The South American Republics, Part 2 of 2

by Thomas Cleland Dawson

THE SPANISH CONQUEST

During the long campaigns by which his general, Quizquiz, had conquered Peru, Atahuallpa had never left the North. He received the news of the crowning victory and the capture of Huascar, in his palace at Tumibamba on the Cuencan plain, and started at once for Cajamarca, the first great town on the plateau south of the Ecuador border, accompanied by only a small army. While waiting near Cajamarca, Atahuallpa heard the wonderful news that two hundred strangers had landed on the coast at Tumbez—a port on the southern side of the Gulf of Guayaquil. They were white and their faces were covered with hair; they had garments and arms different from any his informants had seen; and most extraordinary of all they were accompanied by outlandish gigantic beasts who carried them over the ground with a terrifying speed.

The effect of this intelligence upon Atahuallpa and his advisers can only be conjectured. It was remembered that four years before a ship carrying a score or more of these same foreigners had sailed along the coast of Ecuador and northern Peru, landing at various places to beg provisions and ask questions. Two had been left behind, and were taken to the interior, where their fate is unknown. It is, however, probable that these unfortunate Spaniards had given to Atahuallpa's officers much information about the resources and intentions of their countrymen. The Inca emperor seems to have realised that the importance and power of the foreigners was out of all proportion to their numbers. The newcomers protested that their purposes were amicable, and sent friendly messages to Atahuallpa, who resolved to act cautiously and avoid offending them unnecessarily. He despatched his own brother as an ambassador with assurances of good-will and a polite inquiry as to their wishes and intentions. But unfortunately for himself and his country the Inca was dealing with a man whose profound and deceitful diplomacy was as much superior to his as a musket is to a cross-bow. The Spanish leader returned word that he appreciated the kind expressions of the emperor and would at once proceed to Cajamarca to pay his respects in person.

This was Francisco Pizarro, one of the greatest practical geniuses whom modern Europe has produced. Born out of wedlock at Trujillo, a town in Estremadura, the province which during centuries was the great fighting ground of Castilian and Moor, he passed his youth as a swine-herd in the most abject poverty and illiteracy. Enlisting as a private soldier, he spent his young manhood in fighting under Gonzalo de Cordoba, in those campaigns which carried the renown of the Spanish infantry to the farthest confines of Europe. An admirable soldier, conscious that he possessed powers of the highest order, hopelessly handicapped in old Europe by his base birth and illiteracy, the discovery of the New World opened up a field for his talents. He eagerly embraced the opportunity, embarking in 1509 with Alonso de Ojeda for the Darien gold mines. Four years later he accompanied Balboa in that memorable journey across the Isthmus which resulted in the discovery of the Pacific Ocean. To the city of Panama, looking out over the mysterious sea, adventurers flocked like a pack of wolves eager for a share in the spoils of its unknown shores, and Pizarro was among them. The news of Cortes's conquest of Mexico brought to America a horde of soldiers of fortune. Recklessly brave, experienced in the most scientific warfare of the time, arrogantly proud of their nationality, utterly careless of odds, ready to risk their lives on the chance of sudden fortune, a set of men better qualified for the work which fate threw in their way could not be conceived.

Panama had hardly been founded when rumours of the existence of a wealthy and civilised empire lying far to the south reached the ears of the Spaniards. In 1522, Pascual de Andagoya, a gentleman of distinguished family who occupied a high office at Panama, made an expedition for a short distance along the coast and obtained valuable confirmation of the vague reports. Obliged to abandon the enterprise by his own illness, he turned it over to a partnership formed for the purpose by Pizarro, Almagro, and a priest named Luque. The first enjoyed a great reputation for good judgment and fertility of resource, gained in expeditions along the Caribbean coast, and by mere force of his talents had come to be regarded as one of the ablest and luckiest captains on the Isthmus. The active command was to be his, while Almagro, a soldier of more advanced age and hardly inferior reputation, backed him up and sent supplies and reinforcements. Luque was the moneyed man of the concern. They bought a small vessel at Panama which Balboa himself had built eight years before, and in 1524 Pizarro started down the coast. But his supply of provisions was inadequate, it was impossible to obtain more from the savage natives of the forested shores of Colombia, and the first effort ended in failure.

Nothing discouraged, Pizarro and his partners persevered. They had great difficulty in raising money to fit out properly the next expedition, but happily they succeeded in interesting the mayor of Panama. Eighteen months later Pizarro sailed once more with a better equipment and one hundred and sixty men. For five hundred miles he found nothing except the hot and swampy seashore of Colombia, inhabited by miserable naked tribes, and his companions had begun to believe that the empire they were seeking was a myth, when the pilot who had been sent on ahead came back with word that he had penetrated south of the equator, and there had met a sort of large sea-going raft coming from the south manned by a clothed and civilised crew and laden with cloth, silver work, metal mirrors, vases, and various other goods.

