Read Ebook: The Conquest of the River Plate (1535-1555) by N Ez Cabeza De Vaca Alvar Active Th Century Schmidel Ulrich Dominguez Luis L Editor

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 1255 lines and 109553 words, and 26 pages

PAGE INTRODUCTION xiii

BIBLIOGRAPHY xli

VOYAGE OF ULRICH SCHMIDT 1

THE COMMENTARIES OF ALVAR NU?EZ CABEZA DE VACA:--

CHAP. XL.--What Gonzalo de Mendoza wrote 170

CHAP. L.--How the interpreter and those who had promised to come failed to do so 188

NARRATIVE OF HERNANDO DE RIBERA 263

INDEX 271

ILLUSTRATION.

CORRIGENDA.

INTRODUCTION.

I HAVE the pleasure to present to the Hakluyt Society, in the accompanying volume, the first two historians who wrote on the conquest of the Rio de la Plata, which took place in the reign of Charles V, King of Spain and Emperor of Germany.

The first of these was a German, a native of Straubing, in Bavaria, whose name was Ulrich Schmidt. The second was a Spaniard, native of Jerez de la Frontera in Andalusia, named Alvar Nu?ez, better known by the surname which he took from his mother, Do?a Teresa Cabeza de Vaca. This Alvar Nu?ez was a grandson of Don Pedro Vera, who, in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholics, undertook to conquer the Canary Islands at his own cost. As his means, however, were insufficient for so great an enterprise, he borrowed money of a Moorish banker upon pledge. The security given by this inhuman father consisted of his two sons, the younger of whom was the father of Alvar Nu?ez; and this transaction, characteristic of a soldier in those semi-barbarous times, seemed to presage the singular adventures in which the son of the latter was destined to take part.

Both the German adventurer as well as the Andalusian cavalier gave their names to the narratives of what happened to them in America, in the two books published together in the present volume.

Twelve years after the discovery of the river Plate in 1516, by Juan Diaz de Solis, two Spanish expeditions explored its shores. One of these had been sent out by the Emperor to India, under the orders of Sebastian Cabot, and the other, under the command of the pilot Diego Garcia, to take possession of that river. Cabot altered his course and went up the Paran? till he arrived at the Rio Paraguai in 1527, and Garcia made the same voyage the following year. Both these navigators shortly afterwards returned to Spain, having only left a small colony at Sancti Spiritus, in the neighbourhood of the present city of Rosario, which was soon transferred to Iguape, on the Atlantic coast, very near the limit fixed, by the treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, between the possessions of Spain and Portugal.

When Cabot returned to Spain in 1530, and told of the pieces of silver he had seen among the Indians of the Chaco, the King of Portugal sent Martin Affonso de Souza to establish himself in the extreme south of his possessions in Brazil; and this Portuguese captain, after examining the coast of the ocean as far as the entrance of the Rio de la Plata, founded at the close of the year 1531, in the island of San Vicente, the first regular colony on that coast where now stands the little city of Santos.

The vicinity of these two rival colonies--the much smaller Spanish one of Iguape, and the stronger Portuguese one in San Vicente--endangered the peaceful and tranquil possession of those lands; and for this reason the Spanish Government resolved on sending immediately a formal expedition which should permanently occupy the north of the territory belonging to it, according to the above-mentioned treaty, on that coast. This expedition was placed under the orders of the first Adelantado and Captain-General of the province of Rio de la Plata, Don Pedro de Mendoza.

With him sailed a ship belonging to some Flemish merchants established in Seville, and in this vessel went their servant, or agent, one Ulrich Schmidt, a native of Bavaria, whom the Spaniards called Schmidel, a name which was Latinized, according to the custom of that time, into Uldericus Faber.

This Bavarian remained in the province of the Rio de la Plata some twenty years, taking an active, though obscure, part in the events of the Spanish conquest of that part of America. In December 1552, he returned to his native country, visiting Seville in September of the following year, and Antwerp in January 1554. Thirteen years afterwards there appeared in Germany, in a collection of voyages published at Frankfort-on-Maine by Sebastian Franck, a narrative of Schmidt's voyage under the following title:

"Warhafftige und liebliche Beschreibung etlicher f?rnemen Indianischen Landschafften und Insulen, die vormals in keiner Chronicken gedacht, und erstlich in der schiffart Ulrici Schmidts von Straubingen, mit grosser gefahr erk?ndigt, und von ihm selber auffs fleissigst beschrieben und dargethan."

