River of Darkness: Francisco Orellana and the Deadly First Voyage through the Amazon

By Buddy Levy

The acclaimed author of Conquistador and Labyrinth of Ice charts one of history’s greatest expeditions, a legendary 16th-century adventurer’s death-defying navigation of the Amazon River. 

 In 1541, Spanish conquistador Gonzalo Pizarro and his lieutenant Francisco Orellana searched for La Canela, South America’s rumored Land of Cinnamon, and the fabled El Dorado, “the golden man.” Quickly, the enormous expedition of mercenaries, enslaved natives, horses, and hunting dogs were decimated through disease, starvation, and attacks in the jungle. Hopelessly lost in the swampy labyrinth, Pizarro and Orellana made the fateful decision to separate. While Pizarro eventually returned home in rags, Orellana and fifty-seven men continued into the unknown reaches of the mighty Amazon jungle and river. Theirs would be the greater glory.

Interweaving historical accounts with newly uncovered details, Levy reconstructs Orellana’s journey as the first European to navigate the world’s largest river. Every twist and turn of the powerful Amazon holds new wonders and the risk of death. 

Levy gives a long-overdue account of the Amazon’s people—some offering sustenance and guidance, others hostile, subjecting the invaders to gauntlets of unremitting attacks and signs of terrifying rituals. 

Violent and beautiful, noble and tragic, River of Darkness is riveting history and breathtaking adventure that will sweep readers on a voyage unlike any other.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Diversion Books
• Release date: Apr 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9781635769203

Buddy Levy

Buddy Levy is the author of Conquistador: Hernan Cortes, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs (Bantam Dell, 2008); American Legend: The Real-Life Adventures of David Crockett (Putnam, 2005, Berkley Books, 2006); and Echoes On Rimrock: In Pursuit of the Chukar Partridge (Pruett, 1998). As a freelance journalist he has covered adventure sports and lifestyle around the world, including several Eco-Challenges and other adventure expeditions in Argentina, Borneo, Europe, Greenland, Morocco, and the Philippines. His magazine articles and essays have appeared in Backpacker, Big Sky Journal, Couloir, Discover, High Desert Journal, Poets & Writers, River Teeth, Ski, Trail Runner, Utne Reader, TV Guide, and VIA. He is clinical assistant professor of English at Washington State University, and lives in northern Idaho with his wife Camie, his children Logan and Hunter, and two black Labs.

Book preview

Praise for Buddy Levy and River of Darkness

"In River of Darkness, Buddy Levy recounts Orellana’s headlong dash down the Amazon. Like Mr. Levy’s last book, Conquistador, about the conquest of Mexico, River of Darkness presents a fast-moving tale of triumph over seemingly insurmountable odds. . . . Though impromptu, the expedition was one of the most amazing adventures of all time."

—Wall Street Journal

"River of Darkness immediately takes its place as the definitive book on one of the great voyages into the unknown of all time, Orellana’s accidental first descent of the Amazon. . . . [I]t is a riveting and irresistible read, narrative history of a literary quality rarely encountered that compares with Alan Moorehead’s great books on the Nile. Bravissimo!"

—Alex Shoumatoff, contributing editor, Vanity Fair; publisher, DispatchesFromTheVanishingworld.com, and author of In Southern Light, The Rivers Amazon, and The World is Burning

"In River of Darkness, Buddy Levy proves that the scariest stories are the true ones. Filled with fascinating details and the terror that comes with exploring something for the very first time, this is history coming back to life."

—Brad Meltzer, bestselling author of The Book of Fate and The Inner Circle

Buddy Levy’s compulsively readable book about the first European descent through the Amazon puts us right next to the vampire bat-and-mosquito-bitten conquistadors and on a wild ride through the mighty river and a force of nature down to the Atlantic Ocean.

—Andrés Reséndez, author of National Book Award Finalist The Other Slavery and Conquering the Pacific

ALSO BY BUDDY LEVY

Empire of Ice and Stone

The Disastrous and Heroic Voyage of the Karluk

Labyrinth of Ice

The Triumphant and Tragic Greely Polar Expedition

No Barriers

A Blind Man’s Journey to Kayak the Grand Canyon

Geronimo

Leadership Strategies of an American Warrior

Conquistador

Hernán Cortés, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs

American Legend

The Real-Life Adventures of David Crockett

Echoes on Rimrock

In Pursuit of the Chukar Partridge

For my father, Buck Levy, who first took me to the river

First published by Bantam

Copyright © 2011, 2022 Buddy Levy

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

For more information, email [e-mail]

Diversion Books

A division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

www.diversionbooks.com

First Diversion Books edition, March 2022

Paperback ISBN: 9781635769197

eBook ISBN: 9781635769203

Cover Design by Jen Huppert

Interior Design by Neuwirth & Associates

Printed in The United States of America

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Library of Congress cataloging-in-publication data is available on file

We seldom or never find any nation hath endured so many misadventures and miseries as the Spaniards have done in their Indian discoveries. Yet persisting in their enterprises, with invincible constancy, they have annexed to their kingdom so many goodly provinces, as bury the remembrance of all dangers past. Many years have passed over some of their heads in search of not so many leagues: Yea, more than one or two have spent their labour, their wealth, and their lives, in search of a golden kingdom, without getting further notice of it than what they had at their first setting forth.

