Discoverer of the Pacific

author of COLOMBIA GATEWAY TO SOUTH AMERICA

 BALBO A
OF DARIÉN :
Discoverer of the Pacifi c

by KATHLEEN ROMOL I

A magic quality—an aura of romance, a

suggestion of legend—surrounds the nam e
of Darién, the first mainland colony in th e
Western Hemisphere, and that of Balboa ,
the conquistador whose destiny was inter-
woven with its brief life . In 1510 Vasco
Núñez de Balboa, a handsome, devil-may-
care Spaniard, set out for immortal glor y
concealed in a flour barrel on a ship boun d
for the mainland . He was among the rugge d
compañeros who founded Darién ; it was hi s
leadership during the colony's early, difficul t
years that made Darién a crucial link in th e
chain of empire and exploration, and it wa s
his discovery of the Pacific that has give n
both Balboa and Darién immortal fame .
The story of Balboa of Darién is gaud y
and dramatic, with barely a pause betwee n
crises . It is a pageant roundly constructed ,
with thoroughly vicious villains and hot-
tempered men fighting for wealth, and wit h
a hero who combined vision and practica l
wisdom with a forcefulness that made hi m
both "feared and beloved ." In the few years
that Balboa's star burned brightly Darié n
was a thriving settlement that set the exampl e
for the whole Spanish conquest in the Ne w
World, and when he died under the execu-
tioner's knife Darién died too and returne d
to the jungle .

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 BALBOA OF DARIÉN

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 BOOKS BY KATHLEEN ROMOL I

BALBOA OF DARIÉN : MISCOVERER .OF THE PACIFIC

COLOMBIA : GATEWAY TO SOUTH AMERICA

 KATHLEEN ROMOLI

40

Balboa of Dar i én

DISCOVERER
OF THE PACIFI C

DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY, INC .

Garden City, New York, 1953

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER 53-9142

COPYRIGHT, 1953, BY KATHLEEN ROMOLI

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATE S

AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N .Y.

FIRST EDITION
FOR BILL
 FOREWORD
THE PLEASURES and problems of historical research need no ex-
planation to its addicts, and very little to people with a taste fo r
detective stories . The sifting of evidence ; the dogged pursuit of clues ;
the plausible testimony pulverized by a chance word and the re-
spectable witnesses who turn out to be suspect ; the establishment o f
times (where was the King on December 23, 1511?) ; the holy joy of
finding a priceless lead in an apparently extraneous purchase of salt
mackerel ; the climactic moments when a dozen awkward pieces fal l
suddenly into a beautiful, logical whole—these belong to historica l
detection as much as to that of crime fictional or otherwise . So ,
of course, does the psychological side of investigation : history ma y
follow a vast rhythm as the stars their courses, but its individual de-
velopments are largely the products of emotion.
The drawback—and the charm—in historical sleuthing is that s o
many cases can never be closed . The witnesses are dust, and some of
the chief exhibits are missing . And whereas the evidence which is pre-
served may be abundant, it is frequently inaccurate and seldom im-
partial .
The story of Darién and Balboa in these chapters is founded o n
documenta of the time and on the accounts of contemporary chroni-
clers . Indubitably authentic sources, they provide a remarkabl e
amount of information, comparatively little of which can be take n
vi¡
whole with simple faith . Part of the trouble is mechanical : a docu-
ment may date from the time of the colony, and yet be the faulty copy
of a lost original, to say nothing of the errors which blossom in mor e
modern renderings from the difficult script of that period . Considering
what some of the manuscripts that confront the paleographer are like ,
no one—except, possibly, another paleographer--can be hypercritical ;
nevertheless, at times the mistakes seem excessive even to the char-
itable. As to translations, charity can sometimes only draw a kindl y
veil ; even those of eminent authorities can conceal traps for the un-
wary . Some slips are merely diverting : Harrisse's translation of Punt a
de lobos marinos (Point of Seals) as "Point of the Good Sailors, "
evidently inspired by the term "sea wolf " for an old salt, has a maca-
bre charm when collated with the 1516 report of the expeditionarie s
who found so many sea wolves at the promontory that they kille d
sixty-six of them and brought their skins to Spain . But it is not s o
funny when his translation of a letter from the Bishop of Darién alter s
the meaning from beginning to end . And the translator who turne d
Martyr ' s description of Balboa as "an outstanding fighter with th e
sword" into "an egregious ruffian" has a good deal to answer for.
A far greater problem is, however, the rampant bias of contem-
porary letters and reports . A more contentious, invidious lot than th e
conquistadores would be hard to find ; their representations to th e
authorities in Castile bulge with ulterior motives, so that they can b e
evaluated only when one has a fair idea of what axes are being ground ,
and why. Slander was common coin, and guided by the principle whic h
promotes million-dollar damage suits in hope of getting ten thousand ,
they piled it on ; their talent for omission, subterfuge, and bland pre-
varication is neutralized only by its obviousness . Since it is the officia l
correspondence which has been preserved, and sine in Darién this
was predominantly the expression of a cabal to ruin Balboa, and sine,
furthermore, it was designed to present a peccant administration a s
just men made perfect, it is evident that reports cannot be take n
straight . Depositions in lawsuits and in the probanzas by which vetera n
conquistadores set forth their merits are somewhat better : about as
reliable as such testimony would be today . Finally, there are the hones t
errors—things forgotten or ill-remembered, or misunderstood whe n
heard at second hand. No wonder one clings to the dry entries i n
viii
notarial registers with something like affection : if a shipmaster i s
buying salted flour for his forthcoming voyage, it is at least certai n
that he has not yet left ; if he is found delivering goods and dispatche s
at the other end, he has undóubtedly arrived .
This brings us to the chroniclers . They were giants ; we could not
do without them, for lacking their narratives our knowledge of th e
early years of American colonization would be a skeleton affair . Bu t
here, too, one must keep in mind the maxim that should hang, in
letters of gold, over every student's desk : `7t ain't necessarily so ." Of
the three prime chroniclers who tell of the Darién colony, one neve r
saw the Indies ; one knew parts of the Indies well, but not Darién ; one
was in Darién, but for no more than eleven months during the cours e
of our story . In sum, eighty to ninety per cent of what they recount i s
hearsay . Two of them were influenced by strong personal prejudices ,
and the other got much of his data from tendentious sources . Some-
times they appear to have made an immediate record of what they
learned, sometimes they are clearly at grips with inadequate notes —
the kind of cryptic memoranda which seem perfectly sufficient whe n
jotted down, and are later so baffíing ; all too frequently they rely o n
memory . All things considered, it is not surprising that they occa-
sionally go astray ; what is astonishing is the amount of information
they amassed, and how much of it is substantially correct .
The fact that the chronicles are indispensable, that when they stan d
uncontradicted they must be accepted and when (as often happens )
they contradict each other they must be weighed, means that the mor e
we know about their authors, the better. The notes which follow ar e
no more than a bare introduction .
The three prime chroniclers were, in the order in which they wrote :
Pietro Martire d'Anghiera, called in English "Peter Martyr," who a s
cleric, humanist, papal prothonotary, counselor, and newsman spen t
the greater part of his life at the Castilian Court ; Gonzalo Fernánde z
de Oviedo, who was Chief Inspector of Gold and Barter and Chief
Notary of the Crown in Darién ; and Bartolomé de las Casas, Pro-
tector of the Indians . With regard to Darién, a fourth annalist must
be added to their number : Pascual de Andagoya .
Martyr, urbane, curious, and personally objective, was keenly aliv e
to the import of what he was the first to call the "New World . " H e
ix
made a point of talking with men home from the Indies, and even o f
getting them to put their recollections in writing—memoranda which ,
alas, he usually threw away as soon as read. He was on familiar terms
with ministers, prelates, colonial officials ; Columbus was his friend ;
he was allowed to read especially interesting reports from the Ne w
World—notably those of Balboa about the discovery of the Pacific-
which vanished before others could consult them . And he wrote while
events were still warm or, iP_deed, still in process .
But Martyr was a reporter, not a historian . He sent out a steady
stream of newsletters (over eight hundred of them were publishe d
shortly after his death : the Opus epistolarum) . His eight "Decades"
on the New World, published complete as De orbe novo in 1530 ,
were on much the same order—lengthy epistles written in install-
ments, having all the freshness and faults of any reportage of happen-
ings in an unknown and infinitely remote locale . In the letters he is
direct and insouciant ("I 'm writing this with one foot in the stirrup .
. . . Good-by—take care of yourselU'), and, though sometimes
pompous in the "Decades, " can also be sprightly : no mean feat whe n
writing in Latin to popes and cardinals . With regard to Balboa hi s
data is a kind of sandwich : an approving layer, which coincides with
reports received alter the discovery of the Pacific, between two un-
favorable ones which reflect the communications of Balboa's sworn
enemies .
Oviedo was also at home in Court circles ; he had been one of the
lads chosen as companions for the heir apparent, Prince Juan, i n
whose household Columbus ' sons lived as pages . His direct interes t
in the Indies began when, at the age of thirty-six, he was appointe d
to the official posts in Darién . Clever, cultured, worldly, he had con-
siderable humor, a taste for anecdote, and a healthy sense of his own
importance . His prejudices were lusty, and never more so than i n
connection with Darién, where he was himself deeply involved with
politics and personalities . He was a persistent man, and he had th e
courage of his preconceptions ; twenty-five and thirty years later the y
passed, unfaded, into his chronicle . Some were in the category of fixa-
tions, but it is only fair to say that others were extremely sound .
At the same time Oviedo was in many ways particularly well in-
formed. During his scant year there in 1514–1515 he had access t o
x
all records, attended the meetings of what might be termed the gov-
erning board, made it his business to know what the Governor an d
his colleagues were up to, and although Darién was already unde r
sentence of abandonment when he returned in 1520, he was still abl e
to find out a good deal that could be learned only on the spot . He wa s
an amateur naturalist of merit . And he is the only annalist who rea d
the log of Balboa's expedition of discovery to the Pacific and th e
papers relating to the discoverer ' s judicial murder—both of whic h
disappeared thereafter in suspicious circumstances . Most of what h e
recounts of Darién and Balboa was written around 1546 .
Casas, the third of our chroniclers, was the son of a prosperou s
merchant with interests in the Indies, and a graduate of the Universit y
of Salamanca . He went to Santo Domingo in 1502 ; seven years late r
he became the first priest ordained in the New World . After two years
with Velásquez in the conquest of Cuba, he renounced the land an d
serfs allotted to him there, returned to Hispaniola, proceeded t o
Castile in 1515 and, save for a few months in 1517, was in Spain
until the latter part of 1520 . In Cuba he had seen a great light ; thence-
forth his devouring aim was the freedom and well-being of the Indians .
Vehemently rejecting the thesis that American aborigines were a n
inferior race predestined to servitude—unlike Moslems and Negroes ,
whose enslavement he approved and even promoted—he denied th e
right of Spain to New World dominion and furiously denounced th e
greedy cruelties of the conquistadores . Quite naturally his writings ,
especially a virulent little work published in 1552, enjoyed the mos t
gratifying popularity in countries inimical to Spain ; what is surprising
is that despite his blazing attacks on his country and his countrymen ,
he lived long in security and honors .
Casas' noble, if restricted, obsession was inherent in everything h e
wrote ; it accounts for his exaggerations and, at times, misrepresenta-
tions as well as for the limpid conscience in which he reveals som e
rather questionable methods used to his ends . Like most fanatics, h e
identified himself with the Divine intention ; it followed that peopl e
who disagreed with him were wicked, and that personal piques wer e
apt to take on the thunder of indignation in a sacred cause . Con-
versely, he had only good to say of certain deplorable persons wh o
happened to favor him . No one has ever doubted that Casas was a n
xi
honest crusader, but it has been claimed that he was not an hones t
historian. The judgment, whatever his historiographical failings, is
undue. Like so much criticism, it presupposes that the author's aim
was what the critic thinks it should have been ; it also ignores th e
facts of life .
Casas was not trying to be impartial . A fighter to the last, he wa s
not only incapable of a coldly precise reconstruction : it never occurred
to him that it would be desirable to attempt one . Secondly, he wrote
the greater part of his Historia forty and more years after the events :
starting in 1552, continuing with many interruptions for ten years ,
and adding further bits and pieces almost until his death, at the ag e
of ninety-two, in 1566 . In everyday life we do not expect unbiase d
total recall even of less combatively minded octogenarians . As for
those long, ostensibly verbatim quotations of dramatic discussion s
occurring nearly half a century earlier, the scholars who grant the m
the accuracy of tape recordings are as unreasonable as those wh o
damn them for deliberate distortions . What old warrior, in forty years ,
does not reshape memory nearer to the heart' s belief?
Casas (he calls himself thus, not Las Casas) amassed an extraor-
dinary amount of information, including quantities of documentar y
material, most of which—but not all—was collected in support of hi s
theses. Certain tricks of style are useful guides : accounts of matter s
he learned about at second hand are in general positively phrased,
and modifying as-l-recalls or if-memory-serves are attached to thos e
he observed himself, suggesting that he made careful notes in the
first case which in the second seemed unnecessary ; "probably" or
"my understanding is" in his lexicon means he does not know wha t
happened and supposes the worst ; the "it was believed" formul a
usually indicates that he is putting over a bit of Casasiana, possibly
libelous . Concerning Darién, he was informed to some extent by per-
sonal acquaintance with Balboa and other actors in the drama, and t o
a greater one by Martyr' s works and a lost manuscript called La Bar-
bárica (written by Diego de la Tobilla, who went to the Isthmus in
1514), both of which he cites or paraphrases extensively . His style
is involved, but it is also vigorous and vivid ; he can display, if not
exactly humor, at least a rather savage facetiousness ; he was uncom-
monly widely read, he had a mind for detail and he was in and out of
xii
the Antilles and Central America over a period of forty-five years .
Many historians declare that, could they have only one chronicler ,
they would choose Casas .
Pascual de Andagoya, our last contemporary narrator, had no pre-
tension of being a capital-letter chronicler : he merely wrote a memoir
of what he had seen and experienced . But he saw more of the Darié n
colony, knew its contending personages better, took part in more o f
its expeditions, and told of it more equanimously than anyone els e
whose writing has survived . By some rniracle he kept aloof from th e
clashing rivalries about him, despite close association with the chie f
protagonists . A minder of his own business, he was little given to
judgment, which is why his occasional calm appraisals can be devas-
tating . In fact, Andagoya had the makings of a first-class historian ; it
is a pity that he did not set himself to be one from the first, althoug h
the idea is a lot to ask of a nineteen-year-o1d recruit to adventure .
His Relación, or part of it, has been included in modern works, an d
Markham made a translation of it . Considering Andagoya' s career-
he was later the forerunner of Pizarro on the Pacific coast and titula r
governor of a province—he deserves more attention than he has re-
ceived . The note on him in the Enciclopedia Espasa is curtailed, in-
accurate, and entirely silent about his writings .
The disappearance of so many key documenta written by, or re-
lating to, Balboa is as intriguing as it is frustrating . It is not the onl y
loss : there is that of all the confidential reports sent by clerics an d
friars to their superiors in Spain, to say nothing of the total blan k
in so far as private correspendence is concerned . The thought o f
coming on a bundle of yellowed dispatches subtracted circa 152 1
from the files, or the classie coffer of intimate letters by some gossip y
colonist, is a researcher's dream of hidden treasure . Meanwhile the
gaps in the evidence and those not always identifiable errors in th e
chronicles explain why no one describing the early years of Spanis h
rule in America can escape the nagging sensation—like a dull bu t
persistent toothache—that any day some new find, some oversight o f
his own, will arise to smite him . It also explains the habit-forming
stimulation of historicnl sleuthing : in the last analysis there is no suc h
thing as a definitive history .
xiii
 The statements in these chapters which are at variance with thos e
in other books on the subject have been carefully verified . In th e
strictest sense few of them are "new " : that is to say, the material fo r
them can be found in documents which, with limited exceptions, ar e
available in print . True, it seldom occurs in large, convenient hunks ;
mostly it is a matter of shreds and fragmenta, to be fitted together b y
the collating, or jigsaw, method . Nevertheless, first credit, and my
gratitude, belong to the researchers and compilers whose dedicate d
labors have given us hundreds of volumes of true sources . It seems
ungracious to remark that some of the most valuable documentatio n
is attached to narratives which contain rather startling errors, and i n
any case it is beside the point : the documents are there, placed at th e
disposal of us all . In a few instances it has been impractical to cite al l
the references : e .g., a sentence about the family of the discoverer o f
Darién rests on gleanings from twenty-six separate notarial acts .
Otherwise the sources are given in the notes .
Many chroniclers besides those given in the notes as chief source s
relate the events of Darién, notably, Antonio de Herrera, in extenso,
and Gómara, in admirably compact style . They will be found in the
Bibliography, but because most of their material was taken from
Casas, Martyr, and Oviedo, they are referred to only when they pre-
sent credible particulars which do not appear elsewhere .
In the matter of proper names I have adopted the spelling mos t
common at the time . Orthography of names was a rather casual busi-
ness in those days (consider Shakespeare!), and when it carne t o
unfamiliar Indian ones, any guess was good . There are at least a dozen
ways of spelling Coquibacoa, including "Arcay batoia" and "Argesi-
bacoa ." The question was, of course, complicated by the fact tha t
many colonists were more at honre with a sword or crossbow than a
pen and that some eminent navigators were unable to letter their ow n
charts, but even the most literate usually omitted the accent in writin g
Indian words and had a hit-or-miss way with cedillas—to occasionall y
disconcerting effect, as when a labra (nobleman) turns up without
explanation in an otherwise Spanish text as a cabra, or she-goat .
In translating letters and reports I have been literal rather than
literary ; the authors were often awkward writers, and to tidy up thei r
style would be to misrepresent them . I have, however, supplied some
Xlv
punctuation by way of marking a trail through the denser syntactica l
jungles . Any conversational quotes are so given in the chronicles or ,
more rarely, in correspondence . The maps are based on those mad e
from recent aerial survey ; routes of exploration and travel and th e
location of tribes and chiefdoms were determined from innumerabl e
referentes in writings contemporary to their conquest, checked with
later geographical data and to some extent by what I have been able
to see myself of the country ranged by the men of Darién .

During the years of tracking and collating the material for thi s
book I have had reason to be grateful to many more people than ca n
be mentioned here ; to each of them, this is a renewed expression of
my appreciation . I wish, however, to thank especially the helpfu l
friends in Colombia : the former National Librarian, Dr . Enriqu e
Uribe White ; the Director of the National Archives, Dr . Enriqu e
Ortega Ricaurte ; the President of the Colombian Academy of History ,
Dr . Luis Augusto Cuervo, and numerous members of the Academy ;
the Directors of the Geographical Institute of Colombia, Dr . Belisario
Ruiz Wilches and Dr . José Ignacio Ruiz ; and other kindly people who
put their erudition and their own libraries at my disposal, and who
patiently indulged me in those arguments which are so clarifying o f
one' s ideas . I want, too, to remember three friends who are no longer
with us : Dr . Laureano García Ortiz, Dr . Daniel Samper Ortega, and
Dr . Julio Garzón Nieto, formerly Chief of the Bureau of Longitude s
of the Ministry of Foreign Relations . My thanks go also to the Presi-
dent and members of the Academy of History of Panama for allowin g
me to attend their meetings, to the librarians everywhere whose assist -
ance was above and beyond the call of duty—particularly, those o f
the New York Public Library—and to Jean Luberger Whitnack fo r
her careful and constructive work on the manuscript .
K. R.

New York
1953

XV
 PROLOGU E
DARIÉN is a name of familiar romance, but it has come to hav e
something the quality of legend : heroic, vaguely stimulating and as
disembodied as Avalon or Xanadu . More often than not it stands fo r
a single climactic moment, the discovery of the Pacific ; and even that
is haunted by the shade of "stout Cortez," magnificent on his mis -
placed peak . Yet Darién was important, and not merely as a spring-
board for one transcendent exploration . Moreover, its importance wa s
much more than a passing quirk of destiny (although it was that, too ,
at the time), for its infíuence on the course of American history went
on in widening circles long after Darién itself had sunk from sight .
Darién was the first mainland colony in the Americas, the capital
Pf a vast and only partially defined dominion . It was an episcopal se e
with full chapter, and at one time, before the black death struck, i t
boasted three thousand Spanish residents, "some of the most splendi d
and select people ever to come to theee Indies ." Its vicissitudes wer e
followed with vibrant interest in the palaces and counting houses an d
portside taverns of Europe, and its administration cost the Crow n
some fifteen thousand ducats a year in salaries . It was the mother o f
exploration and settlement from Mexico to Tierra del Fuego, and it s
story—at once a gaudy melodrama and an outline of early colonia l
methods—constitutes a small-scale working model, handy and com-
plete, of the whole Spanish conquest in the New World .
 The facts of Darién can be reconstructed with reasonable accuracy
provided one keeps as Glose as possible to original sources . If there is
a haunting suggestion of technicolor about them, the fault is in th e
modern view . Admittedly the story is out of line with much now
passed as realism : it is roundly constructed, with proper villains and
a more than proper hero ; it presents adventure, disasters, plots, and
difficult triumphs with barely a pause between crises, and it is gen-
erally prone to pageant . Nevertheless it is true . The hard-bitte n
compañeros, the loot (politely known as revenue) in piled-up gold
and quarts of pearls, the greenhorn caballeros, haggard but haughty
in mildewed elegance of silk and velvet, the ladies late of Their High-
nesses' court or of the brothels of Seville, the busy bureaucrats dee p
in reports, corruption and red tape, were never half-tone subjects . But
however fantastic, they were real .
For that matter, the setting itself was fantastic, not so much because
it was untamed and exotic—a description then applicable to all the
New World—as because it was so illogical .
At the southernmost corner of the Caribbean, where the plungin g
Colombian coast line meets the Isthmus of Panama, lies the Gulf o f
Urabá, a pocket of the sea between the mainland and the mountainou s
root of the Isthmus . The eastern side of the Gulf, inside Cariban a
Point, is a region of scrubby hills and broken, palm-fringed beaches ,
once the domain of the fierce Urabaes ; the whole lower part is bor-
dered by swamps, behind which stretches the half-drowned wildernes s
of the Atrato River Valley, half of the western, or Isthmian, side i s
taken up by the mangrove sloughs and wandering channels of th e
Atrato Delta . Above the delta there is a strip of rugged coast wher e
the land climbs in ridges dark with rain forest to the crest of th e
barrier Sierra. This strip, from the Río Tanela to the limit of the Gulf ,
was Darién .
A more improbable site for a front-rank colony could not well b e
imagined . Darién had no decent harbor, no large rivers, little arabl e
land . It dominated no trade routes, actual or potential . Ships had a
hard time reaching it and a worse one getting away, and for any vessel
too big to beach easily a stopover was fatal . Its climate was unhealthy
and (most damning of all in that age) its mineral resources wer e
insignificant. As if to complete the picture, its settlement, Santa María
2
del Antigua, was tucked away in a narrow, rather marshy valley fiv e
miles from the sea—a strategically inapt location where it was impos-
sible to produce food for more than a few hundred people . Logic ,
however, has always put up a feeble show against chance and huma n
daring ; in the face of geographical reason Darién proceeded to estab-
lish itself as a crucial link in the chain of empire .
The protagonist of the Darién story was Vasco Núñez de Balboa,
the handsome young swashbuckler who became one of the greates t
figures in the panorama of discovery . The place and the man are s o
intimately bound that they cannot be viewed separately . Almost every-
thing we know of Balboa is centered in Darién, as if he had no sub-
stance save in connection with it ; and without Balboa, Darién migh t
never have existed for history . He was with the armada which dis-
covered it ; nine years later he was among the compañeros who con-
quered it . It was occupied at his suggestion, he commanded it durin g
the early years, and from it he went out to the explorations which
culminated at the Pacific . Other conquistadores influenced events i n
the colony, some of them decisively : the green-eyed Governor Pedra-
rias, who was called the Wrath of God ; the doughty Bishop ; a host of
maneuvering officials and colonists . But behind their actions one ca n
usually find Balboa, whom they humiliated but could never ignore —
a constantly determinant force by reason of the emotions he inspired .
When he was destroyed, Darién did not survive him . The governmen t
moved to Panamá, Santa María del Antigua soon went back to th e
jungle, and in time the very name of Darién was taken away and give n
to other provinces .
The whole extraordinary cyele, from discovery to abandonment ,
lasted little more than twenty years, and less than ten of these enclose d
all that is significant in the life of the colony and of its hero . It wa s
enough . In the brief span allowed them, Darién and Vasco Núñez d e
Balboa achieved the dynamic immortality which outstrips mere fame ,
because Darién was "the beginning and foundation of all that wa s
discovered and settled by Christians in Tierra Firme . . . and from
that school of Vasco Núñez' went forth captains and famous men fo r
all that happened afterwards . "
 I
SPANISH DOMINION in America, which began (like so many
discoveries) as the unforeseen by-product of a search directed to othe r
ends, was a haphazard development, growing from a foundling archi-
pelago to a bicontinental empire mostly by chance and private specu-
lation. This, indeed, was the only way it could grow. Aside from
the difficulty of drawing up an official plan for nebulous possessions
of unknown character and extent something that even today's bu-
reaucrats might find beyond them—the Spanish government was i n
no position to organize and finance systematic exploration . To b e
exact, there was no Spanish government for the first twenty-five year s
of American history, because Spain as we know it did not exist .
Despite the unity which made Isabel of Castile and Fernando of Ara-
gon, as rulers, almost a single entity, their respective kingdoms ha d
not been amalgamated . In those first decades the New World realms
belonged exclusively to Castile, a country so recently emerged fro m
feudal anarchy as to be scarcely a nation . l
It could be argued that if prolonged adversity is the stimulus t o
creative action in peoples, Castile was exactly primed for her ne w
imperial role. Other indications of preparedness were, to put it mildly ,
slight, except for the special quality of her sovereigns .
When Isabel succeeded to the throne, eighteen years before Co-
lumbus discovered the Antilles, the kingdom of Castile and Leon was
4
little better than a collection of unruly states . The monarchy wa s
bankrupt of prestige as well as treasury . The Moors still held Gra-
nada, the French were harrying Biscaya, some of the most powerfu l
grandees were allied with the King of Portugal to seize the throne by
force . The new sovereigns were young—Isabel was twenty-three ,
Fernando twenty-two—and they were borre poor . It is doubtful i f
they had been able to pay back the money they had borrowed to b e
married ; certainly they were hard put to it to provide the bare neces-
sities for their modest household . (Fernando's father, the old King of
Aragon, could not help : he had just been reduced to pawning his fu r
cloak .) They were an unusually attractive pair, but they did no t
appear destined to remold their country and see it launched as a
world power .
Fortunately, there was a great deal more to Isabel and Fernand o
that good looks and high intentions . The white-and-gold, picture-boo k
Queen had a mind for government and the moral and physical force
to back it. She could ride as fast and far as any cavalryman, and then
sit up half the night over reports and dispatches ; she demanded infor-
mation and welcomed advice, anal if in the end "she followed for th e
most part her own judgment," the judgment was generally good.
Fernando—who has been a good deal maligned, owing to a tendenc y
to accept the opinion of his bitterest adversaries as gospel—was a
little more earthy than his queen, a little more elastic and somewha t
less inclined to the discourses of "religious men and those of righteou s
life"—a pastime to which he was apt to prefer a hard game of pelot a
or a day's hunting . One does not associate Isabel with a sense o f
humor, but Fernando's was keen enough to let him enjoy the comi c
aspects of even his most unfortunate moments . " Well proportioned,
with fine features and laughing eyes . . . he had a singular gift, that
whoever talked with him straightway loved him and wished to serve
him ." Despite all this charm Fernando was both able and conscien-
tious . He not only sought advice, but often took it . He tolerated a n
almost startling degree of plain speaking from his subjects, with who m
he had, for the most part, the patience of a large dog in a yard ful l
of scrappy terriers out to get the best bones. No one, however, coul d
have called him ingenuous . And although the velvet glove was padded ,
the hand within was firm .
5
 They had their faults . They made mistakes ; the Inquisition, wit h
its corollary anti-Semitism, stands heavy against their names . As on e
of their favorite courtiers remarked, their candor and promises wer e
not always proof against the pressure of expediency, and they some-
times used dubious means to desirable ends—defects which might b e
described as endemic among people in their position . Yet, compare d
to their immediate predecessors and, indeed, to the majority o f
anointed rulers, they were paragons of virtue and enlightened effi-
ciency . Had they been otherwise, the history of America would hav e
had a different course .
In twenty years of skillful effort Isabel and Fernando gave their
realms a methodical administration, impartial justice, sound money,
and the merit system in civil service . An even greater achievemen t
was implied in these reforms : the curbing of the near-independen t
power of the great nobles . Granada, last outpost of Islam in the
Peninsula, had been taken . Castile did not look like a mother o f
empire in 1492, but she was beginning to look like a nation . She was
able to grasp at the opportunities presented by Columbus' discovery .
This initiative was due in part to a merciful ignorance of the measur e
of what she was getting into, and more directly, to the foresight o f
her sovereigns, who were remarkably prompt in asserting a right t o
whatever might lie beyond the Ocean Sea .
Columbus had barely had time to make his report before Isabel' s
claim was submitted to the Pope, who, as Vicar of God, to who m
belongs the world, had a clear jurisdiction in the matter . The Pope ,
with almost equal celerity, issued a bull--or rather, three bulls—th e
gist of which was that Castile was mistress of all heathen lands lyin g
beyond a meridian a hundred leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands .
To this Portugal objected ; the west coast of Africa was her preserve ,
and she wanted more leeway . In 1494 the question was amicably
settled in the Treaty of Tordesillas, by which the Line of Demarca-
tion was moved westward to a meridian three hundred and sevent y
leagues (1374 miles) from the Cape Verde Islands and the Azores .
Portugal was recognized mistress of everything east of the Line ; every-
thing west of it, "discovered or to be discovered" (exclusive of suc h
Christian kingdoms as might be revealed), was to belong to the sov-
ereigns of Castile "and to their successors forever and ever ."
 The next steps were to find out what had been acquired and to nail
it down by markers and acts of possession pending actual occupation .
These were not so easy . Armadas were expensive, and the treasury
was in a chronic state of emergency . Isabel had borrowed to financ e
Columbus (though not on her jewels, for the sufficient reason that
these were already in pawn), but borrowing has a limit . Nor could
the still fragmentary " new realms " provide the capital : America, fo r
the first forty years, was not the bonanza that is often supposed . Unti l
1502 it produced practically nothing, and in the period 1503—152 5
the total Crown revenues received in Spain from the New World, on
all counts, averaged a scant 40,000 pesos a year . The solution was t o
harness private enterprise .
Thus discovery became a business, and men sailed beyond the bath s
of all the western stars intent on a commercial gamble . The explore r
was a licensed trader operating "at his own cost and risk," subject t o
official controls . He paid a royalty on all proceeds from his voyag e
(the classic quinto del Rey, or King ' s fifth) and kept the remainder
for himself. At the lame time he served as a royal agent ("our Cap-
tain" ) in staking possession of the lands he discovered, and he was
bound to supply the government with charts of his explorations, copies
of the ships' logs, and reports covering everything from his barte r
deals to the mores of the Indians . In the early days the explorer-
traders were usually master mariners with a little capital who foun d
additional funds for their ventures on a profit-sharing basis which often
extended to arrangements with officers and crew . In due course they
were followed by more ambitious entrepreneurs : the concessionaire s
who contracted to conquer, convert, and settle specific gobernaciones .
Until 1503 negotiation and regulation of overseas voyages wer e
conducted for the Crown by Juan de Fonseca, "Bishop in charge of
discoveries . " From 1499 on, however, successive discoveries mad e
evident that the Indies of the Ocean Sea were more than could be
handled by a one-man bureau . It was also apparent, and more
urgently, that the exclusive privileges granted to Columbus at the
time of the first discovery could not continue to be the basis of colo-
nial administration . A new approach, or rather a first considere d
approach, to the whole problem of the new realms was imperative .
With his discovery of the Antilles, Cristoforo Colombo of Genoa
7
had been transformed into the Magnificent Lord Don Cristóbal Colón ,
Admiral of the Ocean Sea, Viceroy and Governor of all lands discov-
ered by hico or through his diligence . The sweeping titles, thought up
by Columbus himself, were to be hereditary, 2 and were aecompanie d
by the right to one tenth of all revenues from the aforementione d
lands, plus that of securing one eighth of all profits from trade b y
subscribing one eighth of the expenses . Conferred in a flush of enthu-
siasm and the belief that only a few islands were involved, the privi-
leges soon proved excessively awkward, the more so as Columbu s
turned out to be a singularly inept administrator. As the profile of a
vast new continent continued to unroll, they became grotesque . Co-
lumbus clung obstinately to the letter of the grants, liberally inter-
preted : anything discovered after he had shown the way should b e
added to his preserve (in 1502 he signed himself as, among other
things, "Viceroy and Governor General of the Islands, and of th e
Mainland of Asia and of India") . He also tried to claim, as heredi-
tary admiral, one third of the revenues from commerce in the
Indies.
If ever expedieney were justified versus promises, it was in this
absurd situation . The sovereigns could not hand over the New Worl d
to Columbus and his heirs for all time ; more immediately, they could
not even leave him to rule Hispaniola . A majority of the settlers had
rebelled against his authority, and to their complaints was added a
rumor that he planned to deliver the Indies to the Republic of Genoa . 3
Columbus was removed from the government of the colony, and the
sovereigns, while they did not deny his privileges, gradually pare d
them down to relatively innocuous proportions . Meanwhile they se t
about organizing a system of colonial government . In 1502 Fray
Nicolás de Ovando was sent to take over in Hispaniola, 4 and in
January, 1503, the Casa de Contratación de las Indias (the House o f
Trade of the Indies) was established in Seville .
The Casa de Contratación was entrusted to three executive offi-
cials : a treasurer, a factor, and an accountant-comptroller (contador) .
Subordinate officials with the same titles were attached to the admin-
istrations in the new realms . Almost at once the terco "royal officials "
carne to mean those of the Casa exclusively . As the Casa evolve d
from an institution for fostering and supervisan ; trade to an all-
8
embracing ministry of colonial affairs, the officials were invested wit h
enormous power and responsibility . Before long the House of Trad e
blanketed every phase of the economy of overseas development, an d
its authority stretched to a good many political aspects as well. I t
was a clearinghouse for goods and treasure, both public and prívate .
It collected royalties and revenues accruing from the colones an d
managed Crown properties in the Indies . It controlled overseas ship-
ping in all its aspects : letters patent and contracts, inspection, registry ,
insurance policies, emigration . It was a customhouse, a bureau o f
records, and a hydrographic office . It procured arms, stores, and ship s
for government service . It was a department of audit and accounts . It
served as custodian and executor of estates, received all confiscate o r
embargoed goods . It maintained a school of navigation, filed and
collated charts, and licensed pilots for the Indies . And its judicial
powers were extensive .
Incredible as it may seem, the royal officials handled all this with
considerable efficiency, and with a staff which most modern govern-
ments would consider inadequate for a subdivision in a quiet depart-
ment . Their salaries were reasonable and their perquisites large ;
those in Spain were generally honest and their deputies in the Indie s
were usually venal .
When it carne to the principies of colonial policy, Isabel and Fer-
nando displayed their usual good sense . The Indies of the Ocean Se a
might be strange and wild, but a healthy self-supporting communit y
was much the same everywhere, and its foundations were industrious ,
God-fearing residents and a productive agriculture . Gold and silve r
were, of course, highly desirable, but at this stage they were seen as
the frosting on the cake . Desirable emigrants (a category from whic h
Jews, Moors, and most foreigners were excepted) were offered ever y
inducement to settle permanently, particularly if they took their fami-
lies . Every ship bound for the Indies carried seeds, plants, tools, an d
assorted domestic animals . Farmers, stockmen, and artisans of ever y
trade were sent as favored colonists, if necessary on salary . No im-
portant settlement was without its doctors, pharmacist, and, of course ,
its priests and missionary friars—not to mention an infestation o f
lawyers . The Indies, in short, were to be made into a tropical exten-
sion of the mother country.
 The Indians, to be sure, presented an exotic element for whic h
there was no domestic precedent, but here, too, the King and Queen
had soond ideas. The Indians would be absorbed into the genera l
scheme as free subjects of the Crown, participants in the unity of
religion, law, and culture with Spain . Their independence would be
lost, but their souls would be saved . They would supply labor whil e
enjoying the protection and spiritual guidance of their white masters ,
and thus by precept and example be converted into "Christian citi-
zens . "
The first part of the program went well in spite of the difficulty o f
regulating any frontiersmen—and especially, Spanish frontiersmen-
in a generally i11-disciplined age, and later, of the disrupting effects o f
fabulous mining wealth . The colonists built cities "by and large as
fine as any in Spain" ; within the lifetime of the first settlers, Hispaniol a
was exporting hides, bacon, sugar in quantity, all from imported stock ,
and suffered from a glut of cattle . The great University of San Marc o
was founded only twenty years after Pizarro discovered Peru . Wher e
the program broke down was in the part which referred to the natives ;
and this in turn was largely because the Spaniards in the Indies di d
not fit into the role assigned to them .
The colonists did not care about forming free citizens ; they wanted
slaves, or the reasonable facsimile thereof, known as naborias, so that
they might live in a gentility to whích many were unaccustomed . The
Spanish workmen would not stay put : once in the Indies they devel-
oped an acute class consciousness and ceased to be laborers . In vain
Fernando pointed out that a man who had worked with his hand s
until the day he sailed from Castile had no excuse for becoming a
pretentious vagrant in Hispaniola . The settlers thought differently :
If the better-off Indians kept slaves and shunned menial tasks, wer e
Spaniards of the master race to be less than the naked heathen? Th e
perils and discomforts of life in the new realms were accepted, but
those who endured this life should be allowed to make a good thin g
of it . Colonial officials were equally unhelpful, for, favored by dis-
tance, they were masters of passive resistance to inconvenient instruc-
tions, and most humane instructions were inconvenient . Even the
Indians provided some stumbling blocks, particularly those wh o
refused to come to terms with either Christianity or the Christians ,
10
and who exhibited cannibal habits highly unsuitable in free vassals of
the Crown .
Against such odds the vision of sober colones living by husbandr y
and pious paternalism was bound to suffer . The repartimiento, a colo-
nial invention which signified a distribution of the Indians among th e
settlers, was adopted with enthusiasm and justified to the sovereign s
on the ground that it was the only way to regenerate the inherentl y
depraved aborigines . There were some doubts in Spain, however, an d
in time the repartimiento became the encomienda. This sounds much
better, because an encomienda is a trust ; the effect was the same, fo r
if in theory the encomenderos were benevolent guardians operating
(after 1513) under enlightened labor laws, in practice they worke d
the Indians as serfs, often literally to death .
What comfort the Indians received was almost all from the mis-
sionary friars . It is true that the Church approached the heathen in a
manner more peremptory than persuasive : "You will compel . . .
the barbarous nations to come to the knowledge of God, " Pop e
Clement VII told Fernando 's successor, " if necessary by force of
arms ." One cannot help noting a certain absence of loving-kindnes s
in this shotgun salvation . It is true that many missionaries had a robus t
intolerante that matched to the line the narrow insensibility of th e
average conquistador. But it is equally true that there were man y
others whose fervor was tempered by compassion, who worked i n
consecrated devotion to all that was finest in their office, and who bot h
taught and championed the Indians to considerable effect .
It is only fair to add that for all the insensate cruelty of the initia l
years the Indians under Spanish rule were more fortunate (or les s
unfortunate) than those of North America . They were not exclude d
from society, or barred from living in their own land ; their souls were
a matter of lively concern ; their half-cante children were recognized .
The Spaniards exploited and abused them, but they also married them .
Furthermore, conquest of Spanish America, as distinct from subse-
quent administration, cannot be said to have been molded by policie s
formulated in Spain . The policies existed, but the pattern was deter-
mined by the conquistadores .
The men who enlisted for the Indies were of all kinds : landles s
nobles and illiterate mercenaries, merchante and sailors, lawyers an d
11
roistering soldiers of fortune . But almost all the captains and com-
pañeros who went, eighty or a hundred or two hundred at a time, t o
invade and conquer a hemisphere, had certain fundamental character-
istics in common. They were devout, rapacious, and incredibly valiant ;
they had a raw pride and an inborn flair for rather crude intrigue ;
they stood by each other in appalling hardship and were furiousl y
jealous of each other' s successes . The product of centures of war-
fare and spare comfort, endurance was bred in their bones, violent e
was in their blood, and safety was the last of their ambitions .
They were also intensely practical . Underneath their matter-of-fac t
approach to extravagant undertakings lay what one can only call a
lack of imagination, and this in turn was largely due to simple faith .
Nothing could have been more useful. Their amazing self-confidente
was not undermined by fearful speculation, and they were interested ,
but not in the least disconcerted, by the strange world they discovered .
Prepared for marvels, they would have taken hippogriffs and dog-
headed giants in stride : since God can create purple centaurs a s
easily as He could barnyard fowls, it follows that centaurs are a s
natural as speckled hens, only not so common . By the same token they
were spared heart-searchings as to the moral issues involved . Subju-
gation of the New World was obviously not only a right but a hol y
obligation : had not Their Catholic Highnesses been divinely appointe d
as its overlords and as instruments for the salvation of its errin g
inhabitants? Men such as these were not the stuff from which stai d
agricultural settlements were readily made, but they were perfect tools
for conquest.
The conquerors were at their best in hard times, when they pulle d
together in stoic comradeship . When things went comparatively easily ,
they turned on each other like sled dogs out of harness—and sinc e
anything short of life-or-death emergency was comparative case i n
their way of life, the periods of agreement were limited. Because their
personal animosities did as much to mold events as any other facto r
in the conquest, they are important . For the Spaniards, to who m
fighting was a kind of bitter sport, a legal battle was as enthralling i n
its own way as physical combat . They went to court at the drop of a
grudge, and their cases often passed to the Royal Council ; frequently
they forwarded their grievances to the King himself . Government wa s
12
still direct and personal ; Castilians were accustomed to address them-
selves directly to the throne (when a decree was issued on horseshoes ,
the farriers waited on Isabel and Fernando to talk it over), and to d o
so in no uncertain terms . Their Highnesses dictated replies in about
the tone of a company president to a subordinate who is also an ol d
acquaintance ; indeed, the letters of Fernando to officials and colonist s
in the Indies are at times so avuncular that one cannot read them
today without feeling something of the respect, irritation, and affec-
tion that might be provoked by those of an elderly relative .
However exasperating a correspondence largely composed of com-
plaints and accusations might be, it was informative and hence to b e
encouraged . Fernando and his ministers, wise in the perversities of
their generation, could discount a good deal of it, but they could no t
ignore it . There was always a residue which required some action i f
the settlements were not to be left to their own unruly devices . Thus
the spites and ambitions of men in the Indies, while they had littl e
influence on long-range policies, affected so many government meas-
ures on current questions that it sometimes seems as if behind every
official instruction one can glimpse some busy colonist contriving a
rival ' s downfall .
The design woven by adventurers and kings, priests and savages ,
on a warp of chance and defiant nature, held much that was shockin g
even by the unexacting standards of its time . It was never pretty, and
little of it was kind, but it has a somber magnificence which no othe r
conquering possesses . And sordid or splendid, it is all displayed i n
Darién.

