That valiant and adventurous officer, of whom Oviedo says that “he knew much better how to killIndians than to govern them,” had gone up the Orinoco to the Rio Apure (Carao), and thence—where he was assured that “Guiana lay behind him and Meta before him,” and the reports of the wealth of the latter region were confirmed—“to a bay or arm of the sea, which empties into the same river Huyapari, and is called the bay of Meta.”[25]In twenty days he reached “the mouth of that bay,” which seems to be nothing else than the mouth of the Rio Meta. It was the rainy season, the streams were very high, and the boats had to be drawn with ropes. The water often came up to the breasts of the towing men, and it was only with extreme toil that they succeeded in advancing in forty days twenty leagues westward up the Meta. Oviedo, a contemporary whom we have often cited, says of this incident: “I do not believe that any of those who took part in this expedition would have taken so much trouble to get into Paradise.” By the end of the forty days the current had grown to be so strong that farther advance on the river, even by towing, became impossible. The whole country was inundated;[26]yet a hundred men left the boats and tried to press, through these plains converted into a series of lagoons, farther west to Meta. Most of the scattered inhabitants had fled, but they at last met an Indian woman who understood the dialects they had so far heard. She promised to conduct the Spaniards to a large village, but warned them that itsinhabitants would certainly eat up the Christians, seeing they were so few. When she had told enough falsehoods to the whites, Herrera had her hanged “in thanks for her work, and since he was groping around, as it were, in the dark, he thought he might find the way better by means of this kind of holy torch, or by this good act. No wonder that an equally speedy and still sadder death fell upon him and others.”[27]
The country assumed a more favorable aspect fifteen or twenty leagues from the point where the boats were left. The dry spots, which had hitherto only rarely shown themselves out of the boundless waters, became more evident, and upon them were vestiges of food plants, such as maize and yucca. The troops halted at a group of twelve huts, and sent thence some provisions to the sick and dying who had been left on the boats. The rest at this place was, however, of short duration, for the Indians soon attacked the camp by night. The assault was repulsed, but Alonzo de Herrera and three other Spaniards were mortally wounded, and died soon afterward in violent delirium from arrow poisoning. All the horses but one were killed in the fight, and the men were obliged, after returning to their boats, to use this one for food. The return voyage was speedily made, and they reached the Orinoco in fourteen days. Their leader was Alvaro de Ordaz. Willingly complying with the wishes of his men, he decided to leave this river as quickly as possible and return to Paria. Hunger and privation of every kind, hostile attacks and illness were diminishing the company nearly everyday, so that the remnant, which, as already mentioned, met D’Ortal’s men at the seashore, formed only a little band of haggard sufferers. Their accounts showed that D’Ortal had abandoned the Orinoco in order to approach Meta overland from the north, from the Gulf of Cariaco. The conflicts of which the post at Paria was the occasion were renewed this time about the coast-land between Cumaná and the Rio Neveri. Three parties were jealously keeping watch upon one another, and, wherever it was possible, barring one another from the interior. Sedeño had at first united with D’Ortal, and then separated from him. Opposed to both were the “men of Cubagua,” whose chief interest was to hold the coast for the preservation of their own existence, and for the prosecution of the traffic in men.
The expedition to the south, begun by D’Ortal in 1535, entirely miscarried. He tried to reach Meta, first by single reconnaissances, and then in a general campaign. But his men rose against him on the Orinoco, which he possibly struck below the Rio Apure.[28]A part of them wandered away, and we shall find them again later on in Federmann’s following. The rest went back to the coast, where they delivered their commander up to justice. He remained a prisoner sixteen months, although his only crime was misfortune; and when he was released he had lost all desire for further campaigns, and “determined to marry.” “And as his purpose was a good one,” Oviedo says, “God gave him a good wife, arespectable and virtuous widow of suitable age, who had means ... enough for him to live decently in our city of San Domingo on the island of Hispaniola, with more security and fame than could come to him in all these wars, or in hunting the fabulous riches of Meta, of which no one knows anything to this day, or can find the way there without its costing yet more human lives and leading to other troubles. To this point has our story come, this month of August, in the year one thousand five hundred and forty-five.”[29]This event took place in 1536.
The map which Oviedo made about 1545 of the regions successively traversed by Ordaz, Herrera, and D’Ortal defined the results of all these expeditions better than any description could do. The fancied golden empire had not been found north of the lower course of the Orinoco and east of the territory given to the Welsers. It was the fortune of the Germans in Venezuela to determine what was the foundation of the myth which had thus transplanted itself into the eastern region of northern South America.
While Ambrosius Dalfinger was still lost on his campaign towards the Magdalena, the Welsers sent to Coro to his support a division of soldiers, with twenty-four German miners, under the command of Nicolaus Federmann, a burger of Ulm. This reinforcement probably arrived at Coro in June, 1530. Immediately afterward came another reinforcement upon three ships, and with it an agent of the Welsers, Hans Seissenhoffer, who was made governor in Dalfinger’s absence. Federmann, who seems to have been a capable, crafty, and energetic man, became Seissenhoffer’s lieutenant. On accountof these changes the Spanish officers were withdrawn from Coro, an act which seems to have produced a great bitterness, especially against Federmann. When Dalfinger unexpectedly returned a short time after this, Seissenhoffer resigned his position, but Federmann remained—“as lieutenant of the governor and captain general, as which the whole army recognized me.”[30]
Dalfinger brought back only vague accounts and a relatively considerable quantity of gold. He had not found thedorado, and had again withdrawn from the northeastern border of Cundinamarca. He did not tarry long at Coro, but sailed to San Domingo for the recovery of his health, leaving Federmann in his place. Federmann says: “Finding myself now in the city of Coro with a number of men who were unoccupied, I determined to undertake a campaign into the interior toward the south or the Southern Sea, in the hope of finding something profitable.” He left the coast on the 12th of September, 1530, with “one hundred and ten Spaniards on foot, and sixteen on horseback, and a hundred Indians.” His geographical notices are so extremely vague that we can follow him only a little way on this remarkable campaign. His estimates of distances are entirely untrustworthy, and the names of the Indian tribes which he met are often hardly recognizable. He reachedthe Rio Tocuyo in northwestern Venezuela on the 1st of October, crossed it, and went south in search of a tribe of dwarfs called the Ayemanes. He met these little people,[31]who, he says, averaged five “palmos,” or three and a half feet in height, and were well shaped.[32]Thence he went south, from tribe to tribe, across the district of Barquicimeto, to the Cuybas, near Truxillo, and the Cuyones, against whom he could not make headway, and was obliged to turn toward the west. The farthest point he reached was Itabana, situated on a river which he calls the Coaheri, and which was perhaps the Apure. Here he turned back, and arrived again in Coro March 17, 1531. The material results of his journey were small. The country he passed through consisted by turns of rugged sierras and savannas. The tribes, warlike and partially cannibal, were nomadic or half-sedentary people, and his contact with them was usually of a hostile character. He obtained some gold (3000 pesos) from a tribe near Barquicimeto; and there, too, a report was current of a country rich in gold in the direction of the “Southern Sea.” The whole campaign was a mere reconnaissance, but was at the same time to Federmann himself a preparatory school for his subsequent great expedition. Federmann went to Spain from Coro, and on the death of Dalfinger, shortly afterward, obtained the position of governor of Venezuela. But the Spanish colonists there protested most earnestly against his appointment, and in order to satisfythem without offending the Welsers the Cardinal de Siguenza recalled him after he had started, and Georg von Speyer was sent as governor to Coro. Federmann followed him privately, and Von Speyer, appreciating his energy and knowledge of the country, made him his lieutenant, about the year 1535.
