The attackers were led by an older man adorned with war paint and feathers. A scar cut down his cheek from temple to mouth. I must have registered these details in less than an instant, because things happened very quickly. I remember that we faced each other—he with a short lance and I with the sword I had to lift with both hands—each crouched in identical postures, each furiously yelling terrible war cries, each with eyes boring into the other’s with identical ferocity. To my surprise, the old man suddenly made a sign and his companions halted. I could not swear to it, but I thought there was a trace of a smile on his earth-colored face as he turned and ran off with the agility of a youth—just at the moment that Rodrigo de Quiroga came up on his rearing horse and charged our aggressors. That old man was the cacique, Michimalonko.
“Why didn’t he attack me?” I asked Quiroga much later.
“Because he could not bear the shame of fighting a woman,” he explained.
“Is that what you would have done, Captain?”
“Of course,” he replied without hesitation.
The battle lasted at least two hours, and those hours were so intense that they flew by without an instant to think. Suddenly, when the Indians had nearly won the day, they dispersed, vanishing into the same hills they had emerged from, leaving their wounded and dead behind but taking the horses they had been able to capture from us. Nuestra Señora del Socorro had saved us once again.
The ground was strewn with bodies, and we had to chain the dogs, which had tasted blood, so they did not devour our injured as well. The blacks walked among the fallen, killing any Chileans who were not yet dead, and bringing me our wounded. I prepared for what lay ahead. For hours the valley would ring with the cries of the men we had to minister to. For Catalina and me there would be no end to pulling out arrows and cauterizing wounds, a truly repellent task. People say that one gets used to anything, but that isn’t true; I never got used to those blood-curdling screams. Even now, in my old age, after having founded the first hospital in Chile and having spent a lifetime working as a nurse, I still hear the laments of war. If the wounds could be sewed with needle and thread, like a rip in cloth, our task was more bearable, but only searing heat prevents excessive bleeding and putrefaction.
Pedro de Valdivia had several light wounds and bruises, but he refused any attention. He immediately met with his captains to take the count of our losses.
“How many dead and wounded?” he asked.
“Don Benito suffered a very ugly arrow wound. We have one dead soldier and thirteen wounded, one gravely. I calculate that they stole more than twenty horses and killed several Yanaconas,” said Francisco de Aguirre, who was very poor at arithmetic.
“We have four blacks and sixty-three Yanaconas wounded, a number of them seriously,” I corrected. “One black and thirty-one Indians died. I believe that two men will not make it through the night. The injured will have to be transported on horseback; we cannot leave them behind. The most serious will have to be carried in hammocks.”
“We will mount a guard around the camp for a few days. Captain Quiroga, for the time being, you will replace Don Benito as field marshal,” Valdivia ordered. “Captain Villagra, I want you to count the number of savages left on the battlefield. You will be responsible for our safety; I suspect that the enemy will return, sooner rather than later. Chaplain, you take charge of burials and masses. We will leave as soon as Doña Inés thinks it is possible.”
In spite of Villagra’s precautions, the camp was very vulnerable because we were in an open valley. The Chilean Indians occupied the hills, but they gave no signs of life during the two days we stayed there. Don Benito explained that after every battle they drank themselves senseless and did not attack again until they had recovered, several days later. To our good fortune. May they never run out of chicha.
FOUR
Santiago de la Nueva Extremadura, 1541–1543
FROM THE IMPROVISED LITTER on which he was being transported, Don Benito recognized Huelén hill from afar; it was where he himself had planted a cross on his journey with Diego de Almagro.
“There it is! That is the Garden of Eden I have longed for years to see,” the old man shouted; he was burning with fever from the arrow that neither Catalina’s herbs and spells nor the chaplain’s own prayers had been able to subdue.
