As the night passed, more and more Mapuche surrounded the fort, so many the six Spaniards realized that the only possibility of salvation was to try while it was still night to break through the enemy lines on horseback and head for the nearest fort, which was in Purén. That meant abandoning the Yanaconas, who did not have horses, to their fate. I have no idea how the Spaniards reached that audacious decision, because the forest was choked with Indians summoned from great distances by Lautaro for the great insurrection. It seems likely that he had some duplicitous reason for allowing them to escape. In any case, with the first light of dawn, the Indians who had been waiting all night burst into the abandoned fort and there in the courtyard found the bloody bodies of their companions. The unfortunate Yanaconas still in the fort were massacred.
The news of that first victorious attack reached Lautaro quickly, thanks to the communication system he himself had created. The young ñidoltoqui had formalized his union with Guacolda, after paying the traditional dowry. He had not participated in the warriors’ drunken celebration because he had no love for alcohol, and he was also too busy planning the second phase of his campaign. His objective was Pedro de Valdivia.
Juan Gómez, who had reached the south the week before, did not have time to think about the gold mines that had induced him to leave his family, for as soon as he’d arrived, he received the cry for help from the fort in Purén, where the six surviving Tucapel soldiers had joined the eleven already there. Like every encomendero, Gómez had the obligation to go to war when called, and he did not hesitate to do so. He galloped to Purén and took charge of the small detachment. After hearing the details of what had happened in Tucapel, he felt sure that this was not a skirmish, like so many in the past, but the beginnings of a massive uprising of the southern tribes. He set up the best defense he could, but there was not much he could do in Purén with the meager materials at hand.
A few days later, at dawn, they heard the familiar chivateo and the sentinels sighted a Mapuche squadron at the foot of the hill; strangely, they whooped and yelled but did not attack. Juan Gómez calculated that there were five hundred enemies for each of his men, but he had the advantage in weapons, horses, and the discipline for which Spanish soldiers were famed. He had a lot of experience in fighting Indians, and knew that the best way to combat them was in open country, where the horses could maneuver and the harquebusiers were at best advantage. He decided to leave the fort and confront the enemy with what he had available: seventeen mounted soldiers, four harquebusiers, and two hundred Yanaconas.
The doors of the fort were opened and the detachment went out, with Juan Gómez in the lead. At his signal, they rode down the hill at a full gallop, swinging their terrible swords, but this time they were surprised when the Indians did not scatter as usual but held their formation. And now they were not naked; they wore protective pads on their torsos and sealskin headgear as hard as Spanish armor. They were carrying seven-foot lances pointed at the horses’ breastbones, and their heavy wooden macanas were more manageable than the clubs they had traditionally carried. The Indians did not give way but took the charge of the horses head-on, impaling them on their lances. Several horses were killed but the soldiers quickly adjusted. Despite the fearful numbers of Mapuche killed by Spanish iron, they were undaunted.
An hour later, the Spaniards heard the unmistakable tam-tam of the kultrunes, and the warriors fell back, fading into the forest and leaving the field strewn with dead and wounded. The Spaniards’ relief lasted only minutes before another thousand warriors came to take the places of those who had withdrawn. The Spaniards had no choice but to keep fighting. The Mapuche repeated this same strategy every hour: the drums sounded, the tired warriors disappeared and fresh ones took the field, while the Spaniards had no respite at all. Juan Gómez realized that it was not possible to combat that skillful maneuver with his reduced number of soldiers. The Mapuche, divided into four squadrons, rotated; while one group fought, the other three awaited their turn. Gómez was forced to give the order to return to the fort; his men, nearly all wounded, could not continue without rest and water.
In the last hours of the day they treated the wounded as best they could, and ate. At dusk, Juan Gómez considered the possibility of a new attack, to interrupt the enemy’s rest during the night. Several of the wounded men said that they would rather die in battle; they knew that if the Indians got inside the fort, death would be inevitable, and without glory. By this time Gómez had only a dozen horsemen and half his foot soldiers, but that did not deter him. He lined up his men and addressed them with passion, he commended himself to God and to Santiago, the patron saint of Spain, and then ordered the attack.
The clash between iron and club lasted less than half an hour; the Mapuche seemed spiritless, they fought without the ferocity of the morning and, earlier than the Spaniards could have hoped, retired to the summons of their kultrunes. Gómez waited for the second wave to come, as it had that morning, but that did not happen, and though confused, he ordered the soldiers back to the fort. He had not lost a single man. During that night, and the day that followed, the Spaniards awaited the enemies’ attack, not sleeping, clad in armor and holding their weapons, and still there was no sign of the Mapuche. Finally, convinced that they would not return, they knelt in the courtyard and gave thanks to Santiago for such a bizarre victory. They had defeated the enemy without knowing how.
