The Golden Empire: Spain, Charles V, and the Creation of America

by Hugh Thomas

  After leaving Arequipa, Valdivia was soon in the desert of the north of Chile. The story of the expedition’s crossing of this famous obstacle was, according to one historian, “an epic not yet well written. Historians have gathered a thousand details but have not yet captured its spirit.”6 Valdivia adopted the technique of sending out little troops of his followers to break up any band of Indians that might be forming and to seek Spanish reinforcements.

  The difficulty at this stage was not so much the Indians as Sancho de Hoz, who arrived at Valdivia’s headquarters by riding fast and light with a few horse, some of his wife’s grand relations, and some friends. This group had all determined to kill Valdivia when they caught up with him. But when they reached Valdivia’s camp near Atacama, they found that their enemy was away on a reconnoiter and only the capable Inés Suárez was there. She gave the newcomers dinner and discussed with her own friends what should be done. They learned that Sancho de Hoz planned to seize and to kill Valdivia. Next morning, Sancho de Hoz told Don Benito that the site had been badly chosen for a camp. “Who are you to say this to me?” asked Don Benito. “For I am in command by order of Captain Valdivia.” Next day, the latter appeared with ten horsemen, and he was immediately apprised of Sancho de Hoz’s arrival and how they had heard that they planned to kill him.

  Valdivia went to Sancho de Hoz and said, “You repay badly, friend Sancho, the affection that the marquess Pizarro and I hold for you.” He arrested him, and there was a brief trial. Sancho was imprisoned, while his comrades were ordered to return to Cuzco with neither horses nor arms. The two Guzmán brothers (who were relations of Sancho de Hoz’s wife) and Juan de Ávalos, an Extremeño from Garrovillas, accepted the compromise and did in fact make their way back on foot and then by sea. They were fortunate, since Valdivia’s first idea had been to hang them, and he even had gallows built for the purpose.7 Sancho was kept under guard, and for a time in handcuffs, for the rest of Valdivia’s journey. Valdivia would have liked to have executed him, but he did not want to kill someone whose relations could claim that he was the Crown’s representative. But Sancho de Hoz did sign a declaration that released Valdivia from any partnership with him, though he paid for the horses that Sancho had sold him.8

  The expedition continued across the desert of Atacama. There was a constant shortage of food and even more so of water till Inés Suárez’s white horse by accident ate a prickly pear, the red fruit of which cactus became a major source of sustenance. It was also her horse that found a spring in an unpromising desert zone. There was a fierce wind, sometimes stinging sleet, once a dust storm. Then they found at last the green valley of Copiapó. There the army rested two months. Valdivia took possession of the land to the south of it and gave it the promising name of New Extremadura.9 They raised there a large wooden cross, and Valdivia told the nearby Indians that he was going to instruct them in Christianity.

  Several stragglers caught up with the expedition. These included men such as Gonzalo de los Ríos and Alonso de Chinchilla. Some of these newcomers seemed ready for a new rebellion, as Inés Suárez and some others told an unbelieving Valdivia. Juan Ruiz de Torbillo was heard to say: “If it had been left to me to do, I should have killed Pedro de Valdivia by now.” He was arrested and hanged.

  Then Valdivia was again absent one day reconnoitering. Chinchilla and Gonzalo de los Ríos rode into the camp at the head of twenty horsemen and announced that they had come to kill Valdivia. Sancho de Hoz was delighted, but the redoubtable Inés arrested both leaders. On his return, Valdivia gave them a choice: continuing under guard or going back to Peru. Astonished at that merciful concession, Chinchilla cravenly told all his plans, and he was held with Sancho de Hoz till they reached their journey’s end. The expedition continued, but there were more and more Indian attacks on stragglers, sometimes killing horses or more often Indian bearers. Valdivia forced a pass into the valley of the Mapocho in mid-December 1540. It was December 13, Santa Lucía’s Day, and they called the hill that defended that place by that name.10

  A good analysis has been made of the 154 companions who in the end accompanied Valdivia. There were twenty-six Andalusians; seventeen were Extremeños; sixteen came from New Castile, fifteen from León, while twelve were Basques and one was from Asturias. Forty-one, or more than a quarter, were illiterate. Eleven were called hidalgos de solar, gentlemen with property; twenty-three were ordinary hidalgos. Fourteen had been with Almagro in 1535.11 None of these things was surprising except that it is strange that there were no Gallegos. The geographical breakdown is very similar to that in Peru and in Mexico.

