River of the Amazons

By Ralph Moore

The story is about a Spanish Conquistador, Francisco de Orellana, and his companions who were the first Europeans to navigate the Amazon River. A priest went with them, and the major part of this book is a retelling of his firsthand account of the voyage. It is a story about brave men in a tale of true action and adventure, both as history and as enlightening and entertaining reading.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ralph Moore
• Release date: Jul 9, 2009
• ISBN: 9781301767236

Ralph Moore

Ralph Moore was born in Illinois and was raised in a state orphanage: the ISSCS, in Normal. He worked his way through college to a B.A. and M.A., was drafted into the army for a two-year stint in Germany, worked a number of years in city and regional planning in the U.S., and in Peru, and then returned to academic studies, earning a Ph.D. He taught a bit in the U.S. and then two years at several Mexican universities. He now devotes time to his own interests: reading and writing. Never got rich, but learned a lot — always aiming at higher and higher levels.

Book preview

RIVER OF THE AMAZONS

Ralph Moore, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2009 by Ralph Moore

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in

part, in any form, through any medium.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART I SOME BACKGROUND

Chapter 1 Our Story

Chapter 2 Francisco de Orellana

Chapter 3 Gonzalo Pizarro's Expedition

Chapter 4 La Canela

PART II FRIAR CARVAJAL'S ACCOUNT

Chapter 5 Setting Off

Chapter 6 Aparia

Chapter 7 Aparia the Greater

Chapter 8 The Petition

Chapter 9 The Second Brigantine

Chapter 10 Leaving Aparia's Land

Chapter 11 Machiparo

Chapter 12 Omagua

Chapter 13 Paguana

Chapter 14 Corpus Christi

Chapter 15 Arrows

Chapter 16 Las Amazonas

Chapter 17 Another Eye Lost

Chapter 18 Among the Islands

Chapter 19 About the Amazons

Chapter 20 Poison

Chapter 21 Tidewater

Chapter 22 Poison Again

Chapter 23 Islands Again

Chapter 24 End of the River

Chapter 25 Under Sail

Chapter 26 On the Northern Sea

PART III AFTERWORD

Chapter 27 End of the Journey

PART I

SOME BACKGROUND

CHAPTER 1

OUR STORY

A story which is fiction can have within it any number of wonders, of fantasy and magic and legend, and its plot, no matter how many false leads are presented to the reader, no matter how many twists and turns, back-tracking, or filling-in, the plot, if the story is well constructed, will lead inevitably to its logical and proper conclusion, with no questions remaining unanswered, the reader well satisfied.

A story which is about real life, however, is not so neat. It must tell what the author knows. Its plot, no matter how well related, does not always lead to a proper and satisfying end: all questions answered. A story about real life, if it is true to real life, will usually contain within it parts or wholes of other stories—some stories within stories; others parts of stories more fully told elsewhere, at other times, or still waiting to be told. Some of these are never told.

In our story such a partial story is the story of the Amazons of South America. Who were they? Women warriors, or warrior women? How did they live? Were they real or just a legend? And if real, did anyone from the wider world ever make real contact with them? How did the world ever come to know of them, and how much does the world really know of them?

This story of the Amazons is a story within a larger story, a story of an unexpected and unintended voyage of discovery by a small band of Spanish Conquistadors in the year 1542. This party, swept away, down a river from a larger expeditionary force of which it was a part, included the heroes, or protagonists, of our main story. One hero is the captain of the band. Another is a priest who went along and who made a record of the voyage, and compiled a final account from his many notes.

This voyage of discovery forms the largest part of the book, but it, too, is a story within stories. Over all is the story of the Spanish conquest of Peru in 1532. And underneath all is the story of the kind of men who conquered Peru.

Our central story is about a small company of these Spanish Conquistadors. Fresh from having conquered the greatest empire in South America, they were experiencing, at the time when the story commences, failure as part of an expedition to extend Spanish dominance over another part of that great continent. On a small mission, the members of this company were unexpectedly swept away by flood waters, with no possibility of returning to the rest of their expedition and with no knowledge of what lay ahead, their only hope of salvation being to continue onward down the river.

Becoming an independent expedition, the company proceeded in as orderly a manner as possible under the circumstances to note the land through which they were passing. A few of the men had some experience as seamen, and they began to chart their speed and the distances they travelled. They could not navigate because they had no idea of where they were going, but they could note how they were getting there. An official scribe was appointed to write down the orders and proceedings of the management of their expedition, documents which would give legal testimony when and if they ever came to civilization again.

The story is also about rivers—this river, and the many other rivers into which it flowed. The company went from one into another, and into another, each stretch of river bringing them something new: food to satisfy their hunger or another period of privation, acquaintance with new peoples and new dominions, a place to rest or new battles with hostile natives.

A priest who went along, Friar Gaspar de Carvajal, kept notes of significant events experienced on the voyage. He noted the peoples they met, domains through which they travelled, the land form and the vegetation, the flow of the rivers, the things they ate, the hardships they endured, and the religious feasts they celebrated. These were correlated with dates and the distances they travelled, so that in the end they had quite a bit of information gathered on the lands that they were discovering.

