River of Darkness

by Buddy Levy

  The implications of this last bit of information must surely have been lost in translation, for Aparia the Great continued in good and cordial spirit, listening intently to the words and accent of this eloquent stranger. The chief then paused to offer a rather compelling bit of advice. He told Orellana that if he happened to be going downriver to visit a people called Coniupuyara, which in their language meant “grand mistresses,” then the Spaniards should proceed with great caution and try to avoid them altogether, for they seriously outnumbered the Spaniards and would kill them all. Orellana assured Aparia the Great that he would pass them at a distance, if only to record his findings and discoveries and report them back to his master, the emperor Charles.

  These initial dealings completed, Aparia the Great suggested that Orellana and his men take lodging in the village, as many huts were being vacated and prepared for them; he added that they might stay as long as they like—everything they needed would be provided for them, including daily food. Delighted by this kind treatment, Orellana asked Aparia the Great to have all the chiefs of this surrounding principality (there were apparently twenty-six of them, all his vassals) to come and visit when they could so that Orellana might present them with a gift. Clearly Orellana intended to appease his hosts to the best of his ability, thereby avoiding an eventual cessation of food offerings such as had occurred in Imara. And as he had done in Imara, Orellana also ordered that a very tall cross be erected in the village, which drew interest from the Indians and became a point of conversation, if not comprehension or reverence.

  Orellana’s men now had roofs over their heads and the promise of steady meals. After scouting around the interior, Orellana noted that there was also an ample supply of workable timber, though some of it at a good distance away. He thus decided that “since there was a good supply of materials here as well as good will on the part of the Indians, it would be well to build a brigantine, and so the work got underway.”

  Orellana sought the wisdom and knowledge of the chief Aparia the Great in those first few days in the village, learning everything he could about the river’s course, its condition and temperament, and the lands they would face in their continued journey. Orellana listened with fascination and trepidation to what the chief had to say. The people of Aparia, he learned, traded a long distance downriver, and their lands extended some 250 miles to the east. While on this river section, Orellana was assured, he and his men would be treated well and allowed to pass unmolested. But then came the ominous news that just beyond the land of the Aparians the Spaniards would invariably encounter the kingdom of Machiparo, overlord of a hostile and warlike people who were archenemies of the Aparians. Once the Spaniards entered their realm, Aparia told Orellana, they were sure to be attacked.

  Orellana had only just begun to ponder the implications of this daunting prospect when the chief continued. If they managed to escape the lands of Machiparo, and this was by no means guaranteed, they would next encounter an even more powerful and much larger tribal federation: the Omagua. Fearsome warriors, the Omagua lived in a constant state of war with interior forest tribes. They raided far and wide, and they protected their riverside villages by building them on islands, making them inaccessible to their enemies. They built wooden stockades around their huts, too. Even more chilling, Orellana learned, the Omaguas took prisoners and kept them as slaves. “Old men and women not suited for slavery were killed immediately, while captives of high status or outstanding courage (the Spaniards surely qualified), and who therefore constituted a potential danger if left alive, were put to death during ceremonies. The heads were kept in the houses as trophies.”

  Given this last bit of information, Orellana ordered his men to redouble their efforts. They must repair the San Pedro and immediately begin work on a second brigantine, a bigger, more powerful, seaworthy warship. It would need to hold many oarsmen for ramming speed, and have masts for sailing the large open freshwater bodies and eventually the ocean. The ship would have to have places for the crossbowmen and harquebusiers to fire from the decks.

  Where they were going they would not be welcome. They were headed for battle.

  * The Spaniards in the New World mistakenly considered the manatee a fish, when it is in fact a mammal. Believing it to be a fish allowed them to consume the manatee on Good Friday, though this caused some controversy. Father José de Acosta, who wrote The Natural and Moral History of the Indies, mentions his reservations when served manatee one Friday in Santo Domingo: “The so-called manatee [is] a strange kind of fish, if one may designate a fish an animal which brings forth its young alive and has teats and milk with which it nourishes them, and feeds on grass in the fields; but the fact is they ordinarily live in the water, and that is why they eat it as fish.… In color and in taste the chops from this fish do not seem to be anything but slices of veal, and in part of ham: it is as large as a cow.” Quoted in José Toribio Medina, The Discovery of the Amazon, 239.

  CHAPTER 8

  The Victoria

  THE FIRST BOAT, THE SAN PEDRO, HAD BEEN BUILT with the labor and combined expertise of the entire expeditionary force, under the direction of the harsh and unforgiving Gonzalo Pizarro. Orellana, who operated with a different, more reasonable and democratic leadership style, canvassed the men for those with carpentry experience. Eventually Diego Mexía came forward. He hailed from Seville, and while he was not actually a woodworker by trade, he had been a woodcutter and stonecutter, and he knew something of woodworking. He offered to serve in the role of foreman, overseeing the ship’s construction.