—Sir Walter Raleigh, The History of the World, 1614

There is something in a tropical forest akin to the ocean in its effect on the mind. Man feels so completely his insignificance there and the vastness of nature.

—Henry Walter Bates, The Naturalist on the River Amazons, 1892

In human terms, Francisco Orellana’s is probably the most compelling narrative from the entire conquistador period, for the simple reason that this time it was the Europeans who suffered so desperately, and who needed all their powers of endurance as they battled with a savage environment.

—Peter Whitfield, New Found Lands

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION to the New Edition

It has been eleven years since the initial publication of River of Darkness, and while much remains seemingly timeless along the stunning waterways of the Amazon Basin, much has changed. The search for El Dorado (both as raw gold and in the form of the fabled golden man) by conquistadors like the Pizarro brothers and Francisco Orellana brought the first Europeans down the immense, 4,500-mile-long river system, but they would hardly be the last. The Spaniards set in motion a land and culture grab that would continue for the next four-plus centuries, up to the present day. El Dorado was real, as it turned out, just not in the way the conquistadors believed.

THREATS TO THE region that existed when I first visited in 2008—by big oil, by eco-tourism, by encroachment on indigenous peoples, by deforestation and forest dehydration, by hydro-electric dams, by climate change—have only been exacerbated during the last decade. The importance of the Amazon Basin is hard to overstate: it contains sixty percent of the planet’s remaining tropical rainforest, a staggering one-fifth of the world’s fresh water flows through its colossal network of rivers, and it plays a significant role in determining global climate. With the re-release of this astounding adventure story of Francisco Orellana’s historic first descent from source to sea, it feels important and appropriate to revisit the unrivaled Amazon River and consider some of the existential challenges that continue to confront it, and to contemplate what hope might still exist to thwart or at least slow the ongoing degradation.

In May of 2008, while doing research for River of Darkness, I embarked on a three-week journey that would be among the most seminal and inspiring voyages of my life. I started in Quito, Ecuador, founded in the sixteenth century on the ruins of an Incan city and tucked between high Andes mountains that soar to thirteen thousand feet above sea level. I visited the archives, museums, and colonial buildings, literally catching my breath, acclimating to the elevation (at 9350’, it’s the second highest official capital city in the world—second only to La Paz, Bolivia) before my expedition to follow the route of the conquistadors over the mountains and down the Amazon.

I like to replicate—to the extent still possible—at least part of the journeys or voyages of the people that I’m writing about. It’s important for me to be there, on the ground, to sense the scale and scope, the sounds and sights and smells of the places I’m attempting to bring to life for the reader, sometimes hundreds of years after the events I’m depicting took place. The process of immersing myself in the landscape and among the people is the most exciting and rewarding aspect of my research. To describe Francisco Orellana’s historic first journey (by a European) from the stupendous Amazon River’s upper reaches in Ecuador all the way to its mouth where it spills into the Atlantic Ocean at Marajo Island in Brazil, it is essential to experience the flora, fauna, topography, and visceral feel of places like the Andes Mountains and the Amazon Basin.

The route of Francisco Orellana and Gonzalo Pizarro (known as The Way of the Conquistadors) took me first up the steep eastern cordillera of the Andes on part of the old Inca Road to Papallacta Pass, at a breathtaking fourteen thousand feet. From there, the snow-capped Antisana volcano loomed high above the skyline, gleaming in the sunshine yet ominous with its immensity. After spending a day soaking my aching legs in the hot springs at Termas Papallacta, I descended through the Sumaco Forest Reserve and arrived at the oil-boom town of Coca, Ecuador, at the confluence of the Napo and Coca Rivers. Formally known as Puerto Francisco de Orellana—for it was from here that Orellana took to boats and started downriver—the city is considered the gateway to Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest.

Here I met José Shinguango, the guide who would take me by local ferry, then dugout canoe, through the Yasuni National Park and then 450 miles of river and rainforest travel to Iquitos, Peru, the terminus of my research voyage. After an eight-hour riverboat ride to Nuevo Rocafuerte, we transferred to a narrow, twenty-five-foot-long dugout canoe with a 40hp outboard motor and soon we were in the Yasuni Biosphere Reserve, designated as such by UNESCO in 1989. The unique tropical rainforest, located at the crossroads of the Andes Mountains, the Amazon, and the equator, has been called the most biodiverse place on the planet. The bioreserve supports millions of species of plants, insects, amphibians, birds and mammals. José told me that though no one knows with certainty how Yasuni became so biologically diverse, the theory is that it’s the unique location coupled with low temperature variation and the historically high annual rainfall.

