River of Darkness

by Buddy Levy

  All at once the woods exploded in frenzied mayhem. Archers ran to the water’s edge and fired a fusillade of arrows into the air, the shafts buzzing like swarming wasps and so thick that the Spaniards could hardly see one another inside the boats. Though they were taken by surprise, most reacted quickly, diving once again beneath the Machiparo manatee shields.

  Those on the Victoria managed to row away from this fresh peril, but not before another round of arrows shrieked from above, and under this barrage Friar Carvajal felt a searing, and he clutched at his face with both hands, writhing there in agony. The arrow had pierced one eye and exited the opposite cheek.

  The men on the San Pedro responded to the attack by heading for shore, making a bold if foolhardy landing. By the time Orellana reacted and brought the larger Victoria about, he saw that a number of men had leapt from the San Pedro and were now engaged in vicious hand-to-hand fighting among a press of warriors, who were closing in around the defensive crescent they formed. It was a seething snarl of Spaniards and Indians, and the situation appeared disastrous.

  Orellana fired directions at his oarsmen, positioning the Victoria so that his crossbowmen and harquebusiers could level fire on the enemies. As he did so, he considered making a run at the shore, but seeing how seriously his priest was hurt, he thought better of it and called out for the men in the San Pedro to embark at once, for they must flee. The few men onshore fought their way back and did as their captain bade them, and they managed another hasty retreat, another devilishly close call.

  As they drifted away from the ambush site, some of them, including Captain Orellana, took time to survey the landscape there along the southern bank. They saw inland a good distance—perhaps as far as five miles—large cities glistening white as seashells, the land here giving way to more open savanna. Though they had nearly died only moments before, the Spaniards noticed that thick smoke hung over the villages and above the treetops, for here the native farmers burned their fields, making the famous terra preta or “Amazonian dark earth,”* which contains low-temperature charcoals in very high levels, creating an extremely fertile soil.

  Perhaps it was homesickness prompted by sleep-deprived delirium, but as they rowed away from the area—which they named St. John for the day they had entered it and was near the present-day town of Obidos—for the first time they grew nostalgic and saw in the land resemblances to their mother country of Spain. Perhaps Orellana was even thinking that here would be a good place to colonize, to raise livestock and farm crops similar to those at home, for the earth looked like it would be suitable for growing wheat, and they saw wild grasses and sedges along the shore and on floating meadows, and also uplands and sloped hillsides cleared of trees. The open savannas they imagined filled with game, too.

  The left bank remained heavily inhabited, with the shorelines patrolled by flocks of canoes, and Orellana ordered a long pull to the center of the river. Until nightfall, small bands of canoes pursued them downriver, allowing the Spaniards neither rest nor opportunity to land, and forcing them at length to navigate in the darkness. Around ten o’clock that night a large and shadowy form loomed ahead and Orellana called to the steersmen to make for it, and as it happened they reached an uninhabited island where they might finally stop to rest.

  It was pitch-black when they at last eased the brigantines alongshore and moored there, tying them off to stout shoreline trees. Orellana, his voice now a harsh whisper, forbade any man to disembark for any reason, and though the weary men wished to go ashore and sling hammocks or slump on the soft ground, instead they sat cramped and bleeding and wound-stiffened in the soaked and arrow-strewn bottoms of the brigantines. All through the night the floorboards and hull slats groaned against the river’s slurry and wash, and the sides of the San Pedro and the Victoria were so prickled and quill-riddled with enemy arrows that they would have appeared like great nocturnal moonlit hedgehogs or porcupines trying to burrow into the riverbanks in search of a protected dwelling place for a safe night’s sleep.

  * The mouth of the Madeira, at its confluence with the Amazon, is more than five hundred miles from the Atlantic Ocean.

  * Historian Antonio de Herrera says that this chief’s name was Caripuna, and Father Cristóbal de Acuña, who spent nearly two years on the Amazon, mentions a tribe by that name on the Madeira River. They were observed later, in 1852, by Lieutenant Gibbon, U.S.N., near the falls of the Madeira River.

