by Marie Arana
he arrived on a litter under a magnificent: The entire account is in Díaz, Discovery and Conquest, 193. Also in Cortés: Letters, 85, with some differing flourishes.
astonished by “the barbarian king’s baubles”: Cortés, Despatches, 35; Cortés: Letters, 108.
To touch the great Aztec lord: Díaz, Discovery and Conquest, 194; Cortés: Letters, 84.
hygiene-conscious Aztecs: Jacques Soustelle, Daily Life of the Aztecs (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2002), 129–31. Aztecs often bathed twice a day with copalxocotl and washed their mouths with breath fresheners. (See also Florentine Codex, bk. 11, pt. 12.) The Spaniards, on the other hand, cleaned their teeth with urine. (See Ashenburg, below.)
Sixteenth-century Europeans: Katherine Ashenburg, The Dirt on Clean (Toronto: Knopf, 2007), 39–72. Ashenburg explains that in Spain, especially, there was a general disdain for bathing, heightened by Arab rituals of cleanliness. Moreover, water was feared as a carrier of the Black Death, and, for centuries, baths were perceived as opening the pores and admitting disease.
they insisted on fumigating them with incense: Díaz, Discovery and Conquest, 10, 90, 169.
He lodged him splendidly: Ibid., 196.
“it would benefit” the king: Cortés: Letters, 88.
Cortés got word that two Spaniards had been killed: Ibid., 89–91.
He explained to his prisoner: Ibid., 92.
He insisted that he be shown the mines: Ibid.
He called for his servants to accompany: Ibid., 92–93.
Mexico’s fields were bursting with maize: Ibid., 94.
Artists produced maps: Ibid.
defer to the Spaniards as they built fortresses: Ibid., 96.
silver sheets amounting to almost a million pesos: Ibid., 100. Seven hundred thousand pesos, to be exact. Also Díaz, Discovery and Conquest, 256, 269.
would have been worth more than $20 million: Cortés wrote that what he sent King Carlos in his first shipment was worth more than 100,000 ducats. Cortés: Letters, 100. A ducat was 3.545 grams of 99.47 percent fine gold, which at market value today ($41.4 in 2016) is worth $20 million, www.goldgrambars.com, accessed April 20, 2019.
Epigraph; “They come armed with lightning”: Carlos Fuentes, El espejo enterrado (México, DF: House Grupo Editorial, 2016), 111.
The small jade stones, chalchihuites: H. W. Foshag, “Chalchihuitl, A Study in Jade,” American Minerologist 40, nos. 11/12 (December 1, 1955): 1062–1070: “Among the Aztecs, chalchihuitl was the most precious of substances. As an indication of its value, one may quote Montezuma’s words, as recorded by Bernal Díaz del Castillo (1632) upon the occasion of paying tribute to Cortés: ‘I will also give you some very valuable stones, which you will send to him in my name; they are chalchihuites and are not to be given to anyone else but only to him, your great Prince. Each is worth two loads of gold.’ ”
no one had more of it than the merchants of Venice: Frederic C. Lane, Venice: A Maritime Republic (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1973), 323.
“the total amount of gold in Europe in all forms”: Bernstein, 109.
the bullion reserves: John Day, “The Great Bullion Famine of the Fifteenth Century,” Past and Present 79 (May 1978): 3–54.
“greater Kingdoms and Dominions”: Cortés: Letters, 159.
Rebellions flared: Ibid., 97.
another fleet of Spanish ships carrying nine hundred: 880, to be exact—80 horsemen and 800 foot soldiers, Ibid., 113–27.
Even as some of Cortés’s men: Díaz, Historia verdadera de la conquista, 256.
secretly began sending gifts of gold and food: Ibid., 257.
more gold for their loyalty: Ibid., 258.
draped heavy gold chains—fanfarrones: Ibid., 257.
The retinue of Spaniards left behind: Ibid., 300–9.
butchering hundreds mercilessly: Miguel León-Portilla, The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico, 74–77; Francisco López de Gómara cites six hundred present and nearly all killed, Historia General de las Indias: Conquista de México, vol. 2 (Caracas: Fundación Biblioteca Ayacucho, 2007), 1996–98.
Those last bitter blows at the hands of his own people: This is taken from Prescott’s fusion of eyewitness testimonies: Díaz, Oviedo, Torquemada, the noble Tlaxcalan Diego Muños Camargo, the celebrated chronicler Antonio de Herrera, and so on. Prescott, Conquest of Mexico, 350–51.
newly conceived Council of the Indies: King Carlos I made his first mention of this council in 1519, although it wasn’t established until 1524.
