Birthplace of Ferdinand De Soto. Spanish
Colony at Darien. Don Pedro de Avila,
Governor of Darien. Vasco Nunez. Famine. Love
in the Spanish Castle. Character of
Isabella. Embarrassment of De Soto. Isabella’s
Parting Counsel.
In the interior of Spain, about one
hundred and thirty miles southwest of Madrid, there
is the small walled town of Xeres. It is remote
from all great routes of travel, and contains about
nine thousand inhabitants, living very frugally, and
in a state of primitive simplicity. There are
several rude castles of the ancient nobility here,
and numerous gloomy, monastic institutions. In
one of these dilapidated castles, there was born,
in the year 1500, a boy, who received the name of
Ferdinand de Soto. His parents were Spanish nobles,
perhaps the most haughty class of nobility which has
ever existed. It was, however, a decayed family,
so impoverished as to find it difficult to maintain
the position of gentility. The parents were not
able to give their son a liberal education. Their
rank did not allow them to introduce him to any of
the pursuits of industry; and so far as can now be
learned, the years of his early youth were spent in
idleness.
Ferdinand was an unusually handsome
boy. He grew up tall, well formed, and with remarkable
muscular strength and agility. He greatly excelled
in fencing, horseback riding, and all those manly exercises
which were then deemed far more essential for a Spanish
gentleman than literary culture. He was fearless,
energetic, self-reliant; and it was manifest that
he was endowed with mental powers of much native strength.
When quite a lad he attracted the
attention of a wealthy Spanish nobleman, Don Pedro
de Avila, who sent him to one of the Spanish universities,
probably that of Saragossa, and maintained him there
for six years. Literary culture was not then
in high repute; but it was deemed a matter of very
great moment that a nobleman of Spain should excel
in horsemanship, in fencing, and in wielding every
weapon of attack or defence.
Ferdinand became quite renowned for
his lofty bearing, and for all chivalric accomplishments.
At the tournaments, and similar displays of martial
prowess then in vogue, he was prominent, exciting the
envy of competitive cavaliers, and winning the admiration
of the ladies.
Don Pedro became very proud of his
foster son, received him to his family, and treated
him as though he were his own child. The Spanish
court had at that time established a very important
colony at the province of Darien, on the Isthmus of
Panama. This isthmus, connecting North and South
America, is about three hundred miles long and from
forty to sixty broad. A stupendous range of mountains
runs along its centre, apparently reared as an eternal
barrier between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
From several of the summits of this ridge the waters
of the two oceans can at the same time be distinctly
seen. Here the Spanish court, in pursuit of its
energetic but cruel conquest of America, had established
one of its most merciless colonies. There was
gold among the mountains. The natives had many
golden ornaments. They had no conception of the
value of the precious ore in civilized lands.
Readily they would exchange quite large masses of gold
for a few glass beads. The great object of the
Spaniards in the conquest of Darien was to obtain
gold. They inferred that if the ignorant natives,
without any acquaintance with the arts, had obtained
so much, there must be immense quantities which careful
searching and skilful mining would reveal.
The wanton cruelties practised by
the Spaniards upon the unoffending natives of these
climes seem to have been as senseless as they were
fiendlike. It is often difficult to find any motive
for their atrocities. These crimes are thoroughly
authenticated, and yet they often seem like the outbursts
of demoniac malignity. Anything like a faithful
recital of them would torture the sensibilities of
our readers almost beyond endurance. Mothers
and maidens were hunted and torn down by bloodhounds;
infant children were cut in pieces, and their quivering
limbs thrown to the famished dogs.
The large wealth and the rank of Don
Pedro de Avila gave him much influence at the Spanish
court. He succeeded in obtaining the much-coveted
appointment of Governor of Darien. His authority
was virtually absolute over the property, the liberty,
and the lives of a realm, whose extended limits were
not distinctly defined.
Don Pedro occupied quite an imposing
castle, his ancestral mansion, in the vicinity of
Badajoz. Here the poor boy Ferdinand, though descended
from families of the highest rank, was an entire dependent
upon his benefactor. The haughty Don Pedro treated
him kindly. Still he regarded him, in consequence
of his poverty, almost as a favored menial. He
fed him, clothed him, patronized him.
It was in the year 1514 that Don Pedro
entered upon his office of Governor of Darien.