II
ON JUNE 5, 1500, one Rodrigo de Bastidas was granted license "t o
go by the Ocean Sea to discover . . . islands or firm land, in th e
Indies or in any other part ." This was the beginning of the Darié n
story, for it was Bastidas' small armada, pushing two hundred league s
beyond the last charted coast, which discovered Urabá and the easter n
Isthmus, and Vasco Núñez de Balboa was with it.
13
 It is appropriate that this should be the first event in Balbóa's lif e
to which one can put a date and a description . At that, it was a n
unobtrusive debut . Balboa was not a prominent member of the expedi-
tion ; he had signed on as escudero, one of perhaps half a dozen fight-
ing men recruited for the voyage, and he apparently completed hi s
service without provoking so much as an anecdote for reminiscent
use in the days of his fame . So far as can be gathered, he was a devil-
may-care young fellow of twenty-four or -five, quite untroubled b y
intimations of greatness, and distinguished from all the other impe-
cunious hidalgos who soldiered for a living only by his looks and hi s
skill with a sword . These, however, were remarkable . Even in a day
when every gentleman was expected to be handy with his blade ,
Balboa's talent was judged extraordinary, and he seems to have
exercised it with some enthusiasm . His humor was gay, but in his green
years he went with a reckless chip on his shoulder, happily alert fo r
anything from a duel to a free-for-all . As for his appearance, it was
such as to move to admiration even those who disapproved of him .
Casas, who knew him, says that Balboa was "very tall and wel l
built, clean-limbed and strong, with the attractive bearing of a man o f
clear understanding, and capable of withstanding much hardship .
. . . Of very gallant mien, and feat, and handsome of face an d
figure ." He was fair, with reddish-golden hair and beard, and ob-
servers were struck by his sinewy grace of movement and his per-
suasive trick of speech . This bountiful endowment, which was t o
stand him in both good stead and bad, was also durable : the descrip-
tion refers to him as he was ten or twelve years after he sailed wit h
Bastidas, when he was a seasoned veteran of the Indies .
It has been conjectured that Vasco Núñez was driven to enlist wit h
Bastidas by stepmother trouble . The drawback to this theory is tha t
the stepmother is also purely conjectural . She has been deduced fro m
the fact that Balboa had a brother named Alvar, who was born i n
1499 . This, however, may only mean that their mother extended child-
bearing over a considerable period, and sine no one knows when
Balboa was born (the date 1475 rests solely on the shaky authority
of a guess at his age made by Casas long afterwards) the period ma y
have been shorter than is usually supposed. For that matter, Alva r
may have been one of those extracurricular children with whom ever y
14
caballero of the time appears to have been supplied, and who were s o
often accepted amiably by the legitimate family .
Very litúe, in fact, is known about Balboa ' s early years . He wa s
born in Estremadura (cradle of conquistadores) in the craggy, castle d
town of Jerez de los Caballeros . We are told that his father was Don
Nuño Arias de Balboa, and his mother a lady of Badajoz . Beyon d
this, all that can be said of his parents is that since he was "hidalgo y
de sangre limpio," they were patrician, Catholic, racially "pure" an d
properly married—a combination not too easily come by in fifteenth-
century Castile . Two brothers are known besides the youthful Alvar :
Gonzalo, who seems to have been the eldest, and Juan .' The family ,
originally Galician, had been rich and powerful . It was tincture d
with the blood of the Gothic kings and of the royal house of Leon ; i n
the time of the great Adelantado Garci Rodríguez de Valcarcel y
Balboa, and for a century thereafter, it had produced prelates and
ministers who shaped history with strong hands . By Balboa' s time
most of the early luster had faded ; his immediate family was unde-
niably noble, but it was neither wealthy nor influential . 2
Vasco Núñez received the education proper to his station : that is ,
he was put to serve in a great household . (As Oviedo, always a bit o f
a snob, remarked, "He who has not been a page ever smacks of th e
muleteer.") The training of such criados began in childhood and con-
tinued until they were full-fledged esquires—a system which mad e
friction with stepmothers or any other relatives extremely difficult .
Balboa ' s patron was Don Pedro Puertocarrero, the deaf Lord o f
Moguer, a circumstance which may have had something to do wit h
his decision to volunteer with Bastidas . Moguer, like its near neighbor s
Palos and Huelva, had a mighty maritime tradition and a special
interest in the Indies . Its men had sailed with Columbus ; the Admiral' s
favorite caravel was built in its yards, and in its church he mad e
solemn thanksgiving in 1493 . And it was a Moguer pilot, youn g
Peralonso Niño, who carne back from a shoestring voyage in the
spring of 1500 with nearly fifty pounds of declared pearls—and, i t
was rumored, as many more in contraband .
The salt air of adventure which blew about Moguer might well hav e
infected any young man of spirit, particularly Balboa, whose patron ' s
¡11-health now kept hico from the campaigns which were an escudero' s
15
business . On the other hand, special stimulus was hardly necessary i n
1500, when a new fever for exploration was running in Castile .
The revival of interest in the Indies followed six slack years in
which discovery had found few takers, for the first fine capture o f
1493 had evaporated in the disillusionment of the Second Voyage .
Columbus might swear that Cuba was really Mangi Province in China,
but the evidence was against him . Where were the noble cities of a
million hearths, the crowded ports, the merchant-philosophers in thei r
marble palaces, and the ladies "living delicately like royalty"? Europ e
knew quite a lot about China, and even about Mangi, and the islands
of the Ocean Sea did not fill the bill. Far from offering the ric h
cargoes of the Orient, they appeared to produce nothing that coul d
repay the cost and peril of the voyage except the raw material for
slaves, and slaving had been forbidden . Bootleg voyages were made ,
and undoubtedly ranged farther than will ever be known, but legiti-
mate enterprise fought shy, and an experimental lifting of restriction s
in 1495 had little effect beyond arousing Columbus to outraged pro -
test . At the end of 1499, however, the slump ended in a sudden re-
birth of confidence and giddy hopes . Admiral Columbus, on his thid
voyage, had discovered Paria.
The Admiral ' s report of the new find was a characteristic medle y
of fact and vaulting fancy, woven with passages about the Earthl y
Paradise, the strange shape of the other hemisphere ( " like a woman' s
breast"), and the natural lushness of a country blessed by a climat e
derived from its proximity to heaven . But it was perfectly definit e
about indications of gold, pearls in quantity, and barter-minde d
natives ; moreover, it suggested—without much emphasis—that Pari a
might be part of a continent. The northern branches of the Orinoc o
pour into the Gulf of Paria, and although Columbus had not seen th e
river, he had reasoned its existence from the volume of fresh wate r
which sweetened the sea . He was inclined to believe that it was th e
river which flows from the Tree of Life, but on the other hand it s
evident size indicated a drainage basin larger than any island coul d
provide . This was big news ; if the new coast was the "mainland t o
the south" of which the Indians (and, for different reasons, the enter-
prising Portuguese) often spoke, it meant unlimited possibilities .
The information, duly publicized, brought an immediate rush for li -
16
censes of exploration . The offices of the Bishop-in-charge-of-discov-
eries hummed with activity as potential captains discussed routes ,
royalties, financial guaranties, and the minutiae of tonnage, supplies ,
crews, and contractual rights . Bishop Fonseca was a moving spirit in
the creation of the Casa de Contratación, and it may be surmised tha t
the idea carne to him when he was coping with the post-Paria boom
in voyages .
Since Fonseca continued to be a force in the affairs of the Indies fo r
sixteen years after the foundation of the Casa—during which he wa s
the most potent individual influence in official circles on matters affect -
ing the colonies—it is worth pausing to consider him .
The Very Reverend Don Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, "one of th e
most prominent nobles of these realms," may be said to have begun
his concern with the Indies in 1486, when he helped in the study o f
Columbus' project for a westward passage . In 1500 he had just ex-
changed the see of Badajoz for that of Córdoba, but he carried hi s
diocese lightly, as he did succeeding ones, and although he was for a
long period chief royal chaplain, history never catches his executive fig -
ure in the tender attitudes of a shepherd of souls . "Very able in worldly
business," as a fellow prelate acidly observed, he devoted his remark-
able talents to "matters more befitting a Biscayan than a bishop . " As
chief royal advisor on colonial affairs, and later President of th e
King's Council of the Indies, his judicial and political power wa s
enormous . A big, sallow, arrogant man, Fonseca was reputed to b e
scrupulously just but seldom merciful in public life ; in private, hi s
many benefactions (which he strove to conceal) often extended to th e
transgressors he had condemned as judge-in-council . As for hi s
priestly office he no doubt held it to be amply fulfilled, since the piou s
swashbucklers of Castile addressed themselves to conquest with a
sword in one hand and the Cross in the other. The Bishop would hav e
had only contempt for anyone satisfied to herd a single flock when h e
could supervise a mutton trust . Not everyone agreed with him o n
this point ; in his latter years a friend told him that "candidly, every-
one at Court says that you are a very solid Christian and a very indif-
ferent bishop . "
The contracts which passed over Fonseca ' s table were ingenuous
but precise—as precise, that is, as was possible in dealing wit h
17
unknown quantities . The Spanish mind revels in juridical forms, an d
chancy adventure was never dressed with greater decorum than i n
these capitulaciones, encased in meticulous phrases like strange an d
dangerous women in starched chokers and steel-boned corsets . Th e
agreement made with Rodrigo de Bastidas was not the first of th e
turn-of-the-century contracta, but it is said to have been the first
to establish the rules for dual-purpose voyages of exploration and
trade .
Bastidas, whose expedition was in most respects typical, or rather ,
prototypical, was himself unorthodox . He was neither a navigator no r
a gentleman adventurer, but a middle-class notary with a snug prac-
tice in and about Seville . 3 He had an enviable reputation for prudenc e
and sober respectability . By 1500 he was married and was the fathe r
of a future bishop . Such mature and sterling worth suggests a graying ,
churchwarden type, one of those oversubstantial pillars of society wh o
are more admirable than exciting . In point of fact he was still in his
twenties, and obviously not too prudent to gamble his staid security i n
a perilous game . And although he was described as "of candid soul ,
and placid," he was no innocent . It took more than simple virtue t o
survive in the Indies, and Bastidas was to do better than survive : he
took up residence and became rich .
Bastidas had many seafaring relatives and friends, but this is no t
enough to explain why he abandoned his sedentary calling for s o
extravagant an undertaking—or why, for that matter, he was con-
sidered a suitable captain for an expedition of discovery . At al l
events, he was an efl'icient organizer . Without apparent difficulty h e
secured his contract, his ships, some highly qualified officers, and a
group of backers—the armadores—who provided funds for outfitting,
all matters which often harried experienced captains to the point o f
collapse . Victuals and trade goods were purchased largely on credit ;
the armadores assumed the risks and the crews agreed to a share o f
the profits in lieu of pay . Final triumph, Bastidas persuaded Juan de la
Cosa to go with hico as partner and chief pilot. Cosa, familiarly know n
as Juan Viscaíno (Juan the Biscayan), was a master cartographer an d
one of the finest navigators of the time . A levelheaded fellow with a n
eye for business, he was dependable, courageous, and as undramatic
as events would allow ; he had sailed with Columbus in 1493 and with
18
Hojeda in 1499, and "he knew the regions of the Indies like the room s
of his own house . "4
Stripped of its legal verbiage, Bastidas ' contract was simple . H e
could go anywhere he liked beyond the Line of Demarcation, with th e
exception of coasts already staked by previous explorers, and trade for
anything he fancied from gold to monsters . He was required to submit
his armada to inspection before sailing and on its return ; to carry
Crown veedores (supervisors) on each chip to check all commercial
transactions, and to deliver everything procured on the voyage to th e
officials in Cádiz . The quinto, which was not always a strict fifth, wa s
in this case set at one fourth the net profits ; the rest was for Bastida s
"free and unencumbered ." Finally, in consideration of his pledge t o
observe all the conditions and to offer ample security to the satisfac-
tion of the Bishop, the notary was brevetted " our Captain of th e
said chips and of the people who go in them, with plenary authorit y
and civil and criminal jurisdiction with all its incidental, dependent ,
emergent, adjunct and conjunct powers ." 5
The said chips were a nao and a caravel, plus a bergantín which
was probably towed or carried aboard the nao . The nao, Santa Marí a
de Gracia, was the capitana, or flagship, owned by her master, Martí n
Boriol ; the caravel, San Antón, seems to have been Cosa's contribu-
tion . At a guess, the flagship was between seventy and eighty tonele s
in burthen and around seventy feet in over-all length, and the carave l
considerably less than that : small enough vessels in which to face th e
Tenebrous Sea, but perfectly adequate in the opinion of the men wh o
sailed them . Pilots early learned to prefer caravels of under sixt y
toneles for the tricky work of exploration, and favored the diminutive
bergantines for inshore reconnaissance . , For that matter, ships which
cannot have been much more than thirty-five feet over-all were saile d
across the Atlantic without its causing remark, much less celebrity an d
civic receptions . Due allowance must be made for the superb seaman-
ship of the times ; nevertheless the stubby little caravels were swifter ,
more weatherly, and far handier than their appearance indicates .
A crew of twenty to twenty-five was about right for a fair-size d
caravel, plus the officers : master, pilot, and boatswain . (The captai n
of a ship was not of its complement : he was someone named t o
general command for the duration of the voyage, and had no part i n
19
her navigation.) Bastidas probably had forty-five to fifty roen, fro m
able seamen to cabin boys . In addition there were the Crown veedores ,
the escribanos or notary-clerks, the escuderos, at least one armador
as supercargo, two or more priests, and an undetermined number o f
women . One would like to know more of these last, and about all th e
women who shipped for the Indies . They went with every armada ,
and were paid at the same rate as seamen, twelve maravedíes a day ;
their duties, admittedly varied, íncluded cooking, washing, and th e
like . They must have been sturdy, colorful creatures, these bonnes á
toart (aire who signed on for voyages to the unknown, yet they wer e
taken so for granted that no more mention is made of them than of th e
cabin boys . All that is certain about those who went with Bastidas í s
that some of them got back safe—which, considering what happened
to the armada, says a great deal for the resistance of the so-calle d
weaker sex .
Contrary to common belíef, Bastidas did not set out from Spaín i n
October of 1500 . On February 18, 1501, he was still in Seville, with
Cosa and Boriol, registering a promissory note . -- However, the note
must have been about the last píece of business before going to Cádiz
(then the only port from which vessels might clear for the Indies) ,
for the armada was away by the middle of March . Since it passe d
inspection promptly, we can be sure that it was presented in perfec t
order : seaworthy, new-rigged, cargo properly packed and stowed ,
crees as licensed, papers in order, and no contraband merchandís e
aboard for commerce in Hispaniola . Furthermore, at time of sailin g
every man who went with it was in a state of physical purification an d
spiritual grace. The last concerns of anyone bound for the Indies, afte r
making a will, were (a) a purge, and (b) confession and communion ,
"because naturally the sea is very much kínder to empty stomachs tha n
to the full ones of sinful men ." What state they were in emotionally ,
as they watched their , familiar world shrink and vanish behind them ,
can only be imagined, for it is a point skipped by contemporar y
accounts . It is sale to say that no one was entirely unmoved as th e
caravels, dressed with flags and streaming pennants, moved out o f
harbor and bowed to open water .
An Atlantic crossing was no longer, in 1501, an experiment ; much
of the Bread and splendor of Columbus' first adventuring was gone .
20
Some of Bastidas' crew had been that way before and knew the island s
that lie like an emerald necklace from Trinidad to Cuba ; one pilot,
Juan Rodríguez, had been at the discovery of Paria ; another, André s
Morales, had explored with the Admiral from 1493 to 1496 ; Juan de
la Cosa had traced the coast as far as Coquibacoa and seen the Sierr a
Nevada towering to the sky . But no one had gone farther than Cosa ;
even the old hands could not have escaped feeling the exhilaration of
a dangerous treasure hunt . One gathers that there was little thought o f
Cathay and the golden Orient, as when Columbus, discovering Cuba,
"leaped ashore and asked the natives for Japan" ; Bastidas' asiento
listed an extraordinary variety of possible products, but there was n o
mention of silk and only a passing one of spices . It was, in spite of
everything, a practical expedition, and speculation ran to native gol d
and pearls . These last seemed a sure hope ; if they could be collected
"by the bushel" near Paria and had been found by Cosa and Hojed a
in Coquibacoa, doubtless the further coast also had its philoprogenitiv e
oysters.
(Every informed person knew that tropical oysters, swimming
about the sea in Rocks under a queen-commander, were uncommonl y
responsive to the biological urge . Thus prompted, they made for the
shore, there to mate with the dews of heaven and bring forth "their
children, which are pearls"—white pearls, offspring of the morning ,
and dark ones born of twilight . All oyster children were valuable ,
even the deformed ones—victims of prenatal shock—known as aljófar,
for pearls are not only to delight the eye . They are a potent remedy fo r
hemorrhage and heart diseases, and for other ills which resist mor e
banal medicines ; best of all, "they comfort the spirit. " )
Bastidas followed the usual outbound course : down to the Canaries
for fresh meat, cheese, water, and wood, and then straight across t o
the Antilles . Here he discovered Barbados, then uninhabited, which h e
named after the "Green Isle" of legend and dismissed without interest ,
leaving it to be discovered afresh long afterwards . At the end o f
April or in early May the armada fetched Coquibacoa—the Goajir a
Peninsula, which bounds the Gulf of Venezuela on the west—an d
carne to anchor off Citurma . This was the jumping-off place, the en d
of the map and the beginning of discovery . Keeping close inshore an d
putting in to any likely haven, the armada felt its way west, south, an d
21
southwest along the coast of what is now Colombia ; past the soarin g
bastions of the Sierra Nevada and the long beaches of Salamanca t o
the "Big River," $ down to the great bay which Bastidas christened
Cartagena, and so by islands and mainland shore to the Gulf of Urab á
and the Isthmus . Something of what this entailed can be gleaned fro m
modern sailing directions for the coast, which are so studded wit h
warnings that it is hard to see how any pilot, navigating by primitiv e
instrumenta without charts or even a vague knowledge of local winds ,
currents, and soundings, could take his ship safe from cove to bay t o
river mouth in detailed survey . Bastidas and Cosa were thorough ;
it took them five months to cover a distance that later caravels, wit h
favoring weather, sailed comfortably in a week or so .
Not much is known of those months . At Citurma the natives wer e
friendly, and Bastidas was able to get some pearls, though owing t o
the Coquibacoan oysters' careless habit of lying open in the sun, thei r
children were apt to be more tanned than was desirable . Here, too, one
of the crew elected to stay in order to qualify as a "tongue " (inter-
preter) ; he was found, intact, thirteen months later by another expedi-
tion and taken to Hispaniola . At Gaira, near Santa Marta (wher e
Bastidas was one day to be governor), there was some unpleasantnes s
with the Indians ; at the mouth of the Big River the ships wer e
caught in a fearful storm, and were saved only by a masterly display o f
combined piety and seamanship . Zamba and Bohío del Gato, 9 two
small havens just beyond the river, were remarkable only for th e
hostility of their shave-pate Indians, whom the Spaniards dubbe d
los coronados (the tonsured)—a name which has caused some his-
torians to note that they "wore large crowns . "
At Cartagena, where in aftertimes Spain built the "Pearl of th e
Indies, " the greatest fortified port in the Americas, the armada la y
over for two or three weeks . The magnificent landlocked harbor was
inviting, but the inhabitants were not . Nothing would bring them t o
terms, or even to the state of wary truce which mutually inimica l
tribes commonly established for purposes of commerce . Probably th e
frustrated expeditionaries, who had been tantalized for months by th e
sight of golden ornaments with which their owners refused to part,
became in the end too pressing . Before the armada left (about the
twentieth of August) there was brisk fighting, which was repeated i n
22
the near-by Islands of San Bernardo and of Barú . 10 Bastidas wrote off
the natives of these places as hopelessly rebellious cannibals, and the
report was confirmed by following captains . The result was a rather
apologetic decree, in 1503, which excluded the Caribs of Cartagen a
and the islands from the antislaving edicts .
There was one exception to the general i11-humor . Somewhere
beyond the Río Sinú the armada anchored in the mouth of a river ,
near a large village whose inhabitants went so far as to provide a
handsome banquet . The liquid intake was considerable, and th e
natives were so mellowed that they readily exchanged their worke d
gold for Spanish knickknacks . Before the ships could sail, however ,
the effects of the feast wore off, and in a morning-after mood "th e
Indians repented, and asked for their gold, and brought back th e
gewgaws and things which they had received . And Bastidas, that
they be not aroused, gave back the gold and returned what they ha d
given him ." The sweet reasonableness of this story is unfortunatel y
marred by a final sentence . "When he left, " the chronicler continues ,
"he seized certain Indians, whom he bartered in the land where he
got the large amount of gold that he brought back ." The scene of thi s
subsequent deal, if it ever took place, was Urabá.
The province of Urabá, on the eastern side of the gulf that take s
its name, presented no particular attractions as leen from the water —
the only viewpoint Bastidas considered safe . Nevertheless the Span-
iards were enchanted with it, for the Urabaes, though clearly resolve d
to contest a landing, were willing to trade . The arms-length barter
yielded the expedition nearly 7500 pesos of wrought gold . Just what
the haul meant in legal tender (23 .75 carats fine) is impossible to say .
The Indians nearly always alloyed their gold with copper, or with
copper and silver, and the proportions of the alloy were variable .
Presumably, since copper was much scarcer than gold (and corre-
spondingly prized), the native smiths were not reckless with it . Th e
alloy, or an object made from it, was called by the conquistadore s
guanín, a word they took from the name of certain flat ornament s
common in Hispaniola and pluralized, Spanish fashion, to guanines.
In time the term was narrowed to mean pieces assaying 14 carats o r
less . However, an admixture of copper was a minor defect in a glitter-
ing seventy-five-pound heap of guanines, particularly as they seemed
23
an earnest of greater riches somewhere near . If the otherwise scantily
provided Urabaes could use gold so casually, their natural suppl y
must be enormous . This, at last, was discovery worth shouting about ;
small wonder that when the armada crossed to the western side of th e
Gulf, the still-dazzled expeditionaries found Darién an anticlimax .
No exact date can be put to the discovery of Darién, although i t
was probably in October of 1501 . How long the expedition stayed ,
and what it did there, are points which must be left equally vague .
Bastidas secured some native products—textiles, artifacts, a little gold ,
and a few pearls—but nothing to arouse remark after the barter i n
Urabá. Darién, like Balboa, made an inconspicuous entrante . On e
cannot blame the discoverers for failing to be impressed . The brief
heyday of the Darién colony was a triumph of valor and dogged delu-
sion over geographical fact, and it would have required clairvoyanc e
rather than perception to foresee it . And Vasco Núñez de Balboa, tha t
as yet unimportant young escudero, could never have guessed tha t
on this unlikely stage he would play one of the great dramas of Ne w
World history .
The Indians of Darién were a milder people than those of th e
mainland coast, and they appear to have resigned themselves to th e
Spaniards after no more than a token resistance . Some of them em-
barked with the armada, presumably of their own volition, and wer e
later left in Hispaniola . Casas tells of seeing them wandering abou t
the streets of Santo Domingo, free, self-possessed, and naked sav e
for a conical gadget which might be termed a fig leaf, but which a
later observer described explicitly as an extinguisher . Bastidas had
shown commendable restraint in respecting his guests' conveniente :
the extinguishers were made of gold . The amiable Darienes were
evidently not without guile ; they were quite as rich as the Urabae s
(whose mines were a figment of Spanish imagination), but the expedi-
tionaries do not seem to have suspected it .
Ninety or a hundred miles northwest of the there rocky islets calle d
the Farallones de Darién, at about Punta Portogandí, the armad a
turned back in forced retreat . 11 Castilian explorers were not easily dis-
couraged by the malice of "sea and wind and evil people" specified i n
contemporary insurance policies, but they had no defense as ye t
against broma, the voracious shipworm which infests there waters .
24
Santa María and San Antón were found to be riddled with broma .
Somehow Cosa got the wallowing craft to Jamaica and from there t o
Hispaniola—a notable feat on a largely uncharted course . Since Bas-
tidas had no authorization to touch at Hispaniola, an attempt wa s
made to patch up the ships at a little island offshore called Isla de l
Contramaestre (Boatswain's Island), followed by a forlorn one t o
continue the voyage . The armada lay over for a month at Cab o
Canongía waiting for fine weather, put out again to sea, and was onc e
more forced back by storms . Two months after landfall at Boatswain ' s
Island, the spongy vessels quietly foundered in the Gulf of Xaragu á
(Gonaives), near what is now Port-au-Prince . 12
It was about the end of February 1502 when the expeditionarie s
stood on the Haitian shore and watched their ships drown in shallo w
water, and Bastidas and Cosa did not reach Spain until the followin g
September. The intervening months were not dull . There was firs t
the seventy leagues overland to Santo Domingo, a route which fou r
centuries later was still bad enough to be described as demanding
"courage and determination on the part of the traveler," and in th e
course of which Bastidas mislaid one of the three detachments int o
which he had divided his company . And at the end of it there was
more trouble . Official Santo Domingo was usually chilly toward ex-
plorers, and instead of being feted, Bastidas was first investigate d
and then tried for illicit entry and barter .
The charges against Bastidas were thin, but the fiscal (Crown
prosecutor) embroidered them with art, apparently on the thesis that ,
having lost their ships out of sheer perversity, the entire company
should have swum to Spain, or alternatively, have perished in perfect
legality on the spot. The newly installed Governor of the Indies ,
Comendador Ovando, clearly rather embarrassed, upheld the fiscal ,
but sidestepped responsibility by remanding the case to the Royal
Council in Spain . 13 Some twenty-eight vessels of the great fleet that
had brought the Governor and a crowd of new colonists were due t o
sail for honre on July 1 ; Bastidas and Cosa were given passage on
one of the smallest caravels, and their gold was sent with them unde r
embargo.
Casas says that Columbus, who had appeared off Santo Doming o
a few days before, bound for his fourth attempt to find the Gran d
25
Khan and the Isles of Spice, sent a prophetic hurricane warning t o
the Governor, urging that the fleet lie over, and that his advice wa s
ridiculed . 14 However this may have been, the fleet put out as planned,
and ran finto an appalling storm off Puerto Rico. It was night ; the
flagship with its guiding beacon vanished in the screaming dark, an d
in a few hours all but seven of the ships were lost . That carrying
Bastidas and Cosa outran the hurricane, and made port in Cádi z
in September .
The sovereigns were in Madrid when they learned that Bastida s
had returned and was being held in custody by the chief magistrate o f
Jerez de la Frontera . Conscious that this sort of thing was not calcu-
lated to further the cause of exploration, they ordered that he be se t
at liberty and sent, with Cosa, to join the Court at its next residence i n
Alcalá de Henares . It was also arranged that Bastidas should brin g
his gold with him, and put it on exhibition at all towns along the way .
The journey, thus turned into a combined march of triumph an d
publicity campaign, may have taken a roundabout route ; Bastidas and
Cosa were not in Alcalá before February of 1503 .
They were received with marked graciousness . Their expedition
could not be called an unqualified success, but it was profitabl e
despite the loss of the ships and the bulky cargo (mostly dyewood) ,
it showed the enormous extent of the mainland, and it proved for th e
first time that the southern continent produced gold in quantity . 1 5
The treasure brought from Urabá was not startling in itself ; a ship-
ment of gold from the recently discovered mines of Hispaniola whic h
had gone to the bottom with the flagship had been twenty times a s
much . But viewed as a sample from a single village, it was stupendous .
Commander and pilot were made much of, and each was granted a
life pension of 50,000 maravedíes a year—with the canny stipulatio n
that they would be payable from the future revenues from Urabá .
Both Bastidas and Cosa applied, separately, for permits to return t o
Urabá . Bastidas offered higher royalties and as titular discoverer ha d
the prior claim, but he was politely sidetracked . This, as it turned out ,
was a blessing : Urabá was to be the ruin of many an ambitious cap-
tain . Bastidas had been impressed with the opportunities for a smar t
man of affairs in Hispaniola . Acquitted of all charges against him, h e
went back to Santo Domingo in the summer of 1504 16 and settle d
26
down to accumulate a fortune . Juan de la Cosa got his contract, and
an additional prize in the form of a brevet as alguacil mayor (chief
constable) of Urabá, a position which promised financial returns as
well as moral satisfaction . Thereafter Urabá was to be the dominan t
factor in his life, and indeed in his death .
As for Vasco Núñez de Balboa, he seems to have remained in
Hispaniola, sharing the obscurity of hundreds of other young soldier s
of fortune who scraped a living in the colony . He may have serve d
in the dreadful campaign against the Indians sponsored by Governo r
Ovando, for when the natives had been "pacified" (with graveyar d
completeness), he was allotted some land in the newly subdued are a
as one of the founding settlers of a post called Salvatierra de la
Sabana. Salvatierra was situated on an island-sheltered curve of th e
southwest coast, where Aux Cayes is now, and boasted some fine ope n
land, a vast number of palm trees, and twenty white settlers, whose
chief resource was pigs .
Here, very bored, Vasco Núñez raised hogs and debts, with specia l
emphasis on the latter . Perhaps a place in the country was as risk y
for the amateur farmer then as it is now, although since the pig s
fattened spectacularly on the palm fruit, and bacon brought inflate d
prices, it should have been good business . It may be that Balbo a
caught the passion for prospecting, in which some colonists amasse d
riches and many others lost everything they had or could borrow .
Whatever happened in the shadowy years before Darién was ready fo r
him, it brought only a drab kind of failure . In 1509 Balboa wa s
hanging about Santo Domingo, the prisoner-at-large of his creditors-
eaten with longing to get away from the island and totally unawar e
that destiny robed in tragedy and glory was just around the corner .

III
THE gold mines of Urabá were believed in as firmly as if they had
been surveyed and sampled . That they did not exist and that the
treasure of the Urabaes was the product of generations of barter wit h
27
the interior were ideas which received little or no attention, althoug h
Queen Isabel sensibly observed that the next people to go there shoul d
make every effort "to see the said mines with their own eyes ." This was
exactly what a number of aspirant captains wanted to do . Out of a
varied and eager field three were awarded contracta : Cosa, Alonso d e
Hojeda, and Cristóbal Guerra, each of whom had already made two
voyages to the mainland beyond Paria .
The terms of the asientos with Guerra and Cosa were apparentl y
identical . l Hojeda was a special case . He had been named Governo r
of Coquibacoa in connection with an abortive attempt at colonizatio n
of his discoveries around the Gulf of Venezuela in 1502 . The title
had not been revoked, and was now extended to include Urabá, an d
his agreements with the Crown were drawn accordingly . All three cap-
tains were allowed calls and commerce in Santo Domingo, equal right s
of barter anywhere except in Columbus' preserves, and unlimite d
exploration and trade beyond Darién, and all were required to build
a fortified post in Urabá or other convenient spot as a base camp . No
provision was made for the eventuality that they would trip each othe r
in sumultaneous operations along the richer bits of coast, or worse ,
find themselves in Urabá together, there to dot the lonely shore wit h
Spanish forts in triplicate—a prospect filled with dynamite . 2
Thus in the fullness of time three armadas set out for the golde n
Gulf, but the intensive exploitation of Urabá and Darién did no t
develop as scheduled . Hojeda, the most favored, the least organized ,
and the last to leave, 3 got no farther than Hispaniola, where (h e
claimed) his expedition was scuttled by Governor Ovando . He had
not done with Urabá, but it was to be five years before he manage d
to set foot in it . Guerra went as far as Cartagena, where his caree r
was terminated by a poisoned arrow . Cosa alone reached the Gul f
of Urabá, so fulfilling the Queen's prediction that he would kno w
how to carry out the venture better than anyone else . What is more, h e
built a fort there, although the site, construction, and occupation o f
it were none of his choosing.
The Cosa voyage, a crowded saga which may have included th e
first navigation of the Orinoco, has been curiously neglected, and suc h
mention as it has received in modern times is usually erroneous . 4 It
is hard to resist telling a story that comprises practically everythin g
28
that could happen to an armada of exploration, but this is not th e
place to treat it as it deserves, for only a part of it relates to Darién .
Cosa left Spain with four ships, two of them bergantines, in Jun e
of 1504 . He was in Santo Domingo in August, when Columbus go t
there with the survivors from his fourth voyage . From Hispaniola he
seems to have made for the Orinoco, and to have sailed up the rive r
for a hundred and fifty leagues . 5 Doubling back to the Caribbean, he
set his course for Urabá. After various stops—for pearls, for dye-
wood, and at an island chielly remarkable for its "snakes and
dragons"'—he was in Cartagena at the end of the year or early i n
1505 . Here he found Guerra's armada, which had left Castile thre e
or four months after him . Rich in loot, but depressed by sickness ,
short rations, and the death of their commander, the Guerra expedi-
tionaries wanted to go home . This suited Cosa perfectly, especially a s
he was able to make a deal to ship his bulky cargo direct to Spain .
The two expeditions made a joint slave raid (Cartagena now bein g
"a place appointed for slaves " ), and after giving the homebound
fleet what food he could spare, Cosa went his way without lingerin g
to see it sail . He touched at the Sinú and at Isla Fuerte, and a fe w
days later rounded Caribana head and carne to anchor off the villag e
now called Nicocli, in Urabá .
There is a rather pedestrian, but possibly correct, account of th e
initial incidente in Urabá in Oviedo's chronicle : a fight on landing ,
with capture of the hamlet near the beach ; a night march on the chief
village, guided by a co-operative prisoner, followed by a surpris e
attack before which the Indians fíed, and thirty-six pounds of booty
in gold masks and maracas. But an earlier reporter told the stor y
before it had time to cool, and with considerably more color :

Having landed, they found many huts from which many Indian s
came forth to meet them, to accept them and do them honor . And
they say that one of there had already foretold how certain chip s
were about to come from the east, from a great king to them
unknown, who would have them all as his servants, and that th e
strangers would be all endowed with perpetual life and adorned in
their persons with various vestments . They say, that having seen ou r
vessels, their king said : Here are the ships that I told you about
X years ago. The which king carne with a breastplate of solid gol d
29
 fastened on his chest by a golden chain, and a mask of gold, an d
on his feet four gold bells weighing a marco each ; and with him
carne XX Indians all with gold masks on their faces, soundin g
golden rattles which weighed 30 marcos each one . And when they
saw men from the island [of snakes and dragons] with [the Span-
iards], they turned hostile and began to fight our men vigorousl y
with poisoned arrows . There were about 5,000 of them ; of ou r
people 140 landed and in hand to hand combat cut to pieces abou t
700, one of our men being killed by an arrow ; then they went t o
the huts and took the king alive and rattles, masks, bells and the
armature to the amount of 800 marcos . 7

All this has a fine, firsthand fiavor, but someone (perhaps a copyist )
was too free with his zeros . The Urabaes could never have mustere d
five thousand warriors, and seven hundred fatalities would have wipe d
out the village down to the last infant in arms . Also, the eight hundred
marcos (410 pounds avoirdupois) of gold seem to have been neare r
eighty . Incidentally, it would be interesting to know what the interva l
between the chief's prediction and its consummation really was : not
"X years, " obviously, but ten periods of time, since the numeral
would be unmistakable even without an interpreter. Ten moons would
carry foresight to the edge of prophecy ; ten suns (expressed by sweep s
of the arm) would mean no more than an efficient grapevine.
The mellow light in which Juan de la Cosa is usually displayed is
markedly absent from Oviedo's narrative . The chronicler goes out o f
his way to present the Biscayan as a kind of seagoing gangster, hus-
tling from assault to assault and possibly—this was puye suppositio n
—hiding a good part of his loot from the accountants . The expedi-
tion's activities in Darién were an instance in kind .
Cosa, says Oviedo, had learned about Darién from the Urabaes, an d
crossed the Gulf determined on a raid . Leaving the larger ships hove-t o
near the Farallones, he edged into the tiny estuary with the bergan-
tines and the lifeboats, landed his men, and marched on the chief' s
village . The landing had been made in the small hours of the morn-
ing ; the village was reached at dawn and attacked forthwith . Th e
unsuspecting Darienes were easily defeated and their "king" capture d
(though he managed to escape afterwards) ; the booty in worked gold
carne to some twenty pounds . If Oviedo is right, this disgraceful affai r
30
was the first contact between Castilians and the inhabitants of th e
small valley where Balboa was to conduct his school for conquerors .
It is not known what Cosa and his companions thought of the place ,
but some of them were to know it well in the days of the settlement ,
among them the pilot Martín de los Reyes, Juan de Ledesma the flee t
alguacil, and the captain of the flagship, Juan de Quicedo .
Cosa must have learned, at Santo Domingo, enough about Colum-
bus ' latest discoveries to realize that they touched those he himsel f
had made with Bastidas, and that he could not continue for long t o
dodge along the coast pouncing on native villages in the dawn . He
might have chosen to build his fort in Darién, or to make at once fo r
Hispaniola and home, but for an unforeseen check . A lifeboat manned
by sailors of Guerra's armada turned up at the estuary with bad new s
and an appeal for help . Guerra's flagship had been wrecked just out-
side Cartagena Bay ; one of her sister naos, commanded by a certain
Monroy, had then separated from the others and come after Cosa, an d
was now aground in Urabá. Why Monroy had turned to follow Cos a
is not clear ; the impression is that he was like a lost dog whose uneas y
affections have become fixed on a reassuring passer-by, but lince th e
two remaining ships of the armada went safely to Castile there was n o
apparent reason why he should not have gone with them . In any cas e
the Biscayan had no choice but to adopt the foundling . He returned
to Urabá, only to find that the nao, rotten with broma, was pas t
salvaging.
Misfortune was soon followed by disaster . Cosa ' s own two nao s
were found to be in equally hopeless case ; the pumps could not kee p
out the seeping water, and both had to be beached . A fort was no w
essential, for there were more than two hundred men, and the bergan-
tines and the ships' boats could not hold more than half that number .
Making the best of a desperate business, the expeditionaries unloade d
and dismantled the useless naos, fashioned temporary shelters fro m
the sails, and set about raising the mud and timber walls of an en-
closure complete with "a very fine tower . " Thereafter life in the for t
became a monotonous endurance test . Harassed by the Indians, th e
Spaniards ventured on only one major sortie, to pan for gold near a
lake . Their prisoners tempted them with tales of a gold-rolling rive r
beyond the mountains where "each man, for little that he exerte d
31
himself, could gather ten marcos in a day," but they were in no con-
dition to accept the bait . Before very long, they knew that in a matter
of weeks they would be able to leave Urabá : the transportation prob-
lem was being rapidly solved by an epidemic fever .
At the end of three months only a hundred men were left alive . Ten
stalwarts elected to stay and hold the fort, with rations and ammu-
nition for a year—a fantastic gesture, but not unique ; the Spanis h
conquest offers parallel examples of suicidal hardihood . The res t
embarked, the more able-bodied in the bergantines, the seriously sic k
in the flagship's lifeboat (apparently on the bleakly realistic theor y
that, since most of them were doomed anyway, they might as well g o
in one of the more hazardous craft), and the overflow in a smalle r
boat. Ninety-six days alter the stranding of the naos, the little flotill a
put out to sea, bound for Hispaniola .
It was a long and dreadful voyage . In the end one bergantín, packe d
to the gunwales, brought forty-four men to harbor in Azúa, nea r
Santo Domingo ; some time afterward the bigger lifeboat, which ha d
been swept north to Cuba, limped in with fifteen more survivors . B y
7anuary or February of 1506 Cosa was once more in Castile . The
battered expedition had clung grimly to its treasure—11,850 pesos o f
wrought gold and thirty-five pounds of good pearls $ —through all the
catastrophes that had beset it, which explains why all the known sur-
vivors preserved unimpaired their appetite for voyaging, and why th e
Gulf of Urabá continued to be so attractive in spite of its undeniabl e
drawbacks .
Not everything can be verified about Cosa ' s voyage, but several
statements made in connection with it can be proven untrue . The rive r
up which the armada sailed was not the Atrato : the report stated
clearly that it was 600 leagues from Urabá. In any case the Atrat o
could not be explored for 150 leagues, least of all by ship, since tha t
distance would put the explorer considerably beyond its mountai n
source . Amerigo Vespucci did not accompany Cosa : he is fully ac-
counted for in Spain except for a short period from the end of Sep-
tember 1505 to March 1506, when it is just possible that he made a
quick trip to Hispaniola and that he and Cosa returned from Santo
Domingo together . 9 Cosa did not make another voyage to Urabá i n
1507-1508, and much less two such voyages, in 1507 and 1508, one
32
or both with Vespucci : there is ample documentation of the presence
of both Cosa and Vespucci in Castile during those years . It is true
that toward the end of 1506 a plan was afoot to send them to th e
Gulf with an armada of eight ships and four hundred men, but it neve r
took solid shape . For reasons which will be explained, expeditions o f
exploration and conquest were suspended until 1508 . Urabá, where
the token garrison and towered fort were soon erased, was left to it s
own primitive devices for four and a half years .

