The gilded man (El Dorado) and other pictures of the Spanish occupancy of America

Front matter

BY

»ED MAN

ADOLPHE F. BANDELIER

Contents

The Gilded Man: page

I. — CUNDINAMARCA 1

II.— Meta 31

Chapter I. Cundinamarca

While the early Spanish adventurers in America are justly charged with neglecting the true interests of colonization in their excessive greed for treasure, and thereby bringing harm to those parts of the Western Continent which they entered, it cannot be denied that their irrepressible seeking for the precious metals contributed directly to an earlier knowledge and a more rapid settlement of the country. The Spaniards* thirst for gold led them into adventures which excite admiration and wonder as expressions of manly energy, while they offer the saddest pictures from the point of view of morals.

In every age gold has presented one of the strongest means of enticing men from their homes to remote lands, and of promoting trade between distant regions and the settlement of previously uninhabited districts. We have received from the earliest antiquity the stories of the voyage of the Argonauts, of the

l

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expedition of Hercules after the golden apples of the Ilesperides, and of the settlement of the Phoenicians in Spain, the gold of which they carried to the Syrian coast. For gold the Semitic navigators sailed from the Red Sea to Tarshish and Ophir.*

Portuguese seamen as early as the middle of the fifteenth century brought gold from the west coast of Africa j in order to find a sea-route to the goldlands of India, Vasco da Gama sailed around the Cape of Good Hope $ and in order to obtain a shorter route from Spain to India Christopher Columbus ventured out upon the Atlantic Ocean and there reached the new gold-land, America.

On Thursday, October 11, 1492, Columbus landed upon Watling Island, or Guanahani, one of the Bahama group, and on Saturday, the 13th, he wrote : u Many of these people, all men, came from the shore, . . . and I was anxious to learn whether they had gold. I saw also that some of them wore little pieces of gold in their perforated noses. I learned by signs that there was a king in the south, or south

* While we may look for the former treasure region in Sumatra, the latest researches make it probable that Ophir represented not only Sofala, but also the coasts and interior of East Africa south of it, including Mozambique, Monomotapa, and the country of the ruins of Zimbabue (Mashonaland). This conclusion appears more credible than the opinion persistently maintained by Montesino that Ophir was Peru. The difficulties of a long sea-voyage from Ezion-Geber to the western coast of South America would be partly removed if we could accept Professor Haeckel’s hypothesis of a continent of Lemuria having once stood in . the Indian Ocean, and should also suppose the Western Atlantis to have existed — which the natives of Australia sought in the eastern part of their quarter of the globe.

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of the island, who owned many vessels filled with gold.” *

This was the first trace of gold which the Europeans found in America. Cuba, where the Admiral next landed, afforded him no gold, but he found the precious metal so abundant in Hispaniola (Santo Domingo, or Iiayti) that he was able, after he returned, to write from Lisbon to his sovereigns, March 14, 1493 : “To make a short story of the profits of this voyage, I promise, with such small helps as our invincible Majesties may afford me, to furnish them all the gold they need.”

Hispaniola continued till the first decade of the sixteenth century to be the seat of gold production in the newly discovered western land. The consequences of this gold-seeking to the unhappy natives are well known, and need not be dwelt upon. The operations were continued on this island for only a very short time. As a result of the fearfully rapid disappearance of the aborigines, the supply of laborers began to fail, and the mines fell into disuse, although, according to Herrera, t they furnished to the mother-country, Spain, down to the discovery of Mexico, five hundred thousand ducats in gold.

The Admiral saw the mainland of South America for the first time on his third voyage, at Punta de Icacos, Trinidad, July 31, 1498, and found evidences of gold on the coast of Venezuela. The expedition of Ojeda in 1499 and 1500, although it sailed along

* Journal of the Admiral, published by Navarrete, from the “Historia apologetica de las Lidias ” of Bartolomeo de Las Casas, MSS. at Madrid.

t Decada iii.

