River of Darkness Read online

  Those who remained with Pizarro had reason to believe, at least for a time, that their decision had been prudent. They sailed on, and very soon they encountered a coastline that offered open views, unimpeded by mangrove and tidal forest, of the interior. There, at a place called Tumbez, they spotted over a thousand well-made native houses, with wide and orderly streets, a port filled with boats, and thick-coated, long-necked animals that looked like giant sheep being herded about, while hundreds of curious onlookers dotted the shoreline. Francisco Pizarro had discovered the Incas.

  The eldest Pizarro brother wasted little time. He hurried back to Spain in early 1528, hoping to gain an audience with King Charles, who was soon to be Holy Roman Emperor. He managed to obtain his hearing, possibly at least partially owing to the king’s receptive frame of mind when it came to discussions of conquest—quite an achievement for an illegitimate peasant from Extremadura. Hernán Cortés had only just been at court himself, where his presentation of dancing and juggling Aztecs and his many crates full of golden treasures had garnered him the king’s favor and earned him the title of Marquis de Valle, making him one of the richest and most powerful men in the Spanish Empire.*

  The king listened attentively to Francisco Pizarro’s tales of his first two journeys to this place called Peru,† and to his proposed plan for a third expedition. Then, taking a page from Cortés, as he would do again and again over the course of his conquest, Francisco Pizarro presented the king with fine pottery and embroidered linen clothing from the region. He even paraded a few live llamas before his majesty, highlighting the value of their wool and their usefulness as beasts of burden. He described the riches he had seen in Tumbez, bringing forth shining specimens of gold and silver. All had the desired impact, and on July 6, 1529, Queen Isabella of Portugal, Holy Roman Empress,* signed the royal license, a document granting Francisco Pizarro the right of “discovery and conquest in the province of Peru—or New Castille,” as Mexico had been decreed New Spain.

  Working quickly as the head of his recently founded Company of the Levant, Francisco scurried to call in favors and raise money, then convened his brothers in Trujillo, rallying them for a long trip across the sea and the uncertainty and great potential that lay ahead. Finally, in January of 1530, the five Pizarros—Francisco, fifty-four; Hernando, twenty-nine; Juan, nineteen; Gonzalo, eighteen; and Francisco Martin,† seventeen—boarded a ship in the harbor of Seville, a ship packed with all the cannons, gunpowder, swords, crossbows, harquebuses, and horses necessary for battle and conquest in foreign lands, and set sail for Peru. Peering over the gunwale and watching his native Spain recede in the distance, young Gonzalo Pizarro could only vaguely imagine the wonders and horrors, the glories and riches, the deprivations and degradations, he would encounter during the next meteoric but star-crossed eighteen years of his life.

  THE PIZARRO BROTHERS’ infiltration of Peru was much aided by an ongoing civil war waging between the indigenous rival royal Inca brothers Atahualpa and Huascar. The kingdom of Peru the Pizarros marched across in early 1532 was a full-fledged civil war zone; they found formerly great cities like Tumbez reduced to rubble and ruin, abandoned amid the complex civil strife. Looting for riches as they went, the Pizarros cut a swath south from Tumbez toward the city of Cajamarca, where, they had learned through interpreters, Atahualpa and his large victorious army were encamped. Atahualpa, the Pizarros understood, had defeated Huascar and would now be sole lord of the Inca Empire. What they did not know was that Inca spies and runners had been reporting the Spaniards’ movements to Atahualpa since their arrival on the coast, and that the ruler was deeply intrigued by the reports and descriptions: “Some of the strangers, he was told, rode giant animals the Incas had no word for as none had ever before been seen. The men grew hair on their faces and had sticks from which issued thunder and clouds of smoke.” The Inca ruler was less frightened by these reports than curious, so he did nothing about the small band of encroaching foreigners—only waited curiously while he planned his own coronation, to see if they might arrive.

  Arrive they did. By early November 1532, Francisco Pizarro, his brothers, and his small army became the first assemblage of Europeans to ascend the Andes, climbing a well-maintained roadway to the cold plain of Cajamarca at 9,000 feet above sea level. They were on the Royal Inca Road, the two-thousand-mile network of stone paving connecting the entire Inca Empire, from Carnqui north of Quito all the way to Copiapo on the coast of what is today Chile. Hernando Pizarro had been impressed enough to utter that “such magnificent roads could be found nowhere in Christendom.”

