By the early sixteenth century, Spain had gradually transitioned from the age of feudalism to the age of capitalism. Under feudalism, all economic activities centered upon the manorial estate, owned by a lord who had been given his land grant, or benefice, by a king, to whom the lord owed his allegiance. Other than the lord and his family, the parish priest, and perhaps a few administrative officials, the entire population of a feudal estate consisted of serfs—those who worked with their hands and created the surplus upon which the noble and his family lived. It was a system as rigid as it was simple: the lord and his family did no manual labor, living at the peak of the social pyramid, while the peasant masses scratched out a meager living below.
Eventually, however, with the advent of gunpowder, the lords’ castle walls were no longer impregnable; thus, they could no longer offer protection to their retinue of serfs. Gradually, the serfs migrated to towns and cities where commerce, and the notion of working for a profit, had begun to flourish. Men now often joined forces, pooling their resources, setting up companies, and hiring workers who were paid a wage. All profits now flowed to the owners, or capitalists, and anyone with the requisite skills and the right connections could become an entrepreneur. The acquisition of wealth had now become a motive in itself. In sixteenth-century Spain, therefore, if an individual could somehow scrape together a substantial pile of wealth, he could then purchase the equivalent of a manorial estate, he could use some of that wealth in order to receive various titles and pedigrees that would increase his social status, and he could hire a stable of servants and perhaps even buy a few Moorish or African slaves. The individual could then retire to a life of luxury and could pass all his capital on to his heirs. A new world order had emerged.
Although the popular myth is that conquistadors were professional soldiers sent out and financed by the Spanish king in order to extend the emerging Spanish Empire, nothing could have been further from the truth. In reality, the Spaniards who bought passages on ships headed for the New World formed a representative sample of their compatriots back home. They were cobblers, tailors, notaries, carpenters, sailors, merchants, ironworkers, blacksmiths, masons, muleteers, barbers, pharmacists, horseshoers, and even professional musicians. Very few had ever been professional soldiers and, in fact, permanent professional armies had not yet even appeared in Europe.
The vast majority of Spaniards, therefore, traveled to the New World not in the employ of the king, but as private citizens hoping to acquire the wealth and status that had so eluded them at home. Men joined expeditions of conquest in the New World in the hopes of getting rich, which invariably meant that they hoped to find a large population of natives in order to strip them of their wealth and live off of their labor. Each band of conquistadors, usually led by an older conquistador who had the most experience, was composed of a disparate group of men trained in an assortment of professions. None received a payment or wage for participating, but all expected to share in the profits gained by conquest and pillage, according to what they themselves had invested in the expedition. If a potential conquistador showed up with only his own weapons and armor, then he would receive a certain amount of any future plunder. If that same man provided these things plus a horse, then he would receive a larger share, and so on. The more one invested, the larger the share that he was entitled to if the expedition enjoyed success.
The leaders of most conquest expeditions, beginning in the 1520s, actually formed a company that was normally drawn up as a contract and was duly notarized. The participants thus became partners in the company and were the equivalent of shareholders. Unlike companies dedicated to providing services or manufactured goods, however, it was understood from the outset that the conquest company’s economic plan was predicated upon murder, torture, and plunder. Conquistadors thus were not paid soldier-emissaries of a distant Spanish king, but were actually autonomous participants in a new kind of capitalist venture; in short, they were armed entrepreneurs.
By 1524, forty-six-year-old Francisco Pizarro and his two partners had formed a conquest company called the Company of the Levant and were busy interviewing potential conquistadors to share in their first planned venture.
