Rivers of Gold

by Hugh Thomas

  Pedrarias sailed on a southerly route to the Caribbean and stopped at the isle of Dominica on June 3, where, after christening a large inlet the Bay of Fonseca, after the Bishop, he fought some Indians and, resisting the idea of stopping at other places in the Lesser Antilles, made for what is now Santa Marta, Colombia, which he reached on June 12.

  There, on June 19, he caused the “Requirement” of the lawyer Palacios Rubios to be read for the first time, by his notary Rodrigo de Colmenares.1 The Indians had been running backward and forward over the beach, armed with poisoned arrows, waiting for the arrival of the Spaniards whose ships they had observed at sea. They had painted their bodies and adorned their heads with plumes. Some seventy Indians assembled, and both Pedrarias and Rodrigo de Colmenares thought this an adequate audience for the new legal declaration. The latter affected to know the language of the Indians but all the same read his text with the help of an Indian girl who had been kidnapped on a previous expedition, perhaps by the Guerra brothers or by Vespucci, and was now brought from Spain.

  For the first time, Indians now heard the curious statements: how God, our Lord one and eternal, had fashioned the heavens as well as the earth, and how a certain Adam and Eve, from whom everyone, both emperor and clown, descends, had been created.2 That had been five thousand and more years ago. God our Lord later gave the command of the world to one man, St. Peter. He had been called “Papa,” and the present Pope was his successor.

  One of the past popes had given these islands of the Caribbean and also tierra firme to the King and Queen of Castile. So, Colmenares went on,

  I ask and require you, who understand very well what I have been saying[!]… that you recognize the Church as the Lord and Superior of the universe and the King and the Queen, our lords, as superior to the lords and kings of these isles and mainland by virtue of the said donation. And if you accept this, I shall receive you with all love and charity, and will leave you and your wives, and children and farms, free without servitude.…3

  The statement was naturally followed by silence. No one among the Indians had understood a word of it. Then a rain of arrows was dispatched over the Spaniards, who replied with gunshot. That effectively routed the Indians, who fled to the forested mountains.

  Fernández de Oviedo said to Pedrarias: “My lord, it appears that these Indians will not listen to the theology of the ‘Requirement’ and that you have no one who can make them understand it; would your honor be pleased to retain it till we have one of these Indians in a cage, in order that he may learn it at leisure and my lord bishop may explain it to him?”4 Then Oviedo handed the document to Pedrarias, who received it with much laughter, in which all who heard the speech joined; but all the same the “Requirement” continued to be read to trees and empty villages, sometimes to the beat of a drum; and sometimes from ships off an island.

  Las Casas said that he did not know whether to laugh or to cry when he heard of this document.5 Even its author, Palacios Rubios, would laugh when Oviedo told him of his own experiences.6

  While he was making for the Bay of Cartagena, a storm diverted Pedrarias to Isla Fuerte, where he seized several Indians as slaves. On June 30, 1513, he reached his destination, Santa María la Antigua de Darien, on the west of the Bay of Urabá.

  He found there a colony of a little more than 500 Spaniards with perhaps 1,500 Indians working for them as servants or laborers. The commander was, of course, Núñez de Balboa. The settlement seemed rich. Las Casas reported that the colonists had until 1512 made a profit of over 36 million maravedís, of which 7 million had gone to the King, while the voyage of Núñez de Balboa to the South Sea had produced over 13 million maravedís. Oviedo thought that Balboa and his friends were living well and were on the way to enriching themselves. Balboa alone had made nearly 5 million maravedís.7 He had also made the Indians reasonably content, if not entirely “as tame as sheep,”8 as he later claimed.

  Balboa, then three miles from the coast in Santa María, was informed by messenger of the new development: “Sir, Pedrarias has arrived in the port and has come to act as governor of this land.”9 Balboa said how pleased he was, and he organized a reception to greet the new Governor. Indeed, he and his colonists greeted Pedrarias with a Te Deum Laudamus,10 the two leaders embraced, and then Pedrarias, his wife, and Bishop Quevedo made a solemn entry into the town, which must have seemed a most primitive place to those who had been born and bred in Segovia. The old inhabitants offered the newcomers rooms in their houses till the Indians could build them new ones. But that did not solve the problem of lodgings, for the building of the new houses took time.

