Rivers of Gold

by Hugh Thomas

  Velázquez had collateral descendants through his sister; and in the apartment of a modern Velázquez in Madrid there are the remains of a mahogany table that in the family is held to have been Diego’s. It is improbable that Diego Velázquez was related to the seventeenth-century painter of the same name.30

  Velázquez and his friends became accustomed to the tropics, whose foods (turtle, cassava bread, iguana, and cotora bird) began to please them in a way that never happened in Santo Domingo. The Governor seems to have neglected much of what was happening elsewhere on the island, though he had established ten or more haciendas of his own in several places, from Baracoa, in the east, to Havana, in the west, usually shared with others and managed by a majordomo who would receive a third, a fifth, or perhaps a seventh part of the profits. These farms were chiefly concerned with pigs, turtles, and different kinds of game.31

  The decline of the Indian population was noticed, of course, as it had been in La Española, but no one—not even Las Casas, by now back in Spain—could think of a solution, except to bring in more black African slave labor. The problem was surely discussed at Governor Velázquez’s evening tertulias in Santiago. The anxiety about the future of the labor force concentrated the minds of the settlers. Any Indian escaping into the forest would be followed by dogs in hot pursuit, for a slave was at least as important as a settler.

  There was in Cuba an annual melting down of gold in the spring before the rain made all travel difficult. At that time, there would also meet in Santiago the representatives (procuradores) of the cities, and sometimes a procurador general would be sent to Castile to report to the King what needed to be done. This was not exactly a democracy, but it was a liberal oligarchy as far as the Spaniards were concerned. Four Dominicans sent from Santo Domingo by Fray Pedro de Córdoba had little impact, even if they did preach against injustice to the indigenous people.32

  One subject that must have come up for discussion at the tertulias in Santiago de Cuba was the question of what existed to the west and northwest of the island. Here there was a gap in knowledge. As we have seen, Ponce de León, the conqueror of Puerto Rico, had found a country that he christened the land of La Pascual Florida. To the west, he and, earlier, Pinzón and Díaz de Solís had stopped in a territory that sounded promising. That was surely Yucatan. Even Columbus, in 1504, had come upon sophisticated Maya merchants near the Central American mainland. But no one knew exactly whence they had come.

  In 1514, Velázquez, in his first full report home after his conquest, wrote to the King that he had been told that on occasion certain Indians had come from the islands beyond Cuba “toward the north, navigating five or six days by canoe and gave news of other islands that lay beyond.” This was a remarkable report to which little attention was paid. It suggests connections between the mainland of Central America and Cuba that archaeologists have not recognized.33 Velázquez and his friends in their nightly talks did not know, of course, that these were marks of the civilization of Mesoamerica. But they suspected that profit might come from investigation. If nothing else, more slaves could be obtained who might help to make up for the shortage of labor. They had no inkling of the magnitude of the riches that awaited their compatriots in Mexico and Peru.

  In Havana, in the Plaza de Armas, near the house of the Governor-General, there stands a small chapel that commemorates the foundation of the city in 1519, on the north shore of the island. Pictures by a nineteenth-century French painter suggest that Velázquez was present and that Bartolomé de las Casas celebrated the first Mass there. Little is true in this respect: Havana was probably not completely moved from the south to the north until after the days of Velázquez. Nor was Las Casas the first to celebrate Mass there. The confusion indicates the number of myths that attend the history of Cuba even at the beginning of its time as a colony. One thing, though, is sure: Columbus did not exaggerate much when, on his first voyage, he spoke of the island as a place of great beauty. But Spaniards in the sixteenth century wanted fortunes, not flowers, and rivers full of gold, not just streams carrying it.

  Book Five

  BALBOA AND PEDRARIAS

  How the Germans saw the New World. Woodcut, 1505.

  (Illustration credit 5.1)

  24

  “They took possession of all that sea”

  And in the presence of the natives they took possession of all that sea and the countries bordering on it in the names of Fernando and Juana.

