River of Darkness

by Buddy Levy

  For his part, Jerónimo de Aguilar had always held out a remote hope that he might someday be rescued, and from the moment of his arrival on mainland Yucatán, he kept his mind sharp and strong by counting the days. Tucked beneath his tattered cloak was a torn old prayer book, which he kept with him at all times. In his eight years marooned, he had learned to speak Chontal Mayan fluently. Cortés could not believe this stroke of providence. Through Aguilar he could learn something of the mainlanders’ customs and beliefs and lifeways. But most important, he could now communicate with them. He immediately made Aguilar his translator and interpreter and kept him nearby at all times.

  There were other known stories of shipwreck and survival. Orellana might well have heard of the tale of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, who was stranded on the coast of Florida in 1527 during an expedition captained by star-crossed Pánfilo de Narváez, known rival of Cortés. Cabeza de Vaca and three other survivors of shipwreck, hurricane, and abandonment walked westward across America for nine years, a journey on foot that took them from present-day Florida through Louisiana and Texas and all the way to California. They were the first Europeans to see buffalo, and they endured enslavement, torture, and near starvation. They lived among various tribes of the American southwest, finally making their way to Cortés’s Tenochtitlán by 1536, back among Spaniards after an incredible odyssey in which they became faith healers and something akin to messiahs. Though his written account of the journey, Chronicle of the Narváez Expedition, would not be published until the current year, 1542, word of his incredible survival story had certainly spread throughout Spanish-speaking and Spanish-ruled Mesoamerica and throughout the Spanish-controlled lands of the New World, no doubt the subject of many fabulous stories.

  So it was with great interest and likely belief that Orellana took in the tale told by the recently captured Indian girl. Because they were temporarily well stocked with food from their last raid, the Spaniards continued downriver without landing at any villages for a number of days, always moving through what appeared to be one continuous province. Finally, at its extreme eastern boundary, they floated toward a substantial village through which, the Indian girl told Orellana, they must pass if they wished to go to the place where his compatriots lived. Orellana considered this option, contemplating his meager forces and their general condition before thinking better of it. Instead, according to Carvajal, his mind was on a return voyage, one better equipped: “We decided to press forward, for, as to rescuing them from where they were, the time would come for that.” As frightening and dangerous as these lands were, Orellana’s determination to return only grew with each new demonstration of the magic and wealth potentially to be found.

  As Orellana resolved to proceed downriver, two Indians paddled out from the village to investigate. They maneuvered around the brigantines, gazing with amazement at the length and depth and breadth of these boats, the great wooden legs sticking out from them, and their strange grizzled passengers. Orellana attempted to parley with the two, entreating them to come aboard. He tried to entice them with some gifts of cotton blankets and a few of the remaining trinkets and curiosities he had on hand, but the two men remained in their canoe, stolid and resolute. Then they began to gesticulate with their hands, becoming quite animated, pointing to the Spaniards and then running their hands down from their chins, indicating the beards. They pointed back to shore, beyond the village and inland. Orellana and his companions interpreted this to be another reference to the members of the Ordaz party, and they tried to get more information from the two men, who spun about and paddled away. Orellana did not know exactly what to make of this exchange, but for safety, he pulled up near an island facing the village, moored, and anchored. He ordered the men to sleep inside the brigantines—no one was to disembark.

  They awoke at dawn to the cries of native warriors and the sight of large battle formations of canoes racing across the water from the village, the Indians shrieking, chanting, and waving their bows and arrows violently. Orellana managed to pull up anchor and retreat before the canoe squadrons could arrive to inflict any damage, and the Spaniards fled down the river. For five days they kept moving almost continuously, sleeping nights hunkered down in the tepid and odoriferous boats, sweating profusely in their armor. On the fifth day, now out of food, they reached a new settlement and came ashore, relieved that the inhabitants chose not to resist.

