Rivers of Gold

by Hugh Thomas

  Balboa secretly sent a friend, Andrés de Garabito, to Cuba to find more men in order to form another expedition to the Southern Sea. He had abandoned hope of finding volunteers among the expeditionaries of Pedrarias who would respect his leadership, adelantado though he formally might be. Garabito found sixty willing men in Cuba and Santo Domingo. They arrived silently, by night, but Pedrarias came upon them. Furious, he had Balboa arrested and placed in a wooden cage in his house. Bishop Quevedo again intervened in his favor. Quevedo suggested that peace in the colony was the only way ahead, and proposed that Balboa should marry one of Pedrarias’s daughters. Pedrarias’s wife, Isabel de Bobadilla, agreed, and in April 1516, Balboa married María de Peñalosa by proxy. His bride was in a convent in Spain at the time, from which she did not emerge. In a few months, Balboa, freed from his cage, set off with his men to reestablish the settlement of Acla before moving on to the Southern Sea.

  Espinosa remained in command of Pedrarias’s expedition, killing and enslaving as he went. He still had with him two hundred foot soldiers and ten horsemen. He crossed the Sierra de Careta, reaching the upper canyon of the Bayano, where he killed many in revenge for their earlier murder of Spaniards at Santa Cruz and at Los Anades. Then he went on to the River Nata, where he and his followers remained for four months, living off the Indians’ maize. He moved into Pariza country, where he had a series of skirmishes in which the sight of his horses so alarmed the Indians that they were decisively defeated. He returned along the peninsula of Azurero and in April 1517 went to Acla, then loosely but effectively governed by Balboa. Espinosa’s men found Acla “in good shape and that they could eat there well, as if they had been in Seville.”23 There were many houses of wood, and the small Spanish population was well established on the basis of Indian servants and laborers.

  In August 1517, Balboa made for the Southern Sea again with two hundred Spaniards, a hundred black slaves who had come with Pedrarias, and many Indians. Among his men were Andagoya, Hernando de Soto, Diego de la Tobilla, Andrés de Valderrábano, Hernando de Argüello, and Pedro de Arbolancha, of whom the last three had invested all their savings in what Balboa had named “the South Sea Company” (Compañía de la Mar del Sur). Pedrarias had wished to lead this journey himself, but he had been persuaded to desist because of his age and his gout.

  Balboa ordered the building of a flotilla for this expedition. The wood was cut on the Caribbean coast. He had the timbers as well as the sails, anchors, tarpaulin, and rigging transported across the isthmus. He did this, he explained, because he thought that the timber on the east coast was better. The feat was herculean. Las Casas thought that over five hundred Indian bearers died; others put the figure at several times that number.

  At all events, Acla now became the headquarters of Balboa. Thence the Spaniards and Indians set off to march seventy miles to Río de las Balsas (Sabanas) where, on a vast tract of level ground, a dockyard was prepared. But when the precious wood from the Caribbean reached there, it was found that, after all, much of it had been eaten by worms.

  In October 1518, Balboa reached the Pacific coast and built two brigantines, with which he directed himself to the Isle of Pearls offshore. He left some of his men with orders to build two further ships, while he himself set out for the Gulf of San Miguel with a hundred men. They approached the Puerto de Piñas, but a school of whales prevented their landing. Balboa was plainly hoping to found his own independent colony on the Pacific, in a place that would have been more suitable than what was soon established at Panama, and where he would be able to leave Pedrarias behind.

  Back at Darien, however, changes were afoot. As we have seen, Quevedo and Oviedo had returned to Spain. Both described how cruelly Pedrarias was permitting his followers to behave. Their stories convinced King Fernando that a new governor had to be found. Even Bishop Fonseca agreed: “I have already said that we must get that man out of there.”24 The royal choice for a substitute fell on a respectable official, Lope de Sosa, then the Governor of Gran Canaria.