Had conditions in Castile been normal in the period followin g

Cosa's return, colonization of the mainland would probably have bee n
pushed at once . But conditions were anything but normal . From the
end of 1504 until the autumn of 1507 the country was in a state o f
disturbed uncertainty, when the powers and even the identity of th e
ruler were matters of question .
On November 4, 1504, Isabel died, and the throne of Castile an d
the Indies passed to her daughter Juana, wife of Felipe "the Hand-
some, " whose father was Emperor Maximilian of Germany . Unfortu-
nately Juana was mentally unbalanced, and her husband—who both
bewitched and ¡11-used her—lacked the qualities which enabled Fer-
nando to function so effectively as king-consort. Isabel, miserabl y
aware of there facts, had at the last disposed that, should Juana b e
judged incompetent, Fernando should rule on her behalf_ In Decembe r
the Cortes met and decided the succession, declaring (a) that Juan a
was legitimate Queen of Castile, (b) that she was incapable of ruling,
and (c) that Fernando should govern for her as regent . This lef t
Felipe hanging angrily in mid-air, egged on to retaliation by hi s
friend Louis XII of France, by his illustrious parent, and by a numbe r
of disaffected Castilian nobles—all of whom had axes of their own t o
grind .
Faced with the prospect of unequal war, Fernando hit on a schem e
to cut the ground from under the Hapsburg feet by an alliance with
France, based on marriage with Louis' young niece, Germaine de Foix .
The deal was one of his rare instances of political insensibility . He wa s
frank to a fault as to his motives ("You, my son," he wrote to Felipe ,
" by delivering yourself over to France have obliged me to contract ,
much to my regret, a second marriage but he does not seem
33
to have realized the resentment it would arouse in Castile . For the
moment, however, it worked ; in November, Felipe formally recog-
nized Fernando as king-regent .
The Catholic King was not usually ingenuous, but he apparently
believed in Felipe's good faith, for he urged him to bring Juana home :
"Come, my son, come to receive my embrace ." Felipe carne, whil e
Fernando was in Aragon with his bride, but he was not in search o f
paternal embraces . Still less was he concerned with establishin g
Juana's legal competente . The handsome Hapsburg entered his wife' s
realms with a full court and three thousand German infantrymen, t o
which he proceeded to add six thousand additional troops, recruite d
through the feudal lords who supported his cause . When he finally
consented to an encounter with his father-in-law, it was to offer a
choice of war or capitulation . 10 Fernando chose the latter .
It is probable that Fernando never showed to better advantage tha n
in this moment of defeat, when he contrived to preserve not only hi s
dignity but his cense of humor . The young prince received him sur-
rounded by mailed vassals and backed by an army alerted for action ;
Fernando, urbane and faintly ironic, with his unarmored attendants
mounted on mules, made the apprehensive choreography of force loo k
silly . Four days later he renounced the regency, although he succeede d
in keeping the grand masterships of the knightly orders as well as
half the revenues from the Indies as willed to him by Isabel : in th e
circumstances, a notable feat of negotiation . Two months afterward s
he sailed from Aragon for Naples .
Felipe's reign lasted less than seven weeks, which was enough to
demonstrate that the idea of putting this brash young Teuton ove r
Castile had not, after all, been very bright . When he died, on Septem-
ber 25, 1506, he was mourned only by the distraught Queen and a
disconcerted clique of favorites—mostly Flemish imports . Juana, a
figurehead sovereign, but the only one in sight, then cloistered hersel f
in her apartments, from where she emerged just once to exercise, with
staggering lucidity, her royal powers . This single assertion of authorit y
was as unexpected and as devastating as an earthquake : she annulled
all appointments made after her mother's death, reinstated all Isabel' s
advisors and officials, and referred all Crown business to her father ,
relapsing thereafter into mulish silente .
34
 For three months the country was governed (not without dif piculty )
by a board of regents presided over by Archbishop Cisneros, Primat e
and Chancellor of Castile . The Cortes, which had approved the provi-
sional government only until the end of the year, then allowed it t o
expire by default . Castile was left with a full complement of function-
aries and no co-ordinating authority, a singular situation due largely t o
the conviction that Fernando would hurry back in answer to the sum-
mons sent him by Cisneros and other supporters . But Fernando (who
would have made a superlative poker player) lingered in benevolen t
detachment in Italy, writing suave, uneager letters full of confidence i n
Castilian loyalty to the Queen .
Meanwhile, Fate dealt neatly into Fernando ' s hand, for times in
Castile were bad . To the inevitable lawlessness and assorted conspira-
cies were added a near famine (crops had failed for the third consecu-
tive year) and an appalling epidemic of plague . A sure, experienced
ruler was needed, and instead there was Juana, who persisted in
wandering about Castile with her husband's coffined corpse . B y
August of 1507, when Fernando judged the time ripe, he was able t o
re-enter the realms in the guise of a magnanimous monarch graciousl y
acceding to popular demand . Heaven was evidently on the King's
side, for his return coincided with the end of the plague and a bumpe r
harvest .
While all this had been going on, exploration had been in abeyance .
(The plan to send Cosa again to Urabá with Vespucci had originate d
with Cisneros, whose warrant to dispatch expeditions lapsed with th e
provisional government .) In November the King summoned four o f
his most eminent pilots to confer with him in Burgos on measures to
further discovery and development in the new realms . Columbus ha d
died in 1506 ; the four top men now chosen as consultante were Jua n
de la Cosa, Amerigo Vespucci, Vicente Yáñez Pinzón, and Juan Díaz
de Solís . All were in the confidence of the royal officials, who had used
them on various occasions as advisers and special agents, and wh o
doubtless briefed them thoroughly before sending them off to Court .
What with difficult communications and normal bureaucratic delay ,
it was February of 1.508 before they were in Burgos—Cosa an d
Vespucci with a strongbox containing a remittance for the King of
6000 ducats, sent by the Casa de Contratacíon .
35
 The conferences in Burgos were not only with the navigators, an d
some decisions taken at the time were probably reached in privat e
sessions of Fernando and Fonseca : notably, the appointment of
Columbus' son and heir, Diego Colón, to replace Governor Ovand o
in Hispaniola . Other measures bear the pilots ' stamp . The ofpice o f
pilot major was created and entrusted to Vespucci . Pinzón and Solís
were authorized to look fqr the elusive westward passage to the Orient ,
and left the same year to explore west and north from Cape Gracias á
Dios in Honduras . Cosa was given an important part in an ambitiou s
plan for settlement and exploitation in Tierra Firme .
The new project for colonization of the mainland had been sub-
mitted by Diego de Nicuesa, a wealthy resident of Hispaniola, in hi s
own narre and that of Alonso de Hojeda . It divided the whole stretch
of coast from western Venezuela to Cape Gracias á Dios into tw o
immense gobernaciones ; one, from Coquibacoa to the Gulf of Urab á
inclusive, to be administered by Hojeda, and the other, from the Gul f
to northern Honduras, by Nicuesa . 1 1
So far as Hojeda was concerned, title was already established ; the
rights granted to him in 1504 were essentially the same as those em-
bodied in this latest contract, and his brevet as governor of Coqui-
bacoa and Urabá had never been revoked . He could even advance a
certain merit as second-run discoverer, because one of his ships ha d
repeated Bastidas ' course in 1502 ; and although the excursion ha d
been made without his authorization, he was technically responsibl e
for it. No one except Bastidas could better claim rights in the territory,.
and Bastidas had long sine given up any thought of such action .
(Cosa was not in the running, because with all his signal qualities h e
fell short on social position . He was not gubernatorial timber, and h e
knew it ; the Biscayan sailed with Hojeda, partnered him, fought beside
him, and financed him, but when he addressed him, he said "Sir ." )
Nicuesa's grant was a horse of another color . It had no foundatio n
in any previous achievement, and it was territory which had bee n
discovered by Columbus with particular pride . The enchanted Ad-
miral, exploring his personal Asia along the Central American coas t
on his fourth voyage, had decided that Veragua, on the Isthmus be-
tween Chiriquí Lagoon and the Río Chagres, was really the Golde n
Chersonese, and that in the mountains near by must lie Aurea, site o f
36
King Solomon's mines . The six hundred and sixty-six hundredweigh t
of gold sent to Jerusalem in a single shipment, the three thousand
hundredweight willed by King David to Solomon, had all come fro m
Aurea—Josephus raid so . "I esteem the commerce of this port and the
mines of this land," Columbus had concluded, "far more than all that
has been done in the Indies ." One can understand why Fernand o
wanted to serve notice that this prize was outside Diego Colón's in-
heritance, but not why he thought that Colón would carry out hi s
instructions to give every assistance to the interloping concessionaire .
Approved in principie early in May, the concessions were set forth
in a double contract which was signed and sealed on June 9, 1508 .
The capitulaciones were much more comprehensive than any previ-
ously drawn, and contained the stipulation that Juan de la Cos a
should be Hojeda ' s associate and lieutenant-governor, while retainin g
his rank of alguacil mayor .
When Fernando put his hand to the document to sign, "I, the
King," he started a train of events which did, at last, produce a colon y
la Tierra Firme . It is possible, however, that both he and the Gover-
nors of Urabá and Veragua would have torn up the contract had they
foreseen that the net result of eighteen months' preparation, tw o
armadas, seven or eight million maravedíes' investment, and nearl y
eight hundred lives, was to be the settlement in Darién .

IV
THE concessions of Urabá and Veragua were to run for four years ,
reckoned from the date of disembarcation . Each Governor was re-
quired to build two forts, of which one had to be completed within a
year and a balf—solid structures capable of insuring the safety o f
their settlements . This was almost the only obligation imposed by th e
contract, aside from the limitations, controls, and royalties to whic h
all expeditions were subject . The quinto on trade and barter was to b e
one fifth the first year and one fourth thereafter, calculated on th e
gross proceeds ; that on mines (the rights to which were, for some
37
reason, conceded for ten years) was one tenth the first year, one ninth
the next, and so on to a flat fifth for the last five years . l Colonist s
would earn title to the lands allotted them and could sell them a t
expiration of the contract ; they would be exempt from taxes except on
products sold and would enjoy the same privileges as the residente of
Hispaniola .
No limit was put on the number of men who could be enlisted, save
for an elite to be recruited in Hispaniola . This was restricted to si x
hundred, and was to be composed of propertied settlers who woul d
be permitted to keep their land, mines, Indians, and rights in th e
island colony while absent in Tierra Firme . It was hoped that thes e
desirably solvent and experienced recruits, tempted by the doubl e
indemnity, would do much to guarantee the success of the new ven-
tures . The King promised to pay passage with forty days ' food fo r
two hundred men from Spain, and passage with fifteen days' food fo r
six hundred from Hispaniola, and to supply each man with ligh t
armor. He also agreed to provide for each fort four small cannon ,
twenty hand guns, ¡ron shot, and a thousand pounds of powder .
The Governors could take forty slaves from Spain, and might cap-
ture as many more as they liked in Cartagena and the adjacent islands ,
paying royalties on them " as on any other merchandise " ; they could
take four hundred Indians from the islands near Hispaniola (by un-
specified methods of persuasion) and forty expert native miners fro m
Hispaniola itself . They were also allowed, by special decree, twenty-si x
mares and, in the course of their four-year contract, could impor t
twenty stallions—a rare item, because the government of Castile wa s
engaged in an intensive effort to increase breeding in the home realms .
Finally, they were assigned Jamaica as a supply island, with th e
obligation to build there another fortified post .
The asiento was excellent from the point of view of the conces-
sionaires, and sufficiently inviting from that of pioneers who wante d
to get in on the ground floor of promising colonies . As seen by
"the Young Admiral," Diego Colón, it was infuriating from firs t
to last .
Colón, who had inherited his father 's red hair and pigheadednes s
without his genius, cherished in his tight little soul the ambition t o
re-establish for himself the fabulous privileges once granted to Co-
38
lumbus—together with such amplifications and additions as his fertil e
fancy dictated . In Columbus, avidity had been strongly tinctured wit h
mysticism : the Indies were Galatea to his Pygmalion, and the ex-
plorers who followed him were violators not so much of a discover y
as of an invention, patented on earth but expressly inspired by heaven .
Diego was more practical, but not less determined, and the astoundin g
insolence with which he expressed his claims would have shocked hi s
father immeasurably . In 1508 he started suit against the Crown, de-
manding effective instauration as " Viceroy and perpetual Governo r
of the islands and mainland, both discovered and yet to be discovered ,
west of the line which passes 100 leagues beyond the Cape Verd e
Islands ." The demand (which ignored the Treaty of Tordesillas i n
favor of the Pope's first bull) was elaborated to give him absolut e
jurisdiction and the maximum financial return—a return which Co-
lumbus had estimated at about twenty-five per cent of the net proceed s
from all sources, including commerce, anywhere in the New World .
Obviously any monarch would have been insane to accede to suc h
pretentions, and should have been deposed at once had he done so . It
was also clear that Fernando was under no compulsion to send youn g
Diego to Hispaniola : he could have abrogated the decree of privilege s
on the ground that it was inimical to the national interest, or he coul d
have used a rather obvious legal loophole to declare that only th e
rank of admiral was hereditary . Colón, however, ignored the obvious .
He sailed for Hispaniola without gratitude, determined—explicit in-
structions to the contrary—to hinder to the utmost the Governor s
whose concessions in Tierra Firme were symbols of the limits set t o
his power and profit . 2

The armadas for Urabá and Veragua were scheduled to sail i n

March of 1509 . They did rather well to get away only six months late .
Judging from the records which have been preserved of expedition s
of the period, any captain who had gone through the business o f
assembling, financing, manning, and supplying a fleet must have sailed
to face cannibals and hurricanes with a sigh of relief . Cosa, it is true ,
had time to spare, but his armada was almost painfully modest com-
pared to that of Nicuesa . He spent the interval on a mission for th e
Casa, fetching from Portugal two vessels bought for official use i n
39
Hispaniola, where the violent hurricane of 1507 had destroyed mos t
of the ships based at the colony .
Nicuesa, who had both money and credit, raid that he laid out
nearly five and a half million maravedíes on his expedition . How man y
ships he armed is an open question—his contemporaries credit him ,
variously, with five, seven, or twelve—but the most reliable informa-
tion seems to be that he took six from Spain and added a seventh i n
Hispaniola . The Hojeda-Cosa armada is generally said to have left
with a caravel and two bergantines, but quite possibly was limited t o
the bergantines ; it acquired another caravel in Santo Domingo .
The combined fleet, accompanied by the two Portuguese caravel s
destined for service in Hispaniola, sailed from San Lúcar de Barra-
meda about September 9, 1509, and from Cádiz, where the fleet ha d
to pass inspection, a few days later . The date of arrival in Sant o
Domingo is not known, but Nicuesa, at least, could not have bee n
there before November . Six weeks, including the usual stop at th e
Canaries, was considered good time for the outward voyage, an d
Nicuesa paused to shanghai a hundred and fifty slaves en the islan d
of Santa Cruz (St . Croix), and stopped again in Puerto Rico to sel l
some of them . This was a mistake ; Santa Cruz was not appointed for
slaves, as Diego Colón was delighted to point out, and Nicuesa wa s
charged with ¡Ilegal raiding, denounced to the King, and forced to
relinquish his captives .
Alonso de Hojeda and Diego de Nicuesa may have been firm friend s
at the time they negotiated their agreement for the twin concessions ,
but in Santo Domingo, when both were struggling to complete their
armadas, they were like rival fighting cocks . In some ways they wer e
extraordinarily alike . Both carne from the solid second-line nobility ,
and had been pagel and squires to grandees of the bluest blood ; bot h
had gone to the Indies to make the fortunes they lacked at home . Th e
difference in their ages was slight, and they were both under middl e
height, muscular, and singularly handsome . With this, however, the
resemblance ceased .
Hojeda, in whom "all bodily perfections that a man may have
seemed joined, save only that he was small," was as valiant, enter-
prising, and unsuccessful a conquistador as ever swaggered through th e
Indies . Fighting had been his business, and he was as perfectly con -
40
structed for it as a pocket dreadnought, while his grace and prowes s
in the furious sports of the times were famed in Castile as in the Ne w
World . Inevitably he made enemies, but his friends were both eminen t
and loyal ; the King thought highly of him, and he had even won th e
armored heart of Bishop Fonseca . Hojeda had captained three un-
profitable expeditions : in 1499, with Cosa, when in six weeks or so h e
sailed from Surinam to the Goajira Peninsula rapidly bracketing Co-
lumbus' Paria discoveries and himself discovering from Isla Margarit a
to Citurma, and then spent five months hanging about the headquar-
ters of the anti-Columbus faction in Hispaniola ;3 in 1502, when h e
attempted to colonize in Coquibacoa, and in 1505, when, bound fo r
Urabá, he was held up in Santo Domingo by Ovando .
The first of theee voyages was quite evidently undertaken primaril y
in order to check on the Admiral, of whom alarming reports had bee n
received in Castile . The second ended with Hojeda a prisoner of hi s
mutinous partners, of whose trumped-up charges he was convicted in
Hispaniola and acquitted on appeal by the Royal Council . With regard
to the third, he brought suit for damages against Ovando : "on one
count for 30,000 castellanos and on another for 4000 ducats and on
another for 500,000 castellanos, which he says he failed to make and
spent because the said Ovando did not allow him to make a certai n
voyage .' These tidy sums, which added up to about 240,000,00 0
maravedíes, would have made up very nicely for Hojeda's disappoint-
ments—had he been able to get them . 5
Diego de Nicuesa was quite as ornamental as Hojeda ("one of th e
handsomest men in Castile" ), and almost equally skilled in joustin g
and fencing ; he had a pretty talent for ballad-singing to his own guitar
accompaniment, and he liked to show off his excellent horsemanshi p
on a fine mare . He also had considerable business acumen behind hi s
fashionable fagade ; starting from scratch, he had become in only si x
years one of the richest men in Hispaniola . But he had had none of
the grim preparation for his new undertaking that years of struggl e
and frontier leadership conferred . 6
With Diego Colón in the saddle in Hispaniola, the two Governors-
elect found final organization of their armadas to be a day-to-day
battle against official opposition . Their every move was hampered ;
their creditors were encouraged to be difficult ; worst of all, they wer e
41
not allowed to enlist the six hundred self-financing, seasoned colonist s
on whom they had counted . Moreover the Young Admiral appointed
a lieutenant of his own to take over in Jamaica—one Juan de Esqui-
vel, a caballero of whom Casas has some gruesome tales . After a few
weeks of this humiliating obstacle race, Hojeda and Nicuesa wer e
raw-nerved and truculent . Hojeda, meeting Esquivel in the street ,
threatened to have his head if he occupied the supply island ; Esquive l
shrugged it off, and remembered . Before long the two Governors were
snarling at each other over the money given to Nicuesa from the royal
treasury for the keep of the men in both armadas, over procuremen t
of a certain caravel which both of them wanted, over the division o f
the two hundred men brought from Spain, of whom Nicuesa ha d
taken a hundred and fifty, over getting hold of the best volunteer s
from Hispaniola . When Nicuesa demanded that the Gulf of Urabá b e
included in his gobernación, a duel was narrowly avoided .
Juan de la Cosa managed to prevent an open break by getting th e
bristling contendents to recognize the Atrato River as their commo n
boundary . It was Hojeda who made the concession ; his title covered
the Gulf of Urabá, and by compromising he gave up Darién . Seven
months laten King Fernando, informed of the controversy, confirme d
Hojeda ' s right to the whole Gulf . His cédula was important, although ,
by the time it reached the Indies, events in Tierra Firme had gone fa r
beyond proper litúe decrees and council resolutions .
Although relatively few of the six or seven hundred men who signe d
on in Hispaniola could contribute more than their persons to th e
undertakings, almost all of them were baquianos . A baquiano was the
opposite of a chapetón, or tenderfoot, and worth ten times as much in
a pioneering venture ; chapetones were a trial and a danger, and wer e
apt to die before they learned to be useful . And Nicuesa, at least, ha d
several officers who were financially useful . His lieutenant governor ,
Lope de Olano, a Biscayan who had once belonged to the anti -
Columbus faction in Hispaniola, was both baquiano and a man o f
substance (in 1503 he had been guarantor for Bastidas) ; the alcalde
mayor, or chief justice, was Alonso Núñez, ex-councilor of the city o f
Madrid ; Juan de Ledesma, who had backed both Bastidas and Cos a
and been alguacil of Cosa's armada of 1504-1506, appears to hav e
paid for a caravel, bought in Nicues a' s name, of which he was master.
42
 Hojeda and Cosa, whose armada and prospecta were less brilliant ,
did not do so well in the way of investing colonists . Juan de Quicedo ,
who had been appointed chief royal veedor for both gobernaciones ,
may have been of some assistance ; as Cosa ' s flag captain four year s
before, he had proof that Urabá could pay well . His only known con-
tribution, however, was a third interest in a small caravel owne d
jointly with Cosa and a certain Pedro Martínez, notary of gold and
smelting for Tierra Firme, which the three had permission to keep i n
Tierra Firme for their private use and profit . This little caravel, and
Quicedo with it, may have stayed in Santo Domingo for some month s
after the armadas left for Tierra Firme . Hojeda got another in His-
paniola—snatching it from under the nose of Nicuesa, who also
wanted it—and so far as can be ascertained he had only three ships ,
a caravel and two bergantines, when he went to Urabá .
Each Governor secured in Santo Domingo one special partner wh o
was willing to put capital into the enterprise for a proportionate shar e
in the profits . Nicuesa' s man was Rodrigo de Colmenares, an hidalg o
of some education and, it developed, few scruples ; Hojeda contracte d
a clever lawyer named Martín Fernández de Enciso, who was give n
the office of alcalde mayor . These last-minute adjutants were to joi n
their respective commanders as soon as they could assemble mor e
ships and men . Both of them were to have far more to do with th e
colonization of Tierra Firme than either of the concessionaires .
By some miracle of energy and determination the expeditions wer e
ready to clear from Hispaniola early in December . Hojeda and Cos a
completed their arrangements (including the settling of Cosa ' s wif e
and family in Santo Domingo) a little before Nicuesa, and sailed o n
or about December thirteenth,7 setting their course for Cartagena .
Into the caravel and two small craft they had fitted two hundred an d
twenty men, the assorted supplies for the colony, a number of live pig s
and chickens, and twelve brood mares . Thus equipped, they planne d
to subjugate a savage and reluctant land of indefinite extent and incal-
culable hazards .
The departure of the Veragua armada, achieved with considerabl e
difficulty, took place eight or ten days later . Nicuesa spent the interval
in a frantic serial effort to appease creditors egged on by Colón ; th e
last summons was served when he was actually aboard, with the bul k
43
of his fleet already away . A kindly friend stood surety (at whic h
Nicuesa burst into sobs of relief) and the Governor of Veragua liter-
ally ran to his waiting bergantín, " looking over his shoulder to see if
any other writ of attachment were following him ." Partly from reac-
tion, his attitude once he had boarded his flagship was so crassly dicta-
torial that most of his officers and pilots—who had forgotten mor e
about exploration than Nicuesa ever knew—were alienated at the
outset .
The Governors left behind two volunteers who had been eager t o
accompany them . One, prevented by an injury to his knee, was Her-
nán Cortés, who had wanted to go with Hojeda . The other, who wa s
not permitted to leave because he could not first settle his debts, wa s
Vasco Núñez de Balboa .

Nicuesa followed Hojeda's course, bent on collecting some slave s

in the designated zone and on underlining his claim to Darién by enter-
ing his gobernación from the Gulf of Urabá . He reached Cartagena
just in time to be of assistance to Hojeda and just too late to sav e
Juan de la Cosa.
Hojeda and Cosa had made Cartagena on the fifth day out .
Tempted by the harbor, the easy-seeming country, and the recollection
of Guerra's enormous loot, the Governor wanted to establish there hi s
first fort and settlement ; Cosa was all for going first to colonize i n
Urabá, "where the people are not so ferocious and have not such bad
poison." Hojeda insisted on his idea, and a first raid on the village s
close by, which netted sixty captives, only whetted his appetite . When
he gave the order to march with seventy men on Turbaco, a villag e
of a hundred bohíos ten or twelve miles distant, Cosa protested, bu t
elected to go with his chief. This gallantry was unfortunate ; like s o
much spontaneous heroism, it was noble in intent and disastrous i n
its results .
Forewarned, the Indians left the village, only to return and fall o n
the invaders as they scattered to look for treasure . After prolonge d
fighting Hojeda charged through the thick of the attackers and escaped ,
'Tying as if on wings ." Cosa, stubbornly covering for his captain, wa s
killed . As he lay dying from innumerable poisoned wounds, he sa w
one Spaniard still alive and manfully defending them both, " . . . and
44
he said to him, `Brother, since God has preserved us until now, put
forth your strength and save yourself, and tell Hojeda how you lef t
me at the end.' And this man alone, we believe, escaped out of the m
all, he and Hojeda . "
Search parties from the ships found Hojeda crouched in a man-
grove swamp, his sword still in his hand and on his shield the mark s
of three hundred arrows . Told that Nicuesa had arrived, he at firs t
refused to come out, sure that his rival would rejoice in his humilia-
tion . In this he miscalculated ; he had not considered the exquisit e
satisfaction to be had from conscious—and public –magnanimity t o
a fallen adversary . As a matter of fact, Nicuesa behaved beautifully .
As described by Casas the meeting of the two Governors on Codeg a
beach had the mannered grace of a minuet and the elegant wordines s
of eighteenth-century drama . They advanced on one another, em-
braced, shed some appropriate tears, and immediately burst into lon g
speeches in which the most elevated sentiments bloomed in ordered ,
if somewhat ungrammatical, luxuriance .
"There must be a great difference, " declared Nicuesa, his feet
planted in the sand as on an invisible platform, "between the treat-
ment gentlemen accord each other when they see he whom they onc e
disliked in need of help, from that of when they were quarreling an d
had the faculty to revenge themselves . Because besides being basenes s
and vileness of heart and a degeneration from the virtues of his
ancestors," he continued, warming to his theme in a welter of syntax ,
%t would be cruelty, and a deed of men without reason, to afllict thos e
whom affliction has already plunged into anguish . . ." and so on .
The upshot of all this eloquence was a joint punitive expedition
four hundred strong, led by Hojeda and Nicuesa on their mares .
Marching by night, they assaulted Turbaco before dawn ; alarme d
macaws screamed a warning from the trees, but the Indians had n o
time to escape . "By ten o'clock in the morning, there was not in th e
whole town one Indian alive, large or small ." Hunting for loot, th e
soldiers found Juan de la Cosa . His body was tied to a tree, so hor-
ribly bloated and contorted that even the case-hardened compañero s
could not bear to look at it, and " as full of arrows as a hedgehog . " $
Nicuesa refused to wait to bury Cosa, and without pause for foo d
or rest the men were marched back to the coast. The two Governor s
45
said good-by at the shore, and made haste to leave Cartagena and it s
bloody memories . Casas heard that Nicuesa 's share of the loot carn e
to 7000 pesos ; Oviedo, always Nicuesa's champion, says that he nobl y
declined to accept so much as a peso ; Martyr, perhaps the best in-
formed on this point, states that there was very little loot to divide ,
and that of poor quality.
The depleted Hojeda expedition made for Urabá . A week or so
later, after a brief stop at Isla Fuerte, it rounded Caribana head an d
carne to anchor just inside the Gulf . The banner of Castile and Leon
was raised on a low hill above the beach, at or near the spot where
Cosa had camped in 1505, and the post was named San Sebastián d e
Urabá . The day of the arrow-martyred saint falls on January twen-
tieth, and according to Spanish custom, this should be taken as th e
approximate date of the landing . It is possible, however, that anothe r
reason for honoring St . Sebastian was the hope that he would have a
protective feeling for Christians exposed to perils with which he wa s
peculiarly able to sympathize .
Shortly afterwards Hojeda sent the caravel back to Hispaniol a
with some gold and slaves to pay for more supplies and with a lette r
for a ship-owning friend of Haniguayana named Bernardino de Tala-
vera, urging him to come to Urabá with provisions and volunteers .
This caravel presents a minor problem . She apparently arrived, fo r
Talavera went to join Hojeda, in such fashion as to achieve permanen t
notoriety : Having sold his ship just before receiving the letter, he firs t
tried to get her back (allegedly, by simple seizure) and when this
failed, stole a nao which was loading in Salvatierra in which he mad e
off with seventy companions for San Sebastián . Furthermore, th e
caravel from Urabá seems to have carried the news of Cosa 's death-
but to whom, it is impossible to say .
Colón asserted that no news whatever was received in Hispaniol a
from either Hojeda or Nicuesa from the time they left for their gober-
naciones until after February of 1511 . As late as June of 1511, Fer-
nando was anxiously lamenting, to Colón and to the Governor s
themselves, this alarming silence . Yet somehow the King had learne d
that Cosa was dead, and had ordered certain payments made to the
widow . One can only conclude that the caravel, if she did arrive, took
no official correspondence of any kind, and, still more remarkably ,
46
that her entire crew contrived to maintain a clamlike secrecy abou t
their experiences .
Back in Urabá, the hundred and forty remaining colonists built a
stout timber "tower" and thirty huts for dwellings, relatively cheerfu l
in the belief that Enciso would soon be there with his supple-
mentary armada . But as the weeks passed with no sign of him, the
situation became rapidly worse . It was found impossible to live off th e
country ; the Indians rallied to defend their fields, and raids prove d
both costly and ineffectual . A crocodile ate one of the precious mares ,
thus destroying half the value of the others by demonstrating to the
natives that the strange monsters were vulnerable . Disease was rife .
By May, food rations had been cut to almost nothing . Men died ravin g
of hunger, of fever, and of poisoned arrows, and those who burie d
them were envious, "because they thought that with death they coul d
be at resC '
At some time during these months Alonso de Hojeda carne neare r
death than ever in all his years of perilous adventuring . (Gossip sai d
that an outraged husband was at the bottom of it ; Hojeda had a n
enterprising way with native women .) The Urabaes provoked a sortie ,
and as usual Don Alonso led the charge, "running like the wind, "
exactly as the Indians had foreseen . At the first thicket four bowme n
in ambush let fly their arrows, piercing his thigh from side to side .
Carried Back to the fort, he showed the mettle that made him some-
thing of a legend in his time : he ordered his surgeon, Alonso d e
Santiago, to apply white-hot irons to his wounds . Maestre Alonso
refused, protesting that "with such firing I would kill you," and Hojed a
turned on him furiously :
"Be that as it may, " he said with deadly force, "I solemnly swea r
to God that if you do not do as 1 say, I will command that you b e
hanged . "
The surgeon reconsidered . Disdaining to be bound or held, the littl e
Governor lay without a whimper while the flesh was charred deep o n
either side of his leg. He recovered .
Early in May, a nao stood in from sea and carne to anchor below
the campa Talavera had come, and "joy was indescribable and incal-
culable" over his cargo of bacon and cassava . The compañeros were
in no mood to care, if they ever knew, how the meat and foour, or
47
even the nao, had been procured. The crew of the Stolen Ship, for thei r
part, were rather less uplifted. Urabá was considerably less attractiv e
than it had appeared from a distance, and before long they decide d
that the rigors of the law in Hispaniola were to be preferred to th e
hardships of San Sebastián. When they left, the Governor went wit h
them .
Hojeda intended to make a quick trip to Hispaniola for supplie s
and fresh recruits . The compañeros, who from sheer misery had been
ripe for mutiny, approved the plan ; they agreed to remain for fifty
days in San Sebastián in hope of relief, and for his part the Governo r
gave them written permission to go where they chose without further
obligation if no help had come when the time was up . The most force -
ful of the surviving colonists was named lieutenant—Francisco Pi-
zarro, the illiterate soldier from Estremadura who was to be one day
the conqueror of Peru .
Seven weeks was a short time for all that Hojeda proposed to
accomplish—so short that one wonders if he really believed he coul d
carry it out. He probably hoped that Enciso would arrive to save th e
situation ; at all events, when the due date carne he was fighting a wa y
with his shipwrecked companions through the treacherous swamp s
along the coast of Cuba, and he did not reach Hispaniola until lat e
March, or more likely April, of the following year . But seven weeks
was an aeon to hold out in San Sebastián . When they had passed, only
eighty Spaniards were left alive, and late in July, or early in August ,
Pizarro gave the order to abandon the fort . They still had the two
bergantines ; Pizarro and forty-one others went in one ship, and
though they would have despaired to know it, they were to find them -
selves back in Darién before two months were gone . The thirty-eight
men and two women who went in the other bergantín, in charge of a
certain Valenzuela, were more unfortunate . Their vessel was not, a s
Casas states, capsized in a cross sea by "a whale or other large fish "
with the loss of all on board, but their end was almost equally disas-
trous . Swept by wind and current, the ship had fetched up on the coas t
of Cuba . Nine men had died on the way, and the remaining voyager s
had fallen victim to the Indians in battle or in slavery . Three year s
later Velásquez found the only survivors, in servitude to a chief no t
far from the place where Havana was founded : two women and a
48
sailor named García Mejía . Perhaps the women, one of whom wa s
rather well on in years, concluded that their sufferings were not vain ,
for they were immediately supplied with the essentials for their re-
habilitation—clothes and, much more important, husbands . l o
On September seventeenth or eighteenth, Pizarro and his com-
panions were beating up the coast just past Cartagena when their tire d
eyes fell on what must have seemed the most beautiful sight this sid e
heaven : the sails of Enciso's ships, five days out from Santo Domingo ,
bearing down from the northeast. Overjoyed at the prospect of getting
the food and help which would enable them to continue their voyag e
with good chance of making Hispaniola safely, they put about an d
followed the two vessels into Cartagena harbor . As it turned out, their
joy was premature . They knew the horrors of Urabá, which the y
presumed forever behind them ; they knew the tercos of Hojeda's fina l
dispositions, and that they were now free of obligation to the conces-
sion and its governor . But they did not yet know the bachiller Enciso .

V
THE armada of the bachiller Enciso, a nao and a bergantín, had saile d
from Santo Domingo on September 13, 1510, with a hundred an d
fifty-two new settlers for Urabá . One hundred and fifty of these wer e
regularly enlisted recruits, duly registered and approved . The remain-
ing two, even the lesser of whom was to accomplish much more in th e
way of practical conquest than the bachiller himself, were Vasc o
Núñez de Balboa and his yellow dog, Leoncico .
The ships were well out at sea before Enciso was aware of the tw o
irregulars, for the sufficient reason that until then they had been hid-
den from creditors, bailiffs, and other impediments to embarcation i n
a cask originally designed to carry flour . A less picturesque getaway ,
such as walking on board to say good-by to someone and then failin g
to walk off again, had not been possible : Colón had the ships under
close surveillance against just such eventualities, and Enciso was al-
most equally alert for fear some legal infraction would be seized o n
49
as an excuse to keep him in Hispaniola . The flour cask was an inspire d
solution . Helped by a friend among the recruits named Bartolom é
Hurtado, Vasco Núñez was able to fool the local authorities and th e
bachiller in relative comfort . 1
The departure was as significant for him as a new birth, and almos t
equally bare of material equipment. Aside from Leoncico (whos e
subsequent career removes him from the category of mere possessions )
Balboa had nothing but the clothes he wore and his sword—a situa-
tion saved from routine success-story drama by the picaresque comedy
of the moment . Plenty of great men have begun penniless, some of
them fairly late in life, but pone, perhaps, have taken off for immorta l
glory in a barrel . What he thought, as he crouched in the dark wit h
his dog between his knees, no one can say . He could follow the proces s
of sailing by ear—the scrape of lighters against the wales, the crea k
of windlasses, shouts and curses and laughter and long-accented chan-
ties . A swing and strain told when rail was half set, a steady whisper
marked by the beat of sweeps meant that the vessel was moving ou t
of the river under the grim walls of El Homenaje ; the noises as cana s
was full set, the shock of meeting open water, and the first free tremo r
of the leaning hull said when the chip was away . Balboa may hav e
spent the hours before he felt sale in showing himself, worrying over
the approaching interview with the bachiller, but judging from wha t
one learns of his character in the years which followed, it is probabl e
that he simply went to sleep .
Had Enciso been of another stamp, Vasco Núñez would doubtles s
have got off fairly easily . The bachiller, however, was an almos t
ludicrously self-important martinet in the first flush of command .
When the government cutter sent to see the armada on its way ha d
turned back, Balboa emerged prepared for a chilly reception and th e
likelihood of some disciplinary medicine, but he must have been sur-
prised at the fury which met him on the quarter-deck . Enciso had bee n
burlarlo, and to be touched by ridicule, or even by the ridiculous, wa s
unbearable . He lashed out in a tirade wherein he so far forgot hi s
judicial position and training as to declare that Balboa had earned th e
death penalty, and would be left to perish on the first desert island .
It was a highly pictorial scene : the raging alcalde, Balboa stand-
ing blond and tall with his dog beside him, the grouped officers, an d
50
on the deck below the men crowding close to listen ; a scene bright
with color under the arching sails and the cobalt-and-pearl of the
Caribbean sky. It is doubtful, however, if anyone noticed the setting ;
what interested the recruits was to see how their commander met hi s
first test . All things considered, he could hardly have done worse. The
men heard him without approval, and some of them boldly spoke ou t
on behalf of the stowaway, arguing that a superlative fighting ma n
with years of experience in the Indies was an asset to be valued . The y
may have added that Leoncico was also a desirable addition to th e
force ; trained war dogs were hard to come by, and was not he th e
worthy son of Becerillo, Ponce de León's wonder dog? (Later, whe n
Leoncico was drawing crossbowman's pay, no one questioned that h e
earned it several times over . ) z
Enciso saw the force of there arguments, and besides, there wer e
no desert islands immediately handy . He yielded, but he did so as
unpleasantly as possible . His conduct of the incident achieved th e
effects which might have been expected ; the first seeds of dissatisfac-
tion were planted in the compañeros, and Balboa, whom he now de-
tested, was raised from insignificance to something resembling a
popular hero . Nor was his next recorded initiative calculated to im-
prove his position. Reaching Cartagena still in evil humor, he pro-
ceeded to mishandle Pizarro and the other survivors of San Sebastiá n
with what, in the circumstances, was almost perverse stupidity .
Enciso's first reaction to the bitter story told by Pizarro and hi s
crew was to accuse them of lying and threaten to put them in irons a s
deserters or worse ; his second, after reading Hojeda's instructions, wa s
to refuse to honor the release and to order them back to Urabá . Pro-
testing as one man, the unhappy refugees begged to be allowed to go
to Hispaniola, or at very least to Veragua ; as a last resort, they even
offered their gold as the price of liberty. It was all useless . Enciso
merely replied that he was now acting head of the gobernación, an d
that as such his commands were final .
At first glance it seems odd that anyone should go to such length s
to saddle himself with a group of worn-out, resentful subordinates .
But Enciso had his reasons . If he could carry on in Urabá, his share
of the take would be much more than had been envisaged when ther e
were a hundred and eighty more people among whom to divide th e
51
spoils, and he might be able to make his pretension of deputy gover-
nor stick, thus stepping into Hojeda's shoes—a beautiful thought . He
wanted all the men he could get, particularly seasoned recruits wh o
knew the ground . On the other hand, it would have been dangerou s
to allow the offended colonists to carry tales of him to Santo Domingo .
Quite apart from the fertile inventiveness of Spaniards bent on defa-
mation, his right to take over leadership in the concession was too thi n
to withstand the pressure for which Colón would have been charme d
to find an excuse. Enciso was not Hojeda's deputy ; he was only th e
chief justice of a no-longer-existing colony by appointment from a no-
longer-functioning governor . His position was that of an impressiv e
equestrian statue from which someone has removed the horse .
The armada lay over in Cartagena to repair a lifeboat . The job took
three days, during which the work party was surrounded by a silen t
throng of watchful Indians . The Spaniards, also silent, pretended not
to notice their audience, but they probably established a record fo r
speed which few carpenter's gangs have equaled . On the third day o f
this rather morose pantomime, the alarm was given that ten native s
were menacing two workmen who had gone for water . The bachiller ' s
anemic rise to this minor emergency argued ill for future crises . He
"left the ship with many armed men, advancing little by little towards
the Indians with great fear of the poisoned arrows . " The men o f
Urabá must have remembered Hojeda, running like the wind befor e
his soldiers . However, it was just as well that Enciso was not precipi-
tate ; the Indians turned out to be friendly and by the time he ap-
proached on bis slow-motion charge, the Caribs and the carpenter s
were on the best of terms . Enciso subsequently took great credit for
his skill in winning native good will, but the whole story seems a littl e
odd, and one wonders how he acquired "the Indian girl I captured in
Cartagena," who, he said, elaimed to have accounted for eight Chris-
tians with her own bow .
On one of the last days of September the armada sighted the low
hills of Urabá . The dismal forebodings of the returning colonists were
realized even sooner than they expected : rounding the point into the
Gulf the flagship went aground on the inshore shoals, and immediatel y
broke up under the combined action "of wind, waves, tide and under-
tow . " Most of the men reached shore, although they were "nearly al l
52
naked"—presumably because they had stripped in order to swim
better . The total salvage from the flagship amounted to seventy or
eighty swords, twelve barrels of damaged flour, a few cheeses, and a
little soggy hardtack. To complete the desolation, the Urabaes ha d
burned the fort and the thirty shacks . The familiar story began ove r
again : a stranded Spanish force, hostile natives, famine, fever, desper-
ation .
Enciso was quite unequal to handling the seamy side of conquest .
His life in the Indies had been civilian, for it was perfectly possible fo r
a prominent lawyer to reside in Santo Domingo in his time withou t
encountering anything more martial than a courtroom brawl, and-
with the income the bachiller said he earned—to do so in considerabl e
comfort . When he did gird himself to lead a hundred ill-armed com-
pañeros on a foraging raid the party was ignominiously routed, "no t
by 1000 or 2000 men armed with arquebuses and other artillery, but
by only three naked Indians . " The colonists, forlornly camped among
the ruins of San Sebastián, were not disposed to make excuses for thei r
inadequate commander . They watched him fumble, their eyes hard
with judgment ; it was whispered from man to man that the alcald e
mayor was plotting to escape with a few favorites in one or both of the
bergantines, and some said that it would be better to forestall him an d
get away themselves, leaving him in the suffering he had refused to
credit .
A few weeks of this was enough to take a good deal of the starch
out of the bachiller—so much that he was willing to listen to advice .
What is more, he listened to it from the man he disliked most, th e
exasperatingly successful stowaway Vasco Núñez de Balboa . Balboa
did not know very much about the Gulf region, but he evidently kne w
more than anyone else in San Sebastián, and his counsel was simpl e
and convincing .
"I remember," raid Balboa, "that years ago, when 1 came along
this coast exploring with Rodrigo de Bastidas, we entered this Gulf ;
and on the western side, on the right [i.e ., northerly] hand as it seem s
to me, we went ashore ; and we saw a village on the far side of a larg e
river, and a land very cool and abundant for food . And, " he added with
emphasis, "the people there did not put poison on their arrows . "
This was enough for the expeditionaries, to whom the other shor e
53
sounded like Paradise after the one they knew . They would cros s
the Gulf and start afresh . In two sentences, in less than a minute, th e
destiny of Darién had been decided .