The insatiate thirst for gold caused crowds to flock
to his banners. A large fleet was soon equipped,
and more than two thousand persons embarked at St.
Lucar for the golden land. The most of these
were soldiers; men of sensuality, ferocity, and thirst
for plunder. Not a few noblemen joined the enterprise;
some to add to their already vast possessions, and
others hoping to retrieve their impoverished fortunes.
A considerable number of priests accompanied
the expedition, and it is very certain that some of
these at least were actuated by a sincere desire to
do good to the natives, and to win them to the religion
of Jesus: that religion which demands that
we should do to others as we would that others should
do to us, and whose principles, the governor, the
nobles, and the soldiers, were ruthlessly trampling
beneath their feet. Don Pedro, when measured
by the standard of Christianity, was proud, perfidious
and tyrannical. The course he pursued upon his
arrival in the country was impolitic and almost insane.
His predecessor in the governorship
was Vasco Nunez. He had been on the whole a prudent,
able and comparatively merciful governor. He had
entered into trade with the natives, and had so far
secured their good will as to induce them to bring
in an ample supply of provisions for his colony.
He had sent out Indian explorers, with careful instructions
to search the gold regions among the mountains.
Don Pedro, upon assuming the reins of government,
became very jealous of the popularity of Nunez, whom
he supplanted. His enmity soon became so implacable
that, without any cause, he accused him of treason
and ordered him to be decapitated. The sentence
was executed in the public square of Acla. Don
Pedro himself gazed on the cruel spectacle concealed
in a neighboring house. He seemed ashamed to meet
the reproachful eye of his victim, as with an axe
his head was cut off upon a block.
All friendly relations with the Indians
were speedily terminated. They were robbed of
their gold, of their provisions, and their persons
were outraged in the most cruel manner. The natives,
terror-stricken, fled from the vicinity of the colony,
and suddenly the Spaniards found all their supplies
of provisions cut off. More than two thousand
were crowded into a narrow space on the shores of
the gulf, with no possibility of obtaining food.
They were entirely unprepared for any farming operations,
having neither agricultural tools nor seed. Neither
if they had them could they wait for the slow advent
of the harvest. Famine commenced its reign, and
with famine, its invariable attendant, pestilence.
In less than six months, of all the glittering hosts,
which with music and banners had landed upon the isthmus,
expecting soon to return to Europe with their ships
freighted with gold, but a few hundred were found
alive, and they were haggard and in rags.
The Spaniards had robbed the Indians
of their golden trinkets, but these trinkets could
not be eaten and they would purchase no food.
They were as worthless as pebbles picked from the beach.
Often lumps of gold, or jewels of inestimable value,
were offered by one starving wretch to another for
a piece of mouldy bread. The colony would have
become entirely extinct, but for the opportune arrival
of vessels from Spain with provisions. Don Pedro
had sent out one or two expeditions of half-famished
men to seize the rice, Indian corn, and other food,
wherever such food could be found.
The natives had sufficient intelligence
to perceive that the colonists were fast wasting away.
The Indians were gentle and amiable in character,
and naturally timid; with no taste for the ferocities
of war. But emboldened by the miseries of the
colonies, and beginning to despise their weakness,
they fell upon the foraging parties with great courage
and drove them back ignominiously to the coast.
The arrival of the ships to which we have referred
with provisions and reinforcements, alone saved the
colony from utter extinction.
Don Pedro, after having been in the
colony five years, returned to Spain to obtain new
acquisitions of strength in men and means for the
prosecution of ever-enlarging plans of wealth and ambition.
North and south of the narrow peninsula were the two
majestic continents of North and South America.
They both invited incursions, where nations could
be overthrown, empires established, fame won, and where
mountains of gold might yet be found.
It seems that De Soto had made the
castle of Don Pedro, near Badajoz, his home during
the absence of the governor. There all his wants
had been provided for through the charitable munificence
of his patron. He probably had spent his term
time at the university. He was now nineteen years
of age, and seemed to have attained the full maturity
of his physical system, and had developed into a remarkably
elegant young man.
The family of Don Pedro had apparently
remained at the castle. His second daughter,
Isabella, was a very beautiful girl in her sixteenth
year. She had already been presented at the resplendent
court of Spain, where she had attracted great admiration.