  Rumors that a change was planned soon reached Darien. For that reason, Balboa delayed on the Pacific, awaiting the arrival of the new incumbent. He sent an expedition of his friends (Garabito, Valderrábano, Luis Botello, Hernán Muñoz) to bring back more boatbuilding material from Acla, and also to discover whether the new Governor had come. Pedrarias feared that Balboa was planning a rising, and he sent a force to capture these men. He was half taken in by their innocent account. But then he convinced himself otherwise and, furious at failing to persuade Balboa to return, he sent his old subordinate, the ruthless Extremeño Francisco Pizarro, to arrest him. The surprise was complete: “But you are Pizarro,” exclaimed the astonished Balboa. “You used not to come out and greet me in this way.”25 Knowing, however, where authority now lay in the last resort, Pizarro took Balboa to Acla as a prisoner, while Bartolomé Hurtado was sent to take over command of the adelantado’s troops still on the coast.

  Judge Espinosa then embarked on a trial of Balboa, who with Luis Botello, Valderrábano, Muñoz, Argüello, Garabito, and Father Rodrigo Pérez was accused of treason. Garabito changed sides, perhaps because of his and Balboa’s competing affection for the Indian princess Anayansi; he treacherously wrote to Pedrarias alleging that Balboa had planned a rebellion against the King as well as against Pedrarias. Balboa was also accused of engineering the death of Diego de Nicuesa in 1509 and of the illegal seizure of the powers of Fernández de Enciso in 1510. It was swiftly decided that he should be decapitated with his friends in the plaza of Acla. Garabito was forgiven, as was Rodrigo Pérez, because he was a priest.

  Pedrarias visited Balboa in the makeshift jail and denounced him: “I treated you as if you were a son, because I believed in your fidelity to me and to the King. But then I found that you had decided to rebel against the Crown. Thus I can no longer treat you as a son but as an enemy, and so today you cannot expect of me more than … what I tell you.”

  Balboa replied: “Everything which has been said is a falsehood, because no thought of rebellion ever occurred to me. If such a thing had indeed happened, I had no need to answer your call to come back, for at my disposal I had three hundred men and four ships, with which, without seeing or hearing you, we could have gone on to the sea, for there is no shortage of land, both poor and rich.…”

  It was a dialogue of deaf men. On January 1, 1519, Balboa and his four close friends (Luis Botello, Valderrábano, Muñoz, and Argüello) were taken to the improvised square at Acla. At the signal of a roll of drums, the first three and Balboa were executed. Argüello was pardoned at the last minute. Pedrarias watched. Balboa’s head was left in the square for several days.26

  Balboa had been a thorn in the side of Pedrarias since 1514, and given the unbending personalities of the two, some such denouement was probably inevitable. Balboa might have killed Pedrarias, but though fearless and imaginative, he was less ruthless.

  This action left Pedrarias free to embark on his own adventures on the coast of the Southern Sea, a place that he realized, as Balboa had, was more promising as a settlement than Darien. Appointing Espinosa as his second in command, he traveled down the River Balsas as far as the gulf, reached the Pearl archipelago, and took possession of the Isla de las Flores. Espinosa independently reached a point that he thought was “the narrowest stretch of land between one sea and the other.” He sought to persuade Pedrarias to found a settlement there. So they jointly founded Panama on August 15, 1519, in a traditional ceremony, with a notary, Antón Cuadrado, taking notes as Pedrarias took possession in the name of Queen Juana and the new young King Charles. Pedrarias apportioned the blocks of the town to the four hundred Spaniards present, as specified in his instructions of 1513, and began to establish landowners through encomiendas, on November 5, 1519.

  There were plenty of fish, including numerous sardines and mollusks, and abundant vegetation. The sea was a benign presence. The site, though, was probably less hospitable than where Balboa had been, and it is not clear why t
he new place was chosen. Perhaps chance played a part.

  Innumerable Indians were unconquered in war, but no one knew quite how many were available. Still, Pedrarias found 25 political entities (cacicazgos), whose Indians could perhaps be divided through their leaders. Just over 100 Spaniards participated in this division of land, most of whom had to be content with less than 60 Indians each. Those who received more—between 150 and 300—were the Governor’s friends.27

  Pedrarias sent Espinosa northward with the pilot Juan de Castañeda, and they discovered the Gulf of Nocoya. They found, too, rich villages, a large population, and many deer, as well as many peacocks and geese in cages. Here they established yet another settlement, to which they gave the name of Santiago. Pedrarias also sent another expedition under Diego de Albítez to refound Nicuesa’s Nombre de Dios, at the Caribbean end of what would soon become the main road between that sea and the Pacific, the so-called Camino Real.

