South America Part 2

Many of them became active partic.i.p.ants in the wild deeds of the _conquistadores_. Did they, on the other hand, show themselves desirous of protesting, the more reckless pioneers made strenuous attempts to muzzle their eloquence.

When the spirit of the age and the circ.u.mstances in which these adventurers sailed to the South-West are considered, many of the atrocities committed are less to be wondered at than would otherwise be the case. It may be taken for granted, in the first place, that the temperament of these men was sufficiently wild and reckless to cause them to embark in any extraordinarily perilous enterprise of the kind.

With all they had in the world sunk in the venture, they would move heaven and earth, and squander countless human beings, before admitting defeat. The failure of Indian labour meant financial ruin; this was frequently staved off at the cost of thousands and tens of thousands of lives. Such characteristics as these were by no means confined to the Spaniards and Portuguese. We have some terribly vivid examples of it on the part of the Welzers, the German merchant princes who contracted with Charles V. to subdue and settle Venezuela. Sir Clements Markham relates that the first Governor of the new colony, an official of the name of Alfinger, came out with a strong force in 1530. On his marches he would employ many hundreds of native porters; these men were chained together in long lines, each slave having a ring round his neck made fast to the chain. When one of the slaves was too ill or too exhausted to proceed any farther, Alfinger had the unfortunate wretch's head severed from his body, so that the body dropped away from the chain without the march being hindered. It is difficult to imagine a more callous or atrocious proceeding than this, but undoubtedly financial considerations lay at the bottom of it. The thing was done, perhaps, _pour encourager les autres_, and certainly many a poor staggering wretch marched on mile after mile, when under ordinary circ.u.mstances he would have dropped exhausted at an earlier stage. Thus the last atom of physical energy was wrenched by terror from the slaves--a species of economy which, if worked out wholesale, may have proved sufficiently profitable from their owner's point of view!

Long even after the pa.s.sing of the pioneer _conquistadores_ the methods of the Spanish Court encouraged abuses of authority and many acts of tyranny. Officials, such as Governors and even Viceroys, were wont to pay certain sums down for the transference of the tenure of office, and it was then their task to wring as much from the governed territory as possible in order that they might retire from the New World to the Old the owners of vast fortunes.

To expect fair government under conditions such as these was to conceive human beings on a higher plane than that on which they are wont to be planned. Indeed, notwithstanding the atrocities and financial iniquities which were rife throughout Spanish and Portuguese Colonies, to imagine the various officials as necessarily inhuman and criminal is, of course, absurd. Many of these were men of talent, and of merciful and gentle disposition; but in many even of these cases the altogether extraordinary influence and atmosphere of the Southern Continent ended by driving them to acts from which in Europe they would have shrunk whole-heartedly. The dispositions of the men were not invariably at fault; but the system under which they worked was never anything else.

It is time, however, to forsake generalization, and to return to the Spanish pioneers who first colonized Haiti, and then set foot on the mainland itself. In the ill-fated island the drama, begun with the advent of the Spaniards, was being continued in deeper and bloodier shades. The royal edicts came pompously out from Spain, commanding that the welfare of the Indians should be the first consideration on the part of the Colonial Government; but the thunder of such edicts, worn out by the voyage, died away ere they reached the island. Ovando, it is true, made some endeavours to act up to the spirit of these enactments; but in view of the condition of the labour market and the clamourings of the settlers it was, humanly speaking, impossible to carry this out.

As time went on both settlers and Governors accustomed themselves to treat the aborigines rather as beasts of burden than as men, and they were hunted, slain, or driven to labour with as little compunction as if they had been pack-mules. The slightest sign of revolt was wont to be punished by an outlet of blood which left the unfortunate folk cowering in deeper terror and despair than before. The utter misery of the Indians may be imagined when the measures they took to free themselves are taken into consideration, for in the end they adopted the plan of committing suicide as the only means of cheating the rapacity of their white oppressors. Native families, and even entire villages, found gloomy consolation in a self-sought death. Even in this they were not invariably successful. Perhaps never has the irony of fate been more strongly ill.u.s.trated than in the tale that is told of one large slave-owner and his human chattels.

These latter, having come to the end of their endurance, had determined to follow the example of so many in the neighbourhood, and to do away with themselves in a body. The Spaniard, however, received notice of the intention of these people in time. Hastening to the spot, he came upon them just as they were preparing to effect their end. He was undoubtedly a crafty being, this. Proceeding into the midst of the distraught folk, he called for a rope. This, he explained, was in order that he, too, might hang himself and thus accompany the Indians to the next world, where they would thus still remain his slaves. The ruse proved entirely successful. The credulous Indians became, as it were, horrified back to life at the idea; they abandoned the attempt upon their lives, and continued in sorrowful despair to serve their Spanish owner.

