The Golden Empire: Spain, Charles V, and the Creation of America

by Hugh Thomas

  Francisco Pizarro continued to walk about Lima, the new city that he had created in Peru, near the sea. The Almagrists continued with their complaints and plots, though it had been his brother Hernando, not Francisco, who had executed the elder Almagro. Manco Capac lived on in secrecy in Vilcabamba. Gonzalo Pizarro led an attempt to destroy that Indian claimant. Pizarro was told by the mayor of Lima, Dr. Velázquez, that “those of Chile”—that is, the friends of Almagro—had determined to attack “the Marquess” (as the governor was now known) at Mass on Sunday, June 26, 1541. These Almagrists seemed in a majority. They sensed Pizarro’s alarm. Emerging from the house of Diego de Almagro hijo, a mestizo son of Almagro, they shouted ferocious declarations: “Down with the traitor and the tyrant who has killed the judge whom the Emperor has sent to punish him.”12 Actually, no such official had yet arrived. Nor had the young Almagro taken much interest up till then in avenging his father. He was the son of Almagro by a Panamanian Indian girl. Pizarro consulted his friends Francisco de Chaves and Juan Blázquez, the deputy governor. The latter said, “Have no fear, while I have in my hand this staff, none will dare to attack you.” The three concocted a plan. Pizarro would pretend that he was ill. So he would not go to Mass. Then, in the afternoon, he would order his cavalry to seize the young Diego Almagro and some of his friends.13

  When the hour of Mass came, the Almagrists assembled to kill Pizarro on his way to church. When he did not appear, they dispatched a Basque priest to Pizarro’s house to see what had happened.14 Pizarro invited the priest in and asked him to celebrate Mass. He heard Mass with Dr. Velázquez, the mayor; Francisco de Chaves, his deputy; and Francisco Martín de Alcántara, his half brother, who was usually in attendance on him. Hearing a tumult in the square, Pizarro asked his captain, Chaves, to go and see what was going on. Chaves, ill prepared, went outside to ask the crowd’s intentions. Forty men appeared at Pizarro’s door, including men who had been looked on as “those of Chile.” The Indian servants fled. So did Dr. Velázquez. Pizarro had no armor, just a sword and a shield. He, his half brother, and two pages defended the door as best they could, but Martín de Alcántara, Chaves, and the pages were soon killed. Pizarro was left alone. He was surrounded and struck in the throat. He apparently made the sign of the cross with his thumb and index finger, and died kissing the hand that had made the sign.15 He was about sixty-five.

  Juan de Rada (Juan Herrada), the most prominent enemy of Pizarro, inspired the young Almagro to mount a horse and ride round Lima to say that there was no other governor of that city than he. The houses of Pizarro and his staff—including the feared secretary, Antonio Picado, and his half brother—were sacked. Picado was soon apprehended and also killed after horrible tortures. A friend of Pizarro, Juan de Barbarán of Trujillo, and his wife, with some black slaves, were brave enough to haul Pizarro’s body to the church, which the dead governor had built, and buried him, with Diego de Almagro’s permission. Barbarán also made it his business to look after Pizarro’s children and he disposed of many of his possessions. “The Chileans” went into the square and shouted that Diego de Almagro hijo, aged twenty-one, was now King of Peru. That mestizo had himself sworn in more modestly as the governor, and named Rada as his captain-general. Various others assumed perilously fragile posts as judges or captains. But there were still “monarchists,” and they soon rallied, their captain-general being Pedro Álvarez de Holguín, with Alonso de Alvarado, Garcilaso de la Vega, and Pedro Ansúnez as the main captains. A new civil war was now certain.

  Pizarro died rich. He had allocated to himself thirty thousand Indians in his numerous encomiendas, and he had about four hundred staff—Spaniards—working for him. In Peru, Pizarro’s special interest was his encomiendas in the valley of Yucay, which included the Ceja de Selva, where coca was grown. It had been reserved for the personal use of the Inca rulers. Hernando and Gonzalo Pizarro held encomiendas in the neighboring valley of Tampu.16 He also had encomiendas at Chuquiago, Puna, Huaylas (very good agricultural land), Chimú, Conchucos, Lima, and Chuquitanas. Pizarro had mines at Porco with a partner, García de Salcedo, who became the companion of his daughter Francisca. He also had a mine at El Collao. Pizarro, when he died, had a large staff of criados, a word applied to people performing many subordinate activities but meaning essentially “servants.”17 Most of them were from Extremadura, and the part played in his life by men from Trujillo was always notable. Bishop Berlanga, who was known for introducing the banana to the colony of Santo Domingo, had commented: “It is publicly said that Your Lordship and your brothers and officials have as many Indians as His Majesty and all the other Spanish conquistadors.”18 They could not hold them very easily, however.

