by Buddy Levy
Francisco Orellana’s dream of El Dorado and its wonders lives on in the river itself—the Amazon—the siren that lured him over the Andes, through the Land of Cinnamon, and down her sinuous but deadly waterways. The Amazon—that dark and hypnotic enchantress that became his muse, his mistress, his maker, and that, for a brief breath in history, bore his name.
* Ana de Ayala subsequently became involved with another of the survivors, a man named Juan de Panalosa, though they did not marry. She traveled to Nombre de Díos and later Panama, perhaps intending to claim land in Guayaquil left to her by Orellana. She lived until at least 1572. See José Toribio Medina, The Discovery of the Amazon, 137–38.
* The Ursúa-Aguirre expedition is immortalized, in its weird way, in the dark and obsessive Werner Herzog film Aguirre: The Wrath of God.
Chronology
1519–21—Hernán Cortés seizes emperor Montezuma and conquers the Aztec Empire of Mexico.
1524—Francisco Pizarro, Diego de Almagro, and Hernando de Luque form the Company of the Levant, a partnership dedicated to conquests.
1531—Diego de Ordaz’s failed attempt up the Amazon, then expedition up the Orinoco River.
1532—Francisco Pizarro and the “Men of Cajamarca” capture Atahuala Inca, begin the conquest of Peru.
1541—In February, Gonzalo Pizarro and Francisco Orellana depart over the Andes on the expedition looking for La Canela and El Dorado.
1541—Francisco Pizarro is murdered on June 26, killed in his home by supporters of Diego de Almagro.
1542—In late June, Gonzalo Pizarro returns in rags to Quito after his failed expedition to La Canela.
1542—On August 26, Francisco Orellana successfully reaches the Atlantic Ocean, becoming the first European to navigate and descend the Amazon River.
1543—Francisco Orellana arrives back in Spain on May 11 and begins planning his return to the Amazon.
1545—Francisco Orellana departs from Spain on May 11, taking 4 ships, 300 men, and 200 horses on the expedition to New Andalusia.
1546—Francisco Orellana dies on the banks of the Amazon in early November.
1548—Battle of Jaquijahuana. Gonzalo Pizarro is executed.
1561—Pedro Ursúa and Lope de Aguirre’s disastrous descent of the Amazon.
1595—Sir Walter Raleigh’s expedition to Guiana and ascent of the Orinoco in search of El Dorado and Lake Manoa.
A Note on the Text and Sources
River of Darkness deals not only with Francisco Orellana’s historic descent of the Amazon and his return, but also in ancillary ways with the conquest of Peru, the historical search for El Dorado, and the history of the Amazon River Basin. The source material for River of Darkness is correspondingly rich, varied, and worthy of a few comments and observations, especially useful for those wishing to further explore specific areas of interest. For those desiring such inquiry, numerous works are listed below and in the extensive bibliography that follows, works that have been cited, quoted directly, or used as reference in River of Darkness.
The primary source material for Orellana’s journeys (his initial one of 1541–42, which began with Gonzalo Pizarro and continued after they separated, and his return in 1545–46) comes principally from firsthand participants who were on the voyages, and also from a handful of contemporary historians who recorded the events based on interviews with the participants either directly following, or some years after, the expeditions. Central among these is the most famous of them all, Carvajal’s Account, which is published in English in two main sources. The first written version of this account, as mentioned in the text in chapter 17, was given by court historian Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdes (often shortened to Oviedo), chronicler of the Indies and, at the time, 1542, governor of the fortress in Santo Domingo. Oviedo was respected and deeply trusted by the crown, and by 1523 he had already written his famous Natural History of the West Indies and much of his even larger General and Natural History of the Indies. Oviedo then incorporated a version of Carvajal’s account into an amended version of his General and Natural History of the Indies (Historia general y natural de las Indias).
Next to chronicle and comment on Carvajal’s account of Orellana’s journey were the historians Francisco López de Gómara, in his Historia General, and Antonio de Herrera, in his General History of the Vast Continent and Islands of America, Commonly Call’d the West Indies, From the First Discovery Thereof: With the Best Accounts the People Could Give of Their Antiquities. Gómara gained recognition and considerable skill as Hernán Cortés’s chaplain, secretary, and biographer, writing Cortés’s account of the conquest of Mexico.
