINAMARCA 1

II.--META 31

III.--OMAGUA 56

IV.--THE EXPEDITION OF URSUA AND AGUIRRE 87

CIBOLA:

INTRODUCTION 111

I.--THE AMAZONS 113

II.--THE SEVEN CITIES 125

III.--FRANCISCO VASQUEZ CORONADO 163

IV.--THE NEW MEXICAN PUEBLOS 193

V.--QUIVIRA 223

THE MASSACRE OF CHOLULA (1519) 258

THE AGE OF THE CITY OF SANTA FÉ 282

JEAN L’ARCHÉVÈQUE 289

THE GILDED MAN.

CHAPTER I.

CUNDINAMARCA.

While the early Spanish adventurers in America are justly charged with

neglecting the true interests of colonization in their excessive greed

for treasure, and thereby bringing harm to those parts of the Western

Continent which they entered, it cannot be denied that their

irrepressible seeking for the precious metals contributed directly to an

earlier knowledge and a more rapid settlement of the country. The

Spaniards’ thirst for gold led them into adventures which excite

admiration and wonder as expressions of manly energy, while they offer

the saddest pictures from the point of view of morals.

In every age gold has presented one of the strongest means of enticing

men from their homes to remote lands, and of promoting trade between

distant regions and the settlement of previously uninhabited districts.

We have received from the earliest antiquity the stories of the voyage

of the Argonauts, of the expedition of Hercules after the golden apples

of the Hesperides, and of the settlement of the Phœnicians in Spain, the

gold of which they carried to the Syrian coast. For gold the Semitic

navigators sailed from the Red Sea to Tarshish and Ophir.[1]

Portuguese seamen as early as the middle of the fifteenth century

brought gold from the west coast of Africa; in order to find a sea-route

to the gold-lands of India, Vasco da Gama sailed around the Cape of Good

Hope; and in order to obtain a shorter route from Spain to India

Christopher Columbus ventured out upon the Atlantic Ocean and there

reached the new gold-land, America.

On Thursday, October 11, 1492, Columbus landed upon Watling Island, or

Guanahani, one of the Bahama group, and on Saturday, the 13th, he wrote:

“Many of these people, all men, came from the shore, ... and I was

anxious to learn whether they had gold. I saw also that some of them

wore little pieces of gold in their perforated noses. I learned by signs

that there was a king in the south, or south of the island, who owned

many vessels filled with gold.”[2]

This was the first trace of gold which the Europeans found in America.

Cuba, where the Admiral next landed, afforded him no gold, but he found

the precious metal so abundant in Hispaniola (Santo Domingo, or Hayti)

that he was able, after he returned, to write from Lisbon to his

sovereigns, March 14, 1493: “To make a short story of the profits of

this voyage, I promise, with such small helps as our invincible

Majesties may afford me, to furnish them all the gold they need.”

Hispaniola continued till the first decade of the sixteenth century to

be the seat of gold production in the newly discovered western land. The

consequences of this gold-seeking to the unhappy natives are well known,

and need not be dwelt upon. The operations were continued on this island

for only a very short time. As a result of the fearfully rapid

disappearance of the aborigines, the supply of laborers began to fail,

and the mines fell into disuse, although, according to Herrera,[3] they

furnished to the mother-country, Spain, down to the discovery of Mexico,

five hundred thousand ducats in gold.

The Admiral saw the mainland of South America for the first time on his

third voyage, at Punta de Icacos, Trinidad, July 31, 1498, and found

evidences of gold on the coast of Venezuela. The expedition of Ojeda in

1499 and 1500, although it sailed along the whole northern coast to New

Granada, yielded only a small return, for after the largest pearls and

gold pieces were turned into the royal treasury only five hundred ducats

were left to be divided among one hundred and fifty sharers. A few

months before Ojeda, an expedition had returned to Spain from the same

region which had attained considerable material results, notwithstanding

the small means with which it had been undertaken. Christoval Guerra and

Pero Alonzo Nino, with a poor caravel of fifty tons and thirty-three

men, had crossed the ocean to Venezuela and sailed along its coast from

bay to bay, trading and bartering with the natives, and had thus

acquired much gold and more than one hundred and fifty marks’ worth of

pearls. They brought the report that while gold-dust was rare in the

eastern part of the northern coast of South America, the metal was more

abundant the farther west they went. When in 1500 Rodrigo de Bastidas of

Santa Marta discovered the snow-covered foot-hills of the Cordilleras,

his first thought might well have been that the noble metal which the

warlike Indians of the coast wore so abundantly as a decoration was

derived from those distant heights.[4]

While Ojeda was vainly trying to found a settlement near Maracaybo, the

great Admiral was industriously preparing for a new voyage of discovery.

He sailed in 1502, and on the 17th of August of that year he landed,

after meeting much tempestuous weather, at Truxillo in Honduras. Sailing

along the Mosquito Coast, beaten day and night by severe storms,

Columbus reached Porto Bello and Chiriqui. Gold was found in quantities

at Chiriqui and Veragua, in the vicinity of the famous mines of

Tisingal, which the French filibuster Ravenau de Lussan mentioned as

late as 1698.[5] The various efforts of the Spanish to plant colonies on

the Isthmus and in western New Granada[6] had only insignificant results

till Vasco Nuñez de Balboa in 1511 assumed the direction of the colony

in Darien, with a firm hand, but without any higher right, and with

great sagacity immediately brought about closer relations with the

surrounding Indian tribes. The tribe of Dabaybe on the Rio Atrato, who

had many ornaments of gold, pointed to the west and south as the regions

from which this gold came. Balboa, following the directions of the

Indians, who hoped to get rid of their distrusted guests and send them

to their nearest enemies, reached the coast of the Pacific Ocean on the

25th of September, 1543. There he seems to have heard a report[7] of a

wealthy tribe which lived on the seacoast far to the south and used

large sheep as beasts of burden. From this time forward the attention of

the Spaniards was directed to the countries south of the Isthmus.[8]

Prescott says, in his “Conquest of Peru,” that Balboa learned in this

way of the riches of that kingdom. His authorities are Herrera, who

says: “And this was the second report which Vasco Nuñez received of the

condition and wealth of Peru;”[9] and the later Quintana. Pascual de

Andagoya, who went in 1522 as far as Punta de Pinas, on the western

coast of New Granada, says: “He had received there exact accounts

through traders and chiefs concerning the whole coast to Cuzco.”[10]

Still, it may be doubtful whether this notice does not refer to the

civilized tribes of central New Granada, who carried their salt over the

beaten mountain paths to the cannibal inhabitants of the Cauca Valley

and received gold in exchange for it. Without forgetting that the llama

was never used as a beast of burden in New Granada, the supposition that

accounts of Peru had reached the Isthmus, notwithstanding the great

distance, involves nothing impossible. Products of nature and art, and

reports of conditions and events in single countries, are alike carried

to great distances through war and trade.

Although languages and dialects were separated from one another by

uninhabited neutral regions, prisoners of war could tell of what was

going on at their homes; the booty would include a variety of strange

objects; and traders traversed the country in the face of numerous

dangers, visited the enemy’s markets, and carried their goods to them,

with many novelties. This process was repeated from tribe to tribe; and

in that way the products of one half of the continent passed, often in

single objects, to the other half, and with them accounts of far-off

regions, though changed and distorted by time and distance, into remote

quarters.

The centers of this primitive trade were among those tribes which, being

the most civilized, had the largest number of wants and the most

abundant productions. They were the agricultural tribes, the “village

Indians” of the higher races. These, although in America they never

lived in a gold-bearing country, accumulated the metallic treasures of

the lands around them, acquiring them by means of successful wars, or

through an active and extensive trade. But the Spaniards, who had no

taste for work, preferring chivalrous robbery, sought first the centres

of trade and the treasure already laid up in them. The conquest of

Mexico gave them evidence of the existence of such a centre in the

central part of the Western Continent; but concerning South America

there were only rumors and vague guesses.

Excepting the colonies on the Isthmus of Darien and at Panamá, the

Spanish settlements in New Granada and Venezuela made little progress.

Panamá grew vigorously; ships sailed thence southward to the Pearl

Islands and to the west coast of New Granada. The whole western slope of

the Andes, from the Rio Atrato southward, the provinces of Antioquia and

Cauca, were very rich in gold. But they were inhabited by savage and

warlike tribes addicted to a horrible cannibalism, whose villages were

rarely situated upon the coast, while access to them by land from Panamá

was attended with great difficulties. The Spaniards on the western side

of South America were therefore involuntarily led into making coast

voyages, which in the course of time took them to Peru.

The Spanish enterprises in Venezuela, after the pearl fisheries on the

island of Margarita were organized, were limited to making single

landings, the chief purpose of which was barter, and especially

man-stealing. This practice depopulated the coast, and embittered the

natives to such a degree that they became dangerous enemies to all

attempts at permanent colonization. By them the well-intended effort of

the famous lieutenant Las Casas to found a colony at Cumaná was defeated

with bloodshed in the year 1521. Only in Coro, on the narrow, arid

isthmus that connects the peninsula of Paraguana with the country around

Lake Maracaybo, Juan de Ampues succeeded in 1527, with seventy men, in

founding a colony and establishing friendly relations with the Coquetìos

Indians around him.

The Spaniards had by their predatory expeditions excited the resentment

of the Indians along the northern coast of New Granada, and those

tribes, populous and rich in treasures accumulated by their trade with

the interior, but little civilized, offered them a vigorous resistance.

Their poisoned arrows were formidable weapons, and the thick woods gave

them secure hiding-places and natural fortifications. Rodrigo de

Bastidas, having founded a settlement at Santa Marta in 1525, returned

to San Domingo in consequence of an outbreak among his men. His

successors, Palomino, Badillo, and Heredia, tried without success to

overcome the gold-rich tribes of northern New Granada. They could

advance no farther than the valley of La Ramada. Palomino was drowned,

and a bitter quarrel arose between Heredia and Badillo, the adjustment

of which was left to the Emperor Charles V. Without regarding the claims

of the two candidates, the Spanish Government appointed Garcia de Lerma

governor of Santa Marta, with a new military force. At the same time the

Emperor leased the Province of Venezuela, extending from Cape de la Vela

on the west to Maracapanna, now Piritú, on the east, to the house of

Bartholomäus Welser & Co., of Augsburg, and in 1529 Ambrosius Dalfinger

and Bartholomäus Seyler landed at Coro with four hundred men, and took

possession of the post for “M. M. H. H. Welser.” Ampues had to yield,

and the Germans became lessees of a large part of northern South

America. They found the colony of Coro prospering, and the Indians in

the neighborhood friendly. A story was current among these Indians of a

tribe dwelling in the mountains to the south with whom gold was so

abundant that they powdered the whole body of their chief with it. This

was the legend of “the gilded man”--_el hombre dorado_, or more briefly,

_el dorado_, “the gilded.” The story was based on a fact: a chieftain

who was gilded for a certain ceremonial occasion once really existed, on

the table-land of Bogotá, in the province of Cundinamarca, in the heart

of New Granada.

According to Lucas Fernandez Piedrahita, Bishop of Panamá[11] the

district of Cundinamarca included nearly all eastern and central New

Granada. The eastern Cordilleras bounded it on the east, it extended on

the north to the Rio Cesar and the region of Lake Maracaybo, on the west

to the Rio Magdalena, and on the south to Reyva. But the heart of the

district, Cundinamarca, in its strictest sense, was the high table-land

of Bogotá, once the home of “the _dorado_.” “This table-land,” says

Alexander von Humboldt, in his “_Vues des Cordillères et Monuments

indigènes_” (Chute de Tequendama), on which the city of Santa Fé is

situated, “has some similarity to the plateau that encloses the Mexican

lakes. Both lie higher than the convent of St. Bernard; the former is

2660 metres and the latter 2277 metres above the level of the sea. The

Valley of Mexico, surrounded by a circular wall of porphyritic

mountains, was covered in the central part with water, for before the

Europeans dug the canal of Huehuetoca the numerous mountain streams that

fell into the valley had no outlet from it. The table-land of Bogotá is

likewise surrounded by high mountains, while the perfect evenness of the

level, the geological constitution of the ground, and the form of the

rocks of Suba and Facatativa, which rise like islands from the midst of

the savannas, all suggest the existence of a former lake-basin. The

stream of Funza, commonly called the Rio de Bogotá, has forced a channel

for itself through the mountains southwest of Santa Fé. It issues from

the valley at the estate of Tequendama, falling through a narrow opening

into a cañon which descends to the valley of the Magdalena. If this

opening, the only outlet the valley of Bogotá has, were closed, the

fertile plain would gradually be converted into a lake like that of the

Mexican plateau.”

On this high plain, whose even, mild climate permitted the cultivation

of the grains of the temperate zone, lived, in small communities,

according to their several dialects, the agricultural village Indians,

the Muysca. Isolated by nature, for the highland that girt them on every

side could be reached only through narrow ravines, they were entirely

surrounded by savage cannibal tribes. Such were the Panches west of

Bogotá, and in the north the semi-nomadic kindred tribes to the Muysca,

the Musos and Colimas. Engaged in constant war with one another, the

Muysca lived in hereditary enmity with their neighbors. While the

Panches ate with relish the bodies of fallen Muysca, the latter brought

the heads of slain Panches as trophies to their homes. Yet these

hostilities did not prevent an active reciprocity of trade. The Muysca

wove cotton cloths, and their country contained emeralds, which, like

all green stones, were valued by the Indians as most precious gems. But

their most valuable commodity was salt. In white cakes shaped like sugar

loaves this necessary was carried over beaten paths west to the Rio

Cauca, and north, from tribe to tribe down the Magdalena, for a

distance of a hundred leagues. Regular markets were maintained, even in

hostile territories, and the Muysca received in exchange for their

goods, gold, of which their own country was destitute, while their

uncivilized neighbors, particularly the Panches and other western

tribes, possessed it in abundance. The precious metal was thus

accumulated to superfluity on the table-land of Bogotá. The Muysca

understood the art of hammering it and casting it in tasteful shapes,

and they adorned with it their clothes, their weapons, and both the

interior and the exterior of their temples and dwellings.

The Muysca lived in villages--“pueblos”--of which an exaggerated

terminology has made cities; and their large communal houses, which were

intended, according to the Indian custom, for the whole family, have

been magnified into palaces. These buildings were made of wood and

straw; but the temple at Iraca had stone pillars. Their tools and

weapons were of stone and hard wood; but vessels of copper or bronze,

such as the Peruvians possessed, have not been found among them,

although a recent authority, Dr. Rafael Zerda, believes that they were

acquainted with alloys. Their organization was a military democracy,

such as prevailed throughout America. In each tribe the position of

chief was hereditary in a particular clan or gens, out of which the

_uzaque_, as he was called, was chosen. This chief, or uzaque, simply

represented the executive power. As in Mexico, the council of the elders

of the tribe acted with him in decision.

Concerning the religious ideas of the Muysca, as well as concerning

their language, so much has been published in recent times and since

Herr von Humboldt directed attention to them in his celebrated

researches (“_Vues des Cordillères_,” etc., and “_Calendrier des

Muyscas_”) that we refrain from superfluous repetition. Their language

was probably similar to the Peruvian Quichua, but their numeral system

was more like that of the Central American peoples. Their calendar

combined with the Peruvian month of thirty days the double, civil, and

ritual year of the Mexica. Besides the worship of the sun and moon

(Bochica and Bachue or Chia), which was performed with stated human

sacrifices, in which the Mexican rite of cutting out the heart was

employed, there existed, as in Peru, a kind of fetish worship of

striking natural objects. The numerous lakes of the plateau were holy

places. Each of them was regarded as the seat of a special divinity, to

which gold and emeralds were offered by throwing them into the water. In

the execution of the drainage works which have been instituted at

different places in more recent times, as at the lagoon of Siecha,

interesting objects of art and of gold have been brought to light.

Among the many lakes of the table-land of Bogotá known as such places of

offering, the lake of Guatavitá became eminently famous as the spot

where the myth of _el dorado_, or the gilded man, originated. This water

lies north of Santa Fé, on the páramo of the same name, picturesquely

situated at a height of 3199 metres above the sea. A symmetrical cone,

the base of which is about two hours in circumference, bears on its apex

the lake, which has a circuit of five kilometres and a depth of sixteen

fathoms. The bottom of the lake is of fine sand. Near this water, at the

foot of the páramo, lies the village of Guatavitá. The inhabitants of

this place about the year 1490 constituted an independent tribe. A

legend was current among them that the wife of one of their earlier

chiefs had thrown herself into the water in order to avoid a punishment,

and that she survived there as the goddess of the lake. Besides the

Indians of the tribe of Guatavitá, pilgrims came from the communes

around to cast their offerings of gold and emeralds into the water. At

every new choice of a uzaque of Guatavitá, an imposing ceremonial was

observed. The male population marched out in a long procession to the

páramo. In front walked wailing men, nude, their bodies painted with red

ochre, the sign of deep mourning among the Muysca. Groups followed, of

men richly decorated with gold and emeralds, their heads adorned with

feathers, and braves clothed in jaguars’ skins. The greater number of

them went uttering joyful shouts, others blew on horns, pipes, and

conchs. _Xeques_, or priests, were in the company, too, in long black

robes adorned with white crosses, and tall black caps. The rear of the

procession was composed of the nobles of the tribe and the chief

priests, bearing the newly elected chieftain, or uzaque, upon a barrow

hung with discs of gold. His naked body was anointed with resinous gums,

and covered all over with gold-dust. This was the gilded man, _el hombre

dorado_, whose fame had reached to the seacoast.[12] Arrived at the

shore, the gilded chief and his companions stepped upon a _balsa_ and

proceeded upon it to the middle of the lake. There the chief plunged

into the water and washed off his metallic covering, while the assembled

company, with shouts and the sound of instruments, threw in the gold and

the jewels they had brought with them. The offerings completed, the

chief returned to the shore and to the village of Guatavitá. The

festival closed with dancing and feasting.[13]

Till about the year 1470 the tribe of the Tunja was the most powerful

clan on the highland; at that time the Muysca of Bogotá[14] began to

extend their dominion. Their chief, or _zippa_, Nemequene, overcame the

Guatavitá Indians in the last decade of the fifteenth century, and made

them tributary. With that he put an end to the ceremony of the _dorado_.

The gilded chief had ceased to wash off his glittering coat in the

waters of Guatavitá thirty years before Juan de Ampues founded the

colony of Coro, but news of this change on the highlands of Cundinamarca

had not yet reached the coast, and the _dorado_ still continued to live

in the mouths of the natives there.

Ambrosius Dalfinger, of Ulm, in Suabia, the new German governor of

Venezuela, was the first to hunt upon the trail of the “gilded man.” He

left Coro in July, 1529, sailed across the Gulf of Venezuela, on the

western coast of which he established the post of Maracaybo, and then

pressed westwardly inland to the Rio Magdalena. He was not aware that

he was thereby encroaching upon the territory of the government of Santa

Marta. No white man had ever entered these regions before him. Thick

woods, partly swampy and partly hilly, covered the country, and warlike

tribes, who often possessed gold, lived in the valleys. Dalfinger was a

valiant soldier, who permitted no obstacle interposed by tropical

nature, or resistance offered by the natives, to keep him back. He was,

moreover, a rough, heartless warrior of a kind of which the European

armies of the time supplied many examples. Gold and slaves were his

object, and in pursuit of them he plundered the inhabited country, and

then devastated it in so terrible a manner that even the Spanish

historians relate his deeds with revulsion. The rich valley of Cupari

was wholly overrun and partly depopulated. When in 1529 Dalfinger

reached the Magdalena at Tamalameque, he found the stream in flood, and

the Indian villages surrounded by water, so that he could not get to

them; he then turned up the river toward the hills. Herrera says: “He

went up the country, keeping by the river and the hills, to the Rio de

Lebrija, the windings of which he followed as closely as possible. And

when the way became barred by the numerous lagoons he went up into the

hills, where he found a cool region (_tierra fria_) thickly populated.

