River of Darkness

by Buddy Levy

  The Spaniards managed to escape that ambush, but the canoes continued to pursue and attack the brigantines for the next two full days and nights, giving Orellana’s men not a moment’s rest nor time to eat. They were weak with hunger, racked with thirst—their tongues swollen and their lips cracked and bleeding—and now the delirium of sleep deprivation overcame many of them. Orellana knew that they needed to land and recover soon—but where?

  Extending over three hundred miles down the Maranon, the territory of Machiparo proved every bit as impressive and hostile as billed by Aparia the Great. Given the unremitting hostilities, Orellana and his men had no opportunity to land and explore the country, but they did make some observations about the region. Carvajal noted that for the entire length of Machiparo’s domain “it was all of one tongue,” the people speaking only the one language. Even more remarkable was the density of the houses and the population; during one 180-mile stretch, both sides of the river were “all inhabited, for there was not from village to village a crossbow shot.” One settlement truly impressed the Spaniards, for it extended for nearly fifteen miles “without there intervening any space from house to house, which was a marvelous thing to behold.”

  Despite not having the opportunity to scout and reconnoiter the interior lands of Machiparo, Orellana saw enough to believe that here might indeed be wealth and riches worth returning to conquer. Aparia the Great’s intelligence had been highly accurate, so much so that Orellana was willing to believe that somewhere in this vicinity, lying somewhere deeper in the interior, “there was a very great overlord whose name was Ica, and that this latter possessed very great wealth in gold and silver, and this piece of information we considered to be very reliable and exact.” This lure of riches continued to inflame Orellana’s imagination, firing his dreams and determination to return, should he make it out of this expedition alive.

  After four days and nights of continuous fighting, the explorers reached what appeared to be the far eastern boundary of Machiparo’s domain, for the canoes ceased to follow and attack. Ahead they spotted what looked like a garrison or frontier outpost, set up on an elevated bluff overlooking the river. These ramparts and fortifications signaled the beginning of the lands of the Omaguas,* ruled over by a chief named Oniguayal. Orellana assessed the place as they drew near, and he surveyed his men. The place looked promising, but well guarded. Yet if he could possibly take possession of it, it would in turn be defensible. He immediately decided it was worth an attempt; he ordered his oarsmen to steer for it, and his crossbowmen and harquebusiers to the ready.

  The Spaniards drew into a calm harbor above the village outpost and noticed that many Indians were gathered there, readying weapons of their own and preparing for a defense. Orellana determined that this was no time to appear timid or hesitant, and in a bold and decisive move he called on his oarsmen to row forward at ramming speed and with full force beach the boats, whereupon his artillery and crossbowmen, as well as swordsmen, would leap over the sides and storm the garrison in an all-out offensive charge. It was a risky, last-ditch, and potentially fatal move, but Orellana had committed to it, and in they flew.

  Amazingly, it worked. The Omaguas stationed at the outpost offered resistance, standing firm and hurling spears with their throwers, until the massive Spanish ships came skidding and groaning up onto the beach, guns blazing. As his armored men leaped out shouting, Orellana’s daring tactic caused the Indians to flee, abandoning their post and the village beyond, which, to the Spaniards’ relief and delight, included a great deal of food.

  Orellana planned to remain here for three or four days if he could, finishing the remaining stores of the food and replenishing them with bounty from the village. As he had suspected, the existing fortifications could be used to defend their position, in the very likely event of attacks or incursions from the rightful inhabitants, who even now were massing. Orellana had his men pull the boats into the shallows and tie them off, and he placed sentries on round-the-clock watch.

  His concerns were well founded. The next morning the Spaniards awoke to a commotion on the water, and the sentries scanned the water to see numerous canoes headed straight for their position on shore. Some had already arrived at the Spanish boats, and they appeared to be “bent on seizing and unmooring the brigantines which were in the harbor.” Orellana reacted instantly, calling on his crossbowmen to quickly board the boats and fire down on the aggressive Omaguas from protected positions. The skilled crossbowmen picked off many Indians with their deadly bolts, doing enough damage to turn the momentum in their favor, and the attack subsided, the Indians retreating and vanishing back across the water into the várzea.

