River of Darkness

by Buddy Levy

  The victory, such as it was, proved fateful for Pizarro, for it bolstered his spirits and determined his next course of action. He had originally planned to retreat to the south, to Chile, to escape Gasca’s growing royalist armies. But the victory convinced the egomaniacal Pizarro that he might still hold on to his power. Instead of retreating south, he struck northeast for Cuzco, where he decided that the fabled Holy City of the Incas would be his headquarters. He would make one last stand there.

  For his part, President Gasca, though disheartened by his side’s loss at the Battle of Huarina, remained steely, steadfast, and politically astute. He even gave Gonzalo Pizarro one last chance to submit to royal authority. He penned a letter near the end of the year, 1547, stating unequivocally the following ultimatum:

  Insignificant as I am, your Excellency would have little to fear from me if I had not on my side God and the King, justice and fidelity, and all the good vassals who serve His Majesty; but fighting against these things, Your Excellency has good reason to quail; and if you do not repent and return to the service of both Majesties, Divine and human, you will lose both body and soul as you will shortly see.

  More prophetic words have scarcely been written, for cling as he might to his tenuous power, Pizarro’s reign in Peru was near its end. The brash and newly emboldened Pizarro, now comfortably ensconced at his headquarters and feeling invincible since his one-sided victory at Huarina, flatly ignored this offer and chose to remain at Cuzco. He would hold out and fight to the very end. In his mind, he had good reason to be confident, even arrogant, for in his sixteen years in Peru, he had yet to lose a battle.

  Gonzalo felt that his position at Cuzco offered him strength, protected as he was by the strategically important Apurimac bridge, an impressive fiber cable spanning some 250 feet and dangling 150 feet above the ravine, blocking direct approach to the city, with white water raging below. Pizarro ordered the bridge destroyed to cut off Gasca’s only entrance, but he underestimated the military skills and tactics of the clergyman Gasca, who simply moved his troops upriver, built another bridge at a more passable place, and got his troops across.

  The die had been cast; the fates were now poised for a final battle between the Pizarrists and the loyalist force. On April 9, 1548, Pizarro rode out onto the high, barren, wind-scoured plain of Jaquijahuana, “an exquisite place … enclosed by mountains and traversed by causeways and ancient aqueducts,” and there assembled his 1,500 or so heavily armed troops. He formed his squadrons just as he had at the victory at Huarina, although now he possessed significantly more cavalry, allowing him to support and cover all flanks of his infantry. Then, with inspiring bravado and aplomb, Gonzalo Pizarro, big and bold, his black beard long and flowing, mounted his chestnut charger and, wearing a “coat of mail and a rich breast guard with a surtunic of crushed velvet and a golden casque on his head with a gold chin guard,” spurred his mount up and down the ranks in a display of breathtaking horsemanship. His captains and officers gathered around him for final plans and preparations.

  Almost instantly, the famed Battle of Jaquijahuana devolved into a farce, something of a general desertion. Gasca fired heavy cannon—which Pizarro had assured his men the president did not possess—directly into Pizarro’s ranks, instantly killing Gonzalo’s personal squire, charged with keeping him armed. Then one of Gonzalo’s most trusted officers, Diego Cepeda, wheeled his horse as if to charge into battle, but instead galloped off to the other side, joining Gasca’s similarly sized force. Many other officers and men—secretly bought off, it turned out, with promises of pardons—then defected, too, scrambling to the safe haven of loyalty. Pikemen and swordsmen alike laid down their weapons and sprinted across the lines, leaving Gonzalo embittered, dismayed, and devoid of a worthy fighting force.

  Daunted, despondent, but undeterred, the courageous Pizarro barked out orders for trumpets to sound the attack, but at that order nearly all of the harquebusiers marched in slow and orderly fashion across the plain to Gasca, their loaded guns cradled in their arms. Gonzalo could only lift the visor of his helmet from his eyes and stare in disbelief across the plain, then look around him to see that at last he stood with less than a dozen followers ready to die for him. He turned to friend and compatriot Juan de Acosta and asked, “What shall we do, my brother?” Acosta, committed to the end, replied, “Let us charge, and die like Romans.”