While cruising slowly through the park’s tributaries and Oxbow Lakes at water level, I saw resplendent scarlet macaws and yellow-throated toucans flying past overhead and watched with joy and awe as an Amazon River dolphin lolled and played up ahead, its greyish-pink skin striking against the calm, dark water of the lagoon. Beyond the waters, in the várzea amidst the giant Kapok and ceiba trees, I encountered furry tarantulas the size of my fist and roaring, imposing howler monkeys.

Unfortunately, the wondrous Yasuni, home to the Waorani people, happens to sit on top of an estimated billion barrels of crude oil—nearly forty percent of Ecuador’s entire reserves. International Petroleum extraction companies including Texaco, Repsol (Spain), Agip (Italy), Sinopec (China), and state-owned Petroamazonas began drilling in and around Yasuni even before it was declared a national park and continue to do so today. Despite bold initiatives and proposals to protect the park—applauded by Western governments as enlightened environmentalism that would simultaneously conserve the rich biodiversity and curb global warming—big oil won out. Road building for at least four new drilling platforms were photographed and reported by Amazon Conservation (Conservation Amazonica) in June 2020, cutting through primary forests and encroaching on the so-called Zona Intangible (untouchable zone), a reserve created to protect the lands of the indigenous people (the Tagaeri and Taromenane) who remain voluntarily isolated. An oil spill of any magnitude in this region would be catastrophic.

Environmental organizations continue to fight, and the Waorani people have successfully won some lawsuits against the Ecuadorian government in recent years, but big oil may prove too big to thwart, unless global reliance on petroleum reduces drastically and very soon. It’s possible that concerted international movement toward electric vehicles—which is at least showing some impetus among the major automobile manufacturers worldwide—could slow drilling. So, I continue to hold out hope for the future, though it’s a tenuous hope.

TO BETTER UNDERSTAND what’s going on in the Amazon basin today, I recently talked with Alex Shoumatoff, a writer-explorer-conservationist extraordinaire who is an international treasure and a hero of mine. When I was doing my initial research for River of Darkness, I encountered his work for the first time and was enthralled. His 1986 New Yorker piece (A Reporter At Large—Amazons), on traveling up the Nhamunda River in Brazil spins the tantalizing story of the fierce Amazonian women warriors who, according to Orellana’s chronicler—the Dominican friar Gaspar de Carvajal—attacked Orellana and his men. Alex Shoumatoff’s handling of this story, weaving his personal journey into a kaleidoscopic tapestry of longform literary journalism, history, folklore, and socio-cultural reporting was revelatory, and I devoured everything he had written or would write thereafter. His fabulous 1978 book The Rivers Amazon became my go-to text during my research and writing of River of Darkness, and I keep my dog-earned and pencil-annotated copy on the bookshelf next to my desk today.

Shoumatoff has been generous to me with his time and vast knowledge and over the years we’ve maintained a friendship, corresponding mostly via email and sometimes by phone. Oddly, we’re also bound in a very unconventional way, as members of an incredibly small club: Each of us, on separate assignments, got caught, cuffed, stuffed, and booked for trespassing at the Bohemian Grove near Monte Rio, California, but in both cases, it was worth it. His piece in Vanity Fair is excellent; and the episode I was filming for the HISTORY show DECODED had some of the series’ highest ratings!¹

Alex Shoumatoff has devoted a great deal of time compiling his Dispatches From the Vanishing World, a website of his writings dedicated to documenting and preserving the diversity of life on our planet, and especially the most pristine places remaining on earth. He’s devoted to, as he puts it, identifying who and what is destroying them, and who is engaged in the heroic and often life-threatening struggle to save them.² The Amazon is of course among these sacred places. In my recent conversation with Alex, he alerted me to some of the most immediate and persistent threats to the region, of which there are sadly too many to list. Nearly all the menaces are caused by humans, and most can be attributed either directly or indirectly to climate change.

Deforestation (caused by slashing and burning of trees for cattle raising, soy farms, palm oil, legal and illegal logging, road building, mining, and bulldozing for towns and so-called colonization projects) remains an ongoing problem. Since 1978, nearly half a million square miles of Amazon rainforest have been destroyed, an area about the size of Texas and California combined. Such dramatic forest loss matters since the Amazon’s immense water systems play a significant role in maintaining global and regional climate. The region has reached a slippery slope in which lost or destroyed rainforest gets replaced by more fire-prone savannah, which reduces water released into the atmosphere, which in turn produces higher regional temperatures, perpetuating the problem in a desiccating feedback loop. Long-term weather forecasts studied by the World Wildlife Fund predict that by the year 2050, average temperatures in the Amazon will increase by 2-3-degrees C., and this, coupled with deforestation, will result in decreased rainfall, longer periods of severe drought, and an eventual predicted 30-60 percent of the Amazon rainforest being overtaken by dry savannah.³

According to Shoumatoff, of the myriad complex pressures on the Amazon, issues of great immediate concern are rainforest dehydration, encroachment on indigenous (and in some cases, uncontacted) peoples, and hydro-electric dams. Rainforest dehydration—significant reduction in water available to the plants, animals, and people—has reached alarming levels. A decade of sustained mega-drought linked to global warming has resulted in decreased snowfall and retreating glaciers in the Andes, crucial to feeding the tributaries that drain into the Amazon Basin. It’s part of a global climate crisis that fewer and fewer people can ignore or deny with anything resembling a straight face.

