Chapter IX: The Work of Traitors 284 (5)

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 the church 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 did _not_ give 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 by his ungrateful flock,--it was almost a habit. It was not the sin of one or two towns. The pueblos of Taos, Picuries, San Yldefonso, Nambe, 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, _forty_ of 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 authors were 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.

VIII.

ALVARADO'S LEAP.

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,--the _Noche 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 generally the 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. He understood 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.

_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 as each side of the dyke, was blocked with canoes full of savage warriors; and there was another sanguinary melee 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 well
In 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 the _Noche 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 the _Noche 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 Quiche, Zutuhil, and Cacchiquel. The Quiche 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 day probably 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, Dona 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 was sought 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 Onate, 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 Onate. June 11, 1548, several years after the battle of the Mixton, the elder Onate discovered the richest silver mines on the continent,--the mines 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 Onate 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.

IX.

THE AMERICAN GOLDEN FLEECE.

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 has always 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 as _the_ gold-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 more important 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 Spanish _el 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 really _was_ a 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 ancient Indian 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 Guatavita, 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 Guatavita. The warlike Muysca Indians of Bogota had ended it by swooping down upon the village of Guatavita 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 to _El Dorado_, was too startling not to make an impression. It became a household word, 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 they had 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 Sedeno 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 sailed up 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 and emeralds. 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 246,976 _pesos 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 Guatavita, 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 of Speyer," 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 conqueror of 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 greatest river 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 it _Rio 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 regime 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 and in 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 de Mendoza, 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 role. 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 Ynez 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 his approach. 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.

The fable of the lake of Parime--long believed in as a great lake with whole ranges of mountains of silver behind it--was fully exploded by Humboldt in the beginning of the present century. He showed that there was neither a great lake nor were there mountains of silver. The broad savannas of the Orinoco, when overflowed in the rainy season, had been taken for a lake, and the silver background was simply the shimmer of the sunlight on peaks of micaceous rock.

With Humboldt finally perished the most remarkable fairy tale in history. No other myth or legend in either North or South America ever exercised such a powerful influence on the course of geographical discovery; none ever called out such surpassing human endeavor, and none so well illustrated the matchless tenacity of purpose and the self-sacrifice inherent in the Spanish character. It is a new lesson to most of us, but a true and proved one, that this southern nation, more impulsive and impetuous than those of the north, was also more patient and more enduring.

The myth died, but it had not existed in vain. Before it had been disproved, it had brought about the exploration of the Amazon, the Orinoco, all Brazil north of the Amazon, all Venezuela, all New Granada, and eastern Ecuador. If we look at the map a moment, we shall see what this means,--that the Gilded Man gave to the world the geography of all South America above the equator.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] Pronounced Wow-pess.

[18] Pronounced Pah-_ree_-may.

III.

THE GREATEST CONQUEST.

PIZARRO AND PERU.

I.

THE SWINEHERD OF TRUXILLO.

Somewhere between the years 1471 and 1478, (we are not sure of the exact date), an unfortunate boy was born in the city of Truxillo,[19] province of Estremadura, Spain. He was an illegitimate son of Colonel Gonzalo Pizarro,[20] who had won distinction in the wars in Italy and Navarre. But his parentage was no help to him. The disgraced baby never had a home,--it is even said that he was left as a foundling at the door of a church. He grew up to young manhood in ignorance and abject poverty, without schools or care or helping hands, thrown entirely upon his own resources to keep from starving. Only the most menial occupations were open to him; but he seems to have done his best with them. How the neighbor-boys would have laughed and hooted if one had said to them: "That dirty, ragged youngster who drives his pigs through the oak-groves of Estremadura will one day be the greatest man in a new world which no one has yet seen, and will be a more famous soldier than our Great Captain,[21] and will divide more gold than the king has!" And we could not have blamed them for their sneers. The wisest man in Europe then would have believed as little as they such a wild prophecy; for truly it was the most improbable thing in the world.

But the boy who could herd swine faithfully when there was no better work to do, could turn his hand to greater things when greater offered, and do them as well. Luckily the New World came just in time for him. If it had not been for Columbus, he might have lived and died a swineherd, and history would have lost one of its most gallant figures, as well as many more of those to whom the adventurous Genoese opened the door of fame. To thousands of men as undivined by themselves as by others, there was then nothing to see in life but abject obscurity in crowded, ignorant, poverty-stricken Europe. When Spain suddenly found the new land beyond the seas, it caused such a wakening of mankind as was never before nor ever has been since. There was, almost literally, a new world; and it made almost a new people. Not merely the brilliant and the great profited by this wonderful change; there was none so poor and ignorant that he might not now spring up to the full stature of the man that was in him. It was, indeed, the greatest beginning of human liberty, the first opening of the door of equality, the first seed of free nations like our own. The Old World was the field of the rich and favored; but America was already what it is so proud to be to-day,--the poor man's chance. And it is a very striking fact that nearly all who made great names in America were not of those who came great, but of the obscure men who won here the admiration of a world which had never heard of them before. Of all these and of all others, Pizarro was the greatest pioneer. The rise of Napoleon himself was not a more startling triumph of will and genius over every obstacle, nor as creditable morally.

_See page 260._]

We do not know the year in which Francisco Pizarro, the swineherd of Truxillo, reached America; but his first importance here began in 1510. In that year he was already in the island of Espanola, and accompanied Ojeda[22] on the disastrous expedition to Uraba on the mainland. Here he showed himself so brave and prudent that Ojeda left him in charge of the ill-fated colony of San Sebastian, while he himself should return to Espanola for help. This first honorable responsibility which fell to Pizarro was full of danger and suffering; but he was equal to the emergency, and in him began to grow that rare and patient heroism which was later to bear him up through the most dreadful years that ever conqueror had. For two months he waited in that deadly spot, until so many had died that the survivors could at last crowd into their one boat.

Then Pizarro joined Balboa, and shared that frightful march across the Isthmus and that brilliant honor of the discovery of the Pacific. When Balboa's gallant career came to a sudden and bloody ending, Pizarro was thrown upon the hands of Pedro Arias Davila, who sent him on several minor expeditions. In 1515 he crossed the Isthmus again, and probably heard vaguely of Peru. But he had neither money nor influence to launch out for himself. He accompanied Governor Davila when that official moved to Panama, and won respect in several small expeditions. But at fifty years of age he was still a poor man and an unknown one,--an humble _ranchero_ near Panama. On that pestilent and wild Isthmus there had been very little chance to make up for the disadvantages of his youth. He had not learned to read or write,--indeed, he never did learn. But it is evident that he had learned some more important lessons, and had developed a manhood equal to any call the future might make upon it.