The West Indies and Central America witnessed a fascinating history during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries - seen from the European viewpoint, that is. For within a few decades the indigenous population of the Greater Antilles had been wiped out with alarming ruthlessness. The friendly Tainos and Aruacas, the first Americans met by Columbus, were imprudent enough to lead the Great Navigator and his immediate successors to the gold 'fields' of Española. From then on the Spaniards were gripped with gold fever.

The islands of Española, Isabella (Cuba), Xamaïca and Puerto Rico were scoured for more sources of gold, and the Indian population was forcibly recruited as slave labour. Unused to heavy manual labour and exposed to such European diseases as measles and smallpox, the Indians died in their thousands. Often they would willingly succumb to any disease, or they would commit outright suicide by jumping off heights or by slashing their arteries - anything to escape the Spaniards and their policies of greed. According to one quite conservative estimate, there were around sixty thousand Aruacas living on Xamaïca when the Spaniards arrived; by 1655, when the English took over, there was not a single one left.

When the riches of mainland America were discovered there followed an alarming exodus of adventurers and settlers in that direction, stripping the islands of men and materials to maintain the conquístador armies. Those who remained in the Greater Antilles set their more business-like hearts and minds to cultivation and commerce: they started plantations and, with no more Indians around, had Negro slaves imported from Africa to work them. The Lesser Antilles had been quickly by-passed by the Spaniards, as they offered no mineral wealth; for this they were known as the islas inutíles, the useless islands. Besides, they were largely inhabited by the fierce and warlike Caribas who often raided Spanish settlements in their great peraguas, or 'war canoes', which could hold up to fifty men. The Caribas were themselves invaders, migrating northwards from the Guianas and northern Brazil, and it was their occasional practice of eating their vanquished foes that brought the word 'cannibal' into European parlance.

The glittering tapestry of the gold rush history had one particularly bright thread running through it, gleaming enticingly and tantalisingly until well into the Eighteenth Century.

Some twelve years before the Santa María, the Pinta and the Niña cautiously nosed their way into the supposed eastern fringes of the Spice Islands, an annual ceremonial ritual was performed for the last time in the highlands above Bacatá. The local tribal king allowed himself to be undressed by his attendants, whereafter they applied a sticky layer of balsam gum to his body. From cane tubes they then puffed powdered gold dust onto the king so that he looked like a living statue of gold. Glittering in this magnificence, he presented himself before his people and led them in solemn procession to the shores of Lake Guatavitá. There he stepped onto a balsa raft with braziers of moque burning in the four corners, and was paddled by his nobles out across the water while his people lined the shore, made music, and chanted praise to their gods. When the canoe reached the centre of the lake, it drifted to a halt. Then, in a splendid climax, the king plunged overboard, piercing the reflective surface of the water from the living world, down into the netherworld of the spirits. Thus the lake would wash away his golden coat in a symbolic cleansing of the sins of the entire tribe, whilst paying homage to the spirit gods. The ritual complete, the Indians celebrated with a debauched evening of singing, dancing and drinking.

Shortly afterwards this area of the Muisca peoples was invaded by a larger Chibchá-speaking tribe, and the ceremony was snuffed out. But tales of this 'Gilded Man' as he came to be known, survived and flourished, simply because it was far too brilliant a spectacle to be forgotten. It soon became deeply entwined within the folk myths of the Indians, who had never seen the ceremony for themselves, but whose imaginations easily added gaudy accretions of fantasy, exaggeration and awe to the original truth. In their wonderings the Gilded Man became a fabulous king who ruled over a lost tribe of great sophistication and huge wealth. He held his court in a golden city whose palaces were sheathed with plates of gold, his soldiers wore golden armour, and the nobility were decorated like their lord in powdered gold whenever the court held its week-long banquets.