For a variety of reasons, most of the approximately one hundred so-called uncontacted tribes of people left on earth live in the Amazon rainforest. Uncontacted is something of a misnomer—since despite the geographic isolation of the estimated eighty self-isolated tribes of people living in Brazil’s remote rainforests, it’s nearly impossible for them not to have seen (and been harassed by) airplanes, drones, helicopters, logging trucks, or nosy journalists looking for a story. I remember distinctly that when I finished my river voyage in Iquitos, Peru, back in 2008, I went online on one of my first days back to connectivity and I saw a dramatic series of aerial photos of members of a rainforest tribe in Acre, Brazil (bordering Peru), throwing spears and shooting arrows at the hovering craft. There was no misinterpreting their message: Leave us alone.

But being left alone to live in isolation, in their traditional ways, is becoming ever more difficult as industries like cattle ranching, logging, and hydroelectricity demand greater swaths of land and resources. The Enawene Nawe people, a small Amazonian tribe who live in the forests of the Mato Grosso state in Brazil, are a single emblematic example. They survive primarily by subsistence fishing in the Juruena River basin, important because they are one of the only tribes in the world who eat no red meat, so fish are their only source of protein. Their way of life has been severely compromised over the last decade due to cattle ranchers harvesting forests in their government-recognized tribal homeland. And even more dire, a series of proposed—and in some cases already under construction—hydroelectric dams upstream of their lands, on the Juruena River, threaten their fishery by disrupting migratory patterns and altering the natural flow of the river system. The proposed Castanheira plant would irreparably damage the area by turning it into a sprawling hydroelectric complex, flooding out and destroying numerous riverside villages.

Despite the best efforts of crusaders like Sigourney Weaver, who along with Amazon Watch raised the alarm about the proposed Belo Monte Dam on the Xingu River in Brazil back in 2009-10, the third largest hydroelectric dam in the world was ultimately completed and opened in 2016. Controversial from the beginning, the costly and massive three-dam system proved an abject environmental and human rights disaster, displacing close to fifty thousand indigenous and traditional people who were forced to abandon their homes and their fishing livelihoods.⁴ The Belo Monte dams also irreparably damaged Xingu’s aquatic ecosystem, reducing the river’s flow by as much as eighty percent, depleting fish stocks, and causing deforestation. The tragic irony is that in the end, after all the socio-cultural and environmental devastation, because of climate change-induced drought, the dams don’t produce anywhere near the electricity promised! On numerous occasions, Norte Energia, the dam’s operator, has been forced to shut down the turbines because of drastically low water flows on the Xingu. The whole affair has been a multi-billion dollar boondoggle whose consequences will be felt by the people and the land for generations.

I must admit that before I visited the Amazon myself, the place, its importance, and its wonders were abstractions to me, just images and ideas. But going there changed me. Sleeping in a hammock deep in the flooded forests, hearing the timeless rush of the river and the whirrs and chirps of insects and birds harmonizing in weirdly soothing symphony, I felt a connection to a wild place deeper than any I had ever experienced—or have since. El Dorado, it occurs to me now, is real. But it’s not the gold the conquistadors sought, or the mythical golden man, or some city of gold. It’s the golden Amazon itself, the whole magnificent place and its people, and it is no longer for the taking. It has already been found, and enough has been taken.

Now, it’s time to do the work of saving what remains.

The true story you are about to read illustrates what the Amazon was like in 1541-42. It will never look that way again, but I tried to get as close as possible to describing the pristine, wondrous, mystical and at times terrifying place that existed when the Spaniards first encountered it. Remembering it as it was helps me to imagine how it could still be.

Buddy Levy

Moscow, Idaho

September 2021

To learn more about threats to the greatest rainforests on earth, and to help, check out the following organizations:

Amazon Watch https://amazonwatch.org

The Amazon Conservation Team https://www.amazonteam.org

Amazon Aid Foundation https://amazonaid.org

World Wildlife Fund (WWF) https://www.worldwildlife.org/about/

Dispatches From The Vanishing World http://www.dispatchesfromthe vanishingworld.com

Mongabay https://www.mongabay.com

Survival International https://www.survivalinternational.org

International Rivers https://www.internationalrivers.org

Rainforest Trust https://www.rainforesttrust.org/about-us/

Rainforest Action Network https://www.ran.org/mission-and-values/

PROLOGUE

Christmas Day, 1541

Conquistador Francisco Orellana stood on the sodden riverbank and regarded the ceaseless roil of the river, uncertain where the dark waters were heading. In the dying light the water appeared black as it slithered downstream, moving like the skin of some gargantuan dark snake disappearing into an endless jungle. Orellana turned and beheld his bedraggled troops. Some, starving and feverish, their clothes rotted to soiled rags, bent before a weak fire, boiling leather straps from their saddle girths into a bitter broth. Others lay moaning beneath makeshift shelters of palm fronds and ceiba tree bark, their skin sickly white, riddled with bites and stings from mosquitoes, army ants, wasps, and vampire bats. Behind them, from the impenetrable lowland rain forest, sounded the ominous, lionlike roars of red howler monkeys and the piercing calls of macaws.