The two captains of the venture, Pizarro and Almagro, had participated in expeditions together since at least 1519, and had forged a solid business relationship. Both were from Extremadura and hence were countrymen. Pizarro had always had the leading role in the partnership and also had ten more years’ experience in the Indies than did Almagro, who had been in the New World only since 1514. Almagro, as second-in-command, was nevertheless a talented organizer and thus was placed in charge of all matters regarding the provisioning of the upcoming expedition. Unlike his tall, lean compatriot, Almagro was short and squat. As one Spanish chronicler later put it, Almagro was
a man of short stature, with ugly features, but with great courage and endurance. He was generous, but was conceited and was given to boasting, letting his tongue run on sometimes without stop. He was sensible and, above all, was greatly afraid of offending the King…. Ignoring the opinions that others may have of him … I will only say that he was … born of such humble parentage that one could say that his lineage began and ended with himself.
Like Pizarro, Almagro was both illiterate and a bastard. His unmarried mother had spirited him away not long after birth, refusing to allow his father to have any contact with their son. Eventually she disappeared, leaving Almagro with an uncle who routinely beat him and who at one point even chained the young boy by his legs and kept him in a cage. When Almagro eventually escaped, he traveled to Madrid where he at long last found his mother living with another man. Instead of taking him in as he had hoped, however, his mother had stared at him through the partially opened door, then whispered that it was impossible for him to stay. His mother then disappeared for a moment, returning briefly to give her son a piece of bread before permanently closing the door. Almagro was on his own.
The details of the future conquistador’s life after this are sketchy but eventually Almagro made his way to Toledo where he stabbed someone, left that person badly wounded, and then fled south to Seville in order to escape the consequences. By 1514, having reached a dead end in his own country, thirty-nine-year-old Diego de Almagro embarked on a ship headed for the New World, twelve years after Pizarro’s departure. He was bound for Castilla de Oro, or Golden Spain, as Panama was then called. There he would meet his future partner and by 1524, ten years after his arrival, he and Pizarro would finally find themselves traveling in two ships, with eighty men and four horses, heading south toward the unexplored regions along the Southern Sea. The Company of the Levant was at last striking out on its own.
For a number of years before their expedition, rumors of a fabled land of gold lying somewhere to the south had been circulating in Panama City. In 1522, two years before Pizarro and Almagro set sail, a conquistador named Pascual de Andagoya had sailed two hundred miles southward along the coast of what would later be called Colombia (after Columbus) and had ascended the San Juan River. Andagoya was seeking a wealthy tribe he understood to be called “Viru” or “Biru.” Eventually, the name of this tribe would be transmogrified and would come to refer to a land much further south: Peru—home to the largest native empire the New World would ever know.
Andagoya, however, had discovered little, and had returned to Panama empty-handed. Pizarro and Almagro fared little better, succeeding only in retracing some of Andagoya’s previous voyage while engaging in skirmishes with natives along the way. At a place the marauding Spaniards no doubt fittingly called “burned village,” forty-nine-year-old Almagro had one of his eyes permanently blinded in a clash with local natives. Here, the inhabitants were hostile, the land barren, and Pizarro and his band of armed entrepreneurs eventually returned to Panama with no booty whatsoever to show for their efforts. The voyage had lasted for nearly a year.
It was during their second expedition south, however—a two-year voyage in two ships with 160 men t
hat lasted from 1526 to 1528—that Pizarro and Almagro sensed for the first time that they might be on to something at last. At one point, Almagro and one of the ships returned to Panama for reinforcements while Pizarro camped alongside the San Juan River. The expedition’s second ship, meanwhile, headed further south, to do some additional exploring. Soon, off what is now the coast of Ecuador, the crew was surprised to see a sail in the distance. As the Spaniards drew nearer they were astonished to find a giant, oceangoing balsawood raft, powered by finely woven cotton sails and manned by numerous native sailors. Eleven of the twenty-two natives on board immediately leapt into the sea; the Spaniards then captured the rest. After seizing the contents of the mysterious vessel, the delighted entrepreneurs later described their first haul of booty in a letter sent to King Charles V:
They were carrying many pieces of silver and gold as personal ornaments … [and also] crowns and diadems, belts, bracelets, leg armor and breastplates, tweezers, rattles and strings and clusters of beads and rubies, mirrors adorned with silver and cups and other drinking vessels. They were carrying many wool and cotton mantles … and other pieces of clothing all richly made and colored with scarlet, crimson, blue, yellow, and all other colors, and worked with different types of ornate embroidery … [including] … figures of birds and animals and fish and trees. And they had some tiny weights to weigh gold in the Roman manner … and there were bead bags [full of] some small stones of emeralds and chalcedonies and other jewels and pieces of crystal and resin. They were taking all of this to trade for fish shells from which they make counters, coral-colored and white, and they were carrying almost a full ship load of these.*
The seagoing raft was the Spaniards’ first real proof that somewhere nearby a native kingdom must surely exist. Soon, the Spanish ship, with its cargo of plundered goods stowed securely in the hold, rejoined Pizarro. Then, with Pizarro once again aboard, the expedition turned toward the south. Anchoring alongside a jungle-covered island they named Gallo, off what is now the southwestern tip of Colombia, Pizarro and the rest of the crew waited on the mosquito-ridden shore for Almagro and his badly needed supplies to arrive from Panama.
