Rivers of Gold

by Hugh Thomas

  Furthermore, we have learned that there are many charts by various masters on which are delineated the lands and the islands in our Indies, by our command recently discovered, and because these charts may give rise to confusion since they are very different from each other, both in the sailing directions and in the contour of coastlines…[we] order that there shall be made a general chart (padrón general), and so that that may be more accurate, we order our officers of the Casa de Contratación at Seville to assemble all the best qualified pilots who may be found in Spain at that time, and that in your presence, Amerigo Vespucci, our chief pilot, there shall be made a chart of all the islands and lands of the Indies … and this shall be kept in the possession of our aforesaid officers and of you, our chief pilot, and that no pilot shall steer by any other chart.…

  Furthermore, we order all pilots … who voyage hereafter to the said lands of our Indies discovered or to be discovered that when they find new lands, islands, bays, harbors, or anything else, they make a note of them for the said royal chart and that, upon arriving back in Castile, they shall give an account to you, the chief pilot, and to the officers of the Casa de Contratación, that all may be correctly delineated on the said royal chart.… None of our pilots shall henceforth be without his quadrant and astrolabe and the rules for working them under penalty of being named incompetent to exercise the said employment.…18

  The piloto mayor was therefore to be a kind of teacher who would conduct a school for captains at his house in Seville. Vespucci had by then established the reputation in Seville of being not only a great traveler but also “very skilled” in the art of making maps.19 He carried out his new functions from a house in the Plaza del Postigo del Carbón that he rented from Bishop Fonseca, and he does not seem to have moved again.20 A nephew, Juan (Giovanni), lived with him and his Sevillana wife, María Cerezo. So did five slaves, including two blacks and a Canary Islander, Isabel, who may have given two illegitimate children to Vespucci.21 Like Columbus and like Isabel the Catholic, when he died (in 1512) he was buried in the robe of a Franciscan.

  Another decision of the Burgos conference in 1508 derived from a determination to seek a strait in the Americas to establish the real western route to the Spice Islands. Given that Vespucci had searched most of the coast of Brazil and that la Cosa had sailed along the coast of northern South America as far as Darien, while Columbus had been from Darien to the Bay Islands, there were only three possibilities: one in the far south; a second in the center, to the north of the Bay Islands; and a third to the far north, where Cabot had sought to establish an English interest. In the event, Pinzón and Solís set off uncertainly on June 29, 1508, with two ships, the San Benito and the Magdalena, to explore the central route, close to where Columbus had turned south in 1502 after meeting the Maya merchants. They had with them Pedro de Ledesma, a pilot who had been with Columbus on his terrible fourth voyage. On this journey they almost certainly touched at Yucatan and probably sailed some way up what is now the Mexican coast.22 They reached Spain again at the end of August 1509. The journey had much more importance than it has ever been given credit for.

  Now that the difficulties attending the deaths of Queen Isabel and King Philip were over, and Diego Colón restored, as it were, to La Española, it seemed entirely possible to confirm Alonso de Hojeda and Diego de Nicuesa as the first governors of new provinces on the mainland, “Urabá” and “Veragua.” Jamaica would be their base. Diego Colón was still displeased, since he thought both the nominations and the use of Jamaica constituted a violation of his rights. But he was brushed aside. Urabá would include Cartagena de Indias, and Hojeda would build two fortresses there. Veragua would constitute the east of what is now Panama. Neither place could be defined very well in Valladolid, however. Still, Hojeda and Nicuesa were believed to have been friends at least since they had sailed with Columbus in 1493, and that seemed to augur well for the success of what was considered in Castile a joint exercise.