He was forced to fight with the people, and suffered severely from

them.”[15] He had here in all probability reached the edge of the

plateau of Bogotá, and the Indians before whose resistance his weakened

army had to yield were the Muysca, to whose linguistic stem the

_dorado_ had belonged. Dalfinger wintered at the foot of the hills. The

next year (153O) he continued his murderous campaign of plunder on the

right bank of the Magdalena, till in the Ambrosia Valley the natives

inflicted a second defeat upon him. Then he, with his troops, diminished

to a few more than a hundred men, retreated to Coro, where he arrived

about May. He brought with him 40,000 pesos in gold. He had already sent

30,000 pesos to Coro the year before, but both the treasure and its

escort had been lost in the forest.[16]

From the settlement of Santa Marta, on the northern coast of New

Granada, the Spaniards advanced in the meantime very slowly toward the

south. The periodical overflows of the Magdalena, the thick woods of

the interior, the resistance of the exasperated Indians, and, above all,

the previous devastation of the inhabited districts by Dalfinger,

created extremely formidable obstacles to their progress. Tamalameque,

which Luis de Cardoso captured in 1531, was, till 1536, the most

southern point which the Spaniards could reach from Santa Marta or

Cartagena.

In the meantime reports had been brought from the western coast of South

America which caused great excitement in all the Spanish colonies in

America, and even in the mother-land itself. The coasting voyages

southward, initiated by Pascual de Andagoya in 1522, were continued by

Francisco Pizarro in 1524. The accounts which he received concerning the

southern country (Peru) on his first expedition determined him on his

return to Panamá to lay out the plans for a larger enterprise, and on

March 10, 1526, an agreement was made between him, Diego Almagro, and

the licentiate Gaspar de Espinosa, in which the subsequent conquest of

Peru was designated as a “business.” On a third voyage, in 1528, Pizarro

touched at Tumbez, in Quito, and saw the stone houses, the llamas, the

emeralds, and the gold of the land of the Quichua. Three years later the

actual descent upon the Peruvian coast began, and events succeeded one

another with surprising rapidity. On the 15th of November, 1532, the

Capac Inca Atahualpa was a prisoner of the white men at Cassamarca. The

weak bonds which held together the government of the Quichua tribe were

broken at once, and every chief, every subjected district, acted

independently. Huascar Inca, the regularly chosen chief in Cuzco, was

murdered at his brother’s command; the Apu Quizquiz tried in vain to

defend Cuzco; the Apu Rumiñavi fled to the north, whither Sebastian de

Belalcazar pursued him as far as Quito, worrying him with bloody

battles; and the Inca Manco Yupanqui surrendered to the Spaniards. The

conquerors found the whole land open to them almost without having to

draw the sword, and their spoil in precious metals was immense.

According to the partition deed which the royal notary, Pedro Sancho,

drew up at Cassamarca in July, 1533, Atahualpa’s ransom, as it was

called, amounted to 3,933,000 ducats of gold and 672,670 ducats of

silver. The plundering of Cuzco yielded at least as much more. In the

presence of such treasure the recollection of the riches of Mexico grew

faint. A gold fever seized the Spanish colonists everywhere in America,

and every one who could wandered to Peru. The existence of many of the

settlements was thereby endangered. The leaders and founders of those

colonies could not look on quietly while their men were leaving them to

hasten into new lands of gold. In order to retain them they were obliged

to make fresh efforts to find treasures in the vicinity, and occupation

that would attach them to the country.

Georg von Speyer fitted out a campaign from Coro southward into the

plain of the Meta. In Santa Marta, where a new governor, Pedro Fernandez

de Lugo, adelantado of the Canary Islands, had arrived in 1535 with a

reënforcement of twelve hundred men, an expedition was organized to

ascend the Rio Magdalena to the highlands--those highlands concerning

which vague accounts were afloat, and from which came the white cakes of

salt that were found in the possession of the Indians of Tamalameque.

This expedition was divided into two parts. One part was to ascend the

river in a number of brigantines, and was commanded by Lugo himself. The

other division was to proceed inland from Santa Marta to Tamalameque on

the right bank of the river and there meet the brigantines. The command

of this division was given to the governor’s lieutenant, the

thirty-seven-years-old licentiate Gonzalo Ximenes de Quesada of Granada,

afterward rightly surnamed _el Conquistador_. Under his leading were six

hundred and twenty foot-soldiers and eighty-five horsemen. Both

divisions started on April 5, 1536, but the flotilla, badly directed and

overtaken by storms, never reached its destination. Some of the

carelessly built boats went to the bottom, and all but two of the others

returned to Cartagena in a damaged condition. Lugo died before a new

flotilla could be collected; the building of new vessels was given up

after his death; and the land expedition under Quesada, left alone to

its fate, was gradually forgotten at the coast.

Before Quesada lay dense woods, in which lived once wealthy Indian

tribes, who were now shy and hostile. A way had to be cut through the

luxuriant tropical vegetation of these forests. They afforded the

Spaniards but little food, while they abounded in poisonous reptiles and

insects, with treacherous swamps in the lowlands, out of which rose

dangerous miasms. The once fertile valleys were deserted; an ambuscade

was often lying in wait in the forest border that girt them; and

instead of nourishing fruits the Spaniards received a rain of poisoned

arrows. Dalfinger had, indeed, previously accomplished a similar march,

but in his time the country was populated, and he could support his men

on the stored provisions and ripening crops of the natives. Quesada

found only the wastes which his predecessor had created; every day some

of his men fell ill or succumbed to the hardships. The Indian porters

soon died because of them. Their services had become of little value,

for there were shortly no more provisions for them to carry. The energy,

quiet consideration, and self-denial of the leader had then to be

brought into play to keep up the courage of his men.

Quesada justified the trust which his former superior had, perhaps

without particular forethought, placed in him. He never spared his own

person, and he did all he could for his men. If a rapid stream was to be

bridged he was the first to lay the axe to the trees of which the bridge

was to be built. He carried the sick and feeble in his own arms through

swamps and across fords. He thus, by devotion combined with strictness

in discipline, controlled his men so that the exhausted company followed

him without demurrer to Tamalameque, where they expected to find the

boats. The Rio Magdalena was in flood, and its shores were overflowed

for miles. Instead of the expected flotilla loaded with provisions,

Quesada found only two leaky brigantines, and a hundred and eighty

famishing men. The disappointment was bitter; he felt as if he were

abandoned. But the round cakes of salt that came from the mountains in

the south had reached this region, and Quesada determined to follow the

paths over which they had been brought. A retreat by land would, at any

rate, involve sure destruction. Again his weary men followed him, and he

reached Latora, one hundred and fifty leagues from the mouth of the

Magdalena. Eight months had passed since he had left the coast, and his

march had been disastrous, but the worst seemed to be yet awaiting him

at this spot. A wooded, uninhabited waste of waters encompassed the

force, and the swollen river cut off alike all advance and all retreat.

Attempts to move the brigantines up the stream were vain; they could not

be taken more than twenty-five leagues. Despair then overcame

discipline. The men, dejected and weeping, besought their leader to send

them back in the brigantines by detachments to the coast, and to give up

an enterprise which had so far brought them, instead of gold, only

misery, hunger, and death. The moment was imminent in which every bond

of respect for their leader seemed about to be broken, when the captains

Cardoso and Alburazin returned to the camp after several days of absence

and reported that they had discovered a river flowing down from the

mountains, and ascending it had come to a spot where traces of men could

be seen. On the strength of this story Quesada was able to silence his

men’s complaints and gain time to make further research in the direction

pointed out by his captains. Captain San Martin found, twenty-five miles

farther up this mountain stream, a trodden path leading up into the

mountains, and along it a number of huts which contained salt. Quesada

himself started off with his best men and found the path, but fell ill

and was obliged to halt. Antonio de Lebrixa went on to the mountains

with twenty-five men, and came back with the welcome intelligence that

he had found there a fertile plain inhabited by men who lived in

villages and went about clothed in cotton. Quesada hastened back to his

camp at Latora, put the sick and weak upon the brigantines, and sent

them back to Cartagena. In the beginning of the year 1537 Quesada, at

the head of one hundred and sixty-six of his most effective men, stepped

upon the plateau of Cundinamarca, the former home of the _dorado_. He

had lost more than five hundred men by hunger, illness, and exposure.

The sight of the first villages on the plateau satisfied the Spaniards

of the wealth of the country. The people imagined that the strangers

were man-eating monsters and fled to the woods, but left behind them a

quantity of provisions, which were very acceptable to the half-starved

Spaniards, and some gold and emeralds. The Indians posted themselves on

the defensive in a ravine near Zorocota. Quesada tried unsuccessfully to

storm their strong barricade. In the evening, after both sides had

returned, tired with fighting, to their camps, two of the Spaniards’

horses broke loose and ran, chasing one another, over to the natives.

The Indians, frightened by the strange beasts, fled into the woods. The

Spaniards found the large village of Guacheta deserted, the inhabitants

having taken refuge among the rocks overlooking it. In the midst of the

place was an old man stripped and bound to a stake, as an offering of

food to the whites. They unbound him, gave him a red cap, and sent him

away. Thereupon the men on the rocks, supposing that they considered him

too tough, cast living children down to them. Seeing that these little

ones, too, were not touched by the strangers, they sent down from the

heights a man and a woman, both stripped, and a stag, bound. The

Spaniards sent back the man and woman with small gifts, and kept the

stag. The Indians upon this were reassured, left their place of refuge,

came down from the rocks, and gave themselves up to the white men. This

was on March 12, 1537. Quesada followed the wise policy of conserving

the strictest discipline. He caused one of his men who had stolen cloth

from an Indian to be hung. This course secured him the good-will of the

natives, so that many places received the Spaniards as liberators; for

the country they had so far passed through was tributary to the Muysca

of Bogotá, and, as was the case everywhere among the Indians, the

subjected races hated the conquering tribe. The people were therefore

not at all loath to point out to the strangers by signs the direction of

Muequeta, the chief town of Bogotá, near the present Santa Fé, where,

they intimated to the eager Spaniards, emeralds and gold were plentiful.

The rulers of Bogotá witnessed with apprehension the approach of the

strangers, and their braves having assembled for a campaign against

Tunja, the whole force, in which there were five hundred uzaques, or

chiefs, alone, turned against the Spaniards. The Muysca fell upon

Quesada’s rear-guard near the Salines of Zippaquira, their xeques, or

priests, carrying in front the bones of deceased chieftains, while in

the midst of the host was the head chief of Bogotá, Thysqueshuza, on a

gilded barrow. The first assault having been repelled by the Spaniards,

the Indian warriors scattered in every direction; the zippa leaped from

his barrow and fled to the woods, and each chief hastened back with his

men into his village. Quesada took possession of Muequeta without

meeting resistance, for the power of the tribe of Bogotá was broken

forever. But he did not find the treasure he was in search of and had

expected to obtain. The place had been stripped of everything valuable,

and the conqueror surveyed the bare and empty rooms with no little

disappointment. Every attempt to put himself in communication with the

fugitive zippa miscarried, while no promises of reward, no torture,

could extract from the Indians of Muequeta the secret of the spot

whither the treasure had been taken. Muequeta became Quesada’s

headquarters, and thence he sent out scouting parties to explore the

country. A few villages surrendered to the Spaniards, but others, like

Guatavitá, the home of the _dorado_, resisted them strenuously, and hid

their gold or threw it into the lagoons of the páramos. The region

subjected to the Spaniards in this way grew continuously larger, for the

Muysca never offered a united resistance. The dissensions and the mutual

hatreds of the smaller tribes contributed quite as much as the

superiority of their own weapons to the victory of the conquerors. Out

of hostility to that clan a rival uzaque informed a Spanish scouting

party of the great wealth of the powerful tribe of the Tunja. Quesada

himself went against them, and so quiet was his march that the uzaque of

Tunja and all the chiefs of the tribe were surprised in their

council-house. Quesada was about to embrace the chief, but the Indians

looked upon this as an offence, and threw themselves, armed, upon the

Spaniards. A savage combat ensued, within and without the council-house.

By sunset the village of Tunja was in the possession of the whites, the

uzaque was a prisoner, and the pillage was fully under way. The booty,

when piled up in a courtyard, formed a heap so large that a rider on

horseback might hide himself behind it. “Peru, Peru, we have found a

second Cassamarca!” exclaimed the astonished victors.

The Spaniards were less fortunate in Duytama than in Tunja. They were

not able to capture the fortified position; but they anticipated a rich

compensation for this failure when they beheld the glitter of the golden

plates of the large town of Iraca. The Sugamuxi of Iraca submitted, but

a fire broke out, through the carelessness of two Spaniards, during the

pillage of the great temple of the sun, and consumed the whole building

with all its treasure of gold and emeralds. Quesada returned to

Muequeta, where the spoil was divided, and the royal fifth was set

aside. Although it is certain that much gold had been stolen or lost or

hidden by individuals, and the treasures of the wealthy tribes of Bogotá

and Iraca had all disappeared, the prize was still worthy of the home of

the _dorado_. It was officially valued at 246,976 pesos in gold and 1815

emeralds, among which were some of great value.

The conquerors of Cundinamarca had, however, not yet found the _dorado_

himself. Exaggerated stories were still current of Muysca chiefs rich in

gold, and it was said that the fugitive zippa of Bogotá lived in the

mountains in a golden house. That chief was hunted out and murdered in

his hiding-place, but his death did not bring to light the gold of

Bogotá. One reconnoitring party of Spaniards looked down from a mountain

summit eastward upon the plain of the Upper Meta, and another party

brought in a report that there or in the south lived a tribe of warlike

women who had much gold. In this way the myth of the Amazons became

associated in 1538 with the tradition of the _dorado_.

Quesada felt himself too weak to go in search of the origin of these

reports; it was necessary first to secure the conquered country. In

August, 1538, therefore, the foundation of the present city of Santa Fé

de Bogotá was laid, not far from Muequeta. Quesada intended then to go

in person to the coast and obtain reinforcements; but before he could

carry out this design news was brought to him from the south that caused

him to delay his departure.

He was informed that a number of men like his own, having horses, had

come down out of the Cauca Valley into the valley of the Magdalena. A

few days later it was said that this troop had crossed the Magdalena and

was advancing into southern Cundinamarca. It was the force of the

conqueror of Quito, Sebastian do Belalcazar, who, after driving the

Peruvian Apu Rumiñavi out of Quito, and by his intervention making Pedro

de Alvarado’s landing at Manta harmless, had gone northward through

Pasto to Papayan. An Indian from New Granada had already, according to

Castellano, told him in Quito the story of the gilded chieftain, and

had thus induced him to undertake this march. From Papayan he had

proceeded along the Upper Cauca to the tribes of Anzerma and Lile, which

were rich in gold but addicted to the most abominable cannibalism, and

thence following the path on which salt was brought down from the

mountains to the high table-land of the interior.

Quesada had hardly received this news when it was also reported to him

that white men with several horses were approaching from the east out of

the plain of Meta, and were coming up through the ravines of the

mountain. These men were the German Nicolaus Federmann of Ulm and his

company. On his return from Europe Federmann had received a position as

lieutenant of Georg von Speyer in Coro. His chief was engaged in a

campaign in the southern plains, and Federmann was to have gone after

him with reënforcements, but had faithlessly struck out for the

mountains, and was following on the track of Dalfinger to the home of

the _dorado_.

Thus, led thither by the same inducement, Quesada from the north,

Belalcazar from the south, and Federmann from the east, found themselves

at the same time on the plateau of Cundinamarca. The positions which the

three Spaniards took formed an equiangled triangle, each side of which

was six leagues long. Each leader had the same number of men--one

hundred and sixty-three soldiers and a priest. None of them had been

aware of the vicinity of the others, and therefore each of them thought

he was the discoverer of the country. A fatal conflict seemed

inevitable, but the encounter, which might have provoked a rising of the

Indians and a massacre of the Spaniards, was averted by the wisdom of

Quesada and the mediation of the priests. The three leaders agreed to

submit their claims in person to the Spanish court, and in the meantime

to leave all their forces on the plateau in order to hold the conquered

land. The three--Gonzalo Ximenes de Quesada, Sebastian de Belalcazar,

and Nicolaus Federmann--then departed from Bogotá and proceeded together

to Spain. Federmann was destined never to see America again, for the

Welsers would not overlook the treachery which he had committed against

his commander, Georg von Speyer. Quesada suffered the basest ingratitude

from the Court. Nine years passed before he was allowed to return to the

scene of his activity, and he received as the only reward for his great

services the title of Marshal of the new kingdom of Granada.

The brother of the conqueror, the avaricious and cruel Hernan Perez de

Quesada, remained at Bogotá as the commanding officer of the Spaniards.

He completed the subjugation of the Muysca. The unhappy natives suffered

exceedingly cruel maltreatment, for the sake of gold, from him and his

barbarous lieutenants. No means was too violent or too immoral if gold

could be got by it. Hernan Perez made an unsuccessful attempt in 154O to

drain the lake of Guatavitá in order to recover from it the gold of the

_dorado_; but four thousand pesos was all the return he realized from

the experiment. The Muysca, plundered and plagued by the whites amongst

them, and warred upon on their borders by the Panches and Musos living

around them, who were not subjected to the Spaniards till some time

afterward, went down almost irresistibly to extinction. Their vigor was

broken, and they had no hope of consideration or forbearance from their

rulers. When the former Sugamuxi of Iraca was told that a new governor

had come who was a friend to the Indians, he asked a Spaniard if he

believed the river was going to flow upstream; when the white man

answered this question in the negative, the chief responded, “How do you

suppose, then, that I am going to believe in the existence of a Spanish

officer who will feel and act justly and reasonably toward us?”

With the conquest of Cundinamarca was secured the last great treasure of

gold that awaited the Spaniards in America. Their wild greed was,

however, doubly excited by their success so far, and they thirsted for

more and greater. The Minorite monk, Fray Toribio of Benevento,[17]

wrote with truth in 1540: “And gold is, like another golden calf,

worshipped by them as a god; for they come without intermission and

without thought, across the sea, to toil and danger, in order to get it.

May it please God that it be not for their damnation.” Then rose again,

like an avenging spirit, the legend of the gilded chieftain, in the

still unknown regions of the South American continent. Transplanted by

the over-excited imagination of the white men, the vision of the

_dorado_ appeared, like a mirage, enticing, deceiving, and leading men

to destruction, on the banks of the Orinoco and the Amazon, in Omagua

and Parime.

CHAPTER II.

META.

As we have mentioned, the conquest of New Granada by Gonzalo Ximenes de

Quesada concluded, as to the whole of Spanish America, that series of

extraordinary discoveries of precious metals in the possession of the

natives which exercised so sudden an influence on the value of gold,

among European peoples in particular. When the Peruvian spoil was

divided at Cassamarca in 1533 the peso, which contains about the same

quantity of metal as our dollar, had an exchangeable value nearly the

same as that of a pound sterling, or $4.85; but by 1553 its value had

declined, according to the learned Mexican student, Orozco y Berra, to

$2.93, or about forty per cent. During these twenty years Mexico alone

yielded in gold and silver together 1,355,793 pesos. The four ships

which arrived in Spain from Peru on the 5th of December, 1533, and the

9th of January and 3d of June, 1534, carried, without including golden

vessels and ornaments, 708,590 pesos in gold and 240,680 pesos in

silver. The spoil of New Granada amounted to 246,972 pesos in gold

alone. These examples, drawn from two years only in South America, show

clearly that the great depreciation of the precious metals we have just

cited is to be ascribed principally to the findings in Peru and New

Granada. The value of silver fell about eighty-four per cent. in Europe

between 1514 and 1610, a fall which was caused by the working of the

silver mines of Potosi in Bolivia. These yielded, between 1545 and 1564,

641,250,000 pesos or piastres in silver. The discovery of New Granada

had an especial effect on the value of emeralds.