  Moving about this village, the Spaniards pilfered food stores as usual. Most unusual, though, here they found a large storehouse and dispensary for chicha, complete with prodigious quantities of maize stored in big basket hampers, for making both bread and, they realized, alcoholic beverages. They also found maize “buried in ashes in order that it might keep and be protected from weevils.” Orellana’s soldiers were delighted to discover a convenient and working “storehouse filled with liquor, of which our men partook liberally.” This would have been their first real festivity since leaving the peaceful Imara and the Aparians, so Orellana was inclined to let them loose to enjoy themselves a little bit.

  Orellana took the opportunity to explore this interesting, organized, and well-appointed community. He found stores of high-quality cotton goods here, too, but what really caught his attention and curiosity was another temple, this one containing hanging cotton hammocks for sleeping, perhaps to host travelers coming from great distances away. Also inside the temple they found “many military adornments in the form of cuirasses* and other pieces for all parts of the body; and hanging above all these were two miters, very well made and with natural skill, and in such a way as to be quite like those which bishops and prelates have as a part of their pontifical robes, they were made out of a woven cotton of various colors.” The Spaniards named this village, fittingly, the Village of the Miters.

  On Tuesday, June 22, winds slashed up and across the river, roiling the surface and taxing the navigators and the oarsmen. As the brigs bobbed along the whitecaps, Orellana noted an extended settlement along the northern shore, observing that “their houses were glimmering white.” The captain, transfixed by the gleaming buildings, tried desperately to get his men to coax the brigantines across the river to the other side for a more thorough investigation, but alas, the wind and the waves proved insurmountable: “During the whole day there was no possibility of going over to follow the other shore on account of the excessive choppiness of the rough waves, and these were as broken and as restless as any that could be at sea.”

  Under calmer conditions, they managed to land and seize a village that sat in a pretty bend of a smaller tributary stream, the landscape there very flat, devoid of undulations or rises for nearly ten miles. As they scouted about, they noted that the village here was orderly and organized, and had a well-designed street plan, with one central street running the length of the village and a village square midway down this main road. Houses flanked both sides of this street, and inside some of these the Spaniards found great quantities of maize and also much cassava bread made of a mixture of maize and yuca. They also helped themselves to a few welcome ducks and parrots. Because it was tucked away on the river bend, and also for its long street, they gave this village two nicknames: Pueblo de la Calle (Village of the Street) and Pueblo Escondido (Hidden Village).

  Thursday, June 24, was the feast day of St. John the Baptist. Devoutly religious, Orellana and his men now began to hope they might find a good place to stop and celebrate, though certainly Orellana would have been mindful of how he had let his guard down on Corpus Christi, at the price of injured men and nearly some deaths. He hoped to avoid, at all costs, a repeat of that near disaster, but he knew that for the morale of his men, a break from the routine of the river would do much good.

  As they cruised the smooth water, noisy yellow-billed terns—small and streamlined gull-like birds—flitted across the bow, dipping and swooping and soaring for fish or insects. They passed moderate-sized villages that Orellana described as “dwellings of fishermen from the interior of the country.” The Span
iards were sailing closer to shore, looking for a safe place to land, when they rounded a large oxbow bend and saw on the shores in the distance numerous villages, these large and impressive, shimmering white in the sunlight. As Friar Carvajal put it succinctly, but with some trepidation: “Here we came suddenly upon the excellent land and dominion of the Amazons.”

  As the brigantines drew closer to these gleaming villages, Orellana soon realized that the news of his coming had again preceded him, for already many agitated warriors appeared along the banks, some taking to canoes at their approach. They came onto the water, organized and en masse and in a warlike mood, clearly intent on challenging the interlopers. A few courageous leaders paddled directly up to the brigantines, within speaking distance. Orellana made verbal entreaties of peace, even proffering a few trinkets and baubles, but his attempts at civil discourse did nothing to alter the hostile demeanor of the warriors, who threw back chants of mockery, even scornful laughter. There would be no negotiating.