  Hojeda, with his combination of energy, cruelty, and ambition, needs no further introduction. Nicuesa, it should be realized, was a gentleman from Baeza. He had once been in the household of the King’s uncle, Enrique Enríquez, Admiral of Castile, and had it not been for the discovery of the Americas, would have remained there all his life. He was a gifted and charming man, good with horses, skilled on the old guitar (vihuela), and both rich and well meaning. Alas, he coveted a colony of his own. That was his undoing. Returning to Spain as procurador of Santo Domingo, he asked the King to give him the nomination to “Veragua.” Fernando agreed.23

  Hojeda, meanwhile, had already set off for the north coast of South America on December 18, 1508, and with him went the veteran Juan de la Cosa and several young men, such as the resourceful brothers Pedro and Diego de Ordaz from Castroverde del Campo, near Benavente. They stopped in the Canaries and at La Española, where they picked up more men, including Francisco Pizarro, the illegitimate son of a hidalgo from Extremadura who was known for his achievements in the wars in Italy. This Pizarro had first set off for the Indies with Ovando.

  The expedition dropped anchor at Turbaco, near Cartagena, where the local Indians had dark memories of the brutal visit there of Cristóbal Guerra. Hojeda thought of entering the nearby harbor of Calamar, in order to capture Indians as slaves and send them to La Española to settle various debts that he had there. Juan de la Cosa, as captain-general, remembered the poisoned darts that he had encountered in the past and advised against any such effort. But Hojeda insisted and made a surprise attack on the place, capturing sixty natives. Those who escaped fled to Turbaco.

  The Castilians pursued them and reached the settlement, but Hojeda found himself isolated. His men were left behind in the mountains, and the Indians, regrouping, attacked in surprisingly well-directed waves. Hojeda fought bravely, but in the end, he committed himself to flight and ran to the safety of the nearby ships. But Juan de la Cosa, hero or villain of so many voyages to the New World, was surrounded in a hut, and on February 28, 1510, was killed by arrows, along with perhaps seventy others. He was then sixty years old.24

  The men left behind on the boats eventually went in dinghies to look for the refugees. They found Hojeda fainting in a mangrove swamp. The brothers Diego de Ordaz and Pizarro also saved themselves. This Battle of Turbaco was the first serious defeat of the Spaniards since Navidad in 1493.

  At this point, Diego de Nicuesa hove into sight with two naos and three brigantines, as well as several hundred fresh soldiers. Thus in a sense reinforced, Hojeda returned to the battle and even to Turbaco, which he destroyed. He burned the huts and cut the throats of those inhabitants whom he captured. He then set off for the Bay of Urabá, where he established a rudimentary settlement, San Sebastián. He sent a ship back to Santo Domingo with a cargo of captured Indians, some of them coming from the island of Fuerte, just offshore.

  Nicuesa, on the other hand, sailed on to what he presumably hoped would turn out to be Veragua. His old friendship with Hojeda does not seem to have survived this act of kindness on his part.

  The conditions in San Sebastián de Urabá—the first attempt at the establishment of a colony on the mainland—were discouraging. Hojeda’s supplies ran out, the local Indians pursued him and his men with more poisoned arrows, and disease took its usual appalling toll. Fortunately for the Spaniards, a ship of seventy refugees from justice in La Española, all criminals, captained by Bernardino de Talavera, soon appeared. They had stolen a ship from Genoese merchants at Punta del Tiburón. But they were helpful to Hojeda.25

  The colony soon used up the supplies brought by Talavera, and Hojeda decided to return to Santo Domingo in the stolen ship with about half the expedition. As for those left behind, if help had not arrived in fifty days, the survivors, under the command of Francisco Pizarro, who had been a resourceful second in command to Hojeda since the death of la Cosa, should do what they could to save themselves.

  Hojeda with his new ally Talavera went first to Cuba. There, on a beach kn
own later as the Bay of Pigs, they were attacked by Tainos, whose cacique, however, received them well. Pedro de Ordaz sailed from Cuba to Jamaica in search of help, and from there the Governor, Juan de Esquivel, sent a wellsupplied caravel under his second in command, Pánfilo de Narváez, which took Hojeda and his companions to Santo Domingo. But the latter never recovered his health, and he died impoverished in 1515, having in his last moments of life become a Franciscan.

  Hojeda had crossed the Atlantic about seven times and had explored most of the northern coast of South America. His casual cruelty blinds us to his considerable achievements. Las Casas was harsh: “Had he not been born, the world would have lost nothing.”26 He was irrepressible, however, and has a good claim to be considered the first pure adventurer to sail to the New World.