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the whole northern coast to New Granada, yielded only a small return, for after the largest pearls and gold pieces were turned into the royal treasury only live hundred ducats were left to be divided among one hundred and fifty sharers. A few months before Ojeda, an expedition had returned to Spain from the same region which had attained considerable material results, notwithstanding the small means with which it had been undertaken. Christoval Guerra and Pero Alonzo Nino, with a poor caravel of fifty tons and thirty-three men, had crossed the ocean to Venezuela and sailed along its coast from bay to bay, trading and bartering with the natives, and had thus acquired much gold and more than one hundred and fifty marks’ worth of pearls. They brought the report that while gold-dust was rare in the eastern part of the northern coast of South America, the metal was more abundant the farther west they went. When in 1500 Rodrigo de Bastidas of Santa Marta discovered the snow-covered foot-hills of the Cordilleras, his first thought might well have been that the noble metal which the warlike Indians of the coast wore so abundantly as a decoration was derived from those distant heights.*

While Ojeda was vainly trying to found a settle-

* Emeralds may also have been shown to the Spaniards then ; for in the capitulation with Ojeda, on his second voyage, July 5, 1501, islands are mentioned, near Quiquevacoa, on the mainland, where the green stones were of which specimens had been brought to him. Quiquevacoa, or Coquivacoa, was the Indian name for the country around the Gulf of Venezuela.

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ment near Maracaybo, the great Admiral was industriously preparing for a new voyage of discovery. He sailed in 1502, and on the 17th of August of that year he landed, after meeting much tempestuous weather, at Truxillo in Honduras. Sailing along the Mosquito Coast, beaten day and night by severe storms, Columbus reached Porto Bello and Chiriqui. Gold was found in quantities at Chiriqui and Yeragua, in the vicinity of the famous mines of Tisingal, which the French filibuster Ravenau de Lussan mentioned as late as 1698* The various efforts of the Spanish to plant colonies on the Isthmus and in western New Granada t had only insignificant results till Vasco Nunez de Balboa in 1511 assumed the direction of the colony in Darien, with a firm hand, but without any higher right, and with great sagacity immediately brought about closer relations with the surrounding Indian tribes. The tribe of Dabaybe on the Rio Atrato, who had many ornaments of gold, pointed to the west and south as the regions from which this gold came. Balboa, following the directions of the Indians, who hoped to get rid of their distrusted guests and send them to their nearest enemies, reached the coast of the Pacific Ocean on the 25th of September, 1543. There he seems to have heard a report $ of a wealthy tribe which lived on the seacoast far to the south and used large sheep as beasts of burden. From this time forward the attention of the Span-

* The name of “The Rich Coast,” Costa Rica, is still attached to that part of Central America north of Chiriqui.

t Ojeda and Diego de Nicuesa.

t Quintana, and Herrera, dec. i. lib. x. cap. iii.

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iards was directed to the countries south of the Isthmus*

Prescott says, in his “Conquest of Peru,” that Balboa learned in this way of the riches of that kingdom. His authorities are Herrera, who says: “And this was the second report which Vasco Nunez received of the condition and wealth of Peru;”t and the later Quintana. Pascual de Andagoya, who went in 1522 as far as Punta de Pinas, on the western coast of New Granada, says : “ He had received there exact accounts through traders and chiefs concerning the whole coast to Cuzco.” J Still, it may be doubtful whether this notice does not refer to the civilized tribes of central New Granada, who carried their salt over the beaten mountain paths to the cannibal inhabitants of the Cauca Valley and received gold in exchange for it. Without forgetting that the llama was never used as a beast of burden in New Granada, the supposition that accounts of Peru had reached the Isthmus, notwithstanding the great distance, involves nothing impossible. Prod-

* The discovery of Mexico by C6rdova and its conquest afterward by Cortes affected the Spanish colonies south of the Isthmus very little. The influence of the colonization of the Mexican table-land extended no farther than to Yucatan, Guatemala, and a part of Honduras. The booty which the Spaniards gained there, partly in gold, was not great. The presents which the chiefs at Tenochtitlan sent to the seacoast to Cortes were lost at sea, and all the treasures which the Mexicans had accumulated in their great “ pueblo” in the lagoon were ruined by the inundation during the retreat of July 1, 1519, or were burned during the subsequent attack.

t Decada i., p. 267.

t “ Relation de los sucesos de Fedr arias Davila” etc.

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nets of nature and art, and reports of conditions and events in single countries, are alike carried to great distances through war and trade.

