Ines of My Soul (18 page)

Alonso exaggerates, of course, but poets have license to do that; if not, their verses would not have the needed vigor. Chile is not that paramount or powerful, nor are its people as illustrious and noble as he portrays them, but I agree that the Mapuche are proud and brave in battle, and that they have never been ruled by a king or subjected to foreign domination.

They scorn pain; they can suffer terrible torment without complaint—not because they are less sensitive to suffering than we, but because they are so stoic. There are no finer warriors; to them it is honorable to die in battle. They will never conquer us, but neither will we be able to subjugate them, even if it means they all die in the process. I believe that the war will go on for centuries, since it provides the Spaniards with servants. Slaves, actually. It is not just prisoners of war who end up in slavery, but free Indians as well, whom the Spaniards lasso and sell at two hundred pesos for a pregnant woman and a hundred pesos for an adult male or healthy child. The illegal commerce in these peoples is not limited to Chile, it reaches as far as Ciudad de los Reyes, and involves everyone from encomenderos and mine overseers to ship captains. We will, as Valdivia feared, eventually exterminate the natives of this land, because they would rather die free than live as slaves. And if any of us Spaniards had to choose, we would not hesitate to make the same choice.

Valdivia was indignant about the stupidity of the Spaniards who were killing off the peoples of the New World. Without the natives, he always said, the land has no value. He died without seeing an end to the slaughter, which has been going on for forty years now. Spaniards keep coming, and mestizos keep being born, but the Mapuche are disappearing, exterminated by war, slavery, and the illnesses brought by the Spaniards, which they cannot withstand. I fear the Mapuche because of the troubles they have visited upon us. I am angered by the fact that they have rejected the word of Christ, and resisted our efforts to civilize them. I cannot forgive them for the cruel way they killed Pedro de Valdivia, although all they were doing was giving back what they had received, for he had committed many cruelties and abuses against them. As they say in Spain, he who lives by the sword, dies by the sword. I do, however, respect and admire the Mapuche; I cannot deny that. Worthy enemies: Spaniards and Mapuche, equally courageous, brutal . . . and determined to live in Chile. They were here long before we were, and that gives them the greater right, but they will never drive us out, and apparently we will never live together in peace.

Where did those Mapuche come from? It is said they resemble certain peoples in Asia. If they did originate there, I cannot understand how they crossed such tumultuous seas and such broad expanses of land to get here. They are savages; they know nothing of art or writing; they do not build cities or temples; and they have no castes, classes, or priests, only captains for war, their
toquis
. They roam from place to place, naked, free, with their many wives and children, who fight with them in battle. They do not practice human sacrifice, like other American Indians, and they do not worship idols. They believe in one god, not our God, but one they call Ngenechén.

While we were camped in Tarapacá, where Pedro de Valdivia planned to wait until reinforcements arrived and we recovered from our fatigue, the Chilean Indians were organizing to make it as difficult as possible for us to press on. We rarely met them face-to-face; they stole from us, or attacked, from behind our backs. I was kept busy treating the wounded, especially the Yanaconas, who fought without horses or weapons. Battle fodder, we called them. The chroniclers always forget to mention them, but without those silent masses of friendly Indians who followed the Spaniards in all their wars and other undertakings, the conquest of the New World would have been impossible.

Between Cuzco and Tarapacá more than twenty Spanish soldiers had joined our ranks, and Pedro was sure that more would come once word spread that the expedition was under way, but we had lost five men, which was a lot when you consider how few of us there were. One had been gravely wounded by a poisoned arrow, and when I was not able to cure him, Pedro sent him back to Cuzco, accompanied by his brother, two soldiers, and several Yanaconas. A few days later our field marshal woke in good spirits because he had dreamed about his wife, who was waiting for him in Spain, and because a sharp pain that had been stabbing his chest for more than a week had gone away. I served him a bowl of toasted flour with water and honey, which he ate greedily, as if it were a very special dish. “You are more beautiful than ever today, Doña Inés,” he said with his usual gallantry, and his eyes glazed over and he dropped dead at my feet. After we gave him a Christian burial, I suggested to Pedro that we name Don Benito in his place; the old man knew the route and was experienced in setting up camps and maintaining discipline.

We had lost a few soldiers, but like ragged shadows came others who had been wandering through fields and mountains, Almagro's defeated soldiers, who found no friend in Pizarro's empire. They had been living on charity for years; they had little to lose in the Chile adventure.

