FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[15]Pronounced Veel-yah-gráhn.

[15]Pronounced Veel-yah-gráhn.

To pretend to tell the story of the Spanish pioneering of the Americas without special attention to the missionary pioneers, would be very poor justice and very poor history. In this, even more than in other qualities, the conquest was unique. The Spaniard not only found and conquered, but converted. His religious earnestness was not a whit behind his bravery. As has been true of all nations that have entered new lands,—and as we ourselves later entered this,—his first step had to be to subdue the savages who opposed him. But as soon as he had whipped these fierce grown-children, he began to treat them with a great and noble mercy,—a mercy none too common even now, and in that cruel time of the whole world almost unheard of. He never robbed the brown first Americans of their homes, nor drove them on and on before him; on the contrary, he protected and secured to them by special laws the undisturbed possession of their lands for all time. It is due to the generous and manly laws made by Spain three hundred years ago, that our most interesting and advanced Indians, the Pueblos, enjoy to-day fullsecurity in their lands; while nearly all others (who never came fully under Spanish dominion) have been time after time ousted from lands our government had solemnly given to them.

That was the beauty of an Indian policy which was ruled, not by politics, but by the unvarying principle of humanity. The Indian was first required to be obedient to his new government. He could not learn obedience in everything all at once; but he must at least refrain from butchering his new neighbors. As soon as he learned that lesson, he was insured protection in his rights of home and family and property. Then, as rapidly as such a vast work could be done by an army of missionaries who devoted their lives to the dangerous task, he was educated to citizenship and Christianity. It is almost impossible for us, in these quiet days, to comprehend what it was to convert a savage half-world. In our part of North America there have never been such hopeless tribes as the Spaniards met in Mexico and other southern lands. Never did any other people anywhere complete such a stupendous missionary work. To begin to understand the difficulties of that conversion, we must look into an appalling page of history.

Most Indians and savage peoples have religions as unlike ours as are their social organizations. There are few tribes that dream of one Supreme Being. Most of them worship many gods,—"gods" whose attributes are very like those of the worshipper; "gods" as ignorant and cruel and treacherous as he.It is a ghastly thing to study these religions, and to see what dark and revolting qualities ignorance can deify. The merciless gods of India, who are supposed to delight in the crushing of thousands under the wheels of Juggernaut, and in the sacrificing of babes to the Ganges, and in the burning alive of girl-widows, are fair examples of what the benighted can believe; and the horrors of India were fully paralleled in America. The religions of our North American Indians had many astounding and dreadful features; but they were mild and civilized compared with the hideous rites of Mexico and the southern lands. To understand something of what the Spanish missionaries had to combat throughout America, aside from the common danger, let us glance at the condition of affairs in Mexico at their coming.

The Nahuatl, or Aztecs, and similar Indian tribes of ancient Mexico, had the general pagan creed of all American Indians, with added horrors of their own. They were in constant blind dread of their innumerable savage gods,—for to them everything they could not see and understand, and nearly everything they could, was a divinity. But they could not conceive of any such divinity as one they could love; it was always something to be afraid of, and mortally afraid of. Their whole attitude of life was one of dodging the cruel blows of an unseen hand; of placating some fierce god who could not love, but might be bribed not to destroy. They could not conceive a real creation, nor thatanythingcould be without father and mother: stones and stars andwinds and gods had to be born the same as men. Their "heaven," if they could have understood such a word, was crowded with gods, each as individual and personal as we, with greater powers than we, but with much the same weaknesses and passions and sins. In fact, they had invented and arranged gods by their own savage standards, giving them the powers they themselves most desired, but unable to attribute virtues they could not understand. So, too, in judging what would please these gods, they went by what would please themselves. To have bloody vengeance on their enemies; to rob and slay, or be paid tribute for not robbing and slaying; to be richly dressed and well fed,—these, and other like things which seemed to them the highest personal ambitions, they thought must be likewise pleasing to "those above." So they spent most of their time and anxiety in buying off these strange gods, who were even more dreaded than savage neighbors.

Their ideas of a god were graphically expressed in the great stone idols of which Mexico was once full, some of which are still preserved in the museums. They are often of heroic size, and are carved from the hardest stone with great painstaking, but their faces and figures are indescribably dreadful. Such an idol as that of the grim Huitzilopochtli was as horrible a thing as human ingenuity ever invented, and the same grotesque hideousness runs through all the long list of Mexican idols.

These idols were attended with the most servile care, and dressed in the richest ornaments known toIndian wealth. Great strings of turquoise,—the most precious "gem" of the American aborigines,—and really precious mantles of the brilliant feathers of tropic birds, and gorgeous shells were hung lavishly upon those great stone nightmares. Thousands of men devoted their lives to the tending of the dumb deities, and humbled and tortured themselves unspeakably to please them.

But gifts and care were not enough. Treachery to his friends was still to be feared from such a god. He must still further be bought off; everything that to an Indian seemed valuable was proffered to the Indian's god, to keep him in good humor. And since human life was the most precious thing an Indian could understand, it became his most important and finally his most frequent offering. To the Indian it seemed no crime to take a life to please a god. He had no idea of retribution after death, and he came to look upon human sacrifice as a legitimate, moral, and even divine institution. In time, such sacrifices became of almost daily occurrence at each of the numberless temples. It was the most valued form of worship; so great was its importance that the officials or priests had to go through a more onerous training than does any minister of a Christian faith. They could reach their position only by pledging and keeping up unceasing and awful self-deprivation and self-mutilation.

Human lives were offered not only to one or two principal idols of each community, but each town had also many minor fetiches to which such sacrificeswere made on stated occasions. So fixed was the custom of sacrifice, and so proper was it deemed, that when Cortez came to Cempohuál the natives could think of no other way to welcome him with sufficient honor, and in perfect cordiality proposed to offer up human sacrifices to him. It is hardly necessary to add that Cortez sternly declined this pledge of hospitality.

These rites were mostly performed on the teocallis, or sacrificial mounds, of which there were one or more in every Indian town. These were huge artificial mounds of earth, built in the shape of truncated pyramids, and faced all over with stone. They were from fifty to two hundred feet high, and sometimes many hundreds of feet square at the base. Upon the flat top of the pyramid stood a small tower,—the dingy chapel which enclosed the idol. The grotesque face of the stone deity looked down upon a cylindrical stone which had a bowl-like cavity in the top,—the altar, or sacrificial stone. This was generally carved also, and sometimes with remarkable skill and detail. The famous so-called "Aztec Calendar Stone" in the National Museum of Mexico, which once gave rise to so many wild speculations, is merely one of these sacrificial altars, dating from before Columbus. It is a wonderful piece of Indian stone-carving.