In 1509 Ovando sailed back to Spain, and some return was made to Columbus's family for the part he had played in the discovery of the new Colonies. His son, Diego, came out, having been endowed with the t.i.tles of Viceroy and Admiral. Thus the Court of Spain had at last conceded some of the privileges which had been so effectually won by his father.

It is certain enough that the experiences of Diego's generation were very different from those of his father's. The new Commander took up his residence in state in Haiti, where he lived with great pomp and style.

The Indians, however, it is said, suffered more under his Governorship than had been their lot under that of his predecessor.

The tide of conquest was flowing past the islands, and beginning to spend itself on the continent. In 1508 began the actual colonization of the Spanish Main. The first territories to which the Spaniards made their way were those which gave on the Gulf of Darien. Here a companion of Columbus in his second voyage, Alonso de Ojeda, was given the district extending from the Cape de la Vela to the Gulf of Uraba, and this territory was termed the Land of New Andalusia. Another adventurer, Nicuesa, came as his neighbour, holding the Governorship of the coast from the Gulf of Uraba to the Cape Gracias a Dios. These two _conquistadores_, although as jealous of each other as was usual with almost all these pioneer explorers, joined forces against the Indians, whom they attempted to subdue by means of an iron hand rather than by a silk glove. The Indians, however, proved themselves of a very warlike disposition, and the joint forces of the Spaniards were unable to crush the power of the aborigines. After a while the leaders were obliged to withdraw their forces from the district they had occupied.

Some while afterwards Nunez de Balboa took charge of Uraba. On his arrival he found that matters on the Gulf of Darien had reached a desperate pitch. As the fortunes of the Spaniards had waned, the confidence of the Indians had increased. There is no doubt that the majority of men would have recoiled from the task which faced Balboa when he found himself at the head of a number of starving Spaniards, scarcely able to maintain their precarious foothold in a hostile country.

Balboa gathered together the despairing remnants, and contrived to put fresh heart into his men. He then turned to the Indians, and won their esteem by his considerate treatment. He proved himself, in fact, in every respect an able and successful leader. It was in 1512 that he set out on his famous expedition across the Isthmus, and won his way to the sh.o.r.es of the Pacific Ocean. It was certainly not the least dramatic moment in the history of early America when Balboa, in a frenzy of joy, seized the flag of Castile, and, holding it aloft, plunged his body into the waters of the ocean, claiming it for his King. As was the fate of so many able men of that period, it was not long before Balboa was superseded. The fine governmental structure he had built up was very soon wrecked by his successor and superior, Pedrarias. Friendly communication with the Indians was ruthlessly broken off. The natives were chased unmercifully by bloodhounds, and numbers slain.

Balboa, chafing beneath a situation which must have been keenly distressing to him, was suspected by Pedrarias, and arrested. The Bishop, Quevado, however, intervened in favour of the single-minded ex-Governor; a reconciliation of a kind was patched up, and, in order to strengthen this, Balboa was officially betrothed to the daughter of Pedrarias--a purely political move this, since Balboa was already united to the dusky daughter of Careta, an aboriginal chief. There is matter for the novelist here and to spare; few situations can be found which hold more possibilities. In this case they led to the death of Balboa, which would probably have happened irrespective of the strange situation in which he found himself. The cause, however, was merely renewed jealousy on the part of the Governor. Balboa had prepared a further expedition of discovery, so thoroughly, indeed, that the suspicions of Pedrarias were again needlessly aroused. A mock trial brought about a real catastrophe, which ended in the beheading of Balboa in 1547, at the age of forty-two.

In the meanwhile much had been happening in the neighbourhood. Charles V. found himself in some danger of running short of men in the face of these tremendous additions to his empire. He farmed out a portion of these new Colonies, contracting with the Welzers, merchant princes of Augsberg, in Germany, to take charge of and to extend the settlements in that part of the continent which is now known as Venezuela.

An official of the name of Alfinger was appointed as the first Governor of this new settlement. He is said to have practised the most barbarous cruelties on the unfortunate Indians, some of which have already been referred to. Alfinger was succeeded by other officials of his nationality, who are said to have proved themselves somewhat less cruel rulers. But, on the whole, this colonizing scheme of the Welzers proved a dreary failure; they had little interest in the permanent occupation of the country, and sought merely for the gold and precious metals.