  Peter Martyr on Balboa’s vision of the Pacific, 1513

  Vasco Núñez de Balboa was the acting governor in the first permanent mainland colony, of Darien. He unwisely sent home a report about his discoveries. It took the form of a most enthusiastic letter to the King, talking of rivers of gold three days’ march away in which there were also large pearls.1 At the same time, he sent Juan de Quevedo and Rodrigo de Colmenares as representatives to La Española to beg for reinforcements and also for a judge. Martyr says that these two procuradores were elected, but it is more likely that Balboa chose them himself.2 (He would apparently have liked to go, but his followers refused him their votes—perhaps because they thought he might not come back, perhaps because they needed his leadership.) Their journey was difficult, for they were wrecked off Cuba and there encountered the remains of Valdivia’s expedition. On January 20, 1513, Balboa wrote again to the King. It was a letter that would lead to his ruin. It owed a lot to his imagination, for he said:

  In this province of Darien we have discovered many and very rich mines. There is gold in great quantity. We have discovered twenty rivers, and there are altogether thirty which have gold that stream out of a sierra two leagues from this villa.… There are in these sierras certain chiefs who have … gold that grows like maize in their huts, and they have it in baskets. They say that all the rivers in these sierras have gold and there are big nuggets on a large scale.3

  These were the lands of the gran cacique Dabeiba. Balboa asked for the thousand men that the son of Comogre had suggested, “to conquer a large part of this world.”4 He also requested some ships.

  This letter was taken home to King Fernando by Sebastián Ocampo, the circumnavigator of Cuba. But Ocampo delayed in Santo Domingo and died as soon as he reached Seville in June 1514, and though he transferred his powers to a cousin, Alonso de Noya (from his name, probably another Gallego), the two procuradores Juan Quevedo, ex-veedor of Nicuesa, and Rodrigo Enríquez de Colmenares arrived in Spain first, in May 1513. When they were presented to the King by Fonseca, Peter Martyr thought that “a mere look at these men is enough to demonstrate the insalubrious climate and temperature of Darien, for they are as yellow as if they had suffered from a liver complaint, and as puffy. They attribute their condition to what they have endured.”5

  Martyr reported, too, that among the things brought back there was a pineapple—the only one to last the journey. The King ate it. Martyr added,

  There are certain roots that the natives call batatas [sweet potatoes] that grow spontaneously. The first time I saw them I took them for Milanese turnips or huge mushrooms. No matter how they are cooked, roasted or boiled, they are equal to any delicacy and indeed to any other food. Their skins are tougher than mushrooms or turnips and are earth-colored, while the inside is quite white. When raw, they taste like green chestnuts, only sweeter.6

  This was the first description of any form of potato, whose splendid history among Europeans now began.

  Balboa also sent home yet another emissary, Martín de Zamudio, in order to expand on his merits to the King. But he arrived too late: the information of, first, Fernández de Enciso and then of the procuradores had been hostile to Balboa; and according to the historian Oviedo, Zamudio had to escape secretly from the court, the Council of the Realm even having given orders for him to be seized for apparently treacherous behavior.7

  Before the procuradores from Balboa arrived, much was already known at the Spanish court about Darien. It was believed that the few surviving colonists “lived in anarchy, taking no h
eed to convert the simple tribes of that region to Christianity and giving no attention to gathering information.…” But now the story spread in Castile that “one could fish for gold in tierra firme with rods.” The thought of “rivers of gold” was, of course, an intoxicating one, so innumerable men and some women set about trying to go “to fish” there.8 Peter Martyr wrote a little later, ironically: “Spain need no longer plow up the ground to the depth of the infernal regions nor open great roads, nor pierce mountains at the cost of much labor and at the risk of a thousand dangers, in order to draw wealth from the earth. She will find riches on the surface, in shallow diggings.… Pearls [too] will be gathered with little effort.”9

  The creative enthusiasm of Balboa was his undoing. The King and Bishop Fonseca rechristened Darien as Castile the Golden, “Castilla del Oro.” They immediately planned a new expedition to be headed by “an important person.”