  Angered by the standoff and the warriors’ arrogance, Captain Orellana made the decision to strike the first blow: “He gave orders to shoot at them with the crossbows and harquebuses, so that they might reflect and become aware that we had wherewith to assail them.” Perhaps, as it had done in the past, the shock and surprise of loud, flaming, smoking firearms would cow them. If it did not work, if it was a fight the natives truly wanted, Orellana now resolved to bring it to them. As the smoke lifted from the Spanish boats, Orellana saw that some damage had been inflicted, and the canoes turned and sped for shore to report what they had seen and to rally their tribesmen.

  Orellana’s vessels were now less than a mile from the villages, and even from this distance the Spaniards could clearly see more droves of Indians massing along the shore at the waterline. Despite this, Orellana gave the order to row at full speed, for they were going to beach the brigantines and storm the place, guns, crossbows, and swords blazing.

  But the landing would be more difficult than Orellana anticipated. As he approached he saw numerous well-organized fighting squadrons of Indians, knots of men formed up around the houses and buildings, and the village center teeming with warriors too numerous to count, all animated and well armed. The spectacle was daunting: “At the same moment there came out many armed with bows and arrows from among the trees, along the shore of the river, talking very loud and as if vexed, going through all sorts of contortions with their bodies, indicating thereby that they looked upon [the Spaniards] with scorn.”

  Nevertheless the brigs closed in, rowing at breakneck speed, but as the Spaniards came within range, the Indians at intervals fired well-aimed and well-timed volleys of arrows into the sky, the darts whistling through the thick tropical air like the wing beats of scarlet macaws. Orellana and his men were in their armor, some still suffering in their metal breastplates, others having adopted the thickly padded cotton variety the Spaniards under Cortés had learned about from the Aztecs. Given the accuracy of the native bowmen, they would need all the protection they had. The arrows fell from the sky in a driving deluge, skewering all about the Spaniards, some thumping and spearing into the wood, some hitting their marks, the men.

  Quickly, Orellana countered with his own harquebus and crossbow fire, shooting and reloading and shooting again in rapid succession, dropping many Indians, only to see the fallen stepped over and pulled away and replaced by reinforcements. Those Indians not wielding bows stomped and chanted and danced alongside, encouraging their fellow tribesmen. Cloudbursts of the arrows continued to pour forth with such volume, rapidity, and ferocity that the Spaniards were forced to take cover beneath the thick manatee-skin shields they had captured from Machiparo’s territory, to protect their unarmored extremities, and the oarsmen stopped rowing to protect themselves, covering their exposed faces with their hands. As the boats slewed and foundered out of control, native arrows impaled five of the Spaniards, including Friar Carvajal, who caught an arrow between the ribs, surviving only because his densely padded garments slowed the missile. “Had it not been for the thickness of my clothes,” he reported, “that would have been the end of me.”

  Captain Orellana, recognizing their mortal peril, roared at the oarsmen to have courage, for he needed them now more than ever. He ordered them back on the oars and bellowed that they must row with every ounce of their strength and power to beach the brigantines. Sparked by their captain’s rallying cries, the oarsmen gripped and pulled in unison, and amid an ongoing patter of arrows and spears, they succeeded in gaining enough speed to ram the beachhead, allowing their companions to leap from the sides of the boats and land chest-deep in the muddy water.

  They landed right among fearsome warriors bent on defending their lands.

  The Spaniards hacked and parried and thrust with their swords, swinging two-handed in great arcs, mowing down Indians in their path as they struggled through the water to the shore. But the warriors swarmed in from all sides, and they were everywhere, before and behind, a sea of screaming, surging enemies. For more than an hour the Spaniards waged close and hazardous hand-to-hand battle, but no matter how many Indians they slew, more came to replace them, these urging their fellows on with rekindled energies and spirit, leaping wildly over the dead bodies of their friends and relatives as they charged the Spaniards. According to Friar Carvajal, who watched the gruesome battle with an arrow sticking from his side, these Indians had more than just their homes to defend; they were fighting as the subjects, and allies, of the Amazons.