Although languages and dialects were separated from one another by uninhabited neutral regions, prisoners of war could tell of what was going on at their homes ; the booty would include a variety of strange objects ; and traders traversed the country in the face of numerous dangers, visited the enemy’s markets, and carried their goods to them, with many novelties. This process was repeated from tribe to tribe ; and in that way the products of one half of the continent passed, often in single objects, to the other half, and with them accounts of far-off regions, though changed and distorted by time and distance, into remote quarters.

The centers of this primitive trade were among those tribes which, being the most civilized, had the largest number of wants and the most abundant productions. They were the agricultural tribes, the “ village Indians ” of the higher races. These, although in America they never lived in a gold-bearing country, accumulated the metallic treasures of the lands around them, acquiring them by means of successful wars, or through an active and extensive trade. But the Spaniards, who had no taste for work, preferring chivalrous robbery, sought first the centres of trade and the treasure already laid up in them. The conquest of Mexico gave them evidence of the existence of such a centre in the central part of the Western Continent; but concerning South America there were only rumors and vague guesses.

Excepting the colonies on the Isthmus of Darien

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and at Panama, the Spanish settlements in New Granada and Venezuela made little progress. Panama grew vigorously ; ships sailed thence southward to the Pearl Islands and to the west coast of New Granada. The whole western slope of the Andes, from the Rio Atrato southward, the provinces of Antioquia and Cauca, were very rich in gold. But they were inhabited by savage and warlike tribes addicted to a horrible cannibalism, whose villages were rarely situated upon the coast, while access to them by land from Panama was attended with great difficulties. The Spaniards on the western side of South America were therefore involuntarily led into making coast voyages, which in the course of time took them to Peru.

The Spanish enterprises in Venezuela, after the pearl fisheries on the island of Margarita were organized, were limited to making single landings, the chief purpose of which was barter, and especially man-stealing. This practice depopulated the coast, and embittered the natives to such a degree that they became dangerous enemies to all attempts at permanent colonization. By them the well-intended effort of the famous lieutenant Las Casas to found a colony at Cumana was defeated with bloodshed in the year 1521. Only in Coro, on the narrow, arid isthmus that connects the peninsula of Paraguana with the country around Lake Maracaybo, Juan de Ampues succeeded in .1527, with seventy men, in founding a colony and establishing friendly relations with the Coquetios Indians around him.

The Spaniards had by their predatory expeditions excited the resentment of the Indians along the

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northern coast of New Granada, and those tribes, populous and rich in treasures accumulated by their trade with the interior, but little civilized, offered them a vigorous resistance. Their poisoned arrows were formidable weapons, and the thick woods gave them secure hiding-places and natural fortifications. Rodrigo de Bastidas, having founded a settlement at Santa Marta in 1525, returned to San Domingo in consequence of an outbreak among his men. His successors, Palomino, Badillo, and Heredia, tried without success to overcome the gold-rich tribes of northern New Granada. They could advance no farther than the valley of La Ramada. Palomino was drowned, and a bitter quarrel arose between Heredia and Badillo, the adjustment of which was left to the Emperor Charles V. Without regarding the claims of the two candidates, the Spanish Government appointed Garcia de Lerma governor of Santa Marta, with a new military force. At the same time the Emperor leased the Province of Venezuela, extending from Cape de la Vela on the west to Maracapanna, now Piritu, on the east, to the house of Bartholomaus Welser & Co., of Augsburg, and in 1529 Ambrosius Dalfinger and Bartholomaus Seyler landed at Coro with four hundred men, and took possession of the post for “M. M. H. H. Welser.” Ampues had to yield, and the Germans became lessees of a large part of northern South America. They found the colony of Coro prospering, and the Indians in the neighborhood friendly. A story was current among these Indians of a tribe dwelling in the mountains to the south with whom gold was so abundant that they powdered the whole body of their 2

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chief with it. This was the legend of “the gilded man ” — el hombre dorado , or, more briefly, el dorado , “the gilded.” The story was based on a fact: a chieftain who was gilded for a certain ceremonial occasion once really existed, on the table-land of Bogota, in the province of Cundinamarca, in the heart of New Granada.