A dispute was then going on between the provinces of Venezuela and Santa Marta concerning the possession of the valley inhabited by the Pacabueyes Indians, south of Cabo de la Vela, between the lake of Maracaybo on the east and the Sierra Santa Marta on the west. In order to put an end to this contention, Georg von Speyer despatched Federmann thither, with instructions to occupy the country, hold it by force of arms against “the people of Santa Marta,” and then proceed farther west. After Federmann’s departure on this errand, Georg von Speyer himself began a campaign southward. He seems to have been led to this enterprise by some indefinite reports, and to have considered the expedition to the west, which he entrusted to his lieutenant, as a secondary affair. He had doubtless heard of Meta. Georg von Speyer, following a vanguard which he had sent forward, left Coro May 13, 1535, and reached the vicinity of Barquicimeto by the middle of July. He there found his vanguard in full retreat, it having been beaten by the Cuybas Indians, the same whom we met on Federmann’s first journey holding the country around Tucuyo. They were a warlike tribe, and, according to Herrera, cannibals, but also gave some attention to agriculture. Von Speyer, whose whole command now consisted of three hundred and sixty-one men, with eighty horses, easily overcame the Cuybas, buthis men soon felt the effects of the unhealthy climate of the country, with its rivers everywhere out of their banks, so much that he was obliged to give up the march to the south and proceed southwesterly, along the mountains on his right. Thus he followed Federmann’s former route. The health of his men became so critical when among the Cuyones Indians, eight days’ journey from the Cuybas, that he could go on with only one hundred foot soldiers and thirty horsemen. He left the rest of his men behind, as being in no condition to march, under Francisco de Velasco. The country east and south being flooded, he could do nothing else than follow the southwestern slope of the sierra. Occasional raids into the mountains procured maize and salt. In a short time he was joined by most of the men he had left behind, who had recovered; but soon afterward he had to leave one hundred and thirty sick under the command of Sancho de Murga. The place where this occurred was, according to Oviedo, about one hundred and seventy leagues from Coro.
With a hundred and fifty foot and forty-nine cavalry, Von Speyer reached and crossed the Rio Apure, the great northern tributary of the Orinoco, on the 2d of February, 1536. To that point we hear of no clue leading him, of no new accounts brought to him, which might have excited the hope of a liberal reward. Like Quesada, he pursued with iron tenacity a vague purpose, that of searching the south. His experiences were all discouraging. The country, though rich in its profusion of tropical vegetation, gave him no gold. The western sierra was dreary and rugged, the eastern plains were unhealthy wastesof flooded marshes and inundated woods and prairies. The vast region was only sparsely inhabited by wild Indian tribes. While the endurance, the careful direction, and wise leading which he displayed during this first period of his campaign stamp him as one of the greatest captains of the time in America, his mild and discreet behavior toward the aborigines likewise marks Georg von Speyer as a man of honorable disposition. Even the Spanish writers agree in this. Although, unhappily, too little appreciated, he is one of the noblest figures of the Spanish conquest.
Pursuing his unhopeful way toward the southwest, he crossed the upper part of the Casanare. The Zaquitios Indians inhabiting the slope of the sierra were friendly and well disposed, and told him that on the other side of the mountains, on an unwooded plateau, dwelt a tribe rich in gold, who had tame sheep. Two moons farther in that direction was a chieftain named Caziriguey, who ruled over many people, and had a great temple. While the direction in which this rich land was said to lie (west) undoubtedly pointed to Bogotá, the story of the “tame sheep” makes it certain that knowledge of Peru had penetrated to this place, which was in northeastern New Granada. The Zaquitios offered to show Georg von Speyer the pass through which he could reach that plateau, and he eagerly accepted the service. Oviedo says: “This information gratified, strengthened, and encouraged the governor and the Spaniards so much that all the hardships they had endured were forgotten, and the way lying before them appeared as safe and easy as the streets of Valladolid and Medina del Campo.”
But they searched for the pass in vain. Having arrived at the foot of the sierra, they were attacked by night in a village. A desperate battle took place, and although after two hours victory rested with the whites, they gave up further advance in that direction, and again followed the slope of the mountain toward the south. They had now entered the territory of a powerful tribe of Indians, which was then widely spread between the sources of the western tributaries of the Orinoco and the Cassiquiare, but is now confined to the shores of one branch of the Rio Negro. This tribe was that of the Uaupés.
No other branch of the South American aborigines affords so complete an example of that peculiar form of social organization which Mr. Lewis H. Morgan has shown to have existed among the Indians of the whole United States, as the Uaupés. They are, and were in the sixteenth century, village Indians of a low type. Their houses, built of wood, with gable roofs supported on upright posts, form large parallelograms, hundred and fifteen feet long, seventy-five feet wide, and thirty feet high. The entrance, eight feet high, on one of the gable sides, is curtained with a mat. Several families inhabit a communal building of this kind, and choose from among themselves the “tushaúa” or chief of the house. The Uaupés were divided into a number ofgentes(probably about thirty), and the names of twenty-one of them are well known.[33]>
The Uaupés plant and cultivate maize and manioc, and have in later times raised besides sugar-cane and tobacco. They are skilful fishermen, and their canoes, hollowed out of logs, are often forty feet long. Both sexes go entirely naked, but the men wear a crown of feathers on their heads. Their houses are also used as burial-places for the dead. They received Von Speyer in an unfriendly manner, painted in black, and opposing the Spaniards with spears, bows and arrows, and clubs, under the protection of large shields of tapir-skin; but they could not resist the firearms and cavalry of the white men.
Von Speyer was forced to make a slow retreat, more by the violent rains than by the resistance of the Uaupés. Raging torrents pouring down from the mountains in the west often prevented his movements for days at a time. He heard again there, however, the name of Meta, and learned that he was near the source of that river. He was assured that civilized tribes having much gold dwelt there, and he determined to seek those tribes first of all.
Having returned to the country of the Zaquitios, he sent a detachment farther back to bring up the rest of his troops, whom he had left in the rear, sick. But they were not found. Following the route of their commander, they had gone on to the Apure, andthen, giving him up, had returned to Coro. There were left to Von Speyer one hundred and forty men and forty-four horses. With these he went forward again to the Uaupés, and finally reached the sources of the Meta. The Uaupés who inhabited this region had some gold of twenty-two carats and some fine silver, but he was told that the rich tribe he was looking for dwelled beyond that country, on the other side of the western mountains. He tried in vain to push into the mountains; their inaccessible cliffs repelled every effort. He heard here of white men who some time before had tried to reach the Meta from the east with boats.[34]
Georg von Speyer was persuaded by his captain, Estevan Martin, to go farther south. Bloody conflicts took place with the Uaupés before he crossed the Rio Guaviare (or Boayare). On the other side of this river, Diego de Montes, “cosmographer and a man skilled in the use of the astrolabe,” determined the latitude—2° 40´. The western mountain range here took a southwesterly direction; Von Speyer was on the borders of Ecuador. The hope rose again that by proceeding along that chain he could find a pass. Estevan Martin encouraged his hopes, and the Uaupés pointed thither to the strange tribe of the Chogues as being at the gateway to the land of gold. But after crossing the Rio Caqueta (also called the Japura) in northern Ecuador, a detachment sent out under Estevan Martin to ascend that stream was attacked by the Chogues, and its leader was slain. Von Speyer at once avenged the death of his associate, and explored the course of the river to themountains, but was not able to cross them anywhere. His men were now exhausted, and yielding to their entreaties and remonstrances, he began a retreat on August 10, 1537, with one hundred and thirty men, of whom hardly fifty were fit for service. He had got to one degree north of the equator, and his road, if he had succeeded in crossing the mountains, would have led him to Pasto, between Quito and New Granada.