We had descended into a lovely valley filled with oaks and other trees unknown in Spain: quillayes, peumos, coigúes, and canelos. It was the middle of summer, but the towering mountains on the horizon were crowned with snow. Hills and more hills encircled the gentle, golden valley. Pedro needed only one look to realize that Don Benito was right: intensely blue sky, luminous air, exuberant forest, and fecund earth bathed by streams and a bountiful river, the Mapocho. That was the site God had assigned for our first settlement, for in addition to its beauty and plenty, it met the wise guidelines issued by Emperor Charles V for founding cities in the Indies: “Do not choose to populate sites at high elevations because of the annoyance of the wind and difficulties of service and transportation, and neither in very low elevations because they tend to harbor diseases. Found your towns in moderate altitudes that without shelter are comfortable in the north winds and in the heat of the day. And if there be sierras or hills, let them lie to the east and the west; and in case of building on the banks of a river, situate the settlement in such a way that the rising sun will first cast its rays upon the town, and then upon the water.” Apparently the Indians of this land were in total accord with Charles V, because we had seen large numbers of them, along with their villages, crops, irrigation channels, and roads. We were not the first to discover the advantages of this valley.
Captains Villagra and Aguirre rode ahead with a detachment to feel out the reaction of the natives, while the rest of us waited, under guard. They returned with the agreeable news that the Indians, although suspicious, had shown no signs of hostility. They also found that the empire of the Inca had reached this far, and the curaca Vitacura, who represented that power, had assured them that he would cooperate with us, knowing that the bearded viracochas controlled Peru.
“Do not trust those Indians, they are treacherous and bellicose,” Don Benito insisted, but the decision had already been made to settle in this valley, even if we had to subjugate the natives by force. The fact that for generations they had set up their dwellings here, and grown their crops, was a strong incentive for the enterprising conquistadors. It meant that the land and the weather were favorable for their purposes. Villagra calculated that adding up the huts we could see, or guess were there, there must be about ten thousand Indians living in the region, most of them women and children. “We have nothing to worry about,” he said, “as long as Michimalonko’s hordes don’t turn up again.” What must the Indians have felt when they saw us arrive, and later, when they realized that we intended to stay?
Thirteen months after having left Cuzco in February 1541, Valdivia planted the standard of Spain at the foot of Huelén hill—which he baptized Santa Lucía because it was the day of that sainted martyr—and took possession in the name of his majesty. There he proposed to found the city of Santiago de la Nueva Extremadura. After attending mass and taking communion, we proceeded to the ancient Latin ritual of marking the city’s perimeters. Since we did not have a team of oxen and a plow, we did it with horses. We walked in a slow procession, carrying the image of the Virgin at the head. Valdivia was so moved that tears ran down his cheeks. He was not the only one, half of those brave soldiers were weeping.
Two weeks later, our master builder, a one-eyed man named Gamboa, set out the classic plan of the city. First he determined the location of the Plaza Mayor and the site of the gallows or the hanging tree. From there, using a cord and a rule, he projected the straight parallel and perpendicular streets divided into squares of one hundred and thirty-eight varas, a total of eighty blocks, each of them divided into four properties. The first stakes driven into the ground were for the church, the principal site on the plaza.
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“One day this modest chapel will be a cathedral,” González de Marmolejo promised, his voice trembling with emotion. Pedro reserved the block north of the plaza for us, and distributed the remaining properties according to the rank and loyalty of his captains and soldiers. With our Yanaconas, and a few of the valley Indians who had shown up of their own accord, we began constructing our wood and adobe houses—putting on straw roofs until we could make tiles—with the thick walls and narrow windows and doors that would provide a defense in case of attack, and also maintain a comfortable temperature. We knew that summer was warm, dry, and healthful. We were told that winter would be cold and rainy. Gamboa and his helpers laid out the streets while others directed the squads of laborers for the constructions. Forges blazed around the clock, producing nails, hinges, locks, rivets, and angle irons; the sound of hammers and saws was stilled only at night and during mass. The smell of recently cut wood filled the air.
