Peruvian Traditions
Page 17
Contradicting this, Zárate and other chroniclers say that Pizarro knew how to write two signatures, and that between the two, his secretary set down these words: El Marqués Francisco de Pizarro.
The documents of Pizarro’s that I have seen in the Lima Biblioteca, in the manuscript section, all have the two signatures. Some are signed Franxo. de Piçarro, and only a few El marqués. In the National Archives and in those of the town hall there are also several of these autograph signatures.
Putting an end to the question of whether Pizarro did or did not know how to sign his name, I opt for the latter, and here is the most telling reason that I have for so doing:
In the Archivo General de Indias, housed in what was the Casa de Contratación3 in Seville, there are several letters in which, as in the documents we possess in Lima, it can be seen even by the amateur paleographer that the signature is at times written by the same hand as the body of the document written by the scribe or amanuensis. “But if there were any doubt remaining,” a distinguished Buenos Aires writer, don Vicente Quesada, who visited the Archivo de Indias in 1874, affirms, “I have seen in a report, in which Pizarro makes a statement as a witness, that the notary certifies that, after the statement was drawn up, Pizarro signed it with his usual signs, while in other declarations the notary certifies that the witnesses are affixing their signatures to them before him.”
II
Don Francisco Pizarro was neither the marquis of Los Atavillos nor the marquis of Los Charcas, as a great many writers have variously called him. There is not a single document whereby it can be proved that he held these titles, nor did Pizarro himself ever use in the heading of orders and decrees any other title than: El marqués.
In support of our belief, we shall cite Gonzalo Pizarro’s words when, as a prisoner of La Gasca, the latter rebuked him for his rebelliousness and ingratitude toward the king, who had so greatly rewarded and honored him. “The favor that His Majesty bestowed on my brother was only the title and name of marquis, without giving him any estate, and if not tell me what it is.”
The escutcheon and heraldic arms of Marquis Pizarro were these: shield, manteled: in the upper part, in gold, black eagle, columns, and water; and on a gules field, gold castle, orle of eight wolves, in gold; in the second part, mantled in red, castle of gold with a crown; and on a silver field, red lion with an F, and below, on a silver field, red lion; in the lower part, a silver field, eleven heads of Indians, that of the middle crowned; orle with chains and eight griffins, in gold; on seal, coronet of marquis.
A letter written by Charles V to Pizarro, dated October 10, 1537, states the following, which will substantiate our assertion: “Meanwhile you will call yourself marquis, as I here write it, for, inasmuch as the name of the land that will be given you as your share is not known, the aforementioned title is not being sent now.” And since until the arrival of Vaca de Castro the crown had not determined what lands and vassals would constitute the marquisate, it is clear that don Francisco was a marquis in name only, or a marquis without a marquisate, as his brother Gonzalo said.
It is a known fact that by doña Angelina Pizarro he had a son who was baptized with the name of Francisco and died before he reached the age of 15. By doña Inés Huaylas or Yupanqui, the daughter of Manco–Capac, he had a daughter, doña Francisca, who married her uncle Hernando, and in a second marriage don Pedro Arias.
By royal warrant, and without his having contracted marriage to doña Angelina or doña Inés, Pizarro’s children were declared to be legitimate. If Pizarro had had the title of marquis of Los Atavillos, they would have been his heirs. It was almost a century later, in 1628, that don Juan Fernando Pizarro, the grandson of doña Francisca, obtained from the king the title of Marquis of the Conquest.
Piferrer, in his Nobiliario español,4 states that according to genealogists the lineage of the Pizarros was illustrious and went far back; that men with that name distinguished themselves with Pelayo’s forces at Covadonga;5 and that his descendants then settled in Aragon, Navarre, and Extremadura. And he concludes, writing for publication, that the arms of the Pizarros are: “gold shield and a pine with gold pine cones, two wolves rampant and two slates6at the foot of the trunk.” There is no one like a genealogist when it comes to lineages and family trees. Only a fool would believe such liars!
III
There is also an error concerning Pizarro’s standard that I propose to dispel.
