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Pedro de Valdivia
Pedro de Valdivia (Villanueva de la Serena, Extremadura, April 17, 1497 – Tucapel, Governorate of Chile, December 25, 1553) was a Spanish soldier and conquistador of Extremaduran origin.
After taking part in various military campaigns in Europe, he traveled to America, where he joined the forces of Francisco Pizarro, Governor of Peru. With the title of lieutenant governor granted by Pizarro, he led the Conquest of Chile beginning in 1540. He founded the oldest cities of Chile, including the capital Santiago (1541), La Serena (1544), Concepción (1550), Valdivia (1552) and La Imperial (1552). In addition, he ordered the founding of the cities of Villarrica and Los Confines (Angol).
From his fellow conquistadors, organized into a cabildo, he received in 1541 the title of governor and Captain General of the Kingdom of Chile, being the first to hold that office. After containing indigenous resistance and several conspiracies against him, he returned in 1548 to the Viceroyalty of Peru, where Pedro de la Gasca confirmed his title. Back in Chile, he undertook against the Mapuche people the so-called Arauco War, in which he died at the Battle of Tucapel (1553).
On several occasions he was accompanied by Francisco Martínez Vegaso or Francisco Pérez de Valenzuela, among other Spanish conquistadors. He was also with the later Mapuche toqui Lautaro.
Origins
Family
Valdivia was born on April 17, 1497, in the Spanish region of Extremadura, which at that time belonged to the Crown of Castile. The precise place of Valdivia's birth is still under discussion. In the Comarca of La Serena, several towns claim to be the birthplace of the conquistador. The sources indicate Villanueva de la Serena as the place of birth, although many also point to Castuera, where his birth house and that of his ancestors are located.[1][2][3][4] Campanario (where the Valdivia family originally came from) and Zalamea de la Serena are also mentioned as alternatives for his origin.
Pedro de Valdivia belonged to a family of hidalgos with a certain military tradition, the House of Valdivia. The chronicler and soldier of Valdivia's company Pedro Mariño de Lobera states in his Crónica del Reino de Chile: «the governor Don Pedro de Valdivia was the legitimate son of Pedro de Onças (Arias) de Melo, a Portuguese of very noble birth, and of Isabel Gutiérrez de Valdivia, native of the town of Campanario in Extremadura, of very noble lineage». However, no document whatsoever (civil, military or ecclesiastical) supporting this statement has ever been found in the Spanish archives. On the other hand, the thorough genealogical study La familia de Pedro de Valdivia, published in 1935 by the Chilean scholar Luis de Roa y Ursúa (1874–1947), established that the conquistador was very probably the legitimate son of Pedro Onças de Melo and his wife Isabel Gutiérrez de Valdivia, both of noble lineage.
Military experience in Europe and America
In 1520 he began his career as a soldier in the War of the Communities of Castile, and afterward served in the army of Emperor Charles V, distinguishing himself during the campaigns in Flanders and the Italian Wars, at the Battle of Pavia and in the assault on Rome. He married in Zalamea in 1525 a noblewoman named Doña Marina Ortiz de Gaete, a native of Salamanca. In 1535 he left for the New World and would never see his wife again.
He set out for America on the expedition of Jerónimo de Ortal,[5] arriving at the island of Cubagua in 1535 with the aim of beginning the search for the fabulous El Dorado. In Tierra Firme he took part in the discovery and conquest of the Province of New Andalusia with his friend Jerónimo de Alderete, his comrade in arms in the War of the Communities of Castile. He witnessed the founding of San Miguel de Neverí in 1535. Disagreements with Ortal led part of his expedition members to abandon him in search of other, more promising horizons. Alderete, Valdivia and some forty other men were among the rebels. After separating, they reached the territory of the Province of Venezuela under the control of the Welser of Augsburg, and as deserters they were detained by the German authorities in Santa Ana de Coro, and the ringleaders were sent to Santo Domingo to be tried.
Valdivia was not among the ringleaders of the rebellion; he was released and remained in Coro. During that long stay he became friends with Francisco Martínez Vegaso, a Spanish adelantado and moneylender in the service of the Welser. Years later Valdivia, Alderete and Martínez would join together for the conquest of Chile.
After a period that has not yet been clarified, in 1538 Valdivia went to Peru and enlisted in the forces of Francisco Pizarro, taking part as his maestre de campo in the civil war that Pizarro was waging against Diego de Almagro. When this conflict ended with Almagro defeated at the Battle of Las Salinas, his military performance was recognized and rewarded with silver mines in the Cerro de Porco (Potosí) and lands in the Valley of La Canela (Charcas). Near this encomienda was the plot assigned to the widow of a soldier, Inés Suárez, with whom he established an intimate bond, despite being married in Spain.
The route to Chile
Preparing the expedition
For the Governor of Peru, the initiative entailed some benefits and no cost. Valdivia left the repartimientos of Indians and the mine available for another collaborator. Moreover, the authorization involved no financial support from the royal treasury, since it was customary for conquistadors to finance themselves. Yielding to the enthusiasm of his Maestre de Campo, he empowered him in April 1539 to undertake the conquest of Chile as his Lieutenant Governor, although «he did not favor me —Valdivia wrote later— with even a single peso from His Majesty's Treasury or from his own, and at my own cost and charge I raised the men and made the expenses that the journey required, and I went into debt for the little I found to borrow, besides what I had at the time».[6]
Despite his determination, the difficulties in gathering financing and soldiers nearly thwarted Valdivia's plan. The moneylenders judged the risk to their capital excessive, and people shunned enlisting in the conquest of the most discredited land of the Indies, considered since the return of Diego de Almagro to be miserable and hostile, without gold, and with a very cold climate. In Valdivia's words, in a letter to Emperor Charles V dated September 4, 1545:
There was no man who wished to come to this land, and those who fled from it the most were those whom the Adelantado Don Diego de Almagro brought, for since he abandoned it, it was left so ill-famed that they fled from it as from the pestilence; and even many persons who loved me and were held to be sensible did not consider me so when I had to spend the estate I had on an enterprise so far removed from Peru and where the Adelantado had not persevered.[7]
That is, until he turned to a well-known and wealthy merchant and moneylender who acted as a soldier adelantado, Francisco Martínez, who had just arrived from Spain with a supply of weapons, horses, horseshoes and other articles highly valued in the colonies. Martínez agreed to become a partner and contribute, providing his capital (9,000 gold pesos in merchandise, valued by himself), in exchange for half of the profits the enterprise produced, a task that fell to Valdivia.
He finally managed to gather some 70,000 Castilian pesos,[8] a meager sum for the scale of the initiative, since at that time a horse, for example, cost 2,000. As for soldiers, only 11 enlisted in the adventure,[9] plus Inés Suárez, from Plasencia, who sold her jewels and everything she had to help with Valdivia's expenses. She went as his servant, to somewhat disguise that she was in reality his lover and companion.
When he was already preparing to set out, Pizarro's former secretary, Pedro Sánchez de la Hoz, arrived in Cuzco; he had returned to Spain after making a fortune in the early conquest of Peru. He came back with a royal decree granted by the King that empowered him to explore the lands south of the Strait of Magellan, giving him the title of Governor of the lands he might discover there. At the urging and through the manipulations of Pizarro, Valdivia and Sánchez de la Hoz entered into a partnership contract in which the former contributed everything gathered up to that moment, and the latter committed himself to contribute fifty horses and two hundred cuirasses and to equip two ships that within four months were to bring various goods to Chile to support the expedition. That ill-matched partnership would cause Valdivia numerous setbacks in the future; Valdivia, not without reason, regarded Sánchez de la Hoz as an obstacle to his future patrimonial ambitions.
What moved Pedro de Valdivia to undertake a project that almost everyone considered foolish? He thought that the discredited southern lands were suitable for establishing a governorate of an agricultural character, and he believed he could discover enough mineral wealth, not as abundant as in Peru, but sufficient to sustain a province of which he would be Lord. For above all Valdivia intended to establish a new kingdom that would give him fame and power. «To leave fame and memory of myself», he said. Though just one more of the adventurous hidalgos who at that time came from Spain to «make America», Valdivia's talents were superior. He knew it well, and he was convinced he would win renown in the «so ill-famed» Chile, for the more difficult the enterprise, the greater the fame for the one who undertook it. Shrewd, tireless and with a great sense of opportunity, this bold, often reckless leader had the virtue —and perhaps the genius— of raising his eyes above trivial riches and seeing a future there, where others saw only difficulties.
Start of the expedition
From the Cuzco highlands they descended east to the valley of Arequipa, continuing south through the area near the coast. Passing through Moquegua and then Tacna, they camped in the ravine of Tarapacá. During this stretch new auxiliaries joined the small company, until they numbered twenty Castilians. Of Pedro Sánchez de la Hoz, who was supposed to have joined the expedition here contributing the promised goods, there was no news. The other partner in the enterprise, the capitalist Francisco Martínez, suffered a serious accident and had to return to Peru.
News of Valdivia's march had spread across the altiplano, and several soldiers joined him at Tarapacá. Among them were some who would later play a leading role in the conquest of Chile: Rodrigo Araya with sixteen soldiers; also Rodrigo de Quiroga, Juan Bohón, Juan Jufré, Gerónimo de Alderete, Juan Fernández de Alderete, the chaplain Rodrigo González de Marmolejo, Santiago de Azoca and Francisco de Villagra. The Expedition of Pedro de Valdivia to Chile now numbered 110 Spaniards.
They then set out for Atacama la Chica following the Inca Road, where they made camps at Pica, Guatacondo and Quillagua to reach Chiu-Chiu. There Valdivia learned that his comrade from Italy Francisco de Aguirre was in Atacama la Grande (San Pedro de Atacama) and rode out with some horsemen to meet him. This providentially saved his life.
Indeed, Pedro Sánchez de la Hoz, who had remained in Peru trying to gather the agreed reinforcements, had only succeeded in having old debts collected from him. But feeling backed by his royal appointment as governor, one night in early June 1540 he arrived at Valdivia's camp in Atacama la Chica (Chiu-Chiu) together with Antonio de Ulloa, Juan de Guzmán, and two other accomplices. Stealthily they approached the tent where they expected to find Valdivia asleep, with the aim of murdering him and taking command of the expedition.
On entering the darkened dwelling, they realized that it was not Valdivia in the bed but Doña Inés Suárez, who raised loud cries of alarm and harshly rebuked Pedro Sánchez, while he nervously apologized. With the camp now awake from Doña Inés's uproar, the Field Constable Luis de Toledo came with some soldiers to punish the intruders, but on seeing that it was such an exalted personage he chose to send a messenger to alert Valdivia to the suspicious conduct of his partner.
On his return Valdivia, with ill-concealed anger, thought of hanging Sánchez de la Hoz, although he finally spared his life in exchange for a written renunciation of every right (to his royal decree) of expedition and conquest. Of the accomplices he banished three, but Antonio de Ulloa won his trust and was incorporated into the company.
Atacama Desert and the Valley of La Posesión
According to Vivar, by then the expedition totaled «one hundred fifty-three men and two clergymen, one hundred and five on horseback and forty-eight on foot»,[2] plus the thousand service Indians, whose slow pace under the load of the baggage set the rhythm of the advance.
