The South American Republics, Part 2 of 2

by Thomas Cleland Dawson

The fratricidal war lasting seven bloody years exhausted the resources of the northern and central provinces of the Inca empire, and raised the spirit of faction to a bitter pitch. Hardly had the last battle been fought when Pizarro landed on the northern Peruvian coast. The moment could not have been more favourable. The story of Atahuallpa's capture, of Pizarro's intrigues with the different Inca factions, and of his triumphal march to Cuzco through a country distracted by civil feud, belongs rather to the history of Peru than of Ecuador. With Atahuallpa's death and the defeat of Quizquiz near Cuzco, Quito was left without a master. The country had been drained of able-bodied men by Atahuallpa's levies, and bands of troops who found their way back from Peru fought among themselves. The indefatigable Cañaris rose again against the Quito authorities, and following the fatal example set by the Huascar party in Peru, applied to the Spaniards. From San Miguel, the colony which Pizarro had established at Piura, in the valley where the road from the Ecuador table-land debouches into the coast plain, Sebastian de Benalcazar led a force of two hundred Spaniards to their assistance. Ascending the Cordillera he was joined by great numbers of Indians in Loja, Cuenca, and Cañar, and crossed the Azuay before he encountered the meagre forces of the Quito generals. Horses and firearms gave the Spaniards an easy victory, and their enemies retreated to the defences of Tiocajas. This locality was once more fated to be the scene of a battle decisive of Ecuadorean history. Benalcazar and his allies were victorious, but at such a cost that he thought seriously of giving up the enterprise. Tradition recites that the giant volcano Cotopaxi burst forth into a terrific eruption after the battle, and that the midnight explosions were heard scores of miles along the plateau. To the Indians this was an infallible signal of the displeasure of the sun god. Trembling with superstitious fear they retreated in disorder; Benalcazar crossed Tiocajas without resistance, and overran the country as far north as Quito, taking possession of the city in December, 1533. Meanwhile Almagro had been hurrying up from Peru with reinforcements and on his way along the plateau fell in with a third expedition under Alvarado, governor of Guatemala. Coming from Panama on his own account and landing on the coast a long distance north of Guayaquil, Alvarado had succeeded in forcing his way through the dense forests and rain-soaked defiles and debouched on the plateau near Riobamba. Almagro paid him one hundred thousand dollars to withdraw, and Benalcazar was entrusted with the completion of the conquest he had so well begun.

Disappointed in the search for gold, Benalcazar divided the country into feudal lordships, enslaving the Indians and compelling them to pay tribute. His restless energy was not satisfied with the conquest of the old Cara kingdom, and he soon led an expedition of one hundred and fifty Spaniards and four thousand Indians against the coast provinces and founded the city of Guayaquil, whose magnificent and sheltered port, the best on the Pacific coast, gave independent access to the sea. Though the passes leading from Guayaquil to Riobamba were far more tedious than the southern ones from Piura to Loja, they brought Quito two hundred miles nearer the ocean, and their use made Ecuador independent of northern Peru. Hardly had Benalcazar returned to the table-land and gone north to conquer southern Colombia, when the tribes near Guayaquil attacked and destroyed the settlement. His lieutenant at Quito despatched another expedition; Pizarro sent reinforcements by sea; and the place was re-founded. Again was it destroyed, and only in 1537, when Pizarro sent up Orellana with an adequate force, was a permanent settlement made on the site where to-day is the largest and richest city of Ecuador.

Benalcazar had conquered Quito in the name and under the authority of Pizarro, and the latter now named his brother Gonzalo governor. Confident of finding another Peru in the unknown regions to the east of his new domain, the young Pizarro enlisted hundreds of adventurers, and in the beginning of 1541 led the largest and best-equipped expedition yet assembled in South America down the declivities of the Andes. Difficulties began as soon as he reached the sweltering, steaming forest region. Rain fell unceasingly; the soft clay of the defiles afforded no footing; instead of finding stone highways like those over which they had marched in their conquest of the table-land, the Spaniards had to cut tracks along the mountainsides through the matted vegetation. Provisions ran short, clothes rotted, arms rusted, no villages or tribes possessing food were encountered. Finally Gonzalo was obliged to halt the main body, sending a detachment under Orellana, the second in command, on ahead to find provisions. Orellana followed down a stream which soon grew large enough to be navigable. He built boats and proceeded, but still found no signs of civilised inhabitants. Fearing that he could never ascend the river to the main body, he determined to keep on, confident that ultimately he must reach the ocean. The river he was descending is now called the Napo. After a course of nearly a thousand miles, it flowed into the Amazon, and down the latter's broad current Orellana and his little band floated to the Atlantic, there built a little ship, and finally made their way to Spain.

