USA > California > The Spanish Pioneers And The California Missions > Part 10
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each side of the dyke, was blocked with canoes full of savage warriors ; and there was another sanguin- ary mêlée until this gap too was filled with slain, and over the bridge of human corpses the fugitives gained the other bank. Alvarado, fighting with the rear- most to hold in check the savages who followed along the dyke, was the last to cross; and before he could follow his comrades the current suddenly broke through the ghastly obstruction, and swept the channel clear. His faithful horse had been killed under him; he himself was sorely wounded; his friends were gone, and the merciless foe hemmed him in. We cannot but be reminded of the Roman hero, -
" Of him who held the bridge so well In the brave days of old."
Alvarado's case was fully as desperate as that of Horatius ; and he rose as manlike to the occasion. With one swift glance about, he saw that to plunge into the flood would be sure death. So, with a supreme effort of his muscular frame, he thrust down his lance and sprang ! It was a distance of eighteen feet. Considerably longer jumps have been recorded. Our own Washington once made a running jump of over twenty feet in his ath- letic youth. But considering the surroundings, the darkness, his wounds, and his load of armor, the wonderful leap of Alvarado has perhaps never been surpassed : -
" For fast his blood was flowing, And he was sore in pain; And heavy was his armor, And spent with changing blows."
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But the leap was made, and the heroic leaper staggered up the farther bank and rejoined his countrymen.
From here the remnant fought, struggling along the causeway, to the mainland. The Indians at last drew off from the pursuit, and the exhausted Spaniards had time to breathe and look about to see how many had escaped. The survivors were few in number. Small wonder if, as the legend tells, their stout-hearted general, used as he was to a stoic control of his feelings, sat him down under the cy- press, which is still pointed out as the tree of the Noche Triste, and wept a strong man's tears as he looked upon the pitiful remnant of his brave army. Of the twelve hundred Spaniards eight hundred and sixty had perished, and of the survivors not one but was wounded. Two thousand of his allies, the Tlax- caltecan Indians, had also been slain. Indeed, had it not been that the savages tried less to kill than to capture the Spanish for a more horrible death by the sacrificial knife, not one would have escaped. As it was, the survivors saw later three score of their comrades butchered upon the altar of the great teocalli.
All the artillery was lost, and so was all the treasure. Not a grain of powder was left in con- dition to be used, and their armor was battered out of recognition. Had the Indians pursued now, the exhausted men would have fallen easy victims. But after that terrific struggle the savages were resting too, and the Spaniards were permitted to escape.
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They struck out for the friendly pueblo of Tlaxcala by a circuitous route to avoid their enemies, but were attacked at every intervening pueblo. In the plains of Otumba was their most desperate hour. Surrounded and overwhelmed by the savages, they gave themselves up for lost. But fortunately Cortez recognized one of the medicine men by his rich dress, and in a last desperate charge, with Alvarado and a few other officers, struck down the person upon whom the superstitious Indians hang so much of the fate of war. The wizard dead, his awe-struck followers gave way; and again the Spaniards came out from the very jaws of death.
In the siege of Mexico, - the bloodiest and most romantic siege in all America, - Alvarado was prob- ably the foremost figure after Cortez. The great general was the head of that remarkable campaign, and a head indeed worth having. There is nothing in history quite like his achievement in having thir- teen brigantines built at Tlaxcala and transported on the shoulders of men over fifty miles inland across the mountains to be launched on the lake of Mexico and aid in the siege. The nearest to it was the great feat of Balboa in taking two brigan- tines across the Isthmus. The exploits of Hannibal the great Carthaginian at the siege of Tarentum, and of the Spanish "Great Captain " Gonzalo de Cordova at the same place, were not at all to be compared to either.
In the seventy-three days' fighting of the siege, Alvarado was the right hand as Cortez was the head.
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The dashing lieutenant had command of the force which pushed its assault along the same causeway by which they had retreated on the Noche Triste. In one of the battles Cortez's horse was killed under him, and the conqueror was being dragged off by the Indians when one of his pages dashed forward and saved him. In the final assault and desperate struggle in the city Cortez led half the Spanish force, and Alvarado the other half; and the latter it was who conducted that memorable storming of the great teocalli.