Thus, with the knowledge that their occupation would be shortlived, they forced the Indians to ever more strenuous labours than those to which they were accustomed even at the hands of the Spaniards. In the end the country became depopulated. The Welzers shrugged their shoulders, and admitted that their utility was at an end in that district. With this the Spaniards took possession of the country once again.

Gonzalo Jimines de Quesada now became prominent as a _conquistador_ in the territory to the north of Peru, known then as New Granada. Quesada himself, although he lacked nothing of the courage and determination (frequently of a merciless order) of the average _conquistador_, was undoubtedly endowed with certain attributes which were possessed by very few of these hardy pioneers. For one thing he was scholarly; he had been given an elaborate education, and knew well how to put it to the best purposes. Quesada led an expedition up the Magdalena River. He had for companion Benalcazar. They approached the country from the south, occupied Popagan and Pasto, and founded Guayaquil. They also penetrated the Valley of Curacua and Bogota, and thus traversed the whole Province.

This brought them into contact with the Chibcha Indians. In the end these unfortunate beings were completely subdued, their civilization destroyed, and they themselves divided as slaves among the Spaniards.

Quesada, accompanied by a band of mercenary Indians, started on his journey in order to seek for gold. He was, in the first place, received in a friendly way by the natives; but in the end these, dreading the greed which the invaders took no trouble to conceal, attacked them. The warfare between the Spaniards and the natives commenced, with the conquest of the natives as the result, as given above. It has already been explained that many of the characteristics of the Incas and of the Chibchas were curiously alike. In history this extended even to the fate of the respective Royal Families. Pizarro slew Atahualpa; Quesada was even more thorough. For not only did he destroy the Prince of the Chibchas, but the whole of the Royal Family as well.

These acts do not appear to have lain very heavily on the conscience of Quesada, if fruitful years be any test. The tough old _conquistador_ lived to the age of eighty, expiring in the year 1579. In 1597 it is said that his body was taken to Bogota Cathedral.

CHAPTER IV

THE DISCOVERY AND EARLY HISTORY OF BRAZIL

It still remains a point of dispute between the Spanish and Portuguese nations as to who was the discoverer of Brazil. There is, moreover, Amerigo Vespucci. Amerigo Vespucci may be said to have been more successful in his accounts of his voyages than in the feats which he actually accomplished. To have succeeded on such slender foundation in causing an entire Continent to be christened by his name was in itself no mean performance, and this was probably his greatest claim to distinction.

Some historians take him more seriously than this. Southey, for one, appears to accept Vespucci very much at his own valuation, and states that the honour of having formed the first settlement in Brazil is due to Amerigo Vespucci.

The Spaniards claim this distinction for their famous seaman, Vicente Pinzon. Pinzon sailed from Spain in December, 1499. He shaped a more southerly course than any previous navigator in the Spanish service, and he appears to have made his landfall in the neighbourhood of Pernambuco.

He went ash.o.r.e, it would seem, at a spot he named Cape Consolation, and of this he took possession in the name of the Spanish Crown. His voyage, however, appears to have had very little practical result, for almost immediately afterwards he returned to Europe, and no steps seem to have been taken by the Spanish Court for the colonization of the land which he had discovered.

[Ill.u.s.tration: COLUMBUS LANDING IN AMERICA.

_From a seventeenth-century engraving._]

The Portuguese, for their part, a.s.sert that the territories of Brazil were first sighted by their great navigator, Pedro Alvarez Cabral. The discovery was in one sense something of an accident. It was necessary for the seamen who were setting their course for the East Indies to steer well to the west, in order to avoid the zones of calms which prevail in the neighbourhood of the African coast. Cabral appears to have steered so boldly into the west that he fell in with the coast of Brazil. This was in 1500. Word of this event was sent to Portugal, and the enterprising little kingdom, at that time at the height of her maritime power, made preparations to colonize the country.

The auspices under which the Spaniards and the Portuguese arrived in the New World were curiously different. The Spaniards were frankly in quest of gold, and in many cases ransacked the fertile agricultural lands in search of minerals which were non-existent. The Portuguese, on the other hand, had no reason to suspect the presence of precious metals in their new colony, and it was in the first instance for its vegetable products that the land, so rich in minerals, became famed.