As the ship’s stores dwindled, however, the Spaniards began to sicken; then, one by one, they began to die. By the time three or four Spaniards were dying a week, the expeditionaries’ morale hit a low point. Not surprisingly, the men wanted to return to Panama. Pizarro, however, the co-CEO of an expedition that had just found evidence of a possibly wealthy kingdom, was undeterred. By now nearly fifty years old, it had taken Pizarro a quarter century of effort to command an expedition for which he stood to gain the lion’s share of the profits. As many later chroniclers noted, Pizarro normally did very little talking, but was strong on action. When sufficiently motivated, however, Pizarro could be counted upon to deliver a stirring speech. Thus, when the relief ships finally did arrive and his men made ready to abandon the expedition and return to Panama, Pizarro is said to have taken out his sword in frustration, to have etched a long line in the sand with its sharpened point and then, in his ragged clothes, to have dramatically confronted the emaciated men:
“Gentlemen! This line signifies labor, hunger, thirst, fatigue, wounds, sickness, and every other kind of danger that must be encountered in this conquest, until life is ended. Let those who have the courage to meet and overcome the dangers of this heroic achievement cross the line in token of their resolution and as a testimony that they will be my faithful companions. And let those who feel unworthy of such daring return to Panama; for I do not wish to … [use] force upon any man. I trust in God that, for his greater honor and glory, his eternal Majesty will help those who remain with me, though they be few, and that we shall not feel the want of those who forsake us.”
Only thirteen men are said to have crossed over the line, choosing to risk their lives and fortunes with Pizarro; they would later be known as “the men of Gallo.” The rest of the Spaniards, however, chose to return to Panama and to give up the quest for Biru.
With their one remaining ship, Pizarro and his small group of expeditionaries now continued down the coast, heading into territory that no European had ever before explored. The coast was tropical and flush with thick trees, mangrove swamps, occasional chattering monkeys, and impenetrable forests. Beneath them flowed the cold Humboldt Current, wending its way up the South American coast from the still undiscovered Antarctic. Slowly, as the Spaniards sailed south, the forests and mosquitoes began to retreat until, at the very northern tip of what is now Peru, they finally sailed into view of what Pizarro and the one-eyed Almagro had been searching for and dreaming about for years—a native city, complete with more than a thousand buildings, broad streets, and what looked to be ships in the harbor. The year was 1528. And for the small band of bedraggled Spaniards who had been traveling for more than a year and many of whom were as gaunt as skeletons, they were now about to have their first real contact with the Inca Empire.
As the Spaniards moored offshore, they soon saw a dozen balsa rafts set out from shore. Pizarro knew that because his men were few in number, he couldn’t possibly try to conquer such a large city. Instead, he would have to rely upon diplomacy in order to learn more about who and what they had stumbled upon. As the native rafts drew nearer, the Spaniards buckled on their armor and readied their swords for battle. Were the natives going to be hostile or friendly? Were there more cities? Did they have gold? Was this a simple city-state or part of a larger kingdom?