The idol, the inner walls of the temple, the floor, the altar, were always wet with the most precious fluid on earth. In the bowl human hearts smouldered. Black-robed wizards, their faces paintedblack with white rings about eyes and mouth, their hair matted with blood, their faces raw from constant self-torture, forever flitted to and fro, keeping watch by night and day, ready always for the victims whom that dreadful superstition was always ready to bring. The supply of victims was drawn from prisoners taken in war, and from slaves paid as tribute by conquered tribes; and it took a vast supply. Sometimes as many as five hundred were sacrificed on one altar on one great day. They were stretched naked upon the sacrificial stone, and butchered in a manner too horrible to be described here. Their palpitating hearts were offered to the idol, and then thrown into the great stone bowl; while the bodies were kicked down the long stone stairway to the bottom of the great mound, where they were seized upon by the eager crowd. The Mexicans were not cannibals regularly and as a matter of taste; but they devoured these bodies as part of their grim religion.

It is too revolting to go more into detail concerning these rites. Enough has been said to give some idea of the moral barrier encountered by the Spanish missionaries when they came to such blood-thirsty savages with a gospel which teaches love and the universal brotherhood of man. Such a creed was as unintelligible to the Indian as white blackness would be to us; and the struggle to make him understand was one of the most enormous and apparently hopeless ever undertaken by human teachers. Before the missionaries could make thesesavages even listen to—much less understand—Christianity, they had the dangerous task of proving this paganism worthless. The Indian believed absolutely in the power of his gory stone-god. If he should neglect his idol, he felt sure the idol would punish and destroy him; and of course he would not believe anything that could be told him to the contrary. The missionary had not only to say, "Your idol is worthless; he cannot hurt anybody; he is only a stone, and if you kick him he cannot punish you," but he had to prove it. No Indian was going to be so foolhardy as to try the experiment, and the new teacher had to do it in person. Of course he could not even do that at first; for if he had begun his missionary work by offering any indignity to one of those ugly gods of porphyry, its "priests" would have slain him on the spot. But when the Indians saw at last that the missionary was not struck down by some supernatural power for speaking against their gods, there was one step gained. By degrees he could touch the idol, and they saw that he was still unharmed. At last he overturned and broke the cruel images; and the breathless and terrified worshippers began to distrust and despise the cowardly divinities they had played the slave to, but whom a stranger could insult and abuse with impunity. It was only by this rude logic, which the debased savages could understand, that the Spanish missionaries proved to the Indians that human sacrifice was a human mistake and not the will of "Those Above." It was a wonderful achievement,just the uprooting of this one, but worst, custom of the Indian religion,—a custom strengthened by centuries of constant practice. But the Spanish apostles were equal to the task; and the infinite faith and zeal and patience which finally abolished human sacrifice in Mexico, led gradually on, step by step, to the final conversion of a continent and a half of savages to Christianity.

To give even a skeleton of Spanish missionary work in the two Americas would fill several volumes. The most that can be done here is to take a sample leaf from that fascinating but formidable record; and for that I shall outline something of what was done in an area particularly interesting to us,—the single province of New Mexico. There were many fields which presented even greater obstacles, and cost more lives of uncomplaining martyrs and more generations of discouraging toil; but it is safe to take a modest example, as well as one which so much concerns our own national history.

New Mexico and Arizona—the real wonderland of the United States—were discovered in 1539, as you know, by that Spanish missionary whom every young American should remember with honor,—Fray Marcos, of Nizza. You have had glimpses, too, of the achievements of Fray Ramirez, Fray Padilla, and other missionaries in that forbidding land, and have gained some idea of the hardships which were common to all their brethren; for thewonderful journeys, the lonely self-sacrifice, the gentle zeal, and too often the cruel deaths of these men were not exceptions, but fair types of what the apostle to the Southwest must expect.

There have been missionaries elsewhere whose flocks were as long ungrateful and murderous, but few if any who were more out of the world. New Mexico has been for three hundred and fifty years, and is to-day, largely a wilderness, threaded with a few slender oases. To people of the Eastern States a desert seems very far off; but there are hundreds of thousands of square miles in our own Southwest to this day where the traveller is very likely to die of thirst, and where poor wretches every year do perish by that most awful of deaths. Even now there is no trouble in finding hardship and danger in New Mexico; and once it was one of the cruellest wildernesses conceivable. Scarce a decade has gone by since an end was put to the Indian wars and harassments, which had lasted continuously for more than three centuries. When Spanish colonist or Spanish missionary turned his back on Old Mexico to traverse the thousand-mile, roadless desert to New Mexico, he took his life in his hands; and every day in that savage province he was in equal danger. If he escaped death by thirst or starvation by the way, if the party was not wiped out by the merciless Apache, then he settled in the wilderness as far from any other home of white men as Chicago is from Boston. If a missionary, he was generally alone with a flock of hundreds of cruel savages;if a soldier or a farmer, he had from two hundred to fifteen hundred friends in an area as big as New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio combined, in the very midst of a hundred thousand swarthy foes whose war-whoop he was likely to hear at any moment, and never had long chance to forget. He came poor, and that niggard land never made him rich. Even in the beginning of this century, when some began to have large flocks of sheep, they were often left penniless by one night's raid of Apaches or Navajos.

Such was New Mexico when the missionaries came, and very nearly such it remained for more than three hundred years. If the most enlightened and hopeful mind in the Old World could have looked across to that arid land, it would never have dreamed that soon the desert was to be dotted with churches,—and not little log or mud chapels, but massive stone masonries whose ruins stand to-day, the noblest in our North America. But so it was; neither wilderness nor savage could balk that great zeal.

The first church in what is now the United States was founded in St. Augustine, Fla., by Fray Francisco de Pareja in 1560,—but there were many Spanish churches in America a half century earlier yet. The several priests whom Coronado brought to New Mexico in 1540 did brave missionary work, but were soon killed by the Indians. The first church in New Mexico and the second in the United States was founded in September,1598, by the ten missionaries who accompanied Juan de Oñate, the colonizer. It was a small chapel at San Gabriel de los Españoles (now Chamita). San Gabriel was deserted in 1605, when Oñate founded Santa Fé, though it is probable that the chapel was still occasionally used. In time, however, it fell into decay. As late as 1680 the ruins of this honorable old church were still visible; but now they are quite indistinguishable. One of the first things after establishing the new town of Santa Fé was of course to build a church,—and here, by about 1606, was reared the third church in the United States. It did not long meet the growing requirements of the colony; and in 1622 Fray Alonzo de Benavides, the historian, laid the foundations of the parish church of Santa Fé, which was finished in 1627. The church of San Miguel in the same old city was built after 1636. Its original walls are still standing, and form part of a church which is used to-day. It was partly destroyed in the Pueblo rebellion of 1680, and was restored in 1710. The new cathedral of Santa Fé is built over the remnants of the still more ancient parish church.