It cannot be denied that this sudden depreciation of the metallic media

of exchange had a great influence on the demand for them, while it

covered the search for them with the mantle of a legitimate want. The

need of specie was evident, and the less the material of which coins

were made was worth, the more of it must be had. To this was added the

fact that the simple necessities of life on which Europeans depended for

existence were at first not to be got, for example, in Peru. The first

horses sold there brought 6000 pesos (equivalent to at least $28,000 in

present values); and in 1554 Alonzo de Alvarado offered in vain 10,000

pesos, or $29,300, for an ordinary saddle-horse. Between thirty and

forty pesos were paid in Cassamarca soon after the division of the spoil

for a pair of half-boots, and forty or fifty pesos for a sword. The

first cow was sold in Cuzco in 1550 for two hundred pesos. Nine years

later the price of a cow had fallen to seventeen pesos. Wine began to be

cheaper about 1554, when a ship landed at Truxillo with two thousand

casks; the first cask was sold for six hundred ducats, and the last one

for two hundred ducats.

Still, no explanation or excuse can be found in these extreme instances

for the reckless, passionate eagerness with which the Spaniards, without

waiting to secure one treasure, pursued the visions of others. The

transactions and expeditions subsequent to the conquest of New Granada,

of which the _dorado_ was the object, depended on such fancies.

Before describing the second period of the search for the _dorado_, let

us return to the fourth decade of the sixteenth century and take a view

of a number of enterprises carried out at the same time with the

conquests of Peru and New Granada, by the aid of which we may be better

prepared in historical and geographical knowledge for the understanding

of later events. The regions on which we have to fix our attention for

this purpose are the present republic of Venezuela and southeastern New

Granada.

While Dalfinger was engaged in his arduous expedition to the Magdalena,

considerable attempts were begun to found colonies on the northeastern

coast of the South American continent. Antonio Sedeño, _contador_ of the

island of Puerto Rico, was a wealthy and prominent man. One of his

contemporaries, Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, says of him that

“under the pretext of serving God and his king he hoped, through what he

possessed and through his estates on the island of St. John, to acquire

a larger property on the island of Trinidad and on the mainland, and

greater honor. But it did not turn out to the advantage of his purse,

for while he despised what he had, he pursued the schemes of his

fancy.... This lust for ruling and for being more than others caused him

to lose his property, and, what was more, his time too, and exposed his

body as well as his soul to great danger and trouble.”[18] Sedeño sought

and obtained the appointment of governor of Trinidad, with the design

of “building a strong house there” (_de labrar una casa fuerte_),[19] of

which he should be the _alcalde_. But his concession did not extend

beyond the island.

Nevertheless, having left San Lúcar de Barrameda on the 18th of

September, 1530, with seventy men, Sedeño’s first act after reaching

Trinidad was to take formal possession of it and then pass over to the

mainland. There, on the Gulf of Paria, he built, outside of his

province, and contrary to his commission, the “strong house” which he

had contemplated building in Trinidad. This act, apparently

insignificant in itself, was of great importance for the future. Sedeño

left a small garrison in the “strong house,” and sailed to the Antilles

to procure reënforcements. He hoped that he had in the meantime secured

undisputed possession of the mainland, even though it was without higher

sanction. But without his knowledge a former companion of Cortés, Diego

de Ordaz, the same person to whom is ascribed the first ascension of the

Mexican volcano Popocatepetl, had obtained in Spain a concession for the

colonization of the then very indefinite district of Marañon on the

mainland. This concession was granted in 1530, and included permission

to occupy the coast from the territory leased to Welser & Co. to the

mouth of the Marañon, and to erect four fortresses. An allowance of

725,000 maravedis a year was set aside for him, while he had also an

assured income from Mexico of between 6000 and 7000 pesos. Ordaz fitted

out two ships and a caravel in Spain at his own cost, and sailed from

San Lúcar de Barrameda with four hundred and fifty men on the 20th of

October, 1531. Although an additional caravel joined the squadron at the

Canary Islands, and the aggregate force was increased to six hundred

men, yet, in consequence of heavy storms, the Admiral’s ship was the

only vessel that came in sight of the South American coast, near the

mouth of the Amazon.[20] Ordaz sailed on thence northward along the

coast to Paria, where he found the fort built by Sedeño. He captured

this post by assault, regarding it as belonging to his concession, and

kept it for a further base of operations. Ordaz thought so little of the

region of the mouths of the Amazon and of the coast of southern Guiana

that he abandoned all attempts there and decided to turn to the

nearer-lying mouths of the Orinoco. He fitted out a flotilla of seven

galleys from Paria, with which, with two hundred and eighty men and

eighteen horses, to explore the thickly wooded labyrinth of the delta of

that river.

The fleet was worked with great difficulty through one of the numerous

channels up into the principal arm of the river. The relations of Ordaz

with the Arnaks,[21] the scattered inhabitants of that swampy, unhealthy

wilderness, were for the most part of a tolerably friendly character.

But when the tribe of Baratubaro refused to furnish him provisions he

punished them severely for it. Sailing up the principal stream, he at

length came to the falls of the Orinoco, near Atures and Maypures, since

made famous by Alexander von Humboldt, where the miles of rapids and

small cataracts by which the course of the river was broken made further

navigation impossible. Before this the officers of the expedition had

vainly tried to persuade Ordaz to abandon his boats and press into the

interior. Now it was necessary to leave the boats. On the right extended

a broad savanna, on which a hostile encounter took place with the

Indians. They informed Ordaz that the river flowed from a large lake

which lay in the midst of high and rugged mountains. The way thither lay

through a province called Meta, which was thickly populated and rich in

gold. Silver, which the Spaniards showed the natives, was not known to

them, but they recognized gold at once as the substance that was

abundant in Meta. They pointed to the west as the direction in which

this land was to be found. Unfortunately, the river was falling so

rapidly that Ordaz would not venture to march inland. Unwillingly he had

to embark again and begin a dangerous and laborious retreat. Eighty of

his men died from the hardships of the voyage; with the rest, ill and

despondent, he reached Paria. His purpose was, since the Indians near

the falls of the Orinoco had spoken so highly of the wealth of Meta, to

march overland thither from the northern coast of Venezuela--the Gulf of

Cariaco. He left a little colony of a hundred souls at Paria, and sent a

part of his force under Alonzo de Herrera to Cumaná, following it

himself eight days later. To his surprise he was received at Cumaná

with cannon-shots, and was informed that his men were on the island of

Cubagua, and that the post belonged to that jurisdiction. Greatly

astonished at this unexpected communication and at his hostile

reception, he crossed over to Cubagua, where most unpleasant information

was imparted to him.

During the period of nearly two years which Ordaz had spent on the

Orinoco Sedeño had been informed of the occupation of the post he had

established at Paria. He at once appealed to Spain against what he

styled a violent attack on his rights. He cited the terms of Ordaz’s

concession, which, indeed, confirmed to him the coast from the Marañon

to the limits of Welser’s leasehold, but defined the length of the

coast-line as two hundred leagues from the mouth of the Marañon. Sedeño

insisted that under the latter clause Paria was outside of that

concession, and therefore contested the right of Ordaz to occupy the

post there. The contention was in many respects characteristic of the

times. It especially illustrates the vagueness of the geographical ideas

of the period, which estimated the distance from the easternmost point

of the German concession in Venezuela to the mouth of the Amazon as only

two hundred leagues. The Crown decided in favor of Sedeño so far as to

order Ordaz to restore to him the property he had seized, and to satisfy

himself with the prescribed two hundred leagues of coast, which he could

choose either “from the Cape of La Vela toward the Marañon, or from the

Marañon toward the Cape of La Vela,” as he might prefer.[22] Ordaz was

further ordered to restore to the jurisdiction of the city of New Cadiz,

on the island of Cubagua, the coast of Cumaná, which he claimed. The

inhabitants of Cubagua had joined with Sedeño against Ordaz, and when

the latter came upon the island he found that his people had been

dispersed, and his lieutenant, Alonzo Herrera, was held a prisoner.

Ordaz all at once found himself alone, and grieving bitterly over his

loss, sailed for Spain, in order to contend there for his claims, and if

possible to organize a new expedition. Death overtook him on the ocean

in 1533, and the waves were his grave.

Of all their laborious enterprises, there was left to the party of Ordaz

only the post in Paria. Sedeño seized this also, and thus seemed to make

himself sole heir of the scanty acquisitions of his unfortunate rival.

The chief of them was, so far as the interests of the time were

concerned, a name--Meta; signifying the intangible, enticing vision of a

land of gold, which was to be found west of the Orinoco. But before

Sedeño could enter upon the pursuit of this vision a bitter quarrel

arose between him and his confederates at Cubagua over the ambiguous

decision of the Crown already mentioned. The control of the island of

Trinidad cost him much labor and a large sum of money, and when he

landed at Paria on his return thence he found that the island of Cubagua

now claimed that post.

It is aside from the purpose of this sketch to consider the

controversies and contentions, continuing till the end of 1534, between

Sedeño and the administration of Cubagua, of which the “strong house” in

Paria, called by Oviedo “the house of discord” (_casa de discordia_),

was the object. In consequence of them Sedeño was put in prison. Nothing

was accomplished on the mainland, because each party alternately stood

in the way of the other engaging in any important enterprise; but

man-stealing was carried on on the northern coast of Venezuela, as

before from Cubagua and Margarita, without hindrance. Notwithstanding

the complete miscarriage of the enterprises of Diego de Ordaz and his

death, a number of men and officers at Paria remained faithful to the

memory, at least, of his plans. They had indeed to submit to the

authority which was exercised alternately by Sedeño and the people at

Cubagua, but they never gave up the hope of making use on their own

account of the information which they had collected on their memorable

campaign to the falls of the Orinoco. Alonzo de Herrera, the former

prisoner at Cubagua, afterward Sedeño’s associate, finally acquired and

maintained the command of the “house of discord” on the mainland at

Paria.

Among the few comrades who had sailed with Ordaz was Geronimo D’Ortal,

his treasurer, who reached Spain, and obtained from the Crown a

concession, as successor of the deceased Ordaz, to occupy and administer

Paria. The report of this arrangement soon reached the West Indies, and

produced no little commotion there. Sedeño, leaving Trinidad, sailed for

Margarita, but his former allies of Cubagua pursued him there and

compelled him to go back to Puerto Rico. In revenge, he determined to

join with D’Ortal, as soon as he should arrive, against the people of

Cubagua.

D’Ortal arrived in Paria with two hundred men in October, 1534, and was

joyfully received by Alonzo de Herrera and his company of about thirty

men. He at once began preparations to explore the Orinoco, and “find

there that province of Meta, of which he had learned through the natives

that it was a land of great wealth.”[23] But, mindful of the experience

of his predecessors, he sent thither only a part of his force (one

hundred and thirty men) under the command of Alonzo de Herrera, with

nine galleys and a caravel. Herrera was to establish himself at the

upper end of the delta of the Orinoco, among the Aruas (Waruas or

Aruaks), while D’Ortal should wait in Paria for the arrival at the West

India Islands of the reinforcement of a hundred men, which Juan

Fernandez de Alderete was to bring him from Spain. The reinforcement

came to Cubagua, and D’Ortal went there to receive it. Then, in the year

1535, he returned to Paria.[24] Thence he went to Trinidad, and sent a

detachment of his men back to the coast to unload a ship that was

waiting there with provisions. Ten leagues from Trinidad they found

three small boats, and in them, to their no little surprise, the

dwindled remnant of the expedition of Alonzo de Herrera.

That valiant and adventurous officer, of whom Oviedo says that “he knew

much better how to kill Indians than to govern them,” had gone up the

Orinoco to the Rio Apure (Carao), and thence--where he was assured that

“Guiana lay behind him and Meta before him,” and the reports of the

wealth of the latter region were confirmed--“to a bay or arm of the sea,

which empties into the same river Huyapari, and is called the bay of

Meta.”[25] In twenty days he reached “the mouth of that bay,” which

seems to be nothing else than the mouth of the Rio Meta. It was the

rainy season, the streams were very high, and the boats had to be drawn

with ropes. The water often came up to the breasts of the towing men,

and it was only with extreme toil that they succeeded in advancing in

forty days twenty leagues westward up the Meta. Oviedo, a contemporary

whom we have often cited, says of this incident: “I do not believe that

any of those who took part in this expedition would have taken so much

trouble to get into Paradise.” By the end of the forty days the current

had grown to be so strong that farther advance on the river, even by

towing, became impossible. The whole country was inundated;[26] yet a

hundred men left the boats and tried to press, through these plains

converted into a series of lagoons, farther west to Meta. Most of the

scattered inhabitants had fled, but they at last met an Indian woman who

understood the dialects they had so far heard. She promised to conduct

the Spaniards to a large village, but warned them that its inhabitants

would certainly eat up the Christians, seeing they were so few. When she

had told enough falsehoods to the whites, Herrera had her hanged “in

thanks for her work, and since he was groping around, as it were, in the

dark, he thought he might find the way better by means of this kind of

holy torch, or by this good act. No wonder that an equally speedy and

still sadder death fell upon him and others.”[27]

The country assumed a more favorable aspect fifteen or twenty leagues

from the point where the boats were left. The dry spots, which had

hitherto only rarely shown themselves out of the boundless waters,

became more evident, and upon them were vestiges of food plants, such as

maize and yucca. The troops halted at a group of twelve huts, and sent

thence some provisions to the sick and dying who had been left on the

boats. The rest at this place was, however, of short duration, for the

Indians soon attacked the camp by night. The assault was repulsed, but

Alonzo de Herrera and three other Spaniards were mortally wounded, and

died soon afterward in violent delirium from arrow poisoning. All the

horses but one were killed in the fight, and the men were obliged, after

returning to their boats, to use this one for food. The return voyage

was speedily made, and they reached the Orinoco in fourteen days. Their

leader was Alvaro de Ordaz. Willingly complying with the wishes of his

men, he decided to leave this river as quickly as possible and return to

Paria. Hunger and privation of every kind, hostile attacks and illness

were diminishing the company nearly every day, so that the remnant,

which, as already mentioned, met D’Ortal’s men at the seashore, formed

only a little band of haggard sufferers. Their accounts showed that

D’Ortal had abandoned the Orinoco in order to approach Meta overland

from the north, from the Gulf of Cariaco. The conflicts of which the

post at Paria was the occasion were renewed this time about the

coast-land between Cumaná and the Rio Neveri. Three parties were

jealously keeping watch upon one another, and, wherever it was possible,

barring one another from the interior. Sedeño had at first united with

D’Ortal, and then separated from him. Opposed to both were the “men of

Cubagua,” whose chief interest was to hold the coast for the

preservation of their own existence, and for the prosecution of the

traffic in men.

The expedition to the south, begun by D’Ortal in 1535, entirely

miscarried. He tried to reach Meta, first by single reconnaissances, and

then in a general campaign. But his men rose against him on the Orinoco,

which he possibly struck below the Rio Apure.[28] A part of them

wandered away, and we shall find them again later on in Federmann’s

following. The rest went back to the coast, where they delivered their

commander up to justice. He remained a prisoner sixteen months, although

his only crime was misfortune; and when he was released he had lost all

desire for further campaigns, and “determined to marry.” “And as his

purpose was a good one,” Oviedo says, “God gave him a good wife, a

respectable and virtuous widow of suitable age, who had means ...

enough for him to live decently in our city of San Domingo on the island

of Hispaniola, with more security and fame than could come to him in all

these wars, or in hunting the fabulous riches of Meta, of which no one

knows anything to this day, or can find the way there without its

costing yet more human lives and leading to other troubles. To this

point has our story come, this month of August, in the year one thousand

five hundred and forty-five.”[29] This event took place in 1536.

The map which Oviedo made about 1545 of the regions successively

traversed by Ordaz, Herrera, and D’Ortal defined the results of all

these expeditions better than any description could do. The fancied

golden empire had not been found north of the lower course of the

Orinoco and east of the territory given to the Welsers. It was the

fortune of the Germans in Venezuela to determine what was the foundation

of the myth which had thus transplanted itself into the eastern region

of northern South America.

While Ambrosius Dalfinger was still lost on his campaign towards the

Magdalena, the Welsers sent to Coro to his support a division of

soldiers, with twenty-four German miners, under the command of Nicolaus

Federmann, a burger of Ulm. This reinforcement probably arrived at Coro

in June, 1530. Immediately afterward came another reinforcement upon

three ships, and with it an agent of the Welsers, Hans Seissenhoffer,

who was made governor in Dalfinger’s absence. Federmann, who seems to

have been a capable, crafty, and energetic man, became Seissenhoffer’s

lieutenant. On account of these changes the Spanish officers were

withdrawn from Coro, an act which seems to have produced a great

bitterness, especially against Federmann. When Dalfinger unexpectedly

returned a short time after this, Seissenhoffer resigned his position,

but Federmann remained--“as lieutenant of the governor and captain

general, as which the whole army recognized me.”[30]

Dalfinger brought back only vague accounts and a relatively considerable

quantity of gold. He had not found the _dorado_, and had again withdrawn

from the northeastern border of Cundinamarca. He did not tarry long at

Coro, but sailed to San Domingo for the recovery of his health, leaving

Federmann in his place. Federmann says: “Finding myself now in the city

of Coro with a number of men who were unoccupied, I determined to

undertake a campaign into the interior toward the south or the Southern

Sea, in the hope of finding something profitable.” He left the coast on

the 12th of September, 1530, with “one hundred and ten Spaniards on

foot, and sixteen on horseback, and a hundred Indians.” His geographical

notices are so extremely vague that we can follow him only a little way

on this remarkable campaign. His estimates of distances are entirely

untrustworthy, and the names of the Indian tribes which he met are often

hardly recognizable. He reached the Rio Tocuyo in northwestern

Venezuela on the 1st of October, crossed it, and went south in search of

a tribe of dwarfs called the Ayemanes. He met these little people,[31]

who, he says, averaged five “palmos,” or three and a half feet in

height, and were well shaped.[32] Thence he went south, from tribe to

tribe, across the district of Barquicimeto, to the Cuybas, near

Truxillo, and the Cuyones, against whom he could not make headway, and

was obliged to turn toward the west. The farthest point he reached was

Itabana, situated on a river which he calls the Coaheri, and which was

perhaps the Apure. Here he turned back, and arrived again in Coro March

17, 1531. The material results of his journey were small. The country he

passed through consisted by turns of rugged sierras and savannas. The

tribes, warlike and partially cannibal, were nomadic or half-sedentary

people, and his contact with them was usually of a hostile character. He

obtained some gold (3000 pesos) from a tribe near Barquicimeto; and

there, too, a report was current of a country rich in gold in the

direction of the “Southern Sea.” The whole campaign was a mere

reconnaissance, but was at the same time to Federmann himself a

preparatory school for his subsequent great expedition. Federmann went

to Spain from Coro, and on the death of Dalfinger, shortly afterward,

obtained the position of governor of Venezuela. But the Spanish

colonists there protested most earnestly against his appointment, and in

order to satisfy them without offending the Welsers the Cardinal de

Siguenza recalled him after he had started, and Georg von Speyer was

sent as governor to Coro. Federmann followed him privately, and Von

Speyer, appreciating his energy and knowledge of the country, made him

his lieutenant, about the year 1535.

A dispute was then going on between the provinces of Venezuela and Santa

Marta concerning the possession of the valley inhabited by the

Pacabueyes Indians, south of Cabo de la Vela, between the lake of

Maracaybo on the east and the Sierra Santa Marta on the west. In order

to put an end to this contention, Georg von Speyer despatched Federmann

thither, with instructions to occupy the country, hold it by force of

arms against “the people of Santa Marta,” and then proceed farther west.