The advance had been continued through twenty-seven months; the retreat over the same road occupied more than nine months. The Guaviare detained him several days. He was surprised to learn when near the Rio Apure that his lieutenant Federmann had been there two months before, a fact he could not account for, because he had supposed Federmann to be engaged in the northwest. Without delaying longer he continued his march, and finally arrived at Coro, May 27, 1538, after an absence of three years.
While the material returns of this extraordinary campaign (5518 pesos in gold) were so small that it must be considered a total failure as to that object, the geographical results were of great value for later times. Besides visiting all the western tributaries of the Orinoco, the llanos of Casanare and Zaguan, the northwestern branches of the Amazon, and the eastern slope of the Cordillera of Pasto, Georg von Speyer’s expedition gives us our earliest data concerning the ethnography of these regions. The campaign was also of the greatest importance for the special object of our research. Ordaz, Herrera, and D’Ortal had heard the story of the riches of Meta onthe lower and middle Orinoco and in western Venezuela, and had sought for them. The result of their arduous campaigns was that the treasure was not to be found in those districts, that its seat was to be sought farther west, in the mountains in which the river rises, near a great lake. Georg von Speyer had now traversed the whole of western Venezuela and western New Granada, had reached the source of the Meta, and had thereby made it evident that the story of Meta referred to the treasures of New Granada, and was the echo, in another shape, of the legend of thedorado, which had been transported to the lower Orinoco. The gilded chieftain had vanished from the picture, and only the indefinite idea of a tribe in the highlands rich in gold was left; to this was joined the recollection of a lake, afterward transformed into the great “lagoon of thedorado,” which we shall find again in “Parime.” While Georg von Speyer was thus unwittingly determining the true character of the myth, his able but faithless lieutenant had found the real home of thedorado—the plateau of Cundinamarca.
Instead of proceeding westward, as his commission required, Nicolaus Federmann had hardly learned that Von Speyer had gone south when he followed in nearly the same direction, but more toward the southeast. Arriving in the vicinity of the Orinoco east of the Apure, he met the mutinous soldiers of the troop of Geronimo D’Ortal, and incorporated them with his own company. Then he turned toward the west, crossed the Meta, went on to the foot of the mountains, and after he had ascertained that Von Speyer was retreating, pressed boldly into the sierra.Where his chief had failed, he succeeded; he crossed over the steep mountain, and, as we have recorded in the first part of the “Dorado,” reached the plateau of Cundinamarca. But he had come too late. Quesada, as we know, had anticipated him. Federmann bitterly deplored the fact in his letter of August 1, 1539, from Jamaica to Francisco Davila. He charged the dead Dalfinger, as well as the then still living Georg von Speyer, with incapacity and want of courage, because “they might otherwise—the one eight years, the other three years before—have secured the wealth which now the people of Santa Marta had taken.” In this letter, which Oviedo has preserved in abstract, Federmann wrote: “The stories about Meta are not wholly false, for that river does rise in the mountains that border the plain; and the House of Meta which was sought for so long is the Temple of Sogamosa, the holy objects in which the people of Santa Marta have now carried away in sacks.” These words of an important eye-witness prove that it was the legend of thedoradowhich, transferred to Meta, distorted and diluted in many ways and spread throughout eastern South America, stimulated the bold enterprises we have sketched. If we dwell a little longer on some of these enterprises, it is, first, because they are so little known—in no case so well known as they ought to be; and second, there is associated with them, especially to the German public, a direct interest in the deeds of the Germans in South America. We shall, in the third part of the “Dorado,” again, and for the last time, meet Germans in pursuit of the gilded chieftain.
Thelicentiate Juan de Castellanos, in his “Elegias de Varones Illustres de Indias” (1589), sang the legend of thedoradoas it was current in Quito in 1536:
When with that folk came Annasco,Benalcazar learned from a strangerThen living in the city of Quito,But who called Bogotá his home,Of a land there rich in golden treasure,Rich in emeralds glistening in the rock.. . . . . . . . . .A chief was there, who, stripped of vesture,Covered with golden dust from crown to toe,Sailed with offerings to the gods upon a lake,Borne by the waves upon a fragile raft,The dark flood to brighten with golden light.
When with that folk came Annasco,Benalcazar learned from a strangerThen living in the city of Quito,But who called Bogotá his home,Of a land there rich in golden treasure,Rich in emeralds glistening in the rock.. . . . . . . . . .A chief was there, who, stripped of vesture,Covered with golden dust from crown to toe,Sailed with offerings to the gods upon a lake,Borne by the waves upon a fragile raft,The dark flood to brighten with golden light.
When with that folk came Annasco,Benalcazar learned from a strangerThen living in the city of Quito,But who called Bogotá his home,Of a land there rich in golden treasure,Rich in emeralds glistening in the rock.. . . . . . . . . .A chief was there, who, stripped of vesture,Covered with golden dust from crown to toe,Sailed with offerings to the gods upon a lake,Borne by the waves upon a fragile raft,The dark flood to brighten with golden light.
In these words of a poet who can make far more pretension to historical accuracy than his contemporaries Erxcilla and Martin de Barco[35]lies a significant confirmation of the thesis maintained in our chapter on Cundinamarca: that the fame of thedoradohad penetrated southward. Belalcazar’s contemporary Oviedo declares positively that much was said in those regions of a great chief called “Dorado.” Herrera, although not really contemporary (he was born in 1549), but one of the best authorities concerning Spanish America, says that an Indian in La Tacunga, from Cundinamarca, told Belalcazar much concerning the wealth of that country, and of a chief reigning there, “which was the cause of many undertaking the discovery of thedorado, who had till then appeared to be a phantom.”[36]concerning the nature and form of what was said of thisdorado, Castellanos gives us the version we have quoted, which is confirmed by Oviedo, who says:
“When I asked why this prince or chief or king was calleddorado, the Spaniards who had been in Quito and had now come to San Domingo (of whom there were more than ten here) answered, that, according to what had been heard from the Indians concerning that great lord or prince, he went about constantly covered with fine powdered gold, because he considered that kind of covering more beautiful and noble than any ornaments of beaten or pressed gold. The other princes and chiefs were accustomed to adorn themselves with the same, but their decoration seemed to him to be more common and meaner than that of the other, who put his on fresh every morning and washed it off in the evening.... The Indians further represent that this cacique, or king, is very rich and a great prince, and anoints himself every morning with a gum or fragrant liquid, on which the powdered gold is sprinkled and fixed, so that he resembles from sole to crown a brilliant piece of artfully shaped gold.”