In 1617—three years before Plymouth Rock—there were alreadyelevenchurches in use in New Mexico. Santa Fé was the only Spanish town; but there were also churches at the dangerous Indian pueblos of Galisteo and Pecos, two at Jemez (nearly one hundred miles west of Santa Fé, and in an appalling wilderness), Taos (as far north),San Yldefonso, Santa Clara, Sandia, San Felipe, and Santo Domingo. It was a wonderful achievement for each lonely missionary—for they had neither civil nor military assistance in their parishes—so soon to have induced his barbarous flock to build a big stone church, and worship there the new white God. The churches in the two Jemez pueblos had to be abandoned about 1622 on account of incessant harassment by the Navajos, who from time immemorial had ravaged that section, but were occupied again in 1626. The Spaniards were confined by the necessities of the desert, so far as home-making went, to the valley of the Rio Grande, which runs about north and south through the middle of New Mexico. But their missionaries were under no such limitation. Where the colonists could not exist,theycould pray and teach; and very soon they began to penetrate the deserts which stretch far on either side from that narrow ribbon of colonizable land. At Zuñi, far west of the river and three hundred miles from Santa Fé, the missionaries had established themselves as early as 1629. Soon they had six churches in six of the "Seven Cities of Cibola" (the Zuñi towns), of which the one at Chyánahue is still beautifully preserved; and in the same period they had taken foothold two hundred miles deeper yet in the desert, and built three churches among the wondrous cliff-towns of Moqui.

Down the Rio Grande there was similar activity. At the ancient pueblo of San Antonio de Senecú, now nearly obliterated, a church was founded in1629 by Fray Antonio de Arteaga; and the same brave man, in the same year, founded another at the pueblo of Nuestra Señora del Socorro,—now the American town of Socorro. The church in the pueblo of Picuries, far in the northern mountains, was built before 1632, for in that year Fray Ascencion de Zárate was buried in it. The church at Isleta, about in the centre of New Mexico, was built before 1635. A few miles above Glorieta, one can see from the windows of a train on the Santa Fé route a large and impressive adobe ruin, whose fine walls dream away in that enchanted sunshine. It is the old church of the pueblo of Pecos; and those walls were reared two hundred and seventy-five years ago. The pueblo, once the largest in New Mexico, was deserted in 1840; and its great quadrangle of many-storied Indian houses is in utter ruin; but above their gray mounds still tower the walls of the old church which was built before there was a Saxon in New England. You see the "mud brick," as some contemptuously call the adobe, is not such a contemptible thing, even for braving the storms of centuries. There was a church at the pueblo of Nambé by 1642. In 1662 Fray Garcia de San Francisco founded a church at El Paso del Norte, on the present boundary-line between Mexico and the United States,—a dangerous frontier mission, hundreds of miles alike from the Spanish settlements in Old and New Mexico.

The missionaries also crossed the mountains east of the Rio Grande, and established missions amongthe Pueblos who dwelt in the edge of the great plains. Fray Geronimo de la Llana founded the noble church at Cuaray about 1642; and soon after came those at Abó, Tenabo, and Tabirá (better, though incorrectly, known now as The Gran Quivira). The churches at Cuaray, Abó, and Tabirá are the grandest ruins in the United States, and much finer than many ruins which Americans go abroad to see. The second and larger church at Tabirá was built between 1660 and 1670; and at about the same time and in the same region—though many thirsty miles away—the churches at Tajique[16]and Chililí. Acoma, as you know, had a permanent missionary by 1629; and he built a church. Besides all these, the pueblos of Zia, Santa Ana, Tesuque, Pojoaque, San Juan, San Marcos, San Lazaro, San Cristobal, Alameda, Santa Cruz, and Cochiti had each a church by 1680. That shows something of the thoroughness of Spanish missionary work. A century before our nation was born, the Spanish had built in one of our Territories half a hundred permanent churches, nearly all of stone, and nearly all for the express benefit of the Indians. That is a missionary record which has never been equalled elsewhere in the United States even to this day; and in all our country we had not built by that time so many churches for ourselves.

A glimpse at the life of the missionary to New Mexico in the days before there was an English-speaking preacher in the whole western hemisphereis strangely fascinating to all who love that lonely heroism which does not need applause or companionship to keep it alive. To be brave in battle or any similar excitement is a very easy thing. But to be a hero alone and unseen, amid not only danger but every hardship and discouragement, is quite another matter.

The missionary to New Mexico had of course to come first from Old Mexico,—or, before that, from Spain. Some of these quiet, gray-robed men had already seen such wanderings and such dangers as even the Stanleys of nowadays do not know. They had to furnish their own vestments and church furniture, and to pay for their own transportation from Mexico to New Mexico,—for very early a "line" of semi-annual armed expeditions across the bitter intervening wilderness was arranged. The fare was $266, which made serious havoc with the good man's salary of $150 a year (at which figure the salaries remained up to 1665, when they were raised to $330, payable every three years). It was not much like a call to a fashionable pulpit in these times. Out of this meagre pay—which was all the synod itself could afford to give him—he had to pay all the expenses of himself and his church.

Arriving, after a perilous trip, in perilous New Mexico,—and the journey and the Territory were still dangerous in the present generation,—the missionary proceeded first to Santa Fé. His superior there soon assigned him a parish; and turning his back on the one little colony of his countrymen,the fray trudged on foot fifty, one hundred, or three hundred miles, as the case might be, to his new and unknown post. Sometimes an escort of three or four Spanish soldiers accompanied him; but often he made that toilsome and perilous walk alone. His new parishioners received him sometimes with a storm of arrows, and sometimes in sullen silence. He could not speak to them, nor they to him; and the very first thing he had to do was to learn from such unwilling teachers their strange tongue,—a language much more difficult to acquire than Latin, Greek, French, or German. Entirely alone among them, he had to depend upon himself and upon the untender mercies of his flock for life and all its necessities. If they decided to kill him, there was no possibility of resistance. If they refused him food, he must starve. If he became sick or crippled, there were no nurses or doctors for him except these treacherous savages. I do not think there was ever in history a picture of more absolute loneliness and helplessness and hopelessness than the lives of these unheard-of martyrs; and as for mere danger, no man ever faced greater.

The provision made for the support of the missionaries was very simple. Besides the small salary paid him by the synod, the pastor must receive some help from his parish. This was a moral as well as a material necessity. That interest partly depends on personal giving, is a principle recognized in all churches. So at once the Spanish laws commanded from the Pueblos the same contribution to thechurch as Moses himself established. Each Indian family was required to give the tithe and the first fruits to the church, just as they had always given them to their pagan cacique. This was no burden to the Indians, and it supported the priest in a very humble way. Of course the Indians didnotgive a tithe; at first they gave just as little as they could. The "father's" food was their corn, beans, and squashes, with only a little meat rarely from their hunts,—for it was a long time before there were flocks of cattle or sheep to draw from. He also depended on his unreliable congregation for help in cultivating his little plot of ground, for wood to keep him from freezing in those high altitudes, and even for water,—since there were no waterworks nor even wells, and all water had to be brought considerable distances in jars. Dependent wholly upon such suspicious, jealous, treacherous helpers, the good man often suffered greatly from hunger and cold. There were no stores, of course, and if he could not get food from the Indians he must starve. Wood was in some cases twenty miles distant, as it is from Isleta to-day. His labors also were not small. He must not only convert these utter pagans to Christianity, but teach them to read and write, to farm by better methods, and, in general, to give up their barbarism for civilization.