  But Gonzalo saw that all was lost. “Better to die like Christians,” he replied, and he wheeled his chestnut and rode toward Gasca with his handful of hidalgos at his side. Then he offered up his sword in surrender, and the battle, and Gonzalo’s rule, were over.

  The next day Gasca quickly tried Gonzalo Pizarro, took his confession, and sentenced him to be beheaded. The sentence included that all of Gonzalo’s goods and worldly possessions be confiscated, and his houses in Cuzco and elsewhere be destroyed and razed to the ground, which was then to be sown with salt. Pizarro could do nothing but stoically accept the terms.

  Walking calmly up to the executioner’s block, Gonzalo Pizarro is said to have given his fine clothes, “a military cloak of yellow velvet, almost entirely covered with gold embroidery, and a hat to match,” to the executioner. Then he set his notorious head on the block and listened to priests quietly chanting prayers for the dying. Gonzalo, who had refused a blindfold, looked up after a few moments of silence and asked that the headsman “do his duty with a steady hand.”

  At that, the executioner brought down the steel axe and in a single, brutal blow severed Gonzalo Pizarro’s head from his body. The head rolled into a basket poised to catch it. Shortly afterward, as part of the terms of his execution sentence, Gonzalo Pizarro’s head was displayed in a special frame made for just this purpose.

  [It was] hung on the royal pillory of the city of Los Reyes. It was covered with an iron mesh and above it was placed the notice: “This is the head of the traitor Gonzalo Pizarro who rebelled in this country against His Majesty, and fought against the royal standard in the Valley of Jaquijahuana.”

  Such was the inglorious end of forty-two-year-old Gonzalo Pizarro, the last of the Pizarro brothers remaining in Peru. In his sixteen-year career as a conquistador in Peru, he had seen the toppling of perhaps the greatest empire in the world, had achieved riches and power that most men hardly dared dream of, and had faced privation and struggle that few possess the courage and tenacity to survive, his fabled march up the Aguarico River referred to as “the worst march ever in the Indies.” But in the end, Gonzalo Pizarro, who had called his second-in-command Francisco Orellana “the worst traitor that ever lived,” died shamed as one himself, with large signs posted on stone pillars at all his destroyed houses bearing this inscription: “Here dwelled the traitor and rebel Gonzalo Pizarro.”

  * The branding of prisoners of war, signified as slaves by searing the symbol g (for guerra, Spanish for “war”) into the cheek, had been a common practice of Cortés during the conquest of Mexico, as well as in the Indies.

  * Potosi, the greatest source of silver in the Americas, became a thriving city of more than 200,000 people (at 13,352 feet above sea level, called the highest city in the world), and it still produces silver today, though under world criticism for the poor treatment of indigenous workers and dangerous work conditions.

  CHAPTER 19

  The Expedition to New Andalusia—Return to the Amazon

  UPON HIS ARRIVAL IN HIS NATIVE SPAIN IN MAY 1543, Francisco Orellana could now rightfully call himself “Discoverer of the Amazon,” and given what he had accomplished, he should well have been heralded as a national hero. But unlike Gonzalo Pizarro, who staggered into Quito after his disastrous march to a street-lined hero’s welcome, Orellana—the first European to successfully descend the world’s largest river—sailed into port in Spain and disembarked in relative anonymity.

  Despite this apparent snubbing, Orellana wasted no time with his ambitious plans. He had long before determined—perhaps even before the battle with the Amazons—that he must be the o
ne to return to this mythical region of unimaginably giant rivers, his memories fueled by images of albino Indians casting spells in great plumes of ashes blown from wooden pipes, of black-painted warriors two heads taller than the tallest Spaniard, of great highways leading from chiefdoms into the interior, where powerful overlords possessed untold riches waiting there to be plundered. Perhaps he had even convinced himself that somewhere out there among those endless rivers dwelled El Dorado himself, the vaunted Gilded Man.