  On November 16, 1532, Francisco Pizarro and his 167 “Men of Cajamarca”* brazenly confronted the emperor-elect of the Incas, Atahualpa, persuading him to attend a friendly meeting with the Spaniards in the Cajamarca central square. There the Spanish infantry and cavalry lay in wait, hidden inside the empty town buildings. They knew that Atahualpa’s army was enormous, with estimates of as many as eighty thousand warriors. Some of the Spaniards were so unnerved that they “made water [urinated] … out of sheer terror.” Soon Atahualpa arrived with all the ceremony attendant on an emperor: borne on a feather-bedecked and gilded litter; preceded by attendants wearing ornate headdresses, “large gold and silver disks like crowns on their heads,” who swept the ground before him; and followed by nearly six thousand troops armed only with ceremonial weaponry. At length, a Spanish Dominican friar, using an interpreter and accompanied by young Gonzalo Pizarro, spoke with Atahualpa in a historic exchange.

  Atahualpa, confident in his superior numbers and seeing so few of the foreigners before him, demanded that the Spaniards return every item they had stolen since their arrival in his realm. The friar, holding a dog-eared breviary in one hand and a cross in the other, responded by delivering—as Spanish law required him to do—the famous and insidious requerimiento, a self-justifying speech that called on native populations to accept Christ in lieu of their own gods and the Spanish king as their sovereign. Atahualpa listened, but certainly neither comprehended nor much cared about the demands these interlopers were making on someone of his prestige and power. He asked to see the breviary, leafed through it, then angrily and disdainfully tossed it to the ground. The act, interpreted by the Spaniards as a desecration of Holy Writ, was enough to incite an attack, and out flew Pizarro’s soldiers from their hiding places.

  The spectacle was overwhelming to the Incas, for here came men clad in iron chain mail and shining armor, mounted on giant four-legged animals they had never seen, firing harquebuses and cannons into the ranks of unarmed Inca troops. Explosions of smoke and fire terrified the crowd and soon the Spanish cavalry stampeded into the masses, slashing their Toledo blades with impunity and continuing to fire guns and crossbows at close range. The sounds of the explosions, the percussive bursts of smoke and flame, all were utterly foreign to the Incas, many of whom cowered on the ground or fled in terror. In just two devastating hours, Francisco Pizarro and his men had slashed and stabbed and speared and trampled their way to Atahualpa’s litter, still borne by his loyal and courageous attendants. Pizarro himself, bloodied, one hand severely wounded, wrested the Inca emperor from his noble elite and carted him away as a prisoner. As the sun set over Cajamarca that night, nearly seven thousand Incas lay slain or dying, and the balance of power in Peru now lay in the hands of Francisco Pizarro.

  Atahualpa, proud ruler of some ten million tribute-paying subjects, was shocked and devastated by his defeat and capture. Not long into his incarceration he began attempting to negotiate terms for his release. He had noticed the invaders’ fascination with objects of gold and silver. Anything made of these metals—which were much less valuable to the Incas than to the Spaniards—mesmerized Pizarro and his men. Gold was sacred to the Incas, but it was not used as a monetary currency. Atahualpa determined that his best chance to secure his own freedom and the withdrawal of the Spaniards would be to strike a bargain. He told Pizarro that in exchange for his life and freedom, he would give him as much go
ld and silver as he wanted—the equivalent of a ransom.

  The offer obviously piqued Pizarro’s interest. Really? How much, and how soon, he wondered.

  Atahualpa said that he would give a room full of gold that measured twenty-two feet long by seventeen feet wide, filled to a white line half way up its height, which, from what he said, would be over eight feet high. He [also] said that he would fill the room to this height with various pieces of gold—jars, pots, plates, and other objects and that he would fill that entire hut twice with silver, and that he would do all this within twelve months.

