Nicaragua
Balboa had fallen before Pedrarias, but the search for some passageway to the provinces and islands of the South Sea, rich in spices, pearls, and gold, was continued by not unworthy successors in the persons of Andres Niño — a sea-dog not to be confounded with Pero Alonso Niño, pilot under Columbus and Ojeda — and Gil Gonzalez Dávila. Columbus himself had sought this passageway or strait, between 1502 and 1504, (see: Columbus Subsequent Voyages) and others had followed him. This Niño, too, had explored the coast of Darien in behalf of Balboa. In 1519, the year of Balboa's death, Niño entered into a partnership with Gil Gonzalez, treasury agent for Española, a man of great practicality and excellent judgment. The partners were empowered by the Crown to take over the ships built by Balboa and to make exploration one thousand leagues to the west. Pedrarias — seventy years old, drier, harder, more inflexible than ever — refused to deliver the vessels. Gonzalez, whose rank in the partnership was that of Captain-General, thereupon dismantled his own ships, and, repeating the feat of Balboa, carried the materials over the mountains to the river Balsas. In the end, after delays and discouragements comparable to those of Balboa, he managed to build and equip four small vessels and with them to sail westward on January 21, 1522.
This expedition, which took a double form — a coasting voyage by
Niño and a march overland by Gonzalez — came first to the lands of
the cacique Nicoya, from whom Gonzalez learned that fifty leagues to
the northward there dwelt a greater cacique whose name was
Nicaragua. Gonzalez abhorred strife as much as Pedrarias delighted
in it, and the naïve wisdom of Nicaragua had therefore a chance to
unfold itself unhindered. Whence, asked the cacique, after listening
to a detailed account of the Mosaic scheme of creation, did the sun
and moon obtain their light and how would they lose it? Why did not
the God of the Christians make a better physical world, one more
comfortable to dwell in? And finally, speaking in the ear of the
interpreter, he asked: "Came these men from the sky ? " Being
assured that they did, his next query was: "But how? Came they
directly down like a spent arrow, or riding a cloud, or in a circuit
like a bent bow?"
The Indian community over which Nicaragua ruled was situated on a
large freshwater sea, the present Lake Nicaragua, and, striding into
it, Gonzalez drank of the water and took possession in the name of
the King of Spain. "It is by situation," he wrote, "barely three
leagues from the South Sea, and, according to the pilots, connected
with the North Sea. If so, it is a great discovery." Here Gonzalez
repelled an Indian attack under a picturesque cacique named
Diriangen, and, having satisfied himself that as yet the Spaniards
of Mexico, Cortés and his followers, had made no southerly advance,
returned to Panamá. As for Andrés Niño, he had coasted as far
northwestward as the Bay of Fonseca on the shores of the later
Central American provinces of Salvador and Honduras.
But what meanwhile of the doings of Pedrarias? It was in January,
1519, that Balboa had been got rid of, and by the 15th of August
Pedrarias and Espinosa — Gaspar de Espinosa, now Captain-General of
the South Sea — had crossed the Isthmus from Adá and had founded
Panamá to serve as a southern terminal for the long contemplated
chain of posts to connect the Atlantic with the Pacific side of the
Isthmus until the ardently desired interoceanic strait should be
discovered. Later the same year a northern terminal was provided
through the founding of Nombre de Dios.
With the rise of Panamá, now created by royal decree a city and the
capital of Darien, Santa Maria la Antigua, forever ill-famed as the
place of execution of Balboa, sank rapidly to decay and in
September, 1524, was burned by the Indians. Henceforth, in the old
Tierra Firme, Panamá and Nombre de Dios are the names wherewith to
conjure. About these cities, more than about any others of the
Indies, does romance cling. A wide road, says Peter Martyr, was
built from one to the other "through mountains overgrown with thick
woods never touched from all eternity, " to the intent that "two
carts side by side might pass over with ease to search ye secrets of
either spacious Sea." And "ye secrets" were "searched" well, for at
Panamá, by the middle of the century, not only did there ride at
anchor "ships from the South and far western East, laden with the
wealth of half a world," but "in the sun-beaten streets gold and
silver lay stacked in bricks," waiting, "along with spices and
precious merchandise," transportation to Nombre de Dios.