Fortunately for modern readers (and especially readers of English), all of these accounts—as well as court documents, proceedings, petitions, and letters from participants and survivors of the various journeys (including letters from Francisco Orellana and Gonzalo Pizarro)—have been compiled and published in the outstanding, scrupulously researched, and very lengthily titled Discovery of the Amazon River According to the Account Hitherto Unpublished of Friar Gaspar de Carvajal with Other Documents Relating to Francisco de Orellana and His Companions, Put into Print at the Expense of the Duke of T’Serclaes de Tilly, with an Historical Introduction and Illustrations by José Toribio Medina (Seville, 1894). The book was later published by the American Geographical Society as Special Publication no. 17 under the title The Discovery of the Amazon, translated from the Spanish by Bertram T. Lee and edited by H. C. Heaton (New York, 1934). In River of Darkness, I have quoted and sourced extensively from a handy complete and unabridged paperback version of this book by Dover Publications: José Toribio Medina, The Discovery of the Amazon (New York, 1988).
José Toribio Medina was a prolific Chilean scholar, and his Discovery of the Amazon painstakingly and conveniently compiles under one cover nearly every existing source relevant to the Pizarro-Orellana voyage, Pizarro’s trek back to Quito, Orellana’s voyage down the Amazon, and finally Orellana’s return to New Andalusia. The Discovery of the Amazon includes biographies of the central figures (Pizarro, Orellana, and Carvajal), analytical chapters relative to Orellana’s supposed treason, and exhaustive appendices and notes that include everything written and published by Oviedo, Herrera, and Gómara and all testimonies from judicial inquiries, royal audiences, and the Council of the Indies. Medina’s Discovery of the Amazon, in short, proved indispensable in the writing of River of Darkness. The fact that all these sources are collected in one text also explains the heavy leaning on Medina in the notes. When the source is other than Medina himself, I indicate by citing the name of the author first, e.g., Oviedo, in Medina; Carvajal, in Medina.
Aspects of the Pizarro-Orellana expedition to La Canela, of Pizarro’s march back to Quito, and of Orellana’s continuation down the river were chronicled by three main sources, all firsthand observers and significant historians of the conquest of Peru. These are Pedro de Cieza de León, Garcilaso de la Vega (El Inca), and Agustín de Zárate (though Zárate did not arrive in Peru until 1544, quite late in the events).
Cieza de León, who arrived in the Indies as a boy (with his father) in 1535, has been called the “prince of Peruvian chroniclers,” and his writings reveal a fiery, intuitive, and curious intellect, as well as a degree of formal education, for he makes reference to Caesar’s Commentaries, Plutarch’s Lives, and Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps. He was known to be a diligent note taker, and the details, names of places and people, and specifics of personal anecdote and episodes in his writing are remarkable. Relied on in River of Darkness is the following important Cieza de León text: The Discovery and Conquest of Peru: Chronicles of the New World Encounter, edited and translated by Alexandra Parma Cook and Noble David Cook (Durham, North Carolina, and London, 1998). This excellent work includes an informative introduction and biographical sketch. Also instrumental were the exceptional texts Cieza de León wrote about the wars and civil wars in Peru as produced by the Hakluyt Society, translated, edited, and introduced by
Sir Clements Markham. These are The War of Quito (1913), Civil Wars in Peru: The War of Chupas (1917), and Civil Wars in Peru: The War of Las Salinas (1923).
Important, too, in illuminating the episodes of the discovery and conquest of Peru is the monumental work of romantic historian Garcilaso de la Vega, “El Inca.” He was the illegitimate son of a Spanish conquistador (of the same name) and an Inca princess. While he tends toward hyperbole and overdramatization, his sources are dutifully cited. Most useful is his Royal Commentaries of the Incas and General History of Peru, 2 vols., translated and with an introduction by Harold V. Livemore (Austin and London, 1966).
Last of the notable firsthand Peru historians is Agustín de Zárate, a treasury official in Peru during the conquest period who interviewed many of Francisco Pizarro’s companions and wrote with great drama about the wars. He also provided detailed and revealing personal portraits of conquistadors Francisco and Gonzalo Pizarro. A convenient and streamlined version of his work is The Discovery and Conquest of Peru, translated and with an introduction by J. M. Cohen (Baltimore, 1968).