  No sooner had Valdivia decided that the valley of the Mapocho was the obvious place for his capital city than he suffered a serious attack by Indians, whose numbers seemed at first to compensate for the Spanish swords and horses. The Spaniards were almost defeated till the Indians threw down their arms and fled due to the arrival, so legend tells, of a new conquistador on a white horse who came out of the sky with a naked sword: Santiago!12

  The subsequent victory meant that Valdivia could establish himself at the foot of Santa Lucía. He adopted a clever technique of sending out horsemen regularly in all directions so that, as he told the emperor Charles, the Indians “believed that the Christians were many, so most of them came in and served us peacefully.”13 They even helped the Spaniards to carry logs and clay to build their first houses.

  Valdivia finally founded Santiago de Chile on February 12, 1541. The municipality of the new city proclaimed Valdivia captain-general and governor of the city, thereby detaching itself, and him, from Pizarro. There was quite a ceremony. The whole camp gathered; Valdivia appeared in full armor, carrying in his left hand the standard of Castile. He took possession of the place in the name of the Emperor and King. Galloping cavalrymen passed. Valdivia declared that anyone who challenged his claim to be governor should give him battle, and he would defend his right to the title with his life. He drank water from the river Mapocho, offered it to his senior captains, and tossed what was left in the air. He then planted a cross, before which all knelt in thanks. The scene was like one from Amadís. They were over 1,500 miles from Lima.

  The only one of Valdivia’s captains who was absent on this startling occasion was the German conquistador Bartolomeus Blumenthal, who, in Spanish circles, called himself Bartolomé Flores. He came in some days later to say that he had engaged in battle an Indian cacique named Talagante. He had captured a son of that potentate, whom, in keeping with Valdivia’s chivalrous rules, he had handed back. Talagante had been pleased and had asked Flores to go back and visit him. Talagante gave him four Princesses, one of whom was his daughter, perhaps his heiress. Inés took charge of these ladies and had them baptized. They lived with or married Spaniards.

  The building of Santiago de Chile began on February 20, 1541. The designer, or architect, was the one-eyed Pedro de Gamboa. There were nine streets, each about twelve varas (a vara is about 835 millimeters) wide, in blocks 138 varas wide. Each block was divided into four lots (solares). One block, though, was reserved for a square on the west side of which there would soon be a church—a cathedral. This was traditional Spanish urban practice. On the north side of the square, there would be both the governor’s house and the prison. A municipality (cabildo) with a headquarters on the south side was formed in March 1541, with two magistrates, six councillors, a mayordomo, a notary, and a procurador. All these were men with well-known names, the chief magistrate being an old associate of Valdivia’s, Francisco de Aguirre.

  Though his name was Basque, Aguirre came from Talavera de la Reina. A man of great energy, he was proud and irascible, if cultivated, and he liked to live, so we are told, rumbosamente, which perhaps we can translate as “grandly.” He had in the end fifty mestizo children, to whom he gave exotic names: Marco Antonio, Eufrasia, Floridan. He eventually married his cousin, María Teresa de Meneses.

  One of the first councillors was one of Valdivia’s Germans, Juan Bohon. Luis de Cartagena was the notary,
as he had been of the expedition. Valdivia, as ever disdainful of danger, or not believing that it existed, made councillors of two friends of Sancho de Hoz: Antonio de Pastraña (procurador) and Martín de Soller. The council took their oaths on March 11, and municipal life began.