Juan Gómez determined that they could not stay in the fort without communications, on edge, and waiting for the sound of the chivateo that would signal the return of the Mapuche. The best alternative would be to take advantage of the night hours, during which Indians rarely moved because they feared evil spirits, and send a couple of hard-riding messengers to Pedro de Valdivia, informing him of their inexplicable triumph but also warning him that a total rebellion of the tribes was forthcoming, and if it was not immediately crushed they could lose all the territory south of the Bío-Bío. The messengers galloped as quickly as the undergrowth and darkness permitted, fearful at every turn that the Indians would rush them, but that did not happen. They were able to travel without problem, and reached their destination at dawn. They had felt all during the night that the Mapuche were watching, hidden among the ferns, but as their foe had not attacked, they attributed the feeling to their own nerves. They could not imagine that Lautaro wanted Valdivia to receive the message and for that reason had let them through, which is just what he did with the messengers who carried the return letter from the gobernador, in which he told Gómez to join him in the ruins of Tucapel fort on Christmas Day. The ñidoltoqui had planned carefully; he had learned the contents of the letter through his spies, and he smiled with satisfaction. Now he had Valdivia where he wanted him. He sent a squadron to lay siege to the Purén fort, to prevent Juan Gómez from leaving to carry out those instructions, while he put the finishing touches on the trap he had set for his taita in Tucapel.
Valdivia had spent the lazy winter months in Concepción, playing cards and watching it rain, well looked after by Juana Jiménez. He was fifty-three years old, but lameness and excess weight had aged him before his time. He was good at cards and always lucky in the game; he nearly always won. Envious companions claimed that he added what he had won from other players to the gold from the mines, and that the sum ended up in Juana’s mysterious trunks—which to this day have not been found. Spring had burst forth with buds and birds when the unconvincing news of an Indian uprising reached Valdivia, something he considered an exaggeration. More to fulfill a duty than out of conviction, Valdivia took fifty soldiers and reluctantly set out to join Juan Gómez in Tucapel, prepared to crush the brazen Mapuche, as he had done before.
He started the fifteen-league journey with his fifty horsemen and fifteen hundred Yanaconas at a slow pace, for he had to fit his progress to the speed of the bearers. Before long, however, he grew worried about how slowly they were moving; his soldier’s instinct warned him of danger, and he could feel eyes watching from the undergrowth.
For more than a year his own death had been much on his mind, and he had a presentiment that it would happen very soon; he did not, nevertheless, want to worry his men with his suspicion that they were being spied upon. As a precaution, he sent a party of five soldiers ahead to check out the route and he continued at the original pace, hoping the warm breeze and intense aroma of the pines would soothe his nerves. When a couple of hours had gone by and the five horsemen had not returned, his premonition grew sharper. Another league along the way, a soldier, with a cry of horror, pointed toward something hanging from a tree branch. It was an arm, still in the sleeve of a doublet. Valdivia ordered the party to proceed with weapons drawn. A short distance farther they saw a leg, still in its boot, it, too, hanging in a tree, and then every so often other trophies: legs, arms, heads . . . bloody fruit of the forest. “Revenge!” the outraged soldiers shouted, ready to gallop off in search of the assassins, but Valdivia forced them to rein in their anger. The worst thing they could do would be to break into smaller units; they had to stay together till they reached Tucapel.
The fort sat at the top of a barren hill; the Spaniards had cut down the trees to build the wall and the fort, but the base of the hill was all virginal forest. From the fort there was a view of a swift river. The cavalrymen rode up the hill and were the first to reach the smoking ruins, followed by the slow-moving lines of Yanaconas with the supplies. In accord with Lautaro’s instructions, the Mapuche had waited till the last man reached the top to announce their presence with the blood-chilling sound of the flutes made from human bones.
The gobernador, who had barely had time to dismount, peered between the charred tree trunks of the wall and saw Indian formations of compact squadrons protected by shields, with their lances upright, resting on the ground. The war toquís were at the front, protected by a Praetorian guard. Astonished, Valdivia marveled that the savages had somehow instinctively discovered the ancient Romans’ method of fighting, which was the same the Spanish tercios employed. Their general could only be that toquí they had heard so much about during the winter: Lautaro. Valdivia was shaken by a wave of anger as he realized that his body was bathed in sweat. “I personally will see that that damned savage dies an atrocious death!” he exclaimed.
Atrocious death. How many of those have there been in our kingdom? They will weigh forever on our consciences. I must, as an aside, say that Valdivia was never able to carry out his threat against Lautaro, who would die fighting at Guacolda’s side a few years later. Within a short time, this military genius sowed panic through the Spanish towns in the south, forcing their evacuation, and succeeded in leading his armies to the very outskirts of Santiago. By that time the Mapuche were decimated by hunger and plague, but Lautaro continued to fight with a small, very disciplined army that included women and children. He directed the war with masterly cunning and arrogant courage for only a few years, but they were enough to inspire the Mapuche insurrection that lasts to this day.