  Pizarro immediately agreed to the terms, though he certainly had no intention of honoring his end of the bargain. Pizarro inquired where Atahualpa might get all this treasure, and he was enthralled to learn that Atahualpa’s realm stretched a tremendous distance to the south, so far that relay runners racing night and day would take about forty days on foot to reach the end of the empire and return. The empire stretched for thousands of miles, from the top of the continent south to what is modern-day Santiago, Chile. Though he could not have known it at the time, Francisco Pizarro had indeed found a literal and figurative gold mine. He and his brothers were now in control of the greatest empire on the face of the earth.

  Atahualpa honored his part of the arrangement, and gold and silver streamed into Cajamarca from all corners of the Inca Empire. Inca guides and bearers were dispatched under Spanish guard and supervision to oversee the taking of plunder at military and civic outposts far and wide, and Hernando Pizarro went on a three-month reconnaissance expedition to learn more about these people and their vast network of roads and military complexes.

  Between December 1532 and May 1533, great llama trains bearing finery and antiquities flowed into Cajamarca: gold and silver vessels, jars and pitchers, ornate jewelry, unique sculptures, until as promised the rooms were indeed filling toward the ceilings. Eventually Francisco Pizarro had nine special furnaces built and used Indian smiths to melt these gorgeous masterpieces down so that they could be molded into ingots, officially stamped as legal and weighed, and the Royal Fifth* sequestered for the king in Spain. The initial haul was so immense that the smiths were frequently melting down six hundred pounds of gold per day.

  In June 1533, Francisco Pizarro dispatched Hernando in a ship laden with Inca riches, the greatest treasure sent back to the mother country since Cortés’s ships bearing Aztec gold more than a decade before. The Inca hoard caused a sensation wherever it landed, and at ports in Panama, Colombia, and Santo Domingo (Hispaniola), Spanish conquistadors lined the docks trying to get a look at the booty and to hear stories of the land of Peru, said to be more magnificent and wealthier than Mexico, causing a renewed gold frenzy. The governor of Panama exclaimed, “The riches and greatness of Peru increase daily to such an extent that they become almost impossible to believe … like something from a dream.”

  BY 1535 FRANCISCO PIZARRO and his partner Diego de Almagro had begun to argue about the division of the spoils and shares, mostly because Almagro himself had not been present at the rout of Cajamarca, and though he was technically a partner, he had less claim to the riches. The rift was not only over the disposition of treasure, but of lands and encomiendas as well—between the Pizarro and Almagro faithful. Encomiendas were royal grants that made captured or subsumed native inhabitants the propertied workforce of a landowner. While these natives were not technically slaves, in reality that is exactly what they were, and many conquistadors were paid not in hard currency but rather by being made encomenderos, an added incentive to remain and inhabit the country, with the conquered indigenous people forced to work their land as well as to pay taxes to the Spaniards in the form of goods and services.* Soon allegiances were formed—one was either aligned with the Pizarros or with Almagro and his “Chile Faction,” so called because Almagro had agreed in principle to a division of the empire to the south, toward an area called Chile rumored to possess great wealth. The schism between the two factions eventually erupted into an all-out civil war between the Spaniards attempting to control the Inca Empire.

  Francisco Orellana, as a loyal relative, was of course on the side of the Pizarros. He had built himself a house in Puerto Viejo, which lies just north of present-day Guayaquil, Ecuador. Orellana’s house soon became a waypoint for Spaniards flocking to Peru from Spain and Panama, many drawn by the rumors of the treasure ships and the miraculous wealth of the Incas. It was also a sanctuary for members of the Pizarro faction in the ongoing civil strife, as well as for the resistance insurgencies being waged by Inca holdouts and guerrilla forces unwilling to yield to Spanish rule. While at this house on the coast, Orellana learned that the cities of Lima and Cuzco, which were then the two most important municipalities and Spanish command posts, were under siege by Inca factions. The cities were commanded by Francisco and Hernando Pizarro respectively, and Orellana felt duty-bound to race to their aid as quickly as possible. Using his own money to finance an army, he bought a dozen horses—a significant expense—and rallied a force of eighty men, providing the best riders with the horses to form a cavalry, and set out for Lima. The two rescue missions were successful, and Orellana reported later with some modesty that he returned home “having left the said cities freed from siege.”