This is the book translated into English, for the first time, from the original German, and now published by the Hakluyt Society. It is unnecessary for me to say that the translation is not my work.

The historical period embraced by the voyage of Schmidt extends from 1535 to 1552, and refers to the governorship of Don Pedro de Mendoza, of his successor, Alvar Nu?ez Cabeza de Vaca, and to the principal part taken in the events of that period by Captain Domingo Martinez de Irala, under whose orders the author of the narrative continually served. Irala, actuated by personal ambition, defeated the plans of Mendoza, deserted Buenos Ayres, abandoned his second in command in the Chaco, occasioning his death and that of all those who had accompanied him across that great desert to the confines of Peru, and, when the second Adelantado, Alvar Nu?ez, arrived, opposed him by intrigues and conspiracy till he contrived to depose and send him in chains to Spain, under the insidious and calumnious accusation of having committed all sorts of crimes.

Alvar Nu?ez, after waiting judgment for eight years, was acquitted, and recompensed by the king, and to justify himself before the world he published a narrative of the events that had happened to him during his term of office, viz., from 1541 to 1544.

This part has been translated into English by Buckingham Smith, and published in Washington in 1851.

This Society had published in 1874 another narrative, similar to that of Ulrich Schmidt, relating to the same historical period, the voyage of Hans Stade, also a German adventurer, who visited the southern coast of Brazil shortly after the sedition against Alvar Nu?ez Cabeza de Vaca in Paraguai. Though edited with notes and explanations by the gallant Captain, afterwards Sir Richard Burton, these have not thrown the necessary light to show the motive of Stade's voyage, nor other circumstances essential to form a clear and precise idea how this other German adventurer is entitled to a place in the history of the Province of the Rio de la Plata as well as in that of the conquest of Brazil.

Sir Richard Burton died in Trieste on the 20th October last, while holding the office of H.B.M. Consul.

When Alvar Nu?ez returned a prisoner to Spain, the king appointed another Adelantado to replace him and continue the Spanish colonisation from which he had been so violently severed. This new governor of the Rio de la Plata was Don Juan de Sanabria, who died before starting on the voyage, and only after many difficulties his son, Don Diego, sailed from San Lucar de Barrameda in 1549 with three ships. In one of these Hans Stade embarked, on conditions identical with those under which Ulrich Schmidt had gone to America with Don Pedro de Mendoza. The armada of Sanabria was dispersed on the voyage; its chief arrived at the Antilles, and only two of the ships reached their destination.

Sanabria, just like Alvar Nu?ez, bore the king's orders to establish himself in the ports of the Atlantic coast, in proximity with the Portuguese colony of San Vicente, to take possession of the island of Santa Catalina, to found in its neighbourhood a colony on the border of the sea, in order to penetrate thence by land, crossing the whole province of Guaira, or Paran?, till he arrived at Paraguai.

The enterprise of Sanabria was, however, very unfortunate. The colonists, when their resources failed them, divided. A considerable number took refuge in the colony of San Vicente, impelled by necessity, and seduced by the Portuguese governor, Thom? de Souza. Hans Stade went with these, and as he understood something of gunnery, abandoned the Spaniards, and entered the Portuguese service as an artilleryman, when his chiefs and companions returned to Spanish territory and founded the colony of San Francisco, in 26? 20? of south latitude.

The first seventeen chapters of Stade's book refer to his stay in the province of Sanabria; the remainder to the time he passed in San Vicente, and his captivity among the Tupis who inhabited the surrounding country.

These three books are, as it were, fragments of the history of the first few years of the conquest of one part of South America. The series, arranged chronologically, is as follows:--

The special merit of these three works is that their authors were eye-witnesses and actors in the events they narrate.

It has seemed to me interesting and necessary to add to this volume an ethnographical map, which shows what were the indigenous tribes which occupied the country described by Schmidt, and the places in which the Guaran? family lived in that part of the province of Rio de la Plata, colonised in those days by the Spaniards. This map also shows, for the first time in the history of cartography, the demarcation of this same province entrusted by the King of Spain to his Adelantados, or governors, and the route opened by Alvar Nu?ez Cabeza de Vaca on his journey from the island of Santa Catalina to Asuncion, on the Paraguai.