After Federmann’s departure on this errand, Georg von Speyer himself

began a campaign southward. He seems to have been led to this enterprise

by some indefinite reports, and to have considered the expedition to the

west, which he entrusted to his lieutenant, as a secondary affair. He

had doubtless heard of Meta. Georg von Speyer, following a vanguard

which he had sent forward, left Coro May 13, 1535, and reached the

vicinity of Barquicimeto by the middle of July. He there found his

vanguard in full retreat, it having been beaten by the Cuybas Indians,

the same whom we met on Federmann’s first journey holding the country

around Tucuyo. They were a warlike tribe, and, according to Herrera,

cannibals, but also gave some attention to agriculture. Von Speyer,

whose whole command now consisted of three hundred and sixty-one men,

with eighty horses, easily overcame the Cuybas, but his men soon felt

the effects of the unhealthy climate of the country, with its rivers

everywhere out of their banks, so much that he was obliged to give up

the march to the south and proceed southwesterly, along the mountains on

his right. Thus he followed Federmann’s former route. The health of his

men became so critical when among the Cuyones Indians, eight days’

journey from the Cuybas, that he could go on with only one hundred foot

soldiers and thirty horsemen. He left the rest of his men behind, as

being in no condition to march, under Francisco de Velasco. The country

east and south being flooded, he could do nothing else than follow the

southwestern slope of the sierra. Occasional raids into the mountains

procured maize and salt. In a short time he was joined by most of the

men he had left behind, who had recovered; but soon afterward he had to

leave one hundred and thirty sick under the command of Sancho de Murga.

The place where this occurred was, according to Oviedo, about one

hundred and seventy leagues from Coro.

With a hundred and fifty foot and forty-nine cavalry, Von Speyer reached

and crossed the Rio Apure, the great northern tributary of the Orinoco,

on the 2d of February, 1536. To that point we hear of no clue leading

him, of no new accounts brought to him, which might have excited the

hope of a liberal reward. Like Quesada, he pursued with iron tenacity a

vague purpose, that of searching the south. His experiences were all

discouraging. The country, though rich in its profusion of tropical

vegetation, gave him no gold. The western sierra was dreary and rugged,

the eastern plains were unhealthy wastes of flooded marshes and

inundated woods and prairies. The vast region was only sparsely

inhabited by wild Indian tribes. While the endurance, the careful

direction, and wise leading which he displayed during this first period

of his campaign stamp him as one of the greatest captains of the time in

America, his mild and discreet behavior toward the aborigines likewise

marks Georg von Speyer as a man of honorable disposition. Even the

Spanish writers agree in this. Although, unhappily, too little

appreciated, he is one of the noblest figures of the Spanish conquest.

Pursuing his unhopeful way toward the southwest, he crossed the upper

part of the Casanare. The Zaquitios Indians inhabiting the slope of the

sierra were friendly and well disposed, and told him that on the other

side of the mountains, on an unwooded plateau, dwelt a tribe rich in

gold, who had tame sheep. Two moons farther in that direction was a

chieftain named Caziriguey, who ruled over many people, and had a great

temple. While the direction in which this rich land was said to lie

(west) undoubtedly pointed to Bogotá, the story of the “tame sheep”

makes it certain that knowledge of Peru had penetrated to this place,

which was in northeastern New Granada. The Zaquitios offered to show

Georg von Speyer the pass through which he could reach that plateau, and

he eagerly accepted the service. Oviedo says: “This information

gratified, strengthened, and encouraged the governor and the Spaniards

so much that all the hardships they had endured were forgotten, and the

way lying before them appeared as safe and easy as the streets of

Valladolid and Medina del Campo.”

But they searched for the pass in vain. Having arrived at the foot of

the sierra, they were attacked by night in a village. A desperate battle

took place, and although after two hours victory rested with the whites,

they gave up further advance in that direction, and again followed the

slope of the mountain toward the south. They had now entered the

territory of a powerful tribe of Indians, which was then widely spread

between the sources of the western tributaries of the Orinoco and the

Cassiquiare, but is now confined to the shores of one branch of the Rio

Negro. This tribe was that of the Uaupés.

No other branch of the South American aborigines affords so complete an

example of that peculiar form of social organization which Mr. Lewis H.

Morgan has shown to have existed among the Indians of the whole United

States, as the Uaupés. They are, and were in the sixteenth century,

village Indians of a low type. Their houses, built of wood, with gable

roofs supported on upright posts, form large parallelograms, hundred and

fifteen feet long, seventy-five feet wide, and thirty feet high. The

entrance, eight feet high, on one of the gable sides, is curtained with

a mat. Several families inhabit a communal building of this kind, and

choose from among themselves the “tushaúa” or chief of the house. The

Uaupés were divided into a number of _gentes_ (probably about thirty),

and the names of twenty-one of them are well known.[33]

The Uaupés plant and cultivate maize and manioc, and have in later times

raised besides sugar-cane and tobacco. They are skilful fishermen, and

their canoes, hollowed out of logs, are often forty feet long. Both

sexes go entirely naked, but the men wear a crown of feathers on their

heads. Their houses are also used as burial-places for the dead. They

received Von Speyer in an unfriendly manner, painted in black, and

opposing the Spaniards with spears, bows and arrows, and clubs, under

the protection of large shields of tapir-skin; but they could not resist

the firearms and cavalry of the white men.

Von Speyer was forced to make a slow retreat, more by the violent rains

than by the resistance of the Uaupés. Raging torrents pouring down from

the mountains in the west often prevented his movements for days at a

time. He heard again there, however, the name of Meta, and learned that

he was near the source of that river. He was assured that civilized

tribes having much gold dwelt there, and he determined to seek those

tribes first of all.

Having returned to the country of the Zaquitios, he sent a detachment

farther back to bring up the rest of his troops, whom he had left in the

rear, sick. But they were not found. Following the route of their

commander, they had gone on to the Apure, and then, giving him up, had

returned to Coro. There were left to Von Speyer one hundred and forty

men and forty-four horses. With these he went forward again to the

Uaupés, and finally reached the sources of the Meta. The Uaupés who

inhabited this region had some gold of twenty-two carats and some fine

silver, but he was told that the rich tribe he was looking for dwelled

beyond that country, on the other side of the western mountains. He

tried in vain to push into the mountains; their inaccessible cliffs

repelled every effort. He heard here of white men who some time before

had tried to reach the Meta from the east with boats.[34]

Georg von Speyer was persuaded by his captain, Estevan Martin, to go

farther south. Bloody conflicts took place with the Uaupés before he

crossed the Rio Guaviare (or Boayare). On the other side of this river,

Diego de Montes, “cosmographer and a man skilled in the use of the

astrolabe,” determined the latitude--2° 40´. The western mountain range

here took a southwesterly direction; Von Speyer was on the borders of

Ecuador. The hope rose again that by proceeding along that chain he

could find a pass. Estevan Martin encouraged his hopes, and the Uaupés

pointed thither to the strange tribe of the Chogues as being at the

gateway to the land of gold. But after crossing the Rio Caqueta (also

called the Japura) in northern Ecuador, a detachment sent out under

Estevan Martin to ascend that stream was attacked by the Chogues, and

its leader was slain. Von Speyer at once avenged the death of his

associate, and explored the course of the river to the mountains, but

was not able to cross them anywhere. His men were now exhausted, and

yielding to their entreaties and remonstrances, he began a retreat on

August 10, 1537, with one hundred and thirty men, of whom hardly fifty

were fit for service. He had got to one degree north of the equator, and

his road, if he had succeeded in crossing the mountains, would have led

him to Pasto, between Quito and New Granada.

The advance had been continued through twenty-seven months; the retreat

over the same road occupied more than nine months. The Guaviare detained

him several days. He was surprised to learn when near the Rio Apure that

his lieutenant Federmann had been there two months before, a fact he

could not account for, because he had supposed Federmann to be engaged

in the northwest. Without delaying longer he continued his march, and

finally arrived at Coro, May 27, 1538, after an absence of three years.

While the material returns of this extraordinary campaign (5518 pesos in

gold) were so small that it must be considered a total failure as to

that object, the geographical results were of great value for later

times. Besides visiting all the western tributaries of the Orinoco, the

llanos of Casanare and Zaguan, the northwestern branches of the Amazon,

and the eastern slope of the Cordillera of Pasto, Georg von Speyer’s

expedition gives us our earliest data concerning the ethnography of

these regions. The campaign was also of the greatest importance for the

special object of our research. Ordaz, Herrera, and D’Ortal had heard

the story of the riches of Meta on the lower and middle Orinoco and in

western Venezuela, and had sought for them. The result of their arduous

campaigns was that the treasure was not to be found in those districts,

that its seat was to be sought farther west, in the mountains in which

the river rises, near a great lake. Georg von Speyer had now traversed

the whole of western Venezuela and western New Granada, had reached the

source of the Meta, and had thereby made it evident that the story of

Meta referred to the treasures of New Granada, and was the echo, in

another shape, of the legend of the _dorado_, which had been transported

to the lower Orinoco. The gilded chieftain had vanished from the

picture, and only the indefinite idea of a tribe in the highlands rich

in gold was left; to this was joined the recollection of a lake,

afterward transformed into the great “lagoon of the _dorado_,” which we

shall find again in “Parime.” While Georg von Speyer was thus

unwittingly determining the true character of the myth, his able but

faithless lieutenant had found the real home of the _dorado_--the

plateau of Cundinamarca.

Instead of proceeding westward, as his commission required, Nicolaus

Federmann had hardly learned that Von Speyer had gone south when he

followed in nearly the same direction, but more toward the southeast.

Arriving in the vicinity of the Orinoco east of the Apure, he met the

mutinous soldiers of the troop of Geronimo D’Ortal, and incorporated

them with his own company. Then he turned toward the west, crossed the

Meta, went on to the foot of the mountains, and after he had ascertained

that Von Speyer was retreating, pressed boldly into the sierra. Where

his chief had failed, he succeeded; he crossed over the steep mountain,

and, as we have recorded in the first part of the “_Dorado_,” reached

the plateau of Cundinamarca. But he had come too late. Quesada, as we

know, had anticipated him. Federmann bitterly deplored the fact in his

letter of August 1, 1539, from Jamaica to Francisco Davila. He charged

the dead Dalfinger, as well as the then still living Georg von Speyer,

with incapacity and want of courage, because “they might otherwise--the

one eight years, the other three years before--have secured the wealth

which now the people of Santa Marta had taken.” In this letter, which

Oviedo has preserved in abstract, Federmann wrote: “The stories about

Meta are not wholly false, for that river does rise in the mountains

that border the plain; and the House of Meta which was sought for so

long is the Temple of Sogamosa, the holy objects in which the people of

Santa Marta have now carried away in sacks.” These words of an important

eye-witness prove that it was the legend of the _dorado_ which,

transferred to Meta, distorted and diluted in many ways and spread

throughout eastern South America, stimulated the bold enterprises we

have sketched. If we dwell a little longer on some of these enterprises,

it is, first, because they are so little known--in no case so well known

as they ought to be; and second, there is associated with them,

especially to the German public, a direct interest in the deeds of the

Germans in South America. We shall, in the third part of the “_Dorado_,”

again, and for the last time, meet Germans in pursuit of the gilded

chieftain.

CHAPTER III.

OMAGUA.

The licentiate Juan de Castellanos, in his “_Elegias de Varones

Illustres de Indias_” (1589), sang the legend of the _dorado_ as it was

current in Quito in 1536:

When with that folk came Annasco,

Benalcazar learned from a stranger

Then living in the city of Quito,

But who called Bogotá his home,

Of a land there rich in golden treasure,

Rich in emeralds glistening in the rock.

* * * * *

A chief was there, who, stripped of vesture,

Covered with golden dust from crown to toe,

Sailed with offerings to the gods upon a lake,

Borne by the waves upon a fragile raft,

The dark flood to brighten with golden light.

In these words of a poet who can make far more pretension to historical

accuracy than his contemporaries Erxcilla and Martin de Barco[35] lies a

significant confirmation of the thesis maintained in our chapter on

Cundinamarca: that the fame of the _dorado_ had penetrated southward.

Belalcazar’s contemporary Oviedo declares positively that much was said

in those regions of a great chief called “Dorado.” Herrera, although not

really contemporary (he was born in 1549), but one of the best

authorities concerning Spanish America, says that an Indian in La

Tacunga, from Cundinamarca, told Belalcazar much concerning the wealth

of that country, and of a chief reigning there, “which was the cause of

many undertaking the discovery of the _dorado_, who had till then

appeared to be a phantom.”[36] concerning the nature and form of what

was said of this _dorado_, Castellanos gives us the version we have

quoted, which is confirmed by Oviedo, who says:

“When I asked why this prince or chief or king was called _dorado_, the

Spaniards who had been in Quito and had now come to San Domingo (of whom

there were more than ten here) answered, that, according to what had

been heard from the Indians concerning that great lord or prince, he

went about constantly covered with fine powdered gold, because he

considered that kind of covering more beautiful and noble than any

ornaments of beaten or pressed gold. The other princes and chiefs were

accustomed to adorn themselves with the same, but their decoration

seemed to him to be more common and meaner than that of the other, who

put his on fresh every morning and washed it off in the evening.... The

Indians further represent that this cacique, or king, is very rich and a

great prince, and anoints himself every morning with a gum or fragrant

liquid, on which the powdered gold is sprinkled and fixed, so that he

resembles from sole to crown a brilliant piece of artfully shaped gold.”

While these notices afford sufficient and circumstantial evidence of the

existence of the legend south of Bogotá, it is a remarkable fact that

the story was found, in an identical form, without any connection with

this, and without any local relation, on the northern coast of South

America; as has been already remarked in treating of Cundinamarca.[37]

In both cases the seat of the _dorado_ was located at Cundinamarca,

although in one case this lay north, and in the other case directly

south. We have further seen (in the second chapter) that accounts of a

golden “Meta” were spread through all northeastern South America, to the

lower Orinoco. Following the footsteps of those who pursued these

reports, we found their origin again to be in New Granada, in the

plateau of Cundinamarca; and that story of Meta was proved to be an echo

of that of the _dorado_, faintly resounding in the farther distance.

Also among the aborigines of that plateau itself existed a detailed

tradition of the sacred ceremonial ablution of the chief of

Guatavitá.[38] The lake still exists on the Bahlen Páramo, and at the

beginning of this century the remains of ladders were still visible,

which could not have been brought to the isolated mountain-top without a

purpose. Many treasures of considerable value have been taken from this

lake, among them a group of golden figures of antique Indian

manufacture, which we have already mentioned, and concerning which the

chronicler Don Rafael Zerda says: “Undoubtedly this piece represents

the religious ceremony which Zamora has described, with the cacique of

Guatavitá surrounded by Indian priests, on the raft, which was taken on

the day of the ceremony to the middle of the lake. It may be, as some

persons believe, that Siecha lagune, and not the present Puatavitá, was

the place of the _dorado_ ceremony and consequently the ancient

Guatavitá. But everything seems to indicate that there was really once a

_dorado_ at Bogotá.”

We refer to this fact in order to clear up as fully as possible the

question of the historical probability of the _dorado_, and to prepare

the way for further discussion of the subject. The personal _dorado_ has

vanished, but his elusive shade still floats before us. The valiant

figures of the conquest, knights who were little inferior in bravery and

adventurous spirit to those of the Round Table, went in pursuit of him.

Their career, begun with violence, ended usually in crime, and the

generation which called forth and bore the great figures of Cortés,

Pizarro, Quesada, and Georg von Speyer expired in the iniquities of

Carvajal and the revolting monster Lope de Aguirre. We specify the last

in order to mark with his end the close of the second period of the

search for the _dorado_, for in him all the passions of the conquest

blazed up again into a lurid flame.

Our narrative must this time be a chronological one, beginning in the

year 1535, when Sebastian de Belalcazar, freed through negotiations from

the threatening presence of Alvarado, who had landed from Guatemala, was

at liberty to give his mind to establishing and further extending

Spanish rule in Quito. It was on an expedition which the Spaniards sent

out from Quito to explore the region that Louis Daza met the Indians who

told the story of the _dorado_. The immediate result of this was the

slow advance of Belalcazar to the north in 1538, which took him, as we

have seen, by Pasto, Popayan, Cali, etc., to the Rio Cauca, and over the

cordillera to Neyva, and then to Cundinamarca--a march which is usually

described as an act of insubordination on his part. It took place, at

all events, without the knowledge of Belalcazar’s chief, Francisco

Pizarro, who was no little exasperated by it.

On the other hand, it may not have been unpleasant to the cunning,

although mad, conqueror of Peru to be relieved in this way of a

subordinate who was his equal in craft and not far behind him in skill

and energy. He therefore immediately sent his brother, Gonzalo Pizarro,

to Quito to take the chief command there.[39] Gonzalo was, according to

his instructions, more solicitous to prevent Belalcazar’s possible

return than to pursue him; and when he learned, in 1539, that Pascual de

Andagoya and Jorge Robledo had occupied southern New Granada (Cauca),

while Belalcazar had gone on “to find the valley which was called the

Valley of the Gilded One,”[40] he, considering himself secure against

the return of his formidable companion in arms, determined upon an

expedition on his own account.

A version of the _dorado_ legend lay at the bottom of his motives in

this undertaking. Gonzalo Diaz de Pineda had, about 1539, gone to the

village of Quixos, situated southeast of Quito, in the woods of the

Upper Rio Napo (called by the chroniclers of the time Rio de la Canela),

and had there found the cinnamon tree (_Nectandra Cinnamomoides_ of the

order _Lauraceæ_).[41] He also heard there of the Indians--Cofanes,

Jibaros, Huambayos, etc.--and further, “that there were wealthy regions,

in which the people went round adorned with gold, and where there were

no mountains or woods.” This was a reference to the plain, a confused

echo of Meta, and gave a new stimulus to the anticipation that the

spices of the Orient, then monopolized by the Portuguese, might be found

in America.

Gonzalo Pizarro determined, without making any closer inquiry--a trait

of the times as well as of his own personality--to follow up this story.

He left Quito with 220 men on foot and on horse,[42] and proceeded

toward Zumaco, beyond the Sierra, to press thence into the thick woods

which encompass all the tributaries of the Amazon east of the Andes. It

would lead us too far away to follow him on his march, which is known as

the “Journey to the Cinnamon Country.” It was an impotent groping around

in a tropical wilderness, where, surrounded by an overwhelming profusion

of impenetrable vegetation, man had to give up every other purpose than

that of maintaining himself, and might in the end consider that he had

done well if he escaped with his life. All their horses perished, and

also the Indians; and the condition of the miserable remnant of the

troop when it appeared again, on the table-land of Quito, after two

years’ absence, is thus described by the contemporary Augustin de

Zarate, who came to Peru in 1543 as royal treasurer: “All, the General

as well as the officers and men, were nearly naked, their clothes having

been rotted by the constant rains and torn besides, so that their only

covering consisted of the skins of animals worn in front and behind, and

a few caps of the same material.... Their swords were without sheaths,

and all eaten up with rust. Their feet were bare and wounded by thorns

and roots, and they were so wan and wasted that one could no longer

recognize them.... They threw themselves upon the food with so much

eagerness that they had to be held back and to be gradually accustomed

to the taking of it.”[43] Such was the ending of the campaign to the

cinnamon country.

It would be unjust to hold Gonzalo Pizarro responsible for this failure.