The first murmerings of possible riches in the interior may have started in 1512. Vasco Nuñez de Balboa settled in Española in 1500 but fell heavily into debt. To escape his creditors he fled to the ailing colony in the Gulf of Urabá in 1510. It was found to be deserted. Although initially a stowaway, de Balboa soon established a personal ascendancy and pursuaded movement of the settlement to the nearby but more salubrious Santa María de la Antigua in Darién. After seizing full control of the area he transformed the colony into an economic success. This pleased King Ferdinand who appointed him interim gobernadór in 1511. Whilst expanding the colony at Darién, de Balboa heard rumours of gold in the south: somewhere inland there existed a wealthy land of 'Dabeiba.' Leading an entrada up the Atrato river in 1512, de Balboa encountered wild cinnamon trees and 'sixty villages.' Further on a captured Indian chief called Abenamague may have started a 'trend' by telling the invading Spaniards whatever they wanted to know - or wanted to hear. He told of a 'wealthy land' further upriver. Pushing on, de Balboa reached the seat of chief 'Abibeiba.' But 'vast wealth?' - that was not found. De Balboa was, however, the first European to view the Andes, and the following year, after crossing the isthmus of Panama, would also be the first European to observe the Mar del Sur (Pacific Ocean). However, for the next decade Spanish exploration down the west coast of South America was both tentative and slow.

When Francisco Pizarro and his small expeditionary force of 67 cavalry and 110 infantry boldly landed at Tumbés in the former land of the Chimú, 'Birú' (more correctly: Tahuantinsuyu) was entering the final stages of a civil war of succession. Inca Huayna Capac had died in 1527, leaving no determined succession. Atahualpa, who had been with his father in the north, claimed that Huayna Capac had decided to divide the kingdom, setting up a new northern capital at Quito that Atahualpa would rule. His brother Huáscar claimed from Cusco to be the legitimate ruler of the entire realm. Civil war ensued. Atahualpa finally won and was on his way to Cusco in 1532 to claim the whole kingdom when news arrived of strangers on the coast building a town called San Miguel. Atahualpa sent envoys to meet them. The Incas allowed Pizarro and about 150 of his men to enter the regional capital at Cajamarca, where Atahualpa and his army were camped. Here, by means of a surprise attack under cover of a formal conference, the Spaniards succeeded in killing most of Atahualpa's immediate retinue and thousands of Inca soldiers with a breath-taking audacity that frightened the Spaniards themselves, for the ambush lasted only half an hour. The Inca Empire was now ripe for the taking.

Atahualpa Inca bargained for his life and his people by promising to fill a large room with the yellow and white metal and glittering stones which the Spaniards craved beyond reason. The room reputedly measured 20 by 17 by 8 feet, and although it took two months to do so, the Inca kept his side of the bargain by filling it to the level of his raised hand. As was the Spanish custom in the lands of the New World, Pizarro had most of the gold and silver melted down (this took another month), subtracted the Quinto, the Royal Fifth, and distributed the rest among his captains and men, making them richer beyond their wildest dreams - "He was most Christian in depriving no man of that which he deserved." wrote Pizarro's page. Atahualpa must have believed that the invaders' greed was satisfied. He was sadly mistaken. The sight of such riches and the apparent ease with which the room was filled (although it took two months to do so) brought the Spaniards to believe that there was more - much more. Pizarro soon gave in to his captains' demands to eliminate a possible focal point for continued Inca resistance, and had Atahualpa garrotted. A compadre, Diego de Almagro, arrived in Peru with reinforcements and the Spanish force, now some 600 strong, marched on Cusco, the Inca capital. The search for more gold was on.

With the upper echelons of their nobility dead, the inhabitants were unable to form an effective resistance, and they did not even attempt to retire to the more fortified city of Sacsayhuamán. Instead they passively remained in Cusco, which was duly taken and sacked in November 1533. Companies of already-wealthy soldados were then sent off in all directions to capture yet more treasures, whilst Pizarro set about founding a new Spanish capital, Los Reyes, the 'City of Kings' (soon to be called Lima), in the Rimac valley in the coastal lowlands. In Cusco, he set up one of the remaining Inca princes, Manco Capac, as a puppet ruler.