  † According to Helaine Silverman and William Isbell, “some advanced Amazonian societies built impressive formal roads, causeways, and canals of monumental scale. Large and small sites in the Tapajos … regions [Orellana and Carvajal report] are connected by traces of networks of straight roads with earthen berms suggesting hierarchical socio-political organization at a regional scale.” Silverman and Isbell, Handbook of South American Archaeology, 172–74.

  * A defensive protection in the form of a breastplate.

  * Once thought naturally occurring, terra preta (and the lighter-in-color terra mulata) is now widely accepted as intentionally man-made, improved soil, the culmination of what is referred to as “slash-and-char” agriculture. In slash-and-char, the organic matter is burned incompletely, resulting in charcoal rather than ash. Due to the high charcoal content and other nutrients—imbued into the soil as a result of intentional burning and then turned into the ground along with long-accumulated organic domestic rubbish such as excrement, fish, turtles, and even animal bones—terra preta contains much more calcium, nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur than typical Amazonian rain forest red earth soils, giving it longer-lasting fertility. Terra preta is also characterized by large quantities of potsherds in the soil, signifying human habitation and influence. See Charles C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, 306–10.

  CHAPTER 15

  The Trumpeter’s Tale

  SUNRISE POURED OVER THE BASIN IN SMOKE-FILTERED diaphanous light, and the men woke weary and war-sore, blood caking their beards and spattered across their cotton armor. Orellana made haste, ordering his men to pull for the safety of the river’s center as they departed the hostile “Province of St. John,” home to the Amazons and their fight-to-the-death auxiliaries. But here the river wove through braided channels, a tangle of islands they had no choice but to pass near. No sooner had they shaken themselves awake than they found themselves back in the thick of peril—for the islands appeared densely peopled, the river before them clogged with canoes:

  When they saw us, there came out to meet us on the river over two hundred pirogues, so large that each one carries twenty or thirty Indians and some forty … they were quite colorfully decorated with various emblems, and those manning them had with them many trumpets and drums, and pipes on which they play with their mouths, and rebecs, which among these people have three strings: and they came on with so much noise and shouting and in such good order that we were astonished.

  The Spaniards were soon surrounded by the fleets, which encircled them in a giant pincer. Orellana responded by directing harquebus and crossbow fire at the closest canoes, which appeared to contain their leaders, and the marksmen felled enough of them to make an impression. The canoe formations parted to allow the brigantines through so that they could continue downstream, albeit escorted by attacking canoes of the “greatest of all riverbank chiefdoms, the Tapajos.”

  The Spaniards skimmed along with a weird fleet of musical pirogues paddling behind them, some playing their pipes and drums, others firing off arrows, a bizarrely lyrical sort of hostile escort. Along the shore dense formations of warriors stood at the ready, with others designated to play instruments in unison, some dancing about and singing while holding a large and resplendent palm frond in each hand, which they waved back in forth in a kind of mocking farewell. This display continued past very large islands overrun with warriors lining the shore, and dancing and chanting high up on bluffs, at the end of which came forth a warlike reinforcement of battle canoes. Orellana decided to try a token of diplomacy.


  Hurriedly, with the canoes pressing down on them, he gave orders to prepare a gourd filled with some of their barter goods—jingle bells and some pearls and other precious stones—and this gourd Orellana tossed into the river as an offering of peace and a demonstration of his friendliness. Some of the lead canoes paddled forth to retrieve the gourd as it bobbed along, but Orellana’s hopes of peacemaking were dashed when the Indians merely laughed and mocked the contents, continuing to pester the brigantines all day long, following and stalking them until they had driven the foreigners out of the Province of St. John.