On entering the vast, dry and fearsome Atacama Desert, scorching (40 to 45 °C) by day and freezing (−10 to −5 °C) at night, Valdivia divided the expedition into four groups, which marched a day's journey apart, thus giving the scarce water sources, exhausted by one group, time to recover before the next one arrived. The leader set out with the last party, but rode ahead with two horsemen to encourage his men, «watching how they all endured their hardships, suffering in his body his own, which were not small, and in his spirit those of all».[2]
Deep in the Desert, the leader's encouragement became more necessary. From time to time they came upon the dead remains of men and animals, some from Almagro's expedition: «So harsh and cold are the winds in most places of this wasteland, relates Pedro Mariño de Lobera, that it happens that the traveler leans against a rock and remains frozen and stiff on his feet for many years, so that he seems to be alive, and thus mummy flesh is taken from here in abundance».[2] Besides marking the route for them, those corpses confirmed the reputation of the country into which Valdivia's initiative was leading them.
Perhaps distressed by the macabre landscape, Juan Ruiz, one of the rotos (ragged men) who had already been in Chile with Almagro, repented of the adventure. He told his companions in secret «that here there was not enough to eat even for thirty men, and he went about stirring up men to go back to Peru».[10] Warned of the sedition by his maestre de campo Pedro Gómez de Don Benito, Valdivia showed the other, harsh face of his leadership. He did not even allow the insurgent to confess and had him summarily hanged for treason, continuing the march without further ado.
The vanguard group of the expedition, led by Alonso de Monroy, carried tools to improve the passes and prevent the horses from falling. It also tried to deepen the small wells known to the Indian guides, «so that they would have clear water that would not fail for the people coming behind».[2] However, after some two months of travel through the driest desert on the planet, they found only exhausted springs, and the army thought it would perish in the battle against dehydration under the crushing Atacama sun. The men were losing hope.
But the woman did not. Mariño relates that Inés Suárez ordered a yanacona to dig «at the spot where she was sitting», and when he had gone down no more than a meter, the water gushed forth with the abundance of a stream, «and the whole army was satisfied, giving thanks to God for such mercy, and testifying that the water of Doña Inés's jahuel, for so it was named, was the best they had ever drunk». Although it is difficult to give credit to this prodigy, at least in the terms described by the valuable chronicler, the fact is that ever since, that place has been called Aguada de Doña Inés. It lies above a ravine named Doña Inés Chica, some 20 km northeast of El Salvador, at the foot of a mountain known as Cerro Doña Inés, located immediately north of the Salar de Pedernales.
A few days later the hardships of the Despoblado came to an end, although «many service people perished, Indians as well as blacks». On Thursday, October 26, 1540,[2] the expedition was able to camp on the bank of a pleasant stream where, says the aforementioned narrator, «not only did the men show extraordinary relief at finding themselves free of so many calamities, but even the horses suggested the joy they felt, with the neighing, vigor and spirit they displayed, as if they recognized the end of their labors». They were in the splendid valley of Copiapó, or Copayapu in the indigenous language. On entering it they had to face in battle forces of the Diaguita people, estimated by Lobera at eight thousand warriors, whom they easily defeated, and were thus able to settle in the valley.[11]
Since his jurisdiction began here, Valdivia called all the land from this valley southward New Extremadura in memory of his native soil. He had a wooden cross placed on a prominent spot and then, a historian relates, «the troops formed up displaying their military uniforms and their gleaming arms and the priests intoned the Te Deum, after which the artillery thundered, the drums and kettledrums rolled and the expedition members burst into acclamations of joy. Then the conquistador, with his naked sword in one hand and the pennant of Castile in the other, paced martially back and forth a few times across the site and declared the valley taken into possession in the name of the King of Spain, and, this being the first inhabited territory of the conquest entrusted to him, ordered that it be named Valley of La Posesión».[12]
Even amid the general rejoicing, one detail of this ceremony did not go unnoticed by some. Valdivia was supposed to occupy the territory in the name of Governor Pizarro, whose lieutenant he was, but he did so in the name of King Charles V, arousing suspicion among the conquistadors less close to him. Some declared in the trial brought against him several years later before the Viceroy La Gasca, «that on arriving at the valley of Copiapó (Valdivia) took possession of it for H. M., without carrying provisions other than from Don Francisco Pizarro as his lieutenant, giving us to understand that he was already governor».[10]
Conquest of Chile
Founding of Santiago de Chile
He resumed the march south following the Inca Road. On descending into the valley of the Laja River by way of the Putaendo valley, the curaca Michimalonco tried to stop him with skirmishes, without success. He then advanced further south, crossing the great marshes of Lampa and Quilicura, until he reached the wide and fertile valley of the river called by the Picunche Mapuchoco (today's Mapocho), which descends skirting the southern slope of a hill called Tupahue. Upon meeting a crag called AHuelénWala in Mapudungun, the riverbed divided into two branches, enclosing between them an island of flat land. There was a drought that year and the natives were suffering from famine.[13] Nearby, at the present location of the Mapocho Station, there was an Inca tambo from which the Road of the Mines set out toward the Cordillera, ending at the present-day La Disputada de Las Condes mine, with at least two intermediate tambos. This road was used to travel to the apu of Cerro El Plomo, where offerings to Viracocha were made.
Valdivia set up camp on Cerro Blanco, where there was an Inca pucará. The area was in a civil war. He waited on the summit of this hill, placing a hermitage at its base, where he installed his lover Inés de Suárez. He planned to found this city between the two hills while waiting for a propitious moment. He waited until the day of Santa Lucía, on which he was to cross over, by religious syncretism, to occupy the solstitial esplanade. A Jesuit priest had informed him that on that day a Metonic cycle would be completed. And thus he was able to manipulate the Picunche.
The site seemed suitable to him for founding a city. Flanked to the north, south and east by natural barriers, the location allowed the conquistadors to better defend the settlement against any indigenous attack. On the other hand, the native population was more numerous in the Mapocho Valley than in the valleys further north, ensuring the conquistadors labor to cultivate the land, and above all to work the mines they still hoped to discover, even though the natives said they were scarce.
Even so, it seems it was not his intention to give this armed settlement the character of capital of the kingdom. Years later Valdivia would sell his lots and other property in the Mapocho Valley, establishing his residence in the city of Concepción, which he considered located at the center of his jurisdiction, had gold washings in its vicinity, and an enormous native population.
On February 12, 1541, the city of Santiago del Nuevo Extremo was founded at the foot of Huelén, renamed Santa Lucía. The master builder (alarife) Pedro de Gamboa laid out the city in a checkerboard pattern, dividing the land within the river island into blocks, which were in turn divided into four lots each for the first residents. The layout and formation of the city was followed in March by the creation of the first cabildo, importing the Spanish legal and institutional system. The assembly was made up of Francisco de Aguirre and Juan Jufré as alcaldes, Juan Fernández de Alderete, Francisco de Villagra, Martín de Solier and Gerónimo de Alderete as regidores, and Antonio de Pastrana as procurador.
They had barely settled in when a piece of information of the utmost gravity, though of unknown origin, reached Valdivia's ears; it spread through the colony that the Almagrists had murdered Governor Francisco Pizarro in Peru. If the news were true, Valdivia's powers as Lieutenant Governor and the repartimientos given to the residents could be automatically extinguished, as another conquistador would come from Peru to rule the land and distribute it among his company.
Governor and Captain General
Considering the political situation in Peru, the Cabildo resolved to grant Valdivia the title of Interim Governor and Captain General in the name of the King. Shrewdly, Valdivia, until then Pizarro's Lieutenant Governor, initially rejected the office publicly, so as not to appear a traitor to him in case he was still alive (Pizarro was murdered 15 days later). However, faced with the residents' threat to hand the government to someone else, Valdivia, who in reality ardently wished to be named Governor, accepted on June 11, 1541. He did, however, leave a written record that he submitted to the decision of the people against his will, yielding only because the assembly made him see that he thus better served God and the King.
On this matter, it has been speculated that Valdivia himself arranged to spread the rumor about Pizarro's death. The suspicion is supported by the following circumstance: although it is true that the governor of Peru was murdered by the Almagrists, the event did not take place until June 26, 1541, when Valdivia had already received the office of Governor of Chile from the Cabildo of Santiago. Moreover, it is somewhat strange that the Extremaduran refused to accept not once but three times; for, given the presumptions about Pizarro's death, the Cabildo's request was entirely reasonable.
However it happened, it must be borne in mind that while the enterprise of Chile had cost Pizarro no more than the paper on which he issued Valdivia's provision, Valdivia abandoned his comfortable position in Peru, took on debts and accepted partnerships whose terms bordered on usury, «to leave fame and memory of myself» by conquering what was believed to be the poorest land of the New World, «where there was no way to feed more than fifty residents».
The new colony
The conquistador holds in his right hand the scroll of the founding act of Santiago, and rests his left on his sword, symbol of justice. In the artist's metaphor, the sturdy horse without reins is Chile, which walks into the future on its own starting from the founder's work.
The houses of the village were built with the few materials available in the surroundings: wood with mud rendering and thatched roofs. The plaza was a barren stony ground with a large vertical post set in the center, symbol of the dominion of the King of Castile. An acequia supplied water from a spring on Santa Lucía, crossing the settlement toward the east. On the north side of the plaza were Valdivia's lot and hut, a shelter of branches for the meetings of the Cabildo, and the jail enclosure. The church and the priests' lots were on the west side.
The Governor's main concern was finding gold, which was in turn an argument for attracting new contingents to extend the conquest and settlement. Finding it would justify the expedition and improve the spirits of the 150 adventurers who accompanied him, some of them already restless. It was taken for granted that gold would not be as abundant as in Peru, but there had to be some, given the tribute in that metal that the Chilean natives had once paid to the Inca. Trying to discover where that contribution came from, and to provide themselves with food by taking it from the Indians' fields, Valdivia and half his men frequently went out to reconnoiter the surrounding valleys, leaving Alonso de Monroy in the village as Lieutenant Governor.
One of those excursions took them to the coastal sector of the Valley of Chile (Aconcagua), where a bellicose principal cacique awaited them: Michimalonco, the powerful cacique who ruled there and who already had experience with the Spanish presence, having received Diego de Almagro on good terms in 1535, and even before that, the first Spaniard to set foot on Chilean territory, Gonzalo Calvo de Barrientos.
Entrenched in a fort with a great number of Indians «well equipped for war», the indigenous leader sought to take advantage of the invaders' sortie to bring the fight to a tactically advantageous place for him, and to face only a fraction of them first, in order to then deal with the rest. Valdivia ordered his troops to assault the fortress and take Michimalonco alive, hoping he would be useful to him. After three hours of combat and the death of many Indians and barely one Spaniard, the Castilians finished wrecking the fort, capturing Michimalonco and other Indian chiefs alive.[14]
Determined to obtain the location of the gold and indigenous labor to extract it, he treated the captives very well, and they apparently yielded to the attentions and, in exchange for their freedom, guided the Castilians to their washings in the ravines of the Marga Marga stream, very close to the site of the battle. The soldier-chronicler Mariño de Lobera says that on seeing the workings the Spaniards broke out in expressions of joy:
And as if they already had the gold in their purses, they only wondered whether there were enough sacks and saddlebags in the kingdom to put so much into, and how in a short time they would go to Spain to build towers of the metal, beginning at once to build them of wind.[14]
The caciques must have watched the scene with great interest, for an ally for the defense of their soil had unexpectedly appeared: the greed of the invader.