The western side of the Gulf was, by virtue of the pact between th e
Governors of Tierra Firme, Nicuesa territory . But it was Hojeda terri-
tory according to the contract with the Crown, against which n o
private agreement would be valid, and thus open to occupation by th e
Urabá colonists . Some seventy-five men were left to hold San Sebas-
tián ; the rest—all that could be carried in the bergantines and the
lifeboat—sailed over to take possession of the promised land . Balbo a
must have supplemented his first advice with more detailed informa-
tion ; at any rate, the Spaniards seem to have made directly for th e
small Río Darién, where the principal village was some way inland .
Some chroniclers say that Chief Cemaco of Darién mustered fiv e
hundred bowmen, sent his noncombatant subjects to a safe retreat ,
and gave battle at once . Casas presents a somewhat different version ,
based on "my old notes made on hearing the accounts of people wh o
were there ." According to there, Cemaco was at first extremely con-
ciliatory, so much so that with more grace than foresight he presente d
the Spaniards with eight or ten thousand pesos of gold . This immedi-
ately provoked insistent questions as to the source of the metal, and
after a feeble attempt at convincing his interrogators that it came fro m
heaven, the chief told them that the large pieces were from a plac e
twenty-five leagues distant, and the small ones from near-by rivers .
Pressed, he at first consented to serve as guide to the gold fields, bu t
his subjects objected so strenuously (on the grounds that once the in-
vaders found the mines it would be impossible to get rid of them )
that, caught between two fires, he took flight . Cemaco tried to hide
with a vassal headman, was discovered and captured, kept his secre t
under torture, and at length escaped to gather his warriors and give
battle .
Grouped on a low hill, Cemaco's five hundred fighters were not a
reassuring sight, and Enciso was not the man to overlook its gloomie r
implications . He ordered his men to their knees, and with them im-
plored God to give them victory, swearing to send a pilgrimage an d
rich votive offerings to the Virgin revered in Seville, Nuestra Señor a
54
del Antigua, in whose honor they would name the settlement and t o
whom they would dedicate its church . Enciso also required his soldiers
to take oath that they would fight to the death, " neither fleeing nor
turning their backs . "
The action which followed was hardly worth all this preparation .
The Darienes cannot have been ignorant of the poison which mad e
the neighboring Urabaes' arrows such deadly weapons, but they ha d
not imitated the alien invention—an odd lack of precaution which
would be much odder were it not so persistently illustrated throug h
military history . Moreover, they were not inherently a warlike people ;
until the Christians carne they did not need to be, for, in contrast t o
many tribes of Tierra Firme, they lived at peace with their neighbors .
The Spaniards inflicted heavy casualties, and before long Cemac o
and his remaining troops were in headlong retreat . The invaders occu-
pied the deserted village near by, and found it gloriously stocked wit h
food . Next day, scouting about the adjacent country, they came o n
more houses, standing singly or in small groups, and collected a
quantity of cotton cloth, woven garments trimmed with fur, hammocks
and other effects, and more worked gold . They must also have rounded
up a good many prisoners, for Enciso later congratulated himself o n
his treatment of some homosexuals among them : "When I took
Darién, we seized them and burned them ; and when the women saw
that we burned them they were happy about it ." His distribution of
pronouns is revealing .
(Sodomy was not considered particularly vicious by the Indians ,
whether or not Enciso was right in believing that the feminine con-
tingent considered it unfair competition . It was probably practiced les s
than their conquerors believed . In Spanish eyes it was the most heinou s
of crimes . The penalty, established by a law of 1254 which began wit h
an embarrassed apology for mentioning so "unsavory" a matter at all ,
was death of a peculiarly dreadful and protracted sort for bot h
parties . )
Joined by the men who had been left in San Sebastián, the colonist s
elected to stay in Cemaco's village, which offered ready-made shelte r
and fields for crops . No document or chronicle gives the date of it s
taking, but it was evidently some time in November of 1510 . Appar-
ently there was some idea at first that the actual settlement might b e
55
built elsewhere : Oviedo says that it was not until some months late r
that Balboa—to the fore as always in any decisive development i n
Darién—dedicated it to the Sevillian Madonna and changed its narr e
from La Guardia (the Garrison), Enciso's original choice, to Sant a
María del Antigua del Darién . With this ceremony the site which ha d
seemed good to an Indian clan—decently retired, good water, enoug h
land for their simple needs—was fixed as that of the first colonia l
capital of mainland America .
The location ís still marked on modern maps, but unfortunately in
the wrong place : usually on the sea at the edge of the Atrato Delta ,
occasionally down in the delta marshes, or where remains of early mis -
sions have been found . When labeled : "Ruins of . . ." the error is
doubled ; built of wood, Gane, and thatch, Santa María left no con-
veniently indicative ruins, and its durable equipment such as forges ,
church bells, smelter, and the like were taken to Panamá when th e
seat of government was moved . However, despite the absence of ther e
aids and of such local maps as were made (two of them by Balboa) ,
the clues provided by the settlers themselves and by the mariners wh o
visited it can be pieced together to establish very nearly the real site .
According to the people who were there, Santa María was : 1 )
twenty-five miles from the bay at the head of the Gulf, and abou t
fourteen from its western entrante, then considered to be at Punt a
Goleta ; 2) on an exact parallel with the three Farallones, which ca n
only have been the present Islas de Titumate ; 3) at a distante from
the coast variously stated at from under four miles to over eight ,
probably in referente to two different routes ; 4) connected with th e
coast by two separate trails, one to the small estuary at the river mout h
and the "Big Beach" (the Playón), and the other to "the port " ; 5 )
shut in by hills in such fashion that the sun shone on it directly onl y
in the middle hours of the day ; 6) on a fork of the Rió Darién, smal l
and usually limpid, about a league from its confluente with the mai n
stream . It was also said that the Río Darién had no connection wit h
the Atrato and that it was barely large enough at its best for a nativ e
canoe . There are plenty of other confirmatory indications, but sinc e
the key ones are in happy agreement it is superfluous to go into the m
here . They all point to a location on the fork of the Tanela Rive r
sometimes called Lajas, a narrow valley walled east and west by hills .
56
"The port" must have been either La Gloria or Triganá, also calle d
Puerto Escondido. 3
The restorative effects of comparative security and regular meal s
were almost immediate, and organization of the colony proceeded i n
an atmosphere of brisk initiative . However, the initiatives of Encis o
(now once more his usual arbitrary self) were at odds with those o f
the recruits . When he issued an edict forbidding individual tradin g
for gold on pain of death, and capped this by taking possession of al l
the aceumulated treasure, the colonists ' resentment boiled over . Th e
ban on private barter conformed to the royal instructions, but th e
penalty did not, and in any case Enciso's right to formulate edicts wa s
questionable . Moreover, every compañero knew the laws on warfare ,
which, on the premise that "gain is a thing which all men covet, an d
much more those who wage war, " decreed that the spoils should b e
divided among the soldiers within nine days of completing the action .
Enciso may have argued that the pay-off could not be made i n
Hojeda's absence, but the men thought they knew what his real motiv e
was . The bachiller, they believed, was planning a quiet getaway in th e
bergantines with the gold and a few friends, and they proposed t o
make sure that he did not succeed .
Thus ¡t was that when the settlers met, as was customary, to elec t
municipal officers, Enciso was not invited ; in fact, Test he dispens e
with formalities and come anyway, he was not even informed . To hi s
lasting outrage the leaders of the opposition walked off with the elec-
tions . The results were : joint alcaldes, Vasco Núñez de Balboa and
Benito Palazuelos ; treasurer, Hojeda's physician, Doctor Alberto ;
alguacil, Bartolomé Hurtado ; regidores, Diego Albítez, Martín de
Zamudio, Esteban Barrantes, and Juan de Valdivia . Zamudio was sub-
sequently promoted to be co-alcalde in place of Palazuelos . The al-
caldes were combination mayors and city magistrates, the alguacil
was a kind of sheriff, and the regidores were aldermen—although
anything further from the conventional aldermanic type than thes e
battered, hot-tempered, ¡ron-boweled men would be hard to imagine .
The newly installed officials took over with a firm hand and that
devotion to conventional forros so notable in the conquistadores whe n
engaged in unconventional activities . They also took over the bergan-
tines, just to be on the safe side . Enciso protested every step of the
57
way. He accused the council of rebellion ; the council replied that ,
since he had no true authority, there could be no rebellion against it.
The recruits had promised obedience to Hojeda, who had disappeared ,
and eventually to his lieutenant governor, Cosa, who had died . Enciso
insisted that he was now Hojeda's substitute, with full power in th e
Governor's absenec ; the colonists laughed and asked to see his brevet .
That was impossible, said the bachiller stiffly, it had been lost whe n
the nao was wrecked . (He later claimed that Hojeda had sent hico a
power of attorney by Pizarro, but at the time no one seems to have
taken the assertion seriously .) In after years Enciso declared that h e
arrested some of those responsible for seizing the boats, and that the y
had submitted lest they be hanged . The bachiller was very free wit h
his threats of capital punishment—which, incidentally, he was no t
empowered to apply—but if he did manage this countermeasure, it s
effect was brief .
Matters might have come to a quick climax had not conclusion s
been postponed by a happy diversion . In the latter part of November ,
Nicuesa's adjutant Rodrigo de Colmenares arrived, en route to Ve-
ragua with long-overdue supplies and reinforcements .
To do Colmenares justice—always a slight effort in view of hi s
double-dealing recordthe eleven-month delay in leaving to join hi s
chief was not his fault . Like Enciso, he had been tied down by Diego
Colón ' s obstructive tactics . The Young Admiral had not relinquishe d
his claim to Tierra Firme ; on the contrary, he had renewed his demand
that the contract with Hojeda and Nicuesa be canceled and the terri-
tories assigned to him in their stead . Meanwhile he had continued t o
do what he could to further the failure of the concessions, encourage d
by a total lack of news from either gobernación . In the summer of
1510, however, dispatches had come from the King which wer e
enough to give pause to even Colón . 4
Fernando was willing to concede something in the clause regardin g
propertied recruits from Hispaniola, reducing the number to two hun-
dred ; at the same time he confirmed the Governors' right to enlist a s
many other residents of Hispaniola as they liked . Nicuesa's slaves from
Santa Cruz should be repatriated, but they were to be "replaced from
other regions . " As for Jamaica, it had been assigned to Hojeda an d
Nicuesa for the good reason that it would be useful to them : neverthe-
58
less, Colón could send a veedor there to see that no "scandals" de-
veloped . His Highness' further remarks were straight to the chin :
Colón, whatever his personal opinion might be, had no excuse fo r
failing to carry out his instructions to assist the Governors of Urab á
and Veragua, "because it is my will now as always that what I orde r
be agreed with any person whatsoever should be fulfilled," regardless
of hypothetical drawbacks . "I command and charge you," His High-
ness continued, " that without waiting for further letters or order s
from me, you fulfill with the said Hojeda and Nicuesa everythin g
contained in the said pact and contract, without fail in any particular ,
and that you give them all favor and help that may be required t o
expedite their business, in such fashion that they have no cause to sa y
that because of impediments placed for them there, they give up th e
performance of their obligations . "
This plain speaking was backed up by a letter to Miguel de Pasa -
monte, Treasurer of the Indies and powerful confidant of the King ,
enclosing letters patent for the use of Hojeda and Nicuesa in case the y
had difficulty in getting clearance for their recruits, together with a
memorandum of confidential instructions for them . For all that event s
had overrun there provisions, they were indicative of the King's stat e
of mind, and Colón (who undoubtedly knew about them) was jarre d
into compliance . Enciso was able to get away in the second week o f
September, and Colmenares sailed a month later.
Colmenares had a vessel "bought with his own money, " and wa s
accompanied by another ship which was either chartered or license d
by the officials of Hispaniola . Years afterwards he claimed that he
lost 2000 castellanos in the expedition : five hundred for purchase of
the ship, fifty a month for the time of waiting, and a thousand in food-
stuffs which spoiled. (The castellano was at this time a money of
account peculiar to the Indies, equal to a peso of gold .) This estimate
is not to be taken literally, if only because Colmenares made no formal
claim on the loss when he was in Spain in 1513 . It is true that the
second ship vanished from the record after leaving Darién, so that one
may fancy her a kind of Flying Spanishman forever sailing he r
phantom courses . But Colmenares' caravel returned safe to Hispaniola ,
making money on the voyage . Moreover, staple provisions were no t
perishable, and Colmenares certainly reached Darién with a full cargo
59
which he sold at scarcity prices . What he did lose, but failed to men-
tion in his memorials, was a considerable portion of his men at Gaira :
forty-one by the lowest count, eleven of them because Colmenares ,
having seen the others of the landing party killed by the Indians, mad e
sail and ran, leaving them to their fate .
After a stormy voyage the armada made Urabá about the middl e
of November. Reconnaissance ashore revealed the charred ruins o f
San Sebastián, and near them the evidences of a lately abandone d
camp . This had all the earmarks of recent tragedy ; ordering signal
fires to be set on the beach, Colmenares hurried to the safety of th e
ships and had the cannon fired in unison so that any chance survivor s
might know that there was a Spanish armada at hand . Across th e
Gulf the men of Darién lit answering beacons, and a mutually satisfy-
ing reunion followed . "One side was hungry for gold and the othe r
for food "—in the circumstances a situation which guaranteed an
instant entente .
The men from Hispaniola now learned for the first time that Hojed a
had left his concession, while the colonists discovered that their chief
was still missing . It looked very much as if the Governor of Urabá ha d
vanished for good, in which case his gobernación had no technical titl e
to exist . For that matter, even its material survival was problemati c
without an officially recognized leader capable of insuring its support .
Yet now, when the worst seemed over, the settlers hated to give u p
what they had won . Enciso they did not want, and in any case his
standing and resources fell short of the requirements for captai n
general of a colony exposed to sabotage from Santo Domingo . What
to do?
The dilemma revived a project which had received some considera-
tion in the days preceding Colmenares' arrival . Why should not the
Darién settlement throw in its lot with the Veragua gobernación unde r
Diego de Nicuesa? Weighing the alternatives, the vecinos of Sant a
María found this idea more attractive than any other which had oc-
curred to them . Nicuesa's concession was richer, his expedition large r
and better outfitted than Hojeda's had been at their best ; Nicuesa him-
self was as powerful and influential as Hojeda, and much mor e
wealthy . (Colmenares had probably told the colonists that royal
cédulas had been received in Santo Domingo which confirme d
60
Hojeda 's jurisdiction over the entire Gulf ; they seem to have been
sure that Darién was a thing to be offered, not yielded .) Enciso an d
Balboa, for once agreed, were against the plan, but they did not pres s
their opposition . It was finally voted that when Colmenares went o n
to join his chief, one or two representatives of Santa María del An-
tigua should go with him, bearing an invitation to the Governor o f
Veragua to annex Darién .
The official delegation consisted of Colmenares, the bachiller Dieg o
del Corral, Francisco de Agüeros, and Diego Albítez . Each of the am-
bassadors was privately determined to turn the mission to the bes t
possible account for himself, and none of them had any conception
that their ambitions, like the colonists' reasonings, were erected o n
an imaginary base .
The vecinos of Santa María, under the misapprehension commo n
to the unfortunate that their case was unique, pictured Veragua as a
flourishing enterprise . In point of fact it had folded quite as disas-
trously as San Sebastián, with greater loss and less present hope . Far
from being able to foster another settlement, Nicuesa was in urgen t
need of help if there were to be anything left of his venture sav e
bones in the Isthmian beaches and rusty souvenirs to decorate nativ e
bohíos .

VI
THE misadventures of Nicuesa and his men are told at considerabl e
length by three chroniclers who knew the Governor and talked wit h
survivors of the expedition . Their narratives are in frequent disagree-
ment with each other, with such scanty documentary evidence as w e
possess, and sometimes with the author's statements on another page ,
but they are as one in depicting the catastrophic quality of a story
somber even among the dark tales of the conquest .
Hardship and hazard were normal concomitante of every pioneerin g
venture in the Indies, where no one could expect colonization withou t
casualties . Nevertheless the impression is inescapable that a large part
61
of the disaster in Veragua was attributable to the Governor himself .
Diego de Nicuesa was not only inexperienced ; he had neither the
emotional nor, it would seem, the mental stability for the task in hand .
Amateur psychiatry is an indiscrect game, but one cannot help bein g
struck by the increasingly abnormal behavior of the Governor o f
Veragua in the thirteen months of his command . The armada was
barely away before the expeditionaries were aware that he had suffere d
a sea-change : the witty courtier, the shrewd man of affairs disap-
peared, to be succeeded by a hectoring autocrat who insulted hi s
officers, contradicted his pilots, made his own (erroneous) marks o n
the charts, and treated his men with rasping severity . He was to dis-
play this humor throughout, briefly punctuated in moments of ex-
altation or despair by attitudes equally distressing . It is not surprisin g
that when the time of his last need carne, there was no one to lift a
hand to save him .

The Veragua fleet may have touched at Urabá, but its first stopover
was just above the Gulf, in the Bay of Anachucuna . The anchorage
was christened Puerto de Misas, in memory of the first mass to be sai d
in the concession . Here it was decided to divide the armada : Nicues a
and his lieutenant governor, Lope de Olano, would go on with th e
smaller vessels to explore the coast, while the naos would follow at
leisure . The plan was basically sound but badly elaborated, for it in-
cluded no system for maintaining contact between the advance part y
and the main fleet—an error which King Fernando remarked whe n
he read Nicuesa's report .
The scout detachment consisted of a caravel (temporarily promote d
to flagship) and two bergantines . Several veterans of Columbus ' fourth
voyage, including one, and possibly two, pilots, went with it, and whe n
in due course the flotilla carne abreast of the Río Belén, they advise d
the Governor that he had reached his destination : this harborless
coast was Veragua proper, and the lofty sierra to the southwest wa s
that which the Old Admiral had described as heavy with gold for a s
far as a man could march in twenty suns . Nicuesa denied the identi-
fication, and the more the old Fourth Voyage hands insisted, the mor e
obstinate he became . The pilots "did not know what they were talk-
ing about" ; he, Nicuesa, had a chart and a description of the coas t
62
from the hand of Columbus' brother Bartolomé : Veragua was farthe r
on . The ships were ordered to hold to their course, while the outrage d
pilot of Olano's bergantín remarked bitterly that if this were not
Veragua they could chop off his head . l
That night there was a storm, and the ships were separated . Olan o
rode out the blow in the shelter of an island, and next day fell in wit h
the second bergantín, piloted by Pedro de Umbria . The flag caravel
had vanished, and after a fruitless search—the extent and sincerity o f
which is a matter of controversy—Olano and Umbria turned back t o
locate the rest of the armada . They found the naos at the Chagres ,
lying up for overhaul after the passage from Puerto de Misas . Th e
Lieutenant Governor's efforts to rejoin his chief may have lacked con-
viction, but at all events they satisfied the members of the expedition ,
including the Crown officials and a relative of Nicuesa named Cueto ,
who had bcen left in temporary charge of the naos . After talking th e
situation over it was decided to stick to the original plan, and with
Olano in command the ships proceeded to Veragua . Nicuesa, if h e
had survived the storm, would realize in time that he had overshot th e
mark, and return to the appointed rendezvous .
The Río Belén was a few miles short of the true gold river, bu t
Columbus, the ghostly guide of the expedition, had declared that i t
offered the only harbor in Veragua . He had also said that it was a
very good harbor, a statement on a par with his assertion that the
local Indians, who had driven him away by force, were the meekes t
of people . The river basin was shut in by a pounding bar too shallo w
to admit more than a small caravel, and that only when weather an d
tide were favorable ; outside, the open shore was beaten by surf . Th e
landing had to be made in the ships' boats, and one (Olano's) cap-
sized with the loss of fourteen men . The naos, already damaged b y
shipworm, were soon beached and broken up .
Without ships the five-hundred-odd expeditionaries had little choic e
as to where they would settle . Martyr says that Pedro de Umbria ,
"being of irritable disposition," set out in a boat with twelve com-
panions to establish an independent colony somewhere else, only to
be drowned with all but one of his men in crossing the bar. Elsewhere ,
however, Martyr states that Umbria had been authorized to scout o n
behalf of the colonists . This is a more credible version ; surely no one ,
63
however irritable, could think to conquer a wild and hostile country
with a dozen friends in a rowboat .
For some reason food was scarce, although the armada shoul d
have been provisioned for a full year. The first huts, erected on a
beachy point, were swept away in a storm . It rained almost incessantly ,
insects were a torment, and before long, fevers and jungle sores wer e
rife . " In tribulation many died, " and it was noted, disquietingly, tha t
they all died at low tide . This led to another disturbing discovery :
the bodies buried in the sand "were eaten in eight days as if they ha d
been interred for fifty years ." "They took it for an evil sign"—n o
doubt remembering the ominous portents and prophecies made i n
Hispaniola before the armada sailed, when a sword-shaped come t
flamed in the sky, and astrologers and savants declared that Nicues a
went under a baleful star .
Olano did as well as could be expected in these trying circum-
stances . He had stronger houses built on higher ground, started wor k
on a tower atop a hillock, saw that land was tilled and sown t o
corn, and, using lumber hewn from local timber and salvaged material
from the naos, set about making a new caravel . (The comparative eas e
with which Spanish carpenters could put together a seaworthy craft o n
any tropic beach is a continual marvel .) He also took an expedition t o
investigate the Veragua River, where the paramount chief, of th e
region, El Quibián, had his capital village some miles from the sea .
The Spaniards were not looking for trouble ; their target was th e
place, six leagues beyond the village, where Bartolomé Colón's sailor s
had quarried nuggets with pocket knives, and they earnestly hoped tha t
the Quibián would be in a tolerant mood . In this they were disap-
pointed, for the chief carne out to meet them with a body of warrior s
that compelled respect ; he was not particularly eager to fight, bu t
seemed determined to do so if required . Fortunately the river lay
between the two forces, a barrier which permitted both sides to re-
nounce battle with dignity and relief . Olano contented himself wit h
taking one of the Quibián 's outlying strongholds, where he installe d
a reluctant garrison under a certain Alonso Runyelo . This outpost ,
a huge circular bohío over a hundred feet in diameter, was surrounde d
by a hundred and twenty spaced posts, each tastefuliy garnished wit h
a human head. Oviedo remarks that it made "a very nice fort," addin g
64
that the Old Admiral had given it the gentle name of Santa María d e
Redonda .

Meanwhile Nicuesa and his crew were enduring worse hardship s

than any in Veragua . The caravel had evidently passed Chiriqu í
Lagoon and Almirante Bay without sighting them, since even Nicues a
would have had to recognize those keys to the geography of the coast .
As it was, the Governor sailed close-hauled for two days to see i f
the bergantines would catch up with him, and then continued hi s
stubborn course away from his goal . How far he went cannot be sai d
with certainty—perhaps the better part of the way to Cape Gracias á
Dios . One of his mariners, Cristóbal Gómez, testified that they got 12 0
leagues (440 miles) beyond Veragua, and from the earliest days o f
Spanish conquest in Honduras the name of Nicuesa was given to a
bay not far south of the cape . If Gómez' estimate was exactly right ,
the farthest point was the Río Grande, which Columbus had called th e
River of Disasters after losing there a boat and two sailors ; on th e
old maps, however, it was marked as a "gulf," and considerabl y
farther north .
At all events, after some time Nicuesa put finto harbor incide a
river mouth . The river had been high, but it went down abruptly an d
left the caravel resting on the bottom ; her seams opened, and th e
next freshet finished her off in a sudden roll of water and debris . As
her cables snapped, a sailor jumped overboard with a line, only to b e
swept away by the current ; another took his place and succeeded i n
fastening a hawser to a tree, thus saving all the others . The Spaniard s
faced the situation with the practiced valiance of their kind . Someon e
swam out and salvaged the sails to make haversacks and clums y
shirts (the castaways were, as usual, naked) ; the current brought the m
the ship's boat, bottom up, and a cask of flour and one of oil .
Thus outfitted, Nicuesa, pigheaded in the grand manner, gave th e
order to go not back but forward—or so it would appear from th e
accounts of his adventures . But in view of the evidence as to how far
he sailed, it is probable that he really turned south . By this time the
mariners who had been with Columbus must have enlightened him o n
his position beyond possibility of contradiction .
Looking remarkably unlike conquerors, the company followe d
65
along the shore, plodding endlessly through dark sand, stumbling ove r
drift and rocky headlands . Diego Ribero, one of Columbus' veterans ,
went with three other sailors in the dinghy, and ferried the others a t
streams too deep for fording—a difficult task on that coast and, if it
is true that the boat would hold only five people, a prolonged one .
After Ribero, the most useful member of the party was a dog, " wh o
was good company in their extreme necessity," and procured the las t
square meal they were to have for a long time . He flushed a deer, an d
when it took to the water "he did not fail in his duty, though he coul d
barely stand for weakness" ; he swam after it and towed it back by on e
ear . Luckily the Indians were not in evidence ; their only recorde d
victim was Nicuesa's page, killed by an arrow from ambush, perhap s
because he wore a white head covering and seemed important .
The deer was secured just at the entrance to the bay now calle d
Bluefields, which the Admiral had christened San Mateo because h e
was there on September twenty-first, St . Matthew's day . z Either hi s
Fourth Voyagers failed to realize that the point opposite was not a
continuation of the mainland (things look different from the land) o r
more likely, it merely seemed wiser to stick to the seacoast rather tha n
detour around the bay . The company crossed to the opposite point ,
and found themselves on Isla del Ciervo (Deer Island) . And here
the Governor called a halt . It is about three hundred and fifty mile s
from Deer Island to Veragua .
The island was pleasant-seeming at first, but it was not an idea l
camping spot for men without provisions, without gear for fishing or
hunting, without clothes or shelter, and, after a time, without a boat .
They ate shellfish, lizards, insects, and finally roots, grass and leaves ;
their only water was from a brackish swamp . There, but for an act of
well-considered insubordination, the history of Diego de Nicuesa migh t
have ended—which might, on the whole, have been the lesser evil .
The Fates, with the malice of mousing cats, chose to let him go, takin g
as their instruments Ribero and the other mariners who had manage d
the dinghy . These stout fellows had become increasingly disgustecl
with the fatalistic inertia which had taken possession of the Governor ,
by which the whole company appeared destined to passive suicide .
One nght they took matters, and the boat, into their own hands an d
made off to try to reach the armada . Incredibly, they succeeded.
66
Nicuesa damned them for deserters, but he owed them his life an d
those of many of his companions .
Ribero and his mates cannot have had an easy voyage in thei r
cockleshell, but they were better off than the desolate band left behind .
Prisoned on their island, that emaciated, ulcer-blotched, naked cre w
could not have been recognized as part of the "muy lúcida compañía"
that had started from Hispaniola . Some died of fevers ; some lay in
the final apathy of starvation ; some had moments of aimless violenc e
and ran pointlessly from side to side of the island shouting prayers lik e
curses . The more reasoning of them discussed, weakly, the buildin g
of a raft, got together a bundle of poles, and then were too feeble to
save it when it drifted out of their hands.
One phenomenon, named Gonzalo de Badajoz, still had com e
strength left . Aided by two other supermen, he managed to fell a tree
and burn out a crude canoe, in which the three tried to reach th e
mainland with the project—this time duly authorized—of backtrack-
ing to Veragua in search of help . Their clumsy tub turned over, but
they all got to the coast and started walking south . A native chie f
who had been paddled down-river to inspect his fisheries saw them an d
sent them food, and thus fortified, they survived to be picked up b y
the bergantín which carne from Veragua to rescue Nicuesa .
Lope de Olano, informed by Ribero of the Governor's plight, may
have felt only a tempered joy at his chief's survival, but he lost n o
time in saving him . A chip, or chips, dispatched under the guidanc e
of Ribero, reached the island—strange to say, without untoward inci-
dent—and not long afterwards Nicuesa disembarked in Veragua .
The uses of adversity were ever bitter to Nicuesa, and rescue di d
nothing to improve his disposition . It was immediately apparent that
the colonists were not to be commended for having saved him ; they
were to be punished for not having done it sooner . Olano was sen-
tenced to hang as a traitor ; his failure to find the flag caravel after
the storm had been deliberate, the Governor declared ; moreover, h e
was responsible for all the suffering and loss of life in Veragua as o n
the island, since if he, Nicuesa, had been in charge all would have gon e
well . The more prominent expeditionaries were accessories in crime ;
they too should pay with their lives for not having forced the Lieu-
tenant Governor to search for his chief. (No mention was made of
67
a commander's duty to his subordinates, or of the fact that Nicues a
had, in effect, abandoned his .) The appalled colonists, finding thei r
appeals for merey without effect, finally hit on an argument mor e
persuasive : "If famine and constant calamities cut down our number
on the one hand, and cruel sentences kill us on the other, who, señor ,
do you expect to serve you and companion you? There is no doub t
whatever but that your lot would not be happy, nor would you b e
spared still greater hardships ."
Nicuesa retreated, but no farther than he had to . Olano, reprieved
but not forgiven, was kept in irons ; some of his supporters were con-
demned to unspecified penalties ; and Nicuesa, if he refrained from the
gallows, "became from then on most intolerant, ill-tempered an d
intractable, and treated the few men who were left to him very badl y
and with harshness, not considering the starvation and afflictio n
which they had endured, or that to see one another die every day wa s
torment enough and to spare . " And die they did, for the Governor
drove the sick as hard as the well . "They believed that he used the m
badly of set purpose, to revenge himself on them because they had no t
gone to look for him . "
Nicuesa now announced that the colony would be moved imme-
diately to a new location . There were good reasons for a change, bu t
the colonists suspected that the decision was only another form of
punishment. Belén was indisputably bad, but who could say tha t
another place might not be worse? And how could they give up thei r
maize, now almost ripe for harvest? That corra was more than food :
it was a symbol, the proof of something accomplished despite enem y
nature and enemy Indians and even enemy stars . Besides, for all it s
cruelty, this was the land of riches . "Men will gather gold there . . ."
Columbus had promised, "a packload of gold in one day . . . gold
with which a man does all he desires in this world and can even lif t
souls to Heaven . "
Arguments and pleas had not the slightest effect on Nicuesa, al-
though he did consent to allow some of his people to remain in Belé n
until they had gathered the crops and finished building a secon d
caravel . He intended to establish himself at, or near, Portobelo (jus t
east of the Panama Canal), and on the basis of what was known o f
that bit of coast the plan was much sounder than most of his ideas .
68
Portobelo harbor was safe and deep, the inhabitants were numerou s
and their agriculture extensive, and the islands which lay just aroun d
the headland were so well tilled and productive that Columbus ha d
named them and the anchorage in their shelter the Islands and Por t
of Provisions (de Bastimentos) .
What spoiled Portobelo for Nicuesa was that the inhabitants wer e
not only numerous but belligerent, and unlike the river tribes, the y
lived directly on the sea, where they could repel invasion before i t
began . When the Governor, who had already sent a detachment ahea d
from Veragua, got there with sixty men on the second trip of th e
bergantines, he was driven off with the loss of twenty compañeros .
Wearily continuing his course, he carne to another, less attractiv e
harbor and—so Casas says—exclaimed : "In the Name of God, let us
stop here!" And God's Name, Nombre de Dios, it has been called eve r
since . 3 Either the advance party had already gone there, or it ha d
been picked up in Portobelo, for, except for those who were to follo w
only after gathering the harvest, all the surviving expeditionaries wer e
now in the new location .
Nombre de Dios was no improvement on Belén . Foraging raids ,
mostly conducted by Badajoz, gave slight results beyond the obviou s
one of antagonizing the Indians, and once more the settlers wer e
without food or native laborers . A little palmito meal was covete d
"like manna from heaven" ; a skeletal dog for the pot brought 2 0
castellanos (about $93) in gold, and the water in which his mang y
skin was boiled was worth a castellano a bowl . A pair of toads sold
for 6 ducats, as a special favor to a sick man because he begge d
so hard for them, and it was said that a group of thirty Spaniard s
"rabid with hunger" carne upon the decomposing corpse of an Indian ,
ate it, and died of the moral and physical effects . In these condition s
the work of building a fort atop the hillock chosen by Nicuesa for th e
purpose was unbearable, but the Governor allowed his tottering me n
no respite ; when they pleaded that they were at death's door, hi s
answer was : "Get out! Get along to the dying ground!" "They curse d
and abhorred him, holding him to be their bitter enemy, nor did the y
find in word or deed of his a crumb of comfort ." So scourged, they
finished the timber fort before the end of December .
It is in Nombre de Dios that we first hear of a lady among th e
69
colonists : Doña Inés de Escobar, wife of the elderly veedor, Juan de
Quicedo . Doña Inés was no weakling, and was, indeed, to prove ver y
nearly indestructible ; nevertheless, it is hard to visualize this mature
gentlewoman crawling unnoted and unsung about Deer Island as, clad
in a scrap of dirty sailcloth, she grubbed with other castaways for
worms and roots . It is possible, of course, that she was in Belén, bu t
there is no mention of her there, or of the veedor, who should hav e
been to the fore in moments of decision . The explanation woul d
seem to be that the Quicedos left Hispaniola come time after the rest
of the armada, in the little caravel owned jointly with Cosa and
Martínez, and that they joined Nicuesa after the colony was in Nombr e
de Dios .
Before starting from Belén, Nicuesa had written letters asking fo r
aid from Hispaniola, and a long and querulous report for King Fer-
nando . These he seems to have entrusted to Cueto, who was to go t o
Hispaniola with Ledesma in the Veragua-built caravel . Reports ,
though often compiled gradually, were usually dated only at the las t
moment before dispatch ; Nicuesa' s bore the date of November 9 ,
1510, and he appears to have left Belén almost immediately after . 4
Ledesma and Cueto carried out their assignment successfully, bu t
either they delayed departure or their voyage was slow, for they di d
not reach Santo Domingo until sometime after February 19, 1511 .
The report for the King, forwarded from Hispaniola in May, wa s
delivered in Spain in July .
Fernando replied promptly in his best vein, a compound of com-
fort, criticism, and advice . Nicuesa was commended for all he said h e
had achieved and commiserated for what he raid he had suffered ; it
was well to have punished those who deserved such measures, but o n
the other hand "you should endeavor not to give occasion for indisci-
pline" ; after all, had he remained with his fleet he would have bee n
spared both personal hardship and the necessity of punishing anyone ,
not to mention the apparently imminent risk of total failure . It wa s
also essential that he treat the Indians with the utmost consideration ,
respecting scrupulously their liberty and property, so as to win thei r
friendly co-operation . The King promised to issue fresh orders fo r
assistance to the concessions and to instruct Esquivel to step up pro-
duction in Jamaica and shipment of foodstuffs to Tierra Firme . Thus
70
aided and advised, Nicuesa might by God's grace save his gober-
nación and receive from it such recompense as would make all th e
hardships seem worth while . As for the expeditionaries, Fernando
(who had learned a great deal more about the colony and its governo r
than was set forth in Nicuesa's report) was addressing a letter to them ,
expressing his appreciation of all they had done in his service .
Fernando sent off the promised instructions at once, couched in
terms calculated to compel respect . But before the cédulas wer e
penned, before even the reports which prompted them had started o n
their way from Santo Domingo, there was no longer a functionin g
gobernación in Veragua . There was no longer even a governor .

VII
SOMETIME in January of 1511 a bergantín from Nombre de Dios ,
out on a foraging trip to the islands near by, sighted and signaled tw o
Spanish ships that were passing some distance offshore . The vessels
were those from Darién with Colmenares and the nominating com-
mittee, bound for Veragua and still happily unaware of the irony o f
their quest for support and protection from Diego de Nicuesa . Putting
about, they entered the harbor to receive a delirious welcome from th e
few score wretched survivors who now comprised all the colony .
How many of Nicuesa's men were left is uncertain . According to
the most conservative estimate, three hundred and eighty had die d
in the twelve preceding months, and other calculations set the tol l
much higher . However, some of the presumably softer members o f
the company had come through the ordeal fairly well : the elderly
veedor and Doña Inés ; an unspectacular but resistant priest name d
Sánchez, who was just beginning a career of wild and unwilling ad-
venture ; and a friar, Gerónimo de Aguilar, whose subsequent life wa s
to be pure melodrama . Olano, too, had survived . The emissaries from
Santa María del Antigua found him in the plaza, where he was kept
shackled like a delinquent slave and forced to grind palm meal al l
day for a public spectacle . (Oviedo cites this as an example of merey,
71
Nicuesa "being compassionate by nature, " but considera the kindness
excessive . )
The Governor's reaction to salvation could hardly have been mor e
unfortunate . That laconic poise which distinguishes heroes of fanc y
in similar circumstances would have seemed silly to any conquistador ,
but Nicuesa did not get over his emotion in the usual flood of tear s
and then relax . In Martyr's words, "after having wept and sighed an d
poured out complaints, after having overwhelmed his rescuer Col-
menares with thanks and having almost rolled at his feet, Nicuesa ,
when the fear of starvation was removed, before he even laid eyes o n
the colonists of Urabá, began to talk freely of his projects of refor m
and of his intention to take possession of all the gold ." Absorbed in
the delightful prospect of recouping his fortunes in Darién, he faile d
to note a growing chilliness in his audience ; the impression given by
the chroniclers is that he was garrulous to the point of babbling, an d
that everything he said was wrong .
The men from Santa María listened and exchanged shocked com-
ments, their enthusiasm effectively quenched . Quicedo, who had con-
ceived a violent dislike of the Governor "for reasons of honor "
(Doña Inés was perhaps younger than appears?), listened and too k
mental notes for future use . Lope de Olano heard, and contrived t o
have an illuminating chat with the emissaries, and to entrust the m
with letters for his fellow Biscayans in Darién—communication s
bound to have considerable effect in view of Biscayan clannishnes s
and the fact that one of the addressees, the alcalde Zamudio, was a
kinsman . All this spelled trouble, but it might not have been pas t
remedying had not Nicuesa been inspired to a culminating piece o f
ineptitude . He disposed that the arrival in Darién should be made in
installments, and that he himself would arrive last, "to be receive d
with arches of triumph . "
The arrangement was impeccable from the point of view of proto-
col : first a bergantín with Albítez and Corral, then another with th e
chief veedor, and finally the Great Man himself . It was also guaran-
teed to insure an inimical atmosphere in Santa María before th e
Governor could set foot there . This latter aspect of the matter di d
not occur to Nicuesa, from whose triple-plated complacency Olano' s
parting shot, "Does he fancy that Hojeda' s men will receive him a s
72
we received him when he carne, broken, to VeraguaT' glanced of f
unnoticed . He meant to give the Darienites time to prepare for hi s
advent in suitable fashion—and this, as it tumed out, was precisel y
what he did. Preparations started as soon as the vanguard arrived t o
enlighten the colonists as to the reforms they might expect under th e
new regime, and as to the character of the prospective regent .
Vasco Núñez de Balboa, like many another officeholder whe n
warned of an approaching ax, is said to have done a good deal t o
crystallize anti-Nicuesa feeling by confidential, man-to-man conversa-
tions with the vecinos . Whatever his activities, he worked with th e
current. Nicuesa was damned out of his own mouth . His intention to
confiscate the gold touched every settler in his most sensitive spot ;
his vague talk of disciplinary measures was a menace ; his plan to dis-
lodge the strongest men from the settlement and send them to replac e
the garrison in Nombre de Dios made every able-bodied compañer o
his enemy . The Biscayans, led by Zamudio, formed an irreconcilabl e
block . Enciso, much as he hated the existing order in Santa María ,
'roresaw worse things under Nicuesa and carne out strongly against ad-
mitting the Governor, thus achieving brief harmony with his rivals . Col -
menares may have refrained from campaigning against his chief, bu t
his attitude is sufficiently clear from the unflattering picture of Nicues a
given by Martyr, whose principal informant he was . Even the two
nominating delegates who had wangled positions for themselves befor e
quitting Nombre de Dios—Albítez, who had been promised the pos t
of alguacil, and Diego del Corral, slated for alcalde—now felt tha t
these honors would be bought too dear . If there were any dissenting
voices when the colonists decided to deny entry to Nicuesa, they wer e
not recorded .
It should be noted that the decision was in no sense a revolt .
Nicuesa had no vested rights in Darién, and the men who had enliste d
under Hojeda owed him no allegiance . To rescind an invitation is not
elegant, but neither is it criminal . As Casas remarked, the measure o f
Nicuesa's stupidity was that, having received a lifesaving offer, h e
talked before any formal agreement or oaths of fealty had been made :
"At least," the chronicler commented, "he might have dissimulate d
until after he had been accepted . "
The colonists knew that their refusal to carry out their proposa l
73
could not be held to be a breach of loyalty . On the other hand, the
Governor of Veragua was a personage, and he might insist on standin g
on the letter of the invitation . In the circumstances they felt that thei r
determination would look better if it were done up in quasi-judicia l
wrappings and tied with red tape . It was therefore dressed in a cere-
mony in the settlement church which satisfied the Spanish hankerin g
for legalistic forms, lent a becoming tone of righteousness to th e
whole affair, and insured that no one could disclaim his personal re-
sponsibility should he later think it convenient to do so . The proceed-
ings were very solemn : a cloth was spread before the altar, and on it
a cushion holding a crucifix, "as is done on Holy Thursday or Goo d
Friday" ; one by one, in order of rank, the vecinos advanced and
swore by the Cross not to receive Don Diego de Nicuesa as governo r
—first the alcaldes, then the treasurer, the alguacil, the regidores, and
lastly the compañeros . The vow had been put in writing by the notar y
Hernando de Argüello, and each man alter he pronounced it set his
signature or his mark to the document . l
Thus when Nicuesa, bursting with confidence and unpopular proj-
ects, dropped anchor in the estuary of the Río Darién a few days later ,
the colonists met him in very different guise from that he had expected .
They were armed and threatening, and when a spokesman steppe d
forward it was not to deliver a flowery address of welcome, but t o
shout a harsh injunction against landing . Don Diego was shocke d
into conciliation .
"Señores," he called back, "you sent to summon me, and I com e
in answer to your summons . Let me land, and we will talk things over ,
and you will hear me and I hear you, and we will come to an under-
standing, and afterwards you . can do what you like with me . "
The men of Santa María would not listen . That night the bergantín
lay hove-to outside the estuary, and next morning Nicuesa edged i t
inside again, hoping for a change of heart . A group of compañero s
made beckoning gestures from the beach, and he put off in the dinghy
with pathetic eagerness, but their faces must have warned him as he
stepped to shore . The Governor of Veragua took to his heels . Either he
had built up his strength astonishingly in the previous weeks, or terro r
lent him speed, for he ran so fast that the men in armor could no t
catch him .
74
 This was too much for Balboa .
"You go too far," he told the excited compañeros distastefully . "Le t
him alone ."
As a matter of fact, Balboa was feeling rather sorry for Nicuesa .
The weakest point in his character—one that was to cause him infinit e
trouble and be his ultimate undoing—was a lovable and unfortunat e
inability to keep his animosities alive . By nature singularly unvin-
dictive, he seemed to hold the misguided doctrine that an adversary
once defeated is thenceforth innocuous, and repeated lessons t o
the contrary did nothing to alter this habit of mind . Now, having no
experience of the Governor's temper when his crest was high, he foun d
it impossible to believe that anyone so beaten could be dangerous, an d
went so far as to suggest that nothing in the communal oath forbad e
allowing Nicuesa to remain as a guest.
The colonists were in no mood for kindly concessions, and the y
did not share Vasco Núñez' benevolent optimism . When Nicues a
abjectly begged to be admitted on any terms, "beseeching them to
take him as compañero if they did not want him for governor," they
refused . Mindful of his lightning recoveries from despair to arroganc e
in the past, they said that "if he went in by the sleeve he would end
by coming out at the neck ." Nicuesa groveled ; if they would not have
him as a compañero and free, would they not let him stay as a pris-
oner, if need be in irons? He would rather die in chains in Sant a
María than of hunger or an Indian arrow in Nombre de Dios . And he
had lost so much money! Twelve thousand castellanos his expeditio n
had cost—all wasted and without profit .
This sort of thing was little calculated to win either respect o r
sympathy . The jeering crowd was openly contemptuous and nearl y
out of hand. Francisco Benítez, a loud and easy-mouthed fellow ,
shouted something like, "We don't need a dirty dog like you amon g
us! " and Balboa, in a blaze of anger, ordered that he be given a hun-
dred lashes, undeterred by the fact that Benítez was a friend of th e
co-alcalde Zamudio . (Zamudio did not protest, but Benítez pai d
back with interest later on .) The lesson checked the drift toward vio-
lence, but Balboa knew that he could not control the men indefinitely ;
his power was too new, and although the colonists had stumbled on
practical democracy, its theory was too alien for them to have an y
75
ingrained deference for authority which they themselves had con-
ferred. He therefore advised Nicuesa to return at once to his ship an d
in no circumstances to leave it unless he, Balboa, were present .
Back in the safety of his bergantín, Don Diego immediately felt th e
stimulation which possessed him after every relief from peril . Th e
Darienites would weaken, and he would take them unawares an d
force them to yield . In pursuance of this plan he posted the fifty cross-
bowmen he had brought with him in the canebrakes near the landin g
place, with instructions to attack at his signal, ordered dinner, an d
with rapidly rising spirits sat down to await developments .
In the course of time, down the trail from Santa María carne thre e
regidores : Barrantes, Juan de Vegines, and the ex-ambassador Al-
bítez . If we believe Oviedo's none-too-reliable narrative, proceeding s
were conducted with oppressive politeness and extreme duplicity o n
both sides . (Oviedo imputes the duplicity only to the regidores, but
remembering the bowmen in the canebrake, one must allow an equal
measure to the Governor .) The regidores hailed Nicuesa, apologeti c
and reassuring : he must forgive the colonists misled by fellows of th e
baser sort ; all the best people were on his side, and really wanted him
for governor . Nicuesa fell for this without a struggle . "Señores," he
called eagerly, "do you command that I come ashore, or will you d o
me the favor of coming aboard and we will dine togetherT' "Señores ,
as Your Grace commands." "No, señores, as is your pleasure . "
"Señor, it must be only as you desire . " After this Alphonse-and-
Gaston exchange, which completely canceled Balboa's warning in
Nicuesa ' s mind, the unfortunate Governor, misjudging to the last ,
hastened to land and so "to fall into the hands of those who were
dying to ruin him . "
The arrival of more men, led by Zamudio, marked the end of this
drama within a drama . Nicuesa, roughly enjoined to leave at onc e
and forever, rallied in the certainty of disaster to accuse his tor-
mentors wildly of imaginary crimes : of invading his territory, of
treason, of rebellion against God Himself . His voice was drowned by
the compañeros' clamor, his hidden bowmen made no move to hel p
him, and before an hour had passed he had been hustled aboard the
bergantín and escorted to the mouth of the estuary . Unable to face the
76
tribulations in which he had left his men in Nombre de Dios, h e
announced that he would go to Hispaniola. z
In the morning—Saturday, March 1, 1511—Don Diego de Nicues a
sailed on his last voyage . Nothing was ever heard of him or his crew
again . A legend grew up that the ship had been wrecked in Cuba, an d
that a tree had been found there with the inscription : "Here perishe d
the unfortunate Nicuesa," but it was proven fake . Oviedo suggest s
that they may Nave put in to Cartagena and been killed by th e
Indians of Caramairi . The truth was never known . Half a century
later, when it was only part of an old saga and anyone's guess wa s
good, Benzoni polished off the incident with snappy inaccuracy :
they landed for water, were attacked by the Indians, were eaten dow n
to the last man, "and that was the end of Diego de Nicuesa . "