  Pedrarias went to the town hall, where he presented his credentials, and after dismissing all the old councillors who had been dependent on Balboa, nominated new ones. He had a long talk with Balboa in affable terms, asking for details of the land and passing on the gratitude of the King for all that he had done. Balboa replied on July 2 by giving Pedrarias a statement of the gold that he had found and the names of all the caciques whom he had reduced.

  The residencia of Balboa then began, Licenciado Gaspar de Espinosa, who had accompanied Pedrarias, being the judge responsible. That provoked a long quarrel between the friends of Balboa and those of Fernández de Enciso, whom Balboa had expelled and who had now returned. But Espinosa refused to let Balboa’s enemies determine everything that he himself did. Indeed, he soon saw that Balboa was a remarkable leader, as did Bishop Quevedo. Pedrarias, on the other hand, wanted to send Balboa home to Spain in irons because of his self-assertive spirit of insubordination. Quevedo managed to prevent this, with the result that he was accused of having private dealings with Balboa. Pedrarias was, meanwhile, incapacitated for a while by an infirmity, probably gout, which left him permanently an invalid.11

  Martyr says that at Darien there seemed to be an atmosphere of prosperity. He wrote to the Pope:

  Everything that the Spaniards have planted or sowed in Urabá has grown marvelously well. Is this not worthy, Most Holy Father, of the highest admiration? Every kind of seed, grafting, sugarcane, and slips of trees, and plants, without speaking of the chickens and quadrupeds I have mentioned, were brought from Europe. O admirable fertility! The cucumbers and other vegetables were ready for picking in less than twenty days! Cabbages, beets, lettuces, salads, and other garden stuffs were ripe within ten days; pumpkins and melons were picked twenty-eight days after the seeds were sown. The slips and sprouts and such of our trees as we plant in our nurseries or trenches, as well as the graftings of trees similar to those in Spain, bore fruit as quickly as in La Española.12

  But the geographical situation was less favorable: “The rustic township of Antigua, made up of two hundred houses in indigenous style, and lived in by the Spaniards of Balboa, could not easily include 1,500 new inhabitants. Disease and hunger … finished off the lives of the population …,” wrote Pascual Andagoya. He added: “The settlement had hitherto been small and could support itself. But the new people could not be absorbed.… People began to fall ill in such a way that they could not be cured and thus, in a single month, seven hundred men died either from hunger or from modorra.”13 This was the first time that that terrible word was used in relation to a disease that so affected the early Spanish Empire. It was probably a form of sleeping sickness, perhaps Chagas disease, a wasting infirmity transmitted by insects.

  There was also disquiet because the food that the officials in Seville had specified should be sold was not regularly distributed.14 This was because much of the bacon and salt beef, even the biscuits and salted fish, that had been carried had rotted on the journey. The supervisor Juan de Tavira gave out what food there was in small rations, but some of those who received it sold their share to richer emigrants. This period ended when the storehouse burned down. The new colonists then began to ransack the houses of the Indians, sometimes offering a silk coat for a loaf of bread. Settlers from Seville or from Burgos were said to have died shouting, “Give me bread.” There was an attack of locusts.
The old colony regretted the new arrivals more with every passing day, but the growing rivalry between Pedrarias and Balboa prevented any rational approach to the potential catastrophe.

  The “rivers of gold” in Balboa’s letter still seemed far off. The new conquistadors, with their lack of experience, antagonized the Indians, and many of these settlers left as soon as they could to return to Spain (the Franciscan bishop Juan de Quevedo and the historian Oviedo were among them). Some, though, went to Cuba and thence, like Francisco Montejo, Bernardino Vázquez de Tapia, and Bernal Diáz del Castillo, to Mexico with Cortés.

  The King, meanwhile, was pondering the kind of relationship that could be established between Balboa and Pedrarias. He asked the former to collaborate with the latter and to advise him of developments. Then he nominated Balboa adelantado of the Southern Sea and governor of Panama and Coiba. But even in these roles he would be subject to Pedrarias; the King specifically insisted that “in these parts there must be a single person and a single leader and no more.”