Pedro de Valdivia arranged for two soldiers with experience in mining operations to direct the more than one thousand laboring Indians whom the caciques had provided. Nearby, where the Aconcagua River flows into the beaches of Concón, an area then rich in forests, he also ordered a brigantine built to carry the gold to Peru, bring supplies and embark there the Spaniards who, he imagined, would enlist in the conquest of Chile upon confirming the existence of the metal. Captain Gonzalo de los Ríos was left in charge of overseeing both enterprises, in command of some twenty-five soldiers.
In early August, Valdivia was personally supervising the work at the washings and the shipyard when he received a written message from his lieutenant in Santiago, Alonso de Monroy, warning that there were clear signs of a conspiracy to murder him coming from Sánchez de la Hoz and his associates. He returned immediately to the village and met with his most loyal captains, but there was no conclusive evidence against the suspects. Their standing —two of them were members of the Cabildo— counseled extreme caution in proceeding. But these concerns were interrupted by news of a new and grave event, a catastrophe that would bring down Valdivia's already well-advanced project: one night, after a frantic gallop, Captain Gonzalo de los Ríos arrived in Santiago together with the black man Juan Valiente. They were the only survivors of the disaster: led by the caciques Trajalongo and Chigaimanga, the Indians of the washings and the shipyard had risen up, no doubt because if they did not act at that moment, the arrival of more Spaniards on the ship would make it harder to expel them from their land. They lured the greedy soldiers with a pot full of gold, killing them in an ambush and then razing both workings. The governor hurried out with some horsemen to check the state of the works, and whether it was possible to resume the labor, but «arriving at the site of the mines where the slaughter had taken place, he had no chance to do anything other than weep over the damage his eyes beheld».[14] Worse, the information he was able to gather indicated that the natives were preparing a general and definitive insurrection. The shipyard, moreover, had been completely destroyed.
When Valdivia rode back into Santiago his face showed sorrow. On seeing him, one of those conspiring against him, a certain Chinchilla, could not keep his glee from overflowing and began to run around the plaza leaping for joy with «a breastband of bells».[14] The governor, whose mood must no longer have been one for niceties, learned of this and ordered him arrested immediately to be hanged. Valdivia himself later told his King: «There I made my inquiry (he probably tortured Chinchilla) and found many guilty, but because of the need I was in (of soldiers) I hanged five who were the heads, and overlooked the rest, and with this I secured the men». He adds that the conspirators in Chile were in agreement with the Almagrists in Peru, who were to kill Pizarro.[7] For his part, Mariño de Lobera confirms that «the five confessed at the moment of their death that it was true they were mutinying».[14] It seems the plotters' aim was to return to Peru, perhaps on the ship and with the gold. They belonged to the Almagrist faction, which now ruled there, so their prospects were much better in that country than in this «bad land». Their path, however, inevitably passed through the murder of the Governor, since he allowed no one to leave the colony. The good chronicler Alonso de Góngora Marmolejo describes the conspirators' feelings in these terms: «that they had come deceived; that it would be better for them to return to Peru than to be waiting for an uncertain thing, since they saw no sign of wealth on the surface of the land, and that it was not a just thing for men of honor to endure so many hardships and needs in order to make Valdivia a Lord; that Valdivia was greedy for command and that for the sake of command he had come to loathe Peru, and that now that he had them inside Chile they would be forced into whatever he wished to do with them».
After a very brief trial conducted by the Constable Gómez de Almagro, there were executed along with Chinchilla: Don Martín de Solier, a nobleman from Córdoba and regidor of the cabildo; Antonio de Pastrana, procurador and Chinchilla's father-in-law; and two other conspirators. Pedro Sancho de la Hoz narrowly escaped that time; he was a good friend of the clumsy man with the bells, Chinchilla, in whose company he had come from Peru. As a warning to any other impatient man who might wish to rebel, or even desert after the disaster of the gold and the brigantine, the corpses of the wretches swung in the wind on the gallows for a long time, at the highest point of Santa Lucía, reinforcing its evil reputation as the Crag of Sorrow.[8]
The destruction of Santiago
After this second attempt on his life, Valdivia had no alternative but to proceed in the resolute way he did. But although he strengthened his authority on the internal front, on the external front the situation of the Spaniards offered the indigenous leaders an unbeatable opportunity to try to expel them from their land or exterminate them for good. The killings of Spaniards must have seemed to the caciques evidence that the Aconcagua assault had severely affected enemy morale, to the point that they were killing one another. In contrast, news of Trajalongo's victory spread among the tribes of all the valleys near Santiago, instilling renewed enthusiasm among the natives.
To organize them, Michimalonco called a meeting, attended by hundreds of Indians from the valleys of Aconcagua, Mapocho and Cachapoal. There they decided on total rebellion, which would begin by hiding every remnant of food, to press the Castilians and the thousand Peruvian yanaconas who served them even harder. Thus, «they will perish and will not remain in the land, and if perchance they wished to persist, they would kill them on one side with hunger and on the other diminish them with war».[2] In addition, they hoped that necessity would force the Spaniards to divide, going far from the settlement for supplies and leaving it unguarded.
Faced with the lack of provisions and the threat of imminent insurrection, Pedro de Valdivia ordered the arrest of Indian chiefs in the vicinity of Santiago. With evident impatience he told the seven caciques who were captured «that they should at once arrange either for all the Indians to come in peace, or for all to gather to make war, because he wished to be done with it once and for all, for good or for ill».[14] He also demanded that they order «provisions» brought to the city, and held them until that happened. But of course neither did an attack come nor did the food arrive; they were waiting for the Spaniards to divide.
Time was passing in favor of the natives. Valdivia then learned that there were two concentrations of war Indians, one of 5,000[15] to 10,000[16] lances in the valley of the Aconcagua led by Michimalonco and his brother Trajalongo, and another to the south in the valley of the Cachapoal River, land of the Promaucae, who had never surrendered to the Spaniards.
He then decided to set out with ninety soldiers «to fall upon the larger» of those gatherings, that of the Cachapoal, «because by breaking those, the others would not have as much strength».[2] There he also hoped to resupply himself with provisions, for he was aware that that land «was fertile and abounding in maize». He must have thought that with the caciques of the Mapocho as hostages, he was deterring an attack by the natives of that valley. Those of Aconcagua he had already defeated in their own fort, and he must have reckoned that a not very large contingent, well sheltered in the town, could resist them. Even so, it is somewhat difficult to understand this rash decision by Valdivia, who always showed good sense in his war plans: in Santiago he left only fifty infantrymen and horsemen, a third of the total, divided into 32 horsemen and 18 infantrymen,[16] under Alonso de Monroy. To these must be added a contingent of 200 yanaconas.[15]
With his small garrison, Lieutenant Monroy prepared as best he could to withstand the announced onslaught. The yanaconas informed him that the Indians were approaching divided into four fronts to attack the city on each side, and he then distributed his forces into four squadrons, one led by himself and the others under the command of Captains Francisco de Villagrán, Francisco de Aguirre, and Juan Jufré. He ordered his men to sleep in combat dress with their weapons in sight. He likewise ordered that the imprisoned caciques be secured, and that patrols keep watch day and night around the perimeter of the city.
Meanwhile, Michimalonco had already stealthily positioned his forces very close to the town. His forces numbered as many as twenty thousand lances according to the figures of Pedro Mariño de Lobeira,[17] although the Jesuit Diego de Rosales, who wrote a century after the events, reduces it to six thousand (it should be mentioned that Lobeira is known for frequently exaggerating the size of the Indian armies the Spaniards faced).[18] On Sunday, September 11, 1541, three hours before dawn, the thunderous war cry of the Indian armies of Aconcagua and Mapocho began the assault. They came equipped with an extremely suitable weapon: fire, «which they brought hidden in pots, and since the houses were of wood and straw and the fences of the lots of reed, the city burned in earnest on all four sides».[2]
At the sentinels' alarm the cavalry squads had hurried out to try to lance, in the half-light, the Indians who were setting the settlement ablaze from their parapets behind the lots. Although the formidable impetus of the mounts managed to break them up, they quickly regrouped, protected by arrows. Michimalonco planned his attack well: the arquebusiers, one of the Spaniards' tactical advantages, could do little in the darkness, and by daybreak the fire dominated the entire town.
Daylight and the flames showed the Indian leader that the city was now sufficiently vulnerable, and he sent his assault squadrons to take it. From the stony ground on the south bank of the Mapocho, one of those platoons advanced resolutely toward the enclosure from which, above the din of battle, the cries of Quilicanta and the imprisoned caciques could be heard. Monroy sent some twenty soldiers to block their way.
The chronicler Jerónimo de Vivar[2] says that the hostages were in a room inside Valdivia's lot on the north side of the plaza, placed in stocks, and that the rescue squadron wanted to enter through its back courtyard, probably near the present-day corner of Puente and Santo Domingo streets. The defenders managed to hold them back, but more and more fresh Indians kept arriving, «so that the courtyard, which was large, was filling up».
Inés Suárez, Valdivia's lover and servant, was in another room of the same house, watching the indigenous advance with growing anguish while she tended the wounded. She realized that if the rescue took place, the heightened morale of the natives would make their victory more likely. Distraught, she took a sword and went to the prisoners' room, demanding of the guards Francisco de Rubio and Hernando de la Torre «that they kill the caciques at once before they were rescued by their people. And Hernando de la Torre, more cut down by terror than with the spirit to cut off heads, saying to her: Madam, in what way am I to kill them?»
«In this way!», and she herself beheaded them.[14]
The woman then went out into the courtyard where the fighting was taking place and, brandishing the bloodied sword in one hand and showing the head of an Indian in the other, shouted furiously: «Away, auncaes! For I have already killed your lords and caciques!... And they, hearing it and seeing that their effort was in vain, turned their backs, and those who were attacking the house took to flight».[2]
Engraving based on the Crónica of Mariño de Lobera:[14]«Michimalonco ordered that, while everyone drank a little in order to go in with greater vigor, some spies should go to the city to count the Spaniards there, wishing to know whether there were any fewer than the thirty-two on horseback and eighteen on foot, some having died in the battle. The spies counted the Spaniards one by one many times, and always found the horsemen to be thirty-three. They went with this report to General Michimalongo, who mocked them, saying they must be drunk and that he did not intend to learn whether the horsemen were more than thirty-two, but whether they were fewer, since that there were no more was a very certain thing, and known to all beyond any doubt. And sending other spies again, they gave him the same report as the first, as did many other Indians whom he sent at different times, all agreeing that the horsemen were thirty-three, which Francisco de Villagrán had also noticed at the time of the battle; for which reason it was held as a certain thing, as indeed it was, that the horseman who was there in addition to the thirty-two known ones was the glorious Apostle Santiago, sent by Divine Providence to bring help to the town of his patronage, which invoked his holy name».