The foregoing follows in the main Casas' account of the last ac t

in the tragedy of Nicuesa . Oviedo, that rampant partisan, has a muc h
more succulent tale of infamy and wronged innocence in whic h
Vasco Núñez plays the part of a villain whose villainy is both involve d
and superfíuous . The story, given largely in conversational quotes ,
apparently originated with Alonso Runyelo . In it Nicuesa was Bal-
boa's guest in Santa María, and after "eating at the same table an d
sleeping in the same room" for two or three weeks, the two planne d
a coup . ("What is it worth to you if I make you governorT ' "Any-
thing you like, if you do it quickly and obey my orders . " ) Balbo a
agreed to find out who was for Nicuesa and who against, and then t o
see that all the opposers were confined to their quarters under pain o f
death . The supporters would thus have things their own way ; Runyelo,
as go-between, would tell the Governor when to act .
This decided, Balboa told Nicuesa to return to his ship "so tha t
they won't see us together and suspect me "—a rather excessive pre-
caution for men who had been sharing the same room for weeks .
Whereupon, "with the cunning of a fox," he did exactly the opposit e
of what he had promised : he chut up the pros and unleashed th e
contras, after which he sat down to a social evening at home and let
nature take its course . Runyelo was sent to tell Nicuesa to trust only
the regidores and the doctor ; the regidores and the doctor perfidiousl y
77
lured the Governor ashore, and it was all over but the shouting . O n
being told what had happened, Balboa's only comment was : "Alons o
Runyelo, this Governor of yours has been exceedingly imprudent"—
to which the righteous Runyelo "did not reply a word, because h e
knew the iniquity and the times . "
It is almost a pity to pass up such a good story, but it will not with -
stand inspection . The ceremony of repudiation was a matter of record ,
and the judicial investigation of the affair (conducted at a time whe n
Vasco Núñez was fair game for any accusation) found that no on e
could be singled out as specially culpable in a course of action whic h
was, after all, not without some excuse .
The third contemporary narrative of Nicuesa in Santa María is i n
Martyr . It is brief, damns both Nicuesa and Balboa (the latter as a
bullying jack-in-office who intimidated the respectable colonists), an d
is more interesting for what it reveals of Martyr's informante than fo r
the record of events . These informante were Enciso and, more espe-
cially, Colmenares, who were engaged at the time in trying to ruin
Balboa while advancing their own interests . Martyr, writing while the
interviews were fresh, mirrors their line of campaign .
Considering that Enciso decorates himself with the white flower o f
a blameless life, it is reasonable to ask what explanation he offered of
his part in Nicuesa ' s ouster . What did that upright judge say he was
doing in those agitated days? So far as any records show, he raid noth-
ing at all . Oviedo, his %ntimate friend," says that he was markin g
time throughout in confinement aboard a bergantín which had bee n
calked with a blunt ¡ron so that the seams would not hold, but thi s
handsome alibi is unsupported even by Enciso . Martyr, Casas, an d
Gómara are as one in stating that he took active part against Nicuesa .
Certainly in all the accusations which he later composed against
Vasco Núñez and the men of Darién he avoided the whole subjec t
of Nicuesa with care and considerable skill, devoting himself wit h
single-minded persistence to his own affairs .
The bachiller ' s affairs were matters of money and prestige, but
mostly money . His unpopularity in Darién had begun on what migh t
be called general terms ; what set the seal on it was his proprietar y
attitude toward the colony's treasure . Had there been any lingerin g
doubt in the settlers ' minds about his intentions, the injunction whic h
78
he served on them alter they had excluded him from the roster o f
officials would have instantly dispelled it .
The terms of this demand, according to the bachiller ' s own state-
ment, were as follows : (a) the elected officials were to refrain fro m
exercising their functions ; (b) the two bergantines and the lifeboat
were to be given into Enciso's keeping ; (c) all gold in the treasury
was to be handed over to him at once . Alternatively, as a substitut e
for items (b) and (e), the bachiller presented another demand : that
all the loot, less the King's quinto, be divided into three equal parts ,
two of which should be given to him outright as compensation for hi s
ships and their equipment ; and that, of the remaining third, he be given
the captain-general's share, described as "una joya y cuatro suertes" —
a jewel and four lots . The proposal had a certain grandeur . B y
Enciso's own calculation it would have given him 5590 pesos— a
return of 357 2/3 per cent on his declared investment—and left rathe r
less than twenty-four pesos apiece for the other participants in th e
taking of Darién .
The bachiller cannot have been under the delusion that he woul d
get what he asked for, and if he had been, the colonists would soo n
have disabused him . When he continued to make a nuisance of himself ,
they took him into custody and drew up a bill charging him with th e
very crimes with which he taxed the council : usurpation of authority ,
violation of contractual rights, and attempted misappropriation .
The investigation ran to a foregone conclusion in an indictment .
After a little, however, Enciso was set at liberty on condition tha t
he leave the colony, "which was just what he wanted most ." At this
point Balboa suffered one of his typical, bygones-be-bygones relaxa-
tions, and persuaded the vecinos to offer to let the bachiller stay alter
all, as chief justice or as alguacil mayor? Perhaps he was influence d
by the thought that a clever and vindictive lawyer could be mor e
harmful outside the colony than in it, but this was an idea that ha d
already occurred to Enciso . The bachiller was not tempted by th e
chance to live in Santa María as second fiddle to Vasco Núñez, and ,
declining the invitation, he arranged passage for himself and his tw o
Spanish servants to Hispaniola on Colmenares ' caravel . He left just
a month after Nicuesa, his ultimate destination Castile .
Two other prominent members of the colony sailed at the sam e
79
time : the joint alcalde, Martín de Zamudio, and the regidor, Juan d e
Valdivia . Both went as procuradores of the settlers, Valdivia to enlis t
the help of the officials in Santo Domingo and to return as soon a s
possible with supplies, and Zamudio to present reports, petitions, and
an .offering of selected guanines weighing nearly thirteen pounds t o
King Fernando in Spain . The reports, which were to be shown also
to Diego Colón and the Treasurer Pasamonte in Hispaniola, were
apparently composed as from the settlement officials in a body . I t
would be interesting to know how they were written ; they must have
included mention of the late unpleasantness with Nicuesa and som e
explanation of the falling-out with Enciso, and one can imagine th e
studious collaboration among the more literate vecinos as they pre-
pared an account which would produce the desired effect . The peti-
tions were the usual requests for royalty reduction and other helpfu l
concessions, and seem to have been substantially those granted i n
June of 1513 . There was also a long letter directed to the King by th e
veedor Quicedo containing "the relation of all that had happene d
since he left Hispaniola . " Since Quicedo was an experienced and
much-respected of picial of the Crown, his report did much to shap e
opinion in Castile . The text is not extant, but its tenor is clear, an d
it was not such as to aid and comfort Nicuesa . Finally, Zamudio car-
ried a special plea from the colonists as a whole : that His Highness
name a governor for Darién, preferably in the person of their ow n
choice, Vasco Núñez de Balboa .
No one was elected to take Zamudio ' s place in Santa María, an d
Balboa was thus left sole alcalde and, in effect, absolute commande r
of the colony. The change was more apparent than real, for, althoug h
the two had been technically equal in office, Balboa, "who was very
clever and had more innate ability, was everything ." (The ability wa s
indisputable ; cleverness, on the other hand, is not the attribute sug-
gested by a study of Vasco Núñez' character . Balboa's outstanding
mental quality was common sense . This, however, he possessed to a
remarkable degree . In a milieu where it was in notably short supply
it made him well-nigh unique . )
Balboa's undivided rule in Darién began on April 4, 1511 . He wa s
to be supreme there for just over three years—the years of his tru e
glory .
80
 VIII
THE nao from Darién, luckier or better navigated than so many east-
bound from the Isthmus, made Hispaniola without mishap, and also
without haste. It was not less than seven weeks before Enciso, Za-
mudio, and Valdivia reached Santo Domingo .' The greater part of
the time seems to have been spent in Cuba, some of it in the village o f
Macaca, just east of Cape Cruz .
The cacique of Macaca was a friendly soul, known to the Spaniards
as Comendador—a name bestowed on him in recognition of his quali-
ties at the time Comendador Ovando was governor in Hispaniola .
For motives connected with a miraculous image of the Virgin which ,
left to him by a pious castaway, had thereafter confounded his enemie s
and insured his supremacy in the region, Comendador was a ferven t
Christian, and for ten years he had looked after such Spaniards a s
carne his way with generous hospitality . His most recent guests, prio r
to those from Santa María del Antigua, had been in special need o f
his care . Enciso and his companions, hearing about them, must have
identified them as Alonso de Hojeda, Talavera, and their crew .
For the men from Darién the days spent in Macaca were both
agreeable and edifying . There were two priests in the party—one o f
whom, named Juan Pérez de Zalduondo, was to return to Santa Marí a
four years later as dean of the cathedral chapter . Comendador, wh o
had recently had an outstanding demonstration of the power of hi s
protectress, seized the occasion to have everyone within his spher e
of influence baptized . The visit took on the air of a revival meeting,
with eighty or a hundred baptisms a day, and since each convert mad e
a gift of "a fowl or a fish," the Spaniards lived high . When they left,
one compañero accepted a pressing invitation to remain as religiou s
instructor of the Macacans ; in view of what he had been through, on e
can understand that the offer had considerable appeal .
When the bachiller and the procuradores got to Santo Domingo ,
they undoubtedly heard from Hojeda a detailed account of his adven -
81
tures alter leaving San Sebastián . Even for the Indies, where travel an d
expeditions were born to trouble, they had been sufficiently unpleasan t
to occasion considerable attention .
The Stolen Ship had come to grief in Cuba at Xagua (Cienfuegos) ,
and her stranded company had taken the only course open to them :
they had marched eastward along the shore in the general directio n
of Hispaniola . Almost immediately there had been conflict betwee n
Hojeda and Talavera, both of whom claimed command . Hojeda as-
serted that Talavera, having set himself up as captain, "tried to kill
me" ; Casas says that Hojeda was forced to walk in chains, which
were removed only when his help was needed to repel India n
attackers, and gives a spirited account of the pugnacious little Gov-
ernor offering to fight Talavera and his entire company—in pairs :
"Come on, you double-crossing traitors, come on two at a time, an d
I11 fight the lot of you to the death!" On the other hand, someon e
(Esquivel?) charged that Hojeda had callously abandoned Talavera ,
taking with him the able-bodied members of the party.
Quite aside from there quarrels the journey along the Cuban coas t
had soon become pure nightmare, for the way was often marshy ,
yet they dared not leave the shore . Then the Big Swamp began . Fo r
the first days they expected to come through it as they had others ; a
week later, when it was impossible to consider turning back, they
were still floundering in its dim mazes . Sometimes they waded, waist-
deep ; sometimes the bottom fell away beneath their feet . At night
they wedged themselves into the twisted mangrove roots to seek " a
most unquiet, sad, and bitter sleep ." Hojeda, the "devoto de la
Virgen," carried an image of the Madonna, cunningly worked in
Flanders and very holy, which had been presented to him by Fonseca .
A dozen times a day he propped the glowing figure before him, vowin g
that should they be saved by Her divine aid, he would offer the sacre d
likeness to the first village they encountered .
The heavenly merey carne at last, but only after thirty dreadful
days in the swamp . Thirty-five men won through to solid ground an d
a blessed track which led to the village of Cueyba where, at the firs t
bohíos, they collapsed . Fortunately the natives of Cueyba were un-
spoiled by prior contact with Christians ; they took the Spaniards in ,
cared for them, and after a time guided them on to Macaca . Her e
82
Comendador provided a seagoing canoe to take a messenger to Esqui-
vel in Jamaica, and in due course a ship came to carry them t o
Esquivel's camp . In Jamaica, Hojeda was supposed to have a certain
authority, particularly as the King had told Colón that he might senil
no more than an inspector to the island . But Esquivel, who knew he
had Colón's backing, proceeded to behave like a governor, and eve n
dared to arrest Hojeda as well as Talavera and to hold some kind o f
trial . Exactly what happened is obscure ; at all events, Hojeda was in
Santo Domingo before the first days of May, 151 1 . 2
The Flemish Virgin stayed in Cueyba . The Indians built a shrine fo r
Her, adorned with striped and painted cloths, and on festival nights ,
when her moon stood high above the pointed roofs, they compose d
little hymns in her praise, and danced in honor of the Queen o f
Heaven . Casas saw Her when he went that way two or three year s
later and, with less than his usual sensibility where the Indians wer e
concerned, attempted to get the image in exchange for one he carried ,
"which was also holy, only not so much so . " The proposal sent th e
cacique into hiding with his treasure, where, deaf to reassurance an d
excuses, he remained until Casas was safely out of his domain.
With Hojeda and Enciso both in Hispaniola the next development
should have been a concerted effort to re-establish the gobernació n
of Urabá as originally planned . That nothing of the sort took place is
a puzzle in two parts .
Until this time Hojeda undoubtedly meant to go back to Urabá . O n
May fifth he wrote a report to the King in which he stated his inten-
tion, asking for a prorogation of the time allotted for building th e
forts and for other assistance ; about the same time Colón told Fer-
nando that he was lending Hojeda a caravel to go to his concession .
And from that date forward there is not a single reference to indicate
that Hojeda had either rights or interest in his gobernación . The
inference is that his withdrawal was the result of conversations wit h
Enciso and the representatives of the colony, but it is hard to see why.
Hojeda's contract still had two and a half years to run, and the chance s
of success were certainly brighter than when he left San Sebastián . A
settlement had been established, and the King had confirmed that i t
was in his territory ; 3 the reports of gold were borne out by the presen t
which Zamudio was taking to Fernando . And although over a hundre d
83
and eighty Urabá recruits had been lost in one way or another, the
men who had gone with Enciso and Colmenares and those fro m
Nombre de Dios had more than made up for them .
One explanation often stated or implied—Hojeda's carly death-
can be ruled out . Alonso de Hojeda did not die until the end of 151 5
or the early part of 1516 . Nor was his health seriously affected ; almos t
the only incident recorded of his last years is when he routed a number
of footpads who waylaid him one dark night as he returned from a
social evening, chasing them at full speed and pricking their flyin g
rears with his sword . A more likely answer is that Colón decided tha t
the time was ripe to insert a viceregal wedge in Tierra Firme, and too k
steps to eliminate Hojeda . In May he declared that he was helpin g
Hojeda ; a few months later the caravel had been lent to Valdivia ,
excessively damaging accusations against Hojeda had been forwarde d
to Spain, and Colón had confirmed Balboa as commander in Darién .
The other half of the riddle is the unobtrusiveness of Bachille r
Enciso during the months he was in Santo Domingo . Usually a difficult
person to ignore, he might not have existed . As chief justice of Urabá
with a financial stake in the colony, as leader in the taking of Darién ,
he should have been much in evidence ; as a man with a whole set o f
grievances, he should have been loudly proclaiming his wrongs . On e
can understand his silence about Nicuesa, a subject that everyone from
Santa María, including the crew of the nao and the two priests, seem s
to have treated casually if at all . But why was he not now preferrin g
the charges and demands of which he was afterwards so prodigal ?
Later he was to be an unforgiving accuser ; why do we not find him
taking action against the representatives of Darién while in Sant o
Domingo, when it would have been both logical and rafe? The docu-
menta of the period which we possess give no hint of a solution, fo r
the simple reason that they do not refer to him at all . Whatever th e
motive, the normally assertive bachiller appears to have been, during
three or four crucial months in Santo Domingo, as retiring as an y
violet .
Partly because of this curious restraint, and partly for more positiv e
reasons, the procuradores Valdivia and Zamudio were uncommonly
successful . Representatives of an orphan colony to which Colón in-
sisted he was in loco parentis, they found in the Young Admiral a
84
sympathetic friend . Colón immediately agreed to give Valdivia a shi p
and provisions, apologizing for the fact that he had only a very smal l
caravel on hand at the moment and promising more substantial relie f
as soon as he could find ships for the purpose . Furthermore, he
approved the colonists ' request that Vasco Núñez be left in charge i n
Darién . In a formal document—of doubtful validity but great mora l
effect—he named Balboa acting captain of the colony, and entruste d
the brevet to Valdivia for delivery .
The procuradores were still more fortunate in winning the suppor t
of Pasamonte, the Aragonese Treasurer of the Indies, who "had s o
much credit with the King that . . . almost all the disposition an d
government of the Indies was ordered according to his report an d
opinion ." Pasamonte had a private cipher for communicating wit h
Fernando and with Fernando's secretary, Lope de Conchillos (another
Aragonese), and the King told hico frankly that "there is no one [i n
Hispaniola] on whom I rely as on you. "
In view of the Treasurer' s influence on developments in Tierr a
Firme, it would be helpful to know if his opinions—which were posi-
tive but not always permanent—were as disinterested as Fernand o
believed . Unfortunately one cannot be sure . Pasamonte was described
by his contemporaries as learned, prudent, wise, venerable, virtuous ,
"notably honest," and a force for good government ; it was added tha t
"he was believed to have been chante all his life ." He was also pre-
sented as a cynical, venal, and unscrupulous fellow who kept a hare m
of native girls of whom he was morbidly jealous . The second, an d
minority, opinion sounds like simple spite ; nevertheless it was fairly
generally rumored that the Treasurer was, if not exactly bribable, a t
least appreciative of timely gifts . If this were true, the story tha t
Balboa and the council thoughtfully sent him a present of guanine s
by Zamudio was probably also true ; it would have been only prudent
to remember the susceptibilities of the King's right-hand man in th e
Indies . Conversely, it is improbable that the offering, if made, wa s
what determined Pasamonte's attitude .
The Treasurer had his own reasons for supporting Balboa . An
important, though undeclared, part of his duties in Hispaniola was to
keep a curb on the Young Admiral (their momentary harmony ove r
Darién was purely coincidental), and he realized that Hojeda an d
85
Nicuesa, as aids to that end, were badly bent reeds . Hojeda, hung up
in Santo Domingo without men or money, was in suff'iciently bad case ;
Nicuesa, presumably back in Nombre de Dios, was in even worse one .
Should the settlements in Tierra Firme be left leaderless, Colón woul d
have an undeniable excuse for personal intervention . On this basis
almost any recognized captain was better than no captain at all .
Balboa—competent, popular, and independent—would be a mos t
desirable stopgap, particularly as his appointment could be neatl y
removed from Colón's control by a duplicate brevet from the King .
Swimming with the current, the procuradores from Darién wer e
able to finish their business in Hispaniola by the end of August . Val-
divia left in the caravel provided by Colón a few days later, with foo d
for Santa María and the brevet for Balboa . Martín de Zamudio sailed
for Spain about September twelfth, on one of three ships which mad e
port together in Castile before the middle of November . Happy in
the knowledge that the same chips carried the off'icial dispatches fro m
Santo Domingo containing unanimous recommendations of the Darién
colonists in general and Vasco Núñez de Balboa in particular, he
probably was unworried by the fact that Bachiller Enciso, still unde r
an eclipse, also went with the fleet to Castile .

King Fernando, ruler of Castile, Aragon, and southern Italy, fourt h

ranking sovereign of the Christian world, could not dedicate all hi s
time and thought to Tierra Firme, or even to the New World colonie s
in general—a fact which sometimes escapes those who consider hi s
conduct solely from the viewpoint of their own exclusive interest in th e
Indies . He had, however, thought a good deal about Urabá an d
Veragua, increasingly uneasy at the total lack of news from eithe r
colony . When the letters written in Hispaniola in January and Febru-
ary of 1511 merely confirmed the continuing blackout, he was seri-
ously alarmed . "I am most worried over what may have happened, "
he wrote to Hojeda in June . "I am, and will be, in the greatest anxiet y
until I hear. "
Two weeks later three packets of dispatches from Hispaniola wer e
delivered to the royal officials in Seville . They had left Santo Doming o
on May seventeenth in the care of Pedro de Arbolancha, Assistan t
Contador of Hispaniola and special emissary to the King, and the y
86
included three letters from Colón as well as the first—and so far as
is known, the last—reports from the Governors of Tierra Firme :
Nicuesa's of November 9, 1510, and Hojeda's of May 5, 1511 . The
King was in Tordesillas, where he received them, together with a
covering letter from the Casa officials, sometime alter the middle o f
July . 4
This was certainly news, but not the kind to set Fernando ' s mind
at rest . It told nothing of what had passed in Urabá after Hojeda lef t
San Sebastián, nearly a year before he made out his report, or i n
Veragua after early November of 1510 ; and from what it did tell the
inference was inescapable that subsequent happenings had bee n
unfortunate . Both Governors expatiated on their sufferings, on th e
perfidy of their subordinates, on the obstructiveness of Diego Colón ;
Hojeda denounced Talavera and Esquivel ; Nicuesa complained tha t
his Indians in Hispaniola had been confiscated . They were naturally
reticent about their own shortcomings ; nevertheless a discerning ey e
could see that neither Governor had been a wise commander, and tha t
their intentions to proceed with their enterprises had slim chance o f
success .
Fernando replied to all the letters on July twenty-fifth . To Hojeda ,
as to Nicuesa, he was sympathetic but admonitory : the supplementary
arras and armor requested would be supplied, "but you must pay th e
cost, because as you know, the contract with you has been entirel y
fulfilled" ; Colón would be again instructed to collaborate, "and he
will do so, because 1 am telling Pasamonte to attend to i t" ; unless vali d
objection were offered by the royal officials in Hispaniola, an extensio n
would be granted of the time stipulated for building the forts . Talavera
would be dealt with as he deserved, "but you must excuse much i n
similar uprisings, for when captains who lead people are eager t o
conduct themselves well, such things do not befall them . " The Kin g
repeated his injunction to treat the Indians with kindness, and con-
cluded on a paternal note : "Be ever careful and diligent . . . inform
me very fully about everything . . . I will command that you b e
considered and favored . "
A letter to the Young Admiral and the officials was less benign. I t
was not enough to have provided a caravel for Hojeda ; they ought to
have tried to secure loans for the colonies, and if unsuccessful should
87
have used money from the royal treasury "that those desperate peopl e
should not perish ." They must give Hojeda and Nicuesa more valid
assistance : placate their creditors, return their Indians, see that the y
get the utmost from Jamaica, and in general take every possible
measure in support of the two gobernaciones . The officials had sug-
gested that it might be advisable for the Crown to take over direc t
administration of the concessions ; let them submit a plan, and i t
would be considered . For the meantime their duty was to save as muc h
of the settlements and as many of the settlers as possible .
Diego Colón was hauled on the carpet in a separate dispatch stif f
with displeasure . The King was "not satisfied" ; the calamities in Tierra
Firme lay in great part at Colón's door, for "it is held certain tha t
had you dispatched that armada with the diligente and ability tha t
was requisite and that I commanded of you, it would not have com e
to such harm ." He must do his utmost to repair the damage and to
compensate the Governors for the loss and inconveniente sustained .
"Do this in such fashion," Fernando ended curtly, "that I may kno w
from deeds the eagerness you say you have to serve me and carry out
my commands . "
Fernando rounded out a heavy day of correspondence with a cédul a
to the Casa de Contratación . "The defeat and ¡11-fortune suffered b y
the people in Tierra Firme has weighed upon me greatly," he wrote .
"There seems to be nothing for it at present but to favor Nicuesa and
Hojeda so that the collapse of what they have done should not b e
complete, until such time as we know whether there is gold in thos e
wilds, and in what quantity, and what measures they might take t o
extract some profit from those regions ." The Casa should send a ship
with provisions to Urabá and Veragua and take steps to stimulat e
enlistment . "It seems to me," Fernando suggested, "that you ough t
to advertise . . . the great indications of gold . . . in addition to
such other things as you see are apt to invite people to go to Tierr a
Firme ." In the emergency the stringent emigration controls could b e
relaxed : "Do not insist, as heretofore, in wanting to know just wh o
they are, particularly if they be laborers . "
Six weeks later Fernando was wondering if it were any use attempt-
ing salvage . He had talked with Pedro de Arbolancha, the procurado r
of the Hispaniola colony who had brought the dispatches abou t
88
Veragua and Urabá. Arbolancha's information was, of course, n o
more recent than that of Hojeda and Nicuesa, but there was a lot mor e
of it. The men who had reached Santo Domingo from Belén and Sa n
Sebastián—Ledesma and his crew, and those of the Hojeda-Talaver a
party who escaped—had talked, with the freedom and scorn o f
understatement common among survivors of desperate ventures, an d
the essence of what they said was that the concessions offered negli-
gible profits at appalling cost . It is probable that Arbolancha wa s
accompanied by some of these survivors ; at all events, after hearing
the oral accounts, the King wrote again to the Casa . "The Tierra Firm e
affair is most ruinous, and the route is long and little traveled," h e
said ; "for this reason, do not be at pains to send ships with provision s
for our account, but let some of the merchante go if they want to . "
Arbolancha's opinion can be clearly deduced, and it carried weight .
He was a trusted criado of the King ; he had eighteen years' experience
of the Indies ; while serving as assistant contador of Hispaniola he ha d
contrived to keep free of politics, enjoying the confidente of Pasa-
monte, the good will of Colón, and the respect of the settlers—a trul y
notable achievement . But Fernando had other reasons for his new
coolness toward the mainland concessions and, more particularly, th e
concessionaires . He had received written, though possibly unofficial,
reports damning both Governors, including a virulent attack on Ho-
jeda which smells strongly of Esquivel, or rather, of Colón labeled a s
Esquivel .
The Governor of Urabá was accused of conniving with Talaver a
to steal the ship ; of tormenting friendly Indians ; of executing an d
mutilating his own men without trial ; of indiscriminate looting an d
wholesale rape ; of declaring he would seize bread and ships in His-
paniola, San Juan, and Jamaica, and finally, of threatening to behead
Colón and to abduct Colón's wife Doña María de Toledo . The charge s
were grotesque ; on the other hand, it was always possible that, unde r
the strain of successive disasters, Hojeda had gone mad . Much upset ,
Fernando passed the accusations on to the newly appointed appellat e
judges of Hispaniola, ordering them to see that justice was done . 5
Nearly two years had now passed sine Nicuesa and Hojeda had
left Hispaniola for their gobernaciones, during which nothing had bee n
heard from or of the concessions which was not distressing, vexatious ,
89
or both . Thus when the procurador, Zamudio, arrived with his re-
ports, supported by the emphatic recommendations of Colón an d
Pasamonte, the effect was immediate . The officials of the Casa for-
warded the dispatches to the King on November seventeenth by th e
courier Collantes . Collantes, who was something of an institution i n
Castile, was evidently told to rush the mail pouch through, and year s
of shuttling between Seville and the temporary abodes of the Cour t
had kept him in training . A one-man Pony Express, he averaged bette r
than seventy miles a day in the saddle, and handed the dispatches t o
Fernando's secretary on the morning of November twenty-third— " at
11 A .M ., " His Highness noted, struck by the speedy delivery .
Zamudio followed less precipitously, starting from Seville on De-
cember third and reaching Burgos two weeks or so later . He presented
the letters and petitions from the colonists of Santa María, the gol d
ornaments, the report from Quicedo, and his own oral relation, in a
pre-warmed atmosphere of satisfaction and approval . Within a fe w
days the King had taken steps to suspend the Urabá concession a s
such . Hojeda was ordered to leave everything and return to presen t
himself at Court, and Balboa was formally confirmed Governor o f
Darién .
After further thought Fernando concluded that the gobernación o f
Veragua should be written off, and the remnant of Nicuesa' s expedi-
tion incorporated with the Darién colony . Nicuesa was recalled t o
Spain, and his men (with the exception of Olano) were advised to g o
to Santa María del Antigua, placing themselves under Balboa's com-
mand . Olano was to come to Castile for examination of his case .
Balboa and the officers of Santa María were instructed to receive th e
men of Veragua with comradely consideration, "because otherwise I
shall be annoyed, and dispose differently as is most conducive to ou r
service . "
If this last phrase is an allusion to the hostility toward Nicuesa, i t
is the only such referente to be found in the cédulas of this period .
And since the King knew what had occurred, his silente on the sub-
ject is an eloquent expression of opinion . Also, because Fernando
always tried to be fair, it indicates that no one spoke up to defend th e
ex-Governor, and much less to accuse the Darienites of deliberatel y
sending him to perish in a leaky bergantín . In this regard it may b e
90
remarked that Enciso had been in Spain for three and a half month s
when the dispositions concerning the Veragua gobernación were made .
The cédulas which recalled Hojeda and approved Balboa as hi s
successor in Darién were dated December 23, 1511, in Burgos .
"I have seen what the officials of Hispaniola wrote, " Fernando told
those of Seville, " . . . how, until arrangements are made from here ,
the people of Darién have resolved to take as governor and alcald e
mayor one Vasco Núñez de Balboa, a person with whom they sa y
everyone is content . I also saw your opinion on this, in which you sa y
that they decided well, and I intend to dispose accordingly, to the
effect that the said [Balboa] remain in that office until such time as I
order otherwise and appoint someone else, which will be done ." This
was at the end of November ; it was only after the King had listene d
to Zamudio and read Quicedo' s letter that his intention crystallized in
a royal brevet naming Balboa Captain and interim Governor of Darién .
The decree, the existence of which was long in question, was firs t
published by Altolaguirre y Duvale in 1914 ; and although Altolaguirre
does not remark it, there are some odd circumstances connected wit h
it . (What appears in the printed text to be the oddest—a date line
from Zaragoza—is only a transcriber ' s mistake ; the document is dated
from Burgos .) Why did the King, writing to Diego Colón on the same
day the brevet was signed, say nothing about the appointment an d
limit himself to the remark that he would make arrangements fo r
Tierra Firme as might appear most convenient? Why, when he wrot e
again to Colón a month later, did he say only that "it was a goo d
measure that you took, that Vasco Núñez remain in charge there fo r
now, until someone be provided from here"? He was equally reticen t
in letters of the next months . And—since if Fernando did not trus t
Colón he had other channels of communication—how was it that
Balboa knew nothing of his appointment until the middle of 1513 ,
although he had received cédulas of later date six months before ?
Having registered these nagging question marks, to be returned t o
later on, we can consider the decree which rewarded Zamudio's mis-
sion and Balboa's dearest hopes :

The king . For the present, until such time as we command that a
governor and court of law be provided for the province of darien
91
 which is in the tierra firme of the yndias of the otean sea, it is m y
pleasure and will, considering the competente and ability and fidel-
ity of you vasco nuñez de valboa and knowing that it will be t o
our service, that you be our governor and captain of the said islan d
and province and judicial authority in it . And by this my cedula I
command that whatever persons of whatever estate condition pre-
eminence or dignity they may be who are or might be in the raid
province of darien, shall have and hold and accept you during th e
said time as our captain and governor of it, and shall treat with yo u
in all cases and matters pertaining to the said office of governor ,
and that they shall behave towards you and execute and obey you r
commands in all things as to our governor . For the exercise of th e
said mandate in the form stated above and for the execution an d
performance of it, I give you by this my cedula complete authorit y
with all accessory and dependent rights thereto adjoint or conjoint ,
e los unos ni los otros no fagades ende al .' Done in burgos xxii j
day of december of the year dxi I the king—by command of hi s
highness / lope conchillos countersigned by the bisho p
The investiture, for obvious reasons, was a temporary expedien t
limited to the colony in Darién . Royal governors were not chose n
lightly or on hearsay ; Colón's claim to Tierra Firme had yet to b e
judged by the Royal Council, and there had been no time to conside r
so important a reform as the organization of Urabá and Darién as a
Crown colony . Within its confines, however, the brevet was unequiv-
ocal. For such time as it remained in force, Balboa was endowe d
with supreme power--civil, judicial, and military—in the exercise of
which he was responsible, not to Colón, but directly to the King .
The decree must have been dispatched in proper course ; Fernando's
subsequent cédulas to Balboa addressed him as "Our Captain" in th e
identical form which had been used for Hojeda and Nicuesa . Some-
how it was delayed in transit, for it was not delivered in Santa Marí a
until 1513 . Had it been known earlier in Darién, the colony woul d
have been saved much bitterness ; perhaps the smoldering enmitie s
which broke out later would never have been kindled .

92
 IX
IN Santa María del Antigua the months which followed Nicuesa' s
departure were so unwontedly gratifying that it seemed as if th e
wretched Governor had taken the bad luck of the colony with him .
The vecinos felt that they had at last turned the corner—happily un-
aware that, for them, corners were to be only an infrequent punctua-
tion to long stretches of misfortune .
For some time the men had been restless in the narrow confines o f
the settlement, eager to explore and exploit fresh fields . Balboa, "wh o
could not sit still even while his bread was baking," was as impatien t
as the rest ; besides, he knew that idle, well-fed compañeros mean t
trouble . An expedition was clearly indicated : one of those entradas
which so usefully combined duty, profit, and Christian propaganda ,
while keeping the colonists occupied and out of mischief . The under-
taking had been planned, and a goal decided upon, before Nicues a
arrived, and no sooner was Bachiller Enciso out of the way than i t
was put into effect. The objective was Careta, the next chiefdom t o
the north, about eighty miles away by land and twenty less by sea .
Balboa may have remembered Careta—it is uncertain whethe r
Bastidas visited it on his voyage of discovery—or it may have been
selected simply because it was at once the easiest and the most prom-
ising district to reach from Darién . The colonists undoubtedly had
been told about the swamps and savage inhabitants of the Atrato
Valley to the south, and the barriers of sea and mountain lay east and
west. In any case, the latter direction was guarded by Cemaco, and a
scouting party led by Pizarro toward the chief's retreat had limpe d
back in bad shape after an encounter with his forces . (They told a tall
tale of the havoc they had wrought among the enemy, but Balboa di d
not congratulate them . He gave Pizarro a dressing-down for havin g
abandoned a comrade, and sent him back to get the wounded compa-
ñero, who justified the rescue by recovering .) Careta, on the other
hand, could be reached with little difficulty, and its ruler was reporte d
to be both more important and less bellicose than his confrere o f
93
Darién. Balboa mustered a hundred men and set out in late April o r
early May of 1511 .
Careta, like Darién, consisted of a strip of territory between th e
summit of the coastal range and the Caribbean . Its principal port wa s
that inside Punta Sasardí, l and its capital lay in the hills some twelv e
to fourteen miles inland . The Spaniards, following their usual confus-
ing custom, referred to the port, the chiefdom, the principal village ,
and the ruler, indiscriminately, as " Careta, " but the chief 's real name
was Chima . Chima could boast two thousand warriors, and it wa s
fortunate for the expeditionaries that when they made their entrada h e
was engaged in hostilities with Ponca, a hill chieftain whom th e
Caretaes considered a barbarian, and who, like so many barbarians ,
was extremely hard to subdue . The situation, when Balboa arrived ,
seems to have reached an uneasy stalemate .
Every conquistador was avid for treasure, but for the men o f
Darién the prime consideration at this time was food . "We have held
provisions in more account than gold," Balboa told the King, "for w e
have had more gold than health" ; and, having taken Careta village
with little effort, food was the first thing they demanded of the chief .
Chima protested that he had none to give ; the war with Ponca had
hindered the sowing, and other Spaniards had taken his reserve sup-
plies . This was construed, rightly or wrongly, as a mere excuse, an d
the chief with his whole family was put under arrest .
(The "other Spaniards" must have been Enciso and his fello w
travelers, who, since they took sixteen days to make Cuba in a favor-
able voyage, clearly stopped off somewhere en route . )
As has already been noted, there are frequently two or three mai n
versions and several sub-versions of events in Tierra Firme, and the
occupation of Careta is a pretty example of history by hearsay . The
chroniclers agree, however, that Balboa found helpful compatriot s
already installed there : three of Nicuesa's men who had deserted o n
the way to Veragua, and found refuge and rank with the Indians . The y
had adapted themselves to their new environment without reserve ,
and prospered in the process . One, named Juan Alonso, had bee n
made captain of Chima's warriors, and all were "as naked as th e
Indians and as plump as the capons that housewives fatten in thei r
cellars . " These unanticipated friends were extremely useful to Vasc o
94
Núñez, but whether this was solely by amicable liaison work o r
whether there was cynical betrayal of the chief on the part of Jua n
Alonso, is a matter of which chronicler you read. 2
On the evidence, the most benign account appears the most credible .
According to this, Balboa released the chief and his family as soo n
as he learned of the kindness shown to the refugee Spaniards, an d
cordial relations were immediately established . Certainly Chima be-
carne Balboa's devoted friend and adherent from that time forth, an d
it is hard to believe that a proud chieftain would have fallen on the
neck of an invader who, having defeated hico by treachery, subse-
quently ill-treated him . Eager to please, the chief also embrace d
the Christian faith, and as the first important convert was baptize d
with the name of the Catholic King . Thereafter, Chima was officiall y
Don Fernando to his conquerors .
Conducted to Santa María as a hostage, Chima-Don Fernando re-
mained as a guest . When he left, it was as a liege ally . He had con-
cluded a pact with Balboa—whom he called Tibá (great chief)—wit h
which both sides were immensely pleased . The Caretaes were bound
to clear and plant land near the settlement, to help out with food fro m
their own stocks until harvest time, to serve as guides when necessary ,
and to make themselves generally useful ; Balboa, for his part, prom-
ised to take a force against Chima's enemy Ponca, and mop him up
to the mutual satisfaction of both contracting parties . Considerin g
that the chief had paid a handsome tribute in gold, the advantag e
seems to have been heavily on the side of the colonists, but Chima wa s
entirely content. He was free, he had not been pressed for more gol d
than he had been prepared to contribute, and he was about to be
relieved of the harrying raids of Ponca ' s mountaineers .
Before long, Chima returned to his village to see to the plantin g
and to dispatch laborers to Darién . Before he left he sealed his alliance
with Vasco Núñez by the closest tie he knew—he gave a daughter t o
the white tibá .
No one has described this living pledge of friendship, or even give n
her a name . She was very young, and, it is said, beautiful . She was not
Balboa' s only love—for which he had reason to be thankful later on-
and because of her few years she lived in his house for some time a s
his ward . But she grew up to be both desirable and constant, an d
95
because of these qualities she was to be, in the end, an instrument i n
his death .