How difficult it was to do this even the statesman of to-day can hardly measure; but what was the price in blood is simple to be understood. It was not the killing now and then of one of these noble men byhis ungrateful flock,—it was almost a habit. It was not the sin of one or two towns. The pueblos of Taos, Picuries, San Yldefonso, Nambé, Pojoaque, Tesuque, Pecos, Galisteo, San Marcos, Santo Domingo, Cochiti, San Felipe, Puaray, Jemez, Acoma, Halona, Hauicu, Ahuatui, Mishongenivi, and Oraibe—twenty different towns—at one time or another murdered their respective missionaries. Some towns repeated the crime several times. Up to the year 1700,fortyof these quiet heroes in gray had been slain by the Indians in New Mexico,—two by the Apaches, but all the rest by their own flocks. Of these, one was poisoned; the others died bloody and awful deaths. Even in the last century several missionaries were killed by secret poison,—an evil art in which the Indians were and are remarkably adept; and when the missionary had been killed, the Indians burned the church.

One very important feature must not be lost sight of. Not only did these Spanish teachers achieve a missionary work unparalleled elsewhere by others, but they made a wonderful mark on the world's knowledge. Among them were some of the most important historians America has had; and they were among the foremost scholars in every intellectual line, particularly in the study of languages. They were not merely chroniclers, but students of native antiquities, arts, and customs,—such historians, in fact, as are paralleled only by those great classic writers, Herodotus and Strabo. In the long and eminent list of Spanish missionary authorswere such men as Torquemada, Sahagun, Motolinia, Mendieta, and many others; and their huge volumes are among the greatest and most indispensable helps we have to a study of the real history of America.

FOOTNOTES:[16]Pronounced Tah-hee-ky.

[16]Pronounced Tah-hee-ky.

If the reader should ever go to the City of Mexico,—as I hope he may, for that ancient town, which was old and populous when Columbus was born, is alive with romantic interest,—he will have pointed out to him, on the Rivera de San Cosme, the historic spot still known as El Salto de Alvarado. It is now a broad, civilized street, with horse-cars running, with handsome buildings, with quaint, contented folk sauntering to and fro, and with little outwardly to recall the terrors of that cruellest night in the history of America,—theNoche Triste.

The leap of Alvarado is among the famous deeds in history, and the leaper was a striking figure in the pioneering of the New World. In the first great conquest he bore himself gallantly, and the story of his exploits then and thereafter would make a fascinating romance. A tall, handsome man, with yellow locks and ruddy face, young, impulsive, and generous, a brilliant soldier and charming comrade, he was a general favorite with Spaniard and Indian alike. Though for some reason not fully liked by Cortez, he was the conqueror's right-hand man, and throughout the conquest of Mexico had generallythe post of greatest danger. He was a college man, and wrote a large, bold hand,—none too common an accomplishment in those days, you will remember,—and signed a beautiful autograph. He was not a great leader of men like Cortez,—his valor sometimes ran away with his prudence; but as a field-officer he was as dashing and brilliant as could be found.

Captain Pedro de Alvarado was a native of Seville, and came to the New World in his young manhood, soon winning some recognition in Cuba. In 1518 he accompanied Grijalva in the voyage which discovered Mexico, and carried back to Cuba the few treasures they had collected. In the following year, when Cortez sailed to the conquest of the new and wonderful land, Alvarado accompanied him as his lieutenant. In all the startling feats of that romantic career he played a conspicuous part. In the crisis when it became necessary to seize the treacherous Moctezuma, Alvarado was active and prominent. He had much to do with Moctezuma during the latter's detention as a hostage; and his frankness made him a great favorite with the captive war-chief. He was left in command of the little garrison at Mexico when Cortez marched off on his audacious but successful expedition against Narvaez, and discharged that responsible duty well. Before Cortez got back, came the symptoms of an Indian uprising,—the famous war-dance. Alvarado was alone, and had to meet the crisis on his own responsibility. But he was equal to the emergency. Heunderstood the murderous meaning of this "ghost-dance," as every Indian-fighter does, and the way to meet it. In his unsuccessful attempt to capture the wizards who were stirring up the populace to massacre the strangers, Alvarado was severely wounded. But he bore his part in the desperate resistance to the Indian assaults, in which nearly every Spaniard was wounded. In the great fighting to hold their adobe stronghold, and the wild sorties to force back the flood of savages, the golden-haired lieutenant was always a prominent figure. When Cortez, who had now returned with his reinforcements, saw that Mexico was untenable and that their only salvation was in retreat from the lake city to the mainland, the post of honor fell to Alvarado. There were twelve hundred Spaniards and two thousand Tlaxcaltecan allies, and this force was divided into three commands. The vanguard was led by Juan Velasquez, the second division by Cortez, the third, upon which it was expected the brunt of pursuit would fall, by Alvarado.

All was quiet when the Spaniards crept from their refuge to try to escape along the dyke.

It was a rainy night, and intensely dark; and with their horses' hoofs and little cannon muffled, the Spaniards moved as quietly as possible along the narrow bank, which stretched like a tongue from the island city to the mainland.

CHURCH, PUEBLO OF ISLETA. See page 163.CHURCH, PUEBLO OF ISLETA.See page 163.

This dyke was cut by three broad sluices, and to cross them the soldiers carried a portable bridge. But despite their care the savages promptly detected the movement. Scarcely had they issued from their barracks and got upon the dyke, when the boom of the monster war-drum,tlapan huehuetl, from the summit of the pyramid of sacrifice, burst upon the still night,—the knell of their hopes. It is an awesome sound still, the deep bellowing of that great three-legged drum, which is used to-day, and can be heard more than fifteen miles; and to the Spaniards it was the voice of doom. Great bonfires shot up from the teocalli, and they could see the savages swarming to overwhelm them.

Hurrying as fast as their wounds and burdens would permit, the Spaniards reached the first sluice in safety. They threw their bridge over the gulf, and began crossing. Then the Indians came swarming in their canoes at either side of the dyke, and attacked with characteristic ferocity. The beset soldiers fought as they struggled on. But as the artillery was crossing the bridge it broke, and down went cannon, horses, and men forever. Then began the indescribable horrors of "The Sad Night." There was no retreat for the Spaniards, for they were assailed on every side. Those behind were pushing on, and there was no staying even for that gap of black water. Over the brink man and horse were crowded in the darkness, and still those behind came on, until at last the channel was choked with corpses, and the survivors floundered across the chaos of their dead. Velasquez, the leader of the vanguard, was slain, and Spaniard and Tlaxcaltecan were falling like wheat before the sickle. The second sluice, as well aseach side of the dyke, was blocked with canoes full of savage warriors; and there was another sanguinary mêlée until this gap too was filled with slain, and over the bridge of human corpses the fugitives gained the other bank. Alvarado, fighting with the rearmost to hold in check the savages who followed along the dyke, was the last to cross; and before he could follow his comrades the current suddenly broke through the ghastly obstruction, and swept the channel clear. His faithful horse had been killed under him; he himself was sorely wounded; his friends were gone, and the merciless foe hemmed him in. We cannot but be reminded of the Roman hero,—

"Of him who held the bridge so wellIn the brave days of old."