All the later Spanish accounts relate that after the killing of the caciques the course of the battle turned in their favor. For example, Valdivia gave the following reasons for granting Inés an encomienda in a document of 1544: «Inasmuch as you caused the caciques to be killed, laying your own hands upon them, which was the reason that most of the Indians left and stopped fighting on seeing their lords dead, for it is certain that had they not died and been freed, not a Spaniard would have remained alive in the whole of the said city. And after the caciques were dead you went out to encourage the Christians who were fighting, tending the wounded and encouraging the healthy».[8] It is hard to believe, however, that a brave army of eight thousand Indians that was winning a fight so crucial to its destiny would have lost heart to the point of ending up defeated because of that circumstance. Decisive or not, it seems that Suárez's brutal act and the leadership she then assumed improved Spanish morale, while the impetus of the Indians waned. And at the end of the afternoon, the victory of the first santiaguinos was sealed by a violent cavalry charge led by Francisco de Aguirre, whose lance ended up with «as much wood as blood, and with his hand so clenched on it that when he wished to open it he could not, nor could any of the others who tried to open it for him, and so the last remedy was to saw the shaft off on both sides, the hand remaining stuck in the grip, unable to come loose until it was opened with ointments, at the end of twenty-four hours».[14]
But with victory came also the most complete ruin. Valdivia describes the calamitous state in which the colony was left: «They killed twenty-three horses and four Christians, and burned the whole city, and the food, and the clothing, and all the property we had, so that we were left with nothing but the rags we had for war and the arms we carried on our backs». To feed a thousand people, between Spaniards and yanaconas, there were saved only «two little sows and a piglet, and a pullet and a cockerel, and as much as two double handfuls of wheat»,[7] that is, what fits in both hands held together and cupped. Mariño de Lobera adds, «and their calamity came to such straits that whoever found wild herbs, locusts, mice, and similar vermin thought he had a banquet».[14]
The governor, as skilled with the pen as with the sword, summed up these miseries in the following sentence of a letter addressed to the King: «The hardships of war, most invincible Caesar, men can endure. For it is praise (honor) for the soldier to die fighting. But those of hunger joined with them, to suffer them, they must be more than men».[7]
For much less the forces of the Adelantado Almagro had turned back. Valdivia's men, by contrast, resolved to remain in the untamed land of Chile, faced poverty with remarkable tenacity. Inés Suárez, who had saved the treasure of the three pigs and two chickens, took charge of their breeding. A good seamstress, she also mended the soldiers' rags and made them garments from the hides of dogs and other animals. The handful of wheat was reserved for sowing, and once harvested, they sowed it twice more without consuming any. Meanwhile, they fed on roots and on hunting vermin and birds.
By day they plowed and sowed armed. At night half stood guard over the city and the fields. They rebuilt the houses, now of adobe, and built a defensive wall of the same material, some three meters high, around the plaza according to some historians, and according to others, centered on it, enclosing a perimeter of nine blocks. There they stored the provisions they managed to gather, and took refuge «whenever there was an outcry of Indians», while the horsemen went out «to scour the countryside and fight the Indians and defend our sown fields».[7]
They sent Alonso de Monroy with five other soldiers to ask Peru for help. And so that people there might see the splendid prosperity of this country and be encouraged to come, the shrewd Valdivia devised a singular marketing tactic: he had all the gold he could gather melted down and made for the travelers cups, hilts and fittings for their swords, and stirrups.
They left Santiago in January 1542, but the Diaguita Indians of the Copiapó valley killed four of them, and the survivors, Monroy and Pedro de Miranda, did not manage to escape captivity until three months later. Only in September 1543, two years after the burning of Santiago, did a ship with the longed-for help arrive in the bay of Valparaíso.
Valdivia was away from Santiago when a yanacona told him he had seen two Christians passing, coming from the coast to the city. He galloped back, and on seeing the ship's pilot and his companion, the tough conquistador stood speechless, looking at them, and after a while burst into tears. «His eyes brimming with water», relates the witness Vivar, adding that he silently went to his quarters, «and kneeling on the ground and raising his hands to heaven, he found his speech and gave many thanks to Our Lord God, who in such great need had been pleased to remember him and his Spaniards».[2] Shortly afterward, in December, the tireless Monroy entered the Mapocho valley at the head of a column of seventy horsemen.
Most devout Catholics, the conquering company commended itself in all these trials to a small figure of the Virgin in polychrome wood that Valdivia had brought from Spain and that accompanied him everywhere, tied to a ring on his saddle. If his lieutenant managed to return with help, the governor had promised to build a hermitage to honor her. In time the hermitage became the Church of San Francisco on La Alameda, the oldest building in Santiago. And there it still is, the tiny image of Our Lady of Help (Nuestra Señora del Socorro), presiding over the high altar. Long since forgotten by the santiaguinos, it is the only surviving vestige of Chile's embryonic age.
With the colony now recovered, Valdivia continued with his plan of conquest. He encouraged the natives to return to their fields and won over as an ally his former enemy Michimalonco and his followers, who no longer harassed the santiaguinos; a kind of trade was even established between the indigenous and Spanish communities.
Expansion of the colony
The reinforcement brought by Monroy increased the Spanish contingent to two hundred soldiers, and the goods from the ship Santiaguillo temporarily put an end to the hardship in Santiago. Valdivia would have liked to set out immediately to conquer the southern territories, since he had well-founded fears that other conquistadors with royal provisions might come by way of the Strait of Magellan. As early as 1540, when his expedition was approaching the Mapocho valley, the Indians reported having sighted a ship off the coasts of Chile. It was that of Alonso de Camargo, survivor of a failed expedition which, with royal authorization, had entered through the Strait of Magellan from Spain.
The hardships and dangers that Monroy and Miranda faced in their adventure through the desert revealed the urgency of assigning some soldiers to establish an intermediate port between the bay of Valparaíso and Callao, and an overland stopping point to improve the exhausting and risky route that connected the still precarious Chilean colony. To this end, in 1544 he entrusted the German-born captain Juan Bohón, accompanied by some thirty men, with the founding of the second city of the territory. In the valley that the natives called Coquimbo, La Serena was established, named after the homeland of the conquering leader. The site was chosen for its fertility and for its proximity to the gold mines of Andacollo, only six leagues inland, which at that time had already been worked by the local Indians to pay tribute to the Inca.
In the title issued to Pastene in 1544, Valdivia orders him to go «as far as the Strait of Magellan», surely knowing that its discoverer had placed it beyond latitude 50°S. However, Pastene stopped at latitude 41°S. It is possible that the mariner, who according to Valdivia himself was «a person of great honor, fidelity and truthfulness», had before him some official document indicating that the territory assigned to Valdivia reached only as far as the 41st parallel south. At least the concession made to him by the Viceroy La Gasca after this exploration, in 1547, gave the Governor an extent between Copiapó and the 41st degree of southern latitude.
In a letter to Charles V written a year after Pastene's voyage, Valdivia takes care to make a subtle change when referring to the order given to the navigator. He says: «I sent him to discover this coast toward the Strait of Magellan».
Pastene was accompanied by the treasurer Jerónimo de Alderete, Captain Rodrigo de Quiroga, the notary Juan de Cárdenas, Diego Osorio de Cáceres, Antonio Farabarano, Juanes de Mortedo, Juan Ellas, Captain Pedro Esteban, and Antonio Venero.
In the winter of that year another ship arrived at Valparaíso, the San Pedro, sent by Vaca de Castro, then governor of Peru, and piloted by Juan Bautista Pastene, «a Genoese, a man very practiced in altitude (skilled at measuring latitude) and in matters touching navigation».[7] In September he granted the experienced Italian navigator the pretentious title of Lieutenant General of the South Sea so that, with the two small ships, the San Pedro and the Santiaguillo, he might reconnoiter the southern coasts of Chile as far as the Strait, and take possession of all that territory «for the Emperor Don Carlos, King of the Spains, and in his name for the governor Pedro de Valdivia». The «armada» only reached a bay they named San Pedro, like the flagship, more or less at the latitude of the present-day city of Osorno. On the way back they discovered and took possession of the bay of Valdivia (Anilebu), possibly the mouth of the Cautín River, that of the Biobío, and the bay of Penco. The fertility of the lands sighted, the abundant indigenous population, and the size of the riverbeds, which made the Mapocho pale in comparison, redoubled Valdivia's eagerness to set out for the conquest of the south.
But his forces were still insufficient to launch themselves into those densely populated regions and make effective the possession proclaimed by his explorers. It was therefore indispensable that more soldiers come, although, as is already known, «without carrying gold it was impossible to bring a single man». So in the summer of 1545 he devoted great efforts to extracting it from the washings of Marga Marga and Quillota, and although a good part of the gold extracted did not belong to Valdivia, he managed to get hold of the portion that belonged to his subordinates. By fair means or foul: it is said that the devout Governor took advantage of masses to «preach» the advisability of handing over the gold to him to send for new reinforcement and help, «and let whoever would not lend it to him know that he would take it from him. And his hide along with it!».[10]
He finally obtained about twenty-five thousand pesos, which he handed over to Monroy, together with powers that authorized him to contract debts in Valdivia's name, so that he might travel to Peru again, this time in the company of Pastene on the San Pedro. One by land and the other by sea, they would bring men, horses and goods.
Yet another concern was on Valdivia's mind: he was still being given the title of Lieutenant Governor of the province of Chile. That is what Governor Vaca de Castro called him in a document Monroy had brought on his return from Peru, and also in the authorizations Pastene brought. Although Valdivia hid these documents and continued calling himself Governor, it was now becoming indispensable for him to obtain confirmation of his office from the King, and for this he decided to send with Monroy and Pastene a third emissary, who, passing through Peru, was to continue on to Spain. In a notable blunder, as will be seen later, he chose for this mission Antonio de Ulloa, who had won the Governor's trust despite having been one of the accomplices of Pedro Sancho de la Hoz in that murder attempt in Atacama.
This delegate carried letters from Valdivia giving the King a detailed account of his efforts in this conquest and of the characteristics of the territory. In one of them, he enthusiastically paints for Emperor Charles V a flattering picture of Chile.
And so that it be made known to merchants and people who might wish to come and settle, that they should come, because this land is such that for living in it and remaining there forever there is none better in the world. I say this because it is very level, most healthful, of much contentment. It has four months of winter, no more, and in them, except when the moon is in its quarter, when it rains a day or two, all the other days have such lovely sunshine that there is no need to go near the fire. The summer is so temperate and such delightful breezes blow that a man can walk in the sun all day without it troubling him. It is the most abundant in pastures and sown fields, and for raising every kind of livestock and plant that can be imagined. Much very fine timber for building houses, an infinite amount of other firewood for their use, and the richest gold mines, and the whole land is full of it, and wherever they wish to extract it there they will find land to sow and materials to build with, and water, firewood and grass for their livestock, so that it seems God created it on purpose so that one might have everything at hand.
With regard to this generous description, it used to be said sarcastically in Santiago «that the heating of this city in the old winters consisted of reading the letter of Don Pedro de Valdivia, where he says that in Chile it is never cold».[19]
The purpose of that pamphleteering letter was for the Monarch to name him Governor of the magnificent kingdom that, as a faithful vassal, he was conquering. And to tempt peninsular Spaniards to come to the conquest and settlement of the immense expanses between Santiago and the Strait that Valdivia needed to occupy. Or perhaps also, five years after his arrival, the Spanish leader already had Chile so deep in his veins that —as with a son— he was incapable of seeing a fault in it.