  But there was much for Orellana to do before he could return to see all of this for himself once again. First, he needed to give a personal account of his expedition to the king and his council, both verbally and in writing, and in so doing also persuade the crown to grant him the title of El Gobernador that he believed he had earned. If his account was well received and his title granted, he would be in position to request permission—and financial and material support—to mount a return expedition to officially conquer and claim the Amazon regions for Spain and secure immortality for himself.

  And of course there was the important matter of Gonzalo Pizarro’s written accusations of Orellana’s treason to contend with. Fortunately for Orellana, he had less to worry about than he had feared. Gonzalo’s letter, written in September 1542 from Peru, had indeed arrived and been read by the court by the time Orellana landed safely back home and sought audience at Valladolid in May of the following year, but its contents and accusations of treason, mutiny, and desertion were not particularly convincing or persuasive to the Council of the Indies. As luck and empire building would have it, the council, the court, and the crown were much more interested in the possibility of acquiring new and rich realms than they were in the squabbles between two rival conquistadors, even if one happened to be a Pizarro. Further aiding Orellana, Gonzalo Pizarro was far away in Peru, his mind and labors at that time still occupied with avenging the death of his brother. He had not yet pressed, and, destined soon to embark on another fateful path, never would.

  This freed Orellana to proceed with his personal case, which he did immediately, submitting to the royal court an oral testimony of his entire journey from the time he split with Pizarro’s main expedition up to his arrival at the Pearl Island of Cubagua. Along with this, Orellana presented one version of Carvajal’s written account, as well as the two legal documents penned by the scrivener Isásaga and signed by all the men under Orellana, documents that fundamentally supported Orellana and Carvajal’s version of all that had taken place. His tale, his descriptions of the people he had encountered, their lifeways, the animals never before witnessed, the jaw-dropping descriptions of the river’s immensity, and of course his battle with the Amazons, all aroused tremendous excitement in Valladolid, in Seville, in his native Trujillo, indeed all across Spain as people told and retold Orellana’s story of discovery.

  But the initial official governmental response, delivered almost instantly by Charles’s secretary Juan de Sámano, practically devastated Orellana. Sámano ruled that because the great river’s mouth might well be within Portugal’s jurisdiction, as designated by the most current mariners’ charts, its further exploration might not be to Spain’s advantage. Still, Orellana was urged to submit formally his written account and appeal, in which he might clarify the location of the river and assuage any doubts about a return expedition. This he did immediately.

  Orellana’s written appeal and petition included a summary of his considerable services in Nicaragua and Peru prior to the expedition, “performing many services for the King in the various honorable commissions with which he had been interested, not only as captain, but as lieutenant-governor.” Orellana went on to outline and summarize the personal expenses he had laid out and lost in the expedition to La Canela and down the Amazon, focusing at length on the importance of his recent discoveries, the immense size and wealth of the country and its provinces, and their potential benefit to Spain. He closed with a formal request to return to and colonize the Amazon region:

  I beseech Your Majesty to see fit to give it to me as a territory to be held by me as governor in order that I may explore it and colonize it on behalf of Your Majesty, and in case Your Majesty grants me the favors … I offer myself for undertaking what follows, for the sake of serving God and Your Majesty.

  In his recounting of past services, Orellana conveniently and shrewdly left out his participation in the Battle of Las Salinas during the War of Chupas, during which time he had sided with the Pizarros in open civil strife against the rival Almagristas, for he well understood that open participation in Spanish civil strife was looked upon quite unfavorably by the crown.