  Diego de Nicuesa, meanwhile, had left for what Columbus had called “Veragua” and its supposed gold; and, after various tribulations, his party established themselves about four miles to the west of the Bay of Urabá, at Las Misas, so called because the first Mass on the mainland of the New World was celebrated there. There Nicuesa divided his expedition into two, always an unwise move. Nicuesa left the bulk of his men and most of the ships under the command of a cousin, Cueto, another hidalgo from Baeza. He himself, with a single caravel and brigantine captained by a Basque, Lope de Olano, who had been a rebel with Roldán against Columbus in the late 1490s, sailed north with ninety men in a further search for “Veragua.” The journey proved unsuccessful even though Nicuesa had with him some of the pilots, such as Pedro de Umbría, who had been with Columbus on his fourth voyage in those same waters.

  Two months passed during which Cueto and the people at Las Misas heard nothing of Nicuesa. They sent out a search and, after finding a message left in a tree by him saying that he was well, came upon Lope de Olano, who said that the commander had sailed off alone in a canoe after a bitter argument with one of the pilots as to the whereabouts of “Veragua.” If he were not telling the truth, that pilot commented, he hoped that his head would be cut off.

  Cueto and Olano then set off northward themselves in search not of “Veragua” but of Nicuesa, and founded, as they went, a settlement on a river that Columbus had named the Belem. Eventually news of Nicuesa came from a comrade, Diego Ribera, who had deserted him on an island some miles off the coast that he had named El Escudo. A brigantine brought him back, and though Olano now had visions of personal power and arrested Nicuesa when he arrived in rags, hungry and ill, Gonzalo de los Reyes, a benign captain, took him to recover on a hill overlooking the place that became known as Nombre de Dios. These journeys were, of course, all completely new experiences for Europeans.

  It will be recalled that Alonso de Hojeda had allowed the remaining settlers in the colony of San Sebastián de Urabá to remain for fifty days after his own departure for La Española.27 The commander left behind the rough Extremeño Francisco Pizarro, who lingered longer than his appointed time and then, in September 1510, set sail for Santo Domingo. But in the Bay of Calamar, near what became Cartagena de Indias, he met by chance a boat carrying the geographer Martín Fernández de Enciso. That explorer had been on Hojeda’s original expedition. He and Pizarro returned together to the settlement of San Sebastián, but found it had been razed to the ground by the Indians. On the suggestion of Vasco Núñez de Balboa, a clever conquistador from Jerez de los Caballeros who had stowed away on Enciso’s boat to escape creditors in Santo Domingo,28 they sailed to Darien, which Balboa knew from having been there in 1501 with Rodrigo de Bastidas. Despite resistance from Sinú Indians, the three conquistadors Pizarro, Núñez de Balboa, and Fernández de Enciso founded the city of Nuestra Señora de la Antigua in the Gulf of Urabá, at the mouth of the River Atrato, just inside what is now Colombia.29

  This new settlement was a mistake. Martyr, on the basis of later conversations with those who went there, commented:

  The site is badly chosen, unhealthy and more pestiferous than Sardinia. All the colonists look pale, as if they are men sick from jaundice. It is not exclusively the fault of the climate, for in many other places, situated at the same latitude, the climate is wholesome and agreeable; clear springs break from the earth, and swift rivers flow between banks that are not swampy. The natives, however, here make a point of living in the hills and not in the valleys. The colony founded on the shores of Darien is situated in a deep valley, completely surrounded by lofty hills, in such a way that the direct rays of the sun beat upon it at midday, and as the sun goes down, its rays are reflected from the mountains, in front, from behind, and all around, rendering the place insupportable. The rays of the sun are most fierce when they are reflected.… The unwholesomeness of the place is further increased by the malodorous marsh surrounding it. To tell the truth, the town is nothing but a swamp. When the slaves sprinkle the floors of the houses with water, toads spring into action.… There is not even the advantage of a good harbor … for the distance … to the entrance of the gulf is three leagues and the road leading there is difficult.…30