After the conquest of Mexico, in which he had won such honors, Alvarado was sent by Cortez to the conquest of Guatemala, with a small force. He marched down through Oaxaca and Tehuantepec to Guatemala, meeting a resistance characteristically Indian. There were three principal tribes in Gua- temala, - the Quiché, Zutuhil, and Cacchiquel. The Quiche opposed him in the open field, and he de- feated them. Then they formally surrendered, made peace, and invited him to visit them as a friend in their pueblo of Utatlan. When the Spaniards were safely in the town and surrounded, the Indians set fire to the houses and fell fiercely upon their stifling guests. After a hard engagement Alvarado routed them, and put the ringleaders to death. The other two tribes submitted, and in about a year Alvarado and his little company had achieved the conquest of Guatemala. His services were rewarded by making him governor and adelantado of the province; and he founded his city of Guatemala, which in his day
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probably became something like what Mexico then was, - a town containing fifteen thousand to twenty thousand Indians and one thousand Spaniards.
From this, his capital, Governor Alvarado was frequently absent. There were many expeditions to be made up and down the wild New World. His greatest journey was in 1534, when, building his own vessels as usual, he sailed to Ecuador and made the difficult march inland to Quito, only to find himself in Pizarro's territory. So he returned to Guatemala fruitless.
During one of his absences occurred the frightful earthquake which destroyed the city of Guatemala, and dealt Alvarado a personal blow from which he never recovered. Above the city towered two great volcanoes, - the Volcan del Agua and the Volcan del Fuego. The volcano of water was extinct, and its crater was filled with a lake. The volcano of fire was- and is still - active. In that memorable earthquake the lava rim of the Volcan del Agua was rent asunder by the convulsion, and its avalanche of waters tumbled headlong upon the doomed city. Thousands of the people perished under falling walls and in the resistless flood; and among the lost was Alvarado's wife, Doña Beatriz de la Cueva. Her death broke the brave soldier's spirit, for he loved her very dearly.
In the troublous times which befell Mexico after Cortez had finished his conquest, and began to be spoiled by prosperity and to make a very unadmir- able exhibition of himself, Alvarado's support was
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sought and won by the great and good viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza, - one of the foremost execu- tive minds of all time. This was no treachery on Alvarado's part toward his former commander ; for Cortez had turned traitor not only to the Crown, but also to his friends. The cause of Mendoza was the cause of good government and of loyalty.
It had become necessary to tame the hostile Nayares Indians, who had caused the Spaniards great trouble in the province of Jalisco; and in this campaign Alvarado joined Mendoza. The Indians retreated to the top of the huge and apparently impregnable cliff of the Mixton, and they must be dislodged at any cost. The storming of that rock ranks with the storming of Acoma as one of the most desperate and brilliant ever recorded. The viceroy commanded in person, but the real achieve- ment was by Alvarado and a fellow officer. In the scaling of the cliff Alvarado was hit on the head by a rock rolled down by the savages, and died from the wound, - but not until he saw his followers win that brilliant day.
The man who, next to Alvarado, deserves the credit of the Mixton was Cristobal de Oñate, a man of distinction for several reasons. He was a valued officer, a good executive, and one of the first millionnaires in North America. He was, too, the father of the colonizer of New Mexico, Juan de Oñate. June 11, 1548, several years after the battle of the Mixton, the elder Oñate discovered the richest silver mines on the continent, - the
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mines of Zacatecas, in the barren and desolate plateau where now stands the Mexican city of that name. These huge veins of "ruby," " black," ar- senate, and virgin silver made the first millionnaires in North America, as the conquest of Peru made the first on the southern continent. The mines of Zacatecas were not so vast as those developed at Potosi, in Bolivia, which produced between 1541 and 1664 the inconceivable sum of $641,250,000 in silver ; but the Zacatecas mines were also enormously pro- ductive. Their silver stream was the first realization of the dreams of vast wealth on the northern conti- nent, and made a startling commercial change in this part of the New World. Locally, the discovery re- duced the price of the staples of life about ninety per cent ! Mexico was never a great gold country, but for more than three centuries has remained one of the chief silver producers. It is so to-day, though its output is not nearly so large as that of the United States.
