SURVIVING the Amazon: How the First Conquistadors SURVIVED the DEADLY River of Darkness

welcome jason dead guys in the story of the spanish conquest of the americas names like hernan cortez and francisco pizarro are immortalized as conquerors who took down the empires of the aztecs and the inca but what if there was another great empire essentially lost for around 300 years until its publication in 1895 the account by friar gaspar de carvalho described the journey down the amazon the first one ever by the spanish and led by francisco orianna for decades scholars will dismiss his story as fabrication and propaganda carvalhal writes of giant cities and complex roads he talks about populations in the hundreds of thousands and art that rivals the romans and complexity he writes about amazonian warrior women poison arrows and cannibals nearly a hundred years after orianna's expedition pedro d texiero will lead another one up river in 1637 but they won't report the same findings that are found by car ball but we know what european pathogens will do to native populations in well-documented areas and new evidence has maybe suggested that car evolve was being more truthful than originally thought let's take a look in october 1541 the contingent of 200 troops led by gonzalo pizzaro and francisco dioriana are desperate and starved along the napo river gonzalo pizarro is the brother of the famous incan conqueror francisco bizarro orianna is his second in command the purpose of the expedition was to find the rumored eldorado the golden man and the land of cinnamon in order to gain wealth and glory they left keto in february but after months lay dying in the jungle they have eaten all their dogs and horses their 4 000 indian porters have been devastated by a smallpox outbreak and they are an impossible distance from civilization no el dorado had been found no useful supply of cinnamon even pizarro's torture of the natives has not produced information they desire pizarro and orianna have the men begin building a boat a brigantine right there in the jungle the men cut timber and build a forge metal from the armor of the dead and the horseshoes of the eden are made in the nails pitch is made from the tar of trees to make the ship water tight the group ventured down river hoping to find native villages and food the healthy followed the banks on foot the brigantine is named to san pedro it's not a large ship but can carry roughly 30 men they use it to ferry the sick but with a party of 200 the san pedro is limited in its ability to help on christmas day 1541 the men eat dinner a gruel of boiled saddle leather oriana approached bizzaro with a plan let him and a group of men travel down the nappo in search of food 12 days bizzaro's group was to follow on foot after they find provisions they will return for help pizarro agrees he sends orianna in a quarter of his force 57 men out in search of food 30 or so in the san pedro and others in canoes taken from natives oriana and his group start down the nappo on december 26th they move quickly on a current that is stronger than expected for a week they order and float but see nothing they begin to imagine things some believe they hear drums on new year's day but nothing is discovered increasingly they become discouraged and convinced they're going to die the men desperately eat anything they can find and many are sick but then they get the break they needed friar gaspar di caraval were chronicled the journey he writes quote while eating roots in the forest they hear drums far from where they were the captain was the one who heard them first and announced it to the other companions and they all listened such was the happiness that they all felt that they cast out of their memories or the past suffering because now we were in an inhabited country and no longer could die of hunger end quote they come to a village that's ruled by an overlord they call paria the lesser the tribe doesn't call him that but the spanish do because they later made a different aparia that they liked better knowing his men made mutiny if forced to go against the current upriver to pizarro they wait for the force to meet them instead realizing that may never happen orianna elects to continue downriver he theorizes that the napo is a tributary of the amazon previously explored from the east by diego diordas in an expedition in 1531. that expedition is disaster the men face shipwreck and attack some even run off into the jungle taking their chances with the locals rather than starving to death with the group the ordaz expedition doesn't provide a good omen but the only thing waiting for the men up river by pizarro is hunger and death meanwhile a ripper for 12 days pizarro's force continued to starve while they waited for eon to come back when he doesn't come back look agreed pizarro thinks he's been betrayed and abandoned and to be fair he kind of was he and his men turn back to keto most die in the way but orianna never has to answer for his choice to abandon his leader pizarro gets distracted on his way back to keto he discovers that his brother francisco has been murdered and within a few years he'll be in civil war with the king that won't go well in 1548 he'll be captured and beheaded which is fatal but down river things have more or less turned around for our plucky conquistadors party the lesser's people bring in food and abundance they notice gold but orianna forbids them to take any after about a month the group wears out their welcome rather than risk their relationship with the natives orianna elects to move on and they travel down the river for what caraval describes as around 200 leagues before they reach any large