The numerous rivers in these forest wildernesses are the only highways

practicable to man, and his plan was from the beginning to use for his

further movements one of the tributaries of the Amazon--that is, one of

the streams issuing from the eastern slopes of the Andes; of the

existence of the Amazon itself, as well as of its magnitude, he had no

knowledge. For this purpose he had ordered his lieutenant, Francisco de

Orellana (a native of Truxillo in Estremadura), to follow him on the

Rio Napo with a bark[44] and provisions. But the stream carried his

unwieldy boat much faster than the men could march, who were obliged to

cut their way along the shore. Hence Orellana, with fifty-three men,

including two priests, was soon far in advance of the main division. It

was not possible to go back against the swift current. He halted, but

the longer he waited the harder his situation became. The provisions

were exhausted, the bonds of subordination became relaxed, and still no

signs were perceived of Pizarro, who with the best will could not

overcome the impediments interposed by nature. Thus all the precautions

the able commander had taken were in the end nullified.[45] The

impression prevailed from this time[46] that Orellana had treacherously

deserted Pizarro--an impression which, in my opinion, is not well

founded. The natural difficulties were of such a character that Orellana

could not wait for Pizarro. His only hope for existence lay in his

giving himself up to the stream for an indefinitely longer voyage. Thus

Orellana went on down to the Amazon. The magnitude of the immense river

increased the longer he trusted himself upon it. It is known that

Orellana passed the mouth of the Amazon on his wretched vessels, and

thence committing himself to the sea, arrived at Cubagua on the 11th of

September, 1541. The accounts of the details of his remarkable voyage do

not agree, and it is not germane to our purpose to discuss them. The

chief result of it was that the proportions of the gigantic stream which

divides South America into a northern and southern half were at last

appreciated, and that exaggerated notions were spread over Europe

concerning the rich countries that lay north of the Amazon. The fable of

the Amazons survived from classical antiquity as one of the cycle of

myths that were credited or held possible. Orellana’s chronicler, the

Dominican Carvajal, transplanted it to the banks of the great South

American river. This has been charged against him as an offence.

If we examine his account carefully, we shall find two distinct matters

in it. One, relating what he witnessed himself, is simply a statement

that below the mouth of the Rio Negro women took part in the fighting

against the Spaniards; and that seems very plausible. The other matter

comprises the account by a captive Indian of a tribe of Amazons rich in

gold living north of the river. Tales of that kind were often imposed by

the natives upon the Spaniards. The story bears immediately on the

object of this work only to the extent that the Amazon River

henceforward formed the southern boundary of the mythical region within

which the _dorado_ could still find a place.[47]

Almost contemporaneously with this hazardous expedition, the

starting-point of which lay south of Cundinamarca, and immediately after

the departure of Gonzalo Ximenes de Quesada from Bogotá for Spain,

Quesada’s brother, Hernan Perez, who had remained on the high plateau as

commander, determined to attempt a campaign to the west. The occasion of

this resolution[48] was a report that great wealth of gold, silver, and

emeralds was to be found on the slopes of a mountain west of New

Granada. He left New Granada on the 1st of September, 1541, with 270 men

and 200 horses, and went as far as the region which Georg von Speyer had

fruitlessly traversed before him--the country of the Uaupés and Chogues

in northern Ecuador. Hunger and suffering were his companions, but gold,

which he sought so eagerly, he did not find. He returned after sixteen

months, with his object unaccomplished. He had found neither the “House

of the Sun,” of which his far nobler brother had heard,[49] nor the

Amazons, although, as we have already said in “Cundinamarca,” the latter

myth was also current in New Granada. We only refer passingly to this

unfortunate expedition, and return to Coro, on the northern coast of

Venezuela, where, as we mentioned at the close of “Meta,” the Germans

were preparing for new enterprises in the interior.

Georg von Speyer had not been discouraged by the failure of his march to

Meta, but his bodily strength was broken. Yet he had hardly arrived in

Coro again when he sent some of the little gold[50] included in the

spoil to San Domingo, to buy horses and other supplies necessary for

fitting out a new expedition.[51] But he died before he was able to

begin this campaign, at Coro, probably near the end of October or the

beginning of November, 1540. Oviedo says: “May God be merciful to him,

for truly, though I had little to do with him, he appeared to me worthy

of his office, and I believe if he had lived that God and their

Majesties would have gained through him. For, besides being virtuous and

prudent, he was in the prime of life, and had acquired an amount of

experience that would have made him a desirable leader in other

enterprises.”[52]

The death of Von Speyer left the Welser grant in Venezuela without a

director. Such a contingency had been, however, provided for. The Bishop

of San Domingo, Rodrigo de Bastidas, had authority to act as

administrator _ad interim_ at Coro. At the end of November, 1540, that

prelate, who was a man of unusual ability, went thither with 150 men and

120 horses. He perceived at once that the colony, which had never been

put upon an agricultural basis, could be restored to life only through a

series of brilliant campaigns. The expeditions of Von Speyer and

Federmann had defined the object of these further enterprises. He could

not reckon upon Federmann, who would have been a valuable aid, because

he was in Spain, whence, instead of returning, he was summoned to

Germany by the house of Welser & Co. to answer for his equivocal

conduct. He never came to America again. Federmann, however, had left a

man in his place who was in no way inferior to him in vigor,

recklessness, and energy, and had besides the extraordinary gift of

making himself familiar with strange languages with great ease. This

man, who had gained valuable experience in Federmann’s following, was

Pedro de Limpias.

We name this Spanish soldier especially because he was destined finally

to play the part of an evil genius in the enterprises of the Germans.

Fray Pedro Simon says that it was he who brought the legend of the

_dorado_ to Coro; but this is contradicted by the declaration of

Gumilla. His knowledge and character nevertheless made him the soul of

the contemplated campaign. An immediate occasion was offered for

entering upon it. Georg von Speyer had sent on one of his officers, Lope

de Montalvo, with a vanguard and the direction to wait for him “in the

interior.” “And nothing had been heard from this captain or from his

men when the bishop arrived at Coro.”[53] To seek for Montalvo and to

find the way to the wealth supposed to exist in the south formed,

therefore, the object which it was determined to pursue.

As leader of the expedition, the bishop, with wise regard for the

Welsers, appointed the knight Philip von Hutten of Würtemberg, who had

participated in Von Speyer’s expedition as a lieutenant. He was still a

young man, chivalrous, noble, and frank, the idol of his men, and in

many respects the worthy successor of Georg von Speyer. Beside him,

Pedro de Limpias acted as his adviser; Rodrigo de Ribera was _alcalde

mayor_; and Bartholomäus Welser was one of the lieutenants. Few

expeditions were organized in South America with better guarantees in

the capacity and knowledge of their leaders. The bishop assured himself

of the concurrence of the royal revenue officers in Coro, as well as of

that of Welser’s factor, Melchior Grubel, or Gruber, and thus combined

the wishes and interests of both of the parties who were jealously

watching one another.[54]

Thus enjoying every condition that could assure success, Philip von

Hutten left Coro in August, 1541. He had a hundred horsemen. The route,

which had been laid down in writing, was the same as that of Von Speyer,

except that Von Hutten was to press farther on. From Burburata, whither

he went by boat, he marched rapidly through Barquicimeto to the plain of

the Apure, wintered there in “La Fragua,” and then advanced to the

borders of Ecuador, in the vicinity of the mountain range of Timana,

west of the cordillera of Suma Paz. Here, where he came upon the trail

of the unfortunate expedition of Hernan Perez de Quesada, the Indians

tried to induce him to go eastward by telling him of a powerful, wealthy

tribe which inhabited a “city” in the plain called Macotoa. Von Hutten

paid no attention to these deceptive stories, but followed the trail

which Quesada had left; that is, he spent nearly a year of great

privation, suffering, and toil, marching in a circle, and returned, at

the beginning of 1543, to the same place, near the sources of the

Caqueta or Japura, whence he had set out. The steadiness his men

displayed during this terrible march speaks well for his capacity as

well as for his character. Yet it is not impossible that Pedro de

Limpias, then still true, contributed much, by his knowledge of the

country and his iron tenacity, to the holding of the men together. He

probably advised them to follow Quesada’s trail, if for no other reason

than because he was suspicious of the representations of the natives,

and did the contrary of what they advised him.

When, however, he found himself back at his original starting-place with

a small company of sickly men, Von Hutten recollected what the Indians

had said about the gold-rich lands in the east, and determined to go

forward in that direction, accompanied by Limpias, with forty horsemen.

He proceeded to the Rio Guaviare, where the Uaupés received him in a

friendly manner, assisted him in crossing the river, and furnished him

with provisions. Their village contained about eight hundred

inhabitants. They, however, advised Von Hutten not to go farther south,

for his little company was much too weak to contend with the powerful

tribe that dwelt in that region. They called this tribe the Omaguas.

Orellana had arrived at an Indian settlement, the chief of which he

calls Aomaguas, on the 12th of May, 1541, at San Fernando de Machiparo

at the junction of the Putumayo and the Amazon.[55] Fray Gaspar de

Carvajal, in his report preserved by Oviedo,[56] speaks of “the tribe or

settlement of Machiparo, of which we heard from Aparia ‘_el grande_,’ as

also of another kingdom called Homaga, which was in conflict with that

of Machiparo.” The analogy between Homaga and Omagua can hardly be

disregarded; and as the account continues, “After the latter had

withdrawn from the Machiparo to pursue us, we went on eight or ten

leagues farther to an elevated village which we judged to be on the

border of the settlements and of the kingdom of Homaga”--the supposition

is therefore not improbable that the tribe of the Omaguas inhabited, in

the middle of the sixteenth century, that extensive tract which is

bounded on the north by the Guaviare, on the south by the Amazon, and

may have had the Cassiquiare and Rio Negro (partly) on its eastern, the

Rio Uaupés and the Japura on its western borders. Herrera’s remark in

his introductory “_Descripcion_” (of the year 1611) is not without

significance: that “south of the province of Venezuela are the Omaguas

and Omigos, with the provinces of the _dorado_.” At all events, the

tribe seems to have inhabited a large tract, which included in the north

extensive grassy plains, and in the south the thick woods of the shores

of the Amazon.

The Omaguas belonged in all probability to the linguistic family of the

Tupi-Guarani, and therefore to the principal division of the Brazilian

aborigines. Many words in their language are undoubtedly of the Tupi

idiom. Indeed, Velasco said in 1789: “This people is scattered over an

extent of more than fifteen hundred leagues in the interior of America,

under the names of Omaguas, Aguas, Tupis, and Guaranis.” According to

the Jesuit Cristoval de Acuña,[57] who visited the Amazons in the

Spanish service in 1639, their name means “Aguas,” or Flatheads. The

Portuguese called them “Cambebas,” which has the same meaning in the

Tupi language. Though unanimously pronounced, even as late as 1743,

physically the handsomest Indians of the Amazon shores, their figures

were deformed by the custom of pressing the heads of their infant

children flat between two boards. The custom had been discontinued in

1777 when the Ouvidor Ribeira visited them at Olivenza at the mouth of

the Rio Yavari, thirteen leagues below Tabatinga on the Amazon.

The Omaguas appear to have been at least half-sedentary Indians. They

were probably divided into two groups, according to the character of

the country they occupied: a northern group, or the Omaguas of the

plains; and a southern group, or the Omaguas of the wooded river-banks.

The population cannot be supposed to have been dense; certain eligible

points, usually in convenient proximity to the water, were the seats of

villages, between which often lay uninhabited wildernesses several days’

journey in breadth. No connection between the individual settlements and

no kingdom of the Omaguas can be assumed.

The southern Omaguas are the best known to us. We have already referred

to Orellana’s chronicler, Padre Carvajal, as indicating the boundary

where, according to his view, the territory of the tribe began. At all

events, the Omaguas lived in the same region of the Amazon shore from

1639 to 1852, and we can therefore accept the Dominican’s account as

relating to that tribe. It appears further from his description that

they lived in villages built of wood, usually on elevations on the

shore. In one of these villages the Spaniards found two large idols made

of palm-tree bark, which were set up in the great communal house

(_galpon ó casa principal_). Much earthenware, very well worked, with

dark colors and “glazed,” was likewise found there, besides a copper

axe, “such as the Indians in Peru use.” These facts indicate some degree

of skill in art, and therefore a settled abode and agriculture; and this

is confirmed by the acquaintance of the people with natural products.

The Portuguese first obtained caoutchouc from the Omaguas, and manioc

meal, cassava, and maize were abundant in their houses. But fishing

appears to have been their chief industrial occupation. They were very

skilful in managing and steering the pirogue; and Velasco[58] calls them

“the Phœnicians of the Amazon.” Their weapons appear to have been

javelins and the peculiar slings called _estolica_, and their warriors

protected themselves with wooden shields. Concerning their organization,

their religious rites and customs, the writers of the sixteenth century

have left us no information. Later statements on the subject are scanty

and indefinite, and are of a time when their rites had suffered notable

changes through the memorable efforts of the Jesuits to introduce

Christianity among them.

After the Spaniards of Quito had made several efforts, partly by force

of arms, partly by spiritual means, to advance down the Amazon, Fray

Gaspar Cuxia in the year 1645 founded “the mission to the Omaguas, who

live on the islands of the Marañon and are excellent sailors. They have

the fashion of lengthening their heads by compressing the skulls of

their children in a kind of press of boards.”

This effort of the Society of Jesus was based upon a grand plan, unique

in its way, for connecting the aborigines of South America with one

another through the gradual introduction of a general language, in order

to prepare a spiritual kingdom which, though in this world, would not be

for the world of that age, but should form in future centuries a point

of support, or perhaps a place of refuge. Without dwelling on the

particular features of this great religio-political missionary

enterprise, we simply mention a Bohemian, Father Samuel Fritz, who

gained the special title of “The Apostle of the Omaguas.” He was born in

Bohemia in 1650, and in 1687 founded seven mission stations among these

Indians--San Joaquin, Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, San Pablo, San

Cristoval, San Francisco Xavier, Traguatua, and a seventh station which

included twenty-seven small villages. Father Fritz spent fifty years on

the forest-shores of the Amazon, shirking no danger, and died, one of

the grandest figures in American missionary history, at the age of

eighty years, among the Jeberos, in 1730. The constant attacks of the

Portuguese hindered the prosperity of these colonies to an extraordinary

degree. The suppression of the Society of Jesus at last terminated their

existence, and the settled Indians went speedily to destruction. La

Condamine visited the Omaguas at San Joaquin in 1743, and praised their

industry and artistic skill. When Lieutenant Herndon visited them in

1852 there were only two hundred and thirty-two individuals left of the

once numerous tribe.

Our knowledge of the northern group of the Omaguas is of the most

indefinite character. All we have is derived from the reports of Philip

von Hutten’s expedition. We therefore take up again the thread of the

story at the point where the German knight went on in the face of the

warnings of the Uaupés, with only forty mounted men, in search of the

Omaguas.

The little troop went southward in the best practicable order. They soon

came to cultivated fields, in which natives were working. The Uaupés

explained they were slaves, cultivating and taking care of the

plantations of the Omaguas. They offered no resistance, and the white

men hurried forward to surprise the “city” which was supposed to be in

the vicinity. Looking down from the top of a hill, they observed a

settlement of considerable extent, regularly laid out, with large

dwellings, and a high structure amidst them. The view was a surprise.

Convinced by it that this was the long-sought city and that the high

building was the “palace” of the gilded chieftain, the Spaniards rode

full speed down the hill; simultaneously the war drum sounded from out

the village, and armed soldiers rushed into the streets and opposed the

assailants with wild cries, letting fly a shower of missiles against

them. Von Hutten at once saw that he could not accept battle on this

ground. He therefore withdrew in good order to a level spot, hoping that

he might find there compensation for his inferiority in numbers in the

superior weight of his cavalry. Although pursued, he reached the

position he sought without great difficulty. The sun had set, and the

Omaguas remained quiet during the night. On the next morning they

appeared again in great masses--fifteen thousand strong, Fray Pedro

Simon asserts, and after him Gumilla; and their attack was so fierce as

to occasion the most serious apprehensions. The contest was too unequal.

One cavalry attack after another was repulsed, and Pedro de Limpias, who

was in the lead everywhere, was wounded. At length the little troop

struggled no longer for victory, but for life. With unexampled bravery a

few leaders finally succeeded in forcing their way through, and with the

remnant of their men reaching the settlements of the Uaupés, when the

pursuit by the Omaguas ceased.

Although the unfortunate ending of the campaign against the Omaguas made

further progress impracticable, the leaders of the expedition still

believed they had obtained an important result. Their excited fancy

discerned a great city in the large village of the Omaguas, and in the

communal house that occupied the middle of the town the castle or palace

of a powerful prince. Such illusions have often occurred in America, and

the mere introduction of a European terminology into the domain of the

ethnology of the new continent has occasioned a serious confusion which

can only be gradually cleared up. In the eyes of Von Hutten and his

companions that great settlement could only be the kingdom of the gilded

chieftain, and they comforted themselves for their disaster in the fancy

that they had at last found the seat of the long-sought _dorado_.

Philip von Hutten had received a serious wound in the battle, which

necessitated a longer stay with the Uaupés. The examination of the wound

was performed in a singular manner. An aged war prisoner of the Uaupés

was dressed in the armor of the knight and set upon his horse. He was

then wounded by an Indian in the same way as Von Hutten had been. The

flesh was then cut about the wound, the course of which was thus

determined upon the poor victim. The Uaupés inferred that Von Hutten’s

wound was of similar shape, and treated it upon that supposition.

In the meantime, and before Von Hutten could even begin the retreat,

Pedro de Limpias, as the oldest captain, demanded the position of

commander. It cannot be denied that in consideration of his experience

and knowledge he was entitled to it. But Bartholomäus Welser, as a son

of the family which had leased Venezuela, seems to have thought

otherwise; and although we have no exact account of what took place, it

is certain that a bitter quarrel arose between the old Spanish soldier

and the young son of the German merchant. It is easily conceivable that

Von Hutten would ultimately incline to the side of his German companion

in arms. The little troop, nursing the germ of strife within itself,

began, probably in 1544, the retreat, directly toward Coro. The usual

difficulties attended their march, but the accustomed order does not

seem to have prevailed. It soon became evident that the troop was

divided. At last Pedro de Limpias abruptly took leave of it and hastened

forward to the coast. His departure left Von Hutten without a captain.

Bartholomäus Welser, it is true, commanded a small advance-guard, but he

was little acquainted with the region. In the meantime, Limpias hurried

on, occupied with thoughts of revenge: with the intention of going to

Coro in order to bring about the downfall of the Germans and of their

rule in Venezuela.

Philip von Hutten had now been absent four years from the settlement on

the seacoast, and in that time events there had taken a turn very

favorable to the plans of the revengeful Spaniard. After Von Hutten was

sent to the south in the year 1541, and their main support was thereby

taken from the Germans (even to the Factor), Bishop Bastidas returned

to the Antilles. He left Diego de Boiça as his representative in Coro,

who, however, was soon obliged to flee to Honduras on account of his

misdemeanors. The chief court of justice (_Audiencia_) next appointed as

_alcalde mayor_ Enrique Remból, who, with a wasteful expenditure of the

Welsers’ property, brought a hundred men from Cubagua, and thus

contributed somewhat to the encouragement of the settlement. The office

was held after his death by Bernardino Manso and Juan de Bonilla, who

both had, however, to seek safety in flight from the consequences of

their misdeeds. Finally, in order to prevent the ruin of the colony, the

licentiate Frias was in 1545 appointed controlling inquisitorial judge,

and the licentiate Juan de Carvajal governor, of the Province of

Venezuela. The latter appointment was significant of the intention of

the Spaniards to terminate the contract with the Welsers. Frias remained

on the island of Margarita, while Carvajal proceeded to Coro.