  First, the King appointed Diego de Ávila, a comendador of Ávila, as leader but he decided not to go ahead. No one understood why. Then, thanks to the backing of Fonseca, the elderly soldier Pedro Arias Ávila (known at court as “Pedrarias”), was named governor of this new golden colony, his instructions making clear that a durable settlement was intended. There was no mention of any subservience to Diego Colón: Pedrarias would have a regime independent of the Admiral in Santo Domingo.

  On August 2, 1513, instructions were prepared for Pedrarias as captain-general and governor “for the sea as for the land, to go to the mainland as we used to call it and as it must now be called golden Castile.”10 The instructions were that “the ships should not be overcrowded, that you go via the Canaries, that on the way you should touch on the cannibal islands [the Lesser Antilles], that a fifth [of all loot and harvests] should be paid to the Crown, that all new cities should be given names in conjunction with Bishop Quevedo, and that native women should not be seized, while cards and other games would be prohibited.…”11 Bishop Quevedo was the churchman selected to accompany the expedition and found a see in the new land.

  This was only the second expedition since 1492 that the Crown had financed (the first was Columbus’s of 1493); all the others had been paid for by private enterprise. The arrangement enabled the Crown to begin a new era of Spanish conquest, and the rights of the Columbus family were further set on one side.

  Efforts were made by both Balboa’s critics and his friends to quash this nomination of Pedrarias. But Fonseca told the King:

  Pedro Arias, O most Catholic King, is a brave man who has often risked his life for Your Majesty and who we know from long experience is used to command troops. He signally distinguished himself in the wars against the Moors, where he comported himself as befits a valiant soldier and a prudent officer. In my opinion, it would be ungracious to withdraw his appointment in response to the representations of envious persons. Let this good man, therefore, depart under happy auspices; let this devoted pupil of Your Majesty, who has lived from his infancy in the palace, depart.12

  But in the end Pedrarias did not leave Sanlúcar for “Castilla de Oro” until April 11, 1514. His expedition was delayed until a revision of the “Requirement” was complete, something that especially infuriated Fernández de Enciso, who planned to accompany Pedrarias in order to settle accounts with his enemy Balboa.

  The preparation of this fleet of Pedrarias’s was the responsibility of the Casa de Contratación. But, all the same, the Casa was only an executive body. Power to initiate policy remained with the advisers of the King, namely Fonseca and Conchillos. The King himself took an interest, and the concern in Seville all the summer of 1513 was great. A small group of soldiers had returned from Italy, and some of these, who had fought with El Gran Capitán, enlisted. On July 28, a curious decree was issued moderating any sign of luxury in the new expedition.13

  Balboa, hearing of the proposed journey, determined himself to seek first the golden land spoken of by the son of Comogre. He set off by sea with a mere 190 men, landing in the territory of Careca, cacique of Coiba. He marched straight to the mountains through the territory of a cacique named Pomcha, who fled. Balboa sent messages and proposed an alliance that was eventually concluded. They exchanged presents. Balboa offered Pomcha hatchets of iron. “There is no such instrument that the natives appreciate as much, for they have none of them,” wrote Martyr.14 But they also liked glass beads made into necklaces, mirrors, and copper bells, and in return the Spaniards received 110 pesos of gold. King Pomcha offered guides to lead them through “inaccessible defiles inhabited by ferocious beasts.”

  The conquistadors scaled “rugged mountains and crossed several large rivers both by improvised bridges or by throwing beams from one bank to the other.” They were challenged by Quareca, the lord of a territory of that name, who drew himself up in front of his naked horde and apparently said, “Let them retrace their steps if they do not wish to be killed to the last man.” But he and his men were soon astounded by musket fire, which convinced them that the Spaniards commanded thunder and lightning, and “six hundred of them were slain like brute beasts.” When Balboa discovered that Quareca’s brother and some other courtiers were said to be transvestites, he had them torn to pieces by dogs; conquistadors were sometimes prudes.15 (Since the Indians wore few clothes, transvestism implied imagination.)