  Then the Governor returned to Darien, intending to dismantle it completely. He now knew that there were many more opportunities on the Pacific than on the Caribbean. But he found the inhabitants of Santa María de Darien quite opposed to another change.

  The fleet of the new Governor, Lope de Sosa, at this point reached the port. What the existing Governor expected would happen is unclear. It made no difference. For no sooner had the ships come into the harbor than Sosa, who had been ill for most of the crossing, died, at midnight on May 7, 1520, presumably because of illness contracted on the journey. There was a grand funeral, at which officials and Franciscans were present, in the new but far from complete church of Darien. Pedrarias lavished many attentions on the son of the new Governor, who had accompanied his father, and his nephew of the same name who had been intended as his lieutenant, and also on the proposed chief magistrate, Juan Rodríguez de Alcarconcillo, who had been expected to carry out his own residencia. In the circumstances, it was natural that accusations should be made that Lope de Sosa had been murdered, perhaps poisoned by Pedrarias. But there is no evidence of it. Pedrarias was capable of crime, including murder, but on this occasion it was unnecessary.

  A few months later, on July 20, 1520, the historian Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, who had been in Spain, reached Darien again. He returned thinking that Lope de Sosa would have assumed his post as governor and that he could again live peacefully in Darien. He had planned to travel from Spain with Sosa but came a month later, first going to Santo Domingo, where he heard of the new Governor’s death. He continued with his wife and children to Darien, where Pedrarias received him amicably, though he must have known that Oviedo had done what he could to ruin his name in Spain.

  In fact, Oviedo soon, improbably, became the leader of the opposition to any change of the Spanish capital from Darien and, in a spirit of defiance, built himself a luxurious house costing about 7 million maravedís. Pedrarias maintained his policy, though, moving the seat of government to the Pacific, as well as the seat of the bishop. Oviedo survived an attempt at assassination, which he thought must have been the work of Pedrarias because he had read the documents of the trial of Balboa that had afterwards disappeared. He eventually decided to return to Spain where, in 1522, he secured a royal order prohibiting the change of capital. But it was too late; by then Pedrarias had transported the remaining citizenry of Darien to the Pacific by force, except for a few old people who could not move. Soon afterwards, those last were killed by Indians who set the place on fire, leaving nothing save a few lemon and orange trees as evidence of this first European settlement on the American mainland.

  Pedrarias—“Furor Domini,” as he was known to his subordinates—wanted to remain governor. His equally determined wife, Isabel de Bobadilla, in no way dismayed by climate, diet, disease, and discomfort, went back to Spain to intercede, to this end, on behalf of her husband. She traveled with her eldest son, Diego, taking with her a chest carrying pearls and gold. When she arrived, the new King Charles had gone to Germany—the civil war of the rebel councillors (comuneros) was raging (see chapter 32)—and in September 1520, she quite easily secured a confirmation of Pedrarias as governor. No doubt the judicious use of the jewels in her chest played their part.28

  One cannot applaud the conduct of Pedrarias, but his resilience and willpower were admirable.

  Book Six

  CISNEROS

  The pride of Cardinal Cisneros: the polyglot Bible that he commissioned showed the text in seven languages.

  (Illustration credit 6.1)

  26

  “King Fernando! He is dead!”

  “¡El rey don Fernando!” “He is dead!” Three times this happened. Then the thirteen Spanish knights in the cathedral threw their banners to the ground and shouted, “Long live the Catholic Kings, Queen Juana and King Charles.”