The new governor was a man of indubitable ability and vigor, but

unprincipled and violent. His first important transaction was an act of

formal disobedience. In the course of three months he by persuasion or

intimidation induced the more active part of the population to leave

Coro, and taking their property, to follow him across the country to New

Granada, where he promised them wealth which the Venezuelan coast could

not afford them. His adherents first plundered those who remained

behind, and then, having collected their domestic animals, set forth on

their migration. The route lay southward, along the plains, avoiding the

woods. Carvajal halted at Tocuyo, among the Cuybas Indians, in a

pleasant and fertile region, favorable to agriculture and

cattle-raising; and the fact that he began a settlement there speaks

well for his judgment. He collected about two hundred well-armed men at

Tocuyo, whose devotion to himself he assured by skilfully anticipating

and gratifying their unrestrained passions and wants. The inquisitorial

judge, Frias, proceeded to Coro to call the governor to account, but in

the ruinous and plundered condition of the colony he had no means of

making his authority felt. Carvajal therefore remained undisturbed in

Tocuyo, stamped by his own acts as a rebel against the Spanish Crown,

and the sworn enemy of the Welsers and their representatives.

Such was the man whom Pedro de Limpias met on his way as he was

hastening to Coro, filled with hatred and thirsting for vengeance

against the Germans. Limpias came into Tocuyo at night with six

soldiers, called upon Juan de Villegas, one of Carvajal’s officers, and

represented himself to be a fugitive from the Germans, who were on the

way to Coro to offer themselves to the judge there. This was sufficient

to alarm all Tocuyo, for such a union of Von Hutten’s tried soldiers

with the inquisitorial judge’s weak force would be highly dangerous to

Carvajal. It seemed necessary to stop their march, to remove their

leader by stratagem or force, and win over his men to their side.

Pedro de Limpias, at all events, gave his counsel in favor of the

execution of this purpose. First, the advance-guard under Bartholomäus

Welser must be captured. It had already reached Barquicimeto, north of

Tocuyo. Juan de Villegas met it there, and as Philip von Hutten had not

come with it, two written messages were sent to him representing that

Welser was waiting for him at Tocuyo. Thinking of nothing else than that

his companion in arms was bringing him reënforcements, Von Hutten

hurried on with his troop of sixty men to Barquicimeto. To his no little

astonishment he was informed by Villegas that Governor Juan de Carvajal

summoned him to appear at once before him, otherwise “he would come for

him with fifty horse.” The threatening tone of this message was clear

enough, but Von Hutten was the weaker party and he thought it best to

temporize and to submit, at least in appearance, to the “governor.”

Carvajal received him with a show of friendliness, prepared a feast for

him, and tried to dissuade him from going to Coro. If he would stay with

him he would show him a valley where much gold could be got, by the use

of which reënforcements could be obtained from Cubagua and Margarita.

The German knight did not directly refuse this invitation, but pleaded

his duty to the emperor. If this required it he would stay where they

were; but nothing could prevent him from defending himself before the

imperial judge in Coro.

In the meantime the rest of the troops had arrived at Tocuyo. The two

camps or parties had, as it were, coalesced. The moment seemed favorable

for striking a decisive blow. On the second day of Von Hutten’s presence

Carvajal proclaimed orders early in the morning that all of the soldiers

of the former should report themselves to him. The German knight,

greatly astonished at this assumption, hurried to the house of the

governor, whom he met at the door. He remonstrated with him and repeated

his former declaration, that he was ready to account to “the king, the

judge, and the Welsers” for what he had done. Carvajal had been waiting

for the mention of the Welsers, and he used the occasion to call out

aloud, “You are witnesses that he says this province belongs to the

Welsers,” hoping by this means to excite the animosity of the Spaniards

against the Germans and provoke an immediate conflict. The passage of

words between the leaders brought the soldiers to the spot. Carvajal

ordered a notary (a necessary accompaniment of all Spanish expeditions)

to draw up a warrant against Von Hutten. He protested, and both drawing

their swords, appealed to the king. They were separated, but the men of

the two leaders ranged themselves under their respective banners; two

hostile camps ready for battle confronted one another--and Carvajal’s

plan to separate the leader from his soldiers had failed. In the

conflict, Bartholomäus Welser rushed three times against Carvajal with

upraised lance. His exhausted, famished horse failed him the third time,

else, Herrera says, he would certainly have killed the “tyrant.” He fled

to his house, and the approach of night put an end to further action.

On the next morning Philip von Hutten escaped from the trap that had

been set for him in Tocuyo, and collected his men on the llanos of

Quibore. Carvajal now tried negotiations. Priests and Welser’s factor,

Melchior Grubel, served as emissaries. It was finally agreed that

Carvajal and his officers should swear peace and permit the Germans to

go unmolested to Coro. With this assurance Von Hutten started thither,

accompanied by his men.

It was often the case at that time, and in those wild, thinly inhabited

regions, that two war parties could march one a short distance behind

the other without knowing anything of each other. As soon as Von Hutten

had started Carvajal followed upon his track, being probably guided by

Limpias. The Germans went on in fancied security, not suspecting they

had anything to fear, and apparently even neglecting the usual measures

of precaution. Carvajal fell upon their sleeping camp on the night of

the seventh day, and his officers, who had with him a little while

before sworn peace with Von Hutten, seized the German knight in his

bedroom. After the leaders had been captured the men surrendered without

resistance.

By this act of perfidy Ulrich von Hutten and Bartholomäus Welser were

now helpless prisoners. An old Spanish proverb says, “When the dog is

dead the madness is over.” Carvajal, therefore, did not wait long. He

called a council of war at dawn to determine what the fate of the

prisoners should be; they were promptly sentenced to death. Before the

sun had set both the German knights were brought bound into the midst of

the Spanish camp, and, together with two of their associates, were

beheaded with a rusty _machete_ that had been used a short time before

for cutting wood.

Shortly after this tragical event the licentiate Juan Perez de Tolosa

came to Coro as a representative of the weak inquisitorial judge Frias.

He was an earnest, conscientious, inflexible, strict man. He collected

the few soldiers that could be found on the coast, and fearlessly went

with them in 1546 to meet Carvajal. He succeeded, notwithstanding the

superiority of Carvajal’s force, in arresting him without resistance,

and in a few days Von Hutten’s murderer was publicly beheaded at Tocuyo.

Of the further fortunes of Pedro de Limpias we are not able to speak.

Although by this act of justice a kind of atonement was offered to the

Germans, their rule in Venezuela wholly ceased from this time. It had

lasted eighteen years, and had, it must be admitted, contributed very

little to the development of the colonies. Robertson justly remarks that

under the direction of such persons as the Welsers it might have been

expected that a settlement would be founded on a plan different from

that of the Spaniards, and more favorable to the advancement of those

useful industries which commercial proprietors recognize as the most

direct sources of prosperity and wealth. The failure to fulfil these

expectations is ascribed by Robertson to the mistakes and misconduct of

individual German leaders in Venezuela. His designation of these men as

adventurers, who in their impatience thought of nothing but of snatching

wealth, fits Ambrosius Dalfinger very well, and Federmann to a certain

extent, although the latter was too prudent fully to come under it. But

we cannot affix such a reproach to the grand and richly endowed nature

of Georg von Speyer or the noble and knightly personality of Philip von

Hutten. The cause of the lamentable failure lies in the nature of the

transaction itself, in the way in which the possession of Venezuela was

conveyed to the Welsers. They received the province from the Spanish

Crown, not so much in the form of a leasehold as of a mortgage security

for money loaned, and as commercial men their first object was to

recover the advances they had made as quickly as possible from the

revenues of the district. Whatever they might gain after that would be

“good business.” Their representatives acted in their interest as seen

from this point of view.

The coast lands of Venezuela offered no hope of a profitable result; but

golden reports came from the interior, and, clad in the alluring dress

of the _dorado_ legend, led the Germans on to those useless and

destructive expeditions of which we have just described the last one. In

pursuit of the gilded chieftain Dalfinger conducted his fatal campaign

of desolation; after him Federmann pressed fruitlessly into New Granada;

in the chase for the echo of the _dorado_ in “Meta” Von Speyer

sacrificed his fine troop and his own precious person; in the final

effort to grasp the phantom were extinguished Von Hutten’s young life

and the last spark of the manhood and vigor of the colony. When we give

close attention to the history of the German settlement in Venezuela,

the importance of the part played in it by the _dorado_ appears very

clearly.

We have already shown that Von Hutten came back persuaded that he had

really seen the home of the gilded chieftain in the country of the

Omaguas. Henceforth, therefore, Omagua becomes nearly synonymous with

the _dorado_, and the legend is localized near the Amazon, west of the

Rio Negro and Cassiquiare. Oviedo had already placed it there at the

time of the death of Philip von Hutten. Von Hutten’s unhappy fate, the

complete extinction of the settlement at Coro, the threatened

depopulation of the Venezuelan peninsula, precluded any further thought

of an expedition into the interior southward. The Brazilian coast,

hardly touched at a few points by the Portuguese, was too far from the

unknown interior, which was concealed in immense forests. The western

coasts, particularly those of New Granada and of Peru, where the Amazon

begins its course, not only lay geographically nearest to the region in

question, but were also the seat of the strongest and richest

settlements of the Spaniards in South America, the only ones from which

any campaigns could now be undertaken.

But although the population had rapidly increased under the stimulus of

the rich metallic treasures found in the country, events occurred,

especially in Peru, which made further expeditions impossible for many

years. The civil disturbances in Peru provoked in the extreme south by

the conflict between Pizarro and Almagro concerning the limits of their

respective jurisdictions culminated in bloodshed at Las Salinas near

Cuzco, on the 26th of April, 1538. Hardly three months afterward,

Almagro was strangled by Pizarro’s command. An unbroken succession of

betrayals and crimes, to which nearly all the conquistadors of

importance fell victims (thereby expiating their own offences), marked

the progress of the insurrection, till it reached such a height as to

overshadow the whole west coast, like a dark cloud, from Chili to

Popayan. And when, in consequence of the new laws and ordinances issued

by the Spanish Crown for the protection of the aborigines, this cloud

began to unload itself in a storm of open revolt against the

mother-country; when Gonzalo Pizarro, urged by his lieutenant

Carvajal,[59] refused obedience; when the viceroy Blasco Nuñez de Vela

had fallen at Añaquito in Ecuador on the 18th of January, 1546, and the

insurrectionists prevailed from Popayan to Atacamata--then the

threatening storm loomed also over the southern horizon of New Granada,

and the stunning reverberations of the thunders of revolt reached the

heart of Cundinamarca. It was no time for daring expeditions into the

mythical interior; every force had to be used for self-preservation. In

this period a man came upon the stage of history in New Granada who was

to be especially associated with the phantom of the gilded chieftain. He

was Don Pedro de Ursua, a young knight from Pampluna, in the kingdom of

Navarre. He was the nephew of the royal judge Miguel Diaz de Armendariz,

and arrived with him in New Granada in the year 1545. Armendariz came to

the “new kingdom” as inquisitorial judge, “_Juez de Residencia_,” and

appointed his nephew his “lieutenant.”

CHAPTER IV.

THE EXPEDITION OF URSUA AND AGUIRRE.

The government of Bogotá and Santa Marta was lodged in 1542 in the hands

of Alonzo de Luga, a son of the former overseer of Gonzalo Ximenes de

Quesada, the conqueror of Cundinamarca. With reckless greed Lugo had

levied contributions on the province, plundered the original Spanish

conquerors, and robbed the royal treasury. When he learned that a royal

inquisitorial judge had been sent to Bogotá he hastily gathered up his

spoil--300,000 ducats, according to Joaquin Acosta--and fled to Europe,

where he died in Milan. Armendariz, having at first enough to do at

Cartagena in hearing the numerous complaints against Lugo, despatched

his nephew Pedro de Ursua into the interior. The latter established

himself in Bogotá without opposition, and summarily arrested Lope

Montalbo de Lugo, who had remained there as the deputy of the fugitive

governor. Armendariz himself occupied the capital of New Granada in the

year 1546, while Ursua became his military aid, although he was then

only twenty years old.

The sedentary Indian tribe of Cundinamarca, the Muysca, had been

completely subjugated, but numerous hordes of warlike, cannibal natives

still roamed around their territory. These rovers by their constant

attacks endangered the settlements of the Muysca and the Spanish colony

itself. Their subjugation was therefore a necessity for the prosperity

of the “new kingdom,” and seemed the more desirable because the gold

which the Muysca possessed came from the regions inhabited by them.

Already, under Lugo’s wretched administration, the captain Vanegas had

chastised the Panches in the west and conquered their country, but

northwest of Bogotá the Musos still roamed in the extensive forest flats

and grassy prairies, and their predatory attacks threatened to

depopulate the district of Tunja. Ursua had led an expedition to the

northeast in 1548 and founded the settlement of Pampluna. On his return

to Bogotá from this expedition (which is commonly spoken of as a

“_dorado_ journey”) the proposition was made to him, by the three royal

judges who now ruled New Granada in place of his deposed uncle, to

subjugate the Musos.

The knight, now twenty-three years old, advanced confidently into the

enemy’s territory with one hundred and fifty men. So rapid were his

movements that he assailed a fortified camp in the middle of the region

before the Musos could collect their forces. A bitter war of

extermination followed. Unable to repel the well-armed Spaniards by

direct attacks, the savages swarmed daily around their camp, and tried

to starve them out by burning their own crops. Ursua held his position

and finally forced the Musos to negotiate; but when a large number of

chiefs had come to him to conclude the treaty, he induced them to go

inside of his tent, where they were murdered to the last man. He hoped

by an act of such surpassing terror to paralyze the force of the tribe;

but the war only broke out again all the more furiously, and as soon as

Ursua returned to Bogotá the Spaniards were expelled and the settlement

of Tudela was laid in ashes by the natives. Notwithstanding the crime he

had committed, Ursua obtained the position of chief-justice in Santa

Marta. He subdued the Tayronas Indians in 1551 and 1552, but he did not

remain long in New Granada, for his mind had been turned toward Peru,

and he went to Panamá. He waited there till Don Andreas Hurtado de

Mendoza, Marquis of Cañeta, viceroy of Peru, began his journey to Lima.

The environs of Panamá and the Isthmus were then kept in a state of

insecurity by bands of fugitive negroes (Cimarrones), and the perplexed

municipality of the city were looking for a capable soldier who could

deliver them from the plague. The story of Ursua’s deeds was known to

the viceroy, and he recommended him to the officers. Ursua exterminated

the blacks in a two years’ “bush war,” and then, in 1558, followed the

Marquis of Cañeta to Peru.

Ten years previous to this the licentiate Pedro de la Gasca had

suppressed the great Peruvian insurrection. Two later uprisings--those

of Sebastian de Castilla in 1552 and of Francesco Hernandez Giron in

1554--had been likewise suppressed by the adherents of the Crown; but

quiet was not yet fully established. A considerable number of men were

living in Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador who witnessed the return of order

with a dissatisfaction that was well founded, because their past would

not bear an examination in the light of the law. The number of this

“disorderly rabble” was so large that the new viceroy did not rely upon

the mere exercise of force against them, but was considering upon the

ways and means of removing the dangerous element from Peru by means of a

campaign into distant regions.

The unknown lands east of the Andes offered the only objective point for

such a campaign. Chili, New Granada, and the banks of the La Plata were

already occupied by the Spaniards, and it was desirable to send the

expedition only to some point where it could disturb no already existing

colony, and whence the danger of its returning to Peru would be small.

Then, very opportunely, by a curious accident, the legend of the

_dorado_ again rose in Peru.

Pedro de Cieza of Leon says in the seventy-eighth chapter of his

“_Cronica del Peru_”: “In the year of the Lord 1550 there came to the

city of La Frontera ... more than two hundred Indians. They said that

since leaving their home a few years before they had wandered through

great distances, and had lost most of their men in wars with the

inhabitants of the country. As I have heard, they also told of large and

thickly populated countries toward the rising sun, and said that some of

them were rich in gold and silver.” Cieza was in Peru from 1547 till

1550, and his statement is fully corroborated by a contemporary, Toribio

de Ortiguera, who came to South America at the latest in 1561. It

appears from the manuscript of the latter, entitled “_Jornada del

Marañon_,” that these Indians originally lived on the Brazilian coast,

near the mouth of the Amazon. They had started between 2000 and 4000

strong, under the lead of a chief named Viraratu, accompanied by two

Portuguese, and sailed into the Amazon and up that river, amid

hard-fought battles with the shore-dwellers, to the borders of Peru.

Their appearance aroused great interest amongst the Spaniards. Fray

Pedro Simon says of the event: “Those Indians brought accounts from the

province of the Omaguas, which Captain Francisco de Orellana mentioned

when he went down the Marañon River.... In that province, of which the

Indians told when they came into Peru, lived the gilded man.”[60] Thus

the idea of the _dorado_ was awakened anew.

In the disordered condition of the country years passed before an

expedition to the golden land of the Omaguas could be contemplated. The

Marquis of Cañete readily perceived how favorable an occasion this story

of the Brazilian visitors and the “_dorado_ fever” it excited afforded

him. After a personal interview with the Indians he proceeded

energetically with preparations for an expedition to the shores of the

Middle Amazon. Drafts were made upon the royal treasury for this object.

The disorderly elements in the country seized the occasion with not less

eagerness than the viceroy to secure for themselves an unmolested

withdrawal; and thus the _dorado_, which had provoked the conquest of

New Granada and had brought the colony of Venezuela to the verge of

destruction, was this time the beneficent messenger of rest to Peru.

A campaign of this kind required a strong leader. The choice of the

Marquis of Cañete fell upon Pedro de Ursua, who readily accepted the

dangerous commission. Besides several other rewards he was to receive,

in case of success, the title and all the rights of a governor of the

countries expected to be conquered and settled.

A whole year passed before the preparations were completed, and it was

not till the spring of 1560 that Ursua collected his men at Santa Cruz

de Capacoba, on the Rio Llamas, a branch of the Huallaga, where he had

had boats built for the voyage to the Amazon and upon it. It was really

a “picked company” that met there. The scum of Peru formed the principal

part of it; the majority, men accustomed to everything except order and

morals; and with them were women.

To lead such a rabble with success in the face of uncertainties required

an earnest and prudent, and at the same time a decided, character of

moral worth. Ursua was frivolous and indolent, and often rashly bold.

His preparations were incomplete. Much was still lacking when his money

had all been spent, and his men were eager to embark. With the help of

some officers--“all doughty champions with elastic consciences,” says

Simon--Ursua forced the priest of Santa Cruz to “lend” him all his ready

money, some four or five thousand pesos. By this act he set the example

of violence.

He likewise furnished an example of immorality from the beginning. He

kept up a close relation with Iñez de Atienza of Pinira (near the

coast), the young and beautiful widow of Pedro de Arcos. Without heeding

the counsels of his friends, he took his mistress with him on this

campaign in search of the _dorado_, and lived with her so intimately

that the chronicler feels impelled to make the remark, in excuse, that

“they all said, indeed, that he intended at some later time to marry

Iñez de Atienza.”

While the start was delayed, in consequence of the defects in Ursua’s

preparations, trouble was brewing in the camp. It culminated in

crime--the murder of Ursua’s lieutenant, Pedro Ramiro. Ursua’s behavior

in this affair (he drew the perpetrators of the murder from their

hiding-places by promising them immunity and then in the face of his

pledge had them arrested and hung) made him personal enemies. With the

other elements of discontent among the men were now associated hatred

and vindictiveness against their leader.

On the first day of July, 1560, Juan de Vargas was able to go forward

with an advance guard in a brigantine to the mouth of the Rio Ucayali.

The main body, increased by the colonists of Moyobamba with their goods,

should have followed at once, but of all the fleet only three flatboats

and one brigantine were seaworthy; the other vessels were unavailable.