settlements again but when they do they meet a party of the greater between these two villages orion spends a lot of time with each aparia he works diligently to pick up the language he chronicles words and takes a far more diplomatic approach than pizarro for example he kills zero indians with fire at least in these two villages he gives gifts and shows respect and the name is very welcoming to the spanish that does wear off after a while and the natives give them hints that they want them to move on by making their food deliveries less frequent the aparias tell orianna about larger kingdoms with gold oparia the greater introduces him to many overlords that come to the villages on the interior they exchange gifts and while these meetings take place the rest of the men work on building the second brigantine if they were going to continue down a river they will need another ship they make 2 000 nails from what expendable metal they have left a few spanish have died of illness so they did have some armor and horseshoes to pick at they harvested lumber from the jungle they make the pitch from the tar of trees and fill any gaps with cotton the second ship was named the victoria and was larger than the first with this second brigantine the group will be able to ditch most of their canoes and all of their men will be able to stay aboard the two vessels before the conquistadors continue their journey aparri the greater offers them a warning of what is to come orianna writes quote they told him to be careful about what we were doing for we were few in number and they many for they would kill us and they counseled us not to stop in their country end quote orianna's man left the party's village on april 24 1542 and for 200 miles beyond there things go pretty well the group doesn't get attacked a single time and the natives will even provide food for most of their journey along the way but all good things come to an end they enter a barren section where for a while they find no villages or natives like a barrier in the jungle by the middle of may they reached a new kingdom the overlord here is machu paro he is the neighbor to omaga they are warlike and as a pair they often attack other tribes as a partner the greater had warned they are attacked on sight oddly according to caraval by older men he writes quote for fighting purposes fifty 000 men of the age of 30 up to 70 because the young men did not go to war and in all the fights we had with them we didn't see any but it was the old men and these were quite expert and they have thin mustaches and not beards end quote the warriors carry shields of animal high and through the territory orianna has the brigantines banded together in order to fend off attack some of orianna's men have harku buses but they are useless in this first attack because the powder is damp luckily the crossbows they have still work for hours the group is attacked by water when they can they take the land to raid a village for food but before they are overwhelmed they return to the boats in one event a massive land fight took place and one of the spaniards was killed 18 others were hurt but to prevent further attack orianna was clever quote the captain commanded the wounded be placed on board and those who were unable to go on their own feet he ordered to be wrapped in blank and to me carried a board on the backs of other men as if the latter were carrying loads of maize so that they might not embark limping and so that the indians on perceiving this might not regain so much courage that they might not let us embark end quote for days the conquistadors were pursued with only small respites between attacks natives inhabit the entire length of the banks and by the hundreds they are being pursued by canoe at one point they even shoot a sorcerer that's fun they describe him as a guy who's painted and screaming from the riverbank with ashes in his mouth the size of the villages inhabited by the natives are shocking carvalhal writes of them quote which in the opinion of all extended more than 80 leagues for was all of one tongue these 80 leagues being all inhabited for there was not from village to village in most cases a crossbow shot and the one which was furthest removed from the next was not half a week away and there was one settlement that stretched for five leagues without their intervening any space from house to house which was a marvelous thing to behold end quote this is only what they see if caraval's account is even close to accurate what does that mean for the amount of people that live in the interior the constant days of attack keep the brigantines from landing and force the men to spend the days on water unable to eat they have food like a bunch of stolen turtles but they don't have a chance to cook it to eat it you don't want to eat raw turtles they find a small settlement that looks defensible the writing isn't super clear but i think it has a palisade the men are able to take it over and there they find porcelain and art that they compared complexity to that of ancient rome they are astonished with how advanced they are it honestly shouldn't be too shocking this adventure takes place after the fall of the aztecs and the inca and their achievements are pretty well documented but one thing discovered in this village terrifies orianna carvalhal writes quote from this village there went out many roads and fine highways to the inland country orianna took some of his companions and started to follow them the roads and he had not gone half a league when the roads became more like royal highways and wider end quote on seeing the scale of the roads orianna immediately orders his men back into the brigantines