While these notices afford sufficient and circumstantial evidence of the existence of the legend south of Bogotá, it is a remarkable fact that the story wasfound, in an identical form, without any connection with this, and without any local relation, on the northern coast of South America; as has been already remarked in treating of Cundinamarca.[37]In both cases the seat of thedoradowas located at Cundinamarca, although in one case this lay north, and in the other case directly south. We have further seen (in the second chapter) that accounts of a golden “Meta” were spread through all northeastern South America, to the lower Orinoco. Following the footsteps of those who pursued these reports, we found their origin again to be in New Granada, in the plateau of Cundinamarca; and that story of Meta was proved to be an echo of that of thedorado, faintly resounding in the farther distance. Also among the aborigines of that plateau itself existed a detailed tradition of the sacred ceremonial ablution of the chief of Guatavitá.[38]The lake still exists on the Bahlen Páramo, and at the beginning of this century the remains of ladders were still visible, which could not have been brought to the isolated mountain-top without a purpose. Many treasures of considerable value have been taken from this lake, among them a group of golden figures of antique Indian manufacture, which we have already mentioned, and concerning which the chronicler Don Rafael Zerda says: “Undoubtedly this piece represents the religious ceremony which Zamora has described, with the cacique of Guatavitá surrounded by Indian priests, on the raft, which was taken on the day of the ceremony to the middle of the lake. It may be, as some persons believe, that Siecha lagune, and not the present Puatavitá, was the place of thedoradoceremony and consequently the ancient Guatavitá. But everything seems to indicate that there was really once adoradoat Bogotá.”
We refer to this fact in order to clear up as fully as possible the question of the historical probability of thedorado, and to prepare the way for further discussion of the subject. The personaldoradohas vanished, but his elusive shade still floats before us. The valiant figures of the conquest, knights who were little inferior in bravery and adventurous spirit to those of the Round Table, went in pursuit of him. Their career, begun with violence, ended usually in crime, and the generation which called forth and bore the great figures of Cortés, Pizarro, Quesada, and Georg von Speyer expired in the iniquities of Carvajal and the revolting monster Lope de Aguirre. We specify the last in order to mark with his end the close of the second period of the search for thedorado, for in him all the passions of the conquest blazed up again into a lurid flame.
Our narrative must this time be a chronological one, beginning in the year 1535, when Sebastian de Belalcazar, freed through negotiations from the threatening presence of Alvarado, who had landed from Guatemala, was at liberty to give his mind to establishing and further extending Spanish rule in Quito. It was on an expedition which the Spaniardssent out from Quito to explore the region that Louis Daza met the Indians who told the story of thedorado. The immediate result of this was the slow advance of Belalcazar to the north in 1538, which took him, as we have seen, by Pasto, Popayan, Cali, etc., to the Rio Cauca, and over the cordillera to Neyva, and then to Cundinamarca—a march which is usually described as an act of insubordination on his part. It took place, at all events, without the knowledge of Belalcazar’s chief, Francisco Pizarro, who was no little exasperated by it.
On the other hand, it may not have been unpleasant to the cunning, although mad, conqueror of Peru to be relieved in this way of a subordinate who was his equal in craft and not far behind him in skill and energy. He therefore immediately sent his brother, Gonzalo Pizarro, to Quito to take the chief command there.[39]Gonzalo was, according to his instructions, more solicitous to prevent Belalcazar’s possible return than to pursue him; and when he learned, in 1539, that Pascual de Andagoya and Jorge Robledo had occupied southern New Granada (Cauca), while Belalcazar had gone on “to find the valley which was called the Valley of the Gilded One,”[40]he, considering himself secure against the return of his formidable companion in arms, determined upon an expedition on his own account.
A version of thedoradolegend lay at the bottom of his motives in this undertaking. Gonzalo Diaz de Pineda had, about 1539, gone to the village of Quixos, situated southeast of Quito, in the woods of the Upper Rio Napo (called by the chroniclers of the time Rio de la Canela), and had there found the cinnamon tree (Nectandra Cinnamomoidesof the orderLauraceæ).[41]He also heard there of the Indians—Cofanes, Jibaros, Huambayos, etc.—and further, “that there were wealthy regions, in which the people went round adorned with gold, and where there were no mountains or woods.” This was a reference to the plain, a confused echo of Meta, and gave a new stimulus to the anticipation that the spices of the Orient, then monopolized by the Portuguese, might be found in America.
Gonzalo Pizarro determined, without making any closer inquiry—a trait of the times as well as of his own personality—to follow up this story. He left Quito with 220 men on foot and on horse,[42]and proceeded toward Zumaco, beyond the Sierra, to press thence into the thick woods which encompass all the tributaries of the Amazon east of the Andes. It would lead us too far away to follow him on his march, which is known as the “Journey to the Cinnamon Country.” It was an impotent groping around in a tropical wilderness, where, surrounded by an overwhelming profusion of impenetrable vegetation, man had to give up every other purposethan that of maintaining himself, and might in the end consider that he had done well if he escaped with his life. All their horses perished, and also the Indians; and the condition of the miserable remnant of the troop when it appeared again, on the table-land of Quito, after two years’ absence, is thus described by the contemporary Augustin de Zarate, who came to Peru in 1543 as royal treasurer: “All, the General as well as the officers and men, were nearly naked, their clothes having been rotted by the constant rains and torn besides, so that their only covering consisted of the skins of animals worn in front and behind, and a few caps of the same material.... Their swords were without sheaths, and all eaten up with rust. Their feet were bare and wounded by thorns and roots, and they were so wan and wasted that one could no longer recognize them.... They threw themselves upon the food with so much eagerness that they had to be held back and to be gradually accustomed to the taking of it.”[43]Such was the ending of the campaign to the cinnamon country.
It would be unjust to hold Gonzalo Pizarro responsible for this failure. The numerous rivers in these forest wildernesses are the only highways practicable to man, and his plan was from the beginning to use for his further movements one of the tributaries of the Amazon—that is, one of the streams issuing from the eastern slopes of the Andes; of the existence of the Amazon itself, as well as of its magnitude, he had no knowledge. For this purpose he had ordered his lieutenant, Francisco de Orellana (a native ofTruxillo in Estremadura), to follow him on the Rio Napo with a bark[44]and provisions. But the stream carried his unwieldy boat much faster than the men could march, who were obliged to cut their way along the shore. Hence Orellana, with fifty-three men, including two priests, was soon far in advance of the main division. It was not possible to go back against the swift current. He halted, but the longer he waited the harder his situation became. The provisions were exhausted, the bonds of subordination became relaxed, and still no signs were perceived of Pizarro, who with the best will could not overcome the impediments interposed by nature. Thus all the precautions the able commander had taken were in the end nullified.[45]The impression prevailed from this time[46]that Orellana had treacherously deserted Pizarro—an impression which, in my opinion, is not well founded. The natural difficulties were of such a character that Orellana could not wait for Pizarro. His only hope for existence lay in his giving himself up to the stream for an indefinitely longer voyage. Thus Orellana went on down to the Amazon. The magnitude of the immense river increased the longer he trusted himself upon it. It is known that Orellana passed the mouth of the Amazon on his wretched vessels, and thence committing himself to the sea, arrived at Cubagua on the 11th ofSeptember, 1541. The accounts of the details of his remarkable voyage do not agree, and it is not germane to our purpose to discuss them. The chief result of it was that the proportions of the gigantic stream which divides South America into a northern and southern half were at last appreciated, and that exaggerated notions were spread over Europe concerning the rich countries that lay north of the Amazon. The fable of the Amazons survived from classical antiquity as one of the cycle of myths that were credited or held possible. Orellana’s chronicler, the Dominican Carvajal, transplanted it to the banks of the great South American river. This has been charged against him as an offence.