This priest, Friar Gaspar de Carvajal, was born in Trujillo, Spain, in the province of Estremadura, in the year 1504. In 1535 a royal decree was issued which provided for members of his Order of St. Dominic to return with Friar Vincente de Valverde to Peru to assist in the settlement of that realm and to attend to the instruction of the natives in the true faith. Peru was a realm of the new world which had only recently been conquered, in 1532, by Francisco Pizarro. Friar Valverde, who had taken part in the conquest, was returning as newly named bishop-elect.

Friar Carvajal was placed in command, as vicar-general, of eight friars of the Order who would go with Valverde. Held up by protocols and a lack of funds which should have been provided, they were unable to leave with Valverde, but they did finally manage to leave for the new world in 1537. By 1538 the Order was well established in the country and had a monastery in Lima, where Friar Carvajal was vicar-provincial.

It was in Lima, in 1540, through which Gonzalo Pizarro, Francisco's brother, passed on his way to becoming governor of Quito, that Friar Carvajal was induced to join with him to provide the services of the clergy to his men. From Quito Friar Carvajal went along with Gonzalo Pizarro to discover and explore the land of cinnamon and the land of El Dorado, both of which lay to the east of Quito, on the other side of the Andes Mountains. It is from his participation in this expedition that he entered into our story.

This principal story is of the first voyage by Europeans down the River of the Amazons, carried out by men from Gonzalo Pizarro's expedition, and under the command of Francisco de Orellana. The detailed account of this voyage, as related herein by Friar Gaspar de Carvajal, came from the two extant versions written by him. The first version of his account is from a copy of that which he gave to Orellana to take to Spain. This copy was published in 1894 in the Descubrimiento del Río de Las Amazonas, written by José Toribio Medina. The second version, a revision of his own copy of the original account, Carvajal sent from Peru to El Capitán Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés in Santo Domingo to be included in the Historia General y Natural de Las Indias, written by Fernández in 1549, and available in a published collection of 1855. This version was republished in 1942 in Quito, Ecuador, on pages 1-73 of the work Biblioteca Amazonas, Volume I, titled, "Relación del Nuevo Descubrimiento del famoso Río Grande que descubrió por muy gran ventura el Capitán Francisco de Orellana;" in 1945 in Asunción del Paraguay by Editorial Guarania, as part of the Historia General, the story by Carvajal in Volume XIV, pages 104-160; and in 1959 in Madrid, in the Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, Volume V, pages 373-402. The publication in Ecuador, in 1942, also included the book by José Toribio Medina, and it ran both versions of Carvajal's story together, on opposing pages. It also included Medina's introduction, his notes, and various official documents pertaining to the voyage. The present author translated both versions of Carvajal's story from Spanish into English, and fused them into the one story included herein. The present author also inserted into Friar Carvajal's story, in appropriate places, the texts of various documents which were drawn up by the company during the voyage. Notes and other background information from both authors were used in writing the background portion of this book.

But before we get to Friar Carvajal's story itself, we should learn a little more about Francisco de Orellana and how, for him, this voyage down the river came about.

CHAPTER 2

FRANCISCO DE ORELLANA

Who was Francisco de Orellana? Where was he from, and how did he get into our story?

Like Friar Carvajal, he was from the town of Trujillo, in the province of Estremadura, Spain. Many of the Conquistadors of the New World had come from this province, and from Trujillo—including Hernán Cortés, the conqueror of Mexico, and Francisco Pizarro, the conqueror of Peru. Francisco de Orellana was born in 1511, in a branch of the Pizarro family. The Pizarro family had their seat in Trujillo and was supposed to have been descended from Gonzalo Sánchez Pizarro, who was born in the latter part of the thirteenth century. Of the three branches of this family, Francisco de Orellana came from the second, the Pizarro y Orellana branch.

Orellana bore the same name as his father, Francisco de Orellana. His mother was Estefanía Pizarro, and it is through her that his family tree was connected to the Pizarros. She was a sister of Gonzalo Pizarro (not the progenitor, Gonzalo Sánchez Pizarro). This Gonzalo Pizarro was a son of Hernando Alfonso Pizarro and Isabel Rodríguez, and he was the father of Francisco Pizarro, the Conquistador. Our Francisco de Orellana was therefore a first cousin of Francisco Pizarro, the conqueror of Peru.

Francisco Pizarro was actually an illegitimate son of his father, and grew up as a sort of outcast in the area. He had no education, so could neither read nor write, and he survived as best he could, achieving a post as swineherd before leaving to try his fortune in the New World. Pizarro brought four brothers (really only half-brothers) back with him to the New World on his return from a trip to Spain in 1531, just before his third expedition to Peru, the one in which he realized the conquest. One brother, Francisco Martín de Alcántara, who was also illegitimate, was from his mother's side. Juan and Gonzalo, both illegitimate, were descended from his father. Hernando, the eldest of the four, was a legitimate son of his father.

