The Spanish Pioneers

by Charles Fletcher Lummis

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.