Rich, beautiful and of illustrious birth, many noblemen
had sought her hand, and among the rest, one of the
princes of the blood royal. But Isabella and De
Soto, much thrown together in the paternal castle,
had very naturally fallen in love with each other.
The haughty governor was one day exceedingly
astounded and enraged, that De Soto had the audacity
to solicit the hand of his daughter in marriage.
In the most contemptuous and resentful manner, he repelled
the proposition as an insult. De Soto was keenly
wounded. He was himself a man of noble birth.
He had no superior among all the young noblemen around
him, in any chivalric accomplishment. The only
thing wanting was money. Don Pedro loved his
daughter, was proud of her beauty and celebrity, and
was fully aware that she had a very decided will of
her own.
After the lapse of a few days, the
governor was not a little alarmed by a statement,
which the governess of the young lady ventured to make
to him. She assured him that Isabella had given
her whole heart to De Soto, and that she had declared
it to be her unalterable resolve to retire to a convent,
rather than to become the wife of any other person.
Don Pedro was almost frantic with rage. As totally
devoid of moral principle as he was of human feelings,
he took measures to have De Soto assassinated.
Such is the uncontradicted testimony of contemporary
historians. But every day revealed to him more
clearly the strength of Isabella’s attachment
for De Soto, and the inflexibility of her will.
He became seriously alarmed, not only from the apprehension
that if her wishes were thwarted, no earthly power
could prevent her from burying herself in a convent,
but he even feared that if De Soto were to be assassinated,
she would, by self-sacrifice, follow him to the world
of spirits. This caused him to feign partial
reconciliation, and to revolve in his mind more cautious
plans for his removal.
He decided to take De Soto back with
him to Darien. The historians of those days represent
that it was his intention to expose his young protege
to such perils in wild adventures in the New World,
as would almost certainly secure his death. De
Soto himself, proud though poor, was tortured by the
contemptuous treatment which he received, even from
the menials in the castle, who were aware of his rejection
by their proud lord. He therefore eagerly availed
himself of the invitation of Don Pedro to join in
a new expedition which he was fitting out for Darien.
He resolved, at whatever sacrifice,
to be rich. The acquisition of gold, and the
accumulation of fame, became the great objects of his
idolatry. With these he could not only again claim
the hand of Isabella, but the haughty Don Pedro would
eagerly seek the alliance of a man of wealth and renown.
Thousands of adventurers were then crowding to the
shores of the New World, lured by the accounts of the
boundless wealth which it was said could there be found,
and inspired by the passion which then pervaded Christendom,
of obtaining celebrity by the performance of chivalric
deeds.
Many had returned greatly enriched
by the plunder of provinces. The names of Pizarro
and Cortez had been borne on the wings of renown through
all the countries of Europe, exciting in all honorable
minds disgust, in view of their perfidy and cruelty,
and inspiring others with emotions of admiration,
in contemplation of their heroic adventures.
De Soto was greatly embarrassed by
his poverty. Both his parents were dead.
He was friendless; and it was quite impossible for
him to provide himself with an outfit suitable to
the condition of a Spanish grandee. The insulting
treatment he had received from Don Pedro rendered
it impossible for him to approach that haughty man
as a suppliant for aid. But Don Pedro did not
dare to leave De Soto behind him. The family
were to remain in the ancestral home. And it was
very certain that, Don Pedro being absent, ere long
he would hear of the elopement of Ferdinand and Isabella.
Thus influenced, he offered De Soto a free passage
to Darien, a captain’s commission with a suitable
outfit, and pledged himself that he should have ample
opportunity of acquiring wealth and distinction, in
an expedition he was even then organizing for the
conquest of Peru. As Don Pedro made these overtures
to the young man, with apparently the greatest cordiality,
assuming that De Soto, by embarking in the all-important
enterprise, would confer a favor rather than receive
one, the offer was eagerly accepted.
Don Pedro did everything in his power
to prevent the two lovers from having any private
interview before the expedition sailed. But the
ingenuity of love as usual triumphed over that of avarice.
Isabella and De Soto met, and solemnly pledged constancy
to each other. It seems that Isabella thoroughly
understood the character of her father, and knew that
he would shrink from no crime in the accomplishment
of his purposes. As she took her final leave
of her lover, she said to him, very solemnly and impressively,
“Ferdinand, remember that one
treacherous friend is more dangerous than a thousand
avowed enemies.”