Useful and entertaining—as he always is—for an overview of the entire conquest period is William H. Prescott, History of the Conquest of Peru (New York, 2005, originally published 1847). Especially interesting and contextually useful is Prescott’s thorough treatment of the Inca history, royal families, political and social organization, and general conditions on the eve of the Spanish conquest.
An excellent companion to Prescott, and a book that, in the best vein of new histories, provides education while also offering a page-turning read, is The Last Days of the Incas (New York, 2007), by Kim MacQuarrie. Focusing on the Incas’ rebellions and holdouts over the period of the conquest, MacQuarrie does a fine job of modernizing the tale and transporting the reader nearly five hundred years back in history while making the participants seem real and authentic and especially by fleshing out the important native Inca personalities.
Volumes have been written on the Amazon River Basin and environs, but one scholar-historian-writer deserves special mention, and that is John Hemming. Dr. Hemming, who served as director and secretary of the Royal Geographical Society in London between 1975 and 1996, has produced a tremendous list of books about the Amazon based on his personal research projects, explorations, and observations. His prize-winning Conquest of the Incas (San Diego, New York, and London, 1970) betters Prescott in style and scope (no mean feat), but it is on the subject of the Amazon River that Hemming really flourishes, and his contributions to the literature are unprecedented. Vital to River of Darkness have been the following: The Search for El Dorado (New York, 1978); Red Gold: The Conquest of the Brazilian Indians (New York, 1978); and Amazon Frontier: The Defeat of the Brazilian Indians (Cambridge, 1987). Most necessary, even essential, for anyone desiring a complete (and exquisitely readable) history of the Amazon River from the arrival of the explorers-conquerors to the present day is Hemming’s Tree of Rivers: The Story of the Amazon (New York, 2008). This stunning work is like a desk reference that reads like a good novel, and is highly recommended.
Finally, the decades of scholarly work and numerous books of two key academics deserve mention here, for their writings and contributions have greatly deepened our understanding of the peoples whom Orellana encountered along his journey. First among these is Robert Carneiro, curator and professor of anthropology at the Richard Gilder Graduate School at the American Museum of Natural History. With research and scholarly writing spanning six decades, Dr. Carneiro’s expertise and wisdom are far-reaching and diverse, touching as they do areas of history, ethnology, archaeology, and cultural anthropology (especially cultural evolution). His “Circumscription Theory,” put forth in “A Theory of the Origin of the State” (Science, August 21, 1970), aroused tremendous worldwide academic interest; his theory (insufficiently summarized here) explained how warfare played a vital role in state creation and how kingdoms and empires evolved as a result of geographically bounded or “circumscribed” areas. Carneiro performed ethnographic fieldwork in central Brazil in 1953–54 and again in 1975 and also did fieldwork in Peru during the early 1960s and in southern Venezuela in 1975, and he is still producing vital articles and books today. A few of his many important works include Evolutionism in Cultural Anthropology: A Critical History (Boulder, Colorado, 2003); The Muse of History and the Science of Culture (New York, 2000); and Anthropological Investigations in Amazonia: Selected Papers (Greeley, Colorado, 1985).
Last, but of great importance to River of Darkness, has been the work and guidance of archaeologist and anthropologist Anna Curtenius Roosevelt. Curator of archaeology at the Field Museum of Natural History from 1991 to 2002, Roosevelt researches human prehistory and land use sustainability in tropical forest Amazonia. The essential Roosevelt works are Amazonian Indians from Prehistory to the Present: Anthropological Perspectives, edited by Anna Roosevelt (Tucson and London, 1994); Moundbuilders of the Amazon: Geophysical Archaeology on Marajo Island, Brazil (San Diego and New York, 1991); and Parmana: Prehistoric Maize and Manioc Subsistence Along the Amazon and Orinoco (New York, 1980).
Notes
PROLOGUE
1 rumbling the earth with great quakes J. M. Cohen, Journeys Down the Amazon (London, 1975), 18–19.
2 So they built a boat Ibid., 24–25; Brendan Bernard, Pizarro, Orellana, and the Exploration of the Amazon (New York, 1991), 14–16; John Hemming, Tree of Rivers (New York, 2008), 23–24.