  Balboa embarked on the crossing of the peninsula, meeting on the way a beautiful Indian who served him as interpreter. Guided by her compatriots and after passing through dense jungles such as neither he nor any of his men had ever seen, in late September 1513 on a “bare hill” in what is now Panama, he first saw the long-desired “Southern Sea,” the Pacific Ocean. Balboa was accompanied to the mountaintop by Fray Andrés de Vera, Licenciado Andrés Valderrabano, and the resilient Extremeño from Trujillo, Francisco Pizarro: a priest, a lawyer, and a great leader of the future.16 Balboa “went to scale the peak, being the first to reach the top.… Kneeling upon the ground, he raised his hands to heaven and saluted the Southern Sea;… he gave thanks to God and to all the saints for having reserved this great opportunity to him, an ordinary man, devoid of experience and authority. Concluding his prayers in military fashion, he waved his hands to some of his compatriots and showed them the object of their desires.…” All his companions shouted for joy: “Prouder than Hannibal showing Italy and the Alps to his soldiers … he promised great riches to his men, saying, ‘Behold the much desired ocean! Behold, all you men, who have shared such great efforts, behold the country of which the son of Comogre and other natives told us such wonders.…’ ”

  As a sign of possession, Balboa had built a heap of stones in the form of an altar and “in order that posterity might not accuse them of falsehood, they inscribed the name of the King of Castile there and then on the tree trunks.…”17 The lawyer Valderrabano drew up a statement of the discovery signed by all the Spaniards present, the priest Andrés de Vera signing first. A dog and a black slave are also believed to have been present.18

  Intoxicated by this momentous experience, Balboa and his friends went on and defeated the cacique Chiapes, who had been determined to block their way. The Spaniards unleashed a pack of fighting dogs and discharged their guns. The sound of the latter reverberated among the mountains, and “the smoke from the powder seemed to dart forth flames; and when the Indians smelled the sulphur that the wind blew toward them, they fled in a panic, throwing themselves on the ground.” The Spaniards approached in good order, killed some of the enemy and took more prisoners. They subsequently agreed to make peace with Chiapes, who gave Balboa 400 pesos of gold and received in return “articles of European manufacture.…” The Spaniards then went on to the shore of the much-longed-for ocean “and, in the presence of the natives, they took possession of all that sea and the countries bordering on it in the names of Fernando and Juana.”19 At first hearing of the formula, one laughs; at second, one stands amazed at the audacity of Balboa and his men.

  Balboa left some of his men with Chiapes and set off with eighty men and some I
ndians in canoes built from tree trunks, up a river that led him to the land of the cacique Coquera. There he went through the usual procedure: the cacique’s attempt to fight was in vain; advised by a messenger from Chiapes, he gave in, and there was an exchange of presents. Balboa visited, and named, the Gulf of San Miguel, after the Archangel whom he supposed to be fighting for him. He then took to the open sea, where he and his men were nearly drowned. They took refuge on an island, and though they survived the night, the next morning they found their canoes damaged and full of sand. All the same they repaired them and crossed the land of a cacique named Tumaco, who presented them with four pounds of local pearls, which gave “the liveliest satisfaction.” (A Basque, Arbolante, took these back to Spain and sought to persuade King Fernando to see that they proved the qualities of Balboa.20 But it was then too late.)

  Balboa found other beds of pearls for himself and extracted some beautiful smaller ones. He had further clashes with caciques, sometimes establishing good relations, sometimes killing them with dogs. These caciques almost always gave gold presents in return for beads or hatchets, which they continued to appreciate. As for the Spaniards, there was a price to pay for their acquisitiveness: “loaded with gold, as they were, but suffering intensely and so hungry they were scarcely able to travel.…”21