After these events, and leaving that region pacified, the Spaniards descended the river and returned to Darien, posting a guard of thirty men, commanded by an officer, Hurtado,[1] to hold that province. Hurtado descended the Rio Negro to rejoin his leader, Vasco Nuñez, and his companions. He was using one of those large native barques and had with him twelve companions, a captive woman, and twenty-four slaves. All at once four uru, that is to say, barques dug out of tree trunks, attacked him on the flank, and overturned his boat. The Spaniards had been tranquilly sailing along without dreaming of the possibility of an attack, and their barque being suddenly overturned all those whom the natives could catch were massacred or drowned, except two men, who grasped some floating tree trunks and, concealing themselves in the branches, let themselves drift, unseen by the enemy, and thus managed to rejoin their companions.
[Note 1: Furatado quodam decurione. Licet decurione more romano non sint addicti præcise quindecim milites quos regat, centurionique centum viginti octo, centuriones tamen ultro citroque centenarium numerum, et ultro citroque denum, decurionem est consilium appellare; nec enim hos servant ordines hispani ex amussim, cogimurque nomine rebus et magistratibus dare. Thus Peter Martyr for the second time vindicates his knowledge of Roman military terms and his usage of them. His explanation is extraneous to the narrative.]
Warned of the danger by those two men who had escaped death, the Spaniards became suspicious of everything. They were alarmed for their safety, and remembered that they only escaped a similar calamity at Rio Negro because they had received the reinforcement of thirty men on the night before the attack. They held frequent councils of war, but in the midst of their hesitations they reached no decision. After careful investigation they finally learned that five caciques had fixed a day for the massacre of Christians. These five were: Abibaiba, who lived in the swampy forest; Zemaco, who had been driven from his home; Abraibes and Abenamacheios, the river chiefs; and Dobaiba, the cacique of the fishermen, living at the extremity of the gulf called Culata. This plan would have been carried out, and it was only by a miracle, which we are bound to examine with leniency, that chance disclosed the plot of the caciques. It is a memorable story and I will tell it in a few words.
This Vasco Nuñez, a man of action rather than of judgment, was an egregious ruffian, who had obtained authority in Darien by force rather than by consent of the colonists; amongst the numerous native women he had carried off, there was one of remarkable beauty. One of her brothers, who was an officer much favoured by the cacique Zemaco, often came to visit her. He likewise had been driven out of his country, but as he loved his sister warmly, he spoke to her in conversation in the following words:
"Listen to me, my dear sister, and keep to yourself what I shall tell you. The insolence of these men, who expelled us from our homes, is such that the caciques of the country are resolved no longer to submit to their tyranny. Five caciques [whom he named one after another] have combined and have collected a hundred uru. Five thousand warriors on land and water are prepared. Provisions have been collected in the province of Tichiri, for the maintenance of these warriors, and the caciques have already divided amongst themselves the heads and the property of the Spaniards."
In revealing these things to his sister, the brother warned her to conceal herself on a certain day, otherwise she might be killed in the confusion of the fight. The conquering warrior gives no quarter to those whom he vanquishes. He concluded by telling her the day fixed for the attack. Women generally keep the fire better than they do a secret,[2] and so it fell out that this young woman, either because she loved Vasco Nuñez or because in her panic she forgot her relatives, her kinsmen, and neighbours as well as the caciques whom she betrayed to their death, revealed the same to her lover, omitting none of the details her brother had imprudently confided to her. Vasco Nuñez sent this Fulvia to invite her brother to return, and he immediately responded to his sister's invitation. He was seized and forced to confess that the cacique Zemaco, his master, had sent those four uru for the massacre of the Spaniards, and that the plot had been conceived by him. Zemaco took upon himself the task of killing Vasco Nuñez, and forty of his people whom he had sent as an act of friendship to sow and cultivate Vasco's fields, had been ordered by him to kill the leader with their agricultural tools. Vasco Nuñez habitually encouraged his labourers at their work by frequently visiting them, and the cacique's men had never ventured to execute his orders, because Vasco never went among them except on horseback, and armed. When visiting his labourers he rode a mare and always carried a spear in his hand, as men do in Spain; and it was for this reason that Zemaco, seeing his wishes frustrated, had conceived the other plot which resulted so disastrously for himself and his people.
[Note 2: Literally, Puella vero, quia ferrum est quod feminæ observant, magis quam Catonianam gravitatem.]
As soon as the conspiracy was discovered, Vasco Nuñez, assembling seventy men, ordered them to follow him, without however telling any one either his destination or his intentions. He first rode to the village of Zemaco, some ten miles distant, where he learned that Zemaco had fled to Dabaiba, the cacique of the marshes of Culata. His principal lieutenant (called in their language sacchos, just as their caciques are called chebi) was seized, together with all his other servants, and carried into captivity. Several other natives of both sexes were likewise captured. Simultaneously Colmenares embarked sixty soldiers in the four uru and set out up the river to look for Zemaco. The young woman's brother served as guide. Arriving at the village of Tichiri, where the provisions for the army had been collected, Vasco Nuñez took possession of the place and captured the stores of different coloured wines, as we have already noted at Comogra, and different kinds of native stores. The sacchos of Tichiri, who had acted in a manner as quartermaster of the army, was captured together with four of the principal officers, for they did not expect the arrival of the Spaniards. The sacchos was hanged on a tree that he had himself planted, and shot through with arrows in full view of the natives, and the other officers were hanged by Colmenares on scaffolds, to serve as an example to the others. This chastisement of the conspirators so terrified the entire province that there was not a person left to raise a finger against the torrent of Spanish wrath. Peace was thus established, and their caciques bending their necks beneath the yoke were not punished. The Spaniards enjoyed some days of abundance, thanks to the well-filled storehouse they had captured at Tichiri.[3]
[Note 3: This pitiful story of native treachery is frequently repeated, and explains the enslavement, the downfall, and in parts, the extermination of the American tribes. Everywhere they betrayed one another to the final undoing of all.]