When the Independence of Peru was declared in 1821, the town council of Lima sent Generalísimo José de San Martín7 official notice to the effect that the city was making him a gift of Pizarro’s standard. Shortly before his death in Bologna, this leader of the South American revolution made a will, with a clause returning to Lima the standard offered him as a gift. In fact, the executors of his estate formally presented the precious relic to our representative in Paris, who took care to send it to the government of Peru in a box appropriately fitted out. This was in the days of the temporary administration of General Pezet, and at that time we had the opportunity to see the classic standard on view in one of the reception rooms of the Ministry of Foreign Relations. On the fall of this government, on November 6, 1865, the mob sacked several of the offices in the presidential palace, and the standard disappeared, after having been perhaps torn to shreds by some rabid demagogue who imagined that he saw in it the proof of the calumnies that the spirit of partisanship invented at the time in order to overthrow President Pezet, the victor on the battlefields of Junín and Ayacucho, whom his enemies accused of criminal connivance with Spain, aimed at subjecting the country once again to the yoke of what had been the mother country.
Mobs do not reason or discuss, and the more absurd the matter may be the more easily it is accepted.
The standard that we saw had not the armorial bearings of Spain but those that Charles V accorded the city by royal warrant on December 7, 1537. The bearings of Lima were: a shield on an azure field with three royal crowns in a triangle, and above them a gold star, points touching the crowns. As an orle, in a red field, was the motto in gold letters: Hoc signum vere regum est.8As a seal and device were two black eagles with a crown of gold, a J and a K (the initials of Karolus and Juana, the sovereigns) and above these letters a gold star. This flag was the one that the royal standard–bearer, by the law of inheritance, carried on January 5 in the processions of Corpus and Saint Rose, along with a proclamation of the sovereign and other acts of equal solemnity.
The people of Lima persisted in wrongly calling this standard Pizarro’s flag, and accepted without question that this was the war pennon that the Spaniards carried for the conquest. And as it persisted without being refuted from generation to generation, the error became traditional and historical.
Let us now take up the matter of Pizarro’s real standard.
After the execution of Atahualpa, don Francisco made his way to Cuzco, and we believe that it was on November 16, 1533, that he made his triumphal entry into the illustrious capital of the Incas.
The banner that on this occasion was carried by his standard–bearer Jerónimo de Aliaga was what churchmen call a gonfalon. On one of its sides, of scarlet damask, the armorial bearings of Charles V were embroidered; and on the other side, which was white according to some, or yellow according to others, Saint James the apostle was depicted in the attitude of a warrior, on a white horse, with a shield, cuirass, and a helmet with a panache or crest, displaying a red cross on his chest and a sword in his right hand.
When Pizarro left Cuzco (proceeding to the Jauja valley and the founding of the city of Lima) he did not do so in order to wage war and left his battle standard or gonfalon in the Temple of the Sun, already converted into a Christian cathedral. During the civil war between the conquistadors, neither the Almagrists, nor the Gonzalists, nor the Gironists, nor the Royalists dared take it into combat, and it remained as a sacred object on one of the altars. There, in 1825, after the battle of Ayacucho, General Sucre found it;9he sent it to Bogotá, and the g
overnment immediately sent it to Bolívar, who gave it as a gift to the city of Caracas, where it is preserved today. We do not know whether three centuries and a half are enough to have reduced this martial emblem of the conquest to tatters.
1Atahualpa was garrotted, not decapitated. The belief that Atahualpa was decapitated is common in some Andean communities.—Ed.
2Diego de Almagro (1480–1538), conquistador and rival of Francisco Pizarro for the control of Peru. Defeated at the Battle of Salinas, he was garrotted by order of Pizarro. For what happened afterwards, see “The Knights of the Cape.”—Ed.
3The chamber of commerce set up in Seville by Ferdinand V and Isabel II.
4Nobiliario de los reinos y señoríos de España (1857–1860) by Francisco Piferrer (1813–1863).—Ed.
5Pelayo was an eighth–century ruler from the Spanish state of Asturias who achieved fame in the early Christian resistance to the Moors.—Ed.
6In Spanish, pizarras.
7José de San Martín (1778–1850), Argentinian soldier who led the liberation of Chile and Perú, also known as “The Protector.” After meeting with Bolívar in 1822, San Martín withdrew from the theater of war.—Ed.