Cristobal de Oñate was, therefore, a very important man in the working out of destiny. His " bonanza " made Mexico a new country, commercially, and his millions were put to a better use than is always the case nowadays, for they had the honor of building two of the first towns in our own United States.
THE AMERICAN GOLDEN FLEECE.
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IX.
THE AMERICAN GOLDEN FLEECE.
W E all know of that strange yellow ramskin which hung dragon-guarded in the dark groves of Colchis ; and how Jason and his Argo- nauts won the prize after so many wanderings and besetments. But in our own New World we have had a far more dazzling golden fleece than that mythical pupil of old Cheiron ever chased, and one that no man ever captured, - though braver men than Jason tried it. Indeed, there were hundreds of more than Jasons, who fought harder and suffered tenfold deadlier fortunes and never clutched the prize after all. For the dragon which guarded the American Golden Fleece was no such lap-dog of a chimera as Jason's, to swallow a pretty potion and go to sleep. It was a monster bigger than all the land the Argonauts lived in and all the lands they roamed; a monster which not man nor mankind has yet done away with, - the mortal monster of the tropics.
The myth of Jason is one of the prettiest in an- tiquity, and it is more than pretty. We are begin- ning to see what an important bearing a fairy tale may have on sober knowledge. The myth has
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always somewhere some foundation of truth; and that hidden truth may be of enduring value. To study history, indeed, without paying any attention to the related myths, is to shut off a precious side light. Human progress, in almost every phase, has been influenced by this quaint but potent factor. Where do you fancy chemistry would be if the philo- sopher's stone and other myths had not lured the old alchemists to pry into mysteries where they found never what they sought, but truths of utmost value to mankind? Geography in particular has owed almost more of its growth into a science to myths than to scholarly invention; and the gold myth, throughout the world, has been the prophet and inspiration of discovery, and a moulder of history.
We have been rather too much in the habit of classing the Spaniards as the gold-hunters, with an intimation that gold-hunting is a sort of sin, and that they were monumentally prone to it. But it is not a Spanish copyright, - the trait is common to all mankind. The only difference was that the Span- iards found gold ; and that is offence enough to " historians " too narrow to consider "what would the English have done had they found gold in America at the outset."
I believe it is not denied that when gold was dis- covered in the uttermost parts of his land the Saxon found legs to get to it, -and even adopted measures not altogether handsome in clutching it ; but nobody is so silly as to speak of "the days of
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'49 " as a disgrace to us. Some lamentable pages there were ; but when California suddenly tipped up the continent till the strength of the east ran down to her, she opened one of the bravest and most im- portant and most significant chapters in our national story. For gold is not a sin. It is a very necessary thing, and a very worthy one, as long as we remem- ber that it is a means and not an end, a tool and not an accomplishment, - which point of business common-sense we are quite as apt to forget in Wall Street as in the mines.
We have largely to thank this universal and per- fectly proper fondness for gold for giving us America, - as, in fact, for civilizing most other countries.
The scientific history of to-day has fully shown how foolishly false is the idea that the Spaniards sought merely gold; how manfully they provided for the mind and the soul as well as the pocket. But gold was with them, as it would be even now with other men, the strong motive. The great difference was only that gold did not make them forget their religion. It was the golden finger that beckoned Columbus to America, Cortez to Mexico, Pizarro to Peru, -just as it led us to California, which otherwise would not have been one of our States to-day. The gold actually found at first in the New World was disappointingly little; up to the conquest of Mexico it aggregated only $500,000. Cortez swelled the amount, and Pizarro jumped it up to a fabulous and dazzling figure. But, curiously enough, the gold that was found did not cut a more
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important figure in the exploration and civilization of the New World than that which was pursued in vain. The wonderful myth which stands for the American Golden Fleece had a more startling effect on geography and history than the real and incalcu- lable riches of Peru.
Of this fascinating myth we have very little popu- lar knowledge, except that a corruption of its name is in everybody's mouth. We speak of a rich region as "an Eldorado," or " the Eldorado " oftener than by any other metaphor; but it is a blunder quite unworthy of scholars. It is simply saying " an the," "the the." The word is Dorado; and it does not mean "the golden," as we seem to fancy, but "the gilded man," being a contraction of the Spanish el hombre dorado. And the Dorado, or gilded man, has made a history of achievement beside which Jason and all his fellow demi-gods sink into insignificance.