“Cortés ordered his . . . servants”: Ibid., 313.
seizing the jade along with the solid gold bars: Díaz, Historia verdadera de la conquista, 313–14.
Narvaéz troops, newly arrived: Oviedo, 3:47.
Looking back, a Spaniard caught a glimpse: Díaz, Historia verdadera de la conquista, 314.
With four thousand Tlaxcalans: Prescott, Conquest of Mexico, 399; Díaz, Historia verdadera de la conquista, 332–33.
“This order of Cortés’s”: Díaz, Historia verdadera de la conquista, 334.
decided to change his coat of arms: R. L. Kagan, Clio and the Crown: The Politics of History in Medieval and Early Modern Spain (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 61.
This ambition, coupled with the superstition of the age: William Dalton, Cortés and Pizarro (London: Griffin, Bohn, 1852), 8.
“Under faith’s banners”: “So color de religión/Van a buscar plata y oro.” Lope de Vega, Obras de Lope de Vega, vol. 11 (Madrid: Rivadeneyra, 1900), 110.
“Santiago! Y cierra, España!”: “Saint James! And charge, Spain!” The Spanish cry upon an attack on the battlefield. Saint James was also known in Iberia as Santiago Matamoros (Saint James the Moorslayer). The battle cry “Santiago! Y cierra!” is said to have been used at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212, when the Castilians, Aragonese, and Portuguese united against the Berber Almohad rulers of southern Iberia. “España” was added later, when Castile and Aragon became Spain.
Only Napoleon I and Adolf Hitler at the heights of rule: Bernstein, 130.
CHAPTER 4: TRAIL OF THE WHITE KING
Epigraph; “Atahualpa had said there was a small mountain”: Pedro Pizarro, Relation of the Discovery, 2 vols. (New York: Cortés Society, 1921), 234.
some even related by blood: Pizarro, Cortés, and Orellana were all distant cousins. Rómulo Cúneo-Vidal, Vida del Conquistador del Perú, Don Francisco Pizarro y sus hermanos (Barcelona: Maucci, 1925).
“The men who went on these ventures”: John Hemming, The Search for El Dorado, 50.
Pizarro had studied Cortés’s strategies of conquest meticulously: H. T. Peck, W. H. Prescott, English Men of Letters (New York: Macmillan, 1905), 160–63.
“discovered, conquered, and pacified Pirú.” José Antonio Busto Duthurburu, Pizarro, 1:120–22.
The Pirú Andagoya had found: Pirú was also reported variously as “Virú” in original chronicles. Cieza de León calls him Peruquete: Cieza, The Discovery and Conquest of Peru: Chronicles of the New World Encounter, 48–49.
Pirú—the name now for all land south of Panama: Busto, Pizarro, 1:139.
the Guaraní Indians had told: According to a conquistador’s letter, even the king’s vassals were wearing crowns of silver and plates of gold. From Carta de Luis Ramírez a su padre, San Salvador, 10 July 1528, “vista la gran riqueza de la tierra, y como junto a la dicha sierra había un rey blanco que traía . . . vestidos como nosotros, se determinaron de ir allá, por ver lo que era, los cuales fueron y les embiaron cartas. Y que aún no habían llegado a las minas, más ya habían tenido plática con unos indios comarcanos a la sierra, y que traían en las cabezas unas coronas de plata y unas planchas de oro colgadas de los pescuezos y orejas, y ceñidas por cintos.” José Toribio Medina, El veneciano Sebastian Cabot (Santiago: Imprenta Universitaria, 1908), 442.
the mutinous Sack of Rome: In 1527, 34,000 soldiers of the armies of the Holy Roman Empire, unpaid and furious, mut
inied and marched against Rome, pillaging the city. Pedro de Mendoza was among them.
avid participant in the race for worldly riches: Sarah de Laredo, intro., From Panama to Peru: The Conquest of Peru by the Pizarros (London: Maggs Bros., 1925), v.
Born the illegitimate son of a lesser nobleman: Busto, Pizarro, 1:40–41.
he was a loyal warrior, valiant in battle: Oviedo, vol. 4, pt. 3, intro, 2.
flush with grain and a thriving cattle business: Rafael Varón Gabal, Pizarro and His Brothers (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1997), 17.
Pizarro merged his plantation: Busto, Pizarro, 1:124.
