River of Darkness

by Buddy Levy

  ALSO BY BUDDY LEVY

  CONQUISTADOR:

  Hernán Cortés, King Montezuma, and

  the Last Stand of the Aztecs

  AMERICAN LEGEND:

  The Real-Life Adventures of David Crockett

  ECHOES ON RIMROCK:

  In Pursuit of the Chukar Partridge

  Copyright © 2011 by Buddy Levy

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  BANTAM BOOKS and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Levy, Buddy.

  River of darkness: Francisco Orellana’s legendary voyage of death and discovery down the Amazon / Buddy Levy

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-553-90810-7

  1. Orellana, Francisco de, d. ca. 1546. 2. Amazon River Region—

  Discovery and exploration—Spanish. I. Title.

  E125.O6 L48 2011 2010041849

  981/.01 22

  Map copyright © 2011 by David Lindroth

  www.bantamdell.com

  Jacket design: Tom McKeveny

  Jacket illustration: color lithograph after Jean-Baptiste Debret, “Indians Using a Fallen Tree-Trunk to Cross the Rio Paraiba do Sul,” from Voyage Pittoresque et Historique au Brésil (Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Paris/Archives Charmet/ Bridgeman Art Library International)

  v3.1_r1

  For my father, Buck Levy,

  who first took me to the river

  We seldom or never find any nation hath endured so many misadventures and miseries as the Spaniards have done in their Indian discoveries. Yet persisting in their enterprises, with invincible constancy, they have annexed to their kingdom so many goodly provinces, as bury the remembrance of all dangers past.… Many years have passed over some of their heads in search of not so many leagues: Yea, more than one or two have spent their labour, their wealth, and their lives, in search of a golden kingdom, without getting further notice of it than what they had at their first setting forth.

  —SIR WALTER RALEIGH, The History of the World, 1614

  There is something in a tropical forest akin to the ocean in its effect on the mind. Man feels so completely his insignificance there and the vastness of nature.

  —HENRY WALTER BATES, The Naturalist on the River Amazons, 1892

  In human terms, Francisco Orellana’s is probably the most compelling narrative from the entire conquistador period, for the simple reason that this time it was the Europeans who suffered so desperately, and who needed all their powers of endurance as they battled with a savage environment.

  —PETER WHITFIELD, Newfound Lands

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  MAP

  PROLOGUE

  1 A Confluence of Conquistadors

  2 Birth of the Golden Dream

  3 Into the Andes

  4 El Barco and the San Pedro

  5 The Split

  6 The Plight of Gonzalo Pizarro

  7 St. Eulalia’s Confluence—The Amazon

  8 The Victoria

  9 River of Darkness, Brothers of Doom

  10 The Assassination of Francisco Pizarro

  11 On the Maranon to the Realm of Machiparo

  12 Among the Omagua

  13 Big Blackwater River

  14 Encountering the Amazons

  15 The Trumpeter’s Tale

  Photo Insert

  16 Tides of Change and a Sweetwater Sea

  17 The Homeward Reach

  18 The Last Stand of the Last Pizarro

  19 The Expedition to New Andalusia—

  Return to the Amazon

  Epilogue

  CHRONOLOGY

  A NOTE ON THE TEXT AND SOURCES

  NOTES

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE

  Christmas Day, 1541

  CONQUISTADOR FRANCISCO ORELLANA STOOD ON the sodden riverbank and regarded the ceaseless roil of the river, uncertain where the dark waters were heading. In the dying light the water appeared black as it slithered downstream, moving like the skin of some gargantuan dark snake disappearing into an endless jungle. Orellana turned and beheld his bedraggled troops. Some, starving and feverish, their clothes rotted to soiled rags, bent before a weak fire, boiling leather straps from their saddle girths into a bitter broth. Others lay moaning beneath makeshift shelters of palm fronds and ceiba tree bark, their skin sickly white, riddled with bites and stings from mosquitoes, army ants, wasps, and vampire bats. Behind them, from the impenetrable lowland rain forest, sounded the ominous, lionlike roars of red howler monkeys and the piercing calls of macaws.