  Convinced that the hostiles had fled—at least for the time being—Orellana again posted guards. He put the cooks to work and ordered others to rest, all in shifts. The respite—after days and days of continuous fighting and hundreds of miles of near-constant movement on the water—was well earned. “So we remained resting,” reminisced Carvajal, “regaling ourselves with good lodgings, eating all we wanted, and we stayed three days in this village.” Orellana spent his spare time scouting the village and its vicinity, during which forays he discovered many well-trodden roads or paths leading off into the interior, so well used and developed that the Spaniards referred to them as “very fine highways.” This evidence of a large and vibrant populace confirmed Orellana’s suspicion that they were near a wealthy, developed civilization, but the fresh signs of recent use concerned him, too; he feared an organized attack. After three days of rest and no further harassment, he decided that they should press their luck no further and ordered preparations for departure.

  Ransacking the fortified garrison and surrounding houses, the Spaniards procured a good deal of “biscuit,” or bread, which the Omagua had baked from a combination of maize and yuca into large hard cakes that traveled and stored well. That loaded, and with no other formalities, the men boarded the San Pedro and the Victoria once more and shoved off, leaving the relative safety and comfort of their protected lodgings and their calm-water “harbor,” as they called it. It was impossible for them to know where they were or how far they had traveled, but Orellana and his captains estimated that they had now gone more than a thousand miles since leaving the village of Imara. Perhaps not knowing was for the better—because had they known their location and their destination, they would have confronted the daunting fact that there remained well more than a thousand miles of hostile and uncharted river ahead of them—many more than that if they factored in the river’s diabolical, twisting convolutions.

  They were hardly under way—having traveled only five miles or so—when they reached an impressive, powerful river pouring into the Maranon from the south bank. The size of this new river appeared remarkable, even wider—or so it seemed—than the Maranon itself. “So wide was it,” Orellana’s priest remarked, “that at the place where it emptied in it formed three islands, in view of which fact we gave it the name of Trinity River.” They had reached the confluence of the Jurua River, which appeared to flow through an abundant and prosperous land, with numerous houses and buildings dotting the swath of green shoreline. Orellana ordered the men to remain on high alert, but not to provoke any of the local population; he hoped to avoid any fresh confrontations.

  They had reached the heart of the dominion of the Omagua, and because Orellana felt that he had plenty of food, he chose to move slowly and quietly downstream without making stops of any kind. They passed thickly populated villages, some of which sent warriors in canoe fleets to attack the Spaniards. “They attacked us so pitilessly,” wrote Carvajal, “that they made us go down mid-river.” Sometimes the Indians shouted as they approached, moving close enough to attempt to communicate, but they spoke a language that Orellana could not comprehend through the wind and rush of water, so no truce or arrangements could come of their discourse. They moved on, fighting and floating.

  At sunset they arrived at a small and intriguing series of well-kept buildings
set very high and exposed on a bank, and although the place was inhabited, its diminutive size and apparently limited population convinced Orellana that he should try to land and investigate. As they drew near, Orellana could see that it was very orderly and well maintained, so pristine that he suspected it might be a pleasure palace or place of recreation or leisure for the local overlord, enticing him yet further. The few natives resisted as well as they could for about an hour, but in the end they relinquished the village and retreated into the forest. The Spaniards took control of the perimeter, tied up the boats, and went about investigating, armed and ready.