Alvarado's case was fully as desperate as that of Horatius; and he rose as manlike to the occasion. With one swift glance about, he saw that to plunge into the flood would be sure death. So, with a supreme effort of his muscular frame, he thrust down his lance and sprang! It was a distance of eighteen feet. Considerably longer jumps have been recorded. Our own Washington once made a running jump of over twenty feet in his athletic youth. But considering the surroundings, the darkness, his wounds, and his load of armor, the wonderful leap of Alvarado has perhaps never been surpassed:—

"For fast his blood was flowing,And he was sore in pain;And heavy was his armor,And spent with changing blows."

But the leap was made, and the heroic leaper staggered up the farther bank and rejoined his countrymen.

From here the remnant fought, struggling along the causeway, to the mainland. The Indians at last drew off from the pursuit, and the exhausted Spaniards had time to breathe and look about to see how many had escaped. The survivors were few in number. Small wonder if, as the legend tells, their stout-hearted general, used as he was to a stoic control of his feelings, sat him down under the cypress, which is still pointed out as the tree of theNoche Triste, and wept a strong man's tears as he looked upon the pitiful remnant of his brave army. Of the twelve hundred Spaniards eight hundred and sixty had perished, and of the survivors not one but was wounded. Two thousand of his allies, the Tlaxcaltecan Indians, had also been slain. Indeed, had it not been that the savages tried less to kill than to capture the Spanish for a more horrible death by the sacrificial knife, not one would have escaped. As it was, the survivors saw later three score of their comrades butchered upon the altar of the great teocalli.

All the artillery was lost, and so was all the treasure. Not a grain of powder was left in condition to be used, and their armor was battered out of recognition. Had the Indians pursued now, the exhausted men would have fallen easy victims. But after that terrific struggle the savages were resting too, and the Spaniards were permitted to escape.They struck out for the friendly pueblo of Tlaxcala by a circuitous route to avoid their enemies, but were attacked at every intervening pueblo. In the plains of Otumba was their most desperate hour. Surrounded and overwhelmed by the savages, they gave themselves up for lost. But fortunately Cortez recognized one of the medicine men by his rich dress, and in a last desperate charge, with Alvarado and a few other officers, struck down the person upon whom the superstitious Indians hang so much of the fate of war. The wizard dead, his awe-struck followers gave way; and again the Spaniards came out from the very jaws of death.

In the siege of Mexico,—the bloodiest and most romantic siege in all America,—Alvarado was probably the foremost figure after Cortez. The great general was the head of that remarkable campaign, and a head indeed worth having. There is nothing in history quite like his achievement in having thirteen brigantines built at Tlaxcala and transported on the shoulders of men over fifty miles inland across the mountains to be launched on the lake of Mexico and aid in the siege. The nearest to it was the great feat of Balboa in taking two brigantines across the Isthmus. The exploits of Hannibal the great Carthaginian at the siege of Tarentum, and of the Spanish "Great Captain" Gonzalo de Cordova at the same place, were not at all to be compared to either.

In the seventy-three days' fighting of the siege, Alvarado was the right hand as Cortez was the head.

The dashing lieutenant had command of the force which pushed its assault along the same causeway by which they had retreated on theNoche Triste. In one of the battles Cortez's horse was killed under him, and the conqueror was being dragged off by the Indians when one of his pages dashed forward and saved him. In the final assault and desperate struggle in the city Cortez led half the Spanish force, and Alvarado the other half; and the latter it was who conducted that memorable storming of the great teocalli.

After the conquest of Mexico, in which he had won such honors, Alvarado was sent by Cortez to the conquest of Guatemala, with a small force. He marched down through Oaxaca and Tehuantepec to Guatemala, meeting a resistance characteristically Indian. There were three principal tribes in Guatemala,—the Quiché, Zutuhil, and Cacchiquel. The Quiché opposed him in the open field, and he defeated them. Then they formally surrendered, made peace, and invited him to visit them as a friend in their pueblo of Utatlan. When the Spaniards were safely in the town and surrounded, the Indians set fire to the houses and fell fiercely upon their stifling guests. After a hard engagement Alvarado routed them, and put the ringleaders to death. The other two tribes submitted, and in about a year Alvarado and his little company had achieved the conquest of Guatemala. His services were rewarded by making him governor and adelantado of the province; and he founded his city of Guatemala, which in his dayprobably became something like what Mexico then was,—a town containing fifteen thousand to twenty thousand Indians and one thousand Spaniards.

From this, his capital, Governor Alvarado was frequently absent. There were many expeditions to be made up and down the wild New World. His greatest journey was in 1534, when, building his own vessels as usual, he sailed to Ecuador and made the difficult march inland to Quito, only to find himself in Pizarro's territory. So he returned to Guatemala fruitless.

During one of his absences occurred the frightful earthquake which destroyed the city of Guatemala, and dealt Alvarado a personal blow from which he never recovered. Above the city towered two great volcanoes,—the Volcan del Agua and the Volcan del Fuego. The volcano of water was extinct, and its crater was filled with a lake. The volcano of fire was—and is still—active. In that memorable earthquake the lava rim of the Volcan del Agua was rent asunder by the convulsion, and its avalanche of waters tumbled headlong upon the doomed city. Thousands of the people perished under falling walls and in the resistless flood; and among the lost was Alvarado's wife, Doña Beatriz de la Cueva. Her death broke the brave soldier's spirit, for he loved her very dearly.

In the troublous times which befell Mexico after Cortez had finished his conquest, and began to be spoiled by prosperity and to make a very unadmirable exhibition of himself, Alvarado's support wassought and won by the great and good viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza,—one of the foremost executive minds of all time. This was no treachery on Alvarado's part toward his former commander; for Cortez had turned traitor not only to the Crown, but also to his friends. The cause of Mendoza was the cause of good government and of loyalty.

It had become necessary to tame the hostile Nayares Indians, who had caused the Spaniards great trouble in the province of Jalisco; and in this campaign Alvarado joined Mendoza. The Indians retreated to the top of the huge and apparently impregnable cliff of the Mixton, and they must be dislodged at any cost. The storming of that rock ranks with the storming of Acoma as one of the most desperate and brilliant ever recorded. The viceroy commanded in person, but the real achievement was by Alvarado and a fellow officer. In the scaling of the cliff Alvarado was hit on the head by a rock rolled down by the savages, and died from the wound,—but not until he saw his followers win that brilliant day.

The man who, next to Alvarado, deserves the credit of the Mixton was Cristobal de Oñate, a man of distinction for several reasons. He was a valued officer, a good executive, and one of the first millionnaires in North America. He was, too, the father of the colonizer of New Mexico, Juan de Oñate. June 11, 1548, several years after the battle of the Mixton, the elder Oñate discovered the richest silver mines on the continent,—themines of Zacatecas, in the barren and desolate plateau where now stands the Mexican city of that name. These huge veins of "ruby," "black," arsenate, and virgin silver made the first millionnaires in North America, as the conquest of Peru made the first on the southern continent. The mines of Zacatecas were not so vast as those developed at Potosi, in Bolivia, which produced between 1541 and 1664 the inconceivable sum of $641,250,000 in silver; but the Zacatecas mines were also enormously productive. Their silver stream was the first realization of the dreams of vast wealth on the northern continent, and made a startling commercial change in this part of the New World. Locally, the discovery reduced the price of the staples of life about ninety per cent! Mexico was never a great gold country, but for more than three centuries has remained one of the chief silver producers. It is so to-day, though its output is not nearly so large as that of the United States.