  26

  Vaca de Castro in Peru

  Mrs. Pipchin had a way of falling foul of all meek people; and her friends said who could wonder at it, after the Peruvian mines!

  CHARLES DICKENS, Dombey and Son, 1846

  Peru was much too rich to be left with no governor. So, within months of the murder of the Marquess, a name was put forward in the Council of the Indies to take his place. It was not that of Hernando Pizarro, as would have seemed logical, given his prominence in the conquest: Hernando was in prison in Medina del Campo. Nor was it the name of Gonzalo Pizarro, who, as governor in Quito, was in Amazonia seeking cinnamon and was passed over, though he was Francisco’s legal heir. The name suggested as a temporary governor was Cristóbal Vaca de Castro, a Leonés who had been a judge at Valladolid.

  Cobos and García de Loaisa had earlier recommended Vaca to act as governor of Peru alongside Pizarro, and though no one had worked out what that might mean in practice, he was already on his way, to Quito if not to Lima. The assumption was that, sooner or later, a viceroy would be named, as had occurred in Mexico, and when that happened, Vaca de Castro would step aside in an honorable fashion.

  Vaca asked three men to act for him till he reached Peru. These were a Dominican, Fray Tomás de San Martín; Jerónimo de Aliaga, an educated disciple of Pizarro; and Francisco de Barrionuevo. The first was the provincial, or leader, of the Dominican order in Peru and a humane and warm-hearted individual who would later play a decisive part in the creation of the National University of San Marcos in Lima. Aliaga, from Segovia, had been recently inspector of the treasure seized in Cuzco. Finally, Barrionuevo was a remarkable conquistador who had been in Florida with Ponce de León, in Cubagua looking for pearls, and in Santo Domingo charged with defeating the rebellion of the Indians led by Enriquillo. He and his nephew Pedro had built the first stone house on the pearl island, Cubagua. He had also been in Tierra Firme (Venezuela), which he used as a base to become a merchant in Peru. Barrionuevo entered into a commercial agreement with one of the largest entrepreneurs, Antonio de Ribera, a magistrate also, and with him shared the profits of a mine.1 He owned a good sugar mill in Puerto Plata, on the north coast of Santo Domingo. Concerned in a broad sweep of Spanish imperial adventures, he was rightly called “one of the most fascinating men in the history of America” by the German historian Enrique Otte.2

  The letter from Vaca de Castro explaining the designation of Fray Tomás, Aliaga, and Barrionuevo was received by the first-named in the new Dominican convent in Lima, a makeshift building at that time but already on the magnificent site that would make the completed building a triumph of colonial architecture.3 The land had been given to the Dominicans by Francisco Pizarro. The city council of Lima welcomed the arrangements with alacrity but then apparently abandoned the city, for Diego de Almagro hijo was suspected of wanting to burn down the whole settlement. When Vaca arrived and began to wear the appropriate robes of an acting governor, many fair-weather friends and allies of the young Almagro deserted him.

  Some of “the Chileans,” survivors of Almagro’s journey to Chile, suggested that they or Almagro should kill the remaining Pizarrists whom they had as prisoners in their power. These included Pedro Pizarro the chronicler. A recently arrived licenciado, Rodrigo Niño, advised against such actions, and i
nstead, the people concerned were imprisoned on a boat in the port of Arequipa, under the captaincy of Pedro Gómez. Gómez had, however, his price. The Pizarrists found that it was 500 ducats, with which they bought their freedom.4

  Vaca de Castro went to Quito, then to Trujillo. Pizarrists and ex-Almagrists both crowded his drawing room. Soon an army sprang up at his disposal. The commander would be Gómez de Tordoya of Badajoz. He had been a friend of the Marquess and had been hunting when he died. When the news came of Pizarro’s death, he said: “Now is the time for war, smoke and blood, not for the hunting and pastimes.”5 This was, however, still a time when wars often seemed to be hunting carried on by other means.