It was not supposed to be this way. Orellana had fantasized about being fabulously rich by now. He had dreamed, along with his captain Gonzalo Pizarro, of being among the wealthiest men in the world.

Now, all around them was nothing but an infinite river that delivered only death and despair and darkness.

Ten months before, in February, the Spaniards had trekked from Quito over the massive Andes in search of the Land of Cinnamon and the fabled riches of El Dorado, the gilded man who, legend held, was daily powdered from head to toe with gold dust, which he would then wash from himself in a lake whose silty bottom was now covered with gold dust and the golden trinkets tossed in as sacrificial offerings.

But the golden dream had proved an unspeakable nightmare. Now, staring at his writhing, starving men, Orellana thought only about how he might get them all out of this death trap alive.

Getting here had nearly killed them. For months they had hacked their way through the dense Andean forests, the forbidding snowcapped Antisana volcano erupting in the distance, rumbling the earth with great quakes and sending shock waves of fear through the exhausted men as the roofs of the abandoned Indian huts they took shelter in collapsed upon them. On their descent from the mountains, rains slashed the hillsides in horrific torrents, sending the men scurrying to higher ground to escape flash floods and engorging the streams so that the conquistadors were forced to cut timber and construct bridges in order to continue forward. The Spaniards suffered attacks by small bands of Indians at the headwaters of the upper Coca and Napo rivers, and all of their native slaves, porters, and guides either died on the freezing mountain passes or fled during the long nights.

The conquistadors had eaten nearly all of the two hundred horses they had brought with them, abandoning others in the dense and roadless forests, which proved impassable for the large animals. Eaten, too, were all of the savage mastiffs and wolfhounds trained to terrorize native populations or to take part in battle. Francisco Orellana, his despondent captain Gonzalo Pizarro, and their few hundred mercenary soldiers were lost in an unknown wilderness, slowly starving to death with scant hope for survival. Progress along the river’s dank and decaying shoreline was disastrous. Forlorn, they came to understand that somehow the river must be their only hope for salvation.

So they built a boat, salvaging iron from the shoes of slain horses to fabricate nails, calking the craft with cotton ripped from their own garments and blankets, constructing cordage from tree vines.

Pizarro, glowering and brooding and violent, tortured some captured Indians for information, learning between their screams that perhaps two days’ travel downriver was a prosperous village boasting large manioc plantations, enough to keep the men alive, at least for a time.

Francisco Orellana watched the slow and languid movement of the murky river. The waterway appeared hostile and forbidding and alien to him, but he knew what he must do: In this open boat, dubbed the San Pedro, he would navigate downstream in search of food.

Orellana, his lips cracked and bleeding, his face blistered from the unremitting equatorial furnace, took Captain Pizarro aside and presented him with his idea: Orellana, second-in-command, and fifty-seven of his compatriots would depart the next morning, boarding the San Pedro and twenty-two stolen native dugout canoes and voyaging downstream to find the plantations. Pizarro, despondent and without a better idea, agreed: Orellana should embark at dawn.

As the Christmas sunset poured long skeins of bloodred light over the upper reaches of the Amazon Basin, and the flooded várzea forests and swamps reverberated with the eerie twilight chirrs and keening of strange animals, both Francisco Orellana and his captain Gonzalo Pizarro gazed at the endless wash of the river. Neither man found it necessary to voice what they both knew: that their only hope of survival lay with Orellana and the fragile wooden craft that would carry him and his small band down the unknown reaches of the twisting, massive waterway.

CHAPTER 1

A Confluence of Conquistadors

The vast and rugged lands of Extremadura, Francisco Orellana’s homeland in the kingdom of Castile, produced hard and unyielding men, men who learned the arts of warfare as boys, and who by their early teens could ride their Iberian mounts with panache and wield their Toledo swords with deadly efficiency. Theirs was a temperament forged by eight hundred years of conflict with the invading Moors. To this day, Extremadura is the least-populated province in all of Spain, a haunting and landlocked place where seemingly endless tracts of rocky pastureland and burned-out bunchgrass are punctuated by scrubby stands of deep-green encina oak. On elevated promontories, the only respite from the terminal vistas, perch the ruins of castles and ramparts and their crumbling keeps, and the granite remains of Roman arches and bridge columns. The panorama inspired dreams of far-off lands and a better life, as did the stories brought back to Iberia by explorers like Columbus, whose famous carta of 1493 told of innumerable islands peopled by peaceful, naked inhabitants and flowing with spices and gold. The options for men without titles to rise beyond a hardscrabble existence herding swine or cattle were few. They could better their class status through marriage, though most herdsmen or peasants knew that their chances of courting and winning a lady of the elite were less than favorable.