  Meanwhile, Pedrarias thought his only recourse was to send out his captains in all directions. These entradas, as they were called, were razzias, infernal manhunts in search of slaves, according to Oviedo, who added that he did not have time to explain all that the conquistadors did to trap the Indians. The entradas destroyed the reasonably good relations that Balboa had in general achieved with them. The “Requirement” was constantly used. It was read out in Spanish, usually at a distance. Once, when its meaning was explained to a cacique of the Sinú Indians by Fernández de Enciso, the cacique commented, “Oh, the Pope must have been drunk” to give away lands that were already in someone else’s possession. Once Juan de Ayora, the most brutal of Pedrarias’s commanders, had the declaration read when the Indians already had ropes around their necks.15

  These long forgotten journeys by unremembered conquistadors into remote jungles constituted an extraordinary mixture of courage and cruelty. The names of both the Spaniards and their Central American discoveries—tribes, persons, places—defeat us. But that should not prevent us from recalling these astonishing and unprecedented events whose risks were great and whose losses vast.

  The first important expedition into the interior was that of Luis Carrillo (a brother-in-law of the royal secretary Lope de Conchillos). Carrillo being inexperienced, Pedrarias gave him Francisco Pizarro, nothing if not knowledgeable, as his second in command. They set off with sixty men in a southerly direction, establishing a settlement on the River Anades, which they named Fonseca Dávila. But they did not find much of the gold of which Balboa had spoken: a mere 1,000 pesos, even if they captured many slaves. They returned to Darien, Pedrarias being angry at their inadequacy, but perhaps because of the relation between Carrillo and the royal secretary Conchillos, he did not punish them.16

  The second important entrada to the west was that of Juan de Ayora, who took with him four hundred men. The aim was to further the work of Balboa, according to Oviedo, seeking the most narrow section of the isthmus and then building forts along it. Both the Governor and the Bishop gave express instructions that it was essential to be tolerant to the Indians.17

  Ayora divided his army into three: one section, under Juan de Zorita, with 50 men, set off for Pocorisa, and another, led by Francisco de Ávila, 150 strong, made for the Pacific. The third group, under Ayora himself, went to investigate the Cueva Indians. Having been welcomed in Comagrem by the Indians there, and gaining their trust, Ayora and his men turned on their hosts, looking for gold and slaves, torturing and killing them with dogs. The chief of the Tubanama escaped and managed to attack the Spaniards in turn. In October, Ayora returned to Darien on the pretext that he was ill, leaving a lieutenant, Hernán Pérez de Meneses (who founded Los Anades, on the Gulf of San Blas), in control. This new town was soon destroyed, and many Spaniards were killed by furious Indians. María de Aguilar, a mistress of Ayora’s who had gamely come out with her lover, was seized by a cacique who made her into his own mistress. She was soon killed by the cacique’s other wives. Francisco de Ávila then founded a town at Tumaca, perhaps on the site of present-day Panama, but after falling ill, he abandoned the enterprise.

  On these journeys Juan de Ayora treated the caciques whom he encountered so cruelly that they became implacable enemies. Driven to extremities, they killed the Spaniards sometimes openly, sometimes by setting traps for them. In places where commerce in the time of Balboa had been relatively normal and the caciques friendly, it became necessary to fight. Ayora, when he had thus amassed a quantity of gold by these means, decided to flee to Spain, Pedrarias apparently closing his eyes to this act of desertion.18

  Two caravels then brought royal dispatches about Balboa’s appointment as adelantado, as well as some new settlers. Pedrarias wanted to intercept these letters rather than deliver them to his rival. But both Quevedo and Balboa had heard about them, and Pedrarias had to convoke his local council. Bishop Quevedo criticized Pedrarias’s disloyalty to the Crown, but Diego Márquez and Alonso de la Puente agreed that the letter should not be given to Balboa until the residencia on him had been completed. In the end, the letters were handed over on Bishop Quevedo’s insistence. Thereafter, Balboa was indeed named adelantado, a title that made for the greatest difficulty: in an age where designations were all, Pedrarias felt indignant, since the nomination obviously threatened his position. Pedrarias wrote home complaining that Balboa had not explored the region of which he had been proclaimed the proconsul.