The name of Rio de la Plata, given by the King of Spain to a territory so vast, and differing so widely now from what it was at the time of the conquest, creates some confusion and uncertainty in the mind of the reader of the events of that period. This can only be removed by a map which shows clearly what territories were held by the Spanish and Portuguese by virtue of the treaty of Tordesillas. Those who are cognisant of it are but few in number. When speaking or writing of the conquest of America, it is generally believed that the only title upon which were based the conquests of Spain and Portugal was the famous Papal Bull of partition of the Ocean, of 1493. Few modern authors take into consideration that this Bull was amended, upon the petition of the King of Portugal, by the above-mentioned treaty, signed by both Powers in 1494, augmenting the portion assigned to the Portuguese in the partition made between them of the continent of America. The arc of meridian fixed by this treaty as a dividing line, which gave rise, owing to the ignorance of that age, to so many diplomatic congresses and interminable controversies, may now be traced by any student of elementary mathematics. This line is shown on the accompanying map, and runs along the meridian of 47? 32? 56? west of Greenwich. The coast of the South American continent between the equator and the vicinity of the Tropic of Capricorn describes a great curve, closed on the west by the aforesaid dividing line, which enters the sea a little south of San Vicente, or Santos. West of this line were the Spanish possessions. A clear understanding on this point removes the confusion occurring at the present day, when the situation of affairs has undergone so marked a change, and explains how it is that Don Pedro de Mendoza, Alvar Nu?ez, and Hans Stade remained at points of the coast called of Brazil, mentioned by those travellers; and how Alvar Nu?ez, without leaving the province under his jurisdiction and command, marched through Spanish territory, from Santa Catalina, across the whole of Guaira, or province of Paran?, to Asuncion on the Paraguai. The name "Brazil", or "tierra del Brasil", at that time referred only to the part of the continent producing the dyewood so-called. Nearly two centuries later the Portuguese advanced towards the south, and the name "Brazil" then covered the new possessions they were acquiring, thus introducing the confusion to which I have referred.

The translation now published by the Hakluyt Society, done directly from the original German, has the merit of presenting the work genuine and entire as it left the author's hands. And as he was led into many errors of fact, proper names, geography, and chronology, the Society has done me the honour to ask me to explain them by notes and this brief Introduction.

Charles V had inaugurated his reign by showing his partiality for the Flemings, by whom he was surrounded, bestowing on the Baron de la Bresa, his counsellor and majordomo mayor, the first contract for the exclusive privilege of introducing negro slaves into the West Indies, against the advice of his Spanish counsellors, who rejected the project of the famous protector of the Indians, Bartholom? de las Casas. These favours shown to the Flemings gave rise to that picturesque phrase of Pedro Martyr de Anghiera, that the Flemings had gone with Charles V to Spain to destroy the vine after having gathered the vintage.

This explains how the Spanish Government, exclusive and jealous of all foreign interference in its affairs in the Indies, allowed Germans and Flemings, with their vessels, their merchandise, and their men, to take part in such considerable numbers in the expedition of Don Pedro de Mendoza. The Flemings were at that time as much Charles's subjects as the Spaniards, and the owners of the ships in which Schmidt and his countrymen sailed, were bankers--allies and favourites of the young Emperor.

Don Pedro de Mendoza began by establishing himself in the port of Los Patos, at the southern extremity of the island of Santa Catalina, which was included in his jurisdiction, as may be seen on the accompanying map. He then passed to the Rio de la Plata, and, on the 11th June 1535, laid the foundations of the city of Santa Maria de Buenos Aires. Soon afterwards he nominated as his second in command his intimate friend, Juan de Ayolas, and sent him with a detachment to explore the Rio Paran?, and open a road by means of this river to the Pacific Ocean, which was the advance or front limit of his province.