According to Lucas Fernandez Piedrahita, Bishop of Panama * the district of Cundinamarca included nearly all eastern and central New Granada. The eastern Cordilleras bounded it on the east, it extended on the north to the Bio Cesar and the region of Lake Maracaybo, on the west to the Bio Magdalena, and on the south to Beyva. But the heart of the district, Cundinamarca, in its strictest sense, was the high table-land of Bogota, once the home of “ the dorado.” “ This table-land,” says Alexander von Humboldt, in his ilVues des Cordilleres et Monuments indigenes” (Chute de Tequendama), on which the city of Santa Fe is situated, “ has some similarity to the plateau that encloses the Mexican lakes. Both lie higher than the convent of St. Bernard ; the former is 2660 metres and the latter 2277 metres above the level of the sea. The Valley of Mexico, surrounded by a circular wall of porphyritic mountains, was covered in the central part with water, for before the Europeans dug the canal of Huehuetoca the numerous mountain streams that fell into the valley had no outlet from it. The table-land of Bogota is likewise surrounded by high mountains, while the perfect evenness of the level, the geological constitution of the ground, and the form of the rocks of

# “Historic, general del nuevo Reyno de Granada , 16S8.”

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Suba and Facatativa, which rise like islands from the midst of the savannas, all suggest the existence of a former lake-basin. The stream of Funza, commonly called the Rio de Bogota, has forced a channel for itself through the mountains southwest of Santa Fe. It issues from the valley at the estate of Tequendama, falling through a narrow opening into a canon which descends to the valley of the Magdalena. If this opening, the only outlet the valley of Bogota has, were closed, the fertile plain would gradually be converted into a lake like that of the Mexican plateau.” On this high plain, whose even, mild climate permitted the cultivation of the grains of the temperate zone, lived, in small communities, according to their several dialects, the agricultural village Indians, the Muysca. Isolated by nature, for the highland that girt them on every side could be reached only through narrow ravines, they were entirely surrounded by savage cannibal tribes. Such were the Panches west of Bogota, and in the north the semi-nomadic kindred tribes to the Muysca, the Musos and Colimas. Engaged in constant war with one another, the Muysca lived in hereditary enmity with their neighbors. While the Panches ate with relish the bodies of fallen Muysca, the latter brought the heads of slain Panches as trophies to their homes. Yet these hostilities did not prevent an active reciprocity of trade. The Muysca wove cotton cloths, and their country contained emeralds, which, like all green stones, were valued by the Indians as most precious gems. But their most valuable commodity was salt. In white cakes shaped like sugar loaves this necessary was carried over beaten paths west to the Rio Cauca, and north,

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from tribe to tribe down the Magdalena, for a distance of a hundred leagues. Regular markets were maintained, even in hostile territories, and the Muysca received in exchange for their goods, gold, of which their own country was destitute, while their uncivilized neighbors, particularly the Panches and other western tribes, possessed it in abundance. The precious metal was thus accumulated to superfluity on the table-land of Bogota. The Muysca understood the art of hammering it and casting it in tasteful shapes, and they adorned with it their clothes, their weapons, and both the interior and the exterior of their temples and dwellings.

The Muysca lived in villages — “pueblos” — of which an exaggerated terminology has made cities ; and their large communal houses, which were intended, according to the Indian custom, for the whole family, have been magnified into palaces. These buildings were made of wood and straw ; but the temple at Iraca had stone pillars. Their tools and weapons were of stone and hard wood ; but vessels of copper or bronze, such as the Peruvians possessed, have not been found among them, although a recent authority, Dr. Rafael Zerda, believes that they were acquainted with alloys. Their organization was a military democracy, such as prevailed throughout America. In each tribe the position of chief was hereditary in a particular clan or gens, out of which the uzaque , as he was called, was chosen. This chief, or uzaque, simply represented the executive power. As in Mexico, the council of the elders of the tribe acted with him in decision.

