CHAPTER IV
VENEZUELA UNDER SPANISH RULE AND BEFORE
Pre-Columbian times—No great empire—Primitive Venezuelans—Picture rocks—Invasions—The Guatavitas and the legend of El Dorado—Amalivaca—An Inca prince?—Ancient roads—The discovery of Tierra Firme, 1498—Alonso de Ojeda—The name Venezuela—A great geographical fraud—Discovery of the treasures of the west—Arrival of the conquistadores—The slave trade—Treacheries of the Cubagua colonists—Gonzalez de Ocampo—Las Casas—First cities of the New World—Settlement of Coro—The Welsers—Alfinger—Ingratitude of Charles V.—New Andalusia—Exploration of the Orinoco—Cruelties of Alfinger—Exploration of the Llanos—First Bishop of Venezuela—Destruction of New Cadiz—Faxardo and the Carácas—Cities of Western Venezuela—The rebellion of Aguirre—Foundation of Carácas—Pimentel moves his capital to the new city—Capture of Carácas by English buccaneers—Inaccuracies of Spanish historians—Explorations of Berrio in Guayana—Raleigh and El Dorado—Attempts to civilise the Indians—Missions—University of Carácas—Guipuzcoana Company—Revolution of Gual and España—Miranda—The last Captain-General—The Junta—Appeals to England—The Declaration of Independence.
The advanced civilisations of early Peru and Mexico have left us, despite the vicious destruction of everything “heathen” by the “Christian” conquistadores, in possession of sufficient documents of one kind or another to glean a fairly complete and consecutive story of those countries in pre-Columbian times, as we may term that period before the discovery of the New World by Columbus. It is otherwise in Venezuela; here there seems to have been no advanced civilisation; and the conquistadores were as incapable of noticing or recording details of the social organisation and international relations of the savage aborigines as of appreciating the knowledge and skill of Incas or Aztecs; hence we have to depend mainly, if not entirely, on the information gathered with difficulty from buried ruins, tombs, and sepulchre-caves. Dr. G. Marcano has been one of the chief workers in this direction, and his systematic and painstaking work may one day give us a fairly complete picture of Venezuela before the Spaniards.
In the remote past, long (though we do not know how long) before the arrival of the white men from the east, the land appears to have been sparsely peopled by semi-nomadic, primitive tribes of a long-headed race, whose social organisation was limited to a grouping in temporary villages, while in the arts they had advanced as far as the making of rude earthenware, and perhaps the use of curiously shaped stones for personal adornment. They buried their dead in caves, either natural or artificial, placing them in a sitting posture in palm-leaf frails or earthenware urns, accompanied by small pieces of pottery and other household matters. The names of “tribes” in Guayana appear to be far too numerous to be really distinct races, and it is probable that they represent merely the more permanent associations of villages or groups of villages with slight differences of dialect. In Humboldt’s time there were traditions of the internecine warfare of these “tribes,” and it is possible that in times of strife they were guilty of cannibalism, though in later days authentic occurrences of the eating of human flesh were very rare, if existent at all.
Throughout Guayana there are crude rock inscriptions of comparatively ancient date, apparently representing an early attempt at picture-writing, and it is said that some of the shy and reticent Indian tribes appear to know the meaning of these. As yet no one has obtained any satisfactory clue to the purpose of these rocas pintadas.
We have said that these long-headed peoples occupied the land in the remote past, though their descendants were to be found in parts of Venezuela in comparatively recent times, and tribes of mixed race still bear witness to their existence. Many years before the Spanish conquest, however, there was a great influx of the more normal short-headed peoples, divided into more or less civilised communities, and possessed of some proficiency in the arts, with beliefs which were, in some respects, an advance upon the Nature-worship of the earlier inhabitants.
These last were soon compelled to withdraw into the mountain fastnesses, or the equally inaccessible forests of the south, while their conquerors settled in the Caribbean Hills and the lower valleys of the Andes, where at some points excavations have revealed something of their customs. Though greatly inferior to the ruling nations of Peru and Mexico, these races must still be looked upon as intermediate between them and the savages already referred to.
The Guatavitas of the plateau of Bogotá, whose great religious festival probably gave rise to the legend of El Dorado and his golden city of Manoa, may be taken as representing their higher development. The Guatavita chief, according to Acosta, used on the occasion of this annual festival to smear his body with turpentine preparatory to rolling in gold-dust; then, proceeding on a barge to the centre of their sacred lake, he would cast into it gold ornaments, emeralds, and other valuables, finally plunging into the waters himself, an action which was the signal for shouts of applause from the worshippers on the banks.[1]
Whether the Incas ever really held any communication with these lowland peoples it is impossible at present to say, but perhaps the legend of Amalivaca, who, the Indians say, visited them and began to teach them to write, finally sailing away to the east with a promise to return, may be based upon an actual visit of a Peruvian leader, who left on an exploratory voyage to the east, from which he never returned, at least to these shores. It is strange that there was in Humboldt’s time on the Llanos between Barinas and the River Apure some twenty miles of well-made road, elevated about fifteen feet above the frequently flooded plains, the remains of a causeway from the mountains made long before Spanish times, and apparently the work of some nation far more advanced in the arts than any living close at hand.