One can only imagine the Spaniards’ relief to discover that not only were the natives on the rafts friendly, but that they arrived with gifts of food that included a peculiar kind of “lamb” (llama meat), exotic fruits, strange fish, jugs of water, and other jugs containing a tangy liquid now called chicha and which the Spaniards soon learned was a type of beer. One of the natives who climbed aboard the ship was a man who obviously commanded respect; the native was rather well dressed in a patterned cotton tunic and had elongated earlobes with large wooden plugs in them, something none of the other natives wore.
Unbeknownst to the Spaniards, this was either an ethnic Inca noble or a local native chief, both of which formed part of the ruling elite. The Spaniards would later call these nobles orejones, or “big ears,” because of the large, symbolic discs worn in their earlobes that denoted their elite status. This particular orejón had come to discover what this strange ship was doing in their waters and who these strange, bearded men were (the inhabitants of the Inca Empire, like the vast majority of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, had little if any facial hair). Unable to communicate except with hand gestures, the orejón was nevertheless so inquisitive that he astonished the Spaniards, using gestures to ask “where they were from, what land they had come from, and what they were looking for.” The Inca noble then carefully examined the ship, studying its equipment and, according to what the Spaniards could decipher, apparently preparing some kind of report for his lord, a great king called Huayna Capac (Why-na KAH-pak), who the orejón indicated lived somewhere in the interior. The veteran Pizarro, who had been capturing, enslaving, killing, and torturing native Amerindians ever since his arrival in the New World, did his best to hide the true nature of their mission and to see how much he could learn about these people through feigned friendliness and diplomacy. In return for the natives’ gifts, Pizarro quickly presented the orejón with a male and female pig, four European hens and a rooster, and an iron axe, “which strangely pleased him, esteeming it more than if they had given him one hundred times more gold than it weighed.” As the orejón prepared to return to shore, Pizarro ordered two men to accompany him—Alonso de Molina and a black slave—the first European and African ever to step ashore in the area now known as Peru.* No sooner had Molina and the slave arrived than they became instant celebrities. The excited inhabitants of the city, which the Spaniards later learned was called Tumbez, turned out in droves to marvel at the strange ship and at their two exotic visitors. They
all came to see the sow and
the boar and the hens, delighting in hearing the rooster crow. But all that was nothing compared to the commotion created by the Black man. Because they saw that he was black, they looked at him over and over again, and made him wash to see if his blackness was color or some kind of applied confection. But he laughed, showing his white teeth, as some came to see him and then others, so many that they did not even give him time to eat … [he] walked here and there wherever they wanted to see him, as something so new and by them never seen before.
Meanwhile, the Spaniard, Alonso de Molina—apparently awestruck by coming face-to-face with an advanced native civilization—received similar treatment from the excited crowd. The two were, after all, the sixteenth-century equivalent of today’s astronauts—emissaries from a distant and alien civilization.
“They looked at how the Spaniard [Molina] had a beard and was white. They asked him many things, but he understood nothing. The children, the old, and the women all looked at them delightedly. Alonso de Molina saw many buildings and remarkable things in Tumbez … irrigation channels, many planted fields, and fruits and some sheep [llamas]. Many Indian women—very beautiful and well attired and dressed according to their customs—came to talk to him. They all gave him fruits and whatever they had in order for him to take to the ship. They used gestures to ask where [the Spaniards] were going and where they had come from…. Among those Indian women who were talking to him was a very beautiful lady, and she told him to stay with them and that they would give one of them to him as a wife, whichever one he wanted…. And when he [Alonso] arrived back at the ship, he was so overwhelmed by what he had seen that he did not say anything. He [finally] said that their houses were of stone, and that before he spoke to the lord [the local Inca governor], he passed through three gates where they had gatekeepers … and that they served him in cups of silver and gold.”
The Last Days of the Incas Page 4