According to what Rodrigo de Quiroga told me, there are very few generals throughout history who can compare to this young leader who converted a pack of naked tribes into the most feared army in America. After his death, he was replaced by the toqui Caupolicán, as courageous as he but not as astute, who was taken prisoner and sentenced to die seated naked on a pike. It is told that when his wife Fresia saw him being dragged along in chains, she threw their infant son at his feet, crying that she would not nurse the offspring of a conquered man, but that story seems to be another legend of the war, like that of the Virgin who appeared in the heavens in the midst of a battle. Caupolicán bore without a sound the hideous torture of the sharpened pole slowly penetrating his entrails, as is told in the verses of young Zurita—or was it Zúñiga? God help me, names are escaping me; who knows how many errors there are in this account. Thankfully, I was not present when they tortured Caupolicán, just as I have not had to see the oft-applied punishment they call desgobernación, in which half the right foot of rebellious Indians is hacked off. Not even that discourages them: lamed, they keep on fighting. And when they cut off both hands of another cacique, Galvarino, he had weapons tied to his arms so he could return to the battle. After such horrors, we cannot expect mercy from the Mapuche. Cruelty engenders more cruelty, in an eternal cycle.
Valdivia, that decisive day, divided his men into units led by soldiers on horseback and followed by Yanaconas, and ordered them down the hill. He could not send the riders at a gallop, as was customary, because he knew that they would be speared on the lances of the Mapuche, who obviously had learned European tactics. First he would have to disarm the lancers. In the first encounter, Spaniards and Yanaconas had the advantage, and after a brief, intense, and merciless fight, the Mapuche fell back in the direction of the river. A shout of triumph celebrated their retreat, and Valdivia ordered his troops back to the fort. His soldiers were confident that the victory was theirs, but Valdivia was uneasy because the Mapuche had left in perfect order. From the top of the hill, he could see them drinking and washing their wounds in the river, a solace his men did not have. And then he heard the dread chivateo, and new troops emerged from the forest, fresh and disciplined, just as they had in Purén against Juan Gómez’s soldiers, information that had never reached Valdivia. For the first time, the captain general gave new thought to the situation; until that moment he had thought himself master of the land of the Araucans.
The battle continued the rest of the day. The Spaniards, wounded, thirsty, exhausted, in each turnover faced a rested and well-fed Mapuche horde, while those who had quit the field refreshed themselves at the river. The hours went by, Spaniards and Yanaconas fell, and still Juan Gómez’s hoped-for reinforcements had not arrived.
There is no one in Chile who does not know the events of that tragic Christmas in 1553, but there are several versions, and I am going to tell you the one I heard from Cecilia’s lips. While Valdivia and his reduced troops struggled to defend themselves in Tucapel, Juan Gómez had been captive in Purén, to which the Mapuche had laid siege until the third day, at which time there was no trace of them. The whole morning, and part of the afternoon, went by in anxious waiting, until finally Gómez could not stand the suspense any longer and rode out with a small party to reconnoiter the woods. Nothing. Not an Indian to be seen. He suspected then that the siege of the fort had been a maneuver to distract them, and to keep them from joining Pedro de Valdivia, as ordered. So while they were trapped in Purén, the governor was waiting for them in Tucapel, and if that fort had been attacked, as Gómez feared, their situation must be desperate. Without a moment’s hesitation, Juan Gómez ordered the fourteen healthy men under his command to select the best horses and follow him immediately to Tucapel.
They rode the entire night, and the morning of the next day found them at the fort. They could see the hill, smoke from a fire, and scattered bands of Mapuche, drunk from war and muday, waving human heads and limbs, the remains of the Spaniards and Yanaconas defeated the previous day. Horrified, the fourteen men realized that they were surrounded, and that they could meet the same fate as Valdivia’s men, but the intoxicated Indians were celebrating their victory and did not challenge them. The Spaniards spurred their sweating mounts up the hill, slashing their path through the few drunken Mapuche who stood in their way. The fort was reduced to a pile of smoking wood ash. They looked for Pedro de Valdivia among the corpses and quartered bodies, but did not find him. They sated their thirst, and that of their horses, from a large basin of dirty water, but they had no time for anything more because now they could see thousands and thousands of Mapuche swarming up the hillside. These were not the intoxicated warriors they had first seen; these had come from the woods, sober and orderly.
The Spaniards could not defend themselves in the ruined fort, in which they would be trapped, so they got back onto their long-suffering mounts and galloped down the hill in an attempt to burst through the enemy ranks. Within instants they were surrounded, and a cutthroat battle ensued that would last the rest o
f the day. It is impossible to imagine how men and horses that had galloped from Purén all through the night could fight hour after hour that fateful day, but I have seen Spaniards in battle, and I have fought alongside them. I know what we are capable of. Finally, Gómez’s soldiers had thrust their way to a point where they could flee, hotly pursued by Lautaro’s hordes. The horses were on their last legs, and the forest presented fallen trees and other obstacles that slowed the soldiers, but not the Indians, who darted among the trees and easily overtook the horsemen.
Those fourteen men, bravest of the brave, decided then to sacrifice themselves one by one and hold back the enemy while their companions attempted to get away. They did not discuss it; they did not draw lots; no one ordered them. The first one yelled his good-byes to the others, reined in his horse, and turned to face the pursuers. He struck sparks with his sword, determined to fight to his last breath; it would be a thousand times worse to be taken alive. Within minutes a hundred hands pulled him from his horse and attacked him with the very swords and knives that had been taken from Valdivia’s vanquished soldiers.
Ines of My Soul Page 33