The only other chance for fame, fortune, and titles was a triumphant military career, and this alternative lured many an Extremeño to the ships at Seville headed for the newfound world across the seas.

Such was the lure for young Francisco Orellana. Born in 1511 to a prominent Trujillo family related to the famous Pizarros, Orellana himself declared that he was a gentleman of noble blood, and a person of honor. Although information on his early years is scant, his upbringing, including early training in the arts of warfare, would have been much the same as that of another Trujillo family to which his was related: the Pizarros, whose eldest son, Francisco, was already winning renown in the New World. Certainly, Orellana’s eventual leadership roles and his rapid acquisition of native languages point to a high intellect and distinguished bearing.

Orellana claims to have arrived in the Indies in 1527, at which time Panama was the base from which most of the Spanish expeditions were mounted. Orellana, then still a brash but ambitious teenager, soon signed on as a mercenary soldier, and in the regions north of Panama, likely in Nicaragua, he performed his first feats of arms as a conquistador. It would have been a thrilling and chivalric time for the young man, fighting alongside veterans of conquest in lands so different from his native Iberia, in lands that very few Europeans had ever seen and that in fact had only recently been discovered by Columbus.⁵ Indeed, the Spaniard’s staging area of western Panama lay on the very coast of the Pacific Ocean (the Gulf of Panama) that, after hacking their way across the brambly isthmus, Vasco Núñez de Balboa, with Francisco Pizarro as second-in-command, had discovered just fourteen years earlier.

Over the next decade Orellana would distinguish himself by participating in numerous expeditions and invasions in Central America, and ultimately in the conquests and civil wars waged in Peru. Orellana proudly claimed to have fought in the conquests of Lima and Trujillo [Peru, not Spain] and . . . in the pursuit of the Inca in the conquest of Puerto Viejo and its outlying territory. Through his efforts and bravery Orellana acquitted himself with great honor and won the admiration of his peers, including the powerful Pizarros. His stature and reputation came not without cost, however. During one skirmish he lost an eye, and from then on he wore a patch, though his loss never diminished his conquistador’s focus and vision.

Orellana forever will be linked historically to his kinsman Gonzalo Pizarro through their dual roles in the expedition of 1541–42. Their coming together was hardly a coincidence, given their kinship and common origins in Trujillo. Gonzalo was the second youngest of the five infamous Pizarro brothers,⁶ an ambitious and enigmatic quintet of conquerors sometimes referred to as the Brothers of Doom, not only for their harsh and duplicitous treatment of the native populations they conquered but for their own rather ignominious ends. Of this deeply loyal band of brothers, only one of the five—Hernando—would die of natural causes. As with Orellana, the details of Gonzalo’s early life are sketchy, though his exploits and activities after arriving in the New World with his older brother (some thirty years older, in fact) Francisco, as well as his place of origin, provide much evidence and suggest a great deal about his personality and character.

Described by his chroniclers as exceedingly handsome, a womanizer, an avid hunter, and skilled beyond his years with a sword—the best lance in Peru and the greatest warrior who ever fought in the New World—he was also known to be cruel and impulsive. Tall and well-proportioned, with an olive-dark complexion and a very long black beard, Gonzalo Pizarro, rather poorly educated, expressed himself in direct, if crude, language.

To fully understand Gonzalo, we must first consider Francisco Pizarro. Eldest of the Pizarro brothers, Francisco struck out for the Indies in 1502,⁷ and by 1513 he was accompanying Vasco Núñez de Balboa across the Isthmus of Panama to the Pacific. Little more than a decade later, in 1524, the ambitious and skilled Francisco had become a leader himself and put together an expedition to head south from Panama to explore the coast of Colombia in a yearlong venture. There he met fierce resistance from natives and lost a great deal of money, but he remained convinced that there were riches to plunder. In 1524 he formed, with two associates, a private corporation called the Company of the Levant,⁸ which would be devoted to raising money dedicated to further conquest in the New World. For the next two years Francisco Pizarro raised money to sponsor an expedition to the coast of what is now Ecuador. Soon after arriving, they had their first tangible discovery of the riches they sought. Along the seashore’s tropical waters they spotted a sailing craft moving steadily along. On closer inspection they could see that the vessel was constructed of local balsa wood, propelled by handmade cotton sails, possessing a woven reed floor and two sturdy masts, and navigated by several native mariners. The sight proved curious and intriguing, for Francisco Pizarro knew of no Indian population who understood and employed sailing ships—not even the highly civilized Aztecs his countryman and distant cousin Cortés had reported so much about.

As the Spanish caravel moved alongside the craft, some of the natives leaped into the ocean and swam toward shore. The Spaniards overtook the remaining crew and questioned them through sign language. The natives indicated that they were from Tumbez, on the northwestern coast, south of Quito, but Pizarro’s men were much more fascinated by the contents of the craft, which included many wonders, according to a letter later enthusiastically written to Charles V:

They were carrying many pieces of gold and silver as personal ornaments [and also] crowns and diadems, belts, bracelets, leg armor and breastplates . . . rattles and strings and clusters of beads and rubies, mirrors adorned with silver and cups and other drinking vessels.