Like all such myths, this had a foundation in fact. The Colchian ramskin was a poetic fancy of the gold mines of the Caucasus ; but there really was a gilded man. The story of him and what he led to is a fairy tale that has the advantage of being true. It is an enormously complicated theme ; but, thanks to Ban- delier's final unravelling of it, the story can now be told intelligibly, - as it has not been popularly told heretofore.
A number of years ago there was found in the lagoon of Siecha, in New Granada, a quaint little group of statuary ; it was of the rude and ancient
As now robbed of its dignity by churchly improvements. MISSION SAN BUENAVENTURA
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Indian workmanship, and even more precious for its ethnologic interest than for its material, which was pure gold. This rare specimen - which is still to be seen in a museum in Berlin -is a golden raft, upon which are grouped ten golden figures of men. It represents a strange custom which was in prehis- toric times peculiar to the Indians of the village of Guatavitá, on the highlands of New Granada. That custom was this : On a certain great day one of the chiefs of the village used to smear his naked body with a gum, and then powder himself from head to foot with pure gold-dust. He was the Gilded Man. Then he was taken out by his companions on a raft to the middle of the lake, which was near the village, and leaping from the raft the Gilded Man used to wash off his precious and wonderful covering and let it sink to the bottom of the lake. It was a sacrifice for the benefit of the village. This custom is his- torically established, but it had been broken up more than thirty years before the story was first heard of by Europeans, - namely, the Spaniards in Venezuela in 1527. It had not been voluntarily abandoned by the people of Guatavita. The warlike Muysca In- dians of Bogota had ended it by swooping down upon the village of Guatavita and nearly extermi- nating its inhabitants. Still, the sacrifice had been a fact ; and at that enormous distance and in those uncertain days the Spaniards heard of it as still a fact. The story of the Gilded Man, El Hombre Dorado, shortened to El Dorado, was too startling not to make an impression. It became a household
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word, and thenceforward was a lure to all who ap- proached the northern coast of South America. We may wonder how such a tale (which had already become a myth in 1527, since the fact upon which it was founded had ceased) could hold its own for two hundred and fifty years without being fully exploded ; but our surprise will cease when we remember what a difficult and enormous wilderness South America was, and how much of it has unex- plored mysteries even to-day.
The first attempts to reach the Gilded Man were from the coast of Venezuela. Charles I. of Spain, afterward Charles V., had pawned the coast of that Spanish possession to the wealthy Bavarian family of the Welsers, giving them the right to colonize and " discover " the interior. In 1529, Ambrosius Dal- finger and Bartholomew Seyler landed at Coro, Ven- ezuela, with four hundred men. The tale of the Gilded Man was already current among the Span- iards ; and, allured by it, Dalfinger marched inland to find it. He was a dreadful brute, and his expe- dition was nothing less than absolute piracy. He penetrated as far as the Magdalena River, in New Granada, scattering death and devastation wherever he went. He found some gold; but his brutality toward the Indians was so great, and in such a strong contrast to what they had been accustomed to from the Spaniards, that the exasperated natives turned, and his march amounted to a running fight of more than a year's duration. The trouble was, the Welsers cared only to get treasure back for the money they
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had paid out, and had none of the real Spanish spirit of colonizing and christianizing. Dalfinger failed to find the Gilded Man, and died in 1530 from a wound received during his infamous expedition.
His successor in command of the Welser inter- ests, Nicolas Federmann, was not much better as a man and no more successful as a pioneer. In 1530 he marched inland to discover the Dorado, but his course was due south from Coro, so he never touched New Granada. After a fearful march through the tropical forests he had to return empty-handed in I53I.
