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

by Hugh Thomas

  Eventually, Jiménez de Quesada’s uncle offered bail, and Jiménez de Quesada was released, still in possession of his gold and emeralds. The Council of the Indies at first decided in favor of the conqueror of Bogotá as the next governor there, but then reversed themselves, supported by the Emperor. It was at this point that the question of Jiménez de Quesada’s supposed Jewish blood was brought up.

  How disillusioned that conquistador must have been, thinking that he was going to return home as a great conqueror of new territory but to find himself tied down by petty denunciations. All the same, his new province took shape in his absence. Santa Fé de Bogotá was named a city, and the Dominicans agreed to send friars. Jiménez de Quesada then went to France, apparently (or so his enemies said) to sell his emeralds. He did not return to Spain till the end of 1545. He busied himself with his defense of Charles V, Antijovio—a denunciation of the Italian historian Paolo Giovio.

  New accusations were soon made against Jiménez de Quesada. He was not praised for conquering a rich territory. Instead, he was denounced with his brother Hernando for bringing about the deaths of the caciques Bogotá and Sagipa, as well as for other cruelties against the Indians. In Bogotá itself, Alonso Fernández de Lugo appeared as the new governor, and he declared the encomiendas and the division of treasure made by Jiménez de Quesada to be illegal. He sent Hernando Jiménez de Quesada home to Spain, and Francisco (who had joined them from Peru) was dispatched under guard. New legal disputes followed. But events in Santa Marta and Cartagena were nothing compared with what was brewing in Castile.

  Jiménez de Quesada received numerous accusations about his emeralds. In return, many witnesses appeared before him, including his interpreter in the Chibcha plateau, an Indian now known as Don Gonzalo de Huesca, who had by then mastered Spanish perfectly. In his own defense, Jiménez de Quesada presented an interesting questionnaire in which there were sixty-three questions. In question 22, we hear that the cacique Bogotá had made “a very cruel war” against Jiménez de Quesada. Question 41 offered a chance for a friend of the conqueror’s, Antonio Díaz Cardona of Seville, to say that Jiménez de Quesada had “treated the Indians of the new realm of New Granada very well indeed and that witness never saw or knew of or heard talk of such cruelties administered to the Indians except in war.”16

  On February 5, 1547, the trials seemed at an end, and Jiménez de Quesada was found innocent of all the serious charges. Among the “modest” charges, he was found guilty of asking his soldiers for money when he was contemplating a return to Spain, a “crime” for which he was condemned to pay 100 ducats and have his offices suspended for one year. For the torture and subsequent death of Sagipa, he was fined another 100 ducats and called on to accept the suspension of all his offices for another seven years, as well as being sent into exile for a year. An accusation that he had thrown two Indian principals to be devoured by dogs was left undiscussed for the time being. The heirs of Sagipa would be able to sue Jiménez de Quesada for all the trouble that that death had caused them.

  Juan de Oribe, a skillful lawyer, appealed against these judgments and persuaded the Council of the Indies to reduce the fines from 100 to 50 ducats. There remained outstanding only the accusation that Jiménez de Quesada had somehow secreted 12,000 ducats. That accusation dominated the rest of his life—and that of his heirs.

  In July 1547, a supreme court (audiencia) was established for the new realm of New Granada. At last triumphant in his own country, Jiménez de Quesada was named marshal (mariscal), as well as receiving a coat of arms. He became adelantado on the death of Fernández de Lugo. In April 1548, he was allowed to introduce fifty black slaves into his new country to work for him only. He was granted an income of 2,000 ducats a year, and also received three large encomiendas with a promise from the Council of the Indies that they would be perpetual grants to continue to his children. His prohibition on working in any official position was cut from seven years to two.

  Having written his Epítome de la Conquista del Nuevo Reino de Granada for the Council of the Indies, he returned to New Granada at the end of 1550. The Epítome is the best account of a conquest in the New World after the letters of Cortés and Valdivia.