Manco soon turned on his Spanish masters but failed to make any impression on Lima, and invested Cusco instead. His forces occupied the deserted fortress of Sacsayhuamán, and from its heights hurled incendiaries into Cusco, setting the thatched roofs ablaze and driving the Spaniards to camp in the plaza mayor. For a time Manco's forces cut the city off from reinforcements from the coast. But the Inca army was too large to maintain in the field for too long with the primitive means of transport available (the concept of the wheel was known to the Incas, but the wheel itself was not employed), and after a few months Manco's army began to dwindle. Just then, one of the gold-searching expeditions - or rather, the remnants - under de Almagro returned from Chile in April 1537, took Manco's army in the rear, and defeated it.

Diego de Almagro and his men had been away for two years. He had left Cuzco on July 3, 1535, with 750 Spaniards and 12,000 Indians to explore 'New Toledo' (Chile) in the hope of finding a rich civilization like that of the Incas. During that time they crossed the bleak Altiplano of Bolivia via the San Francisco pass, penetrated far to the south, exacted considerable cruelty both upon his own and upon the Indians encountered, and returned northwards through the harsh coastal desert of Atacama. They had endured great hardships from heat and thirst, from cold and hunger, from Indian hostility, and from melancholia, disillusionment and despair. They had lost most of their horses and over half their number, and to crown to it all, they had found no more cities or plunder worth the name. After marching triumphantly into Cusco, Diego de Almagro and his Chilleños, the 'Men of Chile,' were bitterly resentful of former compadre Pizarro and his good fortune. Claiming Cusco as his, the civil war of Las Salinas ensued - the first of many in Peru.

Decisively beaten, Manco regrouped at Ollantaytambo, and retreated northwards through the thickly-forested Urubamba valley. He first settled at a place called Vitcos and used it as a base from which to sally forth against the probing Spaniards. Manco's hit-and-run attacks were rarely successful, and on one occasion, as he withdrew into the mountains, he was followed by one of Pizarro's brothers. With Vitcos no longer secure, Manco moved again, deeper and deeper into the mountainous and forest fastness of Vilcabamba province where his people could be safe. With his wives and sons, the mummies of his ancestors, and some twenty thousand followers and their animals, Manco climbed 16,000 feet over the Panticalla Pass, and descended into the Vilcabamba jungle. There he founded his newest-and-last capital, Vilcabamba City, or, as Friars Marcos and Diego were to call it, the "... largest city, in which was the 'University of Idolatry,' where lived the teachers who were the wizards and masters of abomination ..."

The more gold and silver the Spaniards did not find whilst stripping the palaces and official buildings bare, fighting among themselves and on expeditions, the more convinced they became that Manco and his followers had hauled the bulk of the Inca treasures away with them. This, in itself, was ample enough reason to follow the runaways, but the pursuit was made even more attractive by the local rumour that the ruling Incas had originally come to Peru from a mysterious kingdom in the east. There in the basin of a Great River, it was said, flourished the ancestral home of the Incas, the great empire of Pay-titi, the 'Tiger Father,' which boasted a civilisation even more magnificent than the Inca realm in Peru. Historically the tale may have had its roots in an Inca legend that their first priest-king had come to the Andean highlands from the east. But what mattered to the Spaniards was that the Peruvian natives seemed genuinely convinced of the existence of this Pay-titi. Moreover, their information tallied neatly with the fact that Manco Inca had fled into the jungle-clad slopes of Vilcabamba, where the great Marañón river draws its headwaters from the Andes.