Arauco War
Meanwhile, his soldiers in Santiago insisted on going south. The indigenous population of central Chile had decreased considerably, owing to war casualties and because many fled so as not to serve. With insufficient Indians to distribute in encomienda among the 170 conquistadors waiting in the capital town, the conquest of Chile came to a halt.
The conquest of America was based on the encomienda, which consisted of a simple but extraordinarily effective legal device: the Pope, with his authority, had ordained that both the territory of the Indies and its native inhabitants were the property of the King of Spain. The Indians, who had inhabited America for tens of millennia, now suddenly and by decree occupied soil of the Hispanic Empire, and therefore necessarily had to pay tribute. On the other hand, expeditions of conquest obtained little or no financing from the crown, so to compensate them, the good monarch, through his representatives in the Indies, ceded or entrusted (encomendaba) a certain number of Indians and their corresponding tribute to the officers and soldiers who had shown some merit in the conquest. But of course the natives had no money with which to pay tribute, so this payment was replaced by labor for the encomenderos, who forced them to extract gold from mines and washings. Once the conquistador had gathered enough gold, it was common for him to return to Spain to enjoy his fortune. The King, for his part, thereby enlarged his empire.
In January 1544, as soon as Monroy's first reinforcement arrived, Valdivia had assigned the first encomiendas, but the small indigenous population was only enough for sixty of the two hundred residents. Worse, since the number of Indians inhabiting the area already conquered was not well known, he assigned those few encomenderos quantities that could not be filled. Even in the distribution of the natives of the city of La Serena, «so that the persons I sent would go willingly, said the Governor, I assigned them Indians who were never born». Informed of the abundance of inhabitants south of the Itata River, the soldiers who had been left without a repartimiento in Santiago urged that they set out there as soon as possible to found a city and subject the Indians of the region to the profitable encomienda system.
«And since Valdivia's eagerness to pursue the conquest was so great»,[14] he decided not to wait for the reinforcement of Monroy and Pastene, which might take more than a year, and set out for southern Chile in January 1546 with an expedition of sixty soldiers. «He traveled light, says Vivar, until crossing the mighty river Itata, the last of what he and his companions had conquered, and beyond which no Spaniard had gone».[2] They went along very pleased, seeing the fertility of the land, its beauty and abundance and, above all, the great multitude of people covering the valleys.
While at a lake five leagues south of the river (perhaps Laguna Avendaño in what is today Quillón), a small group of natives attacked and was easily routed. From the cacique of that lake Valdivia learned that all the natives of the region were holding a great assembly to confront the Spaniards, and he sent them word, through the Indian chief accompanied by a yanacona interpreter, that he came in peace, but that if they wished to fight he was waiting for them.
On crossing the Itata, the Castilians probably began searching for the Biobío and the bay of Penco, whose latitude Pastene had no doubt indicated to them. The place was ideal for establishing a city, but, surprised by Mapuche hostility, they had to withdraw.
February 1546.
Although without words, the answer was quite clear: they sent the unfortunate yanacona back well beaten. They marched two more days until reaching the spot of Quilacura, «which is thirteen leagues from the seaport (the bay of Penco)».[14] While they were setting up camp under the full moon, they suddenly heard «so many howls and such a din as would be enough to terrify half the world».[14] It was the Araucanians, attacking with a fury never before seen by the Spaniards. The battle lasted a large part of the night, «the squadron being surrounded by Indians as strong as if they were tudescos»,[2] that is, like German soldiers, the bravest the Europeans had known until then. And at last the advantage of the mounts and the arquebuses managed to break the stranglehold and saved the men of Castile once again. The cacique Malloquete and some two hundred Indians died, and the exhausted Spaniards counted twelve badly wounded soldiers and two horses dead.
With the natives dispersed, Valdivia resolved to leave the place immediately. He headed for the valley of the Andalién River, where they were able to rest and tend the wounded. The next day they captured some natives, and learned from them that at the following dawn a much larger army would fall upon the weakened conquistadors, «for if by night few did not succeed, they wished to attack by day».[2] Now indeed the Spaniards were lost. Valdivia gathered his chief captains in a council of war that wasted no time in deciding on retreat. As soon as night fell they left the campfires burning to make the Indians believe they were still there, and returned toward Santiago hurriedly but stealthily along the coast, a different route from the one taken on the way out, to throw the enemy further off the trail. Thus began the Arauco War between the Spanish soldiers and the fierce Araucanians.
Even so, the Spanish retreat was not the most significant circumstance of that first journey into Araucanian land, but rather an apparently inconsequential event. Among the captured Araucanians, a lad of about twelve caught Valdivia's attention. Fascinated by his intelligence and liveliness, he decided to make him his page and groom. The boy was called Leftrarú, and he was of noble lineage, son of the cacique Curiñancu. Years later the boy turned yanacona would enter History as the paradigm of his still untamed race, the greatest toqui: Lautaro.
The second night, after midnight, three squadrons of Indians came upon us, numbering more than twenty thousand, with such a great howl and impetus that the earth seemed to sink, and they began to fight with us so fiercely that, though for thirty years I have fought with diverse nations of people, never have I seen such tenacity in fighting as these had against us.
— Pedro de Valdivia recounts an encounter with the Araucanians, quoted by Álvaro Jara in Guerra y Sociedad en Chile.
Return to Peru
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The mind of the conqueror of Chile remained in the south. With its copious indigenous population, the formidable Bío-Bío and the superb bay of Penco, «the best port there is in the Indies», he said. He would return as soon as Monroy's reinforcement arrived, essential for subduing the warlike owner of that land. Not only to found a city and distribute encomiendas, but to settle there himself, in order to push the conquest as far as the Strait of Magellan, his eternal obsession.
But of Monroy and Pastene nothing was known. They had left La Serena at the end of 1545, and the sea voyage to Callao could take somewhat more than a month, so they should long since have sent yanaconas reporting their progress, according to the leader's instructions. Fearing a misfortune, in August 1546, after almost a year without news, he decided to send a new delegate. He asked the colonists for another loan of gold, «voluntary» of course, gathering seventy thousand pesos, and with duplicates of the correspondence to the King he dispatched Juan de Ávalos. Another year passed, during which, though consumed by impatience, he remained optimistic: he increased the sown fields to receive the reinforcements he trusted would arrive at any moment.
He waited in vain. For at last, on December 1, 1547, twenty-six months after his departure, Pastene arrived. But he came with nothing. Without Monroy, without soldiers, without goods, and without a peso of gold, in a ship he had had to obtain on credit.
He found the Governor at the washings of Quillota to explain the reasons for that utter failure. The loyal Alonso de Monroy had died, struck down by an infectious disease shortly after arriving in Callao.[20] Antonio de Ulloa had betrayed him. He opened the letters he was to carry to the King and read them «in front of many other soldiers and, mocking them, tore them up».[2] And he joined the cause of the rebellion, whose representatives had confiscated the gold and the brigantine San Pedro. Gonzalo Pizarro, who had defeated and killed the Viceroy Núñez de Vela at the Battle of Añaquito, was leading a general uprising of the conquistadors of Peru against the Crown. The main cause: under the influence of the priest Bartolomé de las Casas, new ordinances had been issued in Spain that corrected the encomienda system in favor of the Indians, and that in practice almost abolished it. Dismayed by what they considered an unacceptable dispossession, the encomenderos of that country acclaimed Pizarro as their leader and declared themselves in rebellion. The Crown, in response, had sent the cleric Pedro de la Gasca with the broadest powers to pacify the region; he was at that moment already in Panama, from where he was sending conciliatory messages and asking all the colonies for help.
Valdivia was surely burning with rage and frustration at the swarm of difficulties: the death of the most loyal of his collaborators, Ulloa's betrayal and the loss of the letters to the King.[citation needed] The gold seized, the conquest paralyzed for lack of soldiers, and his government in danger because of the political uncertainty. However, almost at the same time as Pastene, Diego de Maldonado arrived by land, reporting that Gonzalo Pizarro, resolute and ambitious, was preparing his army in Cuzco to confront the King's envoy. For Valdivia it was, without doubt, the great opportunity to reverse the unfortunate state of his project: to go to Peru and help the King's plenipotentiary representative recover that country. If he collaborated with La Gasca, who as a churchman had no military experience, the latter would have to compensate him. Perhaps by finally naming him Governor. He would take enough gold to provide himself with horses and equipment for the battles, to acquire vessels and, of course, he himself would enlist the troops he needed for the conquest of southern Chile. He did, however, keep his decision secret.
For there was a drawback. With the dispatch of so many delegates, the gold in the kingdom's treasury and Valdivia's own were almost exhausted. Requesting a third «voluntary» loan from the colonists, on the other hand, risked a mutiny. So he devised a stratagem in collusion with Francisco de Villagra and Gerónimo de Alderete. He announced that these two captains would now go to Peru for reinforcements, but that for the first and only time he would authorize anyone to leave the country taking with them the gold they had gathered, to show people there that this land was not so miserable. At least fifteen Spaniards decided to accept the generous offer, eager to leave the poor and dangerous colony or else to go and stock up on goods to return and sell them.
By mid-December everything was ready for the voyage from Valparaíso. The funds and baggage of the fortunate emigrants were duly inventoried aboard the ship Pastene had brought. But before departing, Valdivia gave a party on land to bid farewell to his comrades, who had faced so many hardships alongside him. While that banquet was proceeding in high spirits, the governor of Chile, like the basest of scoundrels, managed to slip stealthily into a launch that his accomplices had ready. He quickly boarded the ship and sailed north. Immense was the surprise and then the fury at the villainy of the esteemed leader, who was fleeing with all their property. The worst insults of the day flew back and forth from the beach while the vessel receded on the horizon.
Pedro de Urdemalas, as the victims of the trick nicknamed him, believed his excuse was admissible. At least before the official authorities, since they had taken his own gold too, but for a cause against the monarch. He declared aboard the ship before the notary Juan de Cárdenas «that he had boarded the vessel because it suited the service of His Majesty, and that if he had not made it known until then, it was so as not to be hindered. I go with determination, he said, to seek a gentleman who they say is in Panama and who comes on behalf of His Majesty, to follow him in his royal name».[2] He also ordered Francisco de Villagra, already named interim governor, to take the part of the product of the washings that belonged to him and to repay the amounts confiscated.
Naturally none of this reassured the dispossessed. Led by Juan Romero, they conceived of transferring the government to the one entitled to it by royal decree, Pero Sánchez de la Hoz. He was at the time in the jail of Talagante, and although for the first time since he had become Valdivia's partner he was plotting absolutely nothing, he received Juan Romero and accepted the offer of those wronged by the governor, though, fearful, he wanted someone else to represent him. Romero urged him to write a letter declaring that his titles were sufficient for him to take over the government in the name of the King, and that he would do so provided he were given sufficient support. He then handed the letter to Hernán Rodríguez de Monroy, who, besides being a bitter enemy of Valdivia, was reputed to be of resolute spirit. And he was indeed, or rather reckless, because he went off to meet with Villagra and, displaying Sánchez de la Hoz's declaration, requested his endorsement.