After absconding with the contents of the balsa craft and sending the frightened and confused natives on their way, Pizarro took careful stock of the booty. Here was the first substantial evidence that, as he hoped and banked on, somewhere in the vicinity there must surely be an empire, perhaps one as grand and immensely wealthy as the one Cortés had discovered. Francisco Pizarro was almost fifty and had spent nearly half his life searching for just such a prize, but he needed confirmation of its existence. After setting up camp on a mosquito-infested jungle island they later named Gallo, Pizarro is reputed to have assessed his travel-weary troops; many of the men were sick and hungry, some already dying and begging to return to Panama. They had depleted most of their stores. The generally taciturn Pizarro, himself by then gaunt and ragged, is said to have stood before them on the beach and etched a deep line in the sand with his sword tip. Gentlemen, he bellowed,

This line signifies labor, hunger, thirst, fatigue, wounds, sickness, and every other kind of danger that must be encountered in this conquest, until life is ended. Let those who have the courage to meet and overcome the dangers of this heroic achievement cross the line in token of their resolution and as testimony that they will be my faithful companions. And let those who feel unworthy of such daring return to Panama; for I do not wish to [use] force upon any man.

With that, Francisco Pizarro stepped across the line himself, indicating that all who followed him would continue south, away from Panama, away from Spain, away from their wives and families and the comforts of home, perhaps forever. Thirteen men, slowly at first, and then with growing conviction, stepped over the line to join him. They would forever be known as the Men of Gallo. The remainder of the crew, those who refused to cross the line, soon sailed back to Panama on a supply ship that had come to reinforce them.

Those who remained with Pizarro had reason to believe, at least for a time, that their

Reviews for River of Darkness

[stbalbach_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Excellent reconstruction of one of the most fascinating voyages during the Age of Discovery. In fact, they did not set out to travel the length of the Amazon (a river yet named), but literally got swept away by it. They had no idea such a large river would go for 1000s of miles, assuming it must reach the ocean any moment - but on they went, month after month. It was one long hack and slash with the Indians their survival improbable to the extreme. The book starts out a little slow setting the background but once the river journey starts it's great stuff.

[sullywriter_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Levy brings people, places, and events vividly to life in this riveting tale of brutality, greed, adventure, and survival.