  For what Carvajal and the others witnessed next was mystifying. Amid the throng of warriors there appeared ten or twelve extremely tall women warriors, with pale white skin and long hair twisted into braids and wound about their heads. “They are very robust,” reported Orellana’s priest, “and go about naked, but with their privy parts covered, with their bows and arrows in their hands, doing as much fighting as ten Indian men, and indeed there was one who shot an arrow a span deep into one of the brigantines, and others less deep, so that our brigantines looked like porcupines.”

  The Spaniards were battling hand to hand with Amazons, live and in the flesh. According to their annals, the women fought at the front line, in the role of leaders or captains spurring on the men, and what the Spaniards witnessed amazed them, for the Amazons “fought so courageously that the Indian men did not dare turn their backs, and anyone who did turn his back they killed with clubs right there before us, and this is the reason why the Indians kept up their defense for so long.”

  The battle raged at such a pitch that the Spaniards had no time to marvel or reflect on these wondrous women warriors—they were busy trying to stay alive. Finally, after an hour of continuous close, hard fighting, the Spaniards, bulling their way forward behind the thick manatee shields and slashing with their steel blades, managed to slay seven or eight of the warrior women, “for these we actually saw,” remarked Friar Carvajal. There they lay, slain and blood-soaked on the beach. The Indian men saw their fallen leaders, too, lost their nerve, and retreated. The momentum had turned in the Spaniards’ favor, and they gave chase, hacking at the retreating men and pursuing them back to their village. For a moment it appeared to be a rout, for they had done considerable damage once the Amazons had been felled.

  But Captain Orellana could see scores of warriors massing on the outskirts and periphery of the main village, coming in support from nearby settlements with belligerent war cries, and he knew that if he and his men remained here they would be overwhelmed. He barked orders to board the brigantines as soon as they could. But this was no easy feat, for some Indians had already regrouped and fought in support of the few Amazons remaining, and the Spaniards had to retreat with their backs to the brigs, some battling and giving cover while others clambered aboard. Even more pressing, Orellana saw at the same time a wide fleet of canoes racing across the water toward them, trumpets, drums, whistles, and battle chants echoing from shore to shore. As they fought their way back onto the boats, Orellana ordered a seized Indian tru
mpeter—whose only weapon appeared to be his wooden musical instrument—taken with them as captive, and then they pulled up anchor and set off, the captain urging his oarsmen to row for their lives. Fortunately, the current was strong enough to sweep them downstream without assistance, because despite Orellana’s exhortations, his companions were now so spent that they lacked the strength even to hold the oars steady. Instead of coursing at breakneck speed they rather drifted away from this extraordinary place, shifting and slowly turning like the monstrous floating islands they often saw moving lazily down this magical waterway.

  Famished, exhausted, and parched with thirst, the Spaniards drifted and tended to their wounds. Mercifully, the canoe fleets did not follow. After a short time they came to a medium-sized village that appeared to be either uninhabited or abandoned—or perhaps the warriors had all gone to aid the village of the Amazons. Whatever the case, Orellana’s men were so racked with fatigue and hunger that they begged him to make a landing there to seek needed food and rest. Carvajal remembered well Orellana’s initial response: “The Captain told them that he did not want to, and that although to them it looked as if there were no people in the village, it was there [in such circumstances] that we had to be more on our guard than where we could clearly see them.”

  But his men persisted. At length, he held counsel with his leading compatriots, and all—even Friar Carvajal, who was still suffering from his arrow wound—were inclined to attempt to go ashore, or at least to have a closer look. Once they had already slung past the village, Orellana commanded his men to take up oars and back pull, slowing and cutting an arc nearer the shore. The Victoria and the San Pedro sat idle for a moment, Orellana scanning the shoreline, when he saw movement among the trees. As usual, his intuition had been right—they should have hurried past.