“Christians! why quarrel and make so much turmoil about a little gold, which nevertheless you melt down from beautifully wrought work into rude bars? Is it for such a trifle that you banish yourselves from your country, cross the seas, endure hardships and disturb the peaceful nations of these lands? Cease your unseemly brawl and I will show you a country where you may obtain your fill of gold. Six days’ march across yonder country will bring you to an ocean sea like this near which we dwell, where there are ships a little less in size than yours, with sails and oars, and where the people eat out of vessels of gold and have large cities and wealth unbounded.”
In the light of our later knowledge we know that he referred to the Pacific and to Peru. At the conclusion of his address he volunteered to lead the Spaniards to the unknown sea, provided they first would aid him and his father in the overthrow of a hostile tribe, and further that they increase their own numbers to 1000 men, for he foresaw hard fighting.
To recuperate his force and add to it Balboa returned to his base at Santa Maria. Here he found trouble of divers kinds. Part of his men were mutinous. Letters from friends at Madrid told that his enemies there were conspiring for his undoing—had even caused a new governor to be sent out to replace him, with orders to send him home for trial. But the most immediate danger was an Indian plot to raid and wholly obliterate the Spanish town—an enterprise which we can hardly blame the oppressed aborigines for cherishing.
An Indian girl, whom a cavalier had first converted to Catholicism, then baptized and then taken for his mistress, revealed the plot to her lover. It had been told her by her brother who, knowing of the wrath to come, in the quaint language of Peter Martyr, “admonyshed her at the days appoynted by sume occasion to convey herselfe oute of the way leste shee shuld bee slayne in the confusion of bataile.” Instead of doing this the faithless one, “forgettinge her parentes, her countrie and all her friendes, yea and all the kinges into whose throates Vaschus had thrust his sworde, she opened uppe the matter unto hym, and conceled none of those things which her undiscrete broother had declared unto her.”
Canal Commission Photo
SPANISH FORT AT ENTRANCE TO PORTO BELLO HARBOR
Balboa was never accused of hesitation. The girl was forced to reveal her brother’s hiding place. He was put to the torture and the information thus extorted enabled the Spaniards to strike at once and strike hard. With 150 men he went into the Indian territory of Darien, surprised the natives and put them to total rout. The almost invariable victories of the Spaniards, except when they were taken by surprise, do not indicate superior valor on their part. To begin with they carried fire arms which affrighted the Indians as well as slaughtered them. Further, they wore partial armor—leather jerkins, helmets and cuirasses of steel—so that the unhappy aborigines were not only exposed to missiles, the nature of which they could not comprehend, but saw their own arrows and javelins fall useless from a fairly struck target. In one battle the Indians were even reduced to meeting their foes with wooden swords, and, after the inevitable victory, one of the victors to further impress the vanquished with the futility of their defensive weapons ordered the fallen chief to stretch forth his right arm, and with one blow struck it off.
The Indians were superstitious. Anything out of the ordinary filled them with dread. Many refused to stand and fight because Balboa rode into battle on a white horse. Some trained blood hounds that the Spaniards took into battle with them also terrified them. Doing battle with them in the open was almost like slaughtering sheep. Only in ambush were they formidable. It may be noted in passing that not all the barbarities were on the Spanish side. One of Balboa’s most trusted lieutenants, Valdivia, was caught in a tempest and his ship wrecked. Those who escaped were captured by the natives, penned up and fattened for a cannibal feast. The day of festivity arriving Valdivia and four of his companions were conducted to the temple and there offered up a sacrifice. Their hearts were cut out with knives of obsidian and offered to the gods while their bodies were roasted and devoured by the savages.
News from Madrid convinced Balboa that he was in disfavor at court. Some great exploit was needed to reëstablish his prestige. He determined to seek without delay that new sea of which he had been told, and to this end gathered an army of 190 Spaniards and about 1,000 Indians. A pack of the trained European war dogs were taken along. The old chroniclers tell singular tales about these dogs. Because of the terror they inspired among the Indians they were held more formidable than an equal number of soldiers. One great red dog with a black muzzle and extraordinary strength was endowed with the rank of a captain and drew the pay of his rank. In battle the brutes pursued the fleeing Indians and tore their naked bodies with their fangs. It is gravely reported that the Captain could distinguish between a hostile and a friendly native.