Whether the natives first told the Europeans, or whether the latter, with a view to increase the wonders of the New World, invented the story and told it to the natives, none can tell; but even before the voyage of Orellana, a tradition existed amongst both natives and colonists that a nation of armed women dwelt somewhere in America. Christopher Columbus was told that the small island of Mandanino, or Matinino (Montserrat), was inhabited solely by female warriors.
Since the days of Orellana, there have been found plenty of travellers to confirm the story and add their testimony to its truth. Hernando de Ribeira, a follower of Cabega de Vega, the Conquistador of Paraguay, asserted in 1545 that he had been told of a nation of Amazons who lived on the western shore of a large lake poetically termed "The Mansion of the Sun," because that orb sinks into its waters every evening. Father d'Acugna, in his "Discovery of the River Amazon," declares that the various tribes of Indians (amongst others, the Toupinambous) dwelling around the Amazon, assured him again and again that a republic of female warriors did exist in that region; several chiefs said they themselves had been in the country of the Amazons on a visit. If, says d'Acugna, the tradition is not true, it is certainly the greatest of all the fables invented about the New World. The Indians all believed that the Amazons possessed vast treasures, sufficient to enrich many kingdoms; but no one dared to attack so warlike a nation, to whom liberty was dearer than all the riches in the world, and who knew how to send their poisoned shafts straight to the heart. D'Acugna fixes the residence of the Amazons on the banks of the Canuriz, on lofty, almost inaccessible mountains.
"When their neighbours visit them," he says, "at a time appointed by themselves, they receive them with bows and arrows in their hands, which they exercise as if about to engage with enemies. But knowing the object of their visitors, they lay these weapons down, and welcome as their guests the strangers, who remain with them a few days."
André Thevet, in his work "Les Singularités de la France Antarctique," Paris, 1558, makes the arrival of the Amazons' guests the subject of a pictorial illustration.
In 1595, Sir Walter Raleigh, wishing to make a fortune in a hurry, undertook an expedition to Guiana to seek for the golden city of Manoa. Most probably he had read Thevet's work, an English translation of which, by Bynneman, appeared in 1568; and he made the most careful enquiries after the Amazons. But, like his predecessors, he was doomed to disappointment.
"I made inqvirie," says he (in his book 'The Discourie of the Large, Rich, and Bewtifvl Empire of Gviana') "amongst the most ancient and best traueled of the Orenoqveponi, and I had knowledge of all the riuers betweene Orenoqve and Amazones, and was uery desirovs to vnderstand the trvth of the warlike women, bicavce of some it is beleeved, of others not; though I digresse from my pvrpose, yet I will set doune what hath been deliuered to me for troth of those women, and I spake with a Casiqve, or lord of the people, that told me he had been in the riuer, and beyond it also, the nations of those women are on the sovth side of the riuer in a prouince of Topago, and their chiefest strength and retraicts are in the Islands scitvate on the sovth side of the entrance, some sixty leagves within the movth of the said riuer."
After entering into some details about the reception of their guests in the month of April, when, he says, "this one moneth they feast, davnce, and drinke," he gives an account of the treatment of children, which bears a suspicious resemblance to the stories related of the ancient Amazons. He further tells us the South American Amazons were "said to be very crvell and bloodthirsty, especially to svch as offer to inuade their territories."
In 1599 an abridged Latin translation of Raleigh's work appeared at Nuremberg, at the cost of Levinus Hulsius, geographer and collector. It was illustrated by five coloured plates; the third representing the joyful reception of the Amazons' visitors, and their subsequent amusements; the fourth showing the treatment bestowed on prisoners of war, who are seen hung up by the heels to trees, where they serve as targets for the skill of their captors, while their ultimate fate is hinted by the figures of several Amazons preparing huge fires.
At the close of the seventeenth century, Father Cyprian Baraza, a Jesuit missionary who went among the South American Indians, gave an account of some Amazonian tribes who dwelt to the west of the Paraquay, in 12° south latitude. M. de Condamine, who read a "Relation abrégée d'un Voyage," etc., before the Académie des Sciences in 1745, brought forward several testimonies to the existence of the Amazons, whom he described as a society of independent women, who were visited by the sterner sex during the month of April only. Amongst other authorities he mentions Don Francisco Diego Portales, and Don Francisco Torralva, two Spanish governors of Venezuela, who agreed in declaring that a tribe of female warriors lived in the interior of Guiana.
Thirty years later he was supported by a Portuguese astronomer, Don Ribeiro de Sampeio ("Diario da Viegem, no anno de 1774 et 1775") who, however, spoke only by hearsay. Gili, the missionary, was told by an Indian of the Quaqua tribe that the Aikeambenanos ("women living alone") dwelt on the banks of the Cuchinero, which falls into the Orinoco opposite the island of Taran, between Cayeara and Alta Gracia.