Schmidt relates that he was present at the foundation of Buenos Aires and its desertion six years afterwards, by order of Irala, who possessed himself of the command after the deaths of Don Pedro de Mendoza and his lieutenant Ayolas. Schmidt was also present at the events which took place during the governorship of the second Adelantado, Alvar Nu?ez Cabeza de Vaca, from 1541 to 1544. He assisted at his violent overthrow and deportation under the direction of Irala, made all the journeys of exploration which, starting from Asuncion, ascended the Rio Paraguai to Matto Grosso, and explored all the country of the Cheriguanos, now known by the name of Moxos and Chiquitos, to the confines of Peru. He remained with Irala till the arrival on the Atlantic coast of the expedition of the Adelantado Sanabria, with whom Hans Stade sailed to America.

At the end of twenty years of travels and strange adventures, of combats with Indians, of anarchy, poverty, and disorder among the conquerors of Paraguai, when Domingo de Irala, by force of audacity and machiavelism, had definitely possessed himself of the government of this unfortunate colony, obtaining, a short while afterwards, the royal title of Governor, his faithful and inseparable companion Schmidt received a letter from the banker Niedhart, transmitted to him from Seville by the agent there of the wealthy Fugger, in which he begged him to return to Antwerp. Schmidt obtained leave of absence from his chief, set out on his journey, with six deserters and twenty of his Indian slaves, by the rivers Paraguai and Paran? to the river Iguaz?, and thence crossed the province of Guaira by the route opened by Alvar Nu?ez, arriving at the Portuguese colony of San Vicente. Here he met with the agent of Erasmus Schetzen, who gave him a passage to Lisbon in a vessel belonging to his principal, which was laden with a cargo of sugar and brazil wood. Schmidt landed at Antwerp on the 25th January 1554, as I have already said.

Hans Stade was a prisoner of the Tapiis, or Tupis, in the immediate vicinity of San Vicente, when Schmidt passed that way on his homeward journey, and only succeeded in obtaining his liberty one year later, embarking at Rio de Janeiro on one of the French ships which trafficked with the Indians occupying that magnificent bay. His adventures during his captivity were published at Marburg in 1557. It is very strange, therefore, that Schmidt should not make the slightest mention of his countryman, though he also was acquainted with Peter Rosel, agent of Erasmus Schetzen, in the Portuguese colony. It would seem most natural that they should have spoken on the misfortunes that had befallen Stade, and on the various fruitless efforts made to rescue him from captivity, and as to the means to be employed in order to restore him to his country. Not a word of all this do we find in Schmidt's narrative.

The voyage of Ulrich Schmidt to the Rio de la Plata was published, as we have seen, at Frankfort-on-Maine in 1567, in the collection of Sebastian Franck, wherein also appeared for the second time that of Stade, side by side with his countryman Schmidt's. This proves the interest taken in these narratives of travel in those days of theological controversies and religious wars, when the French Protestants were trying to set foot in Brazil, while Villegaignon, under the protection of Coligny, was taking possession of the port of Rio de Janeiro, one year after the abdication of Charles V and the accession to the throne of the sombre Philip II, whose tyranny became very soon insupportable in the Low Countries, which fell under his dominion by inheritance from his father.

The publication of these travels answered to the propaganda against Spain and the religious principles her soldiers were taking to the New World. The work of Stade had been written by Dr. Johann Dryandri, Professor of the University of Marburg, the centre of the ideas of Luther. That of Schmidt was adopted and published by his countryman, Sebastian Franck, who was a vehement Anabaptist, and by the Flemings de Bry and his friend Hulsius, one of the most active advocates of Church Reform, expelled from Ghent, his native place, by decree of the King of Spain during the most critical period of the struggle maintained by the Flemings for their national independence and their religious beliefs.

In those times there existed no periodical press or newspaper. The Spanish Government did not expose to the criticism of the world its colonial policy; silence was its inviolable rule. Availing himself of the right of his own defence, the Adelantado, Alvar Nu?ez Cabeza de Vaca, deposed and accused by Irala and his party, had published, as we have seen, the narrative of his Government of the Rio de la Plata. Immediately afterwards there appeared in Germany the book of Ulrich Schmidt, containing the charges against Alvar Nu?ez and the defence of the conduct of his enemy. These conquerors of Paraguai accused one another of disgraceful immorality and incapacity for the enterprize entrusted to them by the King. Ambition, as we gather from these books, overcame in them all feelings of honour and duty; and violence, sedition, perfidy, and bloodshed, were the means by which they sought to attain their ends.