Aguirre, Villagra, Alderete, and Quiroga reorganized our ragged military detachment, which had deteriorated substantially during the long journey. Valdivia and the war-hardened Captain Monroy, who prided himself on having a certain diplomatic ability, rode off to talk with the Indians. My responsibility was to nurse the wounded and ill back to health, and to do what I like best: founding. That was something I had never done before, but as soon as the first boards on the plaza were nailed together, I discovered my vocation and have never turned away from it. From that moment on, I have built hospitals, churches, convents, chapels, sanctuaries . . . entire towns, and if I live long enough, there will be a badly needed orphanage in Santiago. The number of wretched little children in the street is shameful; there are as many as in Extremadura. This land is fertile, and its fruits should provide enough for all.
I was dogged in the challenge of building a community, a task that in the New World was left to women. The men built temporary towns in order to have a place to leave us with their children while they continued the endless war against the Indians. It has taken four decades of dead, sacrifices, tenacity, and hard work for Santiago to become the vigorous center it is today. I have not forgotten the days when it was little more than a collection of rudimentary huts that we had to defend tooth and nail. I set the women, and the fifty Yanaconas Rodrigo de Quiroga allowed me, to making tables, chairs, beds, mattresses, ovens, looms, pottery, kitchen tools, corrals, henhouses, clothing, mantles, blankets . . . all the indispensable items needed for civilized life.
In order to save effort and foodstuffs, I established a system in which no one would go hungry. We cooked once a day and served large bowls on tables set up in the Plaza Mayor, which Pedro called the Plaza de Armas, though we did not have a single cannon to defend it. Besides empanadas, we women cooked beans, potatoes, corn, and stew made with whatever birds and hares our Indians were able to hunt. Occasionally the valley natives brought fish and seafood from the coast, but it had a bad smell. Everyone contributed what he could to the table, just as we had years before on Maestro Manuel Martín’s ship. This communal system also had the virtue of uniting people and silencing the malcontents—at least for a while. We devoted a great deal of care to our domestic animals; it was only on special occasions that we sacrificed a fowl, since it was my goal to fill our pens within a year. The hogs, hens, geese, and llamas were as important as the horses . . . and certainly much more so than the dogs. The animals had suffered from the journey as much as we humans, and each egg and each new birth was reason for celebration. I had seedbeds constructed for spring planting on the small plots the master builder Gamboa had assigned outside the town: wheat, vegetables, fruit, even flowers, for one cannot live without flowers; they were the one luxury in our rough lives. I tried to imitate the valley Indians’ method of sowing and irrigating, instead of reproducing what I had seen in gardens in Plascencia; I had no doubt they knew their terrain better than we.
I haven’t mentioned the maize, or “Indian wheat,” without which we could never have survived. This grain is sown without clearing or plowing the ground; all that is needed is to cut back the branches of nearby trees so there is ample sun. You make shallow scratches in the dirt with a sharp stone; if you do not have a hoe, cast the seeds, and they grow on their own. Mature ears can stay on the stalks for weeks without rotting; they can be broken off without damage, and there is no need to thrash or winnow the grain. Maize was so easy to cultivate, and the crop so abundant, that it fed Indians—and Spaniards as well—throughout the New World.
Valdivia and Monroy returned, exuberantly bearing the news that their diplomatic tentatives had been successful: Vitacura would make us a visit. Don Benito warned us that this same curaca had betrayed Almagro, and that we should be prepared for some sort of duplicity, but that did not dampen our spirits. We were weary of fighting. The men polished their helmets and armor, we decorated the plaza with standards, tethered the horses in a circle—the Indians were fascinated by them—and prepared to entertain with our limited musical instruments. As a precaution, Valdivia had the men load their harquebuses, and put Quiroga and a group of marksmen out of sight, ready to fire in an emergency.