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During the Inca civil war of succession, Atahualpa Inca had been successful against his brother Huáscar largely due to three loyal generals: Chalcuchima, Quizquiz and Rumiñavi. Upon hearing of Atahualpa's death, Rumiñavi, proclaimed himself king of the northern Inca kingdom of Quito. He reigned with some cruelty, for the local Cañari tribes sent emissaries to San Miguel with the request that the Spaniards help deliver them from this Inca tyrant. Pizarro's lieutenant in the area was Sebastián Moyano de Benalcásar, a veteran of both Pedro de Alvarado's Nicaragua campaign and Pizarro's in Peru. With his numbers increased by Spanish arrivals from Panama and Nicaragua, de Benalcásar set out to the conquest of Quito with 200 infantry and 80 horse, besides the usual train of Indian attendants. However, it was not a quick and easy campaign like those against Atahualpa and Manco Capac. Rumiñavi was a shrewd opponent, showing great tactical awareness in choice of ground and in plans of combat. More troublesome than the Spaniards were the Cañari spies and guides who led the Spaniards through by-paths, avoiding the pitfalls laid for cavalry. Three pitched battles were inconclusive. Fearing a devastating dawn attack, the Spaniards were 'saved' when the nearby volcano Cotopaxi erupted violently, sending Rumiñavi's troops into panic, and fortuitously fulfilling one of those Indian prophesies of disaster and doom that were so helpful to the Spaniards in the New World. A few weeks later Rumiñavi chose discretion for the better part of the Spanish valour of horses, muskets and artillery, and fled to a remote mountain refuge, setting fire to Quito in his retreat and, according to a Spanish report, carrying off much treasure after burying the rest. De Benalcásar had the place rebuilt in the Spanish fashion whilst he received aid from Diego de Almagro (before the War of Salinas) against the over-ambitious conquístador of Guatamala Pedro de Alvarado who sought to add Quito to his presidencia. Much cruelty was then exacted upon the native Indians in pacifying fully the Quito region, searching for this 'missing treasure,' and in the troubled founding of Quito's maritime outlet Guayaquíl.

A year later, another curious element regarding 'missing treasure' came to the Spaniards' attention to strengthen further the theory of a fugitive empire in the interior. Whilst out on a foraging mission around Latacungi, Capitán Luìs de Daza, encountered an Indian messenger from an as yet unknown tribe from the north-east. He came as an envoy in search of Atahualpa Inca and, not knowing that the Inca had been overthrown and murdered, walked straight into the hands of the Spaniards. Upon interrogation he revealed that he had been sent by his master, the Zipá of Bacatá. Asked to describe his homeland, the envoy embellished his narrative with an extraordinary description of still another kingdom, far away to the east of Bacatá, where a priest-king who was ritually dusted in powdered gold dived into a lake surrounded by high mountains. A tall story, perhaps? But interesting nonetheless. The legend of the Gilded Man had reached the ears of Europeans.

On hearing of this tale de Benalcásar coined the name el hombre dorado for this mysterious king, the 'Golden Man.' Such a magnificent ritual clearly implied an abundancia of gold - an abundance! And by many extensions, Vilcabamba became the 'Kingdom of El Dorado,' where gold abounded in almost never-ending supply, and which now definitely had to be found. Besides, here was also an opportunity to expand the regions of his own governorship. De Benalcásar was the first to make a move - without official approval. With a number of followers he struck out from Quito in March 1538, and pushed north to Pasto and the region of Popayán, through forest country inhabited by primitive tribes who were subsequently reduced by famine, cannibalism and pestilence. After founding the city of Popayán in 1536, the Spaniards embarked on a bold expedition through the mountains of the central Cordillera, introducing the novel technique of driving herds of hogs and peccaries along with his army as a source of food on the march. In the Cauca valley Calí was founded in 1537. In the spring of 1539 de Benalcásar finally broke through the encircling barrier of mountains and dense, trackless forests into the fertile valley of Neiva, following the upper Magdalena river into the populous savannahs of Bacatá, land of the Muisca, a settled town-dwelling people. But here he met two other conquístadores.

Glossary & Bibliography