  Vaca reached Lima, where he named Barrionuevo his chief lieutenant, and Juan Vélez de Guevara, a lawyer from Jerez de la Frontera, became captain of his increasingly important arquebusiers. They awaited the arrival of Almagro hijo in trepidation, for his force was large. They need not have worried, since he was still in Cuzco, and his two chief lieutenants, García de Alvarado and Cristóbal Sotelo, had fallen out so badly that the former killed the latter in the main square of the city.

  None of these brawling conquistadors had been colleagues of the Pizarros in the great battles of the early days: They were new men with less than five years’ experience in the country. García de Alvarado, for example, had come down to Peru with his kinsman Pedro de Alvarado in 1535. Now, to save himself, he decided to kill Almagro hijo, his putative commander, and invited him to a banquet. Young Almagro accepted; then, at the last minute, suspecting the worst, declined, saying that he was ill. Alvarado went to taunt Almagro, and persuaded him apparently to change his mind. As they left for Alvarado’s lodging, Alvarado said to him, “You are under arrest.” Almagro, however, remarked, “But you are not under arrest but dead,” and he killed Alvarado there and then.6 Almagro with his 250 horsemen set off against Vaca de Castro, whose numbers were three times that.

  They met in June 1542 at Huamanga, in some fields called Chupas. Before the armies fought, Vaca de Castro, usually prudent, sent two of his men, Diego Mercado and Francisco de Idiáquez, to offer terms. They would include a general pardon. The intrepid Almagro said that he would accept the terms, provided the pardon included all his followers and that he, Diego de Almagro, would be named governor of a new kingdom of “New Toledo”—that is, Chile—as well as being given ownership of its gold mines. Vaca, who knew that many of Almagro’s men were unenthusiastic about the idea of a battle, also sent Alonso García to offer terms privately to many captains. Though he was disguised, García was unmasked by Diego, who had him hanged. Diego then prepared for battle. Vaca, proclaiming a list of Almagro’s crimes, did the same. It was one more tragic event in the tragic early history of Peru.7

  Almagro had with him Pedro Suárez, who had fought in Italy. He told Almagro that he could win any battle now simply by using artillery—which, in his case, may have been so, since his guns were controlled by Pizarro’s onetime artillery king, Pedro de Candía, who had made an astonishing series of changes of front in the preceding years.8 But Candía had by now betrayed yet another leader and aimed his guns high so as deliberately to cause no damage. Almagro realized what was going on and had him executed as a traitor. Pedro Pizarro says that the real battle did not begin till darkness. He adds that the royalist infantry sang a song of victory amid the confusion, and by this the cavalry of Almagro was disheartened.9

  Pedro Suárez reported that he told the young Almagro, “My Lord, if your Lordship had followed my advice, we should have won a victory today. But you took other counsel and so we shall lose. I do not want myself to be on the losing side so that, since your Lordship won’t let me win on my terms, I’ll do so on the other.” With that, he cantered over to join Vaca de Castro. There were other such actions in this battle. Almagro’s arquebuses, however, continued to do much damage, killing several important royalists.

  The fighting continued into the night, till Almagro hijo admitted defeat and rode back disconsolate into Cuzco, where he was shortly detained by Rodrigo de Salazar, who had once been his deputy, and Antón Ruiz de Guevara, whom he himself had named a magistrate. Next day, Vaca arrived in Cuzco, where he had Almagro hijo beheaded in the same place that his father had died. Like his father, he was buried in the Mercedarian church. Some Almagrists, however (Diego Méndez, for example), escaped into the forest, where they were welcomed by Manco Capac.

  This victory inaugurated some years of relative serenity in Peru. Vaca de Castro governed with rectitude. He divided those Indians who had no masters among those royal subjects who had no Indians but had done well on his behalf in the war. Vaca’s laws were generally received with favor by the Indians, who admitted that they were comparable to those of their Indian monarchs in the past.10 There were, of course, Spanish complainers, such as Hernando Mogollón, who received no Indians but had done well: Vaca agreed with his self-appraisal and gave him an encomienda. Vaca also sent deserving captains to remote places to win new conquests: Vergara to Pacamura; Diego de Rojas, Nicolás de Heredia, and Felipe Gutiérrez to Musu; Vélez de Guzmán to Muyupamba; and Gonzalo de Monroy to help Valdivia in Chile. But though Vaca at last seemed to have found a peaceful settlement, there were still many tragedies ahead.

  For a time, however, the surviving members of the Pizarro family were not engaged in these battles, since the putative leader, Gonzalo, was physically far away from the center of power.