Cristobal de Oñate was, therefore, a very important man in the working out of destiny. His "bonanza" made Mexico a new country, commercially, and his millions were put to a better use than is always the case nowadays, for they had the honor of building two of the first towns in our own United States.

We all know of that strange yellow ramskin which hung dragon-guarded in the dark groves of Colchis; and how Jason and his Argonauts won the prize after so many wanderings and besetments. But in our own New World we have had a far more dazzling golden fleece than that mythical pupil of old Cheiron ever chased, and one that no man ever captured,—though braver men than Jason tried it. Indeed, there were hundreds of more than Jasons, who fought harder and suffered tenfold deadlier fortunes and never clutched the prize after all. For the dragon which guarded the American Golden Fleece was no such lap-dog of a chimera as Jason's, to swallow a pretty potion and go to sleep. It was a monster bigger than all the land the Argonauts lived in and all the lands they roamed; a monster which not man nor mankind has yet done away with,—the mortal monster of the tropics.

The myth of Jason is one of the prettiest in antiquity, and it is more than pretty. We are beginning to see what an important bearing a fairy tale may have on sober knowledge. The myth hasalways somewhere some foundation of truth; and that hidden truth may be of enduring value. To study history, indeed, without paying any attention to the related myths, is to shut off a precious side light. Human progress, in almost every phase, has been influenced by this quaint but potent factor. Where do you fancy chemistry would be if the philosopher's stone and other myths had not lured the old alchemists to pry into mysteries where they found never what they sought, but truths of utmost value to mankind? Geography in particular has owed almost more of its growth into a science to myths than to scholarly invention; and the gold myth, throughout the world, has been the prophet and inspiration of discovery, and a moulder of history.

We have been rather too much in the habit of classing the Spaniards asthegold-hunters, with an intimation that gold-hunting is a sort of sin, and that they were monumentally prone to it. But it is not a Spanish copyright,—the trait is common to all mankind. The only difference was that the Spaniards found gold; and that is offence enough to "historians" too narrow to consider "what would the English have done had they found gold in America at the outset."

I believe it is not denied that when gold was discovered in the uttermost parts of his land the Saxon found legs to get to it,—and even adopted measures not altogether handsome in clutching it; but nobody is so silly as to speak of "the days of'49" as a disgrace to us. Some lamentable pages there were; but when California suddenly tipped up the continent till the strength of the east ran down to her, she opened one of the bravest and most important and most significant chapters in our national story. For gold is not a sin. It is a very necessary thing, and a very worthy one, as long as we remember that it is a means and not an end, a tool and not an accomplishment,—which point of business common-sense we are quite as apt to forget in Wall Street as in the mines.

We have largely to thank this universal and perfectly proper fondness for gold for giving us America,—as, in fact, for civilizing most other countries.

The scientific history of to-day has fully shown how foolishly false is the idea that the Spaniards sought merely gold; how manfully they provided for the mind and the soul as well as the pocket. But gold was with them, as it would be even now with other men, the strong motive. The great difference was only that gold did not make them forget their religion. It was the golden finger that beckoned Columbus to America, Cortez to Mexico, Pizarro to Peru,—just as it led us to California, which otherwise would not have been one of our States to-day. The gold actually found at first in the New World was disappointingly little; up to the conquest of Mexico it aggregated only $500,000. Cortez swelled the amount, and Pizarro jumped it up to a fabulous and dazzling figure. But, curiously enough, the gold that was found did not cut a moreimportant figure in the exploration and civilization of the New World than that which was pursued in vain. The wonderful myth which stands for the American Golden Fleece had a more startling effect on geography and history than the real and incalculable riches of Peru.

Of this fascinating myth we have very little popular knowledge, except that a corruption of its name is in everybody's mouth. We speak of a rich region as "an Eldorado," or "the Eldorado" oftener than by any other metaphor; but it is a blunder quite unworthy of scholars. It is simply saying "an the," "the the." The word is Dorado; and it does not mean "the golden," as we seem to fancy, but "the gilded man," being a contraction of the Spanishel hombre dorado. And the Dorado, or gilded man, has made a history of achievement beside which Jason and all his fellow demi-gods sink into insignificance.

Like all such myths, this had a foundation in fact. The Colchian ramskin was a poetic fancy of the gold mines of the Caucasus; but there reallywasa gilded man. The story of him and what he led to is a fairy tale that has the advantage of being true. It is an enormously complicated theme; but, thanks to Bandelier's final unravelling of it, the story can now be told intelligibly,—as it has not been popularly told heretofore.

A number of years ago there was found in the lagoon of Siecha, in New Granada, a quaint little group of statuary; it was of the rude and ancientIndian workmanship, and even more precious for its ethnologic interest than for its material, which was pure gold. This rare specimen—which is still to be seen in a museum in Berlin—is a golden raft, upon which are grouped ten golden figures of men. It represents a strange custom which was in prehistoric times peculiar to the Indians of the village of Guatavitá, on the highlands of New Granada. That custom was this: On a certain great day one of the chiefs of the village used to smear his naked body with a gum, and then powder himself from head to foot with pure gold-dust. He was the Gilded Man. Then he was taken out by his companions on a raft to the middle of the lake, which was near the village, and leaping from the raft the Gilded Man used to wash off his precious and wonderful covering and let it sink to the bottom of the lake. It was a sacrifice for the benefit of the village. This custom is historically established, but it had been broken up more than thirty years before the story was first heard of by Europeans,—namely, the Spaniards in Venezuela in 1527. It had not been voluntarily abandoned by the people of Guatavitá. The warlike Muysca Indians of Bogota had ended it by swooping down upon the village of Guatavitá and nearly exterminating its inhabitants. Still, the sacrifice had been a fact; and at that enormous distance and in those uncertain days the Spaniards heard of it as still a fact. The story of the Gilded Man,El Hombre Dorado, shortened toEl Dorado, was too startling not to make an impression. It became a householdword, and thenceforward was a lure to all who approached the northern coast of South America. We may wonder how such a tale (which had already become a myth in 1527, since the fact upon which it was founded had ceased) could hold its own for two hundred and fifty years without being fully exploded; but our surprise will cease when we remember what a difficult and enormous wilderness South America was, and how much of it has unexplored mysteries even to-day.

The first attempts to reach the Gilded Man were from the coast of Venezuela. Charles I. of Spain, afterward Charles V., had pawned the coast of that Spanish possession to the wealthy Bavarian family of the Welsers, giving them the right to colonize and "discover" the interior. In 1529, Ambrosius Dalfinger and Bartholomew Seyler landed at Coro, Venezuela, with four hundred men. The tale of the Gilded Man was already current among the Spaniards; and, allured by it, Dalfinger marched inland to find it. He was a dreadful brute, and his expedition was nothing less than absolute piracy. He penetrated as far as the Magdalena River, in New Granada, scattering death and devastation wherever he went. He found some gold; but his brutality toward the Indians was so great, and in such a strong contrast to what they had been accustomed to from the Spaniards, that the exasperated natives turned, and his march amounted to a running fight of more than a year's duration. The trouble was, the Welsers cared only to get treasure back for the money theyhad paid out, and had none of the real Spanish spirit of colonizing and christianizing. Dalfinger failed to find the Gilded Man, and died in 1530 from a wound received during his infamous expedition.