Pedrarias had made headway also both to the west and east of his new
capital. To the west, as far as the nation of the Chiriqui, famed as
potters, he had sent Espinosa and Francisco Pizarro, the latter
dutiful as ever. To the south he had likewise sent a faithful
retainer and honest man, Pascual de Andagoya, who, following the
Isthmus of Darien to where it broadens into the continent of South
America (Mundus Novus), became the explorer of Birú, whence very
possibly the name Pirú and ultimately that of Perú. At any rate, out
of the Andagoya expedition grew, as we shall see, the subsequent and
ever memorable enterprise of Pizarro.
Pedrarias's next step was to send Hernández de Córdoba to forestall
Gonzalez in the occupation of Nicaragua, a country claimed by him as
within the confines of Darien.
Gonzalez appeared at Panama just when Pedrarias was prepared to
appropriate his conquests, and so Balboa-like had fairly thrust his
head between the jaws of the lion; but he was quick enough to
withdraw it, for he spread sail from Nombre de Dios as Pedrarias
rode up in hot haste to intercept him. When Gonzalez returned, he
approached Nicaragua from the Honduras coast. He thus avoided
Pedrarias himself but encountered instead Hernando de Soto,
lieutenant to Córdoba. Gonzalez defeated Córdoba, but only to
succumb to the superior force of Francisco de las Casas, one of
Cortés's lieutenants, who carried him to Mexico as a prisoner.
Córdoba meantime, thinking the occasion opportune, sought to set up
an independent government in Nicaragua and Honduras. This act of
treachery to Pedrarias was reported to him at Panamá by De Soto, and
in January, 1526, Pedrarias set sail for Nicaragua in person. With
characteristic energy mad ruthlessness, he arrested Córdoba, put him
to death, and took control of the province. The death of Córdoba may
be regarded as marking the end of the long-standing duel between
Pedrarias and the successors of Balboa, and its conclusion was not
unfavorable to the "swarthy-souled" Governor.
Upon Pedrarias — cunning, indomitable, vindictive — Fortune seemed
ever to smile. When, for example, in May, 1520, Lope de Sosa came to
Antigua to supersede him in office, that unhappy man was mortally
stricken in the cabin of his ship as he prepared to disembark for
his inauguration. Again, when in 1526 the Governor was recalled
posthaste to Panamá for trial, just as he was on the point of
seizing from Cortés himself Honduras as part of Nicaragua, what
should befall but, though superseded as to Darien by Pedro de los
Rios, his authority over Nicaragua was confirmed! But the fact is
not to be overlooked that he was ably and zealously seconded at
Court by his wife, Isabel de Bobadilla, whom he had seasonably
dispatched to Spain with his pearls and gold.
The last years of his life, despite the fact that they were the
years of an octogenarian, were active and marked by bloodshed. On
the caciques of the country who rose in revolt, he wreaked
diabolical vengeance by his bloodhounds. But he had withal an eye
for trade and transportation. He projected a transcontinental route
between Lake Nicaragua and the present Greytown, and afterwards one
between León and the north coast by way of Salvador. He became
interested in the expedition of Pizarro to Peru, but in this matter
he for once suffered bafflement, and died at Leon, in 1530, as he
was nearing his ninetieth year.
If the adventure of Gil Gonzalez to Lake Nicaragua, in 1522-23, was
prompted by fear of southward encroachment by Cortés, Cortés himself
was not blind to the chance of northward encroachment by the
Spaniards of the Isthmus. In other words, the conqueror of Mexico
and founder of New Spain sought success also to the south, and for
two reasons. There lay the districts of
Guatemala and Honduras — districts
which, it was said, must "far exceed Mexico in riches, while
equaling her in the size of towns, in the number of inhabitants, and
in culture." And there, in Castilian fancy, figured that long-sought
interoceanic strait upon which every one counted to reach the vast
Pacific with its isles of mystery and gold.
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