  It was the twenty-fifth of June, 1542. By late afternoon that day, Orellana finally managed to locate a landing area he deemed safe enough to stop and sleep, or at least try to rest briefly. They landed and moored beneath a grove of trees, but Orellana saw the faint figures of Indian spies lurking in the woods, so he posted armed and armored sentries on constant guard, taking shifts. This done and the perimeter of the camp secured, Orellana took no time for rest himself. He called for the captive Indian trumpeter and for the next few hours set about creating a lexicon of words and phrases he could use to communicate with the native. Orellana would have cross-referenced these new entries with the growing dictionary he had kept since the very beginning of his journey, way back in Quito in February 1541.

  Under the glimmer of a new moon Orellana questioned the trumpeter about where he came from, asking for details about the village from which he had been taken. The Indian replied that the village was his home, and it was ruled by a powerful overlord named Couynco, whose domain and reach were considerable. Orellana wished to know more about the women with whom they had done battle, and the trumpeter relayed a remarkable tale, a story with details so fantastic and incredible that it would become by far the most controversial passage in Carvajal’s expedition journal and would raise questions for Orellana to answer and explain, and attempt to comprehend, from that moment on:

  The Indian answered that they lived in the interior seven [in another copy, four or five] days’ journey away and that, since Couynco was subject to them, they had come to guard the shore. The Captain asked if they were married, and the Indian said no. The Captain asked how they lived, and the Indian answered in the interior, and that he had been there many times, and seen their customs and way of life, since he had been sent there by his chief to carry the tribute. The Captain asked if they were numerous, and the Indian answered yes, and that he knew seventy of their villages by name. He then named them before those of us who were present, and said that he had been to several of them. The Captain then asked if their houses were made of straw, and the Indian answered no, that they were built of stone, and had proper doors, and that the roads ran between these villages that were walled on both sides, and that they had guards at intervals along them, to collect dues from those who used them. [Another version describes these walls as paneled with silver all around for half a man’s height from the floor, and against them were placed silver seats, which they used for their worship and their drunken feasts. There is the addition, too, of a temple ceiling lined with variegated feathers of parrots and macaws.]

  The Captain asked if their villages were large, and the Indian answered that they were. He asked if they bore children, and the Indian answered yes. The Captain asked how they became pregnant, since they were not married and no men lived in their villages. He said that at certain times they felt desire for men and assembled a large army with which they went to make war on a neighboring chief and brought his warriors by force to their villages where they kept them for as long as they wanted. Then, when they were pregnant, they sent their prisoners back unharmed. If when their time came they bore a male, they killed him or sent him to his father. If they are girls they rear them carefully and train them to war. He said their queen was called Conori, and that they had great quantities of gold and silver, and that the principal women are served on gold and silver plate and have gold and silver vessels, while the common women use earthenware, otherwise wood.

  He said that in the principal city, where the queen lived, there were five very large buildings used as temples, and sacred to the Sun. He added that they call these temples caranain, and that they contain gold and silver idols in female shape, and that from three feet above the floor these temples are lined with heavy wooden paneling painted in various colors. He said that they have many gold and silver vessels used in the divine service, and that the women are clothed in very fine wool. For in that land there are many llamas like those of Peru. Their clothing is a blanket, worn either girded across the breasts or thrown around the neck, or secured at the front with a pair of cords like a cloak. They wear their hair down to the ground and golden crowns on their heads, as wide as two fingers.

  The Indian informed us further that no man is permitted to remain in the women’s villages after sunset but must depart for home at that time, and that many provinces bordering on these women’s lands are subject to them and pay tribute and services to them. But with others they remain at war, and particularly with that tribe from which they seize men that are to get them [with] child. He added that these women are white and of very great stature and numerous.

  The trumpeter concluded his amazing story by assuring Orellana and the others listening that he had seen these women many times personally, all his life, and that he often had daily interactions and communications with them. He mentioned specifically two saltwater lakes from which the women harvested salt—a fact that might well have reminded Orellana of stories of the salt lakes and salt manufacture around Lake Texcoco, in Tenochtitlán, Mexico.