8Truly, this is the sign of the kingdom [Latin].
9Antonio José de Sucre Alcalá (1795–1830), one of Bolívar’s most trusted and celebrated lieutenants, who led patriot forces to victory at the Battle of Ayacucho in 1824, sealing Latin American independence.—Ed.
The Scapegoat1
I
The Inca Titu–Atauchi, the brother of Atahualpa, was on his way to Cajamarca with a large retinue of Indians loaded down with gold and silver to add to the treasure for their sovereign’s ransom when he received the news that on August 29, 1533, the Spaniards had put Atahualpa to death. Titu–Atauchi hid the riches that he was bringing, and gathering warriors together, he went to join forces with Quizquiz, the bravest and most experienced of the generals of the Inca empire who was the head of an army harassing the conquistadors.
The latter had begun their march on Cuzco, doing battle each day against Quizquiz’s troops. Fifty Spaniards, led by Francisco de Chaves, covered Pizarro’s rear guard, and one afternoon, held up by a storm, they set up camp five leagues away from the main body of their comrades. Suddenly they found themselves under attack by six thousand Indians. The Spaniards fought with their usual bravery, but because they did not act in concert and were pursued by an enemy that outnumbered them, they were forced to flee, with disastrous results, leaving behind seven dead and thirteen prisoners.
Among the latter were the gallant captain Francisco de Chaves, the man who died defending Pizarro on the day of the conspiracy of the Almagrists, Alonso de Ojeda, another valiant warrior who went mad a year later, and Hernando de Haro, no less notable for his courage and chivalry.
History says that in the mockery of a trial, set up to condemn Atahualpa to death, which began and ended in a single day, the Inca had many who pleaded for his life, and it is the unanimous opinion that if the illustrious Hernando de Soto had been present in Cajamarca, the conquest would not have borne the stain of this crime, as iniquitous as it was useless. Of the 24 judges of Atahualpa, only 13 sentenced him to death. The 11 who refused to sign the death sentence deserve that we note their names, in homage to their upright conduct. Their names were Juan de Rada (who later was the leader of the Almagrists who murdered Pizarro), Diego de Mora, Blas de Atienza, Francisco de Chaves, Pedro de Mendoza, Hernando de Haro, Francisco de Fuentes, Diego de Chaves, Francisco Moscoso, Alfonso Dávila, and Pedro de Ayala. As the proverb has it, there was everything on the vine: wine grapes, vine leaves, and verjuice grapes.
Titu–Atauchi knew not only the names of those who had authorized the death of the Inca, but also those who, like Juan de Rada, had defended him, thereby risking falling into disgrace with Pizarro. Francisco de Chaves and Hernando de Haro were among this number.
Titu–Atauchi had sworn to take vengeance for the blood of his brother on the first of his executioners who had taken him prisoner. Moreover, he had offered great rewards to anyone who handed over to him the person of Felipillo, the traitorous Indian who served the Spaniards as interpreter, and who, to avenge himself for the contempt shown him by one of the wives of Atahualpa, used bits of gossip he had gathered to exert his influence with the principal conquistadors to have the Inca condemned. But even though Titu–Atauchi did not have the joy of taking his vengeance, don Diego de Almagro took it upon himself to condemn Felipillo to death and ordered him quartered for another act of treason in which he had caught him. Titu–Atauchi found out the names of the prisoners, spoke warmly with the most notable of them, had the wounded among them carefully cared for, and when they were out of danger, had the nobility to set them free, giving them an escort of Indians who took them, on their shoulders, to the environs of Cuzco. In addition he gave precious emeralds to those captains who had been opposed to the execution of Atahualpa, thus giving them a proof of his gratitude for their honorable but fruitless efforts in favor of the monarch.
As they bade the young Inca farewell, Francisco de Chaves noted that one of the 13 prisoners was missing. Titu–Atauchi gave a sardonic smile, and they say that he answered with a phrase in Quechua that, though the translation of it may not be literal, at least embodies the idea:
“Ah! The one that is left is going to be the scapegoat!” And then there are those who claim that 13 isn’t a number that brings misfortune!