the only purpose to having roads that massive would be to be able to transport huge amounts of people the spanish have already described tens of thousands of people on the riverbanks and if the highways are any indication to the interior there are more and they have a road right to them the burgentines travel through the night and hardly stopped for a hundred leagues further they traveled at the center of the river avoiding as much attack as possible but eventually made it out of the territory of these overlords the next region they come to is luckily far less war-like but over the course the next four days they come across something like 20 villages one of the villages described as over two leagues long roughly six miles the area is highly populated but the period of peace is short-lived a brief side note that fits into the timetable of our journey some of the landmarks that are described by caraval are unmistakable in early june the group came to the confluence of the rio negro there's no messing this up the river is black and for miles it doesn't mix with the other the conquistadors are astounded and never saw anything like it on june 7th the men pull up to a small settlement where there's no resistance there the women in the village mostly flee and the spanish found a ton of fish drying probably to be transported elsewhere the men beg orianna stay here the place seems uninhabited mostly but there are women which i bet the men liked oriana expresses that he thinks is a bad idea classic star wars i have a bad feeling about this but reluctantly he agrees in order to appease the group as knight falls the indian men who had left the village during the day come back and they find their homes occupied by the spanish not shockingly they attack the spanish fought them off but again discovering a system of roads orianna knew that staying any longer was a bad idea for the first time in the trip he shows a turn of frustration more similar to what you'd see from pizarro than what we have seen from his more diplomatic character before they leave orianna made a cruel choice car of all rights quote the captain commanded us to get into our boats and go on but first ordered certain person to had captured there to be hanged and so it was done and this was done in order that the indians from there on might acquire fear of us and not attack us end quote later down river a similar event takes place his men hungry convince orianna to stop at a settlement facing heavier resistance than he'd hoped for and seeing the natives literally barricade themselves in their own homes orianna had the men set fire to them over six months into the journey it's clear that orianna's patience is cracking he can't lash out against his men when they coerce him against his better judgment and unfortunately the natives get the brunt of it on a more positive note around the same time in mid-june the spanish wind up capturing a native girl that is not the positive part oriana works to translate apparently she's like oh you guys are christians cool i've met christians to which all the conquistadors were like what the car of all writes in his account quote she said that nearby and back in the interior there were many christians like ourselves that were under the rule of an overlord who had brought them down the river she told us how there were two white women among them as wives of these two christians and the others had indian wives and children by them these are the people who were lost by diego de ordaz's party end quote remember ordaz the guy who had a disastrous adventure up to amazon about a decade earlier if carvalhal's account is accurate the men who fled the party lived orianna elected not to travel upriver to meet them and the group now enters a territory where the indians have bows and arrows i hope no one loses an eye on tuesday june 22nd the spaniards entered the land of the amazons the conquistadors had heard rumors of warrior women in the jungle before they'd even reached the napo there was a level of aggression by the natives in this area that is dialed up and the use of arrows makes this place especially deadly quote these said villages had been forewarned and know of our coming and consequence were of they the inhabitants came out on the water to meet us in no friendly mood and when they came close to the captain he would have liked to induce them to accept peace and so we began to speak to them and call them but they laughed and mocked us and came up close to us and told us to keep going and that down below they were waiting for us and that there they were to seize us and take us to the amazons end quote can you imagine asking a stranger to be friends and they just laugh at you and tell you how excited they are to kidnap you in response orianna told them to shoot them with the crossbows and hockey buses that worked and after being shot out they ran away as one would the roads and networks for communication among the villages are fast and down the river the men meet more men with arrows five of the men are injured among them caraval who's hid in the side according to him the arrow went as far as his hollow region seeing an area to harbor the brigantines and battle their way to food the spanish landed a village despite getting the better of the natives the spanish are unrelentlessly attacked because the indians know amazons are coming to their aid then they see them a dozen amazons car of all rights quote these women were very white and tall and have very long hair and braided they are robust and go about naked but with their privy parts covered with their bows and arrows in their hands doing as much fighting as the indian men and indeed there was