  Meantime, Jiménez de Quesada’s colleague (as he now had negotiated himself to be), Nicolás Federmann made his way by land to salute Balthasar Welser, his supposed leader, then continued to Ghent. It seems that he wanted to be named governor of Venezuela by the Emperor himself rather than by the Welsers. But the return of Las Casas to imperial favor removed that possibility. Instead, Federmann had to negotiate a new agreement with the Welsers, for his first one had been for ten years; his time would soon run out. The Welsers also demanded accounts. At that time in Flanders, it was supposed that all new conquistadors came back vastly rich from the Indies, but they would never concede the size of their colossal wealth. Federmann refused to present any accounts.

  The ensuing drama marked an astonishing transformation in Federmann’s life. First, he was seized in his house in Ghent. Then he was imprisoned in Antwerp, and his goods were confiscated. His case passed from one court to another, ending up in the Council of Flanders, where the procedure was carried out in either Latin or Flemish, with Spanish and German ignored. Everything was done to favor the Welsers. Federmann sought to have his case transferred to the Council of the Indies, and in that the Crown of Castile supported him. After some further changes of position, Federmann was freed from prison in Antwerp on a bail of 8,000 ducats. The Flemish authorities refused the order of release and demanded that Federmann hand over to them an emerald worth 100,000 ducats as well as 15,000 ducats in gold, which they claimed that he had received from Jiménez de Quesada. Federmann denied that, but the consequence was the continuation of the Flemish holding of his goods and his continued imprisonment. But everything that Federmann was said to have brought from the Americas was apparently deposited in the bank of Cristóbal Raizer, the factor of the Fugger family in Seville.17

  On September 22, 1540, the president of the Council of Flanders appeared in the prison of Antwerp and asked Federmann if he could substantiate his statement that the Welsers had committed a fraud in the New World. If he did not prove the declaration, he would have to be physically beaten by one of the Welsers. Federmann accepted the charge. Immediately, the Emperor, who had learned of Federmann’s astounding triumphs, ordered that the prisoner be sent to Spain. Federmann arrived in Madrid in February 1541. The Council of the Indies then insisted that they had exclusive competence in relation to the suit between the Welsers and Federmann. The Welsers complained and demanded the return of the accused to Flanders. That was refused. Federmann was given a new delay, till the end of 1541.

  In August 1541, Federmann admitted in Madrid, at a court where the King’s regent Philip presided, that his complaint against the Welsers had been made only to secure his departure from the prison in Flanders. He then had transferred to him the income from an encomienda in Bogotá, which had been allocated to him by Jiménez de Quesada. He was by then in Valladolid, where he was kept under house arrest. There death from a wasting disease surprised him in February 1542.

  Thus the conquest of the plateau on which Santa Fé de Bogotá was established brought almost as much tragedy to the conquerors as to the conquered. The long years of exile of Jiménez de Quesada were a sad commentary on his remarkable achievements. The lawsuits against Federmann were more personally destructive to him than the jungles of the eastern Andes. Of the three conquerors who met so unexpectedly in Bogotá in 1540, the only one to survive and prosper thereafter was Benalcázar. He was named governor of Popayán. His great fame as a conqueror of Peru ensured him that designation. Illiterate but brave, he was one of the great survivors of the age of the conquests.

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  The Return of Cabeza de Vaca

  The Myth of the Giant admonishes us not to do battle with the forces of Heaven.

  ERASMUS, Enchiridion

  Cabeza de Vaca seemed to be the only remaining
conquistador from Narváez’s expedition of 1528. He had become famous among the Indians of the delta of the Mississippi. He acted for many months as a trader of shells (which were used as knives), of hides, of ocher used by Indians to paint their faces, flints for arrowheads, tassels of the hair of deer, glue from pine trees, and dried reeds. He was also considered a doctor. He was always planning to move on to Pánuco (about seven hundred miles southwest of the Mississippi estuary) and New Spain, but the companionable presence of Lope de Oviedo constrained him. Lope de Oviedo was a strong and vigorous conquistador, and Cabeza wanted him to accompany him westward. Lope de Oviedo was always saying that he would indeed eventually go one day but could not think of doing so till the following year.