Vasco Núñez sent what provisions he could spare to the garriso n

in Nombre de Dios on two occasions, and finally brought all the sur-
vivors of Nicues a ' s settlement to Darién . The first relief seems to have
been dispatched before the start of the Careta entrada, and the ber-
gantines returned with distressing news of the Veragua colonists . "If
I had not succored them, " Balboa wrote to the King, "they were al-
ready lost, for five or six were dying every day from hunger, and th e
Indians were closing in on them . " In addition, they had been quarrel-
ing among themselves, principally over the scanty rations, which th e
alcalde, Alonso Núñez, and Gonzalo de Badajoz doled out in micro-
scopio quantities ; before the thid trip of the bergantines from Darié n
the rank and file had seized both the provisions and the officers . By
this time it was evident that Nicuesa was not going to turn up in tim e
to save them, and they asked nothing better than another home and a
new commander. By July or August the last of them were in Sant a
María del Antigua .
In August, land for crops and grazing, and urban lots for buildin g
were apportioned among the vecinos, the men of Veragua sharing o n
equal terms with the others ; early in September the corn was planted .
With the settlement thus organized, Balboa set out to fulfill his agree-
ment with Don Fernando, transporting his force as far as Puert o
Careta in the bergantines .
Ponca lay west of Careta village, on the other side of a low but
rugged pass . Its river—every chief was lord of a river—was probably
the Moretí (Mortí), a fork of the Chucunaque . There was a trail of
sorts over the pass, which the Spaniards were to know almost as wel l
as the streets of Santa María in years to come, but it was hard goin g
for white soldiers, and the colonists scrambled rather than marche d
for two days to reach their destination . Their laborious progress wa s
noted, and Chief Ponca, wisely deciding that this was a moment for
discretion rather than valor, had gathered his people and taken to th e
forest before they arrived . The compañeros ransacked the deserte d
bohíos, found a tidy amount of gold overlooked in the hasty evacua-
tion, and burned the village .
96
 The Ponca affair had not been heroic, but Chima was delighted .
He now proposed to negotiate a visit to Chief Comogre, whose do-
main, called Comogra, adjoined his own on the north . Comogre wa s
out of the Ponca class ; he was a powerful ruler who commande d
numerous vassal lords and headmen and had three thousand fightin g
men . He was on good terms with Careta, and Chíma wished to kee p
hico that way, so that on all counts it was advisable to treat with hi m
in proper diplomatic fashion . The ambassador chosen to approach
him was a jura—a noble of princely blood—who had once lived i n
Comogra, and who had learned to like the Spaniards when Nicuesa ' s
deserters stayed in his house after their escape from the armada . He
carried out his mission admirably .
The state of Comogra extended from the Caribbean across th e
mountains to the Bayano River, and along the coast from the bay no w
labeled Mazargandí to Playón Grande or beyond . Its capital was o n
the fork of the Bayano known as Matumagantí, where the foreste d
hills gave way to the relatively thickly populated central valley—no w
unbroken jungle, but then in great part open land where the principa l
villages, connected by trails, were often no more than six to ten mile s
apart. Comogra had two "ports, " and in later years the colonists some-
tímes entered by that not far from Mazargandí, whích they called
Puerto Perdido . But the favored route from Careta was through
Ponca, thence from the headwaters of the Chucunaque over the divid e
to the Quiquimipití (or Quiquinibutí), down this to the Río Cañaza s
and on to an affluent called Navagantí, up the Navagantí eleven mile s
to a creek, and then twenty miles overland to the Matumagantí . (The
river names are all of more recent date than that of the Darié n
colony.) Aecording to a later report, the total distance was about a
hundred and forty miles ; one can only suppose that the shorter rout e
via Puerto Perdido was exceptionally arduous .
Balboa' s entry into Comogra had the feudal flavor of a suzerain' s
visit to a puissant vassal prince . Some way outside the capital he was
met by the chief in person, aecompanied by his seven sons and by al l
the local gentry. It was an elegant, not to say an imposing, reception .
A Comogran notable dressed in his best was splendid from the ski n
out : hís body freshly paínted wíth designs in black and red, a fringe d
cotton tunic falling below his knees, and on his head a diadem o f
97
woven cane and feathers . In his nose and ears, around his neck, clasp-
ing his arras and legs, he wore as many ornaments as he could afford
and was physically able to carry without undue fatigue . The chie f
was, of course, even more ornate . His ornamenta were larger, richer ,
and heavier ; graduated necklaces of jaguar teeth lay in a zigzag pat-
tern on his chest ; he wore a golden crown and carried a slender scepte r
made of gold .
After an exchange of compliments, translated by Juan Alonso, th e
guests were escorted to the village . For once the Spaniards wer e
frankly impressed. The green meadows of Comogra were a gratefu l
sight to eyes long held to mountain and jungle, and the spaced bohío s
were numerous and well built, but what struck the compañeros speech-
less was the palace of the chief . This super-bohío was a hundred and
fifty paces long by eighty wide, constructed of heavy timbers, the
upper part made of wood cunningly interlaced to form a kind of loft ;
its beams were carved and its floor "artistically decorated ." The build-
ing was surrounded by a stone wall . Nothing to approach it in size
and craftsmanship had yet been seen in the Indies, and the colonist s
gazed on it marveling and somewhat daunted .
The inside of the palace was in keeping with its exterior . It wa s
partitioned into a great many rooms and corridors, and Comogre saw
that his visitors were shown them all . They were even taken to the
"very secret" Hall of the Ancestors, which was hung with the mum-
mies of departed chiefs . Wrapped in cloth of painted cotton woven
with gold, pearls, and "stones held precious," their shriveled faces
covered with golden masks, the fire-dried bodies swung gently fro m
ropes fixed to the roof, like rich bales of goods in a spectral ware-
house . Death was a familiar story to Balboa and his men, but th e
mausoleum made them uncomfortable, and they were relieved to mov e
on to more congenial storerooms : those in which the chief kept provi-
sions and liquors .
Here were stores to make a colonist's mouth water : piles of corn ,
white, yellow, red, and purple ; woody-looking yucca and arracach a
roots ; turnip-like ajes and mounds of those little orange-colored pota-
toes that make ordinary white ones seem insipid; peanuts and cápera
seeds ; green and red ajís; coconuts, pineapples, anones, and less
familiar fruits ; smoked venison and pork, dried fish, corn meal i n
98
baskets, bundles of herbs . Another room held ollas and jars of maiz e
beer and a surprising assortment of wines, "both white and red . "
That evening there was a banquet . The Indians lived rather sparel y
as a rule, but they were always happy to have warrant for a rousing
feast, and this was an Occasion . For the still more spare-livin g
colonists, it was a revelation. Better-nourished men than they woul d
have found it memorable, thanks to Comogre's dual determination t o
dazzle his guests and at the same time win their regard .
No one, alas, has described this particular feast in detail, but fro m
gleanings here and there in letters and chronicles it can be pretty faith-
fully reconstructed . There was nothing exotic about the menu, whic h
consisted of soup, fish, game, meat, vegetables, bread, fruit, and wines ;
many of the recipes which have come down to us round as familiar
as yesterday's lunch . The quantity and diversity of the dishes would ,
however, put a modern provider to shame : half a dozen kinds of fish ,
boiled, roasted, and grilled ; meats for every taste ; a succession o f
wines, and three times as much of everything as could be consumed a t
a sitting . The food was placed in calabashes and on leaves, range d
down the center of trestle tables, and each place was set with a bow l
of water, a small lump of salt, and a drinking cup . Some of the cup s
were of fiber, incredibly finely woven ; the most beautiful were mad e
of small, highly polished gourds lavishly trimmed with gold .
It is to be hoped that the Spaniards did not forget their manner s
before this unaccustomed plenty, for the Indians were rather carefu l
of the niceties . Each man removed his more encumbering ornamenta
and his pose ring before sitting at the table . The technique for eatin g
such things as stews without implements was to make a spoon of tw o
curved fingers, dip a little out of the common bowl, and pop it int o
the mouth with a rapid sidewise motion as if passing the fingers acros s
the lips . Before the next dip, fingers were rinsed in the individua l
finger bowls . How the colonists managed one can only guess ; no doub t
they were awkward enough to give rise to a good deal of the laughte r
that carne so easily to Indians unspoiled by fear . There were frequent
toasts of the bottoms-up sort, and as the cups were drained th e
attendant women took them away and washed them before refillin g
them .
All this, delightful as it was, constituted no more than a garnish t o
99
the solid satisfactions of the visit . The white tibá secured three prizes :
a formal alliance, clinched by baptism of the chief, who was christene d
Don Carlos after the Spanish heir apparent ; a gratifying present of
gold and seventy slaves by way of tribute ; and, best of all, the sensa-
tional information that another otean lay just the other side of th e
range of hills visible to the south .
The news was not, of course, a bolt from the blue . The existent e
of seas beyond the known Atlantic was generally recognized, sin e
Asia looked on them and Tierra Firme was not Asia . For that matter ,
Columbus had reported that another sea could be reached in onl y
nine days' march from Chiriquí Lagoon ; the odd thing is that thi s
intelligence, which was perfectly correct, did not feature in the con-
tract made with Nicuesa, even though the chief desideratum was a n
uninterrupted water route . 3 One can only suppose that Columbus '
unfortunate insistente that Honduras was China, and the Isthmus th e
Malay Peninsula, from whose farther side the river Ganges was but a
ten-day sail, discredited all his geographical conclusions .
Balboa does not appear to have considered the startling implica-
tions of what he had learned . At any rate, when he reported it to th e
King it was without (so far as is known) any referente to the Orient .
One reason was probably the direction indicated ; the Pacific is indeed
south of the middle Isthmus, hence its first name of "the South Sea, "
and everyone knew that Asia was to the west . Moreover, he wa s
neither an inspired dreamer nor a savant, but a practical, practicin g
conquistador concerned like his men with opportunities he and the y
might grasp . The proximity of another sea was thrilling news, but wha t
was of immediate, absorbing interest was the assurance that its coast
was inhabited by chiefs of fantastic wealth .
Their informant was Comogre's eldest son, "a wise young man "
named Ponquiaco, who had been thoughtfully considering his father' s
visitors . His conclusions were brought to a head by a regrettable scen e
which reflects no credit on the colonists . They had been weighing the
gold presented by Comogre—a proceeding which must have appeare d
crude to the Indians, who valued workmanship far more than mass-
in order to set aside the quinto and apportion what was left amon g
themselves, and in the course of the operation some lively disagree-
ments had developed . Ponquiaco watched them disgustedly and de -
100
cided that such appetites were best directed away from Comogra .
Sending the scales fiying with a sweep of his hand, the young India n
addressed the compañeros as they gaped above the bright object s
scattered on the ground . Martyr remarks that his language was choice ,
and if it was anything Eke the polished periods which the chronicle r
puts in quotes, the adjective was deserved .
"What then is this, Christians? " Ponquiaco's speech began . "Is it
possible that you set so high a value on so little gold? Yet you destro y
the artistic beauty of theee necklaces, melting them into ingots . If
your thirst for gold is such that to satisfy it you molest peaceable
people and bring misfortune and calamity among them, if you exil e
yourselves from your own country to search for it, I will show you a
land where it abounds and where you, can satisfy your thirst . . . "
There was much more of this, and few orators have had a more en-
thralled audience, or, for that matter, one which paid so little attentio n
to style and delivery and so much to what they considered the mea t
of the subject .
The other ocean, it was learned, was only three suns ' march from
the hills bordering the farther side of the Bayano Valley, and the hill s
could be reached from Pocorosa, the next provine west of Comogra,
in a single day . The direction indicated gave the conquistadores thei r
name for the Pacific : the South Sea . And everywhere—everywher e
beyond Comogra—there was gold, both raw and worked, as commo n
as ¡ron in Biscaya. Ponquiaco 's talents as a promoter were consid-
erable .
All the rivers of the southern watershed rolled gold in fat grains ;
every chief was opulent . Pocorosa was very rich ; his neighbor, Tuba-
namá, was even richer ; the chiefs of the sierra were obliged to store
their treasure on racks because it was too voluminous for mere bas-
kets, and those of the other coast possessed such fabulous collec-
tions of wrought gold that sight of them "would make us go out of our
minds ." As for pearls, so many of them were gathered in the islands-
easily reached by canoe on that always calm sea—that no Indian wa s
without them . The Spaniards would need a thousand men to vanquis h
the "mighty kings " who would try to bar their way, but Ponquiaco
himself would be charmed to guide an expedition, and to provide a
Comogran contingent as auxiliaries .
101
 The Indian was not speaking of the Inca Empire, although that i s
what Casas deduced, to the confusion of later historians . He was talk-
ing about tribes he knew, "people who go naked and live as we do, "
with whom Comogra had warred and traded for generations . Th e
mighty kings were the chiefs of Pocorosa and Tubanamá, a litúe wa y
down the valley, traditional enemies whose decisive defeat was Pon-
quiaco's frankly avowed reason for co-operation . The chieftains of th e
sierra, cannibal invaders who had conquered the hill tribes in order t o
exploit their mines, lived near enough for regular commerce by wa y
of the Cañazas, a fork of the Bayano . And in describing the pleasant ,
mannerly magnates of the other coast, who abstained from eating th e
slaves they got by barter, the Indians of Comogra meant those livin g
along the shore of the Isthmus toward the west—which is all tha t
Balboa and his men understood them to mean .
For the colonists it was quite enough . They stayed only a few day s
more in Comogra, checking and completing the information received ,
and then returned to Darién in soaring spirits with their slaves an d
gold . When they got there, they found that Valdivia had already ar-
rived from Santo Domingo with almost everything needed to complet e
their felicity : a few volunteers, enough food for present satisfaction ,
the promise of generous help soon to come, and Colón's approval o f
Vasco Núñez de Balboa as captain of the colony . Decidedly, the tide
of fortune was setting their way .
Thus in November of 1511, Santa María del Antigua was a cheer-
ful place . There was still discomfort—it rained incessantly, man y
people were sick, and Valdivia's small supply of food was quickly
exhausted—but the vecinos bore their trials with good humor and a
phenomenal absence of internecine squabbles . Hope is more than bread
or case, and in Darién hope seemed very Glose to certainty . Ther e
would be plenty in the settlement : the promised relief would soon b e
there, and the corn was already high . There would be wealth fo r
everyone, for the news gathered in Comogra, once known in His-
paniola, would surely bring the necessary reinforcements .
Indeed, the colonists had reason for congratulation . They had
shelter, slaves, field labor, growing crops ; they were assured of officia l
favor ; they were free of undesired commanders and also, apparently ,
of censure for having got rid of them . The man they had themselve s
102
chosen had been confirmed as captain . They could count on two o f
the strongest chiefs as (in the vague but convenient terminology o f
dominion) subordinate allies—a guarantee of security and a promis e
of future assistance . And there was over sixty thousand pesos of gold
in the treasury .

X
LARGELY because Colón, for reasons of his own, did not follow up
his initial burst of encouragement for Darién, it was to be nearly tw o
years before the settlers were able to act on the information receive d
in Comogra . And even when they did, and when the Pacific had bee n
discovered and the colony strengthened, the establishment of Spanis h
rule in the Isthmus was a creeping process .
Had Tierra Firme been a sparsely inhabited territory with land s
empty for the taking, or alternatively, had it been organized in sub-
jection to only one or two absolute rulers, its conquest could hav e
been relatively easy . But it was settled country—the pre-Columbia n
population of the Isthmus alone was greater than that of North Amer-
ica from Mexico to the Arctic Circle—and it was composed of a
mosaic of separate states, each with its sovereign chief . Some of th e
chiefdoms were little more than hunting and fishing preserves, som e
were so developed as to impress invaders still mindful of the duchie s
and fiefs of Europe, and every one of them had to be tackled as a
distinct unit .
It is obvious that this political incoherence, while providing an idea l
setup for plundering raids, did not lend itself to decisive actions effec-
tive over large blocks of territory . Balboa, it is true, obtained friendly
suzerainty over thirty "provinces, " creating a zone wherein the Indians
were "like lambs" and "five or ten Christians, or one alone, coul d
travel as safely as a thousand. "1 But this nucleus was lost when
Governor Pedrarias and his cohorts carne to scourge the tribe s
to revolt. The subjection of the heathen is seldom a gentle business ;
in Tierra Firme, where each small subdivision presented a fresh
103
problem, it was an untidy, bloody business of destruction and piece-
meal seizure .
In some districts—specifically, the Atrato Basin—the conquista -
dores' worst hazard was the land itself, defiant then as now of th e
white man and all his works . At times luck (usually bad luck) decided
the issues . In general, however, it was the human factor which deter-
mined the course and quality of conquest . The virtues and defects of
the Spaniards, their habits and preconceptions, are demonstrated a t
every turn, but they are only one quantity in the equation . It is time
to look at the other : at the Indians. We will do so through the eyes o f
the colonists, who observed more than might be suspected from mos t
modern anthropological studies .
The settlers knew nothing of the minutiae of ethnology . All Indians
were sons of Ham (they themselves stemmed from Japheth), wh o
"retained some Judaic vestiges from their ancient progenitors," an d
whose ramifications sine Ararat were of minor importance . 2 But al-
though their interest and descriptions were anything but scientific ,
they were authentic, and they are preserved by Oviedo, Andagoya ,
and to some degree by Casas and Martyr .
Of the inhabitants of the southern mainland the colonists did no t
have much to tell . They learned little of Cenú save the inconvenien t
military prowess of its warriors, and dismissed the equally recalcitran t
natives of Urabá and much of the Atrato as incurably evil down to th e
last predestined infant . They say enough, however, to confirm th e
distribution of racial groups . The Indians of Cenú, the "province "
which occupied the upper and middle valley of the river Sinú, wer e
Carib, and so were those of Urabá, 3 the Cordillera, the upper Atrat o
and most of the Pacific coast south of the Isthmus : comparatively
civilized in Cenú (the Catío Caribs), 4 savagely primitive in the west
(Citaraes, Chocoes) . Those around the mouth of the Sinú were of a
different race—perhaps Arawak, since the Arawak word for "chief, "
guaxiro, was sometimes heard in Darién, though expressly defined a s
a foreign term . The lower Atrato Valley was Cuna ; Abibaibe, Abraibe ,
Dabaibe, Abanumaque, Abraime were Cuna words . Bea and Coro-
barí, along the delta between Darién and Abraime, were Carib agai n
—strangely softened and unusually attractive, using neither poisone d
arrows nor bitter manioc, and apparently intermixed with Cuna, bu t
104
still basically Carib on the evidcnce of their place names and the one
or two words of their language which are recorded . 5
The Indians of the mountain chiefdoms on the other side of the
divide from Darién and Corobarí were a mixed lot, many of the m
ruled by fairly recent "barbarian" invaders from farther south . Rather
curiously, there is no mention whatever of any natives living betwee n
Santa María and Careta .
Naturally enough, the settlers' information was mostly about th e
tribes with whom they had constant contact, those living in the terri-
tory from the lower delta to the south-central Isthmus, and especially
about those of Cueva—the Indians they knew best, treated worst, an d
admired even as they destroyed them .
Cueva, in colonial parlance, was one of three main divisions of th e
Isthmus, the other two being Veragua and Coiba . Although the name
"Cueva" is often used as if it applied to the whole eastern Isthmus,
this is not strictly correct. It was a linguistic rather than a geographica l
definition ; that is, its people all spoke, with local variations, "the lan-
guage of Cueva . " Its heart-land was the valley of the Bayano and it s
farther limit was the Bay of Capira, and the province of Peruquete ,
some twenty-five miles west of Panamá . Cueva proper did not includ e
the Caribbean coast westward from Nombre de Dios, or the Pacifi c
slopes west of Darién, although the tribes living in proximity to th e
Gulf of San Miguel were nearly all Cuevan . Veragua, in its narrowes t
sense a single chiefdom on the river of that name and in its widest a
gobernación which extended far north to Cape Gracias á Dios, wa s
by now commonly taken to be the Caribbean slope between Nombr e
de Dios and Almirante Bay . As for Coiba, the word merely signifie d
"far away" or "far-off place," and had been adopted by the Spaniard s
from an early misunderstanding of the remarks of Atlantic-coas t
Indians . It began where "the language of Cueva" ended, its boundar y
with Veragua was the crest of the mountains, and its farther limits
were unknown ; its peoples spoke a variety of tongues and sometimes
differed sharply in physical traits from one province to the next . Som e
of them, perhaps most, seem to have been of Nahuatlteca stock.
The "Cuevans" are not only the Indians of whom most is told ;
they are also the most intriguing, partly because of their relatively hig h
culture and partly because their racial affiliations are unestablished .
105
This does not mean that they have not been assigned to a racial group ;
modern ethnology has, in fact, assigned them to several—Arawak ,
Chibcha, and more commonly Cuna . But the very widely adopte d
Cuna identification is at least questionable, aside from the fact tha t
the origin of the Cunas themselves is a matter of controversy . The
Cuevans lived next door to Cunas and had constant intercourse wit h
them, but their social structure was entirely different, and so was thei r
language . No philologically minded colonist compiled a Cuevan gram-
mar, but the small vocabulary that has been preserved is perfectl y
instructive on this point . The Cunas certainly inherited the earth i n
the Isthmus as far as San Blas, but the process started after Darié n
was only a memory .
The trouble is that a good many students have been misled by earl y
sources which are not early enough . Here are some of the recorde d
changes in the distribution of peoples before 1535 : The Urabaes ha d
retired to the hills of Abibe and their land had been occupied by th e
Indians of Bea and Corobarí ; Urabaibe was deserted ; the Chuchu-
reíes, tall, light-skinned people "from Honduras way" who were i n
possession around Nombre de Dios in 1515, had been wiped out ; the
Pearl Islands, well populated at the time of their discovery, were un-
inhabited ; Caribs from the high country "just back of Darién " ha d
moved south to seize the region around the Gulf of Cúpica and wer e
already menacing the Cuevan states around the Gulf of San Miguel .
Careta, which could muster two thousand fighting men in 1511, wa s
reduced to a few people in the more inaccessible hill country . The
Cuevans were well on the way to extinction ; the great chiefs who
could boast five thousand warriors when the Spaniards carne had n o
more than five hundred or a thousand subjects all told .
According to their conquerors, the Cuevans (the unscientific terc o
must serve in lieu of a better) were an uncommonly handsome lot :
well formed, straight, swift and supple in movement, with good fea-
tures and skins of a tawny golden color. In fact their only defect seem s
to have been their teeth, which were almost uniformly bad . The men
were taller and sturdier, "more men, " than those of the Antilles . It
might have been added that the women were more women ; for they
appear to have been charming creatures who displayed unexpecte d
aspects of sophistication . Smallish, large-eyed with thick and ofte n
106
wavy hair, they had beautiful narrow bodies of which they wer e
inordinately proud and on which they lavished endless care . They
bathed five or six times a day and spent hours grooming their hai r
with combs of macaw wood ; they applied perfumed ointments to kee p
their skins smooth and unblemished, and removed every trace of bod y
hair with depilatories and tweezers . They took extraordinary care to
preserve the shape of their admirable breasts ; the wealthier matron s
used brassieres of intricately worked gold, "for they thought it shame-
ful to have a wrinkled or flabby bosom . "
The younger women, believing firmly in enjoying life and main-
taining their girlish figures, often achieved that difficult combination
of aims via herbal contraceptives or, in the last necessity, an abortive .
There was nothing furtive about this ; the girls' frankly expressed atti-
tude was that youth is for fun and freedom—"let the older wome n
have children ." Either their fears of losing their beauty were ground-
less, or nature and art together served them well : it was noted tha t
even after childbirth they were like adolescente .
The Europeans who remarked these qualities usually had ever y
reason to know whereof they spoke, but even a casual observer coul d
not miss much . The sole garment, a wrapped enagua of brightly col-
ored cotton rather like a sarong, covered ladies of quality from wais t
to ankle, but on less exalted women it came only to the thigh, an d
young girls were apt to dispense with it altogether, "for as they do no t
know what shame is, so they do not use any defense for it ." This happ y
ignorante was reflected in their behavior, which was apparently simila r
to that noted by a later observer, a British pirate : "They are very
modest, and tho' they will lay hold on any Part of a Man, yet they d o
it with great simplicity and Innocence ." One is reminded of the philos-
opher who asserted that what the world needed was less chastity an d
more delicacy .
The women showed a flattering preferente for Spanish lovers, al-
though they were inclined to snub mere compañeros in favor of me n
of higher rank, and an Indian mistress was generally faithful to he r
lord %f he be not long absent, for they have no desire to be widow s
or chaste nuns ." And from the colonists' point of view there was muc h
to be said for a ménage with an Indian girl, or possibly two Indian
girls, if only for practical considerations . They were neat and com-
107
petent housekeepers, they served as interpreters and go-betweens, an d
their dispositions were beyond cavil .
Amiability, in fact, was a general characteristic, and so were goo d
manners . Despite the tendency to intertribal fighting, the Cuevans ver y
rarely quarreled among themselves, and if a disagreement did arise i t
was referred to the chief, who disposed of it by final decision withi n
three days . The women carried out the most arduous tasks "cheer-
fully, and as if it were their pleasure," and the men were invariably
gentle with them, being "kind and loving . . . even when drunk. "
No one ever heard a cross word between husband and wife .
Their villages were simple—Comogra was evidently the show place
of Cueva—and even the capitals were small, for the Indians live d
mostly in small groups near their fields . They were primarily an agri -
cultural people, and cultivated not only numerous kinds of maiz e
(their chief staple) but a variety of vegetables, herbs, and fruits, a s
well as a fine quality of cotton . They kept fowls (probably curassow ,
guan, and the like), domesticated peccary and various animals of th e
guinea-pig order . Their houses were rectangular and usually parti-
tioned into several rooms, and both the surrounding ground and th e
dwellings themselves were scrupulously clean and tidy . Nor was the
tidiness a matter of having nothing to keep in order ; the Cuevans were
quite civilized enough for the self-imposed servitude of possessions .
Furniture was not complicated : a number of seats and taborets made
of sections of log, come built-in racks, perhaps a platform bed nea r
the fire, and a hammock for each member of the family down to th e
baby still strapped to its backboard . The problem was storage . In that
climate almost everything had to be guarded from rain and insects ,
and the number of belongings to be taken care of was astonishing .
There was the bulky gear : hunting and fishing nets of different size s
and meshes, canoe paddles and poles, wooden hoes and plantin g
sticks, the yokes and big covered baskets (habas) used for baggage
on the trail, the tall ollas called toreba for water and maize beer, the
loom and dye pots and grinding stones . There were weapons : heavy
two-edged war clubs called macana, fashioned from the ¡ron-har d
wood of the black palm ; spears for war or hunting, tipped with bon e
or shell, some of them with multiple barbs carved into the wood itself ;
throwing sticks known in Cueva as estólica (the atlatl of the Aztecs )
108
and darts to go with them—plain darts of wood or reed for business ,
and whistling ones for sport or mockery . (The Cuevans used neithe r
bows nor blowguns .) There were skeins of cotton, rnaho and othe r
fibers ; bundles of reeds and split cane ; bales of raw cotton, as well a s
all the pots, gourds, baskets, and utensils needed for keeping an d
preparing food. And to all there were added the innumerable smal l
things that in a cupboardless, drawerless, closetless dwelling must hav e
been a housewife's nightmare, such things as battens and shuttles ,
spindle, whorls, and distaff, clay rollers for printing fabrics, tools o f
bone, shell, and stone, cosmetics and medicines—not to mention
articles of adornment, at thirty to fifty pounds of assorted ornament s
per person .
The noble savage is frequently less egalitarian than is imagined, an d
the Cuevans had a strictly class society . The aristocracy was as fol-
lows : queví or tibá—paramount ruler ; saco—minor chief or headman ;
jura—member of a reigning family ; labra—knight. The wives of all
nobles bore the title espave; slaves were called paco. Cabras were so
created for outstanding military merit ; the action on which the hono r
was based had to take place in authorized combat under the chiéf' s
own eyes . All rank was hereditary, and passed to the eldest legitimate
son ; if there was no legitimate male issue it might go to a daughter ,
and, failing direct heirs, it passed to the son of a sister, for "the so n
of my sister is undoubtedly my [blood] nephew and the grandson o f
my father, but about the son or daughter of my brother there could
be some question ."
Nobles did not marry out of their class, although a chief might s o
far condescend as to take the daughter of a gabra as consort . The
Cuevans practiced what might be called modified monogamy : that is ,
they had only one wife with whom they went through a nuptial cere-
mony, but the more affluent maintained a number of auxiliaries . Th e
concubines were expected to serve the legal spouse and to make them-
selves generally useful about the house ; they and their children in-
herited nothing on their lord's death, but were suitably taken care o f
by the recognized heirs .
The chief was supreme in peace or war . His decisions were unap-
pealable, but they were not taken without consultation or, in th e
administration of justice, without a public trial . There was little crime ,
109
perhaps because retribution was both rapid and severe . One of the
gravest offenses was theft, for which the penalty was amputation
according to a nicely graduated scale—a finger for petty pilferage, a
hand for something more serious, and so on up to the maximum o f
both arms . The culprit was obliged thereafter to wear the late bit o f
his anatomy suspended from a cord about his neck, presumably unti l
it dropped off from natural causes . Only the chief could execute
sentence on a noble, although when capital punishment was calle d
for he might limit himself to a symbolic blow and leave the coup de
grace to the executioner . The guilty noble, and his family with him ,
lost rank in this world and the next .
The religion of Cueva was not exacting, and followed a more or les s
standard pattern . The Cuevans believed in a Creator named Chipirap a
(or Chipipipa), a detached Being not incapable of error who confine d
his attentions to the weather ; in the sun and moon as deities (the latte r
female, whereas the Cunas held the moon to be a male god) ; in a
tutelary deity called Tuíra, who dispensed good and ill . The Spaniard s
admitted the existence of Tuíra, though not, of course, his divinity ;
he was clearly Satan in one of his many impersonations . This ac-
counted for the accuracy of his prophecies, communicated throug h
his priests . (When God took the trouble to give him the lie by upset-
ting the preordained course of events, the priests merely explaine d
that Tuíra had changed his mind .) With typically diabolic cunning
Tuíra manifested himself to his deluded people in a form calculated t o
please and reassure : he was seen as a beautiful boy-child with the fee t
of a bird . There was also a Cuevan version of the universal mother-
and-child myth .
Medicine men were called tequina, a word meaning master, whic h
was also given to master craftsmen or even to particularly skillfu l
hunters . A tequina began his training as a child, proceeding to a lon g
novitiate which concluded with a hermitage of two years in the forest .
During these last years he ate nothing that contained blood, saw n o
woman, and talked only with the master who carne at night to teac h
him the priestly mysteries . This completed, he was qualified as a prac-
ticing tequina and absolved from the bonds of abstinence, a freedo m
of which he took full advantage . When he invoked Tuíra and spok e
with the voice of the god, or when he pronounced the spells an d
110
exorcisms no layman might repeat, he inspired a fearful awe . As a
healer, however, he leaned more on medicines than on incantations .
Tequinas did not have a monopoly as doctors ; there were many
wisewomen and "curers" who also knew how to treat the sick . The
Indians had a remedy for almost every ill to which native flesh was
heir, many of them extremely efficacious . The chroniclers' descrip-
tions of some of these are echoed by the pirate doctor who wa s
struck with the effect of a bitter-calabash enema in cases of "Tor-
sions of the Guts, or Dry Gripes, " and with the miraculous healin g
properties of certain herbal poultices applied to gaping wounds . An d
this only touched the fringe of the Indian pharmacopoeia . The Cuevans
also had a pretty knack for surgery . Their treatment of a fracture, fo r
instance, has hardly been improved upon : they set it, splinted it ,
bandaged it, and immobilized it in a cast of clay and plant gums .
When operating they anesthetized the patient with narcotice, close d
severed blood vessels with a gelatinous or resinous substance, disin-
fected the wound and sutured it—or, if suture was impossible, mad e
shift with fresh rubber latex to hold the edges together . When th e
operation left a bad scar, they handled it in the most approved manne r
by supplementary surgery .
The best of medical care, even reinforced by magic, cannot alway s
succeed, and when death is inevitable it should be accepted withou t
dismay . The plebe dispensed with ceremonies, and a man met his end
alone . Family and friends carried him—pallbearers of the still-quick-
into the forest and left him in his hammock with a little food and
water to begin the journey to the other world . If he recovered, he wa s
welcomed back to the village with honor and rejoicing . Nobles, on
the other hand, died in their homes and were accorded proper funerals
and delightfully convivial wakes .
Customs differed from district to district . In the Bayano Valley, an d
in most of Cueva, deceased chieftains were cured like revered hams :
decked in their richest ornaments, wrapped in the finest of cloths ,
they were suspended over a pair of dripping-trays surrounded b y
glowing embers and well dried out, after which they were woun d
in more cloths and hung in a special room with their smoked prede-
cessors . The preserved tibás were ranged in chronological order, eithe r
in hammocks or swung from the roof, and a space was left for an y
111
who had died in such fashion that his body was lost . The rites were
sorrowful until the dried tibá had been aligned with his forebears, bu t
once this was done, they turned into a rousing feast and dance—th e
King is dead ; long live the King! A year later subjects and such neigh-
boring chiefs as were friendly at the time gathered for a particularly
gay commemorative festival, which may have celebrated the arriva l
of the departed in heaven.
(The Indians believed in heaven, which was like earth minus earth' s
defects, and in a shadowy afterworld inhabited by spirits who were
either ineligible, for paradise or were delayed in reaching it . Their
untutored minds had not conceived the savagery of hell . )
Chronicles of the Darién colony describe in some detail burials i n
which the wives or concubines of a dead chief, and a number of hi s
slaves, accompanied him to the other world . Such mass suttee was not ,
however, a Cuevan custom, and the fact that in Cueva it was said to
exist only in Panamá and Pacora raises a doubt that these adjoinin g
chiefdoms were perhaps a "foreign " enclave . In certain parts of Coib a
and in the mountains southwest of Bea and (orobarí it was observe d
with varying rites, of which the least distressing was probably tha t
whereby the richly ,adorned women and, at a suitable distante, th e
slaves drank themselves into complete insensibility, whereupon the as-
sembled mourners paused in their feasting to give them respectfu l
burial . It might be imagined that inasmuch as only preferred wome n
and serfs died with their lord, there would have been a marked coolin g
of devotion when the end seemed near, and that foresighted concubines
would have made themselves disagreeable well in advance . Actually, it
was considered the height of good fortune to be thus assured of eterna l
felicity and social prominente, and the thirty or forty people wh o
might elect, or be elected, to go with an important chieftain to an
Indian Elysium did so in the best of spirits .
The funeral rites of the chief of Pocorosa were witnessed by Anda-
goya . The ceremonial curing took place in a house . Around the bod y
sat ten or twelve nobles, draped in black cloth which covered eve n
their faces ; no one else was allowed to enter the room . Outside, th e
mourners stood crowded . At intervals the great drum was struck, an d
as the sound died, a tequina lifted his voice to chant a chapter of th e
dead tibá's life and glories, pausing for the antiphonal responses of
112
the mourners . Two hours after midnight the people gave a grea t
howl . A deep silence followed, and then, with laughter and drinking ,
the festive part of the wake began, although the black-clad watcher s
still kept their guard . In Pocorosa it was customary to burn the chief' s
body at the year-end commemoration, together with some food, arras ,
models of canoes, and such other effects as he might need until h e
reached the land of immortals .
Feasts of any kind, from the banquets which the chief sometime s
offered to his people as purely social occasions to full-scale triba l
gatherings, were noisy, strenuous, alcoholic, and the Indians' principa l
recreation. Weddings—no more animated than funerals and hardl y
more festive—were splendid excuses for entertainment . Guests carne
from far and near, each with his finery packed in a basket and eac h
with a gift . When everyone was ready, the father of the bride and th e
father of the groom began an energetic pas-de-deux, dancing until ,
sweating and exhausted, they could consider their part of the pro-
ceedings to have been carried out with proper zeal . The two young
people, who had not leen each other during the eight days of pre-
marital seclusion imposed on the bride, now advanced toward their
perspiring parents who, kneeling, formally presented their childre n
to each other . This ended the ceremony .
With much shouting and joking the young men seized their ston e
axes and rushed to cut a clearing for the new family's plantation, afte r
which everyone went for a swim . The banquet and dance followed,
during which all weapons were checked with a custodian as a precau-
tionary measure . Unlike war dances, these were taken part in by bot h
men and women, moving hand in hand a few steps forward, a fe w
steps back, while singing responses to the couplets chanted by th e
master of ceremonies . An old woodcut illustrates such an occasion :
faithful to the spirit, if possibly shaky as to factual detail, it depict s
a scene strongly reminiscent of Kentish yokels in a May festival o n
the green, an illusion enhanced by the resemblance of the tribal dru m
to a keg of beer .
Divorce was fairly easy, and was usually obtained on grounds of
childlessness, "for which each party blamed the other ." The Cuevan s
also swapped wives, either because they were bored or because thei r
inveterate love of barter got the better of them . In these deals th e
113
trader who got the older wife was considered to have made th e
shrewder bargain ; she was apt to be better trained, less jealous, an d
more constant .
Among the most solemn ceremonial feasts were those connecte d
with a declaration of war . The great drum boomed a thunderou s
summons, the tribesmen assembled, and after a secret council (cabine t
meeting) and a larger council of nobles and headmen (joint sessio n
of congress) the decision was taken and the feast began . To thudding
drums, the whine of Panpipes and flutes, the deep bray of conc h
shells, and the clatter of maracas, the tequina chanted an accoun t
of the matter, reporting to the rank and file the action to be taken .
Chicha flowed, torches fiared against the darkness, while hour after
hour a circle of men, arms locked across each other's shoulders ,
shuffíed and stamped a battle dance . The chants turned to sagas o f
tribal glories and forecasts of coming triumphs, tired priests wer e
relieved by assistants, dancers dropped out overcome with beer an d
fatigue and were replaced by fresher men, but not until the sky flushe d
over the forest and the sun-god appeared did the feast end . Later i n
the day the old men who had been delegated to stay sober and kee p
the minutes briefed the more active participante, whose memory of th e
decisions arrived at was understandably hazy .
Any Indian considered unnecessary labor silly, but it is obvious that
lile was not all feasts and jolly funerals . Girls were early taught to
cook, to draw maho fiber, to grind meal, to spin thread and dye th e
skeins, to make wine and chicha. It was the women's business to mix
thyl for tattooing, red bixio and dark blue xagua for body paint, and
to decorate their male relations with becoming designs . On the march ,
women carried the loads, usually slung from either end of a shoulde r
pole, and women did the planting and harvesting . All in all, one
wonders how those pleasure-loving girls found time or strength for
anything but duty. The men provided game and fish for the pot ;
cleared, burned off, and turned the land for sowing ; made canoes ,
tools and weapons ; built the houses ; fashioned utensils and ornamenta ;
made camp and set up the hammocks which their wives had packe d
all day .
They did a little gold-working, but their choicest pieces wer e
imported—some from Urabá, more from Dabaibe ; the bracelets an d
114
leg bands of gold, pearls, and colored stones carne from the Pacifi c
coast. The provenance of the magnificently executed gold-plated ob-
jects which so intrigued the colonists is not stated, and the secret o f
their manufacture without mercury has only recently been discovered . 1
The Spaniards, who loathed manual work themselves, complaine d
bitterly of the Indians' light-minded preference for games and amuse-
ment over slave labor under a Spanish master, but they say little as t o
what the games were . One consisted of a sham battle with Gane staves
which was real enough to leave wounded and even dead on the fiel d
and which was the pedestrian counterpart of the favorite Castilia n
sport called cañas. No doubt Cuevans played that almost universa l
game with disks of clay, the principle of which is a kind of cros s
between horseshoe pitching and bowls . Target practice and shootin g
contests were both instructive and diverting, and a drive for deer o r
even a day's fishing (shared by the women and children) becam e
agreeable picnics . In fact the gregarious Indians had the knack of
turning work into pastime, thanks to a habit expressed by "Let' s
make . . ." instead of "I must make . . . "
There appears to have been little or no use of violent intoxican t
drugs in Cueva, and one finds no mention of frenzies resulting fro m
such things as datura, toluachi, or peyotl . They chewed coca, of course ,
to alleviate fatigue and hunger—toasted, with a little lime from pow-
dered shells to bring out the alkaloid . They occasionally put them-
selves to sleep with aromatic fumes of guaymaro burnt on the famil y
hearth, which gave off a smell that the Spaniards found worse tha n
any insomnia, and very rarely they took narcotice to induce visions .
And, of course, they used tobacco .
A quiet smoker in Cueva was such an odd proceeding, involving th e
maximum of trouble with the minimum of result, that one wonder s
how the Indians evolved it . Only one of the company actually handle d
the tobacco (called by them cohiba), which was rolled into a thick
cheroot some three feet long and "as thick as a man 's wrist ." The host
lighted one end of this cigar-to-end-all-cigars, damped the next sectio n
to prevent it from consuming too quickly, and then inserted the
burning end finto his mouth . At the same time he puffed the smoke into
the faces of his expectant friends, who cupped their hands about thei r
mouths to receive it . This remarkable trick must have required long
115
and painful practice, but it was common to many tribes . For that
matter, in certain out-of-the-way parts of Colombia cheroots are stil l
smoked lighted end inwards, although the effete moderns do no t
attempt to manage one as big as a baseball bat, blowing outward th e
while .
The Cuevans had no writing of any kind . The pieces of paper (or ,
lacking paper, caney leaves) with signs on them which the white me n
sent to one another were clearly magic ; it was the paper itself that
talked—how else could a man in Darién know what had happened i n
Careta, though he had never moved from his own house? Moreover ,
it was probable that the enchanted papers could make it very uncom-
fortable for anyone who treated them ill or delayed them on the way ;
couriers traveled fast and carried them tenderly, just in case . No doubt
the missives could talk also to Indians if they chose, but the chief who
tried to start a conversation with one reported that it was arrogan t
and uncommunicative .
Nothing is told of a calendar or method of counting, although it i s
possible that a system noted near the Pacific coast many years later ,
while not in the Cuevan tongue, had its counterpart in Cueva . Cum-
bersome but logical, it proceeded by tens ; eleven was "ten one, "
twelve was "ten two, " and so on . By the time the count reached, say ,
thirty-six, one had to say "tula boguah anivego indricah," accompany-
ing the words with three sharp hand-claps, one for each ten, and a fin-
ger tally for each unit above that . It is not surprising to learn that th e
average Indian could handle only modest numbers, and that a maxi-
mum of one hundred was attained only by gifted mathematicians . An y
large quantity was expressed by taking a lock of hair and shaking it ;
the bigger the lock, the greater the number .
With true Hamitic perversity the Indians did not embrace th e
doctrines of Christianity with the convinced fervor they should have
displayed . Could it have been because the methods and manners o f
the Spaniards were unpersuasive? Oviedo, who was not above slave-
driving, execution, and grave-robbing himself, remarks reprovingl y
that he never saw a perfect Christian among the Indians, "thoug h
they had acquaintance and knowledge of Christians . "
Indeed, a great many of the habits of the white God's follower s
shocked the natives intensely . War, slavery, torture, loot, amputatio n
116
as punishment—there Spanish customs were like their own, and in
themselves quite admissible . But the Spaniards were without modera-
tion . They took too much ; they ill-treated their slaves ; they waged war
on people who had never offended them, and, fewer in numbers tha n
a Cuevan subtribe, laid claim to limitless territory that they had neve r
seen and could not use ; they were insatiable in victory and in venge-
ance . They were crude as well as greedy, destroying in their furnace s
the golden objects wrought patiently to beauty ; they quarreled amon g
themselves . Finally—and this was almost their most damning trait-
they spoke falsely and broke their promises . (Casas tells with patent
glee of one Indian who declared : "Yes, I am already something of a
Christian because 1 can lie a little ; soon I will know how to lie a lo t
and be very much a Christian ." )
The conquistadores claimed that the Indians could die at will ,
merely by making up their minds to it, and that they frequently did s o
out of sheer spite just to inconvenience their Spanish masters . Th e
thing is quite possible ; it cannot have required much will power to
leave the kind of life endured by most of the enslaved . Left to them-
selves, however, they were long-lived . One may discount the late r
statement that "the people here live to 150 and 160 years of age" —
the author, a Scot who obviously lacked the caution of his race, als o
remarked that the Indians were "five or six feet high"—but it seems
to be true that a woman was found near San Blas who had six genera-
tions of living descendants . Asked the eternal question : To what did
she attribute her great age? she replied succinctly : To keeping away
from liquor and Christians .
The crone was doubtless right, and the Christians might hav e
profited by a similar policy with regard to the natives, for each ha d
secret weapons which neither could control . Syphilis, which among
the Indians seems to have been an aflliction about on a level with
sinus trouble, ravaged the unaceustomed Europeans : " . . . out of a
hundred men, only one escaped—if the other party did not have it, "
Casas says . The incidence was not, of course, as high as all that, or
even the semi-immunized Indians would have shown more of its ef-
fects . Also, it must be remembered that there were native prostitutes in
the Indian villages called in Cueva yracha, a pluralized form of yra ,
woman (indicating not several women but one who was, so to speak ,
117
a woman many times over), and no doubt the girls offered by hos-
pitable chiefs to Spanish soldiers were often yrachas . The nativ e
remedy for the ill was made from guayacán (lignum vitae), an d
adopted by the Spaniards under the name of palo santo it soon becam e
a stand-by in European pharmaceutics . The rapidity with which th e
new disease spread in the Old World can be judged by the fact tha t
one Juan Gonsalvo, who started shipping palo santo to Europe i n
1508, made a fortune of three million gold fíorins from the trade .
In exchange for the pallid spirochete and other infirmities prope r
to the Indies, the Spaniards brought their own maladies, against whic h
the Indians had no inherited resistance . What are known as children' s
diseases mowed them down in swathes, and smallpox all but wiped ou t
whole populations . The conquerors destroyed the natives by what the y
euphemistically called "pacification" and by pitiless forced labor, bu t
it is doubtful if any of their voluntary methods were as deadly as th e
sicknesses they transmitted .