  Orellana and the others took in all the details, which certainly were similar to and reminiscent of the Inca wealth of Peru, as well as the wonders of Montezuma’s Tenochtitlán. Carvajal noted also that it all sounded plausible since he and his compatriots had been hearing tales and reports as early as Quito: the women warriors were so famous that in order to see them, some Indians traveled over 3,500 miles just to behold them, “and anyone who should take it into his head to go down to the country of these women was destined to go a boy and return an old man.” The priest also explicitly stated that he found the Indian trustworthy and credible, “because he was an Indian of much intelligence, and very quick to comprehend.”

  As soon as the priest had heard the story—he may well have been there, albeit not in the best shape, having only the day before lost his eye to an arrow—he began officially referring to these women as Amazons, although as he observed, incorrectly:

  Amazon in the Greek language means “having no breasts,” in order that they might have nothing to hinder their shooting with the bow.… But these women we are dealing with here, although they do use the bow, do not cut off their breasts nor do they burn them off, albeit in other matter, such as in taking men unto themselves for a certain period of time for propagation of their kind and in other respects, it does seem as if they imitate those whom the ancients called Amazons.

  Here, too, was born the name of the river, for they henceforth referred to this miraculous waterway as the Rio Amazonas, or River of the Amazons.

  The Spaniards had been weaned on just such tales, and given what Cortés had described of Tenochtitlán, which possessed hunchbacks and dwarves and albinos, there was no reason to doubt that such a tribe of warrior women would exist. And, of course, there were the imposing female warriors they themselves had encountered, according to Carvajal’s account of the pitched battle. Columbus claimed to have sighted them on Martinique, and one of Cortés’s own captains claimed to have seen an island south of Panama peopled only with women. Cortés likely derived the legend—as did Orellana and his literate companions—from the romance Deeds of Esplandián (written in 1510), a sequel to the famous and widely read Amadís of Gaul (written in 1508). The novel Deeds of Esplandián contains a description of the Amazons that locates them definitively, for the first time, in the Americas, or in “the islands of California.” Too, there was a very recent Spanish precedent for seeing
things and discovering them for the first time. Chronicler Bernal Díaz, who reported with remarkable accuracy and detail the things he witnessed alongside Cortés during the conquest of Mexico, wrote his impressions of seeing the fabled city of Tenochtitlán, the wondrous city on the lake, noting the dreamlike quality:

  When we saw all those cities and villages built in the water, and the other great towns on dry land, and that straight level causeway leading to Mexico, we were astounded. These great towns and temples had buildings rising from the water, all made of stone, and it seemed like an enchanted vision.… Indeed, some of our soldiers asked whether this was not all a dream. It is not surprising therefore that I should write in this vein. It was all so wonderful that I do not know how to describe the first glimpse of things never heard of, seen, or dreamed before.

  Orellana and his men had understood, from the time that they left Gonzalo Pizarro and determined that there was no turning back, that they were on a voyage of discovery; these women could be their legacy. Despite the fact that the story contained elements of lore and legend, passed down through antiquity, why not believe Carvajal? These connections to known stories or categories, as has been noted by the astute writer Alex Shoumatoff, gave the Spaniards something known or potentially knowable to cling to: “To a large extent people are only capable of perceiving what they already have categories for; however outlandish, the Amazon-women category was one of the few things the Spaniards had to hold on to.” And besides, to Orellana and his men, given what they had already seen in Peru and on their amazing river journey, the Amazons would not have seemed outlandish at all. On the contrary, they had fully expected to find them. This leads Shoumatoff—who spent a summer trekking up the Nhamunda River, a tributary of the Amazon where the tribe of women living only with children is said to have lived—to claim: “It is unnecessary and probably unfair to conclude that Carvajal deliberately made up his reports … a final possibility, albeit remote, is, of course, that such a tribe of women without men did in fact live on the Lower Nhamunda.”