one woman among these who shot narrow and span deep into one of the brigantines and others less deep so that our brain teens looked like porcupines end quote their armor mostly saves them from the arrows in the amazons that push forward the attack indians who fled were beaten to death by their own people it was only after the spanish killed seven or eight of the women that the demoralized natives eventually retreated needing to understand what they just saw the conquistadors capture an indian trumpeter and take them aboard the brigantines as they leave when they get a chance to interrogate him they do they ask him about the amazons and the story is a legend he says they live in the interior of the jungle seven days from the river and houses of stone they have several villages and he has been to them all native groups paid them tribute to travel on the roads in the area only women are permitted to live in the village and all men must leave at night in order to have children they capture men from surrounding villages when they are pregnant they force them out if the pregnancy results in a boy they either kill him or give him up to the father if it is a girl they keep her and train her to be a warrior the group themselves never encountered the amazons again but this is probably the most famous part of carvalhal's account the arrows have added danger in a way that hadn't existed for the spanish before protected by shield and armor they'd sustained very little injury in their battles with the natives but that began to change caraval in the land of the amazons sustained a second arrow wound he recalls quote the indians were hidden in ambush hence they began to shoot arrows with us so ferociously that we could not see one another but as the spaniards were equipped from machoparo on with good shields they did not do as much injury out of all of us in this village they hit no one but me for they planted an arrow shot in one of my eyes in such a way that the arrow went through to the other side from which wound i've lost the eye end quote adding to the tension felt by the spanish the territory they're entering now according to their captive trumpeter was inhabited by cannibals arrows in this region were tipped with poison wounds that would not have been a large concern give two of the party a painful death the poison arrows force them to avoid any land that is inhabited and they build up larger railings in the brigantine to offer additional cover when attacked as they advance toward the mouth of the amazon the river is so giant they cannot see from one side to the other but they do notice that the river is rising and falling as they do with the tides near to the ocean before leaving the river they encounter some natives who are far friendlier than our cannibal poison throwers and they are able to make repairs to the brigantines and eat before their final push in late august they finally leave the mouth in the amazon they sailed for two weeks before arriving at nievo cadiz on the island of kubagwa on september 9 1542. the majority of the crew thanked god for their lives and were content to never return to the amazon but not orianna he still dreamed of gold and conquest and adding his name to the likes of hernan cortez and francisco pizarro as soon as he could he returned to spain in order to push for a second trip for conquest he is named the governor of the region by the king but from the beginning the trip is destined to be a disaster the crown refused to finance the operation and orianna had to do so himself he left spain in may 1545 with his new wife four ships around 300 men supplies and horses before they even reach the mouth of the amazon in december near 100 dive disease in the camp verde islands one ship carrying over 70 men is separated from the others in a storm and they never see it again with only a hundred men they sail up the amazon but struggle to find food and he cannot find the main river he traveled in the original journey due to its sheer size attacks illness and starvation kill half of who's left among them orianna himself those who remain sail home lucky to have still been alive and eventually find the european settlement on margarita island the amazon won't have another serious european exploration for a hundred years and when they do return the portuguese reports don't match the account of car of all they encounter a barren jungle with very little inhabitation which is what you would expect in a place so difficult to live so is car of all story fiction in 1895 when it was published many experts thought so but if he made it up then why would orianna return archaeologists have not uncovered the rumored kingdoms full of gold and silver or the stone temples of the amazons but recent discoveries may suggest there could be more there than we originally thought what if in the hundred years between his journey and that of the portuguese the pathogens carried by the spanish had the same type of effect that they had on other native populations what if 90 of the natives that came in contact with the spanish were killed by european diseases we've seen that historically in other regions disease spread along the vast highways built from city to city the survivors forced to flee for support as society broke down the jungle swallowed all remnants of their civilization in a hundred years following that first journey down the amazon there may have been nothing to return to [Music]

Channel: Dates and Dead Guys

Views: 130,055

Keywords: Amazon, Cannibal, Carvajal, Conquistador, History, Jungle, Orellana, Pizarro, Survive

Id: fC66WjyjoMw

Length: 22min 17sec (1337 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 04 2022