  Orellana then ordered certain able-bodied and trustworthy men to take on managerial positions and others to follow suit with hard labor:

  And thereupon the Captain ordered an appointment of the work among all the companions whereby each man in one group was to bring one frame and two futtocks,* and others in another group to bring the keel, and others the stem pieces, and others to saw planks, so that all had enough to occupy themselves, [though] not without considerable toil.

  One immediate impediment and source of toil was the fact that the requisite wood was located “very far away” from the village, combined with the Spaniards’ perceived vulnerability during this time. Despite Chief Aparia the Great’s peaceful demeanor and generous treatment of them, Orellana continued to exercise caution. No doubt advised by the chief as to which types of wood were most suitable for making canoes or other watercraft, Orellana sent the woodcutters to the forest in small detachments, with some men designated as cutters and the others as guards. Once a team had cut its allotment, the cutters would carry the timbers on their backs to the distant village while others formed a rear guard for them, to ensure that no Indians, “friendly” or otherwise, could harass them. Working in organized teams, within a week Orellana’s crews had brought in enough wood for the second brigantine.

  That done, Orellana promptly assigned other important tasks, including the making of a forge for more charcoal, as they needed still more nails (in addition to the two thousand they had made in Imara) and other metal objects for the boat’s construction. Here, near camp, the work was once again impeded by horrifyingly large and persistent mosquito swarms, which drove the men to the edge of insanity. According to one account, the insects were so troublesome that in order for the men to get anything at all done during certain times of day, they had to operate in hour-long shifts, one man working and up to two men whose job it was to “drive the mosquitoes away from him by means of a pair of fans made out of feathers which the Indians gave us.” The Spaniards called these fans “fly shooers,” and they were incredibly useful and even necessary—it was said that a man could not sit long enough to eat unless one of his comrades was busy fanning the mosquitoes away from him.

  Orellana’s choice of the village of Aparia as the place to build the second brigantine was both wise and fortunate, perhaps a combination of luck, good leadership, and decisiveness. For one thing, the chiefs around Aparia, especially Aparia the Great, were not only gen
erous, but they also seemed to be increasingly fascinated by the Spaniards and their ways, and particularly intrigued and inquisitive about their guns, armor, and metal tools. The Spaniards were in this village from February 26 to April 24, and during those two months many chiefs from the vicinity came to pay their respects, speak with Orellana, and exchange gifts. Orellana must have been growing increasingly sheepish about the meager gifts remaining to him, baubles like bells and Spanish combs and a last mirror or two. Then one day a delegation of Indians arrived who, more than any before them, captivated and engaged Orellana and his men:

  There came to see the Captain and his men four Indians, who approached us, and they were each of such a stature that each one was taller by a span than the tallest Christian, and they were quite white and had very fine hair which reached down to their waists, and they came all decked out in gold and splendid attire; and they brought much food; and they approached with such humbleness that we were all amazed at their manners and good breeding; they took out a great quantity of food and placed it before the Captain and told him how they were vassals of a very great overlord, and that it was by his command that they came to see who we were and what we wanted or where we were going.

  Orellana was mesmerized by the appearance of these natives and also by the gold they wore. Especially of interest to him was this “very great overlord” they described, who must have been a person of significant wealth and power. As was his usual approach, Orellana listened politely, exchanged formal pleasantries, and then told them that he, too, was an emissary of a great leader, a ruler who held dominion over all these lands. Orellana told them a little about his Christian God, the one true God, at which point the tall white men asked permission to depart, for they had much to report to their overlord. After the exchange, Orellana gave them “many things to present to their principal overlord, and asked them to tell him that the Captain earnestly requested that he come pay him a visit … and they said that they would do so, and they left.”

  Unfortunately, for whatever reason, this chief overlord did not come to meet the Spaniards, and the Spaniards were never to learn where the distinctive natives were from, or anything else about them. Were they shamans, albino giants, or both? How could their physical characteristics be explained? One possibility is that the men were pituitary giants, a condition characterized by prepubertal excess of the growth hormone. It has been suggested that such a condition of so-called gigantism might also be the result of ritual childhood castration, though none of the chroniclers make any mention of ever seeing such a ritual. Certainly, earlier Spanish accounts of indigenous peoples included plenty of genetic anomalies and wonders. Cortés reported more than once that Montezuma kept in his court, and was attended daily by, “misshapen hunchbacks and dwarves and albinos.” The bone-white skin patina described by Orellana and his men might well have been a result of albinism, or perhaps it was artificially achieved with powders or paints or dyes, or some combination thereof, used in ceremonial ritual, for Orellana and his men later described seeing “sorcerers, daubed with whitewash.”

  It is also not beyond the realm of possibility that these men were from one of farther-reaching tribes, such as one of the various Arawak groups located up the Ucayali River. These groups were very sophisticated, which would explain their regal bearing, humility, and fine manners, as well as their formal regalia. It has been argued that the Arawak were the nexus from which these “culture bearers” branched out.

  Wherever they were from, the tall and mysterious gold-clad men fascinated Orellana, confirming once again that wonders abounded everywhere in these vast regions, and that up one of the main river’s mighty tributaries must be realms and kingdoms of unfathomable wealth—it was only a matter of finding them.