The publication of these recriminations in Protestant Europe, which looked on with fear at the growth of the power of Spain by her conquests in the Indies, was a natural incentive to those who groaned under her yoke. Having no periodical press, they availed themselves of the narratives of voyages, which were awakening curiosity with respect to countries that had fallen under her dominion. Everything for them was new and wonderful. The unknown races, their primitive customs, their savage life, their nakedness, their arms and food, the virgin nature and splendid vegetation of the tropics, the fruits and new animals, the game and fish, differing from those in the old world, all excited the imagination, and, at the same time, opened a vast field for censure, and for inciting the multitude against the enemy who was taking possession with such admirable ease of the new lands which raised the enthusiasm of the first discoverer to such a pitch that he believed they had contained the earthly Paradise.

How could they help devouring with avidity "the veritable historie and description of a country belonging to the wild, naked, savage, man-eating people", narrated by Hans Stade, who had been their captive? How could they fail to be interested in "the true and agreeable description of some Indian lands and islands which have not been recorded in former chronicles", by one who, like Schmidt, had first explored them "amid great danger"?

It seems to me impossible that in the class of people to which Schmidt and Stade belonged, there should have been found men capable of writing narratives, though of scant literary merit. The art of writing was very uncommon in the middle of the sixteenth century. We know by whom Stade's work was prepared; but we have not the same information with regard to that of Schmidt, though there can be no doubt that both were written, not by those who appear as their authors, but by more learned persons, enemies to the Spanish Government, upon data recorded, badly or well, by the adventurers themselves, and from what they heard from their travelling companions.

The memory cannot retain for a long time names, and especially foreign names, and details of events happening in the midst of grave anxieties and dangers. For this reason Schmidt and Stade, who could not have taken notes at the time, ran into such great errors, that it is impossible to correct them with accuracy. The Castilian language is difficult to pronounce for men of Northern Europe, and much more is this the case with the Guaran?, which abounds with vowels and inarticulate sounds, with an accent at times guttural, at others nasal, or both combined. The Spanish Jesuit missionaries found themselves obliged to invent signs to represent these sounds. Nevertheless, there are words which, although pronounced in accordance with these signs, are now unintelligible to the natives.

It seems to me beyond all doubt that Guaran? was the general language of the whole of America to the east of the Cordillera of the Andes, from the sea of the Antilles to the extreme south of the continent. There were various dialects, as might be expected in a language without a literature, spoken by tribes living apart and hostile to one another. Traces of it occur north of the Amazon, as well as in the pampas of Argentina, and especially in Paraguai and in Guaira, the chief centre of the race in the days of the Spanish conquest. In Paraguai and its immediate vicinity the tongue spoken is nearly as pure as in the time of the Spanish missionaries Anchieta and Ruiz de Montoya, who wrote the vocabulary, and tried to adapt the language to grammatical principles and rules.

In the numerous notes I have placed at the foot of the pages, I have corrected the errors of Guaran? nomenclature committed by Schmidt, whenever they bear some resemblance to the true names of tribes and places referred to. Some errors were noticed by L. Hulsius in 1599, who indicated those of well-known places and names, which in the first German edition appeared disfigured. For instance, "Demerieffe" for "Tenerife", and "Petrus Manchossa" for "Don Pedro de Mendoza". But neither Hulsius nor the other editors could correct them accurately, because they did not know a single word of the language of the natives, nor of that of their Spanish conquerors. These errors are still greater in the Latin version from which the Spanish and other translations were made.

The errors of Schmidt went so far in names of persons that he did not write correctly those of his chiefs, not even that of Domingo Martinez de Irala, under whose immediate orders he served for twenty years. Schmidt repeatedly insists on naming him Martino Domingo de Eyollas. Another of his chiefs was Alvar Nu?ez Cabeza de Vaca, whom he always names Abernunzo Cabessa de Bacha. The most curious thing is, that the editors who attempted to correct these errors, were not free from similar faults; even M. Camus, who, in correcting that of Cabeza de Vaca, rendered it by Alvare Nugnez Cabera di Vacha; and M. Ternaux Compans, who supposed the settlement named "Duechkamin" by Schmidt, to be Tucuman, because he did not know that neither the city nor the province of this name were founded at the moment to which he is referring.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet