River of Darkness

by Buddy Levy

  Weakened physically but not altogether broken in spirit, Francisco Orellana called Captain Gonzalo Pizarro aside. They stood by the river’s edge, its eternal current lapping at the muddy banks, eroding them away. The night animals began their crepuscular cries, their strange whirring and chirping and screeching, as Lieutenant-General Orellana pointed to the San Pedro, then to the river, and spoke honestly to his captain, his cousin and brother to one of the greatest conquerors in the New World. Francisco Orellana had an idea, a proposition, one that—while risky and dangerous and in no way certain—might save them all.

  AT SOME POINT before Delicola slipped into the murky waters with the other chiefs and swam to freedom, he had told Orellana that they were headed into a great uninhabited region, a “vast one and that there was no food whatsoever to be had this side of a spot where another great river joined up with the one down which [the Spaniards] were proceeding, and that from this junction one day’s journey up the other river there was an abundant supply of food.” According to Delicola, this confluence of rivers was some days’ journey downstream, and there they would find a place with “plenty of food and rich in gold and everything else they sought.” Perhaps Delicola was merely reporting what he thought the Spaniards wanted to hear and thus filling them with false hope. But now, as Orellana looked at the condition of the men, even false hope seemed better than none at all.

  It was clear that something different, and drastic, needed to be done. Orellana suggested that he take the San Pedro and a group of hand-selected men—some fifty or sixty of the best and fittest—and journey down the river in search of this branching place Delicola had described. Pizarro and the rest of the men would follow on foot and alternately in canoes at whatever pace they could muster. Orellana, after having found and secured food, would return upriver to bring the much-needed sustenance and succor to them. The vague plan appeared, under the circumstances, to be their only hope. Orellana estimated, based on what Delicola had told him, that it would take approximately twelve days to find the food and return.

  Pizarro did not take long to sanction the suggestion. “Being confident that Captain Orellana would do as he said,” wrote Pizarro, “because he was my lieutenant, I told him that I was pleased at the idea of his going for the food, and that he should see to it that he returned within the twelve days.”

  At first light on December 26, 1541, Orellana sprang into action. He ushered the sickly, injured, and infirm off the San Pedro and ensconced them as comfortably as possible at Christmas Camp. Orellana then began supervising the loading and securing of the brigantine. On board they retained most of the equipment originally carried by the native bearers, including heavy tools for construction; iron and horseshoes and tackle for additional boatbuilding or boat repair, should those be needed; blankets and woolens and any extra clothing and armor; and some harquebuses and crossbows, as well as spare ammunition and gunpowder.

  Captain Orellana selected fifty-seven men for the journey, which turned out to be about one-fourth of the entire force. Among the men was Friar Gaspar de Carvajal, who would serve as both priest and recorder of the events, for he would keep a journal of their journey, and a scribe named Isásaga who would compose and execute legal documents. Two African slaves were also brought along. As many men as could fit in the San Pedro boarded it, while the rest slid into the canoes appropriated from the upriver Indian tribes (by now the expedition had acquired as many as twenty-two of the worthy craft), and with little ceremony Captain Orellana set out on his food-finding mission, bidding good-bye to Gonzalo Pizarro and the other men with whom he had lived and fought and suffered. The misfit armada cast off down the river, borne by the surging flow to points unknown, and soon the brigantine and the canoes dissolved into the green veil of forest, sweeping around a slow curve in the rain-engorged stream, and then they were gone.

  * Ecuador’s highest waterfall.

  * Pizarro refers to these people as the Omagua, and he appears to be correct, though there is a great deal of confusion surrounding the name, and there may indeed have been other groups referred to (at least by Pizarro, and later Carvajal) as Omagua or Omaguas. For a modern analysis of the Omagua’s range, see Antonio Porro, “Social Organization and Political Power in the Amazon Floodplain: The Ethnohistorical Sources,” in Anna C. Roosevelt, Amazonian Indians from Prehistory to the Present, 81–83. See also Betty Meggers, Amazonia: Man and Culture in a Counterfeit Paradise, 122–30, and John Hemming, Tree of Rivers, 30.

  * Orellana’s interpretive skills were documented by Friar Carvajal: “After he came to these Indies, he always made it a point to get to understand the tongues of the natives and made his own elementary primers for his guidance; and God endowed him with such a good memory and excellent natural aptitude, and he was so expert in interpreting that, notwithstanding the numerous and varying tongues that there are in those parts, although he did not understand all the Indians entirely and perfectly, as he wanted to, still, as a result of the perseverance which he applied to this matter, devoting himself to this practice, he was always understood in the end, and he himself understood quite accurately.” Quoted in José Toribio Medina, Discovery of the Amazon, 72n.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Split

  THE SAN PEDRO COURSED DOWN THE SURGING NAPO, the river gaining mass and momentum as other streams and rivers joined it. With each additional river adding more volume and more speed to the current, they made good progress the first day. If Delicola’s predictions of what lay ahead proved accurate, Orellana figured there would be no settlements or sustenance for some days, so he planned to course almost continuously, floating by day, only needing to steer to avoid snags and small islands and submerged trees. The first night they tucked into a calm eddy; the canoes pulled ashore and the men slumped in soaked piles on the boat’s floorboards and along the banks, inside the canoes or underneath them. Thick swarms of mosquitoes tormented them constantly, so that sleep proved difficult.

  On their second day of navigating downriver they narrowly averted disaster. The San Pedro was moving along well in the middle of the river when the men were jolted by a violent crash. The San Pedro, literally their lifeboat, foundered midstream, impaled by a giant log and in immediate danger of swamping, taking on perilous amounts of water. Fortunately a number of their companions in canoes were nearby and paddled furiously to the San Pedro’s side. With great exertions, the party succeeded in “hauling the boat out of the water and fastening a piece of plank on it,” and in miraculously little time they were on their way again, searching for the larger confluence that Delicola had vaguely described as being “some days’ journey downstream.”

  They journeyed continuously for three days, still seeing no sign of human habitation nor an obvious junction, surrounded by forest sounds that grew ever more eerie and frightening—the piercing screams of monkeys and the rasping cries and throaty gulps of bizarre turkey-sized birds, hoatzins and horned screamers, that flew off as the boats approached. Fearsome great caimans lolled like logs in the brown river, slapping the water with their tails when disturbed. Along the shore, as well as in the water, the Spaniards watched warily for the giant constricting anacondas, the world’s largest snakes, which can reach over thirty feet in length and which kill their prey (including humans) by coiling around them and squeezing them to death.

  By the third day Orellana began to perceive a significant dilemma. The river was rising and moving faster and faster, “owing to the effect of many other rivers which emptied into it.” There were so many, and of such size, that it was unclear which one might be the confluence or junction described by Delicola. Orellana now began to realize that returning to Gonzalo Pizarro, a plan conceived under extraordinary duress, would prove difficult, if not impossible, even should they find food. The river was carrying them at tremendous speed, and paddling back up it appeared out of the question. Orellana had already seen how brutally slow land travel was. To return up the river within the twelve-day time frame they had agreed upon now se
emed unachievable, nor, at any rate, had they yet found food. According to one of the conquistadors, “the Captain and the companions conferred about the difficulty of turning back, and the lack of food.” Their concern growing, the party floated onward.

  They had passed impressive river confluences, the Yururi and the Tiputini, but still no trace of any people, hostile or otherwise. For two more days the armada of brigantine and canoes kept on, moving ever farther from their companions upstream, and with no indication of human settlement along their route.*

  After nearly a week of their headlong rush downstream, some of Francisco Orellana’s men were becoming disheartened, even distraught, and a few were delirious. Orellana ordered a halt to scour the shores for food, commanding the strongest Spaniards to enter the jungle and return with anything they could find. These men wandered about, some eating herbs and roots straight from the ground, grazing like stock animals. Reported Friar Carvajal:

  We reached a state of privation so great that we were eating nothing but leather, belts and soles of shoes, cooked with certain herbs, with the result that so great was our weakness that we could not remain standing, for some on all fours and others with staffs went into the woods to search for a few roots to eat and some there were who ate certain herbs with which they were not familiar, and they were at the point of death, because they were like mad men and did not possess sense.

  Captain Orellana, seeing his men in such a state, called on his scribe and friar to say mass as it is said at sea. Friar Carvajal commended to God their persons and their lives, and he asked that “Our Lord deliver us from such manifest hardship and eventual destruction, for that is what it was coming to look like to us now.” After mass, Orellana moved about his discouraged men, encouraging them, rallying them, and reminding them to have confidence in their God, for as it was He who had cast them upon this river, “He would see fit to bring us to a haven of safety.” Spurred for the moment by Orellana’s oratory, the men boarded the boats once again and continued their journey.

  On New Year’s Day 1542, a strange and ghostly phenomenon occurred. As the men lay strewn in the boat, listlessly rowing, listening to the languid slosh of the river under the bow or the rush of warm wind across the várzea (flooded areas next to the river), Captain Orellana heard a low and timpanic thumping, like a hollow echo far off in the distance. The sound of drums.

  Orellana listened intently, straining to hear and asking for silence, entreating the others to listen as well. He told his men that he believed he had heard the war drums of Indians. Had others heard them, too? Some, perhaps not wanting to disappoint their leader, agreed, saying that yes, they had. Others said they had heard nothing but wind and the sounds of the river, and the coughs and moans of their sick companions. Still, the hope of civilization—even if it was only illusory—bolstered their spirits, and the oarsmen dug into the water with renewed vitality, churning away enthusiastically. Men were put on watch, and they scanned the green horizon with piercing eyes, hoping to see some movement ashore, perhaps children playing by the water or women collecting fruits or nuts. But all that day, and all the next, they saw nothing, and Orellana feared that perhaps the drums had been only a hallucinatory figment of his desirous imagination, his mind now playing devious tricks on him.

  A sense of despondency now overtook everyone. “Sick and sound alike, the men lost spirit, thinking that there was no hope left of escaping with their lives.” Late on the evening of Monday, January 2, 1542, a week after leaving Christmas Camp and five days from his promised rendezvous with Pizarro, Orellana ordered a halt and brought the armada together, tying the brigantine to trees onshore and landing the canoes. The cooks boiled herbs and roots and saddle-strap soup, and the men slumped and groaned in their anguish. Then, as Orellana sat spooning thin gruel through his parched and cracked lips, he heard it again. The notes came from far away, distant and undefined at first, then clearer, a bum-bum-bum, bum-bum-bum that was unmistakably war drums. Carvajal recalled with excitement, “The Captain was the one who heard them first and announced it to the other companions, and they all listened, and they being convinced of the fact, such was the happiness which they all felt that they cast out of their memories all the past suffering because we were now in an inhabited country and no longer could die of hunger.”

  Orellana was certainly encouraged by the prospect of food, but he was less giddy and more circumspect than his men. As their leader, he was acutely aware of their diminished capacities, and he deeply feared an attack upon the company in their condition. Whatever tribe this was pounding on its drums had certainly already seen the Spaniards and was now preparing for war. He immediately stationed watches at each quarter and rallied the men to stay on high alert. As darkness fell, Orellana became increasingly concerned. “And so that night a heavy watch was kept, the Captain not sleeping.” In fact, none of the men could sleep, so piqued were their spirits now with the prospect of food, perhaps as early as daybreak, “for they had had their fill of living on roots.”

  Sunrise came without incident, and Orellana leaped to action, quietly marshaling his troops, ordering the crossbowmen to prepare their bolts, the harquebusiers to secure dry powder and a supply of balls. All the men, sick and decrepit as they were, now strapped on armor and hoisted shields and swords, exhorted by their leader into battle mode. As stealthily as they could, they loaded into the San Pedro and the canoes and cast off to meet whatever foe might lie ahead. They were conquistadors once more.

  They did not have to wait long for an encounter. About seven miles downstream, Orellana spotted four canoes ahead, each filled with Indians on what appeared to be a scouting mission. When the Indians witnessed the brigantine coming at them—without question the first such craft they had ever encountered—they turned sharply about and sounded an alarm, calling out and waving their arms, blowing whistles and pounding on drums. Then they disappeared downstream in their canoes, ripples fanning in their wakes.

  Within minutes, Orellana and his men heard, now loudly and clearly, the distinctive pounding of war drums, first directly below them, then farther off, like a message or a warning being sent from one village to the next. “We heard in the villages,” recalled Friar Carvajal, “many drums that were calling the country to arms. The drums are heard from very far off and are so well attuned that they have their harmonizing bass and tenor and treble.” Orellana knew that he had little time to waste, so he goaded the oarsmen to row with all their strength, hoping to reach a village before great numbers of warriors could assemble, against which he knew he and his men stood no chance.

  Very shortly, they saw ahead many villagers gathered along the riverbanks, brandishing spears and wooden clubs and chanting. Certainly the natives must have been dismayed by these hairy, grizzled, and bearded white men descending upon them, the first such human beings they had ever seen in a boat of a size and shape that defied explanation. Orellana’s men, crazed with hunger as they were, still managed to follow his orders, which he had assured them were the keys to their survival. On they came, and at last they arrived at the first village they had seen since setting out in the San Pedro eight days before.

  They beached the San Pedro just above the village, the mercenary soldiers leaping from the gunwales and clambering to shore in a show of force and in formation, harquebusiers and crossbowmen on their flanks for protection. They were followed closely by the canoes. The aggressive maneuver worked, for as the Spaniards stormed the village the warriors fled, no doubt shocked by these alien beings bearing steel swords glinting in the sunlight, their armor clanking. Orellana first thoroughly searched the village for warriors in hiding, but to his relief he found the huts empty; all the women and children had been evacuated, and the warriors were now congregating along the banks just downstream, as well as in large flotillas of canoes nearby.

  Orellana placed his armed guards about the perimeter of the village and ordered all food brought to a central location, where the men could eat in ordered turn while others stood gua
rd. Mercifully, there was plenty. The men showed considerable discipline, given their level of starvation and the euphoria of finally devouring fruits and chugging down gourds of maize or manioc beer called chicha. Other food—fish and birds and the meat of monkeys, which the villagers had recently prepared for themselves—was also procured from the various huts and brought forth. For a time the Spaniards ate like famished predators guarding a kill, hunched over, devouring, while the guards stood at the ready, “their shields on their shoulders and their swords under their arms, watching to see if the Indians were turning back on [them].”

  The Spaniards satiated themselves in this way for hours, until early afternoon, increasingly watchful of attack. Small bands of warrior canoes paddled back and forth in front of the village, daring to come closer and closer on each pass, and increasing numbers of foot warriors gathered along the banks. Orellana surveyed the situation. A violent encounter appeared imminent.