II
Titu–Atauchi betook himself to Cajamarca, and shut the prisoner up in the same room that Atahualpa had occupied during his captivity.
Who was that Spaniard chosen to be the scapegoat? Why would the Inca, who had shown himself to be so generous toward the vanquished, wish to display such cruelty toward this man?
Sancho de Cuéllar had the misfortune to spend his early years as the amanuensis of a notary in Spain, and we say misfortune because this circumstance was enough to cause his companions, taking him to be clever at using the jargon of the courtroom, to name him court clerk for Atahualpa’s trial.
Sancho de Cuéllar was a favorite, and deservedly so, of don Francisco Pizarro. He was one of the 13 famous companions of Pizarro’s on the island of El Gallo, to whose heroism the success of the conquest was owed.2
Again the fateful 13!
Sancho de Cuéllar acted craftily as a court clerk during the trial, for he not only set down words that worsened the sad position of the captive Inca, but on notifying him of the sentence and accompanying him to the jail, treated him with disrespect and mocked him.
Titu–Atauchi had him brought to the same site where Atahualpa had met his death, accompanied by a crier who proclaimed: “Pachacamac3 orders this tyrant killed because he killed the Inca Atahualpa.”
The Indians had kept the garrote that served for the execution of their monarch, giving it the name of “the accursed pole.” They used it to kill Sancho de Cuéllar, whose corpse remained in the square for an entire day, where the crowd desecrated it.
This may well be the only time in the history of humanity that a clerk of the court has paid the court costs and served as a scapegoat.
1Spanish: “el que pagó el pato.” Literally, the one who paid for the duck. According to Umphrey the expression comes, perhaps, from an old custom of having a duck killed at a wedding; the one who is left to pay the bill is, therefore, “el pato de la boda,”7.
2In 1527, Francisco Pizarro and his men found themselves stranded on the island of El Gallo. When the desperate men were rescued, and offered the option of returning to Panama, Pizarro exhorted them to follow him to Peru. Only 13 agreed.—Ed.
3Pachacamac is both a powerful Inca deity as well as a famous shrine built in his honor.—Ed.
Friars’ Work!
U ntil a little more than twenty years ago, two wooden crosses set into a wall could be seen in the Plaza Mayor of Lima. One of them was above the arch of the gate leading to the callejón de Petateros. Opposite it were the scaffold and the post for vi
ctims’ heads. It is thus our Christian supposition that the object of the aforementioned cross was to console those condemned to death with the sight in the last moments of the emblem of our redemption.1
The other cross was located where Palacio and Correo Streets meet, and below the balconies of the house of Nicolás de Ribera the Elder, the first mayor and member of the town council after Pizarro founded the city. When and why was that cross placed there?
Here, kind reader, is what I have discovered thanks to extensive historical research.
I
After the battle of Iñaquito, in which the first viceroy of Peru came to such a disastrous end,2don Hernando Vela Núñez, the brother of that ill–starred governor, fell prisoner in the port of San Buenaventura.
The wrath of the victor had somewhat abated, and when the prisoner was brought to Lima and taken before His Most Magnificent Lordship don Gonzalo Pizarro, the latter asked him:
“Does Your Grace pledge and promise, according to the practice and custom of the knights of Castile in bygone days, to remain under arrest in the house of Hernando Montenegro, not to leave it except to hear Mass on the days of obligation, not to quarrel or cause trouble over past matters of government, and not to encourage disturbances or discord?”
Let us agree that this was a great deal to ask, but General Vela Núñez, who was not very sure of keeping his head on his shoulders, knelt before a crucifix, and holding out his right hand, replied:
“Yes, I promise and pledge to do what is asked.”
And so months went by without his failing to keep his promise for one moment.
There finally came news that La Gasca, the king’s envoy, had arrived in Panama with full powers of the monarch to bring into line the troublemakers of these realms. At that point Vela Núñez decided not to take up arms against Gonzalo, but to get around the latter’s vigilance and escape to Spain, for the general had wearied of adventures, dangers, and disappointments. The caretaker of the monastery of San Francisco took it upon himself to make the arrangements for Vela Núñez’s escape, and very cautiously hired the skipper of a brigantine, anchored for the moment in Callao and about to sail to Nicaragua.