  It was not supposed to be this way. Orellana had fantasized about being fabulously rich by now. He had dreamed, along with his captain Gonzalo Pizarro, of being among the wealthiest men in the world.

  Now, all around them was nothing but an infinite river that delivered only death and despair and darkness.

  Ten months before, in February, the Spaniards had trekked from Quito over the massive Andes in search of the Land of Cinnamon and the fabled riches of El Dorado, the “gilded man” who, legend held, was daily powdered from head to toe with gold dust, which he would then wash from himself in a lake whose silty bottom was now covered with gold dust and the golden trinkets tossed in as sacrificial offerings.

  But the golden dream had proved an unspeakable nightmare. Now, staring at his writhing, starving men, Orellana thought only about how he might get them all out of this death trap alive.

  Getting here had nearly killed them. For months they had hacked their way through the dense Andean forests, the forbidding snowcapped Antisana volcano erupting in the distance, rumbling the earth with great quakes and sending shock waves of fear through the exhausted men as the roofs of the abandoned Indian huts they took shelter in collapsed upon them. On their descent from the mountains, rains slashed the hillsides in horrific torrents, sending the men scurrying to higher ground to escape flash floods and engorging the streams so that the conquistadors were forced to cut timber and construct bridges in order to continue forward. The Spaniards suffered attacks by small bands of Indians at the headwaters of the upper Coca and Napo rivers, and all of their native slaves, porters, and guides either died on the freezing mountain passes or fled during the long nights.

  The conquistadors had eaten nearly all of the two hundred horses they had brought with them, abandoning others in the dense and roadless forests, which proved impassable for the large animals. Eaten, too, were all of the savage mastiffs and wolfhounds trained to terrorize native populations or to take part in battle. Francisco Orellana, his despondent captain Gonzalo Pizarro, and their few hundred mercenary soldiers were lost in an unknown wilderness, slowly starving to death with scant hope for survival. Progress along the river’s dank and decaying shoreline was disastrous. Forlorn, they came to understand that somehow the river must be their only hope for salvation.

  So they built a boat, salvaging iron from the shoes of slain horses to fabricate nails, calking the craft with cotton ripped from their own garments and blankets, constructing cordage from tree vines.

  Pizarro, glowering and brooding and violent, tortured some captured Indians for information, learning between their screams that perhaps two days’ travel downriver was a prosperous village boasting large manioc plantations, enough to keep the men alive, at least for a time.

 
; Francisco Orellana watched the slow and languid movement of the murky river. The waterway appeared hostile and forbidding and alien to him, but he knew what he must do: in this open boat, dubbed the San Pedro, he would navigate downstream in search of food.

  Orellana, his lips cracked and bleeding, his face blistered from the unremitting equatorial furnace, took Captain Pizarro aside and presented him with his idea: Orellana, second-in-command, and fifty-seven of his compatriots would depart the next morning, boarding the San Pedro and twenty-two stolen native dugout canoes and voyaging downstream to find the plantations. Pizarro, despondent and without a better idea, agreed: Orellana should embark at dawn.

  As the Christmas sunset poured long skeins of bloodred light over the upper reaches of the Amazon Basin, and the flooded várzea forests and swamps reverberated with the eerie twilight chirrs and keening of strange animals, both Francisco Orellana and his captain Gonzalo Pizarro gazed at the endless wash of the river. Neither man found it necessary to voice what they both knew: that their only hope of survival lay with Orellana and the fragile wooden craft that would carry him and his small band down the unknown reaches of the twisting, massive waterway.