  His story, documents, and petition presented, now all the one-eyed Orellana could do was await the decision of the council and court. Orellana’s petition had been convincing in its own right, but two other factors contributed to the court’s final decision, both with global political significance. The council was well aware of Orellana’s recent stopover and extended visit with the king of Portugal, and as well, they knew that “some three or four years earlier the king of Portugal … had built a fleet to go up the Amazon from the coast; that in the House of Trade in Seville it was rumored that as a consequence of Orellana’s voyage another fleet was being fitted out for the purpose of penetrating up the river.” If this competition for the region were not enough, the council had also heard rumors of a possible French fleet: “It also seems quite likely to us,” they added, “that, as far as may be judged from the indications that have been given out on the part of the King of France of a desire to look into matters connected with the Indies, if this thing should come to notice he might have covetous designs in connection with it.”

  For Orellana, bent on titles and fired by dreams of a return to the New World, the wait for a decision must have seemed interminable. Finally, after careful deliberation, the Council of the Indies concluded the following:

  According to the said account and judged from the location in which this river with the lands that he says he has discovered is, it might be a rich country and one by the occupation of which Your Majesty might be rendered a service and the Royal Crown of these realms enhanced.… And for this reason, it is the opinion of the greater part of the Council that it is advantageous … that the banks of this river be explored and settled and taken possession of by Your Majesty, and that this be done within the shortest time and with the greatest amount of diligence as possible … and that this expedition of exploration and colonization be carried out, and that it be entrusted to this man Orellana on account of his having discovered [the river].

  With a few strokes of a quill pen, his future appeared ensured. Orellana would return to his river. But that return would not be as soon as the anxious conquistador hoped, and there would be stipulations and provisions attached to his expedition.

  First of all, the opinions of the Council of the Indies suggesting actions by the crown in no way guaranteed them, and Orellana still needed Prince Philip, handling things in his father’s absence (for the king was away from court on other royal business), to accept these opinions and formally grant them. At long last, after a nine-month period in which Orellana visited family and attempted to get his personal business and finances in order, Prince Philip on February 14, 1544, signed into law the council’s recommendations and granted Orellana the title of Adelantado—or governor—of this outpost frontier and its Amazonian regions, authorizing him to conquer, settle, and colonize “New Andalusia.” It was a well-earned vindication, final attainment of the titles and power that he sought and dreamed of and toiled for. Now, Orellana must have lustily fantasized, he could become the third marquis of the New World, after only Cortés and Pizarro.

  Francisco Orellana needed to consider carefully the expedition’s numerous stipulations before he formally signed his response—called “articles of agreement.” Of the central expectations, first and foremost was that Orellana, on reaching the Amazon again, build and garrison two towns, one as near as possible to the river mouth and the
other farther upstream and inland, both of them at locations chosen by Orellana and approved by the royal officials and friars who would be going with him. The region granted him was rather vague—he could conquer and settle “the regions that stretched towards the south from the river that he had discovered, for a distance of two hundred leagues as the crow flies.”

  He was obliged to take on the expedition at least three hundred Spaniards, one hundred of whom would be cavalry and two hundred infantrymen, a total that the crown considered to be “a sufficiently large number and force for colonizing progressively and defending yourself and your men.” After building the two towns, he could proceed upriver, in boats either built there or brought along in parts in the ships’ holds, accompanied by eight friars (to be hand-selected by the council), whose mission would be to convert the native populations to Christianity.

  Heading upriver, Orellana could then attempt to settle what domains, chiefdoms, and lands he wished, provided that under the New Laws he enlist no Indian slaves for the purpose, other than the occasional interpreter. Last, he must take great care to respect the Treaty of Tordesillas and its line of demarcation, attempting to ensure that these newfound lands fell within Spanish jurisdiction, and he must refrain from altercations with any Spanish captains who happened to already be in the area, “so that there may be avoided those disturbances which have hitherto arisen out of such situations, both in Peru and in other parts.” This last was a direct reference to the unseemly and ongoing Pizarro-Almagro situation, but the crown had dealt with similar problems in Mexico with Cortés.