  The bounty of food once again pleased Orellana, and he ordered much of it to be confiscated and prepared for travel. Most interesting, though, was a certain building the Spaniards described as a “villa,” a kind of warehouse or storehouse bursting with all manner of pottery of varying quality and sizes, some small but other pieces “very large, with a capacity of more than twenty-five arrobas.”* Orellana and his men marveled at the workmanship, running their hands over the finely made wares, which included jars and pitchers and also

  Other small pieces such as plates and bowls and candelabra of this porcelain of the best that has ever been seen in the world, for that of Malaga is not its equal, because this porcelain which we found is all glazed and embellished with all colors, and so bright that they astonish, and more than this, the drawings and paintings which they make on them are so accurately worked out that one wonders how with only natural skill they manufacture and decorate all these things like Roman articles.

  Orellana had good reason to be impressed by the excellence of the pottery and the skill of the craftsmanship. The sheer volume discovered in the storage rooms suggested that this small village must be the center of a vast pottery manufacturing region, perhaps employed for distribution and trade up and down the river. The immensity further suggested that the region—confirmed by their observations of continuous settlement along both banks—supported a significant population base, perhaps on the order of hundreds of thousands of people. They nicknamed this place China Town, or Pottery Village.

  The pottery that the Spaniards found so captivating would come to be known as the Guarita style, part of the so-called Polychrome Horizon style of works since unearthed by archaeologists along the middle and lower Amazon. The style displays “elaborate geometric patterns executed in painting (usually red, black, and white) and incision, excision, and modeling” depicting human and animal as well as decorative geometric designs.

  Orellana was eager to learn even more about these people, and he ordered his men to round up those few who had not fled. These people, through difficult and painstaking sign language, told Orellana that if he thought the pottery was notable, there was an equivalent amount of gold and silver in a village nearby, in the interior. These few friendly locals even offered to take Orellana and his men there if he wished to see it.

  Orellana pondered the possibility, his interest in this potential El Dorado clearly piqued. But a foray into the interior would be time-consuming and probably dangerous, and it would take some of his men away from the brigantines, a dividing of his troops he was reluctant to make. Instead, he continued to scout the village, and found further evidence of a complex society, a chapel or house of religious worship, in which

  There were two idols woven out of feathers* of diverse sorts, which frightened one, and they were of the stature of giants, and on their arms, stuck into the fleshy part, they had a pair of disks resembling candlestick sockets, and they also had the same thing on their calves and close to their knees; their ears were bored through and very large, like those of the Indians of Cuzco, and even larger.

  The idols terrified the Spaniards and certainly would have conjured connections to the stories that had been brought back from Mexico by Cortés and his men after the conquest of the Aztecs, who also displayed elaborate prayer idols in their temples. Orellana and his men were well aware of the incidents of ritual human sacrifice described by Cortés himself in his famous Letters from Mexico, letters written to the king detailing his expedition as well as the people and events they encountered. In fact, during one particularly memorable and gruesome episode during the siege of Tenochtitlán, some sixty-five or seventy Spaniards were captured and herded toward the Great Pyramid (the Templo Mayor). Bernal Díaz, who was there, described what happened next as his comrades, stripped naked, were led up to the sacrifice stone:

  When they got to a small square in front of the oratory, where their accursed idols are kept, we saw them place plumes on the heads of many of them and with things like fans in their hands they forced them to dance before [the idol of] Huitzilopochtli, and after they had danced they immediately placed them on their backs … and with the stone knives they sawed open their chests and drew out their palpitating hearts and offered them to the idols that were there.

  All night long Cortés had watched his captured men at the temples from across a protected causeway, terrified at the foot of these giant idols, illuminated by eerie torchlight coupled with the burning ceremonial copal incense. He cringed at the chants, the incessant drums, the horrific screams of his compatriots as they succumbed to the sharp obsidian blades.

  Such thoughts would have raced through the minds of Orellana and his men at the sight of these places of religious worship, the most elaborate such temples they had yet encountered. Their fears were tempered slightly when they also found pieces of gold and silver inside the temples. The local inhabitants, with whom Orellana was learning to communicate, managed to explain to him that these houses of worship, as well as the gold and silver, belonged to those wealthy people who resided inland, “in the heart of the forest,” the same people they had spoken of earlier and could lead Orellana to. The idols, which Orellana and his men nicknamed “Orejones” or “Big Ears” because of their large disk ears, presumably represented the tribe’s overlords.