Orellana was also related to Hernán Cortés, whose mother was a Pizarro and related to the mother of Orellana.

Friar Carvajal also came from Trujillo, born there in 1504, and therefore about seven years older than Orellana. He knew the people from that area, their character and families, and he could understand how Orellana had both an entrance to the inner circle of the Conquistadors and close ties with the Pizarro brothers, his cousins. No wonder, then, that Orellana could advance so easily in power in the New Castile [Peru]. The good friar himself had profited from his also coming from Trujillo and Estremadura.

Orellana was only sixteen when he crossed over to the Indies in 1527. Mexico had already been conquered, in 1521. At the time of his arrival the action was in Nicaragua, and so it was to that area that Orellana went, and where he gained his first experience with the Conquistadors.

It is not really known how or when Orellana came to Peru, but it might have been with Hernando de Soto, who had come from Nicaragua in 1531 and joined Pizarro at the island of Puná for his third and final voyage of discovery, by which he actually got to Peru. Or it might have been with a force of men recruited in Panama and under the command of Diego de Almagro, Pizarro's partner in the exploration and conquest of Peru, who arrived after Pizarro and who came to Cajamarca in February of 1533. Orellana was barely in his twenties at that time. Consequently, either he was not there for the taking of the Inca Atahualpa, in November of 1532, or, if there, his position was insufficient for him to participate directly with those who shared in the Inca's ransom in 1533.

Orellana subsequently saw better service, and was suitably rewarded. He participated in the entering of Cuzco, the capital of the Inca Empire, in November of 1533; in the pursuits in 1534 of Atahualpa's general Quiz-Quiz, who was resisting the conquest; in the founding of the cities of Lima, in January of 1535, and Trujillo, in February of that year; and in the founding of the Villa Nueva de Puerto Viejo, in March of 1535, and the conquest of its outlying area, in which campaign he lost an eye. The town of Puerto Viejo was north of the Point of Santa Elena, one of the first capes to be sighted by a ship crossing the Southern Sea [Pacific Ocean] from Panama to northern Peru.

Orellana settled in this northern part of New Castile, building a house in Puerto Viejo. He also owned haciendas and Indians and cattle in other parts of Peru, and these furnished him with a good income to make him a rather rich man. His home in Puerto Viejo became a stopping place and a place of recuperation for those Spaniards who came from the northern colonies to Peru, hoping, like those who came before them, for a share in the riches of the Inca Empire. These people landed in Peru in a horrible state, worn out from their journeys, sometimes sick, sometimes near death. In Orellana's house they found not only shelter, but also food and drink, clothing where needed, and care in their illnesses. Truly, if it were not for him and his assistance, most would have perished. The aid given to these people was expensive, in part because food and other necessary supplies were available in the market only at inflated prices, and Orellana paid for these from his own pocket and distributed them freely to his guests. Needless to say, for this he won considerable fame and respect.

While he was there, in 1536, news came of a general Indian uprising and the sieges of Lima and Cuzco. Manco Capac, a son of Huayna Capac and younger brother of Huascar, was the leader of the rebellion.

Huayna Capac, the Inca Emperor who died just before the arrival of Pizarro, divided his empire between two sons, Huascar and Atahualpa. Huascar was the heir of true Inca blood, from Cuzco. Atahualpa was Huayna's son by a woman of the land of Quito, therefore not of pure Inca blood. Following some disputes between the brothers, Atahualpa defeated Huascar in battle, took him prisoner, and declared himself sole Emperor.

It was at this time that Pizarro came to the northern part of Peru. He made his way southward and over the mountains to the city of Cajamarca, where the—now supreme—Emperor Atahualpa was. Atahualpa was subsequently taken by Pizarro. But from his imprisonment he had orders passed for Huascar to be killed so that Huascar could not in the meantime escape and take over the empire.

After the execution of Atahualpa Pizarro declared the Inca's younger brother Toparca the new Emperor, but this young man died shortly after—in a matter of weeks. Huascar, the pure Inca heir of Huayna, had a younger brother named Manco Capac. He was, then, the rightful heir to the Inca crown, and he sought out Pizarro and asked him for his protection. Pizarro took Manco with him to Cuzco, and there he crowned Manco as the new Emperor.

But Manco soon saw that he was but a tool in the hands of the Spanish and was dependent on them for any status he had. Under the Spanish this was little more than that of other Peruvians, who were all treated as inferior beasts, of value only as slaves or as servants. He and others plotted rebellion. He escaped from Cuzco, was caught and returned. But he tricked Hernando Pizarro into allowing him to escape again, saying he was going to lead two soldiers to a huge throne of solid gold, which they could help him retrieve to Cuzco. Once free, he quickly gathered many of his own countrymen about him and began his rebellion against the Spanish. It was Manco and his cohorts who were directing the general uprising in 1536.

Orellana, on receiving from Lima the call for help, began immediately to