Vitacura arrived three hours late, the traditional protocol among the Incas, Cecilia had told us, adorned with brightly colored feathers and carrying a small silver hatchet—a sign of his authority. He was accompanied by his family and various persons of his court, in the style of the nobles of Peru. They came unarmed. Vitacura made an endless, very convoluted speech in Quechua, and Valdivia responded with another half hour of flattering words in Spanish, both of which the tongues found themselves hard put to translate. As his gift, the curaca brought a few grains of gold, which he said had come from Peru; some silver objects; and alpaca wool blankets. He also offered to provide a number of men to help us erect the city. In return, our captain general gave him trinkets we had brought from Spain, and hats, which the Quechuas were very fond of. I served a bounteous meal, with liberal doses of prickly pear chicha and muday, a strong liquor of fermented corn.
“Is there gold in this area?” Alonso de Monroy asked, speaking in the name of the other men, gold being their only interest.
“No gold, but there is a silver mine in the mountains,” Vitacura replied.
The men were thrilled with that news, but it cast a shadow over Valdivia’s soul. That evening, as others made plans for the silver they did not yet have, Pedro bewailed it. We were on our own property, installed in Pizarro’s tent—for we hadn’t yet put up the walls or roof of our house—soaking in cool water in our wood tub, seeking relief following the sultry heat of the day.
“I truly regret the business of the silver, Inés! I would like it better if Chile were as impoverished as it was said to be. I came to found a colony of hard workers with sound principles. I do not want them to be corrupted with easy wealth.”
“It remains to be seen whether or not the mine exists, Pedro.”
“I hope it doesn’t, but exist or not, it will be impossible to keep the men from going to look for it.”
And so it was. By the next morning, several parties of soldiers had been organized to explore the region in search of the accursed mine. That was the best thing that could happen to our enemies: for us to break up into small groups.
The captain general designed the first council hall himself, named his most faithful companions as councilmen, and prepared to distribute sixty land grants, with Indians to work them, among the most deserving men on the expedition. To me it seemed early to hand out land and encomiendas we did not have, especially before we knew the true size and riches of Chile, but that was how it had always been done: plant a flag, take possession with paper and ink, and later solve the problem of converting writing into real property—and in doing that dispossess the natives and force them to work for the new masters. In spite of everything, I felt very honored, for Pedro considered me as first among his captains, and granted me the best land, with its Indian encomenadados, arguing that I had confronted as many dangers as the bravest of his soldi
ers and had saved the expedition on more than one occasion, and that if the travails of the expedition had been arduous for a man, they were doubly so for a fragile woman. There was nothing fragile about me, of course, but no one objected to Pedro’s decision aloud. You may be sure, however, that Sancho de la Hoz made use of Pedro’s recognition of my contributions to stir the coals of rancor among disloyal soldiers. But if one day those fantasy haciendas became a reality, I, a modest woman from Extremadura, would be one of the wealthiest landowners in Chile. How happy my mother would be!
In the following months the city rose from the ground like a miracle. By the end of summer there were a number of substantial houses, we had planted rows of trees along the streets for their shade and birds, people were harvesting the first vegetables from their gardens, our animals seemed healthy, and we had stored provisions for the winter. This prosperity agitated the valley Indians because it was unmistakable evidence that we were not just passing through. They supposed, and with good reason, that more huincas would come to take away their land and turn them into servants. So while we were making our preparations to stay, they were preparing to drive us out. They stayed out of sight, but we began to hear the lugubrious call of the trutruca and the pilloi, a flute the Indians make from the leg bones of their enemies. The warriors were careful to avoid us; all we saw around Santiago were old men, women, and children, but we were very much on the alert. According to Don Benito, Vitacura’s only purpose in visiting had been to judge our military capacity, and he most surely had not been impressed despite the theatrical show we had put on for the occasion. He must have cackled with laughter when he compared our depleted contingent with the thousands of Chileans spying on us from nearby forests. Vitacura was a Quechua from Peru, a representative of the Incas, and he had no intention of becoming involved in a contest between the huincas and the Promaucae Indians of Chile. He calculated that if war did break out, he would come out the winner. A roiling river favors the fisherman, as they say in Plasencia.