  Orellana moved away from the temples and the idols, filing the information away for future use. He explained to his men that “our intention was merely to search for something to eat and see to it that we saved our lives and gave an account of such a great accomplishment,” and not to plunder for wealth at this time. But he would take this information to heart, noting that here was a complicated, even sophisticated people. Indeed, one chronicler had this to say of the Omagua: “Of all the [people] who inhabit the banks of the Maranon, the Omaguas are the most civilized, notwithstanding their strange custom of flattening their heads.” Another report spoke equally highly of the Omagua, saying, “The Omagua are the Phoenicians of the river, for their dexterity in navigating. They are the most noble of all the tribes; their language is the most sweet and copious; and these facts indicate that they are the remains of some great monarchy, which existed in ancient times.” Intelligent and industrious, they were also the first known people in the world to harvest rubber from wild rubber trees (Hevea brasiliensis) and to make practical items out of rubber. According to firsthand accounts of chroniclers, “the Omagua [used] elastic, waterproof and unbreakable material to make flasks and hollow balls. At their festivals, snuff was puffed from the pear-shaped rubber syringes.”*

  In their movement about the village, Orellana noted that, just as in the previous village, this one seemed to be a nexus for numerous roads leading into the interior. These interested the captain enough to take Maldonado, Lieutenant Robles, and a handful of other trusted companions to investigate where the roads went. After following one road for a mile or so, Orellana observed that the roads grew wider and better maintained, “more like royal highways.” Again, the evidence of so much recent maintenance and use worried Orellana, and he ceased the scouting expedition and turned back for the perceived safety of the brigantines. They arrived just at sunset, and Orellana determined that despite the comfortable and commodious lodgings, it would be a bad idea to sleep there, in a place so heavily trafficked. A concerted and well-organized night attack could easily do them in.

  So once more Orella
na and his intrepid comrades boarded the brigantines, the late sun dying to the west behind them. By the time they embarked it was growing dark, the ghostly silhouettes of bats flitting overhead, the forests filling with the whir and flicker of evening cicadas and the bizarre flashing of the nocturnal lantern bugs, whose outspread wings look like the wide-open eyes of an owl about to swoop down on its prey. Before them the river ran east, a dark and headless black snake slithering into the unknown.

  * Anthropologist Robert Carneiro observes that “a number of Amazonian tribes have ‘whistling arrows,’ made by attaching a perforated nut to the foreshaft of the arrow. When one of these arrows is shot into dense foliage, it whistles on its downward trajectory, making it easier to locate when it lands.” The whistling would have been quite unnerving to Orellana and his men.

  * Aspergilla, a brush or instrument for sprinkling holy water.

  * Richard Muller, in Orellana’s Discovery of the Amazon River, 50, offers an alternate translation to the encounter with the sorcerers: “The pursuers were continuously on our trail, accompanied by four or five sorcerers who by means of long tubes filled the air with clouds of smoke and sprinkled water all around in the manner of witchcraft. After completing a turn around our vessels, and, so they thought, having freed the atmosphere of bad spirits, they exhorted the natives to fight, and the noise of their cornets, drums, and shouting was frightful.” The blowing of tobacco smoke is associated with much assault sorcery, including spells cast during warfare.

  * There is a great deal of confusion surrounding the term “Omagua” and the people it describes. According to historian John Hemming and other sources, the people that Orellana here encountered were probably part of the “Oniguayal tribe, who were later recorded on the north shore near Codajas … 155 miles above the confluence with the Rio Negro, whereas the true Omagua were probably Aparia’s people, far upriver.” See Hemming, Tree of Rivers, 30. But for clarity’s sake, I will refer to these people as Omagua, as Carvajal and others do.