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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.