If we examine his account carefully, we shall find two distinct matters in it. One, relating what he witnessed himself, is simply a statement that below the mouth of the Rio Negro women took part in the fighting against the Spaniards; and that seems very plausible. The other matter comprises the account by a captive Indian of a tribe of Amazons rich in gold living north of the river. Tales of that kind were often imposed by the natives upon the Spaniards. The story bears immediately on the object of this work only to the extent that the Amazon River henceforward formed the southern boundary of the mythical region within which thedoradocould still find a place.[47]
Almost contemporaneously with this hazardous expedition, the starting-point of which lay south of Cundinamarca, and immediately after the departure of Gonzalo Ximenes de Quesada from Bogotá for Spain, Quesada’s brother, Hernan Perez, who had remained on the high plateau as commander, determined to attempt a campaign to the west. The occasion of this resolution[48]was a report that great wealth of gold, silver, and emeralds was to be found on the slopes of a mountain west of New Granada. He left New Granada on the 1st of September, 1541, with 270 men and 200 horses, and went as far as the region which Georg von Speyer had fruitlessly traversed before him—the country of the Uaupés and Chogues in northern Ecuador. Hunger and suffering were his companions, but gold, which he sought so eagerly, he did not find. He returned after sixteen months, with his object unaccomplished. He had found neither the “House of the Sun,” of which his far nobler brother had heard,[49]nor the Amazons, although, as we have already said in “Cundinamarca,” the latter myth was also current in New Granada. We only refer passingly to this unfortunate expedition, and return to Coro, on the northern coast of Venezuela, where, as we mentioned at the close of “Meta,” the Germans were preparing for new enterprises in the interior.
Georg von Speyer had not been discouraged by the failure of his march to Meta, but his bodily strength was broken. Yet he had hardly arrived inCoro again when he sent some of the little gold[50]included in the spoil to San Domingo, to buy horses and other supplies necessary for fitting out a new expedition.[51]But he died before he was able to begin this campaign, at Coro, probably near the end of October or the beginning of November, 1540. Oviedo says: “May God be merciful to him, for truly, though I had little to do with him, he appeared to me worthy of his office, and I believe if he had lived that God and their Majesties would have gained through him. For, besides being virtuous and prudent, he was in the prime of life, and had acquired an amount of experience that would have made him a desirable leader in other enterprises.”[52]
The death of Von Speyer left the Welser grant in Venezuela without a director. Such a contingency had been, however, provided for. The Bishop of San Domingo, Rodrigo de Bastidas, had authorityto act as administratorad interimat Coro. At the end of November, 1540, that prelate, who was a man of unusual ability, went thither with 150 men and 120 horses. He perceived at once that the colony, which had never been put upon an agricultural basis, could be restored to life only through a series of brilliant campaigns. The expeditions of Von Speyer and Federmann had defined the object of these further enterprises. He could not reckon upon Federmann, who would have been a valuable aid, because he was in Spain, whence, instead of returning, he was summoned to Germany by the house of Welser & Co. to answer for his equivocal conduct. He never came to America again. Federmann, however, had left a man in his place who was in no way inferior to him in vigor, recklessness, and energy, and had besides the extraordinary gift of making himself familiar with strange languages with great ease. This man, who had gained valuable experience in Federmann’s following, was Pedro de Limpias.
We name this Spanish soldier especially because he was destined finally to play the part of an evil genius in the enterprises of the Germans. Fray Pedro Simon says that it was he who brought the legend of thedoradoto Coro; but this is contradicted by the declaration of Gumilla. His knowledge and character nevertheless made him the soul of the contemplated campaign. An immediate occasion was offered for entering upon it. Georg von Speyer had sent on one of his officers, Lope de Montalvo, with a vanguard and the direction to wait for him “in the interior.” “And nothing had been heard from thiscaptain or from his men when the bishop arrived at Coro.”[53]To seek for Montalvo and to find the way to the wealth supposed to exist in the south formed, therefore, the object which it was determined to pursue.
As leader of the expedition, the bishop, with wise regard for the Welsers, appointed the knight Philip von Hutten of Würtemberg, who had participated in Von Speyer’s expedition as a lieutenant. He was still a young man, chivalrous, noble, and frank, the idol of his men, and in many respects the worthy successor of Georg von Speyer. Beside him, Pedro de Limpias acted as his adviser; Rodrigo de Ribera wasalcalde mayor; and Bartholomäus Welser was one of the lieutenants. Few expeditions were organized in South America with better guarantees in the capacity and knowledge of their leaders. The bishop assured himself of the concurrence of the royal revenue officers in Coro, as well as of that of Welser’s factor, Melchior Grubel, or Gruber, and thus combined the wishes and interests of both of the parties who were jealously watching one another.[54]
Thus enjoying every condition that could assure success, Philip von Hutten left Coro in August, 1541. He had a hundred horsemen. The route, which had been laid down in writing, was the same as that of Von Speyer, except that Von Hutten was to pressfarther on. From Burburata, whither he went by boat, he marched rapidly through Barquicimeto to the plain of the Apure, wintered there in “La Fragua,” and then advanced to the borders of Ecuador, in the vicinity of the mountain range of Timana, west of the cordillera of Suma Paz. Here, where he came upon the trail of the unfortunate expedition of Hernan Perez de Quesada, the Indians tried to induce him to go eastward by telling him of a powerful, wealthy tribe which inhabited a “city” in the plain called Macotoa. Von Hutten paid no attention to these deceptive stories, but followed the trail which Quesada had left; that is, he spent nearly a year of great privation, suffering, and toil, marching in a circle, and returned, at the beginning of 1543, to the same place, near the sources of the Caqueta or Japura, whence he had set out. The steadiness his men displayed during this terrible march speaks well for his capacity as well as for his character. Yet it is not impossible that Pedro de Limpias, then still true, contributed much, by his knowledge of the country and his iron tenacity, to the holding of the men together. He probably advised them to follow Quesada’s trail, if for no other reason than because he was suspicious of the representations of the natives, and did the contrary of what they advised him.
When, however, he found himself back at his original starting-place with a small company of sickly men, Von Hutten recollected what the Indians had said about the gold-rich lands in the east, and determined to go forward in that direction, accompanied by Limpias, with forty horsemen. He proceededto the Rio Guaviare, where the Uaupés received him in a friendly manner, assisted him in crossing the river, and furnished him with provisions. Their village contained about eight hundred inhabitants. They, however, advised Von Hutten not to go farther south, for his little company was much too weak to contend with the powerful tribe that dwelt in that region. They called this tribe the Omaguas.