It was only natural that the pioneer Portuguese should have been struck with the admirable quality of the valuable Brazilian woods. Shipments of timber were the first to be sent from the new colony to the Mother Country. It was from this very wood that Portuguese South America took its name, since much of it, being of a brilliant red colour, was known in the Portuguese language as "brasa."

Just about this time the Portuguese fitted out the most imposing fleet which had ever left their sh.o.r.es. It was commanded by one of the greatest of Portuguese explorers, Vasco da Gama, and was destined to sail round the Cape of Good Hope to the Indies--the new and marvellous land of spices. The fleet was worthy of its commander; it was made up of no fewer than thirteen vessels, and was manned by some 1,200 men.

With pomp and ceremony this imposing Armada sailed away from the blue waters of the Tagus, and, rounding the sunlit bluff, stood away to the south. It made the Canaries in the usual way, pa.s.sed the Cape Verde Islands, and struck out to the west, lighting on the Brazilian coast in lat.i.tude 17 south--that is to say, not far from the spot where stands the present town of Bahia. From this point Vasco da Gama sailed southward, keeping touch with the coast. He eventually established communication with the Indians, who were, as was usual in these lat.i.tudes, quite naked, their bodies being painted, and who wore great bones in their ears and in their slit lips and noses.

A criminal, one of the type which seems to have been brought out for purposes such as this, was landed in order to dwell among the natives, to test their temper and habits--a somewhat precarious profession this!

After a while the fleet sailed from the place they named Port Seguro, leaving two of these criminals or _degradados_--professional pioneers--behind. These "were seen lamenting and crying upon the beach, and the men of the country comforting them, demonstrating that they were not a people devoid of pity."

This was the scene which presented itself to the eyes of the more fortunate mariners as they sailed away. Nevertheless, the criminals seem to have survived. No small advertis.e.m.e.nt, this, of the courtesy of the Indian tribe, for the people composing it must have belonged to one of the coastal races who afterwards were grimly famed for their ferocity.

As a matter of fact, human instruments of the kind, which, it must be admitted, were of small merit, played no small part in the colonization of Brazil. In some respects these unfortunate folk were undoubtedly useful. They resembled the candles carried by underground miners. If the candle continued to burn, all was well; but if the candle went out, there was obviously danger in the air. Quite a number of these human candles went out in the course of the early Iberian explorations. In a sense there was sufficient justice in this, since they were criminals whose offences had been usually those of murder and violence. If, therefore, they escaped in the first instance with their lives, their penitence had been consummated, and they were free to take advantage of the land.

People of this kind had been set ash.o.r.e to pave the way for their betters in Africa and in India, and this system was now extended to Brazil. When friendly relations were once established, it may be imagined that the influence of these criminals upon the savages was not of the best. According to Southey: "The Europeans were weaned from that human horror at the blood-feasts of the savages, which, ruffians as they were, they had at first felt, and the natives lost that awe and veneration for the superior races, which might have proved so greatly to their advantage."

In 1503 the Portuguese sent out an important expedition under Duarte Coelho. This leader explored the country in the neighbourhood of the Bay of Bahia. After this he proceeded southwards, and landed men in order to establish a small colony.

The first really important attempt at colonizing the country was undertaken by Martin Affonso de Souza. This navigator set out from Portugal in command of many ships and men. Like Coelho, he struck the Brazilian coast at Bahia; but, instead of proceeding to the south, as his predecessor had done, he remained for some while at the spot. It is said that when De Souza landed he fell in with a Portuguese of the name of Correia. This worthy is supposed to have formed one of Cabral's expedition. For some reason or other he was marooned at that place. The Indians, instead of slaying him, had conceived a great veneration for this white man, who had, as it were, dropped from the clouds into their midst. The marooned sailor had become a kind of professional adviser, whose counsel was sought by the natives on every important occasion.

Many of the early navigators maintain that the comparatively easy colonization of this portion of the Brazilian coast was due to the presence of the much-esteemed Correia.

Bahia rapidly became the most important of these early Portuguese settlements. In the first instance it was, of course, extremely difficult for the few bands of daring Portuguese to make any practical impression on the huge slice of coast which had fallen to their share.

The experiences of the first colonists, moreover, were destined to differ considerably from those of the pioneer Spaniards. The latter had their field of exploration practically to themselves. The Portuguese, on the other hand, found rivals in the South Seas almost as soon as the prows of their ships had pierced the waters. The Dutch eventually were destined to become by far the most formidable of these; but in the first instance the chief friction occurred with the French.