Francisco de Villagra, who was also decisive, cut the sedition short drastically and without ceremony. He had de la Hoz arrested, and the latter, on acknowledging authorship of the letter of representation held by Monroy, was beheaded without even being allowed to confess, while Juan Romero was hanged. With this brief trial and its sentence, rather irregular moreover, the conspiracies against Valdivia's authority dissolved. But it was already too much. The discontented believed they had sufficient grounds for a higher authority to sanction it, and they managed to send their grave accusations to Peru.
Governor for the King
Valdivia, for his part, was sailing against time in the company of Gerónimo de Alderete and a few others. Aware that his future was at stake, he was trying to join La Gasca's forces before the crucial clash with Pizarro's host. After brief stops at La Serena and in the bay of Iquique, he learned in the port of Ilo that the King's envoy, having already passed through Lima, was with his army in Jauja and was heading for Cuzco for the great battle with the rebels. Upon landing at Callao and moving on to Lima, he wrote to the royalist commander begging him to delay one day at each halt, for he was marching at full speed to catch up with him. In the capital he obtained mounts and war equipment, and since he carried plenty of money, he equipped many other soldiers of Peru loyal to the King who had been unable to accompany La Gasca for lack of arms and horses. He continued in frantic pursuit of the Viceroy, now with his detachment. "He traveled in such haste," says Vivar, "that he covered in one day what the President covered in three." At last, on February 24, 1548, he caught up with him at Andahuaylas, some 50 km from Cuzco.
Pedro de la Gasca's reception was cordial. The soldiers of Peru had informed the cleric of the Extremaduran's skills as a strategist, which had been legendary since the Battle of las Salinas. To the disappointment of the man who aspired to be Governor of Chile, however, La Gasca called him merely Captain Valdivia. But he was not discouraged; quite the opposite. Appointed maestre de campo together with the equally prestigious marshal Alonso de Alvarado, he immediately devoted his utmost effort and all his tactical intelligence to preparing the King's militia to surprise and overwhelm the men of Gonzalo Pizarro.
It was not easy. The revolutionaries had won a great victory at the bloody Battle of Huarina weeks earlier, and their field commander was the marshal Francisco de Carvajal, the mythical Demon of the Andes, of unquestionable military talent and as brave as he was violent and merciless. But the arrival of the equally famous Pedro de Valdivia kindled the morale of the royalists, and the priest Viceroy had done his part, sending messages full of kindness and offering pardon and amnesty to the rebel troops and their principal captains. More decisively, and by virtue of his broad powers, La Gasca proposed to them to negotiate the application of the new ordinances on the encomiendas of Indians, thus cracking the foundation of the revolution.
In light of the facts, it seems that, in order to minimize the shedding of Spanish blood, the King's men aimed at the heart of the adversary's morale with the following strategy: while on one side the shrewd priest showed through his messages all the understanding and mercy of His Majesty, on the other Valdivia and Alvarado were to display the unsurpassable power of the Empire. After a remarkable logistical effort and by forced march, the two colonels managed to cross the steep gorge of the Apurimac river with the royal army and, after some minor skirmishes, to set it up by night behind the craggy hills surrounding Pizarro's camp, in the valley of Xaquixahuana, four leagues from Cuzco.
Installed on the top of a hill, Vivar recounts, as soon as dawn broke on April 9, 1548, the Chilean ordered the best gunners to fire four cannon shots at the tent that appeared to be the main one, that of Pizarro. The projectiles hit their target, tearing apart a lieutenant of the rebel leader and wounding a couple of others. But the casualties were the least important thing. Valdivia was seeking a psychological blow: to overwhelm the spirit of the insurgents as they woke to find themselves surrounded by the army of the King to whom they had once sworn loyalty, which moreover occupied the strategic positions of the valley in perfect order and distribution. It worked. Francisco de Carvajal, the commander of Pizarro's forces, who had served with Valdivia in Italy but did not know he was in Peru, recognized the hand:
—"Valdivia is in the land and commands the royal camp... or the devil!" he was heard to curse.[21] Everything was done. Most of the rebel soldiers, impressed by the arrangement of the squadrons of the royal front, and lacking the nerve to fight the powerful imperial forces of their beloved Spain, chose to change sides after a short skirmish and to accept the amnesty offered to them.
—"Ah... Lord Governor, how much His Majesty owes you!" said Pedro de la Gasca, full of satisfaction, when Valdivia appeared bringing the terrible Carvajal as a prisoner. He had achieved it. He was Governor of Chile for the King.
Trial of Valdivia – The return to Chile
"It was fitting to give the Governorate to him rather than to another," said La Gasca, "for what he served H.M. in this campaign, and for the knowledge he has of Chile, and for what he has labored in the discovery of that land."[10] Valdivia then vigorously resumed the work for the conquest of Chile. He was able to enlist eighty soldiers in Cuzco, sent them with a captain to gather provisions for the crossing of the Despoblado at the entrance of Atacama, and to wait there for the rest of the columns. He sent captains to raise men to the east, in the Province of Charcas, and to the south, in Arequipa. He immediately left for Los Reyes, where he bought ships, horses, provisions and supplies, setting sail a month later with three ships to the south. He landed near Arequipa to join the expedition and direct it toward Atacama.
But so great was his eagerness to add every possible recruit to subdue the south of the country that he did not weigh the consequences. He contravened express instructions from La Gasca not to enlist certain notorious Pizarrists condemned to the galleys for treason against the King, nor to take Peruvian Indians to support the desert crossing and for service in Chile. These were valuable to La Gasca, who was not so concerned about abuses as about his obligation to reward with encomiendas the impatient Spaniards who had fought on the King's side against Pizarro. In Callao, Valdivia prevented the royal officials, who intended to remove the Indians who had been embarked, from boarding his ships. And to complete the picture of transgressions, the governor recruited for Chile some ill-living soldiery who "came robbing the land and the natives and had even done very ill treatment to the residents of Arequipa."[10]
This information soon reached the Viceroy La Gasca, who might perhaps have let it pass, because of the credit Valdivia had earned at Xaquixahuana, and "because it was fitting to unburden these kingdoms of people." But it was also around then that the President learned of the execution in Chile of Pedro Sancho de la Hoz. He was told that Valdivia had ordered it and that the dead man was the bearer of a royal provision for the government of Chile. It was too much. If it were true, La Gasca was left in a very uncomfortable position; he himself clearly describes the predicament he could be in: "If it were true that [Valdivia] had killed Pedro Sancho, the latter holding provisions from His Majesty for the governorship of that province, instead of punishing him for having killed its governor, I have given him that very governorship."[10] Alarmed, the President sent General Pedro de Hinojosa, a man of his complete confidence, to catch up with Valdivia and inquire with the greatest caution, among the soldiers of the camp who had already been in Chile, into his responsibility for those events. The delegate was to inform himself "with all the secrecy he could, of the things of Chile that I had been told, and if he found them to be true, to endeavor to make Valdivia return [as a prisoner] and send the people [to Chile], so that some of those who are in excess in this land might be emptied out."
Valdivia was with his men near Tacna around August 1548 when Hinojosa appeared. The Viceroy's envoy concealed his intentions in order to have time to investigate, telling him that he was there only on the matter of the Indians and the misdeeds of his recruits, which were insufficient to take measures against Valdivia beyond a reprimand. After a couple of days of inquiries in the camp, however, La Gasca's delegate was at least able to confirm that De la Hoz had been executed in Santiago. He immediately filled in a provision he carried, signed in blank by the Viceroy, and burst one morning into Valdivia's tent with twelve arquebusiers aiming at the Governor with the matches of their weapons lit. He summoned the Chilean to accompany him to Lima to give an account of his acts before the President. Certainly agitation spread among the hundred or so turbulent men of war accompanying Valdivia, who, once the surprise had passed, were ready to act at the first gesture of their leader. Hinojosa, for his part, had only those twelve arquebusiers. But he had the Viceroy's signature. Valdivia restrained himself, understanding that he had to return obediently "so as not to lose what had been served"; his project depended on it.
Seeing him back in Lima was a relief for Pedro de la Gasca, "who knew and appreciated his services and whose intelligence could not be hidden from him."[10] He told him that "he was an example so that all the subjects of His Majesty might know how to obey at that juncture and in times so fragile and a land of turmoil." Moreover, he expressed confidence "that what they had said of his person were falsehoods and envies."[2] He treated him with special deference, allowing him to wander freely about the capital of the Viceroyalty while the investigation was carried out.
But it was not only envy. Like any ruler, some loathed him. They felt mistreated, miserably despoiled by Pedro de Urdemalas, whom they regarded as a tyrant. The following incident gives a clear account of this: while La Gasca was inquiring into what had happened in Chile, in October 1548 a frigate arrived at Callao with some soldiers from Chile who came to complain about Valdivia personally before the Viceroy, "and so that he should not appoint him governor, because they would not receive him in the land." One of them, no doubt one of those defrauded of the gold, could not contain his fury on seeing Valdivia conversing with La Gasca in the street: "Your Lordship must not know who this man is with whom you are speaking... Well, know that he is a great thief and evildoer, who used with us the greatest cruelty that any Christian has ever used in the world!",[14] and he went on, beside himself, insulting Valdivia. The latter once again kept his calm, although, as one may suppose, it cost him.
La Gasca seemed inclined to allow his departure for Chile, so Valdivia's enemies, determined to prevent it, hastily drew up a disorderly document containing 57 accusations and had it delivered to him. The litany of charges was well summarized by Barros Arana: 1) Disobedience to the authority of the King's delegates; 2) Tyranny and cruelty toward his subordinates; 3) Insatiable greed; 4) Irreligiousness and loose morals with public scandal.
The bill of accusation, however, had a serious defect: it was presented unsigned. A man of law, La Gasca easily saw through the ruse: "It seemed to me," wrote the Viceroy, "that [the articles of the accusation] were given to me so covertly that one could suspect that those who had been involved in giving them wished to be witnesses, and for this reason I took information on those who had been the informers in them."[10] That is, he took care to establish clearly who had drawn up the document, and since all those opposed to Valdivia who came on the frigate had taken part in it, none of them could testify as a witness. On the other hand, on that ship there also came Pedro de Villagra together with other residents sympathetic to Valdivia, with letters from the Cabildo of Santiago that pleaded in his favor and asked the Viceroy to appoint him Governor. In this way, these latter, but also the loyalists of the governor who had accompanied him on his journey to Peru, were almost the only ones who knew the events in Chile and were qualified to testify.
For his part, required by La Gasca on October 30, 1548, Valdivia produced a long written defense. According to Barros Arana, the accused defended himself "with the confidence and integrity of one who believes he can fully justify his conduct." Finally the President was able to establish, regarding his main concern, that Sancho de la Hoz's royal provision empowered him only to conquer and govern the territories south of the Strait of Magellan (at that time it was believed that beyond the Strait a continent continued southward). As for the other accusations, he was able to verify that "they were false, or concerned faults of little importance."[10]
In a sentence of November 19, 1548, Valdivia was acquitted and authorized to return to Chile as Governor, albeit with certain conditions. Among others, that he take no reprisals against his adversaries; that within six months of his arrival in Chile he marry off his mistress Inés Suárez or send her to Peru or Spain, and reassign the encomiendas of Indians allotted to her; and that he return the funds taken from private individuals; "and that what he has taken out and borrowed from the coffer and treasury of H.M. he return to it, and that from now on he in no way take from the said coffer." Relieved, Valdivia willingly accepted everything imposed on him, declaring that "he will so comply and had intended to comply, even if he were not ordered to."