They formalized their pact: Francisco López de Gómara, Historia General de las Indias (1523–1548), vol. 1, pt. 1 ch. 108.
a crew of more than one hundred men: Zárate, bk. 1, ch. 1, 19; Francisco de Xerez, True Account of the Conquest of Peru (1522–48), ed. Iván R. Reyna; Antononio de Herrera y Tordesillas, The General History of the Vast Continent and Islands of America, 6 vols., trans. Captain John Stevens.
Luque, manager of their funds: According to the Sorbonne historian Bernard Lavallé, Luque was serving as a front for someone else: “Rafael Varón Gabai insiste asimismo en el hecho de que el principal financista de la operación puede muy bien haber sido en realidad el licenciado Espinosa, uno de los hombres más conocidos y más ricos de Panamá en esa época, pero cuya posición en relación a Pedrarias Dávila, de quien era alcalde mayor, lo ponía en una situación delicada. No es pues imposible que Luque, quien de todos modos participaba en la empresa, le haya servido de pantalla.” Bernard Lavallé, Francisco Pizarro (Madrid: Espasa-Calpé, 2005), 58.
the governor was not asked to contribute a penny: There is some debate on this and even the suggestion that he was paid to be a partner. For clarity on this debate see Varón, Pizarro, 17–19.
The first voyage was a rout: This account is taken from various sources. See Diego de Silva y Guzmán, Conquista de la Nueva Castilla, “La Crónica rimada” (Lima: Biblioteca Peruana, 1968); Oviedo, vol. 4, pt. 3, intro., 2; Xerez, True Account, vol. 3, 3–5; Cieza de León, Discovery and Conquest of Peru, 49–55; Raúl Porras Barrenechea, Cartas del Perú, Colección de documentos inéditos para la historia del Perú (1524–1543), vol. 3, 13–18.
no wind in their sails: Silva y Guzman, Conquista, 1:21, cited in Busto, Pizarro, 1:138.
“Ah, mister Governor!”: “A señor gobernador/ miradlo bien por entero/allá va el recogedor/y acá queda el carnicero.” Cieza de León, in Vedia, Historiadores primitivos de Indias, 2:436.
under captain Bartolomé Ruiz: Ruiz was a skilled former pilot who had sailed with Columbus.
Huayna Capac, who, at that moment: Cieza de León claims he was still alive at this point. Cieza de León, The Discovery and Conquest of Peru, 113.
“They were carrying many pieces of silver”: Raúl Porras Barrenechea, Cronistas del Perú (1528–1650) y otros ensayos (Lima: Banco de Crédito del Perú, 1986), 54–55. Quoted also in Hemming, Conquest of the Incas (1983), 25, and Wright, 64.
they wept for joy to see: Cieza de León, Crónica del Perú, vol. 16, fol. 17v.
kept his emotions in check: Ibid.
“On that side . . . is Panama”: José Antonio Busto Duthurburu, La Conquista del Perú, 26. The original Spanish has it “escoja el que fuere buen castellano lo que más bien le estuviere.”
dumped their allotment of maize on the sand: Cieza de León, vol. 16, fol. 18v.
Pizarro had six months to make his way back: Lavallé, Francisco Pizarro, 66.
a band of slaves: As Alexandra Parma Cook and David Noble Cook noted in the 1998 edition of Cieza de León’s book: “There were numerous Black slaves in Panama in the 1520s, and many participated in the Peruvian venture. A slave had saved the life of Almagro. As [James] Lockhart points out [in Men of Cajamarca], the records are remarkably silent regarding the sure participation of Blacks in the conquest.” Cieza de León, Discovery and Conquest of Peru, 111.
enough supplies, but no weapons of war: Hemming, Conquest, 27.
“the product of centuries of development”: Ibid., 27.
Epigraph; “Castrate the sun!”: From the Chilám Balám de Chumayel, quoted in León-Portilla, Reverso de la Conquista, 78.
Cortés, with his natural charisma: Cortés, Cartas y relaciones de Hernán Cortés al emperador Carlos V (Paris: Imprenta Central de los Ferro-Carriles A. Chaix y ca., 1856) 539–58; Hemming, Conquest, 28.
had not been having an easy time of it: “Me ha sido más difícil luchar contra mis compatriotas que contra los aztecas.” Julio Verne, Viajeros extraordinarios (1878) (Barcelona: Circulo Latino, 2006), 290.
mingled easily and charmed the ladies: José Luis Olaizola, Francisco Pizarro (Madrid: Planeta, 1998), available on BibliotecaOnline, 2012 digital edition, www.bibliotecaonline.net.
a formidable river of silver: The first Aztec mines Cortés’s men tapped were the ancient sites at Taxco. Because of France’s many covert attempts to seize the silver as it made its way across the Atlantic, Spain sent a fleet of ships to escort the shipments. Timothy R. Walton, The Spanish Treasure Fleets (Sarasota, FL: Pineapple Press, 1994), 44.