  CHAPTER 1

  A Confluence of Conquistadors

  THE VAST AND RUGGED LANDS OF EXTREMADURA, Francisco Orellana’s homeland in the kingdom of Castile, produced hard and unyielding men, men who learned the arts of warfare as boys, and who by their early teens could ride their Iberian mounts with panache and wield their Toledo swords with deadly efficiency. Theirs was a temperament forged by eight hundred years of conflict with the invading Moors. To this day, Extremadura is the least populated province in all of Spain, a haunting and landlocked place where seemingly endless tracts of rocky pastureland and burned-out bunchgrass are punctuated by scrubby stands of deep-green encina oak. On elevated promontories, the only respite from the terminal vistas, perch the ruins of castles and ramparts and their crumbling keeps, and the granite remains of Roman arches and bridge columns. The panorama inspired dreams of far-off lands and a better life, as did the stories brought back to Iberia by explorers like Columbus, whose famous Carta of 1493 told of innumerable islands peopled by peaceful, naked inhabitants and flowing with spices and gold. The options for men without titles to rise beyond a hardscrabble existence herding swine or cattle were few. They could better their class status through marriage, though most herdsmen or peasants knew that their chances of courting and winning a lady of the elite were less than favorable.

  The only other chance for fame, fortune, and titles was a triumphant military career, and this alternative lured many an Extremeño to the ships at Seville headed for the newfound world across the seas.

  Such was the lure for young Francisco Orellana. Born in 1511 to a prominent Trujillo family related to the famous Pizarros, Orellana himself declared that he was “a gentleman of noble blood, and a person of honor.” Although information on his early years is scant, his upbringing, including early training in the arts of warfare, would have been much the same as that of another Trujillo family to which his was related: the Pizarros, whose eldest son, Francisco, was already winning renown in the New World. Certainly, Orellana’s eventual leadership roles and his rapid acquisition of native languages point to a high intellect and distinguished bearing.

  Orellana claims to have arrived in the Indies in 1527, at which time Panama was the base from which most of the Spanish expeditions were mounted. Orellana, then still a brash but ambitious teenager, soon signed on as a mercenary soldier, and in the regions north of Panama, likely in Nicaragua, “he performed his first feats of arms as a conquistador.” It would have been a thrilling and chivalric time for the young man, fighting alongside veterans of conquest in lands so different from his native Iberia, in lands that very few Europeans had ever seen and that in fact had only recently been discovered by Columbus.* Indeed, the Spaniard’s staging area of western Panama lay on the very coast of the Pacific Ocean (the Gulf of Panama) that, after hacking their way across the brambly isthmus, Vasco Núñez de Balboa, with Francisco Pizarro as second-in-command, had discovered just fourteen years earlier.

  Over the next decade Orellana would distinguish himself by participating in numerous expeditions and invasions in Central America, and ultimately in the conquests and civil wars waged in Peru. Orellana proudly claimed to have fought “in the conquests of Lima and Trujillo [Peru, not Spain] and … in the pursuit of the Inca in the conquest of Puerto Viejo and its outlying territory.” Through his efforts and bravery Orellana acquitted himself with great honor and won the admiration of his peers, including the powerful Pizarros. His stature and reputation came not without cost, however. During one skirmish he lost an eye, and from then on he wore a patch, though his loss never diminished his conquistador’s focus and vision.

  Orellana forever will be linked historically to his kinsman Gonzalo Pizarro through their dual roles in the expedition of 1541–42. Their coming together was hardly a coincidence, given their kinship and common origins in Trujillo. Gonzalo was the second youngest of the five infamous Pizarro brothers,* an ambitious and enigmatic quintet of conquerors sometimes referred to as the “Brothers of Doom,” not only for their harsh and duplicitous treatment of the native populations they conquered but for their own rather ignominious ends. Of this deeply loyal band of brothers, only one of the five—Hernando—would die of natural causes. As with Orellana, the details of Gonzalo’s early life are sketchy, though his exploits and activities after arriving in the New World with his older brother (some thirty years older, in fact) Francisco, as well as his place of origin, provide much evidence and suggest a great deal about his personality and character.