CHAPTER ONE: A CONFLUENCE OF CONQUISTADORS
1 The vast and rugged lands of Extremadura Arthur Helps, The Life of Pizarro (London, 1896), 1–3; Rafael Varón Gabai, Francisco Pizarro and His Brothers: The Illusion of Power in Sixteenth-Century Peru (Norman, Oklahoma, and London, 1997), 3–10; Hammond Innes, The Conquistadors (New York, 1969), 22–23; Kim MacQuarrie, The Last Days of the Incas (New York, 2007), 18–22.
2 “a gentleman of noble blood, and a person of honor” José Toribio Medina, ed., translated by Bertram T. Lee and edited by H. C. Heaton, The Discovery of the Amazon (New York, 1988), 264, 36, 36n. The exact date of Orellana’s birth remains unknown, but sources, including his own testimony made on the island of Margarita in 1542, generally agree that the year was 1511.
3 Orellana claims to have arrived in the Indies in 1527 Medina, Discovery, 37.
4 “he performed his first feats of arms as a conquistador” Ibid., 37.
5 that, after hacking their way across the brambly isthmus Innes, Conquistadors, 30 and 38.
6 “in the conquests of Lima and Trujillo” Medina, Discovery, 37–38.
7 Of this deeply loyal band of brothers For a thorough (and in some ways exhausting and confusing) overview of the complex Pizarro family lineage, see James Lockhart, The Men of Cajamarca: A Social and Biographical Study of the First Conquerors of Peru (Austin, 1972), 28–35; see also Gabai, Francisco Pizarro and His Brothers, 3–10; Hoffman Birney, Brothers of Doom: The Story of the Pizarros of Peru (New York, 1942), 3; MacQuarrie, Last Days of the Incas, 37.
8 skilled beyond his years The exact date of Gonzalo Pizarro’s birth is unknown. It is typically listed as c. 1502–6.
9 “the best lance in Peru” William H. Prescott, History of the Conquest of Peru (New York, 2005), 348–49 and 497; Michael Wood, Conquistadors (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2000), 191–92; Walker Chapman, The Golden Dream: Seekers of El Dorado (Indianapolis, Kansas City, and New York, 1967), 142; Lockhart, Men of Cajamarca, 175–78.
10 Tall and well proportioned Agustín de Zárate, translated and introduced by J. M. Cohen, The Discovery and Conquest of Peru (Baltimore, 1968), 242–43.
11 The sight proved curious and intriguing Prescott, Conquest of Peru 131–33; Pedro de Cieza de León, The Discovery and Conquest of Peru, edited and translated by Alexandra Parma Cook and Noble David Cook (Durham, North Carolina, and London, 1998), 74–77; MacQuarrie, Last Days, 27–28; Innes, Conquistadors, 210. See also, on balsa craft, the interesting article by Thor Heyerdahl, “The Balsa Raft in Aboriginal Navigation off
Peru and Ecuador,” in Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, vol. 11, no. 3 (Autumn 1955): 251–64.
12 “They were carrying many pieces of gold” Quoted in MacQuarrie, Last Days of the Incas, 28; Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 133; Cieza de León, Discovery, 76.
13 “This line signifies labor” Quoted in MacQuarrie, Last Days of the Incas, 29; Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 142. Different versions of this speech exist in various translations.
14 Francisco Pizarro had discovered the Incas Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 133 and 145–47; MacQuarrie, Last Days of the Incas, 29–30; Cieza de León, Discovery, 76, 103–13.
15 earned him the title of Marquis de Valle Hugh Thomas, Conquest: Montezuma, Cortés, and the Fall of Old Mexico (New York, 1993), 597–98; Buddy Levy, Conquistador: Hernán Cortés, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs (New York, 2008), 317–18.
16 “discovery and conquest in the province of Peru—or New Castille” Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 162–63.
17 “Some of the strangers, he was told, rode giant animals” Quoted in MacQuarrie, Last Days of the Incas, 53–54.
18 “such magnificent roads could be found nowhere in Christendom” Bernard, Exploration, 31. For a detailed description of the complex Inca road system, see Charles C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (New York, 2005), 85–86.
19 “made water [urinated] … out of sheer terror” Quoted in Mann, 1491, 80.
20 “large gold and silver disks like crowns on their heads” Quoted in John Hemming, The Conquest of the Incas (San Diego, New York, and London, 1970), 38.