Concerning the religious ideas of the Muysca, as

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well as concerning tlieir language, so much has been published in recent times and since Herr von Humboldt directed attention to them in his celebrated researches (“Vues des Cordilleres,” etc., and “ Calen - drier des Muyscas”) that we refrain from superfluous repetition. Their language was probably similar to the Peruvian Quichua, but their numeral system was more like that of the Central American peoples. Their calendar combined with the Peruvian month of thirty days the double, civil, and ritual year of the Mexica. Besides the worship of the sun and moon (Bochica and Bachue or Chia), which was performed with stated human sacrifices, in which the Mexican rite of cutting out the heart was employed, there existed, as in Peru, a kind of fetish worship of striking natural objects. The numerous lakes of the plateau were holy places. Each of them was regarded as the seat of a special divinity, to which gold and emeralds were offered by throwing them into the water. In the execution of the drainage works which have been instituted at different places in more recent times, as at the lagoon of Sieclia, interesting objects of art and of gold have been brought to light.

Among the many lakes of the table-land of Bogota known as such places of offering, the lake of Guatavita became eminently famous as the spot where the myth of el dorado , or the gilded man, originated. This water lies north of Santa Fe, on the paramo of the same name, picturesquely situated at a height of 3199 metres above the sea. A symmetrical cone, the base of which is about two hours in circumference, bears on its apex the lake, which has a circuit of five kilometres and a depth of sixteen

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fathoms. The bottom of the lake is of fine sand. Near this water, at the foot of the paramo, lies the village of Guatavita. The inhabitants of this place about the year 1490 constituted an independent tribe. A legend was current among them that the wife of one of their earlier chiefs had thrown herself into the water in order to avoid a punishment, and that she survived there as the goddess of the lake. Besides the Indians of the tribe of Guatavita, pilgrims came from the communes around to cast their offerings of gold and emeralds into the water. At every new choice of a uzaque of Guatavita, an imposing ceremonial was observed. The male population marched out in a long procession to the paramo. In front walked wailing men, nude, their bodies painted with red ochre, the sign of deep mourning among the Muysca. Groups followed, of men richly decorated with gold and emeralds, their heads adorned with feathers, and braves clothed in jaguars’ skins. The greater number of them went uttering joyful shouts, others blew on horns, pipes, and conclis. Xeques , or priests, were in the company, too, in long black robes adorned with white crosses, and tall black caps. The rear of the procession was composed of the nobles of the tribe and the chief priests, bearing the newly elected chieftain, or uzaque, upon a barrow hung with discs of gold. His naked body was anointed witli resinous gums, and covered all over with gold-dust. This was the gilded man, el honibre dorado, whose fame had reached to the seacoast.*

* Zamora treats these ceremonies as fabulous, but they are vouched for by Piedrahita, Pedro Simon, and others, as having once existed.

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Arrived at the shore, the gilded chief and his companions stepped upon a balsa and proceeded upon it to the middle of the lake. There the chief plunged into the water and washed off his metallic covering, while the assembled company, with shouts and the sound of instruments, threw in the gold and the jewels they had brought with them. The offerings completed, the chief returned to the shore and to the village of Guatavita. The festival closed with dancing and feasting.*

Till about the year 1470 the tribe of the Tunja was the most powerful clan on the highland ; at that time the Muysca of Bogota t began to extend their dominion. Their chief, or zippa, Nemequene, overcame the Guatavita Indians in the last decade of the fifteenth century, and made them tributary. With that he put an end to the ceremony of the dorado. The gilded chief had ceased to wash off his glittering coat in the waters of Guatavita thirty years before Juan de Ampues founded the colony of Coro, but news of this change on the highlands of Cundinamarca had not yet reached the coast, and the dorado still continued to live in the mouths of the natives there.

Ambrosius Dalfinger, of Ulm, in Suabia, the new German governor of Venezuela, was the first to hunt upon the trail of the “ gilded man.” He left Coro in July, 1529, sailed across the Gulf of Venezuela, on the western coast of which he established the post of Maracaybo, and then pressed westwardly inland to

* A group of ten golden figures has been found in the lagoon of Siecha, representing the balsa with the dorado.

t Bacat& — the extreme cultivated land.