  Cries at Sainte-Gudule cathedral, Brussels, 1516

  King Fernando spent the early part of January 1516 as usual, on his travels. What roads he had followed since he had married Isabel in 1469, what strange parts of their joint kingdoms he had visited! Everywhere in Spain except for Asturias! He had just been at Plasencia for the wedding of a bastard granddaughter and was on his way to Seville. We find him at Trujillo, the city of the Pizarros, on January 2, and on January 11 and 20 at La Abertura and Madrigalejo, small towns scarcely marked on any map, old or new. La Abertura, on a hilltop, had a number of lovely streams nearby. Of Madrigalejo, nothing so positive could be said. It is small today, as it was in Don Fernando’s day. The house where the King lodged remains, a single-story building unchanged and unimproved by time. In the distance, the King could have seen the high-towered Moorish castle of Montsánchez. Close by flowed the River Pizarrosa. It was not a strong current. Charles, Fernando’s grandson and heir, would say of his grandparents’ lead-covered coffins, below the royal chapel of Granada, that they seemed to fill a “small space for so great a glory.” He would have said much the same had he ever seen the little house in Madrigalejo.

  These towns were in Extremadura, the land of the conquistadors, of men such as Núñez de Balboa and Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro, Castilian captains already established in Cuba and Darien, respectively, though the great monarchies, Mexico and Peru, that the two would win for Castile had not yet even been heard of.

  In Madrigalejo, Death laid its icy hand on this most successful king. It was, because of the Extremeño connection, an appropriate place to end his life, but he would not have thought so, even though he did not complain. Fernando was the last person to be sentimental, though he might have remembered how his wife Queen Isabel had besieged the place in 1478, in the civil war against La Beltraneja, using lombards and siege engines, and how she had subsequently given orders to destroy the castle.1

  More important to Fernando would have been the fact that between Madrigalejo and Seville there lay the valley known as the Serena, whence came most of the fine wool, from merino sheep, that was used in Seville’s textile industry. The flocks of the Mesta spent the winter there, and the wool would be delivered in April and May. Lora del Río, to the far south, was an important market for connections between the Serena and Seville, and no doubt Don Fernando had intended to approach the latter city by way of it. The principal buyers of wool in 1516 would be Genoese, as had been the case for many years past: all the famous names of rich families from Columbus’s city appeared in the list of wool merchants.2

  Fernando had united Castile, of which he was still Regent, and Aragon, of which he was King, in a way that has endured, with some hiccups of separatism, ever since. He had also conquered all Navarre south of the Pyrenees, and that, too, would remain part of Spain. Naples, thanks to the Gran Capitán, Fernández de Córdoba, was also a Spanish viceroyalty. These territories were managed by councils, all depending on either the Council of the Realm or that of Aragon, which were now dominated by university-educated civil servants—to the irritation of loyal old noblemen.

  Some of these “new” men were with Fernando at Madrigalejo: for example, Lorenzo Galíndez de
Carvajal, the “chronicler” and lawyer from Extremadura who seemed to be “the most correct and wise politician of his time,” with “possibly the best legal mind in Castile, being honorable and a little cynical”3; the important Licenciado Luis Zapata, “El Rey Chiquito,” venal but mellifluous in speech; and Francisco de Vargas, the treasurer of Castile, a gray personage, typical of civil servants in modern states, who was one of the reliable pillars on which the regime had been built.

  Some have sought to emphasize that Fernando’s solution of the problems that he inherited in Catalonia—tensions between the classes, in particular—was based on the reinvigoration of traditional customs. He had certainly made no attempt to blend the institutions of the two realms of Aragon and Castile. Spending only four years in the former during his thirty-seven-year reign, he relied on deputies, viceroys, in those dominions. He had done his utmost to show himself a king of all Spain.

  Fernando, of course, also had responsibility in his last years for the New World, where the new Spanish Empire, without as yet that name, was being founded. There was no Council of the Indies, no formal committee to govern these territories, and Fernando continued to leave most decisions on the subject to Fonseca, now Bishop of Burgos, and his embittered assistant, the converso from Aragon, Lope de Conchillos. Already there was to be seen among the group of secretaries who concerned themselves with the Indies the astute Francisco de los Cobos, a poor hidalgo from Úbeda, who was signing royal documents on the matter by 1515. Fernando himself still seems to have had little idea of what the Indies meant and saw them as interesting primarily for the possible financial contribution that they might offer to his enterprises in the Mediterranean.