  Meanwhile, the residencia against Balboa ended. Despite his growing admiration for Balboa, Espinosa found evidence of insubordination against the Crown and fined him 1,565,000 maravedís, which payment left him quite without funds. He began writing to the King. Of these letters, one remains, that of October 26, 1515, which took the form of a request for an investigation into what was happening in Darien—for, said Balboa, the caciques and Indians who had been like lambs “had turned into wild lions and God had been very badly served.”19 As for the Governor, he might be honorable, but he was very “old for these parts, and suffers very much from the great illness that has never left him for a day since he arrived.” He was, thought Balboa, “a man very advanced in excess.20 He never punished those who carried out damage in the various entradas.”

  Balboa and Pedrarias also quarreled about a new decree that allowed for the sale of slaves captured on tierra firme in the islands. Balboa protested, but Pedrarias said that for the moment “it was better to accept it, since it gives the people something to do.” Andagoya commented that in those days “no one was interested in making peace or in furthering the development of the settlement. All that people worried about was seeking gold and slaves.”

  Another entrada followed, that of Gaspar de Morales to the Pacific. He set off with Pizarro and captured the charming offshore isle of Terarequi, with its pearls. This was the occasion when Pizarro first heard of a rich territory to the south that turned out to be Peru. It was a beneficial expedition for the Spaniards. They found one extraordinary pearl: La Peregrina, or La Huerfana, which weighed thirty-one carats. Morales sold this to Pedro del Puerto, a merchant who, soon afraid of owning it, in turn sold it to Isabel de Bobadilla, from whom it passed later to Charles V’s queen, the Empress Isabel, for 900,000 maravedís.21

  Morales cut his way through the territory of new peoples such as the Tutibra, Chichama, Garchina, and Birú. His men showed great cruelty, capturing many slaves. Their fellow Indians tried to rescue them, and there was a fierce battle, in the course of which Morales killed all his “slaves” on purpose. He then returned to Darien and gratefully received permission to go home to Spain.

  Balboa also went on a new expedition to the magic realm of Dabeiba, in the foothills of the Andes, which he had represented as being full of gold and of palaces. He set off with Luis de Carrillo and about two hundred men. The expedition was a failure. Balboa was nearly killed by an arrow in his head, while Carrillo died of wounds.

  Next, Gonzalo de Badajoz set off in
March 1515, with forty soldiers, toward the northwest, where he eventually reached Columbus’s Cape Gracias a Dios and where he failed either to bribe or to persuade the cacique into helping him. He was then joined by Luis de Mercado with fifteen men. They decided to cross the mountains and take possession again of the Southern Sea. On the way they went to Javana, whence the cacique had fled, taking what riches he had with him. The Spaniards did capture some curiously branded slaves, however. They found, too, a good deal of gold and visited the caciques Totongo and Taracuru, and the latter’s brother Pananome, as well as others named Anata, Scoria, and Pariza.22 Badajoz then returned to Darien.

  All these expeditions were badly planned attempts at enrichment. They were not much concerned with discovery, their attention to the souls of the indigenous people was not marked, and they brought their commanders little in the way of glory.

  Finally, Pedrarias embarked on his own journey. After being inactive since his arrival, due to his continuous ill health, he set off with 250 men and twelve caravels on November 28, 1515. The party headed west, in the direction of the Gulf of Urabá, to look for a “conquistador,” Gabriel Becerra, who had died there eight months before. The purpose was also punitive, for the whole region had risen against the Spaniards. Pedrarias and his men landed at Aguada and made their way inland to Aguila and then to Acla, known as “Huesos Humanos” (Human Bones) because it had been the scene of a battle in the past between the cacique Cartea and his brother Chima. There Pedrarias gave a banquet and wine flowed, and he founded a port that he thought was protected against shipworm. From there, he argued, one could go easily on foot to the Pacific. It must have been close to the modern city of Colón.

  But Pedrarias became ill again, this time from what seems to have been hepatitis, and had to return to Antigua. There he arrived on January 26, 1517, leaving behind the experienced Lope de Olano with orders to complete the building of a port, and naming Espinosa to command the rest of the expedition. His entrada had been, as he thought, a success: there was booty of 45 million maravedís, and two thousand slaves were obtained for sale to La Española. Lope de Olano and his few men soon died or were killed, however, and the territory returned to Indian control.