  Eventually, they set off and crossed the Mississippi. Once they were on the western bank, they encountered Indians, who assured the Spaniards that they were then close to a band of Christians who had been living there for some years. These Christians turned out to be Andrés de Dorantes, Alonso del Castillo, and the slave Estebanico, also survivors of Narváez’s expedition. Dorantes was a native of Béjar, in northern Extremadura, the town where Cortés had married, while Castillo came from Salamanca. Being the son of a doctor, Estebanico was probably a Berber. The five planned to set off for Pánuco, but just before they started, Lope de Oviedo said that he had to return to bring with him some of his favorite Indian women. He left his friends, and no one saw him again. Presumably the women persuaded him to stay.

  Cabeza de Vaca and his party were held as slaves for several months by a family of one-eyed Indians (as he explained it). Many times, he recalled, these one-eyed people “said that we were not to be sad because soon prickly pears would be brought and, in the end, they did come.” These people had many strange characteristics; for example, they would set the forest afire to force lizards and other such to come out, which they would kill and eat. They would also trap deer by surrounding them with fires and depriving them of grazing places so that their needs would force them to go where the Indians wanted. They would make fires against mosquitoes, though they were bitten by them all the same. From deerskin, they would make cloaks, shoes, and shields.

  Cabeza, Estebanico, Castillo, and Dorantes agreed to escape from their Indian masters one day of a new moon. They did so and entered the territory of the Marcame Indians, whose language they seemed to be able to speak. The night when they arrived, some Indians came to Castillo and said that they had dreadful pains in their heads. They implored Castillo to cure them. After he had made the sign of the cross and commended them to God, the Indians said that all their pains had left them. The same occurred on other occasions. This comforted the Spaniards as much as it did the Indians, for it reinforced their beliefs. “It inspired us to give many thanks to Our Lord that we might more fully know His Goodness,” recalled Cabeza, “and have the firm hope that he would free us and bring us to where we might serve Him. For myself, I always had faith in His mercy that he would release me from that captivity.” Cabeza also carried out a comparable medical feat, for he removed an arrow of deer bone which was close to one Indian’s heart. “This cure,” Cabeza recalled, “gave us fame everywhere in the land.”

  Cabeza also recalled that the Indians told of an evil spirit named Mala Cosa who would come to houses with a firebrand and take what he wanted and sometimes, with a sharp knife, tear out the entrails of people whom he did not like. Sometimes Mala Cosa would appear at dances, sometimes dressed as a man, sometimes as a woman, and he could lift up a house and let it crash when he wanted. He was often given food, but he never ate anything, and it was said that he lived in a crack in the earth. The Spaniards told the Indians that if they could only believe in God, demons such as Mala Cosa would never return, and indeed, as long as they were in the town, no one saw him.

  Cabeza de Vaca and his three friends moved on. They were always hungry and always naked—except at night, when they had deerskins to keep them warm. They shed these skins twice a year, as if they had been snakes.

  The journey of the three Spaniards across what later became Texas must have lasted a year. Remarkably, a large body of Indians attached itself to them. Each Indian carried a club. Eventually, Cabeza wrote in his later work, they began to find villages where there were permanent houses, whose inhabitants ate squash, beans, and maize, as well as deer or hare. One day, Alonso del Castillo saw a buckle from a sword belt hanging round the neck of an Indian, with the nail of a horseshoe sewn onto it. Where did it come from? Castillo asked. “From heaven” was the reply. They asked more questions, and after a while, they learned that “those who had brought it were men who wore beards like us and who had come from Heaven and reached the river [the Mississippi] and that they had horses, lances and swords and they had wounded two of their people with lances. Where had they gone? They said that they had gone to the sea and thrust their lances under the water, and that they had followed them and later the Indians saw them floating in the water going towards the sun.”