They saw each other at least once: Olaizola, Francisco Pizarro; Hemming, Conquest, 28.
as Egypt is from Rome: I owe these insights to Ronald Wright, in his masterful Stolen Continents.
he had no real understanding of the people: Ibid., 67.
from the southernmost part of Colombia: This was neither Colombia nor Chile at the time, of course, but I use these for ease of understanding by the contemporary reader. From here forward, I use these current geographic place markers for convenience’s sake.
“that there were about one hundred ninety”: Edmundo Guillén Guillén, La guerra de reconquista Inka (Lima: Guillén Guillén, 1994), 44.
“like a brilliantly star-studded sky”: Cristóbal de Mena, in Miguel de Estete, Noticia del Perú, quoted in Hemming, Conquest of the Incas, 36.
“I myself witnessed”: Pedro Pizarro, 36.
“Where are they?”: Hemming, Conquest, 40.
“Did you not see what just happened?”: Cieza de León, Crónica del Perú, vol. 3, ch. 44, 255; Estete, 31; Porras Barrenechea, Cartas del Perú, 120.
“Their efforts were of little avail”: Cristóbal de Mena, La conquista del Perú, llamada la Nueva Castilla, 244.
Pizarro was able to frog-march: Pedro Pizarro, 230.
“They pulled him from his litter by force”: Tito Cusi Yupanqui, A 16th-Century Account of the Conquest, 136.
In little more than two hours: Xerez, 333; Mena, 244.
He answered with a sad smile: Mena, 246; Hemming, Conquest, 46.
At least one historian has conjectured: Hemming, Conquest, 46.
“The Spaniards took all who were brave and noble”: Guaman Poma, 2:357.
an ongoing culture of rampant sexual abuse: Sara Vicuña Guengerich, “Capac Women and the Politics of Marriage in Early Colonial Peru,” Colonial Latin American Review 24, no. 2 (2015): 147–67, 147; Susan Socolow, The Women of Colonial Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 38.
“eighty thousand pesos of gold”: Hernando de Soto, in Porras Barrenechea, Cartas del Perú, 59.
Spanish squadrons rode out into the countryside: Guaman Poma, 2:369.
one large room stacked to the ceiling with gold: Xerez, 335. The room measured roughly twenty-five by eighteen feet, and eighteen feet high (an average taken from numerous chroniclers) (Hemming, Conquest, 535).
Huascar was killed soon after: Mena, 250; Estete, 35; Hemming, Conquest, 54.
By 1534, the conquistadors had wrung an estimated ten metric tons: Izumi Shimada and John Merkel, “Copper-Alloy Metallurgy in Ancient Peru,” Scientific American 265, no. 1 (July 1991): 80.
worth approximately a half billion dollars: 24K gold in January 2019: 10 tons at $1,319.51 per ounce = $384,857,127; silver on same date: 70 tons at $16.06 per ounce = $32,789,170. Total: $417,646,297. Gold and silver prices, Gold Price, accessed
January 30, 2019, http://goldprice.org/gold-price-usa.html.
With the exception of a few objects: Vilches, 135.
Epigraph; “Stone upon stone on a bedrock of rags?” (“piedra en la piedra, y en la base, harapos?”): Neruda, “Alturas de Machu Picchu,” 207 (my translation).
personal loans to the king: Varón, Pizarro, 75.
the most prosperous mogul in Mexico: Buddy Levy, Conquistador: Hernán Cortés, Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs (New York: Bantam Dell, 2008), 321. I use Mexico for ease of comprehension. Of course, it was not called Mexico but New Spain.
five times more blacks than whites: Ramiro Montoya, 111.
shoe their horses with the precious white substance: Acosta, vol. 4, ch. 4.
One conquistador whose jaw was blown off: José Antonio Busto Duthurburu, La Platería en el Perú: dos mil años de arte e historia, 68.
palaces atop their places of government: Indeed, Pizarro instructed his palace in Lima to be built on top of the residence of Taulichusco, the curaca who governed the region under the Incas. Churches were to be built atop temples. In such ways did the Spaniards signify power over the conquered.