  Valdivia sought to make the survival of Santiago easier. “At once,” he said, “I set about coming to speak with the chiefs of the land and, owing to the diligence with which I moved about it, whereby they believed that there were many of us Christians, most of them came in peacefully and served us well for five or six months … and they built us wooden and grass houses on the flat land, which I gave them.” But, Valdivia had learned, Manco Capac “had sent to warn them, the people of Chile, that they should hide all the gold, sheep, clothing stuffs and food, for since we sought all this, [they thought] that, if we did not find such things, we would go away. And they did this work of obstruction so thoroughly that the sheep were eaten and the gold and all the rest hidden or burned; and they did not spare their own clothing but left themselves bare.”14

  Sancho de Hoz’s friend Antonio de Pastraña urged Valdivia to accept the nomination as governor by the municipality. He thought that that would be a way of eventually ridding Santiago of Valdivia, because he would, if he accepted the nomination, be seen in Spain as committing treason. On June 10, Pastraña’s plan seemed to work. For Valdivia called an extraordinary meeting of the town hall (a cabildo abierto) at which he presented a petition signed by nearly all the inhabitants of Santiago demanding that he should become governor. This document was presented to the “perfect captain” as he was leaving Mass. Valdivia said at last: “Since you have seen my replies and are not satisfied with them … you in one voice say it and I alone contradict it, so I might be mistaken … And so I accept the office of governor elected by the town hall and so I shall entitle myself until His Majesty commands something else.”15

  Thus Antonio de Pastraña’s cynical plot was, in the short term anyway, a success. Valdivia, however, went to the notary, Luis de Cartagena, and had him write down, “This election was not of my wish and since I do not know if in doing it I am doing a disservice to my King, let everyone be a witness for me in what way I have accepted it. Nor do I reduce the obedience that I owe to the illustrious marquess Don Francisco Pizarro if he lives.”16 Valdivia later explained what had happened to the emperor Charles in a letter, which seems accurate in its summary.17

  Despite the ceremony with which Valdivia had welcomed his being hailed as the chief ruler in Santiago in February, he was still not governor and captain-general in the reckoning of the Council of the Indies. The rumor, and then the news, of the death of Francisco Pizarro affected Valdivia’s position in Chile, for Pizarro had been his first stay and protection. He regarded himself as the lieutenant of Pizarro. As soon as he had confirmation of Pizarro’s death, Valdivia rather curiously wrote to the Emperor suggesting that he should take care to ensure that Pizarro’s children “could support themselves as such.”18

  Soon after this, the Indians made a major onslaught on the new Spanish town of Santiago. The attack was made under two leaders coming from two directions. Valdivia himself wrote one of his excellent letters to the emperor Charles about his exertions. He himself dealt effectively with the large attack with ninety men, but in the second battle, with Alonso de Monroy in command, the Indians burned the new Santiago entirely and killed all the animals. Valdivia wrote: “We were left only with the arms at our sides and two small pigs, one suckling pig, a cock and a hen, and about two handfuls of wheat. In the end, when night came, the Christians gathered so much courage, together with what their commander Monroy put to them, that, though all were wounded, with the good wishes of Santiago himself, they found the energy to fight and kill many.… And with this, the war began in earnest.”

  Valdivia continued: “Seeing the plight we were in, it seemed to me that, if we were to hold onto the land and make it Your Majesty’s forever, we must eat of the fruits of our hands as in the beginning of the world [la primera edad]. So I set about sowing. I divided my men into two groups. We all dug, plowed and sowed, being always armed and the horses being saddled always by day. At night one half of us kept watch. And I with the other half moved at the time eight to ten leagues [twenty-four to thirty miles] around the town breaking up bands of Indians … [till] I built up the town again.”

  One of these expeditions in the neighborhood of Santiago captured the local toqui, or cacique-in-chief, Michimalongo. To save his life, Michimalongo led the Spaniards to some gold mines, in the so-called Malga district. It was from those mines that the people of the Mapocho had dug the gold that they paid to the Incas. The Spaniards were delighted, and they began to calculate how many sacks they would need; and some put on airs as if they were already rich people, thinking that, in a short time, they would be able to go to Spain, establish a country estate, and—who knew—obtain a Marquessate.

  Work began at Malga, with a hundred Indian workers (yanaconas) obtained from Santiago. Michimalongo offered his own army of miners, which numbered 1,200 (there were also many women). Valdivia left there two Spanish captains, Pedro de Herrera and Diego Delgado, who had engaged in mining in Peru, together with fifteen soldiers, under Gonzalo de los Ríos. Then Valdivia went down to the coast near Santiago to seek a place where he could conveniently build a brigantine, with which he could communicate with Peru by sea. He found a likely harbor at the mouth of the river Aconcagua at Concón, where there was also plenty of wood. Work on a brigantine began.