His successor in command of the Welser interests, Nicolas Federmann, was not much better as a man and no more successful as a pioneer. In 1530 he marched inland to discover the Dorado, but his course was due south from Coro, so he never touched New Granada. After a fearful march through the tropical forests he had to return empty-handed in 1531.

Here already begins to enter, chronologically, one of the curious ramifications and variations of this prolific myth. At first a fact, in thirty years a fable, now in three years more the Gilded Man began to be a vagabond will-o'-the-wisp, flitting from one place to another, and gradually becoming tangled up in many other myths. The first variation came in the first attempt to discover the source of the Orinoco,—the mighty river which it was supposed could flow only from a great lake. In 1530, Antonio Sedeño sailed from Spain with an expedition to explore the Orinoco. He reached the Gulf of Paria and built a fort, intending thence to push his exploration. While he was doing this, Diego de Ordaz, a former companion of Cortez, had obtained in Spain a concession to colonize the district then called Maranon,—a vaguely defined area covering Venezuela, Guiana, and northern Brazil. He sailed from Spain in 1531, reached the Orinoco and sailedup that river to its falls. Then he had to return, after two years of vainly trying to overcome the obstacles before him. But on this expedition he heard that the Orinoco had its source in a great lake, and that the road to that lake led through a province called Meta, said to be fabulously rich in gold. On the authority of Bandelier, there is no doubt that this story of Meta was only an echo of the Dorado tale which had penetrated as far as the tribes of the lower Orinoco.

Ordaz was followed in 1534 by Geronimo Dortal, who attempted to reach Meta, but failed even to get up the Orinoco. In 1535 he tried to penetrate overland from the northeast coast of Venezuela to Meta, but made a complete failure. These attempts from Venezuela, as Bandelier shows, finally localized the home of the Dorado by limiting it to the northwestern part of the continent. It had been vainly sought elsewhere, and the inference was that it must be in the only place left,—the high plateau of New Granada.

The conquest of the plateau of New Granada, after many unsuccessful attempts which cannot be detailed here, was finally made by Gonzalo Ximenez de Quesada in 1536-38. That gallant soldier moved up the Magdalena River with a force of six hundred and twenty men on foot, and eighty-five horsemen. Of these only one hundred and eighty survived when he reached the plateau in the beginning of 1537. He found the Muysca Indians living in permanent villages, and in possession of gold andemeralds. They made a characteristic resistance; but one tribe after another was overpowered, and Quesada became the conqueror of New Granada.

The treasure which was divided by the conquerors amounted to 246,976pesos de oro,—about $1,250,000 now,—and 1,815 emeralds, some of which were of enormous size and value. They had found the real home of the Gilded Man,—and had even come to Guatavitá, whose people made a savage resistance,—but of course did not find him, since the custom had been already abandoned.

Hardly had Quesada completed his great conquest when he was surprised by the arrival of two other Spanish expeditions, which had been led to the same spot by the myth of the Dorado. One was led by Federmann, who had penetrated from the coast of Venezuela to Bogota on this his second expedition,—a frightful journey. At the same time, and without the knowledge of either, Sebastian de Belalcazar had marched up from Quito in search of the Gilded Man. The story of that gold-covered chief had penetrated the heart of Ecuador, and the Indian statements induced Belalcazar to march to the spot. An arrangement was made between the three leaders by which Quesada was left sole master of the country he had conquered, and Federmann and Belalcazar returned to their respective places.

While Federmann was chasing the myth thus, a successor to him had already arrived at Coro. This was the intrepid German known as "George ofSpeyer," whose real name, Bandelier has discovered, was George Hormuth. Reaching Coro in 1535, he heard not only of the Dorado, but even of tame sheep to the southwest,—that is, in the direction of Peru. Following these vague indications, he started southwest, but encountered such enormous difficulties in trying to reach the mountain pass, which the Indians told him led to the land of the Dorado, that he drifted into the vast and fearful tropical forests of the upper Orinoco. Here he heard of Meta, and, following that myth, penetrated to within one degree of the equator. For twenty-seven months he and his Spanish followers floundered in the tangled and swampy wastes between the Orinoco and the Amazon. They met some very numerous and warlike tribes, most conspicuous of which were the Uaupes.[17]They found no gold, but everywhere heard the fable of a great lake associated with gold. Of the one hundred and ninety men who started on this expedition only one hundred and thirty came back, and but fifty of these had strength left to bear arms. The whole of the indescribably awful trip lasted three years. The result of its horrors was to deflect the attention of explorers from the real home of the Dorado, and to lead them on a wild-goose chase after a related but rather geographic myth to the forests of the Amazon. In other words, it prepared for the exploration of northern Brazil.

Shortly after George of Speyer, and entirely unconnected with him, Francisco Pizarro, the conquerorof Peru, had given an impulse to the exploration of the Amazon from the Pacific side of the continent. In 1538, distrusting Belalcazar, he sent his brother, Gonzalo Pizarro, to Quito to supersede his suspected lieutenant. The following year Gonzalo heard that the cinnamon-tree abounded in the forests on the eastern slope of the Andes, and that farther east dwelt powerful Indian tribes rich in gold. That is, while the original and genuine myth of the Dorado had reached to Quito from the north, the echo myth of Meta had got there from the east. Since Belalcazar had gone to the real former home of the Dorado, and had failed to find that gentleman at home, it was supposed that the home must be somewhere else,—east, instead of north, from Quito. Gonzalo made his disastrous expedition into the eastern forests with two hundred and twenty men. In the two years of that ghastly journey all the horses perished, and so did all the Indian companions; and the few Spaniards who survived to get back to Peru in 1541 were utterly broken down. The cinnamon-tree had been found, but not the Gilded Man. One of Gonzalo's lieutenants, Francisco de Orellana, had gone in advance on the upper Amazon with fifty men in a crazy boat. The two companies were unable to come together again, and Orellana finally drifted down the Amazon to its mouth with untold sufferings. Floating out into the Atlantic, they finally reached the island of Cubagua, Sept. 11, 1541. This expedition was the first to bring the world reliable information as to the size and nature of the greatestriver on earth, and also to give that river the name it bears to-day. They encountered Indian tribes whose women fought side by side with the men, and for that reason named itRio de las Amazones,—River of the Amazons.

In 1543 Hernan Perez Quesada, a brother of the conqueror, penetrated the regions which George of Speyer had visited. He went in from Bogota, having heard the twisted myth of Meta, but only found misery, hunger, disease, and hostile savages in the sixteen awful months he floundered in the wilderness.