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the Rio Magdalena. He was not aware that he was thereby encroaching upon the territory of the government of Santa Marta. No white man had ever entered these regions before him. Thick woods, partly swampy and partly hilly, covered the country, and warlike tribes, who often possessed gold, lived in the valleys. Dalfinger was a valiant soldier, who permitted no obstacle interposed by tropical nature, or resistance offered by the natives, to keep him back. He was, moreover, a rough, heartless warrior of a kind of which the European armies of the time supplied many examples. Gold and slaves were his object, and in pursuit of them he plundered the inhabited country, and then devastated it in so terrible a manner that even the Spanish historians relate his deeds with revulsion. The rich valley of Cupari was wholly overrun and partly depopulated. When in 1529 Dalfinger reached the Magdalena at Tamalameque, he found the stream in flood, and the Indian villages surrounded by water, so that he could not get to them ; he then turned up the river toward the hills. Herrera says : u He went up the country, keeping by the river and the hills, to the Rio de Lebrija, the windings of which he followed as closely as possible. And when the way became barred by the numerous lagoons he went up into the hills, where he found a cool region (tier r a fria) thickly populated. He was forced to fight with the people, and suffered severely from them.”* He had here in all probability reached the edge of the plateau of Bogota, and the Indians before whose resistance his weakened army had to yield were the Muysca, to * Dec. iv. lib. iv. cap. i., p. 101.

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whose linguistic stem the dorado had belonged. Dalfinger wintered at the foot of the hills. The next year (1530) he continued his murderous campaign of plunder on the right bank of the Magdalena, till in the Ambrosia Valley the natives inflicted a second defeat upon him. Then he, with his troops, diminished to a few more than a hundred men, retreated to Coro, where he arrived about May. He brought with him 40,000 pesos in gold. He had already sent 30,000 pesos to Coro the year before, but both the treasure and its escort had been lost in the forest*

From the settlement of Santa Marta, on the northern coast of New Granada, the Spaniards advanced in the meantime very slowly toward the south. The periodical overflows of the Magdalena, the thick

* Dr. Clements R. Markham supposes, following Oviedo y Banos (“ Historia de Venezuela ” 1728), that Dalfinger died from a wound in 1530 ; but this appears to be erroneous, as is the assertion, too, of the same author that Dalfinger got no farther than the Rio Cesar. As to the latter point, Herrera, who is very exact in relating the deeds of the Europeans, mentions very plainly his reaching the cool country ( adonde hallo tierra fria). Dalfinger’s death can hardly have taken place before 1532. Nicolaus Federmann, Dalfinger’s provincial successor, says that he went to San Domingo in 1530 to be cured of a fever. When Federmann returned, in 1532, from his first expedition (southward to the plain of Meta), the governor was still living. Herrera’s statement (dec. iv. lib. ii. cap. ii.) that Dalfinger died at Coro in 1532 is the probable one. Federmann went back to Europe, but we shall see him later seeking for the dorado. Hans Seissenhoffer (Juan Aleman) succeeded him as governor of Coro, but died soon afterward without having undertaken anything. His successor, Georg von Speyer, was likewise inactive till the year 1535.

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woods of the interior, the resistance of the exasperated Indians, and, above all, the previous devastation of the inhabited districts by Dalfinger, created extremely formidable obstacles to their progress. Tamalameque, which Luis de Cardoso captured in 1531, was, till 1536, the most southern point which the Spaniards could reach from Santa Marta or Cartagena.

In the meantime reports had been brought from the western coast of South America which caused great excitement in all the Spanish colonies in America, and even in the mother-land itself. The coasting voyages southward, initiated by Pascual de Andagoya in 1522, were continued by Francisco Pizarro in 1524. The accounts which he received concerning the southern country (Peru) on his first expedition determined him on his return to Panama to lay out the plans for a larger enterprise, and on March 10, 1526, an agreement was made between him, Diego Almagro, and the licentiate Gaspar de Espinosa, in which the subsequent conquest of Peru was designated as a “ business.” On a third voyage, in 1528, Pizarro touched at Tumbez, in Quito, and saw the stone houses, the llamas, the emeralds, and the gold of the land of the Quichua. Three years later the actual descent upon the Peruvian coast began, and events succeeded one another with surprising rapidity. On the 15th of November, 1532, the Capac Inca Atahualpa was a prisoner of the white men at Cassamarca. The weak bonds which held together the government of the Quichua tribe were broken at once, and every chief, every subjected district, acted independently. Huascar Inca, the reg-