Hearing nothing of Orellana, Gonzalo gave up and climbed back to Quito with a starving and naked remnant of his men. There he learned of the assassination of his great brother at Lima, and that Vaca de Castro, the royal commissioner appointed to settle the disputes between the partisans of Almagro and Pizarro, had passed through Ecuador on his way south to Peru, appointing another governor for Quito. Gonzalo retired to Charcas in southern Bolivia, whence he emerged a year later to head the great rebellion. The viceroy was compelled to fly from Lima, and landing at Tumbez made his way to Quito. The Spaniards in Ecuador and southern Colombia were against Pizarro, but the latter chased the viceroy out of Quito and north into Popayan, where Benalcazar took sides with him. Four hundred Spaniards accompanied the viceroy in a counter-invasion, but near the city he was completely defeated and decapitated as he lay wounded on the field. Gonzalo, now undisputed lord of the whole Inca empire, returned at his leisure to Lima. The tale of how Gasca, shrewd old priest, by intrigue and conciliation, re-established royal authority and brought Pizarro to the scaffold, does not especially affect the history of Ecuador.

By 1550 the civil wars were over, the unruly original conquistadores had been executed, banished, or reduced to obedience. Shortly afterward the system of Indian tribute and slavery was modified so that although the proprietors got rich the aborigines were saved from rapid extermination, royal officials and functionaries were installed, an elaborate system of taxation established, and Ecuador, with the rest of Spanish America, entered upon a long period of exploitation under form of law, instead of being the haphazard prey of irresponsible private adventurers.

ECUADOR INDIANS.

For the next two hundred and fifty years Ecuador has no history. The occasional eruption of a volcano or an Indian insurrection is all one finds in the annals, except the interminable lists of the Spanish officials sent out to enrich themselves and the Crown at the expense of the hapless Indians. The Spanish occupation brought about no colonisation of Ecuador in the true sense of that word, although it worked a considerable revolution in the life and customs of the Indians who continued to constitute the bulk of the population. Indeed, the habitable area of the Andean plateau was so limited and the aboriginal population so numerous, that there was no room for immigration without a war of extermination. The cultivable area of Andean Ecuador barely exceeds eight thousand square miles, and it is probable that more than a million natives lived there in the time of the Caras and Incas. Even at the present day these eight thousand miles contain more than two-thirds of the total population, and not more than four hundred thousand people inhabit the two hundred and eighty thousand square miles of high, barren mountains, steep declivities of the Cordillera, and wooded plains on the coast and in the Amazon valley, which constitute the remainder of Ecuador.

One of the important results of the Spanish occupation was the introduction of new food plants and domestic animals. Wheat and barley were early planted by the Castilian proprietors who had divided the country among themselves, and these grains quickly replaced the quinoa, which, with the potato, had been the chief reliance of the Caras. The cultivation of the potato and also of maize was, however, continued. The Spanish invaders introduced the plantain and banana, which immediately became the staples of the forested and tropical districts, making possible a great increase of population. The plateau was found suited to European fruits, and orchards were soon flourishing in its more favoured parts. Rice, indigo, and sugar-cane were also introduced, and an export trade in these articles grew up, as well as in the native cacao and sarsaparilla.

The Spanish rulers effected radical changes in the political, social, and religious life of the civilised Indians. A certain apathy and fatalism seems characteristic of the American aborigine, and in Ecuador, trained through countless centuries to the patriarchal rule of his own chiefs, he submitted to the exactions and innovations of his new masters. According to Spanish constitutional law and practice, America was not a component part of the mother-kingdom, but the new continent was regarded as the personal property of the king of Castile, its lands, mines, and inhabitants being his to dispose of at pleasure. The viceroy at Lima was the monarch's lieutenant, only responsible to the king himself or to the advisory board known as the Council of the Indies. For great territorial divisions like Ecuador this power was delegated to governors, and the corregidors were likewise unrestrained within the smaller subdivisions. The Indians were regarded as mere chattels, and the tribute exacted from every adult was a logical consequence of their legal status. In theory even the Spanish residents had no rights to self-government, nor did any constitutional guaranties of life and property exist.