Meanwhile Spain had become satisfied that the leasing of Venezuela to the German money-lenders was a failure. The Welser régime was doing nothing but harm. Yet a last effort was determined upon, and Philip von Hutten, a young and gallant German cavalier, left Coro in August, 1541, in chase of the golden myth, which by this time had flitted as far south as the Amazon. For eighteen months he wandered in a circle, and then, hearing of a powerful and gold-rich tribe called the Omaguas, he dashed on south across the equator with his force of forty men. He met the Omaguas, was defeated by them and wounded, and finally struggled back to Venezuela after suffering for more than three years in the most impassable forests and swamps of the tropics. Upon his return he was murdered; and that was the last of the German domination in Venezuela.

The fact that the Omaguas had been able to defeat a Spanish company in open battle gave that tribe a great reputation. So strong in numbers andin bravery, it was naturally supposed that they must also have metallic wealth, though no evidence of that had been seen.

Driven from its home, the myth of the Gilded Man had become a wandering ghost. Its original form had been lost sight of, and from the Dorado had gradually been changed to a golden tribe. It had become a confusion and combination of the Dorado and Meta, following the curious but characteristic course of myths. First, a remarkable fact; then the story of a fact that had ceased to be; then a far-off echo of that story, entirely robbed of the fundamental facts; and at last a general tangle and jumble of fact, story, and echo into a new and almost unrecognizable myth.

This vagabond and changeling myth figured prominently in 1550 in the province of Peru. In that year several hundred Indians from the middle course of the Amazon—that is, from about the heart of northern Brazil—took refuge in the eastern Spanish settlements in Peru. They had been driven from their homes by the hostility of neighbor tribes, and had reached Peru only after several years of toilsome wanderings.

They gave exaggerated accounts of the wealth and importance of the Omaguas, and these tales were eagerly credited. Still, Peru was now in no condition to undertake any new conquest, and it was not till ten years after the arrival of these Indian refugees that any step was taken in the matter. The first viceroy of Peru, the great and good Antonio deMendoza, who had been promoted from the vice-royalty of Mexico to this higher dignity, saw in this report the chance for a stroke of wisdom. He had cleared Mexico of a few hundred restless fellows who were a great menace to good government, by sending them off to chase the golden phantom of the Quivira—that remarkable expedition of Coronado which was so important to the history of the United States. He now found in his new province a similar but much worse danger; and it was to rid Peru of its unruly and dangerous characters that Mendoza set on foot the famous expedition of Pedro de Ursua. It was the most numerous body of men ever assembled for such a purpose in Spanish America in the sixteenth century, but was composed of the worst and most desperate elements that the Spanish colonies ever contained. Ursua's force was concentrated on the banks of the upper Amazon; July 1, 1560, the first brigantine floated down the great river. The main body followed in other brigantines on the 26th of September.

The country was one vast tropical forest, absolutely deserted. It soon became apparent that their golden expectations could never be realized, and discontent began to play a bloody rôle. The throng of desperadoes by whose practical banishment the wise viceroy had purified Peru, could not be expected to get along well together. No longer scattered among good citizens who could restrain them, but in condensed rascality, they soon began to suggest the fable of the Kilkenny cats. Their voyage was an orgie entirely indescribable.

Among these scoundrels was one of peculiar character,—a physically deformed but very ambitious fellow, who had every reason not to wish to return to Peru. This was Lope de Aguirre. Seeing that the object of the expedition must absolutely fail, he began to form a nefarious plot. If they could not get gold in the way they had hoped, why not in another way? In short, he conceived the audacious plan of turning traitor to Spain and everything else, and founding a new empire. To achieve this he felt it necessary to remove the leaders of the expedition, who might have scruples against betraying their country. So, as the wretched brigantines floated down the great river, they became the stage of a series of atrocious tragedies. First, the commander Ursua was assassinated, and in his place was put a young but dissolute nobleman, Fernando de Guzman. He was at once elevated to the dignity of a prince,—the first open step toward high treason.

Then Guzman was murdered, and also the infamous Yñez de Atienza, a woman who bore a shameful part in the affair; and the misshapen Aguirre became leader and "tyrant." His treason was now undisguised, and he commanded the expedition thenceforth not as a Spanish officer, but as a rebel and a pirate. As he steered toward the Atlantic, it was with plans of appalling magnitude and daring. He intended to sail to the Gulf of Mexico, land on the Isthmus, seize Panama, and thence sail to Peru, where he would kill off all who opposed him, and establish an empire of his own!

But a curious accident brought his plans to nought. Instead of reaching the mouth of the Amazon, the flotilla drifted to the left, in that wonderfully tangled river, and got into the Rio Negro. The sluggish currents prevented their discovering their mistake, and they worked ahead into the Cassiquiare, and thence into the Orinoco. On the 1st of July, 1561 (a year to a day had been passed in navigating the labyrinth, and the days had been marked with murder right and left), the desperadoes reached the Atlantic Ocean; but through the mouth of the Orinoco, and not, as they had expected, through the Amazon. Seventeen days later they sighted the island of Margarita, where there was a Spanish post. By treachery they seized the island, and then proclaimed their independence of Spain.

This step gave Aguirre money and some ammunition, but he still lacked vessels for a voyage by sea. He tried to seize a large vessel which was conveying the provincial Monticinos, a Dominican missionary, to Venezuela; but his treachery was frustrated, and the alarm was given on the mainland. Infuriated by his failure, the little monster butchered the royal officers of Margarita. His plan to reach Panama was balked; but he succeeded at last in capturing a smaller vessel, by means of which he landed on the coast of Venezuela in August, 1561. His career on the mainland was one of crime and rapine. The people, taken by surprise, and unable to make immediate resistance to the outlaw, fled at hisapproach. The authorities sent as far as New Granada in their appeals for help; and all northern South America was terrorized.

Aguirre proceeded without opposition as far as Barquecimeto. He found that place deserted; but very soon there arrived the maestro de campo, (Colonel) Diego de Paredes, with a hastily collected loyal force. At the same time Quesada, the conqueror of New Granada, was hastening against the traitor with what force he could muster. Aguirre found himself blockaded in Barquecimeto, and his followers began to desert. Finally, left almost alone, Aguirre slew his daughter (who had shared all those awful wanderings) and surrendered himself. The Spanish commander did not wish to execute the arch-traitor; but Aguirre's own followers insisted upon his death, and secured it.

There were many subsequent attempts to discover the Gilded Man; but they were of little importance, except the one undertaken by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1595. He got only as far as the Salto Coroni,—that is, failed to achieve anything like as great a feat as even Ordaz,—but returned to England with glowing accounts of a great inland lake and rich nations. He had mixed up the legend of the Dorado with reports of the Incas of Peru,—which proves that the Spanish were not the only people to swallow fables. Indeed, the English and other explorers were fully as credulous and fully as anxious to get to the fabled gold.

The myth of the great lake, the lake of Parime,[18]gradually absorbed the myth of the Gilded Man. The historic tradition became merged and lost in the geographic fable. Only in the eastern forests of Peru did the Dorado re-appear in the beginning of the last century, but as a distorted and groundless tale. But Lake Parime remained on the maps and in geographical descriptions. It is a curious coincidence that where the golden tribes of Meta were once believed to exist, the gold fields of Guiana (now a bone of contention between England and Venezuela) have recently been discovered. It is certain that Meta was only a myth, but even the myth was useful.

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