  After that, Cabeza de Vaca’s expedition heard again and again of Christians. They saw many a place deserted because “the people there feared the Christians, even though it was fertile and beautiful.”1 “They brought us blankets which they had hidden for fear of the Christians and gave them to us and even told us how, on many occasions, the Christians entered the land and destroyed and burned the villages and carried off half the men and all the women and children and that those who had managed to escape were wandering and in flight. We saw that they were so frightened, not daring to stay in any place and that they neither wanted nor were able to sow crops nor cultivate the land but rather were determined to let themselves die, for they thought that was better than waiting to be treated with such cruelty as they had endured.”2

  After a few more weeks, Cabeza de Vaca and Estebanico, going ahead but accompanied by eleven Indians, encountered Lázaro de Cárdenas and three mounted Spaniards at Los Ojuelos, a day’s journey from Tzinaba on the river Petatlan, somewhere in what is now the northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa. Cabeza had thus crossed the entire modern Mexican peninsula. Cárdenas took the walkers to meet his own captain, Diego de Alcaraz. Estebanico was sent back to fetch Andrés de Dorantes and Alonso del Castillo, who arrived with an escort of six hundred Indians. Cabeza de Vaca had many arguments with Alcaraz, who at first wished to enslave the Indians that Cabeza had brought. In the end, they sent the Indians home and promised that they would not be attacked.

  The great walkers then went to Compostela, farther south. News of their coming began to circulate. They reached Mexico-Tenochtitlan in July, where they were sumptuously received by Cortés and by the Viceroy Mendoza, though for months they were unable to wear clothes and preferred to sleep on the floor rather than in beds. Celebrations included jousting with canes and bullfights. After spending the autumn and winter of 1536 in the capital, they went down to Veracruz in the spring of 1537. They boarded a ship to Spain on April 10, stopping at Havana, Bermuda, then the Azores, and finally Lisbon, before reaching Sanlúcar. They had some difficulties with French pirate ships, but they reached Castile at last. They were in time to greet and wish “godspeed” to Hernando de Soto, a veteran of Peru who was resolved to return to the New World and to conquer as much of North America as he could.

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  Soto in North America

  The rarest thing of all in men who have made history is greatness of soul.

  JACOB BURCKHARDT, Reflections on History

  The most glittering of expeditions led from Spain in the late 1530s was that of the Peruvian conquistador, the reckless, brave, and enterprising Hernando de Soto. It was he who had been in the vanguard of Pizarro’s triumphs and who secured a contract in Spain in April 1537 to conquer and settle the land between the Río de Palmas in Mexico and the southernmost keys of Florida. He would be named the governor of Cuba. As adelantado of Florida, he would be allowed to take 1,500 men with him. He would receive 500 ducats a year from the Spanish government. In addition, Soto had his 180,000 cr
uzados from the treasure of Peru. He would take a large household with him, among whom were several Peruvian veterans. Soto took with him, too, his new wife, Isabel de Bobadilla, a daughter of Pedrarias.

  Cabeza de Vaca had recently come back to Castile to explain that Florida was the richest of countries. He also said that, though he wished Soto well, neither he nor Andrés de Dorantes could accompany him, because they “did not wish to divulge certain things which they had seen lest someone might beg the government in advance.”1 No one knew what that mysterious message meant. Some of those who decided to go to the Indies with Soto (Baltasar Gallegos, Cristóbal de Espíndola) told Cabeza de Vaca that they undertook the journey because of his strange words.

  The court smiled on Soto. Many close to the monarch planned to accompany the expedition: for example, the Osorio brothers, Francisco and Antonio. Soto spent a great deal on outfitting: Indeed, the 130,000 castellanos that he lavished on his expedition was six times what Pedrarias had spent twenty years earlier. Soto himself paid for many of the men. He bought the galleon La Magdalena, of eight hundred tons, for 1,212 ducats from a famous shipbuilder of Triana, and the galleon San Juan for 1,410 ducats. He took eight hundred quintals of biscuit and a quantity of salt beef. His ships were well stocked with olive oil, water, and wine, as well as “steel, iron for bridles, spades, mattocks, panniers, ropes, baskets, arquebuses, gunpowder, crossbows, swords, chain mail, bucklers, boots, sacramental vessels for use at mass, beads and other goods for presents, and iron chain links and collars for slaves.”2 Horses, seed, and other provisions would be bought in Cuba.