  27

  Gonzalo Pizarro and Orellana Seek

  Cinnamon and Find the Amazon

  You shall understand, Sancho, that Spaniards and those who embark themselves at Cádiz to go to the Indies, one of the greatest signs they have to know whether they have passed the equinoctial, is that all men that are on the ship, their lice die on them …

  MIGUEL DE CERVANTES, Don Quixote

  In late 1540, Francisco Pizarro had named his younger brother, the charming and valiant Gonzalo, governor of Quito. He had also given Gonzalo an encomienda, which included the Cañari people, Spain’s best friends among the indigenous population. This gave Gonzalo control of the north of the old Inca empire. Atahualpa had had his supporters there. Gonzalo behaved curiously, however, in his new position. He took up his office formally on December 1, 1540, but immediately devoted himself to arranging an expedition whose aim was the search for cinnamon on the eastern side of the great Andes.

  He left Quito in February 1541 with nearly two hundred Spaniards, a large number of Indian porters (though surely not approaching the figure of four thousand given by chroniclers), many llamas as beasts of burden, about two hundred pigs to supply bacon on the way, and a large number of fighting dogs, without which, at that time, no Spanish army could be complete. Gonzalo Pizarro at that time was powerful because of his association with his brother, the Marquess. His own qualities of leadership also seemed magnetically attractive. So, as Ortiguera would one day put it, “there followed him in that undertaking a large number of the noblest and most prominent people of the realm.” Ortiguera added, “It was a great achievement to have been able to bring them together and with them 260 horses,” as well as a good number of arquebuses and crossbows, munitions, other implements of war, slaves, and Indians—a “magnificent body of men and one well prepared for any adventure.”1

  They began by going east over the Andes, where Gonzalo reported: “We came to some very rugged and wooded country with great ranges out of which we were obliged to open up roads anew not only for the men but also for the horses.” At least a hundred Indians died from cold crossing the Andes. They continued thus, till sixty leagues (180 miles) to the east of Quito, they found themselves in the flatlands of the jungle, at the headwaters of the Napo, in a province that they named Zumaco. The Napo was at this stage a large meandering river, with a big floodplain.2 There Gonzalo expected to find cinnamon bushes.

  Cinnamon was native to Brazil, though it is generally supposed that the quality of the product there is inferior to that found in the Old World, for example
in Ceylon. The flavor that we expect from cinnamon derives from a fine aromatic oil made by powdering the bark of the tree, macerating it in seawater and then distilling it. It has then a golden yellow color with a special smell and a very hot taste. It had already by the sixteenth century become much sought after in cookery, and this provided an appropriate motive for an expedition such as Gonzalo Pizarro now mounted.

  From Zumaco, Gonzalo and his men went down into the beautiful valley of the river Coca, an abundantly flowing river. They followed the Coca down to where there was a stretch of narrows. Here Gonzalo built a good wooden bridge, over which he could carry his expedition to the north side. There they remained for several weeks.

  They were now joined by a smaller force led by another Extremeño, Francisco de Orellana. This conquistador, though his name is from a place in the beautiful valley called Serena, was born, like the Pizarros, in Trujillo. Like them, he was a distant cousin of Hernán Cortés.3 He was in Nicaragua by 1527 and probably was among the lionhearted men who came down to Peru with Alvarado in the company of Pedro Álvarez de Holguín, another Extremeño friend of the Pizarros. Orellana established himself at Puerto Viejo, and afterwards went as a senior captain to help the Pizarros at Lima and at Cuzco. He became ensign-general of the seven hundred men sent by Hernando Pizarro to Cuzco and lost an eye at Las Salinas. At some point in these undertakings, he gained a rough knowledge of Quechua. Then he was sent by Francisco Pizarro to reestablish the settlement at the port of Guayaquil and La Culata, which had been founded by Benalcázar but then destroyed by Indians. He became a link between the tierras del sur and the Ecuadorian plains.

  There began to be discussions as to how one could go directly from Quito overland to the Mar del Norte, or the Atlantic. A pioneer in this field had been Gonzalo Díaz de Pineda, who was the first Spaniard (or European) to cross the great range of the Andes.4 Orellana soon became captain-general and lieutenant-governor in this province—lieutenant, that is, to Francisco Pizarro. In these offices, Orellana emerged as a strong opponent of sexual deviations. Thus he had two compatriots burned for sodomy and their goods confiscated.5 Gonzalo Pizarro then became his overlord.