The intensity of those days also exacted a price. As he was returning through Arequipa, near Christmas of that year, "an illness came upon me," he himself said, "from the fatigue and past hardships, which brought me to the brink of life." As soon as he could stand, however, the conqueror of Chile pressed on: "Within eight days and the festivities having passed, not well convalesced, I set out for the valley of Tacana, from which I had departed, and went eight leagues farther to the port of Arica."[22]
He returned to Chile with 200 soldiers in January 1549, and upon reaching La Serena the difficulties continued. He found the city destroyed and Juan Bohón dead along with 30 other Spaniards, at the hands of the natives of Huasco. He left instructions to his captains to rebuild it and punish the Indians, and then continued by sea to Valparaíso, arriving in April 1549.
Once in Santiago things improved. He was received with true joy by the settlers, "as a friend who has come after a long absence."[3] He confirmed Francisco de Villagra as Lieutenant Governor because, he told him, "you have given me a good account and reckoning of what I left in your charge on behalf of His Majesty, as gentlemen of your profession and quality are wont and accustomed to do."
Since he had lost men in the massacre of La Serena, shortly afterward he gathered thirty thousand gold pesos and sent Villagra on one of the new ships to Peru. He was to enlist as many soldiers as he could among the many there who, Valdivia knew, did not feel well rewarded with encomiendas for their services to the King in the civil war. He ordered him to make his return by land along the eastern side of the Andes, so that before crossing to the west he would leave some of the recruits there, in a city he was to found in that territory, which was included in the governorate granted by La Gasca.
He also sent Francisco de Aguirre to pacify the region of La Serena and the valleys of Huasco and Copiapó. Relentless, Aguirre cornered and executed the rebel caciques, who had taken refuge in the Limarí Valley. "The Spaniards shut the Indians, men and women alike, alive in straw huts and then set them on fire, making them die in batches of a hundred."[23] Thus all danger to the definitive refounding of La Serena was eliminated.
Then Pedro de Valdivia's gaze turned once again toward the south. At last he believed he was in a position to launch the invasion and conquest of the land of the Mapuche, and whatever lay beyond.
Arauco War
Battle of Andalién and founding of Concepción
In January 1550 he began a new campaign toward the south following the route he had taken three years earlier. Valdivia was ill again, but he had himself carried by the yanaconas along the way, from time to time taking his horse, which was in the charge of his page, Lautaro. On January 24 he reached the area of Penco and arrived at the Bío-Bío and crossed it, while groups of locals watched him; at night a mass of two thousand of them attacked him and were repulsed;[24] after this, on February 22, he reached the Andalién River, where he camped.
During the night a squadron of Araucanians of approximately 10,000 individuals appeared, raising a great war cry and stamping the ground, and a furious pitched battle of three hours ensued, which became seriously compromised for the Spaniards, where a charge on foot and by lancers relieved the situation, leaving one Spaniard dead and several yanaconas wounded.
Valdivia entrenched himself at the site, which would form the foundation of the City of Concepción. Nine days later the Araucanians appeared again, formed in squadrons armed with axes, arrows and spears, as well as maces and clubs, and attacked the fort. The battle was decided in a single cavalry charge, in which 900 Indians died or were badly wounded. In this battle his ally Michimalonco died, executed by Jerónimo de Alderete.
Valdivia had the survivors' right hands and noses amputated as a sign of punishment and freed them so that they would spread panic; this way of making war would turn against the Spaniards themselves. This action, moreover, fostered the irrevocable hatred of an Indian he had as his page, named Lautaro.
Valdivia remained throughout that year of 1550 in the fort of Penco, formally founding Santa María de la Inmaculada Concepción, which would be the third important settlement after La Serena and Santiago. The Real Audiencia would be established there.
Along with this, Valdivia established a relationship with María Encio, who had come with him from Peru and been brought from Santiago, and who was the daughter of one of his moneylenders.
The settlement was a fort and was surrounded by semi-marshy areas, besides being an area of heavy rains and long winters. Because of his convalescence from his illness, Valdivia could advance no further, partly also because of the onset of winter. In the future Concepción would be the principal stronghold in the Arauco War.
Campaign of 1551 and founding of Valdivia
In February 1551, Valdivia, in the company of Pedro de Villagra, undertook a campaign from Concepción with 170 soldiers and, as always, an unrecorded number of yanaconas, and reached the banks of the Cautín River and founded a fort near its tributary, the Damas River, leaving Pedro de Villagra in charge of the task of completing it.
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During this campaign, he reached the Valley of Guada(ba)lafquén (the present-day City of Valdivia), and noticing that it lay on the banks of the Ainilebu (river of the Ainil), which they had named seven years earlier in his honor with the name Valdivia, he decided to found a city that would bear his surname as its name; thus he founded the city of Valdivia on February 9, 1552, on the banks of the Valdivia River, the continuation of the Calle-Calle River. A witness describes the event:
The Governor, having seen so good a district and site to settle a city, on the bank of so good a river, and having so good a port (he says), founded a city and instituted it the city of Valdivia, and appointed Alcaldes and council. It was founded (he concludes) on the ninth of February of the year MDLII
In April 1552, he returned to the brand-new fort after more than a year of operations and founded the fourth Spanish city, called La Imperial, because he found among the indigenous hostages some two-headed eagles carved in wood, resembling the emblem of Charles V.
At some point during these events his page Lautaro fled with his horse, a sallet and the command bugle of Godínez.
The foundation attracted many settlers because of the quality of the land, the abundance of timber and its privileged surroundings.
He went farther inland toward the cordillera and, on the shores of a great lake, founded the city of Villarrica as a mining settlement owing to the abundance of silver mines.
Making a deep advance toward the south, he reached the Reloncaví Sound and glimpsed in the distance the island of Chiloé. This is the farthest point of Valdivia's advance toward the Strait of Magellan. This period was characterized by a strange calm in the Arauco War; in fact, no more than local skirmishes were recorded. Valdivia believed for a moment that the region was pacified owing to the punishment given to the natives at the battle of Andalién.
In reality the strange Mapuche apathy was due to other causes.
Valdivia instructed Gerónimo de Alderete to travel to Spain, charging him with confirming his appointment as Governor by royal decree, delivering the Royal Fifth and bringing his wife Marina Ortiz de Gaete to Chile.[25]
Campaign of 1553
In the summer of 1553 Valdivia founded the forts of Tucapel, Arauco and Purén and laid the foundations of the fifth and last city founded by the conqueror, Los Confines de Angol, near the aforementioned forts.
In 1553 some auxiliaries fled from the mines of Villarrica and killed a Spaniard. The captains of the forts noticed the unmistakable signs of an indigenous uprising and raised the alarm in Concepción.
Valdivia dispatched Gabriel de Villagra toward La Imperial and Diego de Maldonado with four men toward Tucapel. On the way, Indians ambushed them; Maldonado survived, along with a fourth man, gravely wounded, who managed to reach the fort of Arauco.
At the same time, natives—under the command of Caupolicán—smuggled concealed weapons into the fort of Purén and, had it not been for the warning of an Indian informer, plus some reinforcements that arrived under Gómez de Almagro from La Imperial, the Spaniards would have suffered a slaughter, since hordes of Indians had gathered at siesta time to attack the fort. The Spaniards observed that the Indians attacked in a very different way from previous battles, organized as a copy of Spanish tactics. Such was their effectiveness that the Spaniards shut themselves up in the fort, sending a message to Valdivia about the extreme gravity of the situation.
The natives intercepted the messenger as he left the fort; under Lautaro's instructions, they let him proceed, and on his way back he carried Valdivia's instruction to join him at Tucapel, whereupon he was captured by Lautaro's hosts.
Lautaro displayed his cunning by keeping Gómez de Almagro in the fort of Purén: he arranged for a well-trained Indian to be captured, and as soon as the Spaniards interrogated him he said that as soon as Spaniards left the fort they would be heavily attacked.
Battle of Tucapel and death of Valdivia
Valdivia, personally in command, set out with 50 horsemen plus auxiliaries from Concepción on December 23, 1553, toward the fort of Tucapel, where he believed the forces of Gómez de Alvarado were already gathered. He spent the night at Labolebo, on the banks of the Lebu River, and early in the morning sent an advance patrol of five soldiers under the command of Luis de Bobadilla.
Being now half a day's journey from the fort of Tucapel, it was very strange to have no news whatsoever of Captain Bobadilla. On Christmas Day of 1553 he set out at dawn, and on reaching the vicinity of the hill of Tucapel he was surprised by the absolute silence that reigned. The fort was completely destroyed and there was not a single Spaniard in the vicinity.
While they were making camp in the smoking ruins, war cries (shouts) and blows on the ground were heard in the forest. Then a large group of natives rushed at the Spaniards. Valdivia was barely able to form his defensive lines and withstand the first clash. The cavalry charged the enemy's rearguard, but the Mapuche had foreseen this maneuver and had placed lancers who vigorously contained the charge. The Spaniards managed to break up the first charge of the natives,[citation needed] who withdrew with heavy losses from the hill to the forests.[citation needed]
However, they had barely lowered their swords when a new indigenous squadron burst in; they re-formed their lines and charged again with the cavalry. The Mapuche, in addition to lancers, had men armed with maces, bolas and lassos, with which they managed to unhorse the Spanish riders and deal mace blows to their skulls as they tried to rise from the ground.
The scene was repeated once more: after the sound of a horn, the second squadron withdrew with some losses, and a third contingent presented itself for battle. Behind this strategy of fresh battalions was Lautaro.
The situation of the Castilians became desperate. Faced with fatigue and casualties, Valdivia gathered the available soldiers and threw himself into the fierce fighting. Half of the Spaniards already lay on the field and the Indian auxiliaries were dwindling.
At one point in the combat, seeing their lives slipping away, Valdivia turned to those still around him and said:
—"Gentlemen, what shall we do?"—
Captain Altamirano replied:
—"What does Your Lordship wish us to do but fight and die!"—[3]
Soon the outcome of the battle was decided and finally the commander ordered the retreat, but Lautaro himself fell upon the flank, causing a rout. It was precisely what Valdivia did not want, and the Indians fell one by one upon the isolated Spaniards. Only the governor and the cleric Pozo, who were riding very good horses, managed to take the road of flight. But when crossing some marshes, the horses got bogged down and they were captured by the Indians.