It was necessary to build rafts and canoes. The embarkation could not be

effected till September 26th, when it took place in great confusion. The

available space in the boats was unevenly allotted; only forty out of

three hundred horses were taken; and all the cattle were left, without

masters, on the shore. The flotilla at last moved slowly down along the

thickly wooded shores of the Rio Huallaga. It sailed three hundred

leagues, according to Pedro Simon (vi.), without passing in sight of a

single Indian hut. Harmony among the men was not promoted by their

getting under way. Every one appeared dissatisfied and envious of the

others, while most of them censured Pedro de Ursua. At the mouth of the

Ucayali they came upon the advance expedition under Juan de Vargas; the

men were nearly famished in the midst of the richest vegetation. Their

vessel had rotted, and it was necessary to distribute them among those

who crowded the other already overloaded boats. Fresh discontent arose

over this measure, and the dissatisfaction was increased by the fact

that Ursua always claimed a full share of room for himself and Iñez de

Atienza. At last settlements were reached above the mouth of the Rio

Napo, in which were found maize, sweet potatoes, beans, and other

vegetables. At one of these places the flotilla landed, and the boats

were repaired and rebuilt. Some of the Brazilian Indians who had given

the original motive to the expedition and who accompanied it as guides

pointed farther eastward as the direction of the rich country of which

they were in search. The Ticunas, indeed, on the southern side of the

Amazon (between the Ucayali and the Yavari) possessed some gold, but the

_dorado_ lived north of that river. The fleet therefore sailed on,

despite the murmurs of the men, who had become tired of the constant

promises and deceptions.

Before Christmas of 1560 Ursua reached Machiparo, where he was near the

country of the Omaguas. Encouraged by the extent of the Indian

settlements he found there, and by the friendly demeanor of the

inhabitants, he determined to make a longer sojourn at that place, for

his crews were worn out by their labor, especially by rowing. The men

were glad to resign themselves to rest on the shore, but their idleness

also gave them leisure to consider and mature criminal plans. Besides

their dissatisfaction with Ursua’s leading, personal hatred, and many

worse passions, thoughts of wider bearing lay at the bottom of their

schemes.

Some of the members of the band had divined the secret thoughts of the

viceroy of Peru, or had joined the expedition while realizing the

improbability of the _dorado_ legend, in order to use it for their own

purposes. It is only certain that a conspiracy against Ursua was formed

at Machiparo. He and his lieutenant were to be killed, and Fernando de

Guzman, a young knight from Seville and the ensign of the campaign, was

to be chosen commander in Ursua’s place. Under his direction they would

return to Peru and with armed hand conquer the country, expel the royal

officers, and establish a new kingdom there. The soul of this conspiracy

was the Biscayan Lope de Aguirre.

Born at Oñate in Biscay, Aguirre was then about fifty years old. He had

spent twenty years in Peru, chiefly in the occupation of a

horse-trainer. Involved in all kinds of violent and seditious acts, he

had been several times condemned to death and then pardoned, and having

become at last a fugitive from province to province, was glad of the

opportunity to join Ursua’s expedition. He is described as having been

“small and spare in figure, ugly, ... with black beard and an eagle eye,

which he turned straight upon others, particularly when he was angry.”

Burning through and through with hatred against the Spanish Government,

at home, at the same time, in all circles and ranks, endowed with

remarkable shrewdness and great physical and mental force--a logical and

impressive speaker, withal--with clearly defined purposes, he was in

every respect a dangerous man. He was the most detestable character of

the conquest.

Even before the beginning of the voyage earnest warnings against Aguirre

had reached Ursua, but the indiscreet knight had disregarded them. The

Biscayan had abundant leisure to intrigue with the men. Ursua was so

blind as to allow the conspiracy to be organized under his eyes, without

regarding the plainest evidences of it. On the 26th of December he

embarked again and proceeded six or eight leagues farther to another

village. Here a broad path led from the shore into the interior; a

landing was effected, and a camp formed. “The path,” it was said, “led

to a large city and province;” the Spaniards had, in fact, entered the

territory of the Omaguas. A strong detachment started out “to explore

the new country”--by which the most faithful soldiers were removed from

the camp, and the conspirators were given the opportunity they had been

waiting for.

On the first day of January, 1561, two hours after sunset, a well-armed

party, with Alonzo de Montoya and Cristóval de Chavez at its head, came

into Ursua’s quarters. He was lying in the hammock and speaking with a

page. Surprised, he asked them, “What are you looking for here at so

late an hour?” and was answered with a number of scattering shots.

Before he could put himself on guard the whole band pressed in upon him,

and with the cry, “_Confessio, confessio, miserere mei Deus!_” he fell

to the ground and expired. The murderers hastened out, one of them

crying aloud, “Liberty, liberty! Long live the king, the tyrant is

dead!” The alarm brought Juan de Vargas, Ursua’s lieutenant, to the

place. He was immediately prostrated, and the conspirators returned to

the hut that served as the quarters of Fernando de Guzman.

Dismay and terror prevailed in the camp. Those not in the conspiracy

stood surprised and helpless before the numerous and well-armed

murderers. These took advantage of the confusion to remove on the next

morning a few other of Ursua’s friends. A general meeting was then

compulsorily assembled, in which Fernando de Guzman was without

opposition proclaimed governor. New appointments of officers were made

all around. Aguirre received the second highest place, with the rank of

a _maestro del campo_.

The conspirators did not agree as to their further proceedings. The

larger number, of whom Fernando de Guzman was the leader, would not give

up the _dorado_. A second general meeting was called. Against the

earnest opposition of Aguirre and Lorenzo de Salduendo, the view of the

majority prevailed, and a continuance of the campaign was determined

upon. A paper was drawn up in which Ursua’s death was excused as being a

necessity, and was signed by those present. Aguirre joined in the

signature, and wrote with a firm hand, “Lope de Aguirre, the traitor.”

Murmurs were uttered audibly against this act, and Aguirre answered

defiantly: “You have killed the representative of the king among us,

the bearer of his power; do you think that this writing will exculpate

you? Do you suppose that the king and his judges do not know what such

papers are worth? We are all traitors and rebels, and even if the new

country should be ten times as rich as Peru, more populous than New

Spain, and more profitable to the king than the Indies, our heads are at

the order of the first licentiate or pettifogger who comes among us with

royal authority.”

This speech was shrewdly calculated, and was based on known facts which

were extremely unpleasant to most of the men. The meeting broke up in

disorder; even the conspirators were now divided into two parties.

Aguirre had on his side the active and determined mutineers. His

unexampled audacity dazzled many and also made him many enemies, but he

carried his point, for he was the only one among the reckless,

disorderly adventurers who was seeking to execute a clearly defined

purpose.

The first thing to be done was to divert the band from the pursuit of

the _dorado_. When his powers of persuasion failed to be of effect in

this attempt, Aguirre built upon the knowledge of the men. The

reconnoitring party which Ursua had sent out came back with the report

that the path which they followed led to some abandoned huts, and that

the thick woods prevented further advance. The company then reimbarked

and went on. The shores of the Amazon were solitary and deserted; for

weeks they saw no signs of men. Food became scarce; the horses were

killed and eaten, and thus all possibility of an advance overland was

taken away. The spirit of license grew more and more rife under these

toils and privations. Aguirre secretly made use of the demoralization to

remove the most influential men under various pretexts, and to put in

their places persons in whom he could perceive willing tools. Fernando

de Guzman permitted these crimes, for he was himself only a tool in the

Biscayan’s hands, and was even so infatuated as to call the monster

“father.” When at length the Brazilian Indians confessed that they knew

nothing of this country, and that it was not like the one they had

previously passed through, Guzman concurred in Aguirre’s plan to give up

the _dorado_ and invade Peru.

A halt of three months took place above the mouth of the Japura, and

there it was determined at a general meeting to sail down the river to

the sea. Margarita was to be secured by a sudden attack; thence Nombre

de Dios and Panamá should be surprised; and once in possession of

Panamá, the Europeans believed that the success of their scheme would be

assured. This audacious plan was so attractively presented by Aguirre

that a formal declaration of independence of Spain was drawn up, from

which only three men ventured to withhold their signatures. Only one of

these escaped death--the bachelor Francisco Vasquez, afterward historian

of the campaign. Aguirre having thus succeeded in the first part of his

design, it remained for him to acquire exclusive control of the

expedition. A series of murders had relieved him of the officers most in

his way, and the time had now come for Fernando de Guzman to fall.

Knowing the ambitious character of the young Sevillan, he decided to

exalt him to such a height that a fall should in any event be

destructive. With absurd ceremonies Guzman was therefore proclaimed

“Prince and King of the mainland and of Peru.” The puppet-play did not

fail of its anticipated effect. Guzman, naturally courteous and

therefore beloved, after this became proud and imperious, and surrounded

himself with a silly ceremonial, which was unpleasant to the men. They

soon ceased to love him; he was disliked, avoided, and finally hated;

and his fall became a question only of time and opportunity.

The three months’ halt above the Japura was devoted to the building of

two new brigantines of stronger construction for the contemplated sea

voyage. When they were completed the company embarked upon them, and

started, before Easter of 1561, down the river. Evidences of a numerous

population were apparent on the right shore; and when the Indian guides

said that wealthy tribes lived there, Aguirre, fearing that the thought

of the _dorado_ might be aroused again, contrived to change the course

of the voyage. According to Simon,[61] he conducted the flotilla

“through a bend into an arm of the river on the left side.” Simon’s

account is based on the manuscript testimony of the eye-witness Vasquez,

and he continues: “Therefore Aguirre determined to turn out of the

direct way; and after they had gone three days and one night in a

westerly direction, they came to some vacant huts.” This took place

above the mouth of the Rio Negro, and it indicates, as Mr. Clements R.

Markham likewise supposes, that the band left the continuous course of

the Amazon and went through one of the numerous bayous that form a

network of channels between the Japura and the Rio Negro, into the

latter river. Von Humboldt and Southey are, on the other hand, of the

opinion that Aguirre sailed down the Amazon to its mouth.

Yet that station of “some vacant huts” appears to have been situated,

not on the main stream, but on a northern tributary.

The forsaken Indian town, surrounded by muddy water, in which the band

found quarters while it consumed its scanty provisions, plagued day and

night by clouds of mosquitoes, was a sorry stopping-place in which to

spend the Easter season in idleness. Aguirre thought the place and the

opportunity favorable for striking his last blow. Fernando de Guzman was

ripe for his fall. Few of the men still adhered to him. But his death

was to be preceded by those of two other persons whom Aguirre still

feared. They were his former associate, Lorenzo de Salduendo, and Iñez

de Atienza. This woman had soon forgotten her lover Ursua, and yielded

herself without hesitation shortly after his death to the murderer

Salduendo, with whom she afterward lived. Aguirre mortally hated her. A

trifling contention about the division of the rooms gave the Biscayan a

pretext for a quarrel with Salduendo. The result was that Aguirre killed

his comrade in Guzman’s presence. Then two hired murderers rushed into

the lodging of Iñez de Atienza and took the life of the young woman in

the most revolting manner.

Dr. Markham, on the strength of a few verses of the licentiate

Castellanos, calls Iñez de Atienza, after Madame Godin des Odonais, the

heroine of the Amazon. The comparison is hardly admissible between

Ursua’s mistress, who shortly after his death became so readily the

mistress of his murderer, and the faithful wife who, to seek her husband

toiling in the service of science at Cayenne, bravely made her way

through the wilderness of the Amazon shores almost alone. It is also

painful to read Dr. Markham, in his defence of this woman, a concubine

in station, calling the eye-witness Vasquez, who maintained his fidelity

to the Crown through constant danger to his life, a “gold-seeking

adventurer,” and the noble Bishop Piedrahita, of Panamá, a “dirty

friar.”

Salduendo’s death aroused Guzman from his dreams, but it was too late.

Not able to accomplish anything openly against Aguirre, he determined to

make an attack upon his life. Aguirre anticipated this, and speedily

collected his adherents. The murderers pressed in the darkness of night

into the quarters of the “prince of terra firma.” The priest Henao was

the first victim, six captains fell next, and lastly the simple-minded

youth himself was shot. On the next morning, Aguirre, accompanied by

eighty armed men, came into the midst of the camp and was without

opposition proclaimed “General of the Marañon.”

By this name, Marañon, Aguirre henceforth called the mutiny, of which he

was now absolute commander, and it was so applied by the men themselves.

Simon[62] says the word was derived from _maraña_ (complication), and

survived after Aguirre’s campaign as a by-name for the Amazon. This is,

however, not correct. Peter Martyr had already, in his “_De Orbe Novo_,”

applied the name to the Amazon, of which Pinzon had seen the mouths;

Oviedo, who died in 1557, describes the Amazon River as the Marañon; and

Gomara, whose “_Historia general de las Indias_” was printed in 1552,

applied the name in an indefinite way to the great South American river

that empties into the Atlantic Ocean.

The Amazon is, however, also known as the Rio de Orellano; and in view

of the extremely vague geographical ideas that prevailed in the

sixteenth century, no conclusion can be drawn from the application of

the term “Marañones” to Aguirre’s men concerning the further course or

route of the expedition. It is significant that Acosta[63] says, on the

authority of a witness who was in the expedition of Ursua and Aguirre,

and afterward went into the Order of Jesus, that the Amazon, Marañon, or

Rio de Orellana, emptied into the sea opposite the islands of Margarita

and Trinidad. In connection with this the statement of Cristoval de

Acuña (1639), that Aguirre reached the sea through a side-mouth of the

Amazon opposite Trinidad, is of considerable importance. Mr. Markham,

therefore, does not seem to be wholly unjustified in supposing that the

Marañones, having sailed up the Rio Negro, passed into the Orinoco

through the Cassiquiare and thence through one of the mouths of the

Orinoco, and not through the Amazon, into the Atlantic Ocean. In further

confirmation of this view is the mention by Pedro Simon of Aguirre’s

having met a cannibal tribe, the Arnaquinas. In fact, the Arekainas,

thorough-going cannibals, now dwell on the Upper Rio Negro. On the other

side are the facts that the Falls of the Orinoco are not mentioned in

the few meagre accounts we have of the further course of the expedition,

and that the torrent at Atures and Maypures, and even below, was hardly

navigable for the brigantines although, according to Simon, they were

“as strongly built as ships of three hundred tons.” But whether through

the Orinoco or the Amazon, it seems to be certain that Aguirre with his

two vessels reached the ocean on the first day of July, 1561.

With the murder of Guzman, Aguirre obtained supreme authority; and the

compressed narrative of the voyage down the river to its mouth and into

the ocean, which lasted not quite three months, gives us but little else

than accounts of the Biscayan’s behavior in the exercise of unlimited

power. His whole course was intended to establish this power, and since

he was burdened with guilt and crime, and guilt and crime alone bound

his men to him, doubt and suspicion of his own people were his

predominant feelings. At least eight of the Marañones fell victims to

these feelings in the course of three months; and every new crime

attached the rest, by the sense of common guilt, more closely to their

leader, who, like an evil spirit, led them, with an iron will, to

further crimes. No one dared to speak or hardly to think of the

_dorado_; the men were permitted to entertain but one thought--that of

the conquest of Peru.

The island of Margarita was to afford the first base for this

enterprise. Aguirre reached it in seventeen days, sailing around

Trinidad. The appearance of the two brigantines excited general

astonishment. Aguirre knew how to appeal to the emotions of the

inhabitants. The governor of the island and some of the other officers

went down to the landing to see the new-comers. Aguirre seized and

imprisoned the governor; his men then captured the fort; and before the

people of Margarita came to their senses the island had passed without

drawing a sword into the hands of the Marañones. The royal treasury was

immediately seized, independence of Spain was proclaimed, and provisions

and ammunition for the further prosecution of the campaign were

energetically collected, by gentle means or forcible. Aguirre now needed

larger and swifter vessels for the execution of his audacious plan, for

Nombre de Dios and Panamá were to be surprised in the same manner as

Margarita had been, before the news of the event could spread. A large

vessel, which had brought the Dominican-Provincial Montesinos with his

military escort to Venezuela, was anchored before Maracapanna (the

present Piritú), on the coast of the mainland, opposite Margarita. Some

of the Marañones were sent to seize the vessel. Instead of doing that,

they took the opportunity to desert the standard of rebellion and

surrender to the Provincial, to whom they also made a circumstantial

confession of all the atrocities which Aguirre and his band had

committed. Fray Francisco de Montesinos was shocked by the story, and at

once sent messengers to all the settlements in Venezuela. The report of

the impending danger spread so rapidly over the mainland that in a short

time fifteen hundred men were under arms in New Granada. Venezuela had

been so exhausted by the _dorado_ expeditions of the previous period

that it was only with extreme effort that it could supply two hundred

and sixty poorly armed men.

Aguirre, who had in the meantime sunk both brigantines, confidently

awaited the arrival of the expected ships at Margarita. In the excited

and tense condition of his mind, delay was hardly possible without

violent outbreaks occurring. Not only were Aguirre’s own men exposed to

his murderous caprices, but the defenceless people of the island stood

in constant peril of death. Aguirre regarded their property as his

legitimate spoil, and disposed of it arbitrarily for his own purposes.

While the men of influence and means were robbed and murdered by him,

the bad elements flocked to his party, and the reign of terror on the

island increased as the Marañones gained accessions from the scum of the

population. At last the Provincial’s vessel came in sight, but flying

the royal standard. Aguirre fell into a furious passion. Having caused

the governor of Margarita and the principal officers to be slain, he

proceeded hastily down to the port to prevent the vessel’s landing. No

battle ensued, however, for after an exchange of empty threats the

Provincial set sail again in order to carry the alarm to the Antilles

and the Isthmus.

Aguirre’s plan for surprising Panamá, having been thus defeated, he

determined to invade Venezuela. Before doing so he instigated a number

of murders at Margarita. At length he succeeded in getting a vessel, on

which he sailed “on the last Sunday of August, 1561,” at the head of a

well-armed band of criminals, for Burburata. The people of this place

fled into the woods with their property as soon as they saw the vessel,

which bore two blood-red swords, crossed, on its flag. Without halting

at Burburata, Aguirre marched inland to Lake Tacarigua, on the shore of

which the settlement of Valencia had existed since 1555. Some of his men

deserted him in the tropical wilderness through which his road lay.

Valencia had been abandoned, and the Marañones burned the vacant houses.

Aguirre was ill, and therefore twice as irritable as usual, and gave

himself up to the wildest cruelty, even toward his own men. In Valencia

he composed a manifesto to the King of Spain, and sent it by a priest

whom he had brought from Margarita as a hostage to the coast. The

letter, which has been preserved by Vasquez and by Oviedo y Baños,

begins, “To King Philip, a Spaniard, son of Charles the Invincible,” and

ends with the words, “and on account of this ingratitude, I remain till

death a rebel against thee.--Lope de Aguirre, the Wanderer.” The

document is full of reasonable and unreasonable reproaches, contains the

most glaring and absurd contradictions, and bears throughout the marks

of insanity. From Valencia Aguirre went southwest toward Barquicimeto.

The royal party was not prepared for resistance in the open field; but

the number of the Marañones was perceptibly diminishing. Aguirre’s

daily recurring frenzies were continually costing the lives of some of

the men; the scanty population, instead of joining his party as he had

anticipated, fled from before him, and his people deserted him at every

opportunity.

The end was approaching. Barquicimeto was deserted, but the military

force on the side of the king now appeared before the place, under the

lead of the _maestro del campo_, Diego de Paredes. While not strong

enough to attack him, it prevented Aguirre from proceeding farther. Well

mounted, the royalists passed around his camp daily, cut off all access

to it, and by the judicious circulation of amnesty proclamations which

Governor Collado sagaciously issued, they encouraged his men to desert.