Orellana had arrived at an Indian settlement, the chief of which he calls Aomaguas, on the 12th of May, 1541, at San Fernando de Machiparo at the junction of the Putumayo and the Amazon.[55]Fray Gaspar de Carvajal, in his report preserved by Oviedo,[56]speaks of “the tribe or settlement of Machiparo, of which we heard from Aparia ‘el grande,’ as also of another kingdom called Homaga, which was in conflict with that of Machiparo.” The analogy between Homaga and Omagua can hardly be disregarded; and as the account continues, “After the latter had withdrawn from the Machiparo to pursue us, we went on eight or ten leagues farther to an elevated village which we judged to be on the border of the settlements and of the kingdom of Homaga”—the supposition is therefore not improbable that the tribe of the Omaguas inhabited, in the middle of the sixteenth century, that extensive tract which is bounded on the north by the Guaviare, on the south by the Amazon, and may have had the Cassiquiare and Rio Negro (partly) on its eastern, the Rio Uaupés and the Japura on its western borders. Herrera’s remark in his introductory “Descripcion” (of the year 1611) isnot without significance: that “south of the province of Venezuela are the Omaguas and Omigos, with the provinces of thedorado.” At all events, the tribe seems to have inhabited a large tract, which included in the north extensive grassy plains, and in the south the thick woods of the shores of the Amazon.
The Omaguas belonged in all probability to the linguistic family of the Tupi-Guarani, and therefore to the principal division of the Brazilian aborigines. Many words in their language are undoubtedly of the Tupi idiom. Indeed, Velasco said in 1789: “This people is scattered over an extent of more than fifteen hundred leagues in the interior of America, under the names of Omaguas, Aguas, Tupis, and Guaranis.” According to the Jesuit Cristoval de Acuña,[57]who visited the Amazons in the Spanish service in 1639, their name means “Aguas,” or Flatheads. The Portuguese called them “Cambebas,” which has the same meaning in the Tupi language. Though unanimously pronounced, even as late as 1743, physically the handsomest Indians of the Amazon shores, their figures were deformed by the custom of pressing the heads of their infant children flat between two boards. The custom had been discontinued in 1777 when the Ouvidor Ribeira visited them at Olivenza at the mouth of the Rio Yavari, thirteen leagues below Tabatinga on the Amazon.
The Omaguas appear to have been at least half-sedentary Indians. They were probably divided into two groups, according to the character of thecountry they occupied: a northern group, or the Omaguas of the plains; and a southern group, or the Omaguas of the wooded river-banks. The population cannot be supposed to have been dense; certain eligible points, usually in convenient proximity to the water, were the seats of villages, between which often lay uninhabited wildernesses several days’ journey in breadth. No connection between the individual settlements and no kingdom of the Omaguas can be assumed.
The southern Omaguas are the best known to us. We have already referred to Orellana’s chronicler, Padre Carvajal, as indicating the boundary where, according to his view, the territory of the tribe began. At all events, the Omaguas lived in the same region of the Amazon shore from 1639 to 1852, and we can therefore accept the Dominican’s account as relating to that tribe. It appears further from his description that they lived in villages built of wood, usually on elevations on the shore. In one of these villages the Spaniards found two large idols made of palm-tree bark, which were set up in the great communal house (galpon ó casa principal). Much earthenware, very well worked, with dark colors and “glazed,” was likewise found there, besides a copper axe, “such as the Indians in Peru use.” These facts indicate some degree of skill in art, and therefore a settled abode and agriculture; and this is confirmed by the acquaintance of the people with natural products. The Portuguese first obtained caoutchouc from the Omaguas, and manioc meal, cassava, and maize were abundant in their houses. But fishing appears to have been their chief industrial occupation. They were very skilful in managing and steering the pirogue; and Velasco[58]calls them “the Phœnicians of the Amazon.” Their weapons appear to have been javelins and the peculiar slings calledestolica, and their warriors protected themselves with wooden shields. Concerning their organization, their religious rites and customs, the writers of the sixteenth century have left us no information. Later statements on the subject are scanty and indefinite, and are of a time when their rites had suffered notable changes through the memorable efforts of the Jesuits to introduce Christianity among them.
After the Spaniards of Quito had made several efforts, partly by force of arms, partly by spiritual means, to advance down the Amazon, Fray Gaspar Cuxia in the year 1645 founded “the mission to the Omaguas, who live on the islands of the Marañon and are excellent sailors. They have the fashion of lengthening their heads by compressing the skulls of their children in a kind of press of boards.”
This effort of the Society of Jesus was based upon a grand plan, unique in its way, for connecting the aborigines of South America with one another through the gradual introduction of a general language, in order to prepare a spiritual kingdom which, though in this world, would not be for the world of that age, but should form in future centuries a point of support, or perhaps a place of refuge. Without dwelling on the particular features of this great religio-political missionary enterprise, we simply mention a Bohemian, Father Samuel Fritz, who gained the special title of “The Apostle of the Omaguas.” He was born in Bohemia in 1650, and in 1687 founded seven mission stations among these Indians—San Joaquin, Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, San Pablo, San Cristoval, San Francisco Xavier, Traguatua, and a seventh station which included twenty-seven small villages. Father Fritz spent fifty years on the forest-shores of the Amazon, shirking no danger, and died, one of the grandest figures in American missionary history, at the age of eighty years, among the Jeberos, in 1730. The constant attacks of the Portuguese hindered the prosperity of these colonies to an extraordinary degree. The suppression of the Society of Jesus at last terminated their existence, and the settled Indians went speedily to destruction. La Condamine visited the Omaguas at San Joaquin in 1743, and praised their industry and artistic skill. When Lieutenant Herndon visited them in 1852 there were only two hundred and thirty-two individuals left of the once numerous tribe.
Our knowledge of the northern group of the Omaguas is of the most indefinite character. All we have is derived from the reports of Philip von Hutten’s expedition. We therefore take up again the thread of the story at the point where the German knight went on in the face of the warnings of the Uaupés, with only forty mounted men, in search of the Omaguas.
The little troop went southward in the best practicable order. They soon came to cultivated fields, in which natives were working. The Uaupés explainedthey were slaves, cultivating and taking care of the plantations of the Omaguas. They offered no resistance, and the white men hurried forward to surprise the “city” which was supposed to be in the vicinity. Looking down from the top of a hill, they observed a settlement of considerable extent, regularly laid out, with large dwellings, and a high structure amidst them. The view was a surprise. Convinced by it that this was the long-sought city and that the high building was the “palace” of the gilded chieftain, the Spaniards rode full speed down the hill; simultaneously the war drum sounded from out the village, and armed soldiers rushed into the streets and opposed the assailants with wild cries, letting fly a shower of missiles against them. Von Hutten at once saw that he could not accept battle on this ground. He therefore withdrew in good order to a level spot, hoping that he might find there compensation for his inferiority in numbers in the superior weight of his cavalry. Although pursued, he reached the position he sought without great difficulty. The sun had set, and the Omaguas remained quiet during the night. On the next morning they appeared again in great masses—fifteen thousand strong, Fray Pedro Simon asserts, and after him Gumilla; and their attack was so fierce as to occasion the most serious apprehensions. The contest was too unequal. One cavalry attack after another was repulsed, and Pedro de Limpias, who was in the lead everywhere, was wounded. At length the little troop struggled no longer for victory, but for life. With unexampled bravery a few leaders finally succeeded in forcing their way through, and with the remnant of theirmen reaching the settlements of the Uaupés, when the pursuit by the Omaguas ceased.