  Two crises arose for Valdivia. First, Alonso de Monroy sent a message to explain that yet another plot was being planned by Sancho de Hoz. The idea was to kill Valdivia, Suárez, Monroy, and all their friends. Sancho would then seize the gold of Malga and return to Peru to join Diego de Almagro, who had now, it seemed, triumphed over the Pizarros. Valdivia made light of the rumor. But then a confused quarrel occurred in the house of Monroy. The lamps were destroyed. Inés Suárez brought another light, which showed Sancho de Hoz being held by Monroy himself, Chinchilla engaged in a duel with one of Valdivia’s captains, and the priest Fray Juan Lobo defending himself with a stool against Pastraña.

  As if that fracas were not enough, Gonzalo de los Ríos and a black slave named Valiente at this moment rode in from the gold mine at Malga to say that the Indians who had been working in the mines had risen, had killed all the Spaniards there except for themselves, and then had gone down to the coast and thrown the gold that had been mined into the sea.

  Valdivia feared another general assault—with good reason, since the woods near Santiago were reported to be full of Indians bent on his destruction. Valdivia went to the north of his city and captured seven caciques. They confirmed that an attack was probable. Since Valdivia was away and could not return in time to Santiago, Inés Suárez and Monroy organized the resistance. The Spaniards were pressed back to their main square, most of their houses were soon on fire, and a majority of the Spanish population were wounded—but Inés Suárez cut off the heads of the seven caciques whom Valdivia had captured, and exposed them. The gory heads of their leaders inspired dismay in the attackers, who held off their attack. Sancho de Hoz seemed to redeem himself by fighting well with a lance, even if he had to do so manacled. Afterwards, he was pardoned.

  Valdivia returned, and the Indians withdrew. There was, however, practically no food. Some argued for the abandonment of Santiago and a withdrawal to Peru, but even that retreat did not seem feasible without supplies. The recently established fields of maize were caused to work at double pressure. A harvest of twelve fanegas (bushels) of wheat was also forthcoming, but these were immediately put back into the soil. Starvation was the characteristic of this first year at Santiago.

  The old Spanish houses were swiftly rebuilt, but this time—to avoid the effects of fire—not with wood and straw roofs but with adobe bricks. A fort, too, was built—1,600 feet square, needing two hundred bricks three feet long and a handsbreadth high. In the event of another Indian at
tack, the children of the Spaniards and their Indian servants could take refuge there.

  The likelihood of another attack was assumed to be considerable by everyone concerned.

  32

  Valdivia’s Consummation

  Can it be that only the design for a holy life is without the benefit of a system of rules? Indeed there is in general an art and a discipline of virtue, in which those who exercise themselves diligently will be inspired by the Spirit.

  ERASMUS, Enchiridion

  In December 1541, Valdivia sent back to Peru his most reliable subordinate, Alonso de Monroy, presumably a cousin of Hernán Cortés, to seek new clothing, men, horses, ammunition. He went by land with five men, taking the best horses with new horseshoes. Some of these horseshoes were made of gold because iron was so short. Valdivia wrote to the Emperor: “Since I know that no man would stir to come to these lands owing to its bad report, unless someone would go from here to bring them and take gold to buy men … And since the land they had to traverse was at war and there were great wildernesses, they would have to go lightly equipped and unsheltered by night, I have arranged … to send [to Peru] no less than 7,000 pesos of gold”—gold from Malga—to impress the Peruvians. Valdivia also wrote a letter that Monroy was to take to Pizarro.1 Then, reported “the perfect captain,” “we went through the next two years in great want. Many of the Christians had sometimes to dig up roots for food … There was no meat and the Christians who found fifty grains of maize a day thought themselves well off. And he who had a fistful of wheat did not grind it to take away the husks … I chose to have thirty or forty mounted men always about the plain in winter; and when the food which they took with them was finished, they came back and others went out. And so we went about looking like ghosts and the Indians called us ‘cupias,’ which is the name which they give to their devils for, whenever they came in search of us (and they know how to attack at night), they found us awake, armed and, if need be, on horseback.”2