The number of these diminished every day, and Aguirre’s mad spells of

fury became steadily more impotent. At last Paredes decided to risk an

attack on Barquicimeto. On the advance of the royal troops most of the

Marañones threw away their arms and met their assailants with the cry,

“Long live the king!” Aguirre found himself all at once entirely

forsaken. Pale and trembling, he went into the chamber of his only

child, a grown-up maiden, and with the words, “My child, God have mercy

on your soul, for I am going to kill you, so that you shall not live in

misery and shame the child of a traitor,” stabbed her in the heart, and

then weakly tottered toward the door which the royal soldiers were

approaching. He suffered himself to be taken without resistance. The

royal _maestro del campo_ desired to spare his life, but the Marañones

insisted on the instant death of their former leader, and he fell under

the discharge of musketry. His head was cut off and was exhibited at

Tocuyo in an iron cage. His memory survives to the present time in

Venezuela as that of an evil spirit; and when at night the

jack-o’-lanterns dance over the marshy plains, the solitary wanderer

crosses himself and whispers, “The soul of the tyrant Aguirre.”

With this closes the account of the series of expeditions which we

undertook to describe in connection with the legend of the gilded man.

The story justifies our comparison of the vision of the _dorado_ after

his real home had been conquered with a mirage, “enticing, deceiving,

and leading men to destruction.”

Notwithstanding the tragical consequences which the search for this

phantom invariably entailed, it remained long fixed like an evil spell

upon the northeastern half of the South American continent. Martin de

Proveda tried and failed, in 1556, to reach Omagua and the “provinces of

the _dorado_.” Diego de Cerpa, in 1569, and Pedro Malaver de Silva, in

1574, met their deaths at the mouths of the Orinoco. There Antonio de

Berreo, after he had fruitlessly marched through the whole interior of

Venezuela, fell a prisoner into the hands of the English in 1582. The

great expedition of Sir Walter Raleigh in 1595 only got as far as the

Salto Caroni. In the meanwhile the locality of the legend, as Humboldt

has remarked, kept shifting farther to the east, till it took final

refuge in Guyana, “in the periodically overflowed plains between the

rivers Rupununi, Essequibo, and Branco”--but shrunken at the same time

to a purely geographical myth of Lake Parime. As in the first half of

the sixteenth century German soldiers were the earliest to pursue the

gilded chieftain, the fact also appears like a curious fate that in the

first half of the nineteenth century the German travellers Alexander von

Humboldt and Schomburgk laid that phantom of the great lake, and with it

terminated the last survival of the legend of the gilded man.

CIBOLA.

INTRODUCTION.

The most interesting period in the history of the discoveries on the

American continent was in that part of the sixteenth century when the

efforts of the Spanish people were directed to pushing from the already

settled coast lands and isthmuses into the interior of both North and

South America. I have already endeavored, in the preceding chapters, to

project a brief view of the exploring expeditions of the Spaniards in

northern South America. Since those sketches were composed, fortune has

several times led me into those countries of southern North America

which formed the scene of the most arduous efforts of the Spaniards in

the sixteenth century to reach the north. I now purpose, as a

contribution I owe to knowledge, to follow step by step the tracks of

the earliest Spanish campaigns in the southwest of the present United

States into the interior of Sonora.

The value of historical research on the American continent consists not

only in the enrichment it affords to the fund of scientific knowledge,

which has an indirect influence upon life, but also in the destruction

it effects of deeply rooted errors, in which it acts immediately upon

practical life. Accordingly as we represent to ourselves a people or a

country when they first become known to us, so we shape our

expectations of them when we go to establish our home among them. A

correct notion of the past furnishes the basis for an intelligent

forecasting of the future. I have tried to show in the history of the

_dorado_ what harm may result from incorrect views of history and

misapprehensions of manners and customs.

The errors of this kind which arose in the southern half of the Western

Continent were, fortunately, corrected at a comparatively early date. In

North America similar errors have been reëchoed, with mischievous

results, down to near the present time. Expectations awakened and

cherished in the beginning of the sixteenth century, not fulfilled but

never completely dispelled, have in past years prepared for the failure

of many enterprises in the southwest of the United States. These

expectations were built upon the basis of a misunderstood fact. The

tradition of the “Seven Cities of Cibola” included a kernel of fact

enveloped by a shell of exaggerated fancies and hopes. Much interest has

been taken in recent times in inquiries respecting the “where” and the

“how” of that kernel. While those questions were correctly answered by

earnest and intelligent investigation thirty years ago, the practical

seeker has been led by them into many unfortunate wanderings, and the

settler looking for his future in the west has been lured into attempts

that have forever buried his fortunes and those of his companions. The

following pages have been prepared in the hope that, conveying the

warnings of history, they may furnish the basis for the formation of

more correct views.

CHAPTER I.

THE AMAZONS.

Columbus had heard of the Amazons on his great voyage. He said, on the

4th of March, 1493, of the Caribs: “They are the same who have

intercourse with the women on the first island which is found on the

voyage from Spain to the Indies, on which no men live. These do not

follow any womanly occupations, but use bows and arrows of cane, like

those mentioned above, and cover and arm themselves with brazen plates,

of which they have many.” In the same letter the Admiral spoke of a part

of the island of Cuba (Juana), “called Cibau, where the people come into

the world with tails;” and of another island, “where, as they assured

me, the men have no hair.” In such a company, at that time, the Amazons

also could not fail to be present.

The legend of the Amazons was unquestionably domiciled upon the American

continent by the Spaniards, and was suggested by imperfectly understood

accounts of distant tribes given by the natives, to whose words the

Spaniards were not inattentive. Keeping pace with the efforts of the

Spaniards to penetrate to the north, it appears first in the fourth

letter of Cortés to the Emperor Charles V. (October 15, 1524): “And

among the reports which he brought from that province [Colima] was an

account of a very good harbor which was found on that coast; ... and

also he told me of the lords of the province of Ciguatan, that many of

them asserted there was an island inhabited only by women without any

men, and that from time to time men went out to them from the mainland;

... when they bore daughters they kept them, but the sons were put away.

This island is ten days distant from the province, and many persons have

gone there from the province and seen them. I was also told that they

were rich in pearls and in gold.”

It was Gonzalo Sandoval, Cortés’s most faithful lieutenant and friend,

who brought this account. It was not allotted to Cortés himself to

pursue the search for the Amazons’ island, for the insurrection which

another associate in his conquest of the Mexican tribes, Cristóbal de

Olid, excited against him in Honduras forced him into the arduous

campaign in that part of Central America, in which he only with great

difficulty escaped death. Until that remarkable expedition, which

penetrated southward from Mexico to the now hardly accessible interior

regions of Chiapas and Yucatan, the Spaniards held the northern coast of

the Mexican gulf to the present state of Tamaulipas, but on the western

coast they had advanced but little beyond the twentieth degree of north

latitude in the state of Jalisco. The subjugation of the tribes of the

Rio Pánuco on the eastern coast brought about a conflict in the year

1523 between Cortés and the contemporary discoverer, Francisco de Garay,

which ended in Garay’s going to Mexico, where he espoused the natural

daughter of Cortés, and then suddenly died. The behavior of Cortés had

already aroused the distrust of the Spanish Government. There is no

longer much doubt that, feeling his separation from the mother-country,

and counting on the support of the natives, which he was beginning to

cultivate systematically, he was working for the establishment of an

independent kingdom in Mexico. He was therefore dangerous to all who

stood near him in importance, and used every means to remove them. To

this end he sent the most capable and most popular of his lieutenants,

Pedro de Alvarado, to Guatemala, and Cristóbal de Olid to Honduras,

while Sandoval, in whose frank and innocent character alone he could

trust, was allowed to remain in Mexico. He had managed to get the first

commissioner whom the Government sent to Mexico, Cristóbal de Tápia, out

of the country; but Garay he permitted to come to Mexico--to die.

Cortés considered himself secure, and wrote a letter to the Spanish

Crown, the language of which is little known, in which, while he

insisted in the plainest manner upon his services and personal devotion,

he in the most courtly terms denied allegiance, and declined any

interference of the royal officers in the administration of the new

colony. This letter, which bears the same date as the famous paper

called the _Carta Cuarta_ (October 15, 1524), was written when four

officers of the Spanish Crown--the treasurer, Alonso de Estrada; the

accountant and paymaster, Rodrigo de Albornoz; the factor, Gonzalo de

Salazar; and the inspector, Peral Mendez Chirinos--had come to Mexico to

take care of the financial interests of the monarch. The insurrection of

Olid called away the conqueror of Mexico and took him to Honduras, else

he would have carried out his ambitious plans at that time, when, it is

hardly to be doubted, they would have been more successful than was

afterward the struggle for independence of Gonzalo Pizarro in Peru.

After the departure of Cortés from Mexico, October 12, 1524, the

administration of the province fell into the hands of the officers of

the Crown. They soon quarrelled, and disastrous complications arose.

Mexico itself was the scene of great disorder, while the Indians in the

country rebelled. This interregnum lasted till the year 1525, and ended

with the arrest of Salazar and Chirinos by the partisans of Cortés.

Cortés, after restoring order in Honduras, returned to Mexico on June

20, 1526.

A brilliant reception was prepared for him there, but it had only a

transient importance. The Spanish Government had perceived the magnitude

of the danger with which it was threatened from the extraordinary but

reckless conqueror, and had made the best of his absence. Cortés had

indeed been honored with the title of “Adelantado” of New Spain, and

with many personal privileges, but the most northern part of Mexico that

had been discovered, from the mouth of the Pánuco River, was withdrawn

from his dominion and placed under the administration of Nuño de Guzman.

By this change he lost all the fruits of his agreement with Francisco de

Garay and of Garay’s premature death. A young jurist, Luis Ponce de

Léon, was immediately sent to Mexico to make an impartial investigation

on the spot of the complaints that were brought against Cortés. For

this purpose he was privately given full power to arrest Cortés if

necessary and send him to Spain, or in the other event to confirm him in

his office.

Ponce de Léon arrived at the City of Mexico on July 2, 1526, and was

received with pomp by Cortés, who placed himself wholly at his

disposition; but the climate agreed no better with the new functionary

than it had before agreed with Garay. He died in the same month after a

short illness; and eight weeks afterward his successor in office, the

Bachelor Márcos de Aguilar, also died. The process against Cortés

dragged slowly along with many interruptions amid great disquiet in the

country; for Alonso de Estrada had taken the reins of government, and

had abridged the conqueror’s prerogatives to the domain of military

command and Indian administration. Shorn of all power, Cortés had to

submit to the inevitable, and to suffer patiently a banishment from the

City of Mexico, which Estrada imposed upon him in order to secure

tranquillity.

Although further explorations in the north were temporarily interrupted

by the disorders that prevailed in the country, Cortés found time to

organize an expedition to the Molukkes on the western coast, and at

least to open communication with them. The royal officers, on the

contrary, could accomplish nothing, and in order to circumscribe their

power, as well as that of the governor of Panamá, Pedro Arias Dávila,

independent jurisdictions were created out of Honduras, Guatemala, and

Yucatan. At the same time the Church assumed the control of Indian

affairs, and finally, in order to terminate the arbitrary provisional

system of government, the royal court of law, _Audiencia real_, was set

up in the year 1527 as the chief authority in Mexico.

Nuño Beltrán de Guzman entered into possession of his government in

Pánuco in the year 1528. He was young, vigorous, and energetic, but

imperious, and his inconsiderate ambition was not capable of the wise

patience that Cortés manifested. His first step was to stir up boundary

disputes with the adjacent jurisdiction of New Spain or Mexico, and when

no results accrued from them, he sent Sancho de Caniego to Madrid with a

series of complaints against Hernando Cortés, which could not fail to

excite earnest attention. Besides the charge of treason against the

Crown already raised, Guzman accused the conqueror with having murdered

Francisco de Garay and Luis Ponce de Léon. Cortés presented himself in

Spain almost simultaneously with the charges, to defend himself

personally against them. But an accusation of another more heinous

offence had been more recently filed in secret against him at the court.

His wife, Doña Catalina Xuarez, with whom he had not long shared the

happiness of wedded life, having been separated from her a few years

after their marriage by absence on his campaigns, had joined him again

after the conquest of Mexico, and suddenly died three months later. He

was therefore, although not openly, accused of murdering her. The Acts

of the Process against Cortés included a “secret inquiry” (_pesquisa

secreta_) into this terrible accusation. The Process resulted in an

official acquittal; but the Acts themselves presented the death of

Francisco de Garay in the most suspicious light, left the manner in

which the death of Ponce de Léon occurred an open question, and made it

certain that Cortés had with his own hands strangled in bed his first

faithful wife, who had followed him to Mexico at his request. The

Process did not detain Cortés later than till the year 1530. In the

meantime the Spanish Crown, as soon as it was informed of the new

accusations that had been brought against Cortés, appointed Nuño Beltrán

de Guzman president of the court of law in Mexico, and thus elevated him

to the highest official position in New Spain. The selection was an

unwise one. Guzman proceeded to Mexico, where he arrived in 1529. His

demeanor was very arrogant. The complaints against him soon became as

loud, even on the side of the _Audiencia_, as they had been against

Cortés. At last the King of Spain (the Emperor Charles V.) named a new

_Audiencia_, and appointed as its president Sebastian Ramirez de

Fuenléal, bishop of Santo Domingo. The president did not go directly to

the mainland, but spent some time in his episcopal see, partly in order

to observe quietly the course of affairs in Mexico, and partly to

perfect his plans for the reorganization of the country.

Guzman’s conduct was in the meantime intolerable. Directly in the face

of the Spanish laws he pursued the natives in order to extort gold and

slaves from them, and abused the former associates of Cortés. Even the

_Audiencia_ was glad when he left Mexico, on the 20th of December, 1529,

at the head of a large Spanish squadron and more than eight thousand

Indians, for the purpose of continuing the discoveries begun by Sandoval

for Cortes in the northwest. The drafting of Indians to engage in this

campaign was a transgression of the law, but he was personally supported

in it by some of the members of the court. His march was directed first

toward Michoacan, but its ultimate goal was the gold-rich and

pearl-bearing island of the fabulous Amazons.

The Tarasca lived and still live in Michoacan. Although they spoke a

different language from the Mexicans, their traditions pointed to an

original connection with them, and they were in the same stage of

civilization. The Tarasca were split up into a number of groups, which,

like the other linguistic stocks or their subdivisions, of which

Tlaxcala, Cholula, and the three large settlements of the Mexican

Valley--Mexico, Tezcuco, and Tlacopan--were conspicuous examples, had a

common leadership in war. The tribes of Michoacan had two such head

war-chiefs, of whom commonly only one--like Montezuma in his day in

Mexico--who is called Cazonci, is named. The Tarasca had voluntarily

submitted to Cortés, and stood in friendly relations toward the

Spaniards as long as the famous conqueror commanded in Mexico. Guzman,

having arrived at Michoacan, in his rude way imposed considerable

requisitions on the chiefs. As these could not be granted quickly

enough, the principal leader, “Zinzicha,” was tortured to death. Guzman

then went northward, and this campaign constitutes the saddest page for

the natives in the history of Mexico. The Indians there suffered

generally only during two periods: first under the confusion which

prevailed during the absence of Cortés, from 1524 to 1526; and, second,

under the administration of Nuño de Guzman, from 1529 to 1531. The rule

of Cortés was wisely just and mild; and the later policy of the

Spaniards was a paternal one, marked by a correct knowledge of the

Indian character, its weaknesses and its capabilities.

Guzman has been often accused, by his contemporaries as well as by later

writers, of having exercised deliberate cruelties on his march through

the present states of Jalisco and Sinaloa, and his campaign has been

described as one of devastation. Numerous acts of violence certainly

occurred. The Indian tribes, divided, scattered, and living in constant

war with one another, suffered much, but a careful examination of the

authorities shows that it was more from fear than anything else; while

no reliance can be placed upon the numerical statements concerning the

so-called Spanish blood-baths, particularly none upon those of the

bishop of Chiapas, Bartholomé de las Casas. The whole literature of that

period should be read with the same reserves with which we receive the

political “campaign literature” of the present; and the numerous

official hearings of the Spanish civil officers furnish the most

contradictory statements. Guzman was ambitious and avaricious; his

outbreaks of cruelty were provoked by those passions. Where his

interests demanded patience he could be gentle enough, but when excited

by contradiction or negligence, he raged against his own Spaniards as

well as against hostile Indians. Contrary to the orders of the Spanish

Crown, he made slaves of a number of Indians in order that he might at

least compensate himself for the disappointments he suffered in other

respects; for the chief object of his search was gold in quantities,

but he could only obtain it scantily. The civilization of the natives

appeared to decline as he went toward the northwest; the houses of stone

and plaster gave way to lighter structures of cane and wood, and

shelters made of branches and foliage.

A bitter disappointment was awaiting him in Cihuatlan in the present

state of Sinaloa. Sandoval had brought the story of the Amazons from

there; but instead of the island on which he had placed the soldierly

women, Guzman was shown only a few insignificant villages. He found

them, however, exclusively inhabited by women and children, for the men

had fled to the mountains. The legend of the Amazons was thus resolved

into one of those mistakes which were sure to arise at that time on the

first contact of Europeans with natives whose language they did not

understand. No trace was found of gold, pearls, or treasures of any

kind. The story of the Amazons ceases from this time to be of any

significance in the history of discovery in the northern half of

America. It plainly appears from the accounts of contemporaries that it

was not a native legend in America, but was an importation from Europe,

a survival from classical antiquity, which emigrated along with

cultivated and uncultivated Europeans into what was called the New

World.

Guzman, although unsuccessful as to his principal object, did not

abandon the effort to press farther north. He reached Culiacan, and

founded there a settlement under the name of San Miguel de Culiacan. His

force, however, was exhausted and partially destroyed. His Indian

guides especially had suffered much. He therefore despatched the Captain

Chirinos toward the north, and the latter in turn sent his captains,

Cebreros and Diego de Alcáraz, still farther in that direction. Guzman

in the meantime started on his return. His direct work in this region

ended with the foundation of the Spanish settlement in Culiacan. In the

beginning of May, 1531, he left the young town and began a continuous

march to the south. His kingdom had come to an end; Cortés had returned

to Mexico and arrived at an understanding with the new _Audiencia_.

Grave accusations were raised against Nuño de Guzman. All his orders

concerning the Indians were revoked, and when at last the new president

of the royal court of justice, Bishop Don Sebastian Ramirez de Fuenléal,

came into Mexico, he took control of affairs with a firm hand, and

banished his violent predecessor to the scene of his march on the

western coast. In 1537 he was arrested by order of the Spanish

Government and carried a prisoner to Spain, where, having been deprived

of his property by confiscation, he died in poverty in 1544. When

Guzman, even after he had become satisfied at Cihuatlan that he had been

pursuing a phantom in the shape of the river of the Amazons, still

endeavored to go farther north, he was moved by another story which

excited his avarice and his imagination. Unable himself to follow this

second phantom, he charged Captain Chirinos with the object. The latter

went as far as the Rio de Petatlan, and thence sent out his

subordinates, Cebreros and Alcáraz, to the Rio Mayo. The numerous though

small towns which were found on the banks of this river were inhabited

by the Mayo Indians, who now form a branch of the linguistic stock of

the Yaqui, or Hyaquin. Cebreros crossed the Mayo, proceeded in 1532 into

the present Sonora, and although he had hardly twenty men reached the

Rio Yaqui. He did not venture to go farther than to the north bank of

that river, but returned to Sinaloa. The Indians there were in active

revolt, and the Spaniards had great difficulty in maintaining themselves

in the weak settlement of San Miguel Culiacan. They had found on their

northern excursions fertile intervales inhabited by warlike tribes.

Beyond these tribes lived a people who built their houses of clay. Still

farther north another wonder-story invited them, which promised more

than the most fertile intervale, more than the most civilized Indian

settlements. The account of Indians in Sonora who lived in large houses

of clay was true, for it referred to the southern Pimas. But the story

that attracted the Spaniards to the north was the legend of the “Seven

Cities.”