  Orellana next played a role in the noted battle of Las Salinas, the violent culmination of the struggle for power and Inca spoils. On April 26, 1538, in a marshy plain a few miles west of Cuzco, the two rival Spanish factions faced each other in a decisive battle. Orellana, having been made ensign-general of seven hundred infantry and cavalry, helped the Pizarros achieve a crucial rout, during which 120 of Almagro’s men were killed, while the Pizarro troops suffered only nine casualties. Almagro managed to escape on the back of a stray burro, and he made a valiant last stand, but eventually he was overtaken, imprisoned, and then, on the orders of Hernando Pizarro, garroted for acts of treason. It was an inglorious end for the sixty-three-year-old conquistador and former partner, a man who had helped win Peru for the Pizarros. But now that he was out of the way, the Pizarros set about dividing the land among themselves and bestowing titles on those favored supporters, authorizing them to carry out new discoveries in the many unexplored regions of Peru.

  For his efforts, Francisco Orellana received from Francisco Pizarro a grant to survey the province known as La Culata, under special commission to settle a city there. The region was well defended by the native inhabitants, and a previous group of Spanish captains had ventured unsuccessfully there. They had been driven back by hostile Indians, and a number of Spaniards were killed. Orellana embarked, as he would say later in a letter of petition to his king recounting his exploits and services, “with the aid of men whom I took along … at my own expense and on my own initiative, and at the cost of many hardships on the part of myself and of those who went along with me.” Heading north of Lima, they encountered swamps and flood-swollen rivers that were dangerous to ford. Horses and men foundered in the boggy marshes, and all the while, Indians attacked them. Orellana’s leadership and tenacity prevailed, however, and soon he had harnessed “the said province under the yoke of Spain” and “established and founded … the City of Santiago [de Guayaquil].” Orellana stressed to his sovereign the importance of the city’s location and terrain, “a spot so fertile and so rich,” he said, and also perfectly situated between Quito and the sea. Here in La Culata, the intelligent Orellana began to develop an interest in the native languages, learning a few regional dialects during his time settling the area.

  Francisco Pizarro, El Gobernador, was pleased with developments as he surveyed his new realm and its domains. He decided to further reward Orellana for his valiant efforts, sending him “procurations and appointments, making him lieutenant-governor” of both Puerto Viejo and the newly founded Guayaquil. Francisco Orellana, just thirty years old, had been in the right place at the right time, and he had fulfilled his duties as a leader, a soldier, and a scout. There seemed no limit to what he might yet accomplish.

>   He did not have to wait long. Soon an opportunity presented itself, an expedition that would test every fiber of his resourcefulness, his leadership, and his courage, an endeavor of danger and discovery that stood to redefine the European understanding of the New World.

  * Christopher Columbus discovered the coasts of Panama and Honduras on his final (fourth) voyage, 1502–1504.

  * A more accurate term might be “half brothers,” considering that a number of them had different mothers. Their father, Captain Gonzalo Pizarro, fathered at least eleven children with different mothers, and of these, five were sons. Of the sons, only Hernando was legitimate. All of the sons—Francisco, Hernando, Juan, Francisco Martín, and Gonzalo—are associated with the conquest of Peru. The eldest, Francisco, leader and instigator of the capture and overthrow of the Inca ruler Atahualpa, ironically is the only one not acknowledged in his father’s will.

  * Also on this ship, incredibly, was eighteen-year-old Spaniard Bartolomé de Las Casas. Las Casas would later become a priest and the most ardent defender of indigenous rights the native people of the New World would ever know. Las Casas’s influence on King Charles V of Spain would eventually bear directly on the life of Gonzalo Pizarro and on the historical outcome of Peru.

  † The two men were Diego de Almagro and Hernando de Luque. Almagro would later figure significantly in the history of Peru and the destinies of the Pizarro brothers.

  * Cortés had been dispatching treasure ships back to the king from mainland Mexico since 1519.

  † Spanish mispronunciation of “Biru.”

  * Queen Isabella, Holy Roman Empress, also known as Isabella of Portugal. She married Charles V in 1526, and served as competent regent for him during his long absences, notably during the years 1529–32 and 1535–39. She is sometimes confused with Queen Isabella of Spain, who preceded her but died in 1504.