Although the unfortunate ending of the campaign against the Omaguas made further progress impracticable, the leaders of the expedition still believed they had obtained an important result. Their excited fancy discerned a great city in the large village of the Omaguas, and in the communal house that occupied the middle of the town the castle or palace of a powerful prince. Such illusions have often occurred in America, and the mere introduction of a European terminology into the domain of the ethnology of the new continent has occasioned a serious confusion which can only be gradually cleared up. In the eyes of Von Hutten and his companions that great settlement could only be the kingdom of the gilded chieftain, and they comforted themselves for their disaster in the fancy that they had at last found the seat of the long-soughtdorado.
Philip von Hutten had received a serious wound in the battle, which necessitated a longer stay with the Uaupés. The examination of the wound was performed in a singular manner. An aged war prisoner of the Uaupés was dressed in the armor of the knight and set upon his horse. He was then wounded by an Indian in the same way as Von Hutten had been. The flesh was then cut about the wound, the course of which was thus determined upon the poor victim. The Uaupés inferred that Von Hutten’s wound was of similar shape, and treated it upon that supposition.
In the meantime, and before Von Hutten could even begin the retreat, Pedro de Limpias, as the oldest captain, demanded the position of commander. It cannot be denied that in consideration of his experience and knowledge he was entitled to it. But Bartholomäus Welser, as a son of the family which had leased Venezuela, seems to have thought otherwise; and although we have no exact account of what took place, it is certain that a bitter quarrel arose between the old Spanish soldier and the young son of the German merchant. It is easily conceivable that Von Hutten would ultimately incline to the side of his German companion in arms. The little troop, nursing the germ of strife within itself, began, probably in 1544, the retreat, directly toward Coro. The usual difficulties attended their march, but the accustomed order does not seem to have prevailed. It soon became evident that the troop was divided. At last Pedro de Limpias abruptly took leave of it and hastened forward to the coast. His departure left Von Hutten without a captain. Bartholomäus Welser, it is true, commanded a small advance-guard, but he was little acquainted with the region. In the meantime, Limpias hurried on, occupied with thoughts of revenge: with the intention of going to Coro in order to bring about the downfall of the Germans and of their rule in Venezuela.
Philip von Hutten had now been absent four years from the settlement on the seacoast, and in that time events there had taken a turn very favorable to the plans of the revengeful Spaniard. After Von Hutten was sent to the south in the year 1541, and their main support was thereby taken from the Germans (even to the Factor), Bishop Bastidas returned to the Antilles. He left Diego de Boiça as his representative in Coro, who, however, was soon obliged to flee to Honduras on account of his misdemeanors. The chief court of justice (Audiencia) next appointed asalcalde mayorEnrique Remból, who, with a wasteful expenditure of the Welsers’ property, brought a hundred men from Cubagua, and thus contributed somewhat to the encouragement of the settlement. The office was held after his death by Bernardino Manso and Juan de Bonilla, who both had, however, to seek safety in flight from the consequences of their misdeeds. Finally, in order to prevent the ruin of the colony, the licentiate Frias was in 1545 appointed controlling inquisitorial judge, and the licentiate Juan de Carvajal governor, of the Province of Venezuela. The latter appointment was significant of the intention of the Spaniards to terminate the contract with the Welsers. Frias remained on the island of Margarita, while Carvajal proceeded to Coro.
The new governor was a man of indubitable ability and vigor, but unprincipled and violent. His first important transaction was an act of formal disobedience. In the course of three months he by persuasion or intimidation induced the more active part of the population to leave Coro, and taking their property, to follow him across the country to New Granada, where he promised them wealth which the Venezuelan coast could not afford them. His adherents first plundered those who remained behind, and then, having collected their domestic animals, set forth on their migration. The route lay southward, along the plains, avoiding the woods.Carvajal halted at Tocuyo, among the Cuybas Indians, in a pleasant and fertile region, favorable to agriculture and cattle-raising; and the fact that he began a settlement there speaks well for his judgment. He collected about two hundred well-armed men at Tocuyo, whose devotion to himself he assured by skilfully anticipating and gratifying their unrestrained passions and wants. The inquisitorial judge, Frias, proceeded to Coro to call the governor to account, but in the ruinous and plundered condition of the colony he had no means of making his authority felt. Carvajal therefore remained undisturbed in Tocuyo, stamped by his own acts as a rebel against the Spanish Crown, and the sworn enemy of the Welsers and their representatives.
Such was the man whom Pedro de Limpias met on his way as he was hastening to Coro, filled with hatred and thirsting for vengeance against the Germans. Limpias came into Tocuyo at night with six soldiers, called upon Juan de Villegas, one of Carvajal’s officers, and represented himself to be a fugitive from the Germans, who were on the way to Coro to offer themselves to the judge there. This was sufficient to alarm all Tocuyo, for such a union of Von Hutten’s tried soldiers with the inquisitorial judge’s weak force would be highly dangerous to Carvajal. It seemed necessary to stop their march, to remove their leader by stratagem or force, and win over his men to their side.
Pedro de Limpias, at all events, gave his counsel in favor of the execution of this purpose. First, the advance-guard under Bartholomäus Welser must be captured. It had already reached Barquicimeto, north ofTocuyo. Juan de Villegas met it there, and as Philip von Hutten had not come with it, two written messages were sent to him representing that Welser was waiting for him at Tocuyo. Thinking of nothing else than that his companion in arms was bringing him reënforcements, Von Hutten hurried on with his troop of sixty men to Barquicimeto. To his no little astonishment he was informed by Villegas that Governor Juan de Carvajal summoned him to appear at once before him, otherwise “he would come for him with fifty horse.” The threatening tone of this message was clear enough, but Von Hutten was the weaker party and he thought it best to temporize and to submit, at least in appearance, to the “governor.” Carvajal received him with a show of friendliness, prepared a feast for him, and tried to dissuade him from going to Coro. If he would stay with him he would show him a valley where much gold could be got, by the use of which reënforcements could be obtained from Cubagua and Margarita. The German knight did not directly refuse this invitation, but pleaded his duty to the emperor. If this required it he would stay where they were; but nothing could prevent him from defending himself before the imperial judge in Coro.