According to some historians, in an act of reprisal for the mutilations and massacre of natives that he ordered after the Battle of Andalién, Valdivia was taken to the Mapuche camp, where they killed him after three days of torture, which included mutilations similar to those carried out by the conqueror to punish the Indians in that battle.[citation needed] According to Alonso de Góngora Marmolejo, the martyrdom continued with the amputation of his muscles while he was alive, using sharpened clam shells, and eating them lightly roasted before his eyes.[26] Finally they tore out his heart while he was still alive to devour it among the victorious toquis, while they drank chicha from his skull, which was kept as a trophy.[citation needed] The cacique Pelantarú returned it 55 years later, in 1608, together with that of Governor Martín Óñez de Loyola, killed in combat in 1598.
According to the chronicler Carmen de Pradales, Valdivia's death occurred as follows:
Being held prisoner by the Indians, they were deciding how to punish Valdivia. Meanwhile an Indian chief came from behind, grabbed a club and dealt him a blow on the back of the neck. He lopped him.
This account of Valdivia's death was one of the most widespread orally in the early moments among those who were in the vicinity of Tucapel.
The end of Valdivia according to Jerónimo de Vivar, as related in his Crónica y relación copiosa y verdadera de los Reynos de Chile (1558), chapter CXV:
[...] and [Valdivia], exhausted from that day, the Indians took him. Through a yanacona who happened to be there he spoke to the Indians and told them not to kill him, that the harm they had done to his Spaniards was enough. Thus the Indians were of different opinions, some saying that they should kill him and others that they should spare his life. As they are people of such poor understanding, neither knowing nor understanding what they were doing, at this moment there arrived an evil Indian, who was called Teopolican, who was lord of part of that town, and he said to the Indians what were they doing with the apo [Valdivia], why did they not kill him, "for once he who commands the Spaniards is dead we will easily kill those who remain." He struck him with one of the spears I have mentioned and killed him.
Thus perished and ended the fortunate governor who until then had certainly been so in everything he had undertaken and attempted up to this day. They took the head to Tucapel and placed it on a pole at the door of the principal lord, and two other heads with it, and they kept them there as a sign of greatness, because those three Spaniards had been the bravest, [...] I was informed by Spanish-speaking yanaconas and Indians who were there and escaped.
Portrait and self-portrait of Pedro de Valdivia
Valdivia was, when he died, fifty-six years of age, a native of a place in Extremadura called Castuera, a man of good stature, of cheerful face, the head large in proportion to the body, which had grown fat, broad-shouldered, broad-chested, a man of good understanding, though of words not well polished, liberal, and he granted favors graciously. After he became a lord he took great pleasure in giving what he had: he was generous in all his things, fond of going well dressed and resplendent and of men who did so, and of eating and drinking well: affable and humane with everyone.
— Alonso de Góngora Marmolejo, companion of Valdivia[3]
To govern the vassals of Your Majesty, I was a captain to encourage them in war, and to be first in dangers, because it was so fitting. A father to favor them with what I could and to grieve at their hardships, helping them bear them as if they were sons, and a friend in conversing with them. A geometer in laying out and settling; a master builder in making irrigation ditches and distributing water; a farmer and laborer in the sown fields; a head herdsman and shepherd in raising livestock. And in short, settler, breeder, sustainer, conqueror and discoverer.
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Valdivia's battles
Pedro de Valdivia was one of the few conquistadors who was a professional soldier (unlike Cortés or Almagro); in fact, he distinguished himself in the service of the King of Spain not only in America but also in Europe.
- Battle of Villalar (on the Comunero side)
- Battle of Pavia (in charge of a division of the tercio of the Marquis of Pescara)
- Sack of Rome
- Battle of las Salinas (Maestre de Campo)
- Battle of Quilacura
- Battle of Jaquijahuana
- Battle of Andalién
- Battle of Penco
- Battle of Tucapel
Tributes
The city of Valdivia, in southern Chile, was named by him in honor of his surname. In the following centuries various places and streets in Chile have been named "Pedro de Valdivia," among them the Pedro de Valdivia saltpeter works in the north of the country and Pedro de Valdivia Avenue in Santiago. The same goes for Pedro de Valdivia Avenue in Concepción. The vast majority of Chilean cities have a street, avenue, park or neighborhood named in honor of Don Pedro, the founder of Chile. Between 1977 and 2000, 500 Chilean peso banknotes were printed with his face on the obverse, and in 1975 two Chilean astronomers discovered an asteroid which they named (2741) Valdivia in his honor.
References
- ↑ Roa y Ursúa, Luis de (1945). El Reyno de Chile 1535-1810: Estudio histórico, genealógico y biográfico (in español). Valladolid: Talleres Tipográficas Cuesta.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link) - ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 2.14 2.15 2.16 2.17 2.18 Vivar, Gerónimo de (1966). Crónica y relación copiosa y verdadera de los reinos de Chile 1558. En: Fondo Histórico y Bibliográfico José Toribio Medina, Tomo 2 (in español). Instituto Geográfico Militar, Santiago de Chile.
Memoria Chilena - Documentos
{{cite book}}: External link in|quote= - ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Góngora Marmolejo, Alonso de (1862). Historia de Chile desde su descubrimiento hasta el año de 1575. En: Colección de historiadores de Chile y de documentos relativos a la historia nacional. Tomo 2 (in español). Imprenta del Ferrocarril, Santiago de Chile.
Memoria Chilena - Documentos
{{cite book}}: External link in|quote= - ↑ Valdivia's place of birth is still under discussion. In the comarca of La Serena, Villanueva, Castuera, Campanario (where the Valdivia family originally came from) and Zalamea all claim to be the birthplace of the conquistador.
- ↑ According to José Toribio Medina in Diccionario Biográfico Colonial de Chile, «Charles V had just granted the governorship of Paria (Venezuela) and other provinces to Jerónimo de Ortal, who, after embarking for those lands, had left Jerónimo de Alderete in Spain in charge of recruiting some men for him; Alderete had also been a soldier in Italy, was his comrade, and later figured as Valdivia's trusted man. Alderete indeed arrived at Cubagua in December 1534 with a galleon carrying "a hundred and some men, all of war and of deeds". It is thus very probable that Valdivia was among them.[...] There (in Venezuela) he had the opportunity to deal with Juan Fernández de Alderete, another of those who later served at his side in the conquest of Chile».
- ↑ Instrucciones de Pedro de Valdivia a sus apoderados en la corte. Written in Santiago on October 15, 1550.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 Carta de Pedro de Valdivia al emperador Carlos V. Written in La Serena on September 4, 1545
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 José Toribio Medina - Diccionario Biográfico Colonial de Chile, Imprenta Elzeviriana, Santiago de Chile, 1906
- ↑ Among those who left Cuzco with Valdivia were: the ensign of the royal standard Pedro de Miranda; the sergeant major Alonso de Monroy; the maestre de campo Pero Gómez de Don Benito; the capitalist partner Francisco Martínez; and the notary Luis de Cartagena.
- ↑ 10.00 10.01 10.02 10.03 10.04 10.05 10.06 10.07 10.08 10.09 Diego Barros Arana - Proceso de Valdivia i otros documentos concernientes a este conquistador, Imprenta Nacional, Santiago, 1873
- ↑ Conrad J. Bahre (1979). Destruction of the Natural Vegetation of North-Central Chile. Berkeley; Los Angeles; London: University of California Press, pp. 37. ISBN 978-0-520-09594-6.
- ↑ Carlos María Sayago. Historia de Copiapó. Imprenta de El Atacama, 1874.
- ↑ Veronica Droppelmann A. (17 de agosto de 2020). "Árboles como archivos climáticos: reconstruyendo 600 años de historia de sequía en Sudamérica". Ladera Sur (in español). Retrieved 12 de marzo de 2023.
Valdivia, poco antes de la fundación de la ciudad, arribó a un valle que sufría de hambruna producto, justamente, de la sequía
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|access-date=and|date=(help) - ↑ 14.00 14.01 14.02 14.03 14.04 14.05 14.06 14.07 14.08 14.09 14.10 14.11 14.12 14.13 Crónica del Reino de Chile, escrita por el capitán Don Pedro Mariño de Lobera. Published in Colección de Historiadores de Chile, volume VI, Imprenta El Ferrocarril, Santiago de Chile, 1865.
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 Daniel Vidart (1996). Los muertos y sus sombras: Cinco siglos de América. Bogotá: Editorial Nueva América, pp. 353. ISBN 978-958-9039-31-1.
- ↑ 16.0 16.1 Michael Murrin (1994). History and Warfare in Renaissance Epic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 163. ISBN 978-0-226-55403-7. Michimalongo's army attacking Santiago numbered 8,000 to 10,000 warriors.
- ↑ Silvia Lorente-Murphy. «Dos aproximaciones a la figura histórica de Inés Suárez: Jorge Guzmán e Isabel Allende». Ciberletras: Revista de crítica literaria y de cultura. Purdue University North Central. No. 21, 2009, e-ISSN 1523-1720.
- ↑ Diego de Rosales (1989). Historia General Del Reino de Chile. Flandes Indiano. Santiago de Chile: Fundación Andrés Bello, pp. lx
- ↑ Joaquín Edwards Bello, El subterráneo de los jesuitas, Ed. Zig-Zag, 1966.
- ↑ The historian Claudio Gay, well versed in matters of medicine and pharmacy, noted in his Historia Física y Política de Chile that Monroy died of a brain fever, chavalongo, the name the Indians gave to typhoid fever. The maestre de campo Francisco de Carvajal, however, who received Monroy in Lima around 1545, related that «an illness came upon him from which he died in three days. The physicians say it was a strain of pestilence. I say that they killed him, not knowing how to cure him nor understanding his illness».
- ↑ Diego Fernández de Palencia, Primera y Segunda Parte de la Historia del Perú, published in Seville in 1571. The chronicler of the Conquest of Chile, Pedro Mariño de Lobera, also said in this regard: "the King's camp having come to stand face to face with the tyrants, and Francisco de Carvajal seeing it in such new and extraordinary order and disposition, he began to tremble, and said aloud to those of his army: either Valdivia is in the King's camp, or the devil; giving to understand that there could be no other in the kingdom who could do as much as what he then saw; and it not taking long to discover that it was Valdivia, Carvajal said: we are lost, as one who had known him for so many years."
- ↑ Letter from Pedro de Valdivia to Emperor Charles V, giving him an account of his actions in the government of Chile and of his journey to Peru. Written in Santiago on October 15, 1550.
- ↑ Diego Barros Arana, Historia General de Chile; volume I, Editorial Universitaria, 1999.
- ↑ Historia del pueblo mapuche: (siglo XIX y XX), José Bengoa, Lom Ediciones, 2000 edition, p. 34.
- ↑ Gerónimo de Alderete returned to America in 1556 and died in Panama, the victim of a serious illness. Marina Ortiz de Gaete arrived in Chile, together with her sister Catalina and Doña Esperanza de Rueda, Alderete's widow, in a female retinue of Don García Hurtado de Mendoza, in 1557, when Valdivia had already been dead for almost four years.
- ↑ De Góngora Marmolejo, Alonso (2015). Historia de todas las cosas que han acaecido en el Reino de Chile y de los que lo han gobernado Volume 1 of Letras del reino de Chile (in español). Editorial Universitaria de Chile. p. 180. ISBN 9789561124783. Retrieved August 30, 2018.
External links
- Pedro de Valdivia y la fundación de Chile (in Spanish)
- Genealogía de Pedro de Valdivia at Genealog.cl (in Spanish)