Here already begins to enter, chronologically, one of the curious ramifications and variations of this prolific myth. At first a fact, in thirty years a fable. now in three years more the Gilded Man began to be a vagabond will-o'-the-wisp, flitting from one place to another, and gradually becoming tangled up in many other myths. The first variation came in the first attempt to discover the source of the Orinoco, - the mighty river which it was supposed could flow only from a great lake. In 1530, Anto- nio Sedeño sailed from Spain with an expedition to explore the Orinoco. He reached the Gulf of Paria and built a fort, intending thence to push his explo- ration. While he was doing this, Diego de Ordaz, a former companion of Cortez, had obtained in Spain a concession to colonize the district then called Maranon, - a vaguely defined area covering Venezuela, Guiana, and northern Brazil. He sailed from Spain in 1531, reached the Orinoco and sailed
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up that river to its falls. Then he had to return, after two years of vainly trying to overcome the obstacles before him. But on this expedition he heard that the Orinoco had its source in a great lake, and that the road to that lake led through a province called Meta, said to be fabulously rich in gold. On the authority of Bandelier, there is no doubt that this story of Meta was only an echo of the Dorado tale which had penetrated as far as the tribes of the lower Orinoco.
Ordaz was followed in 1534 by Geronimo Dortal, who attempted to reach Meta, but failed even to get up the Orinoco. In 1535 he tried to penetrate overland from the northeast coast of Venezuela to Meta, but made a complete failure. These attempts from Venezuela, as Bandelier shows, finally localized the home of the Dorado by limiting it to the north- western part of the continent. It had been vainly sought elsewhere, and the inference was that it must be in the only place left, - the high plateau of New Granada.
The conquest of the plateau of New Granada, after many unsuccessful attempts which cannot be detailed here, was finally made by Gonzalo Xime- nez de Quesada in 1536-38. That gallant soldier moved up the Magdalena River with a force of six hundred and twenty men on foot, and eighty-five horsemen. Of these only one hundred and eighty survived when he reached the plateau in the begin- ning of 1537. He found the Muysca Indians living in permanent villages, and in possession of gold and
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emeralds. They made a characteristic resistance ; but one tribe after another was overpowered, and Quesada became the conqueror of New Granada.
The treasure which was divided by the con- querors amounted to 246,976 pesos de oro, - about $1,250,000 now, -and 1,815 emeralds, some of which were of enormous size and value. They had found the real home of the Gilded Man, - and had even come to Guatavitá, whose people made a savage resistance, - but of course did not find him, since the custom had been already abandoned.
Hardly had Quesada completed his great con- quest when he was surprised by the arrival of two other Spanish expeditions, which had been led to the same spot by the myth of the Dorado. One was led by Federmann, who had penetrated from the coast of Venezuela to Bogota on this his sec- ond expedition, - a frightful journey. At the same time, and without the knowledge of either, Sebastian de Belalcazar had marched up from Quito in search of the Gilded Man. The story of that gold-covered chief had penetrated the heart of Ecuador, and the Indian statements induced Belal- cazar to march to the spot. An arrangement was made between the three leaders by which Quesada was left sole master of the country he had con- quered, and Federmann and Belalcazar returned to their respective places.
While Federmann was chasing the myth thus, a successor to him had already arrived at Coro. This was the intrepid German known as "George of
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river on earth, and also to give that river the name it bears to-day. They encountered Indian tribes whose women fought side by side with the men, and for that reason named it Rio de las Amazones, - River of the Amazons.
In 1543 Hernan Perez Quesada, a brother of the conqueror, penetrated the regions which George of Speyer had visited. He went in from Bogota, hav- ing heard the twisted myth of Meta, but only found misery, hunger, disease, and hostile savages in the six- teen awful months he floundered in the wilderness.
Meanwhile Spain had become satisfied that the leasing of Venezuela to the German money-lenders was a failure. The Welser régime was doing nothing but harm. Yet a last effort was determined upon, and Philip von Hutten, a young and gallant German cavalier, left Coro in August, 2541, in chase of the golden myth, which by this time had flitted as far south as the Amazon. For eighteen months he wan- dered in a circle, and then, hearing of a powerful and gold-rich tribe called the Omaguas, he dashed on south across the equator with his force of forty men. He met the Omaguas, was defeated by them and wounded, and finally struggled back to Venezuela after suffering for more than three years in the most impassable forests and swamps of the tropics. Upon his return he was murdered ; and that was the last of the German domination in Venezuela.
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