In the meantime the rest of the troops had arrived at Tocuyo. The two camps or parties had, as it were, coalesced. The moment seemed favorable for striking a decisive blow. On the second day of Von Hutten’s presence Carvajal proclaimed orders early in the morning that all of the soldiers of the former should report themselves to him. The German knight, greatly astonished at this assumption, hurriedto the house of the governor, whom he met at the door. He remonstrated with him and repeated his former declaration, that he was ready to account to “the king, the judge, and the Welsers” for what he had done. Carvajal had been waiting for the mention of the Welsers, and he used the occasion to call out aloud, “You are witnesses that he says this province belongs to the Welsers,” hoping by this means to excite the animosity of the Spaniards against the Germans and provoke an immediate conflict. The passage of words between the leaders brought the soldiers to the spot. Carvajal ordered a notary (a necessary accompaniment of all Spanish expeditions) to draw up a warrant against Von Hutten. He protested, and both drawing their swords, appealed to the king. They were separated, but the men of the two leaders ranged themselves under their respective banners; two hostile camps ready for battle confronted one another—and Carvajal’s plan to separate the leader from his soldiers had failed. In the conflict, Bartholomäus Welser rushed three times against Carvajal with upraised lance. His exhausted, famished horse failed him the third time, else, Herrera says, he would certainly have killed the “tyrant.” He fled to his house, and the approach of night put an end to further action.
On the next morning Philip von Hutten escaped from the trap that had been set for him in Tocuyo, and collected his men on the llanos of Quibore. Carvajal now tried negotiations. Priests and Welser’s factor, Melchior Grubel, served as emissaries. It was finally agreed that Carvajal and his officers should swear peace and permit the Germans to gounmolested to Coro. With this assurance Von Hutten started thither, accompanied by his men.
It was often the case at that time, and in those wild, thinly inhabited regions, that two war parties could march one a short distance behind the other without knowing anything of each other. As soon as Von Hutten had started Carvajal followed upon his track, being probably guided by Limpias. The Germans went on in fancied security, not suspecting they had anything to fear, and apparently even neglecting the usual measures of precaution. Carvajal fell upon their sleeping camp on the night of the seventh day, and his officers, who had with him a little while before sworn peace with Von Hutten, seized the German knight in his bedroom. After the leaders had been captured the men surrendered without resistance.
By this act of perfidy Ulrich von Hutten and Bartholomäus Welser were now helpless prisoners. An old Spanish proverb says, “When the dog is dead the madness is over.” Carvajal, therefore, did not wait long. He called a council of war at dawn to determine what the fate of the prisoners should be; they were promptly sentenced to death. Before the sun had set both the German knights were brought bound into the midst of the Spanish camp, and, together with two of their associates, were beheaded with a rustymachetethat had been used a short time before for cutting wood.
Shortly after this tragical event the licentiate Juan Perez de Tolosa came to Coro as a representative of the weak inquisitorial judge Frias. He was an earnest, conscientious, inflexible, strict man. Hecollected the few soldiers that could be found on the coast, and fearlessly went with them in 1546 to meet Carvajal. He succeeded, notwithstanding the superiority of Carvajal’s force, in arresting him without resistance, and in a few days Von Hutten’s murderer was publicly beheaded at Tocuyo. Of the further fortunes of Pedro de Limpias we are not able to speak.
Although by this act of justice a kind of atonement was offered to the Germans, their rule in Venezuela wholly ceased from this time. It had lasted eighteen years, and had, it must be admitted, contributed very little to the development of the colonies. Robertson justly remarks that under the direction of such persons as the Welsers it might have been expected that a settlement would be founded on a plan different from that of the Spaniards, and more favorable to the advancement of those useful industries which commercial proprietors recognize as the most direct sources of prosperity and wealth. The failure to fulfil these expectations is ascribed by Robertson to the mistakes and misconduct of individual German leaders in Venezuela. His designation of these men as adventurers, who in their impatience thought of nothing but of snatching wealth, fits Ambrosius Dalfinger very well, and Federmann to a certain extent, although the latter was too prudent fully to come under it. But we cannot affix such a reproach to the grand and richly endowed nature of Georg von Speyer or the noble and knightly personality of Philip von Hutten. The cause of the lamentable failure lies in the nature of the transaction itself, in the way in which the possession of Venezuela was conveyed to the Welsers. They received the province from the Spanish Crown, not so much in the form of a leasehold as of a mortgage security for money loaned, and as commercial men their first object was to recover the advances they had made as quickly as possible from the revenues of the district. Whatever they might gain after that would be “good business.” Their representatives acted in their interest as seen from this point of view.
The coast lands of Venezuela offered no hope of a profitable result; but golden reports came from the interior, and, clad in the alluring dress of thedoradolegend, led the Germans on to those useless and destructive expeditions of which we have just described the last one. In pursuit of the gilded chieftain Dalfinger conducted his fatal campaign of desolation; after him Federmann pressed fruitlessly into New Granada; in the chase for the echo of thedoradoin “Meta” Von Speyer sacrificed his fine troop and his own precious person; in the final effort to grasp the phantom were extinguished Von Hutten’s young life and the last spark of the manhood and vigor of the colony. When we give close attention to the history of the German settlement in Venezuela, the importance of the part played in it by thedoradoappears very clearly.
We have already shown that Von Hutten came back persuaded that he had really seen the home of the gilded chieftain in the country of the Omaguas. Henceforth, therefore, Omagua becomes nearly synonymous with thedorado, and the legend is localized near the Amazon, west of the Rio Negro and Cassiquiare. Oviedo had already placed it there at the time of the death of Philip von Hutten. Von Hutten’s unhappy fate, the complete extinction of the settlement at Coro, the threatened depopulation of the Venezuelan peninsula, precluded any further thought of an expedition into the interior southward. The Brazilian coast, hardly touched at a few points by the Portuguese, was too far from the unknown interior, which was concealed in immense forests. The western coasts, particularly those of New Granada and of Peru, where the Amazon begins its course, not only lay geographically nearest to the region in question, but were also the seat of the strongest and richest settlements of the Spaniards in South America, the only ones from which any campaigns could now be undertaken.
But although the population had rapidly increased under the stimulus of the rich metallic treasures found in the country, events occurred, especially in Peru, which made further expeditions impossible for many years. The civil disturbances in Peru provoked in the extreme south by the conflict between Pizarro and Almagro concerning the limits of their respective jurisdictions culminated in bloodshed at Las Salinas near Cuzco, on the 26th of April, 1538. Hardly three months afterward, Almagro was strangled by Pizarro’s command. An unbroken succession of betrayals and crimes, to which nearly all the conquistadors of importance fell victims (thereby expiating their own offences), marked the progress of the insurrection, till it reached such a height as to overshadow the whole west coast, like a dark cloud, from Chili to Popayan. And when, in consequence of the new laws and ordinances issued by the Spanish Crown for the protection of the aborigines, this cloud began to unload itself in a storm of open revolt against the mother-country; when Gonzalo Pizarro, urged by his lieutenant Carvajal,[59]refused obedience; when the viceroy Blasco Nuñez de Vela had fallen at Añaquito in Ecuador on the 18th of January, 1546, and the insurrectionists prevailed from Popayan to Atacamata—then the threatening storm loomed also over the southern horizon of New Granada, and the stunning reverberations of the thunders of revolt reached the heart of Cundinamarca. It was no time for daring expeditions into the mythical interior; every force had to be used for self-preservation. In this period a man came upon the stage of history in New Granada who was to be especially associated with the phantom of the gilded chieftain. He was Don Pedro de Ursua, a young knight from Pampluna, in the kingdom of Navarre. He was the nephew of the royal judge Miguel Diaz de Armendariz, and arrived with him in New Granada in the year 1545. Armendariz came to the “new kingdom” as inquisitorial judge, “Juez de Residencia,” and appointed his nephew his “lieutenant.”