These Indians said they came from Tumbez, a city in a fertile valley on a dry and penetrable coast which lay not more than two hundred miles farther south. They were traders bringing up a stock to sell to the shore peoples of Ecuador—tribes who had long been compelled to acknowledge the suzerainty of the Incas, but who still lived in virtual independence under their own chiefs. The men on the raft told the Spaniards that the whole interior and the southern coast were inhabited by civilised peoples, subjects of an emperor whose capital was a great city in the mountains hundreds of leagues to the south. Having received this confirmation of their most extravagant hopes, Pizarro and his men pushed on until they nearly reached the northern boundary of Ecuador, not far from the limits of the Inca empire. It was clear, however, that their small force would never be able to cope with the armies of such a power. Almagro went back to Panama for reinforcements, while the indomitable Pizarro landed his already disheartened adventurers on a swampy island where their clothes rotted in the steaming, tropical heat and never-ceasing rain; fevers decimated them, mosquitoes tortured them, and eatable provisions were impossible to obtain. When Almagro reached Panama, the governor flew into a rage on hearing that Pizarro was holding his men against their will, and sent a ship to bring back all who wished. Nine-tenths of the band deserted Pizarro, but he was indomitable and thirteen heroes stood by him in his determination to reach Peru or perish. For weary months he waited for provisions, but the moment they arrived he set off for the south. Within twenty days he and his little band of adventurers reached the Gulf of Guayaquil, four hundred miles farther on, and immediately landed at Tumbez. With their own eyes they saw full confirmation of what the Indians of the raft had told them. Irrigated fields, green with beautiful crops, lined the river bank; eighty thousand people, all comfortably housed, lived in the valley; commerce was flourishing; large temples profusely ornamented with gold and silver testified to wealth and culture; the government was well-ordered and stable; and the people received the visitors with open-handed hospitality.

After refreshing his followers, Pizarro continued his explorations down the coast for a couple of hundred miles, finding a succession of fertile valleys interrupting the monotonous desert, each filled with villages and farms and a thriving, civilised, and prosperous population. In the fall of 1527 he returned to Panama, full of the idea of leading an expedition to conquer the great empire about which he had obtained such minute and exact information. He wisely resolved himself to go to Spain and secure the direct patronage and countenance of the government at Madrid. Taking with him natives brought from Tumbez and specimens of products, he set off, and on his arrival was granted an audience by Charles V. The Emperor was greatly impressed by the story which the adventurer told. Naturally of a noble and commanding presence, the conscious dignity of Pizarro's manners corresponded to the high ambitions which filled his mind. In the doing of great things he had dropped all evidences of his base origin, and contact with men and the habit of command had given him an ease of address and clearness of thought which made his hearers forget the deficiencies of his early education. The concession he prayed for was granted. He himself was legitimatised and ennobled and received the title of "adelantado," while the gallant followers who had refused to abandon him on the Colombian island were made gentlemen of coat-armour. Pizarro and his partners were formally authorised to conquer and settle Peru in the name of the Castilian sovereign and received a grant of money for the purchase of arms, agreeing to remit to the royal treasury one-fifth of all the gold that they should find.

Pizarro knew just the kind of men needed to assist in this hazardous enterprise, and he took every precaution to select only those of whose valour and capacity he was well assured. His mother had bred up a family of lions in the little old Estremadura town, and his four brothers were hardly his inferiors in valour and audacity. Hernando, the oldest and only legitimate son of Francisco's father, agreed to go. So did Juan and Gonzalo, two illegitimate brothers who were younger, and also Francisco Alcantara, a half-brother on the mother's side. Hernando Cortes, the noble conqueror of Mexico, exerted himself to help Pizarro fill up his ranks with soldiers of the most approved courage, and the latter finally sailed for the Isthmus with a small body picked from the very flower of the fighting men of the Peninsula.

Pizarro believed that a few hundreds of good men, well provided with artillery and horses, would be as effective as thousands in striking terror to masses of Indians armed only with spears and swords. Arrived at Panama, it was arranged that he should proceed to Peru at once, while Almagro would follow later with reinforcements recruited among the unemployed adventurers in Nicaragua. All sorts of good fortune favoured the daring enterprise. For once the fitful winds which usually baffle sailing ships in the Gulf of Panama were kind, and Pizarro's clumsy, little caravels traversed in thirteen days the seven hundred miles of inhospitable coast which lay between the Isthmus and the first Inca provinces. Landing among the half-civilised tribes of Ecuador, he had the good luck to find a store of gold and emeralds. This he sent back, as an encouragement to Almagro, and marching down the Ecuador coast, he reached the Gulf of Guayaquil, on whose southern shore began the populous and civilised portions of the empire. He crossed to the island of Puna, overcame its fierce inhabitants with great slaughter, and there was joined by a large and welcome reinforcement of men and horses under the command of Hernando de Soto, afterwards so famous as the discoverer of the Mississippi, who had come on his own motion to get his share in the spoils.