  Still, here was a Spanish colony in a remote and unknown place. What courage, what determination were needed to establish such a settlement! Once it was properly set up, several of the expedition headed by Rodrigo Enríquez de Colmenares, and accompanied by Diego del Corral and Diego Albítez, went to look for Diego de Nicuesa at Nombre de Dios. They found him “the most wretched of men, by now reduced to a skeleton, covered with rags.” They embraced and Nicuesa returned with them to Urabá. After arriving there, newly confident and encouraged by Colmenares and the others, Nicuesa showed himself intent on reasserting his authority. The new settlement, he argued, was in his zone of command. He wanted to confiscate the goods of Balboa and his friends. But Balboa conducted himself cleverly. He encouraged Nicuesa to sleep in his room, and after about three weeks, Nicuesa was placed on board one of his own brigantines and ordered to sail off again, back to Veragua. He left, furious, on March 2, 1511, sailing east, not north, and was never seen again, probably being killed by Indians at Cartagena, where he landed to look for fresh water. Two of his men—a lay brother, Jerónimo de Aguilar, from Écija, near Córdoba, and Juan Guerrero, from Lepe, near Huelva—continued on the brigantine only to be wrecked off the coast of Yucatan. Both survived to play a part in the expedition of Cortés to Mexico.31

  Lope de Olano, who also challenged Balboa’s authority, was punished in a different way. He was made to grind maize in the streets of Darien in the style of Indians. As for Fernández de Enciso, Balboa had him expelled. He had never been a friend since he had threatened to have Balboa placed on a desert island when he was discovered as a stowaway on his vessel from Santo Domingo. Balboa thereby acquired temporary peace of mind but made an enemy of a powerful individual with the capacity to injure him. All the same, he now assumed command of the colony. Francisco Pizarro was his deputy.32

  Balboa sent two adherents, Valdivia and Martín de Zamudio, to explain his conduct to Diego Colón, and he was confirmed in his command on December 23, 1510, by the King himself. Zamudio went on to Spain, but Valdivia returned to Darien. His ship was wrecked, and he and some of his men were captured by the Maya Indians in Yucatan.33

  Balboa was the first caudillo of the Americas, in the sense that he made himself leader through sheer determination and strength of character. He followed a policy of relative friendship with the indigenous people, which, in general, worked well (though there were some exceptions, such as when he had the cacique Pacra torn to pieces by dogs). The leaders of the Indians at Urabá were similar to those in La Española in that there were recognizable caciques. But in most other ways, with their palm and pineapple wines, their beer made from maize, and their glittering gold ornaments, they were more sophisticated. The houses of their chiefs were rectangular, often built elegantly in trees, and their gold objects (sometimes the accumulation of generations) were frequently elaborate. Like all sophisticated people, they had slaves. They did not possess the bitter yucca of the Caribbean and therefore had no cassava br
ead, but they did have the staple of Mexico, maize, sweet potatoes, and sweet yucca. They also bred turkeys and dogs to be eaten.

  They provided Balboa and his three hundred men with both food and girls. He traveled extensively, usually accompanied by Colmenares, and found gold in the foothills of the Andes, the origins of the myth of Eldorado. Once, the caciques planned to murder the Spaniards, but a sister of one of them was Balboa’s mistress, and she betrayed her relations.34

  Balboa also clashed with the eldest son of a cacique named Comogre, who struck the scales in which the conquistadors were weighing the royal fifth of gold, and asked:

  What thing is this, Christians? How is it possible that you set such a high value on such a small quantity of gold? Yet you nevertheless destroy the artistic beauty of these necklaces, making them into ingots! If your thirst for gold is such that, in order to satisfy it, you destroy peaceful people and bring misfortune and calamity among them, if you exile yourselves from your own country in search of gold, I will show you a country where it abounds and where you can satisfy the thirst that torments you. But to undertake this expedition, you will need numerous forces, for you will have to conquer powerful rulers who will defend their country to the death. More than all the others, King Tumanamá will oppose your advance.…

  On the other side of those mountains there is another sea that has never been sailed by your little boats. The people there go naked and live as we do, but they use both sails and oars.… The whole southern slope of the mountains is very rich in gold mines.