These, then, were the Indians of Cueva : a handsome, cheerfu l

people, skillful to make the country serve them, brave against familiar
dangers, given to hospitality, kind and quick to laughter . ("A poo r
naked people contented with their fate .") Neither their simple virtue s
nor their unforgiving hostility once they had been goaded to hatre d
could save them from the white men's cruelty . They were doomed
because they were not quite poor enough or savage enough, an d
because their lands lay across the path of conquest . Any survival wa s
through absorption by the Cunas, who succeeded them—the Cuna s
who resembled them in so many ways, but who, luckier and mor e
adaptable than they, learned to be dangerous while still on the fring e
of the exploited region, and moved into Cueva when it no longe r
mattered to the conquistadores .
Perhaps the Cuevans did not matter either ; their culture was a smal l
thing to lose compared to the civilizations of Mexico and Peru an d
Yucatán . But they deserved to live . One wonders if the missionar y
friars told them that the true God marks every sparrow's fall, an d
what they thought of it .

118
 XI
THE tide of prosperity and good luck on which Santa María de l
Antigua had ridden for eight months turned at the end of Novembe r
1511 . There was a particularly heavy storm ; the streams, swollen by
three months of rain, overflowed their banks, and when the water s
went down all that was left of the ripening fields—planted, of necessity ,
at the wrong season—was a soggy waste of mud and twisted corn-
stalks .
The colonists were caught off base . They had not thought it neces-
sary to hoard the provisions brought by Valdivia ; the harvest woul d
soon be ready and they had Colón's promise of ample supplies t o
come . Colón, however, had done nothing whatever to carry out hi s
obligations, and by December the shadow of hunger lay once mor e
over the settlement. Balboa determined to send Valdivia again to His-
paniola . This time the procurador would carry the King's quinto, an d
with it the news of the Other Ocean—together, enough to persuade
the most tepid bureaucrats that Darién (and Vasco Núñez) were
worth cultivating with more than phrases . Sure of his ground, Balbo a
asked for five hundred or a thousand men, veterans from Hispaniola
trained to frontier action, and as much as possible in the way o f
ammunition, arms, and provisions . He also dispatched a transcript o f
the proceedings against Enciso, probably with the idea of spiking an y
attempt on the lawyer' s part to return now that prospects were brigh t
in the colony .
The royal fifth, being in this case a fourth, carne to 15,000 pesos .
It was "good gold, " and 150 pounds of it could hardly have failed
to arouse the kindliest feeling in every official breast—had it eve r
arrived . But not one grain of it reached the royal treasury .
Valdivia set out from Darién on January 13, 1512 . With him ,
besides the crew, went a Franciscan friar named Gerónimo de Aguila r
and two unnamed Spanish women . Since Valdivia carried, in addition
to the quinto, a heavy consignment of private gold from various vecinos ,
his litúe vessel was beyond doubt the richest ship that sailed th e
119
Ocean Sea .' It was wrecked some hundreds of miles north of Urabá,
on the reefs known as the Vipers . The survivors crowded into the
lifeboat, and after thirteen dreadful days were deposited by th e
current on the coast of Yucatán, where they were promptly capture d
by the Indians . It was a year before Vasco Núñez learned that bis
envoy had never arrived in Hispaniola, and longer still before th e
authorities in Santo Domingo and Castile knew that a treasure shi p
had been sent from Santa María . When this information did reac h
the King and the Casa, it was given to them so overlaid with virulen t
accusations against Balboa that much of its good effect was nullified .
The informants had jumped to the conclusion that some wreckag e
seen in Cuba was that of Valdivia's ship, and it was not until 151 9
that the whole story was known .
In February of 1519, Hernán Cortés sailed from Cuba fo r
Mexico . Two years before, Francisco de Córdoba had brought bac k
from Yucatán a tale of Indians who hailed the Spaniards : "Castilán,
Castilán," and although Grijalba, coasting from southeastern Yucatá n
all the way to Tampico the following year, found no trace of Chris-
tians, Cortés was instructed to search further. His first stop was at the
island of Cozumel, near the top of the peninsula, where he learne d
that there were indeed "bearded men" living not far away . They coul d
be reached from the coast "in a matter of two suns' journey, " an d
they had been serving native masters for leven years .
Cortés wrote all about it to the King and Queen : how he sent som e
Indians to the mainland with a letter for the castaways, and three day s
later two bergantines, "on account of the coast being very dangerous ,
as it is," for larger vessels ; how after waiting six days (at Punta d e
Catoche) the bergantines returned without news, and how he deter-
mined to go in person with his whole fleet, regardless of danger— a
debatable decision—and was providentially prevented by bad weathe r
when actually under way . "That contrary weather," Cortés wrote ,
"was held among us, and truly, to be a very great mystery and miracle
of God" —for the next day a canoe under sail reached the island ,
and in it was Fray Gerónimo de Aguilar, onetime of Santa María del
Antigua del Darién .
Fray Gerónimo did not look like a Franciscan, or for that matter
like a Spaniard, and he had almost forgotten how to behave like one .
120
As he carne ashore, his paddle over his shoulder, one sandal tucke d
into the hand of his breechclout, he was not recognized as a Europea n
until he stammered words in his half-forgotten mother tongue : "God
and Holy Mary and Seville! " The commander was notified, but when
Cortés looked at him he saw only a native branded as a clave, an d
asked what had become of the Spaniard . " And the Spaniard, hearing
him, squatted down as the Indians do and said, `I am he ." '
Aguilar had been found by Cortés' native messengers in the house
of Chief Taxmar of Xamanzana, not far from Punta de Catoche .
He was a captive, but a favored one ; according to Herrera, his posi-
tion was approximately that of chief eunuch . This was the direc t
reward of virtue . The friar's continence, at first regarded with incredu -
lous suspicion, had been subjected to tests which would have strained
the well-known resistance of St . Anthony ; it had emerged triumphant ,
and the chief, delighted to find the right man for an exacting job ,
had made him Keeper of the Household and Harem. Reluctant to los e
a servant who might well be irreplaceable, Taxmar had at first ob-
jected to releasing Aguilar, but in the end the parting had bee n
amicable, and Fray Gerónimo had proceeded to the neighboring stat e
of Chetemal to give the glad news of deliverance to a fellow castaway ,
a sailor of Palos named Gonzalo Guerrero . More adaptable than the
celibate friar, Guerrero was living in complete content with a Mayan
wife and family : equally successful, he had been made war captain t o
Nachantán, Lord of Chetemal . He firmly refused to be rescued .
"Brother Aguilar," he said comfortably, "I am married ; I have
three children ; I am considered a chief and a captain in time of war .
Go you with God ; I have my face tattooed and my ears pierced . . .
what would the Spaniards say to see me thus? And you see my thre e
little sons, how pretty they are! I beg of you, give me for them com e
of those green beads that you carry, and I will say that my brothers
sent them to me from my own land . "
Guerrero's wife ("a rich lady" ) was more outspoken . One gathers
that if enaguas had strings, the sailor was tied to hers .
"Well, look at this slave who comes to summon my husband!" sh e
cried in anxious fury . "Go away, you, and don't try any more of thi s
talk! "
The fate of the other survivors of Valdivia's ship is told in stron g
121
colors by several of the chroniclers . Seven or eight of those in the life-
boat had died before reaching land ; three, Valdivia among them ,
had been offered as sacrifices to the Mayan gods and been eaten
afterwards in a ritual feast . Aguilar and six others had escaped fro m
the pen in which they were confined and had found refuge with othe r
chiefs, thus saving themselves from a culinary end, but they had all,
with the exception of Guerrero and the friar, succumbed thereafter t o
disease or exhaustion . The story is artistically satisfying ; but it should
be noted that Cortés, in his contemporary report, is silent abou t
anthropophagal rites and says only that Aguilar's companions were s o
widely scattered throughout the interior that their rescue was no t
feasible .

Vasco Núñez never knew what happened to his old friend Valdivia .
Two months before Aguilar told the story to Cortés, Balboa ' s headless
body had been laid in an unmarked grave in Acla . But that was i n
1519 ; in 1512, when Valdivia sailed from Santa María del Antigua ,
the hungry but hopeful colonists saw the future as desert wanderer s
see the promised land : luxuriant, kind, and peculiarly their own .
Meanwhile, there was no point in hanging about the settlement ,
"eating the air on promise of supply. " If the lords of the Other Se a
could not be faced without reinforcements, there were regions more a t
hand as yet unexplored : those lying south of Darién . The colonists
had undoubtedly heard enough about them from the Indians in the
settlement to know that an expedition there would not be comfortable ,
but since information provided by the natives was always colored b y
an urgent desire to persuade the white men to go somewhere else, i t
is probable that no one realized how arduous an undertaking it woul d
prove to be. On the other hand, Balboa may have felt that anythin g
was better than trying to keep all the settlers, idle and short-rationed ,
in harmony at home . He organized a force of a hundred and sixt y
men, appointed Rodrigo de Colmenares his second-in-command, an d
with a bergantín and a small flotilla of canoes set out about the middl e
of March .
The date of the expedition has been frequently misplaced, appar-
ently because Oviedo says (in another context) that Balboa first sa w
the Atrato on St . John's day, June 24, 15 10 . Since this is impossible
122
in June of 1510 Balboa had not yet left Hispaniola—it has bee n
assumed that Oviedo meant to write " 1512" and that the amende d
date marks not only Balboa's first sight of the great river but also th e
start of the entrada . The first of there suppositions may very well b e
true ; the last is an error . Padre Sánchez, who accompanied th e
expedition, declared in a sworn deposition that it lasted for seve n
months, and although he carne back with the rear guard, he was i n
Santa María by early October .
Another misconception has led the exploring campaign to be labele d
"the Dabaibe Expedition . "
In succeeding years an El Dorado-like legend grew up among th e
Spaniards about the golden city of Dabaibe : a strong and glittering
place of palaces and treasures east of the Atrato, where a tutelar y
mother-goddess was worshiped in a temple of fabulous splendor .
Martyr, evidently fascinated by the subject, is a mine of fact, fancy ,
and general confusion about it, and the information regarding i t
which is scattered through his "Decade s" is warranted to entertain and
mislead . The germ of the seductive myth can be found in Balboa' s
report to the King of January 1513, where, however, it is no more tha n
a résumé of data obtained on the expedition concerning a particularl y
prosperous village at the foot of the Cordillera on the Río Sucio . It
has been assumed that Dabaibe—the visionary city rather than th e
real village—was the lure which drew the colonists to explore south-
ward . But as Balboa himself makes perfectly clear, the place mean t
nothing to them before they started . Indeed, it is only on this basis that
the entrada makes any sense : Balboa did not go to Dabaibe ; what i s
more, he did not try to do so .
So far as any record shows, the colonists until this time had see n
no more of the Gulf of Urabá than had been revealed in crossin g
from San Sebastián to Darién . They knew, of course, that there
was a Great River ; they had confirmation of the existente of rich
mines in the country to the south (the "mines of Urabá, " which, it
developed, were a long way from the land of the Urabaes), bu t
Hojeda's abortive attempt to reach them had been the last in tha t
direction . They now proposed to find out what the Gulf was like ,
what profit they could wrest from its bordering chiefdoms, and how-
or whether—they could get to the gold country .
123
 Not all Caribbean bays and gulfs are scenic havens painted in gree n
and sapphire . The Gulf of Urabá has moments of beauty, but mostl y
it is a drab expanse, brazen in the sun or dreary in lashing rain . Two
thirds of its shore is swamp blanketed with mangroves and vegetabl e
debris . It affords poor shelter from the trade winds and is subject t o
miniature hurricanes off the land known as chocosanas; its entrante i s
made dangerous by incompletely charted shoals and submerged reefs ;
its surface is strewn with drift . The expedition eventually landed on th e
eastern side near the head of the Gulf, almost the only bit of relatively
solid shore not dominated by the malevolent Urabaes .
From here Balboa passed to Ceracana, a Cuna province, whos e
chief, Abraibe, lived about twenty-five miles from the Gulf on th e
river now called León . Ceracana appears to have extended from th e
Atrato east to the base of the Sierra de Abibe and south as far as th e
Río Sucio . A soggy, miasmic region, for the most part quite unhabit-
able, its main product was fish. It was not, however, as indigent a s
might be imagined. The Spaniards found the capital village deserted
(thanks to a timely warning from the still unreconciled Cemaco), bu t
in rummaging through the houses they found seven thousand pesos o f
guanines, which they appropriated together with some of the larg e
canoes called uru and a quantity of baskets and fishing nets . These las t
were particularly well made, and there were so many of them tha t
Balboa named the river the Río de las Redes—the River of Nets .
It is not known how long the expeditionaries spent on the River
of Nets, or how far they went, or whether the entire force took part
in the exploration . At some point Balboa divided his company, leaving
a third of the men with Colmenares, but it is impossible to say wit h
certainty when this was done, or what Colmenares' activities wer e
during the time he was on his own . Martyr, whose newsletter accoun t
of the expedition was based on what Colmenares told him in 1513 ,
was somewhat confused (which, considering his ignorante of Tierr a
Firme and his informant's penchant for doctoring reports, is not sur-
prising), and subsequent versions have been largely and often care-
lessly based on Martyr . As a result, Colmenares is variously said to
have been : (a) the true discoverer of the Río León, and (b) absen t
from this exploration because engaged in an independent trip up th e
Atrato . A study of the sources, however, seems to establish that Col-
124
menares took part in the trip up the León ; that while Balboa inter-
rupted his entrada to return briefly to Santa María, he led a compan y
by land "toward the mountains of the eastern coast [of the Gulf]" ; an d
that when the two were again united, it was in Urabaibe at the villag e
of a chief called Turvi—in other words, at or about the present Turbo .
Balboa's purpose in returning to Darién was to deposit the loo t
taken in Ceracana and to check on what was happening in the settle-
ment . The decision was obviously wise, but it turned out to be unfortu-
nate . As the canocs put out into the Gulf they were caught in a sud -
den violent storm ; "everyone thought to be drowned, but by divine
dispensation, Providence did not will that more than those who went i n
the cave that carried the 7000 pesos should perish, and thus neither
the gold nor these men were seen again ." (Casas always saw an d
applauded the hand of God in the disasters which befell the con-
quistadores . )
Finding that nothing of moment, either good or bad, had occurre d
in Darién, Balboa set out for the second part of his program . Picking
up Colmenares and his detachment at Turvi, he proceeded to explora-
tion of the Atrato . If this was when he christened the river in hono r
of St . John, it was the twenty-fourth of June when the expeditio n
passed through the delta channels to see its four-mile-wide ope n
reaches . The name San Juan did not endure—after Pedrarias carne
everything which recalled Balboa's achievements was blotted out i f
possible—and for a long time the Spaniards referred to it as the Grea t
River of Darién, but the best name for it was one of several used b y
the Indians : (T)Ata-dó, the Grandfather Water .
The Atrato is a slow-moving, majestic river, fourth largest i n
volume of South America, and is described (by the U . S . Hydro-
graphic Office) as "resembling the lower Mississippi in its grandeur o f
proportion, its long reaches, its width . . . and its great depth . "
Eminently navigable, its silted mouths have been allowed to remai n
so for the reason that its immediate environs offer so little to navigat e
to or from . The Atrato Valley is not only hot, rank, and walled off
from the interior by the tremendous Cordillera Occidental of th e
Andes, it is also one of the wettest spots on earth . It is wet because th e
rainfall averages about four hundred inches a year, and because th e
whole lower basin, where the fall in elevation is only one in twelv e
125
thousand, is a waterlogged maze of streams, bayous, and overgrow n
morasses . At best, there are few places below the middle river wher e
a landing is possible . At frequent worst, the Atrato overflows for mile s
on either side ; the morasses become lagoons and the lagoons spreadin g
lakes, and the observer has the haunting impression that the smalles t
earth movement would send the sea crowding inland to turn th e
Isthmus once more into a grotesque peninsula .
In spite of the difficulties, Balboa seems to have surveyed the coun-
try with care . There is a ring of first-hand knowledge painfully ac-
quired in his letter to the King of the following January : "Going by
land, it is necessary to march three leagues away from the river, and a t
times five or eight . . . one can manage to embark on the rive r
occasionally by some estuaries that flow into it, which one canno t
do at the main river because the area around it is under water, but th e
nearest place one can embark by the estuaries is half a league distant . "
And, lest Fernando should fail to realize what these aquatic marche s
implied, "Your Royal Highness must not suppose that the swamp s
of this land are so easy that we idled pleasantly through them, becaus e
it often happened that we went a league, and two, and three in bog s
and water, naked, with our clothes bundled together on bucklers o n
top of our heads ; and, having emerged from one swamp we entere d
into others, and in this manner marched two or three or ten days . "
Some eighty miles from the Gulf the explorers carne to a larg e
river which enters the Atrato from the southeast . It is now called th e
Río Sucio (the Dirty River), but Balboa, who thought it very beauti-
ful, named it in more genteel fashion, Río Negro . Camp was made on
an island formed by the branching waterways around the river junc-
tion . 2 The island was well grown with cañaf ístula trees, and the com-
pañeros, flinging themselves on the fruit with the brief enthusiasm o f
ignorance, learned the hard way that this variety of cañafístula is
purgative . "Their guts dissolved away," Casas says succinctly, and the y
thought to die ignominiously on the spot .
Having recovered from this shattering experience, the purifie d
expeditionaries were ready for an essay in conquest . Dabaibe coul d
have been reached in two or three days up the Río Sucio, but the y
were not yet interested in Dabaibe . 3 Instead, they advanced on a
province which lay on the west bank of the Atrato, almost opposit e
126
the island, whose ruler was called Abanumaque. The capital of
Abanumaque was more a district than a village, consisting of fiv e
hundred or more houses in widely separated groups, but it offere d
little resistance . The Indians took flight, were pursued, turned at bay ,
and were quickly defeated . Someone lopped an arm off the chief ,
which angered Balboa, but the victim survived the amputation an d
contrived to make his escape . Less determined or less agile, the chief' s
son was captured, and was later taken to Santa María . The beate n
Indians were either very poor or very clever, for the Spaniards coul d
find no treasure in their village . As usual, however, there was plenty
of information about gold elsewhere, and Balboa decided to go a
little farther in search of it .
Leaving half his men in Abanumaque, he went on up the Atrat o
with the rest of the expeditionaries, guided by one of his recen t
captives . Some forty miles farther on, the guide turned them into a
tributary river, and after a short distante pointed out the village o f
Abibaibe .
Most of the delta and river Indians had some cropland well back o n
high ground, but they built their villages in the swampy bottoms ,
preferably where there were close-growing palms which could b e
trimmed off to make firm foundation columns twenty or thirty feet tall .
In Abibaibe, perhaps because of a scarcity of palms, the natives were
tree dwellers . They had selected as the site of their capital a piece o f
semidry land at a fork of the river, where some giant trees lent them-
selves to the purpose, and built their houses solidly on beams lai d
across the branches . Many of the airy bohíos were large structure s
partitioned into several rooms, and all had attached storerooms wher e
everything except wine could be kept in easy reach . (Wine, it appears ,
became turbid when the wind swayed the trees, and so was stored at
ground level as in cellars .) When the river was high, the canoes wer e
moored to the family tree with all the conveniente of a basemen t
garage . The houses were reached by rudimentary ladders formed o f
lianas, a pair for each dwelling to allow for two-way traffic, and th e
easy, simian grace with which a woman carrying a baby could swar m
up to her front door was "something to see . "
Abibaibe was won with axes . The inhabitants had retreated to their
homes and drawn the ladders up after them, and a preliminary parle y
127
with them had ended in a stalemate . Balboa peered upward, urgin g
the chief to come down and be friends ; the chief peered from his tre e
and begged the strangers to go away and leave him in peace . Th e
Spaniards became threatening ; the Indians, who felt entirely safe ,
were defiant . At last the order was given to cut down the trees . When
the chief saw how the Spanish steel bit into the foundation of hi s
refuge, "he changed his mind and descended, accompanied by his tw o
sons, and they proceeded to argue about peace and gold . "
Chief Abibaibe declared that he was not interested in gold himself,
and thus never had bothered to collect any, but he was quite willin g
to tell where it could be obtained . From him Balboa got most of th e
astonishingly accurate information on the topography and mines o f
the Cordillera, and on the chiefdom of Dabaibe, which later blos-
somed lavishly into the legend of a golden city . Abibaibe adde d
that he was afflicted by some " vary carib " neighbors who were ex-
tremely rich, and suggested hopefully that the Spaniards go and wip e
out these undesirables ; he, meanwhile, would make a trip to the
mountains and bring back a tribute of gold . Neither of these project s
was carried out . The chief departed and was thereafter seen no more ,
and Balboa, after going a little farther upriver and finding only empty
houses, returned to Abanumaque .
As Balboa later remarked when pointing out his merits to the King ,
something always went wrong when he was not in personal command .
The garrison in Abanumaque had got into trouble during his absence .
Discipline had been lax ; the men had been allowed to go off raidin g
on their own, and one party of ten led by a certain Raya had com e
upon Chief Abraibe and been soundly trounced . Raya and two other s
had been killed .4 This was bad, but the real gravity of the incident wa s
its effect on the river Indians, who until then had been more or les s
paralyzed by the belief that the Spaniards were invincible . It no w
appeared that the strangers, for all their strength and arrogante, fo r
all their weapons that shouted death, were vulnerable as other men .
The word spread, and was to pass from generation to generation ;
thereafter the Atrato was a death trap for Christians .
The first sequel was a mass attack on the garrison, organized by
Abraibe, Abanumaque, and Abibaibe . Abraibe, still smarting from th e
loss of seven thousand pesos of gold and elated at having polished of f
128
Raya, was the moving spirit ; his plan was to fall on the camp befor e
Balboa could return from his foray upriver . Casas, who could neve r
resist a chance to adorn a tale when he could thereby point a moral ,
and who was leaning heavily on Martyr's account, written in Latin ,
here gives way to fictional quotes :
"What misfortune is this, brothers, that has come upon us and our
houses? " Abraibe declaims . "What have we done to these people wh o
eall themselves Christians—which we do not admit—that they shoul d
thus alarm and aflíict us, who live in peace and tranquillity withou t
offending them or anyone else? Until when must we endure the eruelt y
of these men who so perniciously ill-treat and persecute us? Would i t
not be less dolorous to die once than to suffer what you, Abibaibe, an d
you, Abanumaque, and what Cemaco and Careta and Ponca and al l
the other kings and lords of this our land have suffered from thes e
cruel people, and have wept over with such grief? "
Casas gives a good deal more of this silver rhetoric, all packed with
social significante . Abraibe certainly did not deliver it—not, at least ,
in the language of a papal prothonotary or a crusading Castilian
bishop—but whatever he did say was effective . The outcome was that
five or six hundred painted warriors, naked and yelling, rushed the
Spanish camp in the dawn . The garrison, however, had been jolte d
into watchfulness, and by happy coincidente had been reinforced th e
day before with a troop of thirty men sent ahead by Balboa . Th e
Indians were routed so completely that Balboa' s irritation on learnin g
of the Raya incident was tempered by the belief that native resistanc e
had been broken . He wanted to leave a permanent post in Abanu-
maque as a base for future operations, and if he could not hav e
friendly Indians about it, the next best thing was to have defeated ones .
The future operations were to be based on data gathered fro m
Abibaibe and confirmed by other Indians whom Balboa had induce d
to talk by various methods, "some by torture, others for love, an d
others by giving them things of Castile . " The information thus ex-
tracted was almost as enticing as that on the Other Sea .
Dabaibe, it was learned, was the chief of a large and populou s
country in the foothills of the Cordillera, whose capital was two days '
journey by canoe up the Río Sucio . He was almost incredibly rich, not
because he had mines of his own, but because he had established a
129
near monopoly on manufactured gold . He drove a thriving two-way
trade ; bartering skillfully fashioned guanines for the textiles, salt, fish ,
and other products of the coast, and exchanging a part of this mer-
chandise, plus tasty young lads for eating, good-looking girls (not fo r
eating), and wrought gold, for raw metals from the mines of th e
Cordillera. His smelter and his hundred craftsmen were never idle,
and hundreds of pounds of dust and nuggets were laid up in his
strong-house . Dabaib e' s sources of supply, Balboa told the King, wer e
in a range of mountains, "apparently the loftiest in the world," which
began about twenty leagues inland from Caribana and ran southward ,
no one knew how far . The slopes above Dabaibe were heavily for-
ested, but those beyond the cloud-hung crests were open, even bare ,
and ¡t was there, high up towards the summit where "the sun strike s
them in rising," that the mines were located. " According to the
information I have," Balboa wrote, "these mines are the richest in
the world ." He added that they were owned and exploited by "a very
carib and evil people who cat as many men as they can get . " This was
fact-finding at its best ; the wealth of Dabaibe may have been over-
estimated (no one was ever able to verify it), but the mountains, th e
mines, and the cannibals were all as described .
Bartolomé Hurtado was appointed commandant of the camp i n
Abanumaque, and thirty ¡ron-souled compañeros agreed to stay wit h
hico—plus Father Sánchez, who stayed, but without any appreciabl e
conviction . Thirty men were not many for the job in hand, but eve n
this meager force was soon sharply cut . A few weeks after Balboa ha d
left, twenty-one of them, "who were sick or something," got permis-
sion to go back to Darién . Hurtado, with nine durable and indomi-
table companions, remained to keep the standard of Castile fiying over
a savage wilderness inhabited by ten or fifteen thousand hostile natives .
The twenty-one sick-or-something compañeros, with twenty-fiv e
captive Indians, crowded into one big canoe and bowled happil y
downstream—but not for long . Their enemies were waiting ; paddlin g
out from hiding in the half-submerged tangle of vegetation that edge d
the river, they attacked the canoe from all sides . The Indians were
usually hopelessly outclassed on land, but on the water the odds were
reversed : the Spaniards, wedged in their unstable craft, could no t
fight, and when pitched into the river most of them could not swim .
130
Only two escaped, clinging to some driftwood and camoufiaging them-
selves with branches ; miraculously, they managed to struggle back t o
Abanumaque with news of the disaster .
Hurtado was not easily shaken, but even he could see that it wa s
a good time to leave the Atrato . The departure was spurred whe n
inquiry (of a somewhat forceful nature) disclosed that the river
chiefs were consolidating their alliance with the idea of killing ever y
white man in Tierra Firme . Twelve battered soldiers and an unhappy
priest, they girded themselves to make a run for the settlement . Th e
Indians let them alone, by accident rather than design, and a few day s
later they reached Santa María del Antigua. The first expedition t o
the Big River was over .
The entrada had closed in deficit, with little to show for seve n
difficult months and thirty or more lives spent in its accomplishment .
Balboa had, it is true, achieved the goal of most explorers : ample
information about a potentially valuable country . But it was hard t o
say how, or when, he would be able to profit by his knowledge . For in
the last months of 1512 Darién was in worse case than at any time
since the settlement had been founded.

XII
SANTA MARÍA DEL ANTIGUA skirted the cold edge of annihila-
tion in October of 1512, and brushed by unscathed .
The allied chiefs who had sworn to destroy the colony—Cemaco ,
Abraibe, Abanumaque, and Abibaibe—had planned their campaig n
with care . According to one source, they had five thousand warrior s
and a hundred large canoes, with which they proposed to launch a
concerted attack on the settlement by land and sea . The role of each
war captain was assigned, a supply base was established at a plac e
called Tichirí, and even the division of the prospective spoils wa s
precisely laid down . Had they struck at once, they could hardly have
missed success . They delayed in the belief that no odds were sure s o
long as Balboa was in command of the colony—an eloquent tribute
131
and on Cemaco's advice determined to eliminate the white tibá befor e
moving on Santa María . To this end Cemaco sent forty of his subjects
to the settlement, disguised as voluntary laborers, instructing them t o
lure Balboa to the fields to inspect the crops, and there assassinat e
him . The rest, it was felt, would be easy .
The scheme worked up to a point ; no one questioned the fifth
column ' s bona fides, and Vasco Núñez was induced to go out alon e
to look at the corn . But when the Indians saw him riding toward the m
they were afraid . Forty picked men, keyed to action and answerable t o
an absolute and angry overlord, convinced that the death of on e
individual would insure their freedom, they yet did not dare to rais e
a hand against him . Balboa rode back untouched, and the chiefs wer e
forced to realize that with all their cautious foresight, they had under-
estimated the intangible power of prestige .
In the end the great rebellion failed before it began—partly fro m
overorganization in the leisurely native fashion, but mostly because o f
Balboa ' s personal charm . In short, because of a girl .
The girl was a slim brown espave, a willing captive in Vasco Núñez '
house, young, pretty, and very much in love . Balboa called her Fulvia ,
and "had so many attentions and so much esteem for her that it was
as if she had been his legitímate wife ." Fulvia had a brother who
adored her, and this brother was one of Cemaco 's vassals . He was in
the habit of stealing into the settlement to visit her, profiting by the
fact that to the Spaniards one Indian looked very Eke another and tha t
a noble without his regalia could pass very well for a naboria . When
the assault on Santa María was imminent, he managed to come an d
warn Fulvia .
"Dearly beloved sister, " he began (in Casas' words), "listen well
to what I am about to tell you, and see that you keep it secret, fo r
on it hang the lives and liberty of us all . . ." An account of th e
plot followed .
Cemaco's jura must have been very young, or he would have know n
his folly . Fulvia was faithful to Balboa, and since the obverse sido o f
ioyalty is betrayal, she promptly told him everything she had learned .
Then, instructed by her lord, she sent for her brother again, saying tha t
she wanted to run away and hide with her own people . The young
man carne, was duly captured, and under pressure revealed everything ,
132
including the responsibility of Cemaco for the attack on the com-
pañeros returning from Abanumaque and for the attempted assassina-
tion of Balboa . Balboa at once marched with seventy men o n
Cemaco ' s village, some ten miles from the settlement, where h e
seized the chief's locum tenens and a number of other Indians, an d
then proceeded to Tichirí, where Colmenares, guided by Fulvia's
unhappy brother, had gone with sixty men in four big canoes . Th e
headman of Tichirí was in charge of the allies ' supply dump, but i n
the belief that the rising was unsuspected he had been given no extr a
troops to defend it. Balboa easily took possession of the place, whil e
Colmenares saw to the execution of the headman and four "officers .
Finding their plot discovered and their supplies gone, the chiefs los t
heart ; the rebellion melted to the sullen peace of impotence, and th e
Spaniards returned to enlarge and strengthen the fort in Santa María
against future danger. l
The Indians had not yet been gathered in battle array, and Balbo a
had moved fast on learning of their project ; nevertheless the almost
unopposed capture of Cemaco's lieutenants and of Tichirí, which coul d
only have been accomplished by coming on them unobserved, is a n
illustration of a frequently renewed. mystery :
How was it that the Spaniards contrived to surprise the natives wit h
such apparent ease? Granted that come baquianos had become verse d
in jungle craft, how could eighty or a hundred compañeros, carrying
awkward weapons, encumbered by armor, accompanied by porters ,
dogs, and at times several horses, march by night over rough an d
unfamiliar terrain to catch the Indians napping in the dawn? At times
they repeated the trick with hall a dozen villages, all within a radius
of twenty-five miles, finding each one wrapped in unguarded slumber .
It is true that the Indians' dogs—or, at any rate, the only dogs o f
which we are told—were barkless . Small ("like little wolves"), shy ,
and affectionate, they were kept solely as pets ; they could give no
alarm and when attacked by the Spanish war mastiffs they died i n
silence . Yet the fact that their dogs were mute does not explain th e
persistent unpreparedness of a people who must have known tha t
they had lost the safety of isolation . Where was that ever-watchful ,
all-seeing-yet-unseen intelligence service of the aborigine, in whic h
we have been taught to believe so implicitly? What about the hidde n
133
scouts, the drums that talk across the hills, the smoke signals, and th e
runners grim with warning? What about the telepathy dear to count-
less travel tales? All these primitive precautions seem to have bee n
lacking, and for years, up and down the Isthmus, the white men con-
tinued to take the somnolent natives unaware .
The concrete threat of an Indian war did no more than highlight a n
already perilous situation . Evidently Colón had no intention of honor-
ing the King's orders or his own pledged word ; the absence of any
reaction to the gold and information sent with Valdivia suggested tha t
they had not reached Hispaniola . To have survived two long years o f
almost utter neglect was a miracle that could not continue indefinitely ;
somehow the outside world must be aroused to save the colony .
Another delegation would have to be sent to Santo Domingo an d
Castile .
There were no seaworthy ships left in Darién, but the settler s
managed to put together a solid clumsy vessel from the better part s
of the two last bergantines, rigged with rope of maho fiber an d
equipped with a stone anchor . In this makeshift craft an embassy ,
driven by the daring that lies along the edge of desperation, woul d
attempt to reach Hispaniola. If successful, it would proceed to report
directly to the King .
This decided, the question of who should represent the colony at
Court became acute. Balboa wanted to go . He felt sure that if he could
talk to the great ones who controlled the Indies he could awaken the m
to enthusiasm . No one knew as much as he about "the secrets of th e
land, " for the sufflcient reason that he had published as litúe a s
possible of what he learned ; no one, certainly, could convey as con-
vincingly the singular merits of that deserving caballero, Vasco Núñe z
de Balboa . The colonists, however, vetoed the suggestion . Some of
them were jealous ; a few were already actively plotting to use th e
eventual emissaries as agents in Balboa's undoing and their own sub-
sequent rise to power . But the majority were honestly afraid to see hi m
leave . Even the recalcitrant compañeros had, as it were in spite o f
themselves, a blind reliance on his ability to keep them, if not rafe, a t
least alive . Whoever went to Castile, it must not be Vasco Núñez .
For some time Santa María rocked with the devious joys of a n
election campaign . The candidacy of Nicuesa's ex-alcalde, Alons o
134
Núñez, was seriously considered, but Núñez had a wife in Madrid ,
and it was felt that he might forget the colony in the renewed pleasure s
of home . Finally it was voted to send Juan de Quicedo, the veedor .
He had the King's ear, he was unfit for active service, he was used t o
the ways of bureaucracy, and he was a baquiano in the discovery an d
trade of the Indies . Furthermore, his wife Doña Inés, that robus t
conquistadora, would stay in the settlement as a guarantee of hi s
return. Meanwhile his office would be filled by Andrés de Val-
darrábano, the royal escribano .
One old man, voyaging in a jerry-built bergantín, was a bad risk :
there must be a second, more vigorous procurador . After more argu-
ment and wire-pulling, Rodrigo de Colmenares secured the commis-
sion . He had a certain standing as Nicuesa's ex-lieutenant, and, as h e
pointed out, deserved consideration from the Crown for his thirtee n
years' service "by land and sea" during the wars in Italy . His interest s
were bound up in the colony, where by Balboa's favor he was rich i n
property and naborias . Balboa had every confidence in him—but so ,
unfortunately, had Balboa's enemies, and with far better reason . Thes e
last, an ambitious clique holding the potential menace of most aggres-
sive minorities, had not yet come into the open, but they appear t o
have reached an understanding with Colmenares before he sailed .
The more obvious turns of history always prick one to wonder wha t
would have happened if . . . What would have happened if Vasc o
Núñez had been able to go to Court? Perhaps the whole inept an d
bloody tragedy of the early exploitation of the Isthmus would hav e
been avoided ; perhaps, confirmed in his command, Balboa would hav e
discovered middle America and Peru, and grown old in honor a s
Viceroy and Marquis of the Farther Indies . On the other hand, o f
course, he might have failed in his mission and retired to provincial
obscurity ; he might never have discovered the Pacific . But history
knows neither hypotheses nor alternatives ; the facts are that Balboa
stayed in Darién and that Quicedo and Colmenares went to Castile —
Colmenares, at least, with the concealed and burning determination t o
supplant his chief as far as possible by whatever means he could find .
The vecinos took up a collection to pay the procuradores ' expenses
and a suitable salary, and at considerably greater sacrifice contribute d
thirteen bushels of corn meal by way of provisions for the voyage .
135
Three hundred gallons of drinking water were stowed in the bergantín ,
which was then taken to the mouth of the estuary . Balboa gave the
envoys his reports, the petitions from the colonists as a body, fiv e
hundred pesos of raw gold from the mines for the King, and his bless-
ing, and watched them embark without other apprehension than fo r
their safety. On October twenty-eighth, with a crew of eleven and three
miserable Indians, Quicedo and Colmenares set their patched sail s
and stood away for Hispaniola . According to Colmenares, they lef t
only a hundred and sixty Spaniards in Darién .
All things considered, the voyage went remarkably well . After the
usual stopover in Macaca, where Chief Comendador's hospitality wa s
still holding out despite the frequent strains to which it was subjected ,
the procuradores made port in Santo Domingo fourteen weeks after
leaving Santa María . Not long after, they were able to get passage wit h
a home-bound armada which reached Spain in early May of 1513 .
Colmenares and Quicedo employed their time and talents to re-
markable effect during the weeks they were in Hispaniola . They con-
vinced Pasamonte that Balboa was an unscrupulous bully who shoul d
be removed from his post with all dispatch—or, at any rate, they con-
vinced him that Balboa should be so presented to the King . The
Treasurer duly wrote to Fernando on these lines, with such apparen t
outrage that His Highness was seriously impressed . Diego Coló n
opposed this offensive against the man he had designated as his lieu-
tenant in Tierra Firme, but Colón was discredited by his own behavio r
and by Pasamonte' s insistence that he was trying to inch his way int o
direct control of the mainland—which was true enough .
The dispatches from Darién and from Santo Domingo, togethe r
with comments and suggestions from the officials of the Casa, were
forwarded to the King from Seville on May nineteenth . They produced
instant results . Fernando was ripe for action on Tierra Firme, an d
while he may have been slightly bewildered by the sudden volte-face
of opinion about Balboa, he could not fail to be disturbed . Before the
procuradores arrived at Court, in the middle of June, he had take n
measures to meet the situation . In fact he had taken more measure s
than they liked, and Colmenares, for one, found his plans for powe r
reduced to the soured dreams of impotent ambition .
Back in Darién, the days that followed the procuradores ' departure
136
were tense and troubled . Hungry men are always difficult, and the
vecinos of Santa María had been hungry for a long time . Raw-nerve d
and miserable, many of the colonists were half persuaded by the rebel
group which was conspiring to overthrow Balboa .
The number of active malcontenta was not large—perhaps ten o r
fifteen all told—but a little positive discontent can leaven a larg e
amount of passive endurance, and as always, there were many fence-
sitters poised to help the winners in a showdown . The ringleaders o f
the conspiracy were the alcaldes and regidores of the settlement, whos e
taste of authority had whetted their appetite : the bachiller Corral, a
certain Alonso Pérez de la Rúa, Luis de Mercado, and Gonzalo d e
Badajoz, plus an unnamed escribano who had been tempted "becaus e
he was poor and young ." Needless to say, the intrigue was decke d
with the trappings of legal forms . Corral, Pérez, and the rest thought
up lurid accusations against Balboa, and the callow notary set the m
down over his seal as the findings of a "secret investigation . "
Diego del Corral, who had come to Darién with Colmenares, who
had shared his hot-and-cold attitude toward Nicuesa, and like him had
remained to enjoy office in the settlement when the Governor ha d
been ejected, was the brains of the faction . Wellborn, trained to the
law, and at this time about thirty years old, he was not physicall y
enterprising ; the nearest approach to an entrada he ever made seem s
to have been an inspection tour just south of Darién in 1522, whe n
he succeeded in provoking a previously peaceful tribe to rebellion .
None of his record is pretty, and some of it is singularly ugly, as whe n
he connived with a hostile native chief against his own countrymen .
His most notable trait was a tireless talent for slander .
It may have been indirectly through this unsavory hidalgo tha t
Vasco Núñez learned of the plot against him . Corral had forgotten
"a poor, honest, and virtuous" wife in Spain for a faseinating youn g
espave from Bea, the delta chiefdom five or six leagues from Sant a
María . He had the girl baptized, named her Elvira, and lived unde r
her slim brown thumb for twelve years . No doubt those two classically
christened favorites, Fulvia and Elvira, often met to gossip and com-
pare notes, and as we have seen, Fulvia kept Balboa well informed .
Vasco Núñez, "all his faults observed, set in a notebook, learn' d
and conn'd by rote," was the prime objective, but the rebels' firs t
137
overt move was an attempt to seize Bartolomé Hurtado, the alguacil .
Hurtado was Balboa's friend as well as chief constable of the colony ,
and it was good tactics to get him out of the way ; besides, Pérez de la
Rúa had conceived for him a special antipathy . Balboa, warned o f
the scheme, moved first and clapped Pérez in jail, whereupon the othe r
conspirators rushed to arms and sallied forth to free their companion .
The colony jail was at that time a stout wooden cage set up in th e
middle of the plaza . When the rebels reached the square, they foun d
the way barred by Balboa and a company of loyal followers, and a s
the two angry groups confronted each other the fate of the settlemen t
hung for a few moments in precarious balance . Fortunately (and sur-
prisingly) the calmer heads among the vecinos managed to mak e
themselves heard . These sensible fellows pointed out the folly of a
battle which could have no victory, since the few who survived woul d
inevitably fall victim to the Indians . Brought up short by the logic of
this argument, the contenders agreed to an understanding .
With some formality a peace was negotiated : Balboa promised to
release Pérez, and the rebels promised to cause no more trouble .
Balboa kept his word ; his adversaries drew up plans for a fresh revol t
before twenty-four hours were out . They began by capturing Hurtado ,
but were induced to let him go after half a day . This did not mean that
they had thought better of their project ; they had merely decided t o
concentrate on the main part of it . Thus simplified, it had two aims :
to depose and imprison Balboa, charging him with misconduct an d
crooked division of the spoils, and to take over the spoils themselves-
ten thousand pesos of gold—and apportion them according to their
own fancy .
Here Balboa had an uncharacteristic moment of inspired duplicity .
With full intelligence of the reborn plot, he pretended ignorance, and
let it be known that he was going that night on a hunting trip . In the
evening he set out for the monte in seemingly guileless confidence ;
with the contents of the treasury in mind, he was gambling that th e
conspirators would grab the rope so conveniently offered and han g
themselves forthwith . This they obligingly proceeded to do ; havin g
rified the strongbox, their division of the treasure caused such a n
uproar that a deputation was sent scurrying to find Vasco Núñez .
Escorted to the settlement to be met by an armed and acclaimin g
138
crowd, he had no need to urge resistance to the insurgents ; his prob-
lem was to prevent too drastic reprisals against them .
The ringleaders were put in jail, and Balboa appointed two prom-
inent colonists to investigate the case and draw a bill of indictment t o
be sent to Spain . He would have done better to hold onto his ebbin g
anger, profit by public resentment, and as alcalde mayor conduct a
quick trial to a foregone conclusion . He had no power to execute
capital sentence, but he could, with general approval, have remande d
the culprits to Colón and been well rid of them . Unfortunately, Balbo a
was temperamentally incapable of this kind of precaution ; however
bitter in the heat of a quarrel, he could never keep his resentmen t
sharp and his guard up once the quarrel seemed over . Now he soo n
relented and released the prisoners in the custody of the Francisca n
friars, thus preserving enemies in the colony who were to do hi m
infinite harm later on.
Even Balboa, however, recognized the venomous capacities of th e
bachiller Corral. He attributed them largely to Corral's profession :
troublemaking, he felt, was an occupational defect of lawyers in gen -
eral. "One grace I would implore Your Highness, " he wrote soon after
the abortive revolt, "and that is, that no doctor of laws or of anythin g
else except medicine should come to there parts of Tierra Firme, o n
pain of heavy penalty . . . because no bachiller comes here who i s
not a devil, and they lead the lives of devils ; and not only are they
evil, but what is more they devine and employ methods which resul t
in a thousand lawsuits and iniquities . "
This was plain talk, if no more so than that which reached the Kin g
about the lawyers who infested Hispaniola. Nevertheless, had Balbo a
known as much when he composed it as he did two years later, h e
might have searched for stronger terms .