Just at this period the Gallic sailors awoke to a strong interest in Brazil, and the French vessels carried numbers of warlike and industrial adventurers to the tropical sh.o.r.es. Even before 1530 a French factory had been established at Pernambuco, but a circ.u.mstance of far greater importance was that these French rovers discovered the magnificent harbour of Rio de Janeiro, sailed into the narrow entrance between the lofty peaks, and founded a colony there before the Portuguese had obtained the opportunity of a permanent footing in that place.

The leader of these troops was Nicolas Durant de Villegagnon, and his men comprised a number of Huguenots who were abandoning France.

Villegagnon's own character appears to have been complex and curious in the extreme. He was apparently a true blade of the old swashbuckling type; he employed religion for such ends as he might have in view at the moment, regarding its tenets cynically, tongue in cheek. Thus he came out in command of the Huguenots, ostensibly himself a Huguenot; but his convictions appear to have changed on various occasions, and he is seen now as their abettor, now as their oppressor. In the end he clearly showed himself antagonistic to the convictions of his followers, and took to denouncing them as heretics. With the exception of this leader, the circ.u.mstances and motives of the expedition were somewhat similar to those which caused the first emigration of the English Puritans to North America.

Once established in Rio de Janeiro, the Huguenots succeeded in making friends with the Indians of the neighbourhood, who became their firm allies and proved of great a.s.sistance to the French in their struggles against the Portuguese, who came down in force to evict the intruders.

The Huguenots were defeated in 1560 by Mem de Sa, the third Governor of Brazil; but, although dispersed for a while, the power of the invaders was by no means broken. Shortly afterwards they came together again, and succeeded in establishing themselves more firmly than before in the place. They were again fiercely attacked by the Portuguese, but the number of islands in the bay afforded excellent points of defence, and it was not until 1567 that the Portuguese sea and land forces combined were able to expel the last Frenchmen from the mountains which lay about the harbour of Rio de Janeiro. This, as a matter of fact, was merely a foretaste of much of the active and aggressive compet.i.tion in matters of colonization from which the Portuguese were destined to suffer.

Before arriving at the subject of the predatory expeditions of the various nations in South America, it would be as well to consider the initial methods taken by the early Portuguese settlers. In the first instance the part.i.tion of so vast an extent of territory among so small a number of colonists was necessarily effected in a crude and tentative fashion. The great colony was divided into _capitaneas_, or counties, each of which possessed a coast-line of 150 miles. A Governor was appointed to each _capitanea_. As was perhaps natural, the powers of each of these officials, more or less isolated as each was, grew rapidly--to such an extent, indeed, that the home authorities in Portugal became anxious to curb the occasional eccentricities of some of the more despotic of these. In order to effect this, Thome de Souza was made Captain-General of Brazil, and was sent out to that country provided with numerous officials and troops. He established his headquarters at Bahia, and the size of the town increased in consequence. In 1572 Brazil was divided into two governmental areas, Bahia being recognized as the capital of the north, and Rio de Janeiro as the capital of the southern portion. This division, however, only lasted for five years. Brazil in the meanwhile was becoming populous, and had taken its place as the largest among the regular Portuguese colonies throughout the world.

It was not long before the jealousies between the Spanish and Portuguese led to various outbreaks and to troubles on the frontiers. From a purely practical point of view, there is no doubt whatever that such bickerings were a sheer absurdity, since the territories at the disposal of both nations were far too great to be effectively dealt with by any forces which either the Spanish or Portuguese could introduce into the Continent. As it was, the era was one of moulding and experiments. Even at the present day it would seem difficult to decide whether many of these latter have proved themselves definite successes or undoubted failures. The general conditions of the New World at this period are well worthy of note.

No doubt South America has been more widely experimented upon in the colonizing sense than any other Continent. The methods of the Spaniards and Portuguese were by no means similar throughout. Indeed, the principles adopted by the four greatest colonizing nations of the age--the Spanish, the Portuguese, the English, and the Dutch--were all distinguished from each other by various important features.

The British, where they came into contact with dark-skinned races of inferior vigour and individual power, made a point of holding aloof, so far as the more important social points were concerned. Thus in India and in Africa the gulf between the white and the black has continued unbridged. The representatives of the British have remained as a governing race, relying upon the strict justice of their rule for its preservation. They have refrained from interference in the thousand jealousies and caste regulations with which the East Indies were, and are, honeycombed, becoming active only when oppression became barefaced.