  While working on the brigantine, itself a huge undertaking, the Spaniards tried to impress their religion upon the people of the village, and at any rate, as it was the time of Lent, both Friar Carvajal and Friar Gonzalo de Vera of the Order of Mercy were busy hearing confessions daily from the men. Orellana well understood the dangers of conquistadors at rest: they tended to grow edgy and impatient, for they were men of action. In sedentary conditions the men were more likely to transgress, to rape the local women or mistreat their hosts, so Orellana kept all of them busy every waking hour with tasks connected to the boatbuilding, and when those were finished, with mandatory worship services. Morale, Orellana understood intuitively, was crucial. But he also seemed now to comprehend that his voyage, and that of his men, had assumed even greater importance: they were in the process of great new discoveries, of seeing places never before witnessed by white men. According to Friar Carvajal,

  I preached every Sunday and every feast day, and Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter.… I endeavored to lend assistance and encouragement, to the best of my ability, in keeping up the good spirits of those brothers and companions, reminding them that they were Christians and that they would render a great service to God and to the Emperor in carrying on the enterprise and in patiently bearing up under the present hardships and under those to come, until they should complete this novel voyage of discovery.

  Francisco Orellana himself was never idle. While overseeing the construction of the new brigantine and the repairs to the San Pedro, which had begun to rot, the shrewd captain also saw fit to further his political positioning vis-à-vis Gonzalo Pizarro. In order to do this correctly (and from his perspective, legally), he needed to formally dissolve his captaincy under Gonzalo Pizarro and formally assume his own captaincy over the men he now led. There were certain Spanish precedents for such a controversial action, not the least of which was Cortés’s famous 1519 dissolution of his commission under Diego Velásquez, governor of Cuba, under whose aegis Cortés had gone to mainland Mexico in the first place. In a shrewd strategic coup, Cortés officially resigned his command under Velásquez as he simultaneously founded a new city on Mexico’s eastern shore, naming it Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz (the Rich Town of the True Cross). Within minutes he had himself “elected” chief justice and captain-general of the town that only moments before he had conjured into existence. Francisco Orellana would certainly have known of this fabled political maneuver.

  The scribe Isásaga now prepared yet another document on behalf of the company, this one similar to the recent appeal that begged Orellana not to take them back up the river. The wording of this new document was critical, too, for it once again suggested that it had been orchestrated and driven by the men themselves and not by Orellana (though it is certainly not hard to picture Orellana leaning over Isásaga’s shoulder as he penned the document). The missive Isásaga wrote summarized the efforts and exploits of Orellana’s men, calling them “cavaliers and hidalgos, comrades, able-bodied men” in order to portray them as being in possession of their faculties and not under duress. The document recounted again Orellana’s insistence that they attempt “to go and search for the Governor [Gonzalo Pizarro] dead or alive,” and the men’s outright refusal to follow. The document reiterated their current situation, including their great distance downstream, and expressed that they personally assumed responsibility for the desertion of Gonzalo Pizarro. They had witnessed Orellana’s resignation of his previous post, and now they petitioned him directly:

  We, perceiving and realizing the evil effects and great disorders that can prevail … among men being without a captain in these forest regions and lands of infidels … summon you, the honorable Francisco Orellana, to keep and protect us in all peace and tranquility, as you did keep us and command us before, and as in other parts you have kept and commanded Spaniards in greater numbers than we who are here at the present time; because we appoint you now to be our captain again in the name of His Majesty, and so we wish to swear to it, and we shall swear to it, and for such a captain we wish to have you and obey you until … His Majesty shall decree otherwise.

  The document went on to delineate all the inevitable “harmful evils, tumults, homicides, and other outrages” that would sur
ely occur should Orellana refuse the captaincy, so he really had no choice but to agree, which of course he did, with his hand placed firmly on the mass book and in the presence of both friars, swearing by God “and the Holy Mary, by the sign of the cross, and by the four sacred Gospels.” The petition, a crucial legal document, was signed by all members of the expedition, either by their name or, for the illiterate, by an X mark.

  Now that he was officially their captain-general, Orellana’s first order of business was to make Alonso de Robles, a fellow Extremaduran, his lieutenant. Robles had won Orellana’s favor along the way through deeds, actions, and demonstrated leadership temperament. The plan was to use the competent and courageous Robles for reconnaissance and food-gathering missions as they continued downstream. In addition to Robles, Orellana could count on Cristóbal de Segovia, a hardened and daring soldier nicknamed Maldonado who was known to be trustworthy in the field, for he had been one of Sebastián Benalcázar’s lieutenants. In the chronicles of the expedition, Segovia would also sometimes be referred to with the title of “captain,” suggesting he was a man of power and command.

  This business taken care of, it was back to the boats and the preaching, the latter about which Orellana instructed his friars specifically: “The Captain requested of me that I preach and see to it that all attend to their devotions with great fervor, as persons who had very great need of asking God for his mercy.” Evidently, Orellana had taken the warnings of Aparia the Great to heart, and to soul. He and his men would need all the help they could get, where they were headed.