Relief carne at the end of December, by which time, as Balbo a

remarked, the colonists "were in such straits that had it delayed muc h
longer it would have been superfluous, because there would have bee n
nothing left to relieve ." It was brought by two vessels from Hispaniola ,
which appear to have been the bergantín and caravel which Colón ha d
assured the King (in October of 1512) he was preparing to dispatc h
to Tierra Firme . If so, Colón 's merit was limited to issuance of a
139
license, at least with regard to the bergantín . The litúe vessel was o n
a private trading venture at the cost of her commander, a baquian o
of Hispaniola named Sebastián de Ocampo .
Hidalgo, pilot, and man of substance, Ocampo had gone to th e
Indies with Columbus in 1494, and had lived there ever since, no t
entirely by choice . In 1501 a Spanish court had condemned him to
death in absentia "because of a certain question . . . with Juan de
Velásquez, " and the sovereigns, " moved by certain just reasons "
(Ocampo had been a criado of the Queen), had commuted the sen-
tence to perpetual banishment to the New World realms . He mus t
have been pardoned later. He was apparently under no cloud in 150 8
when Governor Ovando commissioned him to circumnavigate Cub a
and verify if it were an island ; 2 he was associated with Pasamonte in
business, and when he carne to Darién he planned a subsequent voyag e
to Castile . He knew everyone of importante in Hispaniola, and wit h
many of them (including Nicuesa) had participated in commercia l
enterprises . He may have been friendly with Balboa in the island, o r
he may only have been predisposed in his favor because he was a
fellow Galician—a good enough argument for the regionally minde d
Spaniards . In any case, he became Balboa's confidant and ally durin g
his stay in Santa María .
Casas, confusing there two ships with others which went to Darié n
some months later, says that they had been sent for the account o f
the authorities in Santo Domingo with a hundred fifty new settlers . H e
also says that they delivered to Balboa the brevet of captain general o f
the colony, which, "it was said," had been issued by Pasamonte b y
virtue of a general authorization from Fernando to appoint officials i n
Tierra Firme . "The joy and pleasure which Vasco Núñez received at
seeing himself thus exalted was beyond measure, " Casas adds, " . . .
because until then he had maintained his usurped authority over the
Spaniards by force and cunning . "
This is all wrong . Balboa had been governing by appointment fro m
Colón ever since September of 1511, and while his emotions on re-
ceiving the King's commission as captain general (something Pasa -
monte was never empowered to bestow) were doubtless all th e
chronicler describes, he did not experience them at this time . This is
clear from the text of his monumental letter to Fernando dated Janu -
140
ary 20, 1513, and sent off with Ocampo . He acknowledges Fernando's
cédula about taking in the men from Nombre de Dios, which, it is true ,
addresses hico as "Our Captain," but it is evident that he saw no mor e
in the title than acquiescence in Colón's stopgap appointment, or h e
would not have devoted so much—far too much—of his letter to
efforts to get royal approval as commander in Darién . He is careful ,
too, not to call himself more than "Alcalde Mayor . " He mention s
oficial aid only to complain of its absence, and new recruits only to
emphasize the need for them . What he does say is that the settlement ,
"as badly sustained from Hispaniola as if we had not been Christians , "
has survived only by divine mercy and his own unresting ability, an d
that of the pitifully few settlers left in the colony not more than a
hundred are "fit for war . "3
Balboa must have had by now a very fair idea of Colmenares ' an d
Quicedo's relations with the insurgent vecinos, and hence of what the
procuradores would say about his rule in Darién . He knew that his
enemies intended to forward the record of their "secret inquiry" t o
Castile . His own counterinformation would, of course, arrive at th e
same time, but it was doubtful if it would weigh enough against in-
formation plus two flesh-and-blood persuaders . What he needed wa s
a good personal representative to offset Colmenares and Quicedo-
and, another proof of the special grace he believed God vouchsafe d
him, there was one to his hand : Sebastián de Ocampo .
It is probable that Balboa's proposal to Ocampo to serve as hi s
procurador to the King was accompanied by a promise of substantia l
reward contingent on his success . But Ocampo was not a man t o
accept such a mission for purely mercenary reasons . The fact that he
did accept (to say nothing of his subsequent behavior) is proof tha t
he was convenced of Balboa's worth . Thus when he left Santa María,
he carried 370 pesos of mine gold for the King, some samples of nativ e
products, a branded slave who was to explain native methods of wash-
ing metal, and full power to negotiate with Fernando on Balboa' s
behalf. It was not his fault that the careful plan went wrong, or tha t
the evidence and inducements offered by Balboa reached the King to o
late to be of any appreciable use .

141
 XII I
BALBOA was not a polished writer, but he was a remarkably copiou s
one . The dispatches addressed to the King in January included a t
least five from his hand, of which only one—the general letter date d
January twentieth—has survived . The others were : "another lette r
giving an account of all that has happened here," a memorandu m
devoted to Nicuesa ' s faults and errors, "an inquiry and report of m y
life and my very great and loyal services which I have rendered Your
Highness in these regions of the Indies," and "an account of wha t
transpired in consequence of [the insurgent colonists ' ] iniquitous in-
ventions . "
Nothing can compensate for the loss of the account of everything
that had happened in Darién, or of the memorial of Balboa' s life an d
services—or for that matter, for that of all save one of his othe r
reports and letters to the King and the royal officials . Some twenty-
five of them are known by reference or in secretarial summaries, bu t
the originals and textual copies early vanished from the files, togethe r
with his correspondence with Hispaniola and any documents he dre w
for use in Darién . Such wholesale disappearance suggests that the tw o
which have been preserved escaped an otherwise efficient purge by a n
oversight for which one must be grateful . The letter of January 151 3
is not Balboa's prize report (one would gladly exchange it for tha t
describing the expedition to the Pacific, or for the all-inclusive one h e
compiled in 1514 for his successor's guidance), but it covers a good
deal of ground . Moreover, it is a singularly revealing bit of writing .
Balboa emerges from its pages in a portrait of unposed candor : brave,
resourceful, ambitious, unsubtle ; a magnificent frontier leader with
considerable intelligence, unusual common sense, and the diplomati e
finesse of a single-minded elephant .
The letter is about fifty per cent impersonal information, twenty-
five per cent projects and requisitions, and twenty-five per cent cam-
paign for a Crown appointment as captain-commander in Darién .
These proportions are not immediately apparent, because Balboa ,
142
who clearly disdained such things as rough drafts and revision, set
down what he wanted to say as it occurred to him, and arguments in
favor of a royal brevet occurred to him with great frequency . Declara-
tions of his merits and cross-referenced recitals of his predecessors'
defects are inserted wherever there is an opening for them, and often
where there is none, and lince both are laid on with a trowel the effect
is a little obsessive . It must be admitted that when squarely on this
tack Balboa does not appear at his best, at least to modern eyes . On
the other hand, it is possible that his contemporaries, accustomed t o
the intemperate and prolix style of the times, did not find him speciall y
heavy-handed . No one expected humility from a candidate for office-
certainly not in the Indies, where the meek inherited nothing and th e
modest flower was inevitably stepped on .
Hojeda and Nicuesa, Balboa said, had been irresponsible, cruel ,
and incompetent . Nicuesa, especially, had shirked leadership of dan-
gerous or merely arduous entradas, shuflling off his duties onto sub-
ordinates, with the results that might have been expected . Neither
Governor had had any thought for the safety of the people under hi s
command, or any compassion for their suffering ; on the contrary, both
had " used them like slaves," and their tyranny had been aggravate d
by occasional crass favoritism . Furthermore, they had refused to por-
tion out so much as a real's worth of the loot among the compañero s
entitled to it, so that the men "were so dejected that they did not care
about taking gold even if they saw it lying next to them." Such
behavior in a captain would be detrimental anywhere ; in a countr y
like Tierra Firme it was fatal . Architects of their own disasters, Ni-
cuesa and Hojeda had achieved nothing, and between them they ha d
lost eight hundred men, most of whom had not even received Chris-
tian burial .
(Much, if not all of this was true enough, but Balboa might have
left out the passage in which he says that "their presumption an d
arrogance were such that they fancied they were sovereigns of the land
and should rule . . . from their couches, and so they did ; and a s
soon as they got here they thought they need do nothing but giv e
themselves up to dissipation ." Even in Castile, the picture of th e
Governors lolling in wanton ease in San Sebastián and Veragua mus t
have raised a smile . )
143
 In contrast to all this he, Vasco Núñez, had been ever diligent i n
good works . "Night and day I think of nothing save how I may help
and protect . . . these few people whom God has spared us ." "I do
not stay in bed while the men go out to raid . . . they have not gone
in any direction that I did not go before them, even opening trail b y
my own hand ." "I cared for the people whom Nicuesa abandoned a s
if I had been responsible for them and had myself brought them fro m
Castile by authority from Your Very R .H ." "I, my lord, have always
leen to it that everything obtained up to now, after the part belongin g
to Your V.R .H . is set aside, be very well distributed . . . the gol d
to those who went to take it, each according to his person, all remain-
ing satisfied and contenC' "I have tried, wherever I have gone, to se e
that the Indians be treated very well, allowing no harm to be done t o
them, always dealing honorably with them, and giving them man y
things of Castile to attract them to friendship with us ." If the situation
of the colony was still precarious, Balboa declared, the fault lay in
past misgovernment and present neglect ; but for his efforts and ability,
"it would be a marvel if anyone were left alive . "
It had not been easy, and Balboa was at no pains to make it appea r
so . The marches "by rivers and marshes and forests and mountains, "
the "evil nights and . . . days when one must risk death a thousan d
times," the repeated crises "when we were in such extremity that w e
thought to die of hunger," the desolation of an outpost left to peris h
by those charged with its support—were depicted with simple force .
Against this background, "Consider, Your Highness, what I have ac-
complished and discovered, and [how I have] sustained all thes e
people, without any help save that of God and my own industry . "
These were not empty claims ("in proof, I submit the deeds") ; His
Highness had only to compare Balboa's record with those of the Gov-
ernors to see who served hico best .
Having set forth his qualifications as eloquently as possible, Balbo a
added one final, transcendent argument for leaving hico in charge : the
manifest design of the Almighty . God, who had made Fernand o
master of Tierra Firme, who had preserved Santa María del Antigu a
despite mundane neglect, had chosen as His instrument Vasco Núñe z
de Balboa . "For this above all I give Him much praise and thank s
every day of the world, and count myself the most fortunate man eve r
144
born on earth . And since it has been Our Lord's will that by my han d
before another ' s such great beginnings should have been made, I be-
seech that Your V.R .H . deign to dispose that I may carry it to com-
pletion ." Fernando would be well served to second the divine intention :
"I dare promise that if Your V .R .H . be pleased to send me troops ,
1 will through Our Lord's goodness discover high things whereby ma y
be secured so much gold and such riches that with them may be con -
quered great part of the world . . . and if this be not accomplished,
I have nothing to offer but my head, which I put as forfeit . "
On practical subjects Balboa shows a different quality ; in fact, th e
more practical the matter treated, the better he appears . His geo-
graphical data were extremely good, for all that they had been give n
to him in unfamiliar languages and referred in great part to region s
he had not yet been able to visit, "since," he remarked, " a man gets
as far as he can, not as far as he would ." Most of his estimates of dis-
tance check to within a few miles of scientific measurement . When h e
enlarges on descriptions of what he has seen, in the valley of th e
Bayano and that of the Atrato, he is at once accurate and vivid . If
some of his information on mines and treasure was too optimistic, h e
had excuse : he believed what the Indians told him about them, and
he knew that the future of the settlement hung on making Fernand o
believe it too . Gold was still the only con'vincing reason for trying t o
maintain a colony in that remote wilderness, and the only inducement
which would bring men to risk their lives there .
All the rivers of the Pacific slope, and many of those in Careta ,
Comogra, Pocorosa, and Tubanamá, were reported to be heavy wit h
gold in very beautiful grains . Darién itself contained many rich mines ;
twenty streams bearing gold had been identified south of the settle-
ment, and thirty more issued from the coastal sierra ; even Abanu-
maque, so unprofitable when discovered, was said to show grea t
promise . The fantastically rich mines in the Andean Cordillera eas t
of Dabaibe were reputed to produce nuggets as big as oranges, an d
the whole upper Atrato was a vast alluvial gold field . Recovery of th e
metal was simplicity itself, Balboa added, by native methods of pan-
ning or even by a kind of seining, and it was said that in some part s
good results were obtained by merely burning off the grass from pre-
viously flooded areas .
145
 (The information about the mines of the Cordillera and the uppe r
Atrato was reasonably correct . Unfortunately, the men of Darién
were never able to verify it, and more accessible sources belied Bal-
boa's hopes . The Spaniards were indefatigable prospectors, and dur-
ing the life of the colony they worked hundreds of claims in and aroun d
Darién, but from the eastern Isthmus they were able to extract be-
tween 1511 and 1520 only 41,000 to 42,000 pesos of legally regis-
tered raw gold . )
Balboa's goals were the Other Sea and the auriferous Cordillera ,
which in his opinion could be exploited only if two key positions were
occupied : Dabaibe (a glorious prize in itself) and Tubanamá on the
Bayano . Stating his program and specifying what was needed to put
it into effect, he writes with point and almost terne assurance . Here
he is not pleading or persuading—he is telling the King, and hi s
approach is summed up in his own words : "Take it from me, You r
Highness, as from one who knows . . . "

Because I desire that the things which I have begun here shoul d
flower and come to that state which is consonant with the interest s
of Your V .R.H ., I wish to inform you what is expedient and neces-
sary to command be provided for the present . . .
Until such time as the land is known and it is seen what there is
in it, the principal requirement is that a thousand men should come ,
[recruited] from those who are in Hispaniola, because those wh o
might come from Castile would not be worth much until they be-
carne accustomed to the country, and for the present would destro y
themselves and us who are here with them .
Your V.R .H . should command that for the time being this lan d
be supplied with provisions directly by Your V .R.H . This behooves
you in order that the land be explored and its secrets known, an d
by it two results will be attained : first, much money will be earne d
in goods ; and the other and principal is that, being provided wit h
food, it will be possible to do and discover great and very ric h
things .
At the same time it should be provided that plenty of materials
for building small river vessels be constantly available here . . .
[words missing] . . . an abundance of tar and nails and sails an d
cordage. It is necessary that some master workmen should come ,
who know how to build bergantines .
146
 Your Highness must order that two hundred crossbows be brought ,
made exactly to specification with very strong stocks and fitting s
. . . [words missing] . . . very quick-shooting and not above tw o
pounds in weight . And from these much money would be made ,
because here everyone is happy to have a crossbow or two, sine
in addition to being very good weapons against the Indians the y
keep those who can own them supplied with plenty of birds an d
game . Two dozen very good lightweight espingards are needed ,
made of brome because the ¡ron ones are ruined at once by th e
heavy rains and eaten with rust . Your Highness should command
that two dozen hand guns be made, of brome because those of ¡ro n
get ruined ; it is enough that they be twenty-five to thirty pounds in
weight, and long, so that one man can carry one of them whereve r
needed. And very good powder.
As soon as more people come, a fort must be built in the prov-
ince of Dabaibe, as secure as possible because the country is well
populated with evil people ; another fort should be built at the
mines of Tubanamá in the province of Comogre . . . and thes e
forts, most puissant Lord, cannot be constructed at present of
masonry or adobe, but must be built of a double palisade of ver y
strong timber filled in the middle with earth mixed and packed, an d
surrounded by a very good secure fosse . . . and from these tw o
forts, the one in Dabaibe and the other in the province of Comogre ,
we will go out through the land, and learn the secrets of it and o f
the Other Sea which is on the south side, and everything else tha t
is needful .
Your Highness should order that artisans come to keep the cross -
bows in repair, because every day they get out of order on accoun t
of the heavy rain .
In everything that I have said, money will be made, and it nee d
cost Your V .R .H . nothing except to command that the necessary
reinforcements be provided ; for I dare undertake, through Ou r
Lord, to carry out everything that in these parts behooves th e
service of Your V.R .H .

Balboa's ideas as to suitable boats for use on the Atrato were a s

definite as his other concrete plans . Exploration, he said, could b e
done only in native dugouts not above thirty inches wide, since th e
narrow, vegetation-choked channels which had to be penetrated to
reach firm ground were closed to larger craft . For postexploratio n
147
service, however, he proposed to build boats on the order of the
lighters common in Spain, five and a half feet in the beam and lon g
enough to be rowed by twenty oars ; they would be fitted with sail fo r
use at the season of the northeast trades, when vessels of up to seve n
toneladas' capacity could navigate the river under canas if helpe d
with the oars at some of the bends .
For their part, the colonists had formulated certain petitions ex-
pressed in a separate document, "the greater part of which," Balbo a
said, "it is best that Your Highness should concede ." The vecino s
wanted permission to take as slaves the Indians of Caribana and th e
lowlands east of the Atrato as far as Dabaibe and, lince it would b e
impossible to control them in Darién, to sell or exchange them in th e
Antilles . The concession would be amply justified, Balboa urged, be -
cause the Indians in question were cannibals, wholly unprofitable ,
killers of Christians, and in general more deserving of total extermi-
nation than of mere servitude in exile . Once far from their ow n
country they could be used to advantage by the Spaniards of other
settlements, who would in turn send their difficult captives to Tierr a
Firme . Stretching a point (and his own claims to kindly fair-dealing) ,
he suggested extending the scheme to include the natives west of th e
Gulf of San Blas, on the curious grounds that their land was rugged ,
jungled, cut-off, and fruitless .
Two other collective requests are seconded . The first was that the
quinto on plunder be reduced from one fourth to one fifth : Balbo a
advised the King to grant it in his own interest, because the men wer e
reluctant to jeopardize their lives in entradas unless the returns were
high, "and nothing done unwillingly is ever done well . " The secon d
item was less important : that miscellaneous loot such as cloth an d
household effects be left to the settlers free of tax.
Before closing, Balboa made one recommendation and one vibran t
plea . With regard to the recent attempted revolt, he urged that th e
guilty be punished not only in vindication of his authority but as neces-
sary policy, since otherwise "no governor who might come here would
be spared rebellions ." And he begged that practicing lawyers, thos e
demons in human form, be barred from the colony .
The two ships from Hispaniola left Darién in the last week o f
January, carrying, in addition to Balboa's dispatches, the representa-
148
tions of the frustrated rebel group . These last seem to have been : the
writ of the so-called investigation organized by that deviser of iniqui-
ties, the lawyer Corral, which constituted a bill of accusal agains t
Vasco Núñez ; a request that come "prominent" person be appointe d
captain general of the colony ; and a letter or letters for Colmenares
designed to provide ammunition for the anti-Balboa campaign at
Court . Sebastián de Ocampo bore a notarized power of attorney fro m
Balboa, clearly defining the matters he was to treat with the King, and
probably, for his personal use, a voluminous memorandum of "th e
whole truth " as communicated to him in conference with his principal .
Ocampo took his obligation very seriously ; the pity was that hi s
luck did not match his loyalty . He never saw the King, although h e
was able to insure tardy delivery of Balboa's letters, and when hi s
reports were read, events had overrun them . Stranded in Cuba on th e
return voyage from Darién, he did not get to Hispaniola until some-
time in October, and when at last he arrived in Spain he was desper-
ately ill . For months, as he lay helpless in Seville, the guest of hi s
cousin Alonso de Noya, he continued to plan a journey to Court .
Availing himself of the privilege allowed the infirm, he bought a n
ambling saddle mule to carry him to Valladolid .
By June 1514 Ocampo knew that he would never go anywher e
again . Summoning a notary, he transferred his power of attorney t o
his cousin Noya and to Francisco de Cobos, assistant royal secretar y
for the Indies, charging them to treat diligently of "the matters con-
tained in the said power and no more . . . . And because he coul d
not sign this, being sick and weak, the witnesses of this document
signed for him ." Even then he could not die tranquil . Again calling
the notary, he dictated a letter to Noya, then absent from Seville . In it
he repeats his instructions about representing Balboa, binds himself
to pay a 50,000-maravedí indemnity if the terms are not fulfilled, and
promises to Noya for his trouble "my dun mule, saddled and bridled ,
plus forty gold ducats . " That is really all, but the letter is very long .
One seems to hear the tired voice stumbling on, saying over and ove r
the same exhortations and promises, in an increasing confusion o f
juridical provisions, urgency, and dun mules . He died a few days later.
A staunch and honorable gentleman, Sebastián de Ocampo . One
hopes that Balboa learned eventually of his faithfulness .
149
 In Santa María the early months of 1513 were relatively serene an d
almost entirely unrecorded. With the exception of a long anecdot e
about a marauding "tiger"—an episode which may have occurre d
later in the year—events must be pieced out from stray referentes i n
legal documenta, cédulas, and "proofs of merit," confined almost en-
tirely to ships and incoming colonists .
(The tiger was, of course, a jaguar—a bold fellow whose nightl y
raids decimated the small stock of domestic animals and were believe d
to have included human victims . He was finally trapped in a camou-
flaged pit and stoned to death . The settlers ate the meat, which the y
said was 1¡ke beef (an indication of how long they had been deprive d
of the germine article), and stuffed the skin to send an interesting, i f
rather gamy, present to Colón . Trackers found the animal's den ,
occupied by two newborn cutis whose mother was fortunately else-
where ; the babies were taken to the settlement to have ¡ron collar s
riveted about their necks and then returned to the den . Subsequent
investigation revealed the collars and their attached chains, but no
vestige of the jaguar widow and orphans . )
Soon after the departure of the Ocampo ships, a Crown carave l
carne, bringing Alonso de Quiroga, who had originally been appointed
veedor of barter and fort-building in Veragua . Quiroga collected 894
pesos in guanines for the royal quinto, started back to Hispaniola, an d
was never heard from again. l The next vessel appears to have bee n
the caravel Chapinera—master, Alonso Martín Aparicio—with a
cargo of pork and cassava from Hispaniola . Two other royal caravels ,
Santa María and San Juan, arrived with nearly a thousand pesos '
worth of bacon and flour from the King ' s hacienda, sent by the offi-
cials of Santo Domingo ; both were lost on the return voyage, one off
Cuba and one on the coast of Yáquimo . No one mentions starry
omens in this year, but mariners must have wondered : yet another
ship carne, later in the year, and was wrecked at the mouth of th e
estuary. She was owned and piloted by Juan de Castañeda, who got
sale to shore with forty men who had come to settle in Santa María .
The dates of these arrivals are nowhere stated, but the approximate
times can be deduced from clues embedded in scattered document a
and letters . The same is true of the most important armada to reach
Darién in 1513 . This consisted of two ships (possibly the two alread y
150
mentioned, San Juan and Santa María), which had been dispatche d
by the oidores, the appeal judges who had recently been installed i n
Santo Domingo with ample powers to supplement, and curb, the gov-
ernment of Colón . The vessels brought a large number of new settler s
—four hundred, according to Juan de Ledesma, who piloted one o f
them, a hundred and fifty by Casas' more acceptable estimate—con-
ducted by a master mariner named Cristóbal Serrano, and includin g
a well-to-do hidalgo named Diego Hernández . Serrano and Hernández ,
both good men who were to be prominent in the colony, were ver y
different types . Serrano, a stolid, shy fellow of few words, had already
achieved a prosperous position in Hispaniola, and in Tierra Firm e
proved himself a capable leader of expeditions, agreeably averse t o
politics and skulduggery . Hernández was a well-educated young ma n
"of diligence and good conduct, and very well outfitted ." He had gone
from Seville to Hispaniola with Nicuesa, had been providentially pre-
vented by illness from continuing to Veragua, and now arrived wit h
a number of retainers, thoroughly armed and equipped . Balboa made
him escribano of justice and public documents .
Although there is no record of even the month in which th e
oidores' ships reached Darién, it was probably not before June . In any
case, it marked a great change in the colony, for Serrano delivered
the King's cédula naming Vasco Núñez de Balboa Their Highnesses '
Captain and interim Governor in Tierra Firme . 2
This was the time of Balboa's rejoicing . Although command of th e
colony had been conferred on him by both popular vote and vice-
regal commission, neither source was particularly solid . Democratic
processes lend themselves to pulling down as readily as they do t o
building up, and the validity of any appointment made by Dieg o
Colón in Tierra Firme could be questioned on several counts . True
authority carne only from the Crown ; moreover, without a royall y
designated administration, the colony existed in a kind of officia l
limbo . The King's brevet certainly gave Balboa "immeasurable pleas-
ure," but it also gratified the settlers, who felt that Santa María no w
had identity and status . "With this joy and gaiety, those who wishe d
him ill were set at liberty and reconciled with him," Casas writes ,
"though whether the reconciliation was fictitious or real -I cannot say . "
Unclouded moments are always brief, and this one was soo n
151
dimmed by a shadow of coming events . "A short time later . . . or
perchance by those same ships," Balboa received letters which indi-
cated that his tenure would be short .
It has been presumed that the chief informant was Zamudio—whic h
is quite likely—and that the burden of his letter was that the King ,
influenced by Enciso, had turned sharply against Balboa, which is un-
true . Enciso was influencing no one seriously at the time the letter mus t
have been dispatched from Castile, least of all the King, who was bus y
with a minor wár and spent the last five months of 1512 in the field .
Nor did Fernando evidence any displeasure toward Balboa in this
period . What Zamudio could have said was that the King, plagued b y
three years of failure, conflict, and confusion in Tierra Firme, an d
wary of Colón, was resolved to make a fresh start with a governor o f
unassailable position and no factional allegiances . The post had, in
fact, already been offered late in 1512 to a caballero of Avila, Comen -
dador Don Diego del Aguila—a nobleman so neutral that little i s
known of him beyond his family's extreme piety . Aguila had declined ,
but it was to be supposed that His Highness was looking for someon e
elle both eligible and willing .
This was disturbing intelligence, the more so as it undoubtedl y
coincided with news of what Colmenares and Ouicedo had been u p
to in Santo Domingo, as well as of the way the Young Admiral, wit h
his megalomanic demands, was forcing the King's hand . Colón had ,
in fact, reached a point where speculation ran on the chance that h e
would attempt a coup in Tierra Firme . The prospect was not such as
to induce Fernando to prolong there an unorthodox regime under a
makeshift governor . Even now a new captain general might be unde r
commission, and whoever he might be, he would certainly bring hi s
own officers and a large number of followers . The existing order in
Darién would be swept away ; another leader and other troops woul d
discover the high things and great riches, reaping where they had no t
sown .
Considering these things, Balboa came to a momentous decision .
He would stake everything on a magnificent gamble—now, while hi s
achievements would have the weight and luster of his position as th e
King's acknowledged representative . He would cross the mountain s
and find the Other Sea .
152
 The men of Santa María approved the plan . If the undertaking wa s
hazardous, the prize was well worth a risk . The advantage of snatchin g
the gold and glory of the Other Sea before an influx of undeservin g
strangers arrived to share in them was obvious ; the most illiterate
compañero could do the simple arithmetic which divided the spoils
by the low denominator of present numbers as against an alternativ e
represented by hundreds of additional shareholders . The provinces o f
the other coast had been described as powerful states—but when, i n
the process of conquest, did the soldiers of Castile hesitate to invad e
a powerful country from which they anticipated golden rewards ?
After all, the inhabitants of the south coast were said to be courteou s
and amiable, and experience proved that courtesy and amiability i n
the Indians contributed notably to their undoing . If Tubanamá barred
the high road to any force of less than a thousand men, they woul d
by-pass Tubanamá.
Moreover, conditions in Santa María were more favorable than the y
had yet been in its tormented existence . There were about four hun-
dred Spaniards in the settlement, and—a unique circumstance—the y
had been well fed for months . The natives along the "North Sea" a s
far as Pocorosa were friendly, and could be counted on for assistance ;
the hostile tribes of the Atrato might in time attempt another offen-
sive, but it seemed likely that they had not recovered sufficiently fro m
the rout of the previous year to be a serious menace to the garriso n
left in Santa María. In short, if the settlers were to bring off th e
exploit on their own, it was now or never .
Once the expedition had been agreed upon, preparations were se t
on foot at once . It was decided to strike across the mountains fro m
Careta, passing through Ponca, and Chief Chima was advised to hol d
guides and porters in readiness . Two hundred men were told off to
remain in the settlement, including, of course, all those implicated i n
the late insurrection ; reconciliation did not extend to admitting the m
to a share in the plunder and credit from this supreme entrada . About
the middle of August a transport column of naborias and slaves wa s
dispatched to Chima's village, whither the expeditionaries would g o
by sea, in nine canoes and a small ship . 3 When everything was done ,
on the last day of August, the men who were to leave attended a
special mass, made their confessions, and received communion .
153
 On Thursday, September first, Balboa and one hundred ninet y
picked companions' embarked at the river mouth, and set forth fo r
Careta, the Pacific, and immortality .

XI V
THE route selected by Balboa had several disadvantages, not least o f
which was that of conducting to the poorer part of the other coast . I t
was more rugged than that by the Bayano, and less settled . But it was
short and, traversing no important chiefdoms, comparatively safe ; th e
low Careta-Ponca pass could be traveled in two days and Chima' s
guides were familiar with the country .
There is a popular tendency to think that Balboa, going out into a
blank unknown, struggled for nearly a month of uninterrupted march-
ing to come, with wild surmise, upon an unguessed ocean . It should
be remembered that he not only knew what he was going to discover ,
but also, thanks to his native friends, pretty much what he would fin d
along the way . Furthermore, although it took twenty-two days to reac h
the Pacific, not more than nine or ten of these were spent in marching .
The nine canoes reached Careta on September fourth, and the shi p
one day later . Vasco Núñez lost no time in social amenities with hi s
quasi-father-in-law . He wanted to be well away before the specter o f
another governor could materialize to hamstring his venture . Th e
urgency which made him undertake the entrada in spite of the seaso n
—the tropical "winter" was due to begin—drove him out on the trail
within twenty-four hours of reaching Chima's capital . Half of the men
brought from Santa María were detailed to stay in Careta, which thu s
became the base camp . The others made up the actual exploring force :
ninety-two men-at-arms and two priests, pledged to claim an ocea n
and all its coasts for their King . l
The little company of Spaniards was escorted by hundreds of na-
tive porters, servants, women, and hangers-on ; strung out in singl e
file their column must have stretched for over half a mile . An observer
stationed beside the path would have seen the ingredients of the Con -
154
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quest pass by in less than an hour : soldier-colonists of all sorts an d
degrees, some in steel cuirasses, ridged casques, and boots, but mor e
of them at ease in cotton shirts and skimpy breeches, their feet i n
alpargatas; priests with their cassocks tucked high for marching, thei r
faces as tanned and their eyes as wary as those of any compañero ;
Indians bent under the burdens of the vanquished, carrying the in-
struments of further vanquishment—armor, bags of gunpowder an d
shot, baskets and jars of food, trade goods, camp gear ; the leashed
war dogs, more terrible than guns and crossbows, and chief amon g
them Balboa's Leoncico, who drew a bowman's pay .
Ponca, the first objective, was reached on Thursday evening afte r
two days of stiff marching . As usually happened when the Indian s
were not taken by surprise, the Poncans had deserted their bohíos fo r
the shelter of the forest. The expeditionaries settled down to wait for
their messengers to find the chief and persuade him to return . Vasc o
Núñez was, by universal judgment, a restless man, happy only whe n
employed in something constructive—preferably something which
required physical effort—yet he could be extraordinarily patient i n
his dealings with the natives . It was one of his best cards . Other cap-
tains, greedy for quick profits and mindful only of the present gain ,
wrought havoc and passed on rather than lose a day ; Balboa woul d
wait, on hope of conciliation, aware that for the Indians time ha d
small reality and that much of their hostility was bred of fear .
Chief Ponca, at length reassured, carne back to the village five day s
later, on September thirteenth . Balboa ignored the delay, greeted him
with ceremony as an overlord welcoming an honored vassal, an d
presented him with coveted gifts : cotton shirts and glass beads fo r
elegante, little bells for fun, and ¡ron hatchets for solid use . Thes e
methods worked like a charm . Beaming with good nature, Ponc a
responded with a number of pieces of finely wrought gold . Further-
more, after confirming the information about the Other Sea, "he tol d
Vasco Núñez in secret many things that he was rejoiced to learn . "
It is interesting to speculate on how much of Balboa's success shoul d
be traced to Careta's daughter and to Fulvia, who had taught him t o
understand the people whose lands he invaded .
Ponca played host to the Spaniards for another week. On the morn-
ing of the twentieth, having sent twelve of his men (the sick list) bac k
156
to Careta, Balboa left for Quareca. This was the first piece of real
exploration, but Ponca had given full instructions about the rout e
and had supplied guides to insure that there was no mistake . The chief
was not prompted by pure altruism ; Torecha, lord of Quareca, was hi s
enemy . The distance was not great, as miles go, to Torecha's villag e
—no more than ten leagues—but it was the hardest part of the jour-
ney. For five days the Spaniards struggled through wild and hilly
country, thickly forested and cut by rivers . The Indians, unencum-
bered by clothes, used the rivers as roads, for it was easier to clambe r
over rocks and fallen trees, to wade the shallows and swim the deepe r
spots, than to force a way through the forest . Weary and dripping ,
the compañeros ploughed doggedly after their guides, averaging at
best five or six miles between dawn and dark . The general direction
was southwest ; across the Chucunaque and the headwaters of the
Artigatí and the Sabanas . On the evening of September twenty-fourt h
they came to Quareca .
The village of Chief Torecha lay in the hills called the Sierra de
Quareca, and although its altitude cannot have been great, the air
was fresh and pure after the steamy jungles of the middle Isthmus .
The compañeros, impervious to heat, complained that it was disagree-
ably chilly ; but they can hardly have suffered much, for their stay
was both brief and uncommonly active . It started with a battle . The
inhabitants were Caribs—no doubt some of those barbarian invader s
mentioned by Ponquiaco—and Torecha, braver and more ingenuous
than Ponca, stood his ground backed by six hundred warriors arme d
with bows and arrows . Balboa (who saved his patience for uncertai n
or remissive chiefs) attacked at once . After a short but heavy skir-
mish, in which Torecha and a number of his men were killed, th e
Spaniards occupied the bohíos .
Once in the village, the expeditionaries made a discovery whic h
shocked them inexpressibly . Certain Quarecan patricians were give n
to homosexuality ; Torecha's own brother and two other gabras wer e
found dressed in women's enaguas . "The abominable sin" admitte d
no forgiveness . Without compunction, Balboa ordered that the cama-
yoas be given to the dogs . (The rather more horrible penalty prescribe d
by Spanish law would have taken too long to execute . )
After the summary reform of Quarecan morals, a little looting, and
157
a careful check of his data on the route to be followed, Balboa is
said to have pushed on from Quareca on the day after his arrival ,
September twenty-fifth . This is the day enshrined in history as that o n
which European eyes first saw the Pacific Ocean—or more exactly ,
when they first looked on it from the Western World . Oviedo, wh o
once had in his keeping all the documenta of the expedition, includin g
the journal kept by Andrés de Valdarrábano, notary and officia l
recorder of the entrada, tells the story :

There in Torecha he left part of the troops, and departed wit h

about seventy men ; and on the twenty-fifth of the month, the sam e
day that he left, he reached the bohíos and seat of the chief name d
Porque, who had absented himself . Balboa did not bother wit h
him, but passed on, pursuing his journey in search of the Othe r
Sea . And on a Tuesday, the twenty-fifth of September of that yea r
one thousand five hundred and thirteen, at ten o'clock in the morn-
ing, Captain Vasco Núñez, going ahead of all those he was con-
ducting up a bare high hill, saw from its summit the South Sea . . .

Only two moments in recorded discovery can match this : that when
Columbus, peering across the water in the moonlight, saw the lo w
shore of Guanahaní straight before Santa María's dipping bow ; and
that when Magellan, after six months of voyaging, knew that he ha d
truly sailed around the unknown to meet the known . These were
greater achievements, but there was a special quality in Balboa's mo-
ment because he was alone . Just for an instant, as he stood ther e
solitary between earth and sky, the immensity that stretched awa y
below him was his and his only, vast and inviolate .

And immediately he turned toward the troops, very happy, lift-

ing eyes and hands to Heaven, praising Jesus Christ and Hi s
glorious Mother the Virgin, Our Lady ; and then he knelt down o n
both knees and gave much thanks to God for the grace He ha d
shown him in allowing him to discover that sea, and in doing so t o
accomplish so great a service to God and to the Catholic and Mos t
Serene Kings of Castile . . .
And he commanded that all those who accompanied him shoul d
kneel down likewise and give the same thanks to God, and shoul d
pray very devoutly that He permit them to discover and see th e
158
 great secrets and riches which lay in that sea and coast, to th e
greater exaltation and growth of the Christian faith and for th e
conversion of the Indians native of those austral regions, and fo r
the great prosperity and glory of the royal throne of Castile and o f
its princes present and to come .
Everyone did so very willingly and joyously, and then the cap-
tain caused a fine tree to be felled, of which was made a tall cros s
which was planted and fixed on that same place and high hill fro m
where that austral sea was first seen . And because the first that wa s
seen was a gulf or bay entering into the land, Vasco Núñez com-
manded that it be called the Gulf of San Miguel, because it was th e
feast of the archangel four days later . And he also commanded that
the names of all the men who were there with him should be writ-
ten down so that the memory should remain of him and of them ,
because they were the first Christians who saw that sea ; all of whom
sang the hymn of the glorious holy doctors of the Church, Ambros e
and Augustine, as a devout priest who was there, named Andrés d e
Vera, sang it with them, saying : "Te Deum laudamus : Te Domi-
num confctemur . "

Perhaps the list of discoverers was only drawn up afterwards, bu t

it is pleasanter to think that it was there, under the still-green Cross
on the hilltop, that Andrés de Valdarrábano sat down to write in fai r
script the names of the sixty-seven "caballeros and hidalgos an d
worthy men who were present in the discovery of the South Sea wit h
the magnificent and most noble lord captain Vasco Núñez de Balboa ,
Governor for Their Highnesses in Tierra Firme. "
One can picture the battered compañeros, still somewhat moist-
eyed, tearing themselves away from the panorama of descendin g
ridges and distant silver water to bend over the escribano, makin g
sure that the memory of them should endure, while the Indian s
squatted beside their loads a litúe way off and watched the white men' s
magic with attentive eyes, wondering what these ceremonies meant
for good or ill .
Having thus registered the discovery with both heaven and earth,
the sixty-seven immortals marched down to a village near the shore
of the Gulf, in the territory of Chape . The inhabitants had fled, bu t
the empty bohíos made an excellent place to camp while waiting fo r
the men left in Quareca to come up . On September twenty-ninth, as
159