The alleged expedition of Peñalosa to Quivira is placed about 1662. The accounts of it depend on a Relacion del descubrimiento del Pais y Ciudad de Quivira echo por D. Diego Dionisio de Peñalosa, escrita por el Padre Fr. Nicolas de Freytas (1684). In 1882 there were two annotated renderings of this narrative,—one by Duro, mentioned at the beginning of this note, who discredits the journal and gives other documents on the same theme; the other, an English version, was issued under the title, The expedition of Don Diego Dionisio de Peñalosa, from Santa Fé to the river Mischipi and Quivira in 1662, as described by Father Nicholas de Freytas. With an account of Peñalosa’s projects to aid the French to conquer the mining country in Northern Mexico; and his connection with Cavelier de la Salle. By John Gilmary Shea, New York, 1882.
Dr. Shea in this volume claims that Quivira was north of the Missouri, while it has generally been placed south of that river. He also derives from this narrative an opinion, contrary to the one ordinarily received, namely, that La Salle was carried, against his will, beyond the mouths of the Mississippi in his expedition of 1682; for he judges his over-shooting the mouths was intentional, in order to land where he could better co-operate with Peñalosa in wresting the mines in New Mexico from the Spaniards.
CHAPTER VIII.
PIZARRO, AND THE CONQUEST AND SETTLEMENT OF PERU AND CHILI.
BY CLEMENTS R. MARKHAM, F.R.S.
Honorary Secretary of the Hakluyt Society.
WHEN the Isthmus of Darien was discovered by Vasco Nuñez de Balbóa, during the six years between 1511 and 1517, there can be little doubt that tidings, perhaps only in the form of vague rumors, were received of the greatness and the riches of the Empire of the Yncas. The speech which the son of the Cacique Comogre is said to have made to the gold-seeking followers of the discoverer of the South Sea most probably had reference to Peru; and still more certainly, when the Cacique of Tumaco told Vasco Nuñez of the country far to the south which abounded in gold, and moulded the figure of a llama in clay, he gave tidings of the land of the Yncas. There was a chief in the territory to the south of the Gulf of San Miguel, on the Pacific coast, named Biru, and this country was visited by Gaspar de Morales and Francisco Pizarro in 1515. For the next ten years Biru was the most southern land known to the Spaniards; and the consequence was that the unknown regions farther south, including the rumored empire abounding in gold, came to be designated as Biru, or Peru. It was thus that the land of the Yncas got the name of Peru from the Spaniards, some years before it was actually discovered.[1467]
Pedro Arias de Avila, the governor of the mainland called Castilla del Oro, founded the city of Panamá. He went there from the Pearl Islands, in the vessels which had been built by his victim Vasco Nuñez, while Gaspar de Espinosa, the Alcalde Mayor, led the rest of the colony by land. The city was founded in 1519. The governor divided the land among four hundred settlers from Darien. Among them were Pascual de Andagoya, Hernando Luque (a priest), Francisco Pizarro, and Diego de Almagro. Nombre de Dios, on the Atlantic side of the isthmus, was settled towards the end of the same year by a captain named Diego Alviles, in obedience to orders from Pedro Arias.[1468]