[jgolomb_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Buddy Levy’s most recent two books have been histories focused on the Spanish conquest of the new world. With his latest release, “River of Darkness: Francisco Orellana's Legendary Voyage of Death and Discovery Down the Amazon,” he’s shown to be a master of taking complex historical events and creating consumable, interesting, reliable and accurate narratives. Levy's "Conquistador: Hernan Cortes, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztec" was terrific. Cortes' conquest of the Aztecs is a complex story, and Levy's book synthesized the myriad of sources well and told an enlightening and engaging story. In "Rivers of Darkness", Levy journeys south of Cortes' New Spain (Mexico), hops around the Inca Empire and travels the length of the mighty Amazon River following the travails of conquistador and explorer Francisco Orellana. Orellana was actually a cousin to the Pizarro clan and, though a generation younger than Francisco Pizarro, established himself as a brave and loyal supporter of the Pizarro’s during their conquest of the Incas in Peru. After providing a small army of support during a particularly tricky stage of the Inca conquest, Orellana was rewarded with a large land holding outside of modern Quito which, at the time, was part of the northernmost reaches of the Inca/Pizarro Empire. Levy reviews key moments of Pizarro's foray into South America. Francisco Pizarro had been part of Cortes' conquest in Mexico, and he was Balboa's second-in-command when he discovered the Pacific Ocean. Adventure, glory and riches were ingrained on Francisco, as were the methods to achieve them. Taking a page from Cortes' book, Pizarro's entrance into Peru, and rapid conquest of the Incas, was aggressive and bold. Levy makes it clear that Orellana was cut from the same Extremaduran Spanish mold as his cousin (Extremadura was a poverty-stricken part of Spain that produced an inordinately large amount of conquistadors). He wanted glory and he wanted gold. Like all conquistadors in the New World, he had heard the whispers and rumors of the famed El Dorado. By the 1530's, the legend was burned into the consciousness of every Spaniard with an adventurous set of mind. Rumors spread wildly of a fabulously wealthy king in a fabulously wealthy land existing just over the horizon - whichever horizon one was facing, in most cases. The rumors were strong that El Dorado lay just on the eastern side of the Andes. One of Pizarro’s half-brothers, Gonzalo, the hardheaded, reactive and most violent of the clan (three Pizarro half brothers and another cousin were part of the Peruvian conquest), was pulling together an expedition to conquer new lands and find new riches. Orellana offered up supplies and troops and was rewarded by being named second-in-command to Gonzalo. Through the first horrible months of the journey, Gonzalo thoroughly played his role as conquering Pizarro - act first and ask questions later; lead with violence. Unsurprisingly, they didn't get far. Nobody knew how to hunt for food in the jungles and they only just barely knew how to survive, while making enemies of every tribe they encountered. After almost a year and barely out of sight of the mighty Andes, Gonzalo ordered Orellana to take some of his troops further into the jungle in the hopes of finding a village rumored to be friendly towards visitors and where they could find food and rest. Orellana descended the Napo River many miles and for several days without finding an appropriate place to stop en masse, and decided (at least according to his records and chroniclers) that it would be impossible to fight back up river and reconnect with Gonzalo's troops. Pizarro’s group circled around the jungle for another six months and eventually dragged back into Quito with only a fraction of his original Spanish troops, unrecognizable and barely alive. Their return home would be referred to as “the worst march ever in the Indies.” Orellana, however, continued on. Orella attempted to communicate with the native peoples with more than just sign language and violence. He had a gift for languages and he used that to his strength throughout his conquests. Orellana kept a diary of vocabulary during his early interactions with new tribes. Levy compares the style of the two cousins after Orellana's first encounter with a native village had been a peaceful one: "It is clear that his (Orellana) approach of using language and diplomacy before violence was effective...and a diametric departure from the techniques favored by his own captain, Gonzalo Pizarro, who no doubt would have already tortured and killed a good portion of the villagers." Levy points to Orellana's skill with oratory and communication and languages were a deciding factor in their early successes. Orellana's story is one of first contact...over and over and over again. Cortes' first meetings with polities and tribes across Mexico are well documented, and his first meeting with Montezuma is legend. Pizarro's first meeting with the Inca Atahaulpa is one of the most famous first contacts in world history. Orellana had first contact after first contact - all along the winding, rushing river that would ultimately be identified as the largest in the world. Some first meetings were civil and almost friendly. More than once did Orellana and his troops find welcoming arms, food and rest along their journey. Most first meetings, despite Orellana’s friendlier outlook, were violent and angry. Orellana took advantage of the enormous river highway by building two boats to ferry his troops through the jungle (an amazing feat considering their circumstances, resources and knowledge base). What eventually became known as the Amazon River was initially called the Maranon and several explorers had come across it in the early 1500s. Orellana would have known that a massive river shot from the Atlantic Ocean into the heart of the new world. Though he had no idea how far he would have to travel, Orellana, while seeking El Dorado, was aiming for the Atlantic. One of the more fascinating tales in Levy’s book is his overview of the legend of the Amazonian Women. Orellana’s troops documented a battle against a number of tall, pale skinned and pale haired women. It was a relatively brief encounter, but later Orellana learned more about these women warriors from a captive native. Levy provides more detail around the rumors and reports about these warrior women who supposedly lived in a female-only society, capturing male slaves only as needed to ensure the propagation of their kind. Modern researchers suggest that the plethora of native tales, in combination with reports from explorers lend credence to the fact that some type of female warrior tribe that was seen by Orellana’s crew. These women ultimately gave the world’s largest river its name. Orellana and his chroniclers also describe seeing “large cities glistening white as seashells” and large “roads made by hand”. They would certainly float past miles and miles of jungle, but then they would float for miles more where the shore was lined with homes, people and the clear signs of civilization. In the last two or three years, archaeologists have discovered evidence that, historically, the Amazon was far more populous than originally believed. Those scientists have found evidence of large interconnected thoroughfares that led from one population center to another. They’ve determined that natives found ways to make the nutrient poor Amazonian soil more fertile, creating what’s now called ‘terra preta’ or “Amazonian dark earth”. Orellana’s crew also pointed out this “dark earth” in their journals. It was clear early on in Orellana’s 8-month long adventure that his journey was becoming one of survival rather than conquest. He and his chroniclers, however, continued to observe and record what they saw. And after a time, Levy points out that they were "conquistadors no more." They were explorers and they were survivors. Months later, after being spit out of the Amazon into the ocean, Orellana’s two ships worked their way north until they cam across a small Spanish pearl fishing island. Levy writes: “Captain Francisco Orellana … completed one of the most remarkable, daring, and improbable journeys in the history of navigation and discovery. (His) achievement would later be called one of the world’s greatest explorations, ‘something more than a journey, and more like a miraculous event.’” 43 of his original 57-man expedition survived; the rest succumbed to disease, starvation, poisoning or death in battle. The book is richly detailed, includes copious notes, references and a robust bibliography. Even the black and white ebook version contains a well-reproduced series of drawings representative of the New World Spanish Conquest and the Amazon. The ebook’s version of Levy’s maps present terribly in the format I was using, however. This certainly would’ve helped track Orellana’s progress, specifically in regards to keeping up with the sheer number of tribes he ran into along his journey. I would encourage readers to review the “Notes on the Text and Sources” before starting the story, to gather perspective on Levy’s myriad of source material. While he includes some footnotes in each chapter, the detail of sources is presented as endnotes. It makes the reading easier, but one has to hunt a little bit if interested in the source material.