  Described by his chroniclers as exceedingly handsome, a womanizer, an avid hunter, and skilled beyond his years with a sword—“the best lance in Peru” and “the greatest warrior who ever fought in the New World”—he was also known to be cruel and impulsive. Tall and well-proportioned, with an olive-dark complexion and a very long black beard, Gonzalo Pizarro, rather poorly educated, expressed himself in direct, if crude, language.

  To fully understand Gonzalo, we must first consider Francisco Pizarro. Eldest of the Pizarro brothers, Francisco struck out for the Indies in 1502,* and by 1513 he was accompanying Vasco Núñez de Balboa across the Isthmus of Panama to the Pacific. Little more than a decade later, in 1524, the ambitious and skilled Francisco had become a leader himself and put together an expedition to head south from Panama to explore the coast of Colombia in a yearlong venture. There he met fierce resistance from natives and lost a great deal of money, but he remained convinced that there were riches to plunder. In 1524 he formed, with two associates, a private corporation called the Company of the Levant,† which would be devoted to raising money dedicated to further conquest in the New World. For the next two years Francisco Pizarro raised money to sponsor an expedition to the coast of what is now Ecuador. Soon after arriving, they had their first tangible discovery of the riches they sought. Along the seashore’s tropical waters they spotted a sailing craft moving steadily along. On closer inspection they could see that the vessel was constructed of local balsa wood, propelled by handmade cotton sails, possessing a woven reed floor and two sturdy masts, and navigated by several native mariners. The sight proved curious and intriguing, for Francisco Pizarro knew of no Indian population who understood and employed sailing ships—not even the highly civilized Aztecs his countryman and distant cousin Cortés had reported so much about.

  As the Spanish caravel moved alongside the craft, some of the natives leaped into the ocean and swam toward shore. The Spaniards overtook the remaining crew and questioned them through sign language. The natives indicated that they were from Tumbez, on the northwestern coast, south of Quito, but Pizarro’s men were much more fascinated by the contents of the craft, which included many wonders, according to a letter later enthusiastically written to Charles V:

  They were carrying many pieces of gold and silver as personal ornaments [and als
o] crowns and diadems, belts, bracelets, leg armor and breastplates … rattles and strings and clusters of beads and rubies, mirrors adorned with silver and cups and other drinking vessels.

  After absconding with the contents of the balsa craft and sending the frightened and confused natives on their way, Pizarro took careful stock of the booty. Here was the first substantial evidence that, as he hoped and banked on, somewhere in the vicinity there must surely be an empire, perhaps one as grand and immensely wealthy as the one Cortés had discovered. Francisco Pizarro was almost fifty and had spent nearly half his life searching for just such a prize, but he needed confirmation of its existence. After setting up camp on a mosquito-infested jungle island they later named Gallo, Pizarro is reputed to have assessed his travel-weary troops; many of the men were sick and hungry, some already dying and begging to return to Panama. They had depleted most of their stores. The generally taciturn Pizarro, himself by then gaunt and ragged, is said to have stood before them on the beach and etched a deep line in the sand with his sword tip. “Gentlemen,” he bellowed,

  This line signifies labor, hunger, thirst, fatigue, wounds, sickness, and every other kind of danger that must be encountered in this conquest, until life is ended. Let those who have the courage to meet and overcome the dangers of this heroic achievement cross the line in token of their resolution and as testimony that they will be my faithful companions. And let those who feel unworthy of such daring return to Panama; for I do not wish to [use] force upon any man.

  With that, Francisco Pizarro stepped across the line himself, indicating that all who followed him would continue south, away from Panama, away from Spain, away from their wives and families and the comforts of home, perhaps forever. Thirteen men, slowly at first, and then with growing conviction, stepped over the line to join him. They would forever be known as “the Men of Gallo.” The remainder of the crew, those who refused to cross the line, soon sailed back to Panama on a supply ship that had come to reinforce them.