We stayed several weeks in Tarapacá, to give Indians and beasts time to put on weight before we started across the desert, which, according to Don Benito, would be the worst part of our journey. He explained that the first part was arduous, but that the second, called the wasteland, was much worse. In the meantime, Pedro de Valdivia rode for leagues, scanning the horizon in hopes of sighting new volunteers. Sancho de la Hoz was supposed to meet us, bringing by sea the promised soldiers and supplies, but there was no sign of our pompous partner.

While I was having more blankets woven, and preparing dried meat, cereals, and other food that wouldn't spoil, Don Benito was working the blacks from sun up to sundown in the forges crafting munitions, horseshoes, and lances. He also sent out parties of soldiers to look for the foodstuffs the Indians had buried before abandoning their settlement of huts. He had made camp in the safest and most suitable spot, a place where there was shade, water, and hills where he could post his lookouts. The one decent tent was the one Pizarro had given me; made of waxed cloth, it was supported by a strong armature of poles, its two rooms as comfortable, actually, as a house. The soldiers made do however they could, with patched cloths that barely protected them from the weather. Some did not have even that, but slept beside their horses. The camp for the auxiliary Indians was separate from ours, and under constant guard, to prevent them from escaping. At night you could see the hundreds of little campfires where they cooked what food they had, and the breeze carried the lugubrious sound of their musical instruments, which had the power to sadden both men and beasts.

Our camp was near two abandoned villages where we had not found any food, though we had searched it thoroughly. We discovered that these Indians have the custom of living on good terms with deceased relatives: the living in one part of the hut and the dead in the other. In each dwelling, we found a room with well-preserved mummies, dark and smelling of moss: grandparents, women, infants, each with personal belongings, but no jewels. In contrast, in Peru the tombs had been stuffed with precious objects, including statues of pure gold. “Even the dead are hard up in Chile,” the soldiers had groused. “Not a hint of gold anywhere.” To vent their frustration, they tied ropes around the mummies and dragged them behind their galloping horses until the bindings burst open and bones spilled out. They celebrated this accomplishment with screams of laughter, while in the camp fear spread among the Yanaconas. After sunset, a rumor began to circulate among the bearers that the desecrated bones were reknitting, and that before dawn the skeletons would attack us like an army from beyond the tomb. Terrified blacks repeated the tale, which then reached the ears of the Spaniards. Those invincible vandals, who do not even know the word “fear,” burst out sobbing like nursing babes. By midnight, teeth were chattering so loudly that Pedro de Valdivia had to harangue his men and remind them that they were Spanish soldiers, the strongest and best trained in the world, not a clutch of ignorant washerwomen. I myself did not sleep for several nights but passed them in praying because the skeletons were wandering around outside . . . and anyone who says the opposite was not there.

The soldiers, who were bored and discontent, wondered what the devil we were doing camped for weeks in that accursed place instead of marching on toward Chile, as planned—or returning to Cuzco, which seemed even more sensible. When Valdivia was losing hope that reinforcements would arrive, a detachment of eighty men showed up. Among them were several great captains, whom I did not know but whom Pedro had spoken of because they were so famous, men like Francisco de Villagra and Alonso de Monroy. The former was blond, ruddy-faced, and robust, with brash manners and a sneer on his lips. He always struck me as disagreeable because he treated the Indians badly, was miserly, and unkind to the poor, but I learned to respect him for his courage and loyalty. Monroy, who had been born in Salamanca and was a descendant of a noble family, was just the opposite: refined, handsome, and generous. We immediately became friends. Jerónimo de Alderete, Valdivia's old comrade in arms, who years before had tempted him to come to the New World, was with them. Villagra had convinced them that their best bet was to join Valdivia. “We will do better to serve his majesty, and not wander in lands where the devil runs loose,” he told them, referring to Pizarro, for whom he had no respect. Also in their party was a chaplain from Andalucia, a man some fifty years old, González de Marmolejo, who would become my mentor, as I have mentioned before. This man of the cloth showed signs of great kindness throughout his long life, but I believe he would have made a better soldier than a priest, for he was too fond of adventure, wealth, and women.

For months, these men had been in the terrible jungle of Los Chunchos, in eastern Peru. Their expedition had set out with three hundred Spaniards, but two of every three had perished, and the rest had been turned into starving shadows drained by tropical illnesses. Of their two thousand Indians, not one was left alive. Among the men whose bones had been left in the jungle was the ill-starred Lieutenant Núñez, the man whom Valdivia had sent to rot in Los Chunchos, as he had said he would do when Núñez tried to force his attentions on me in Cuzco. No one could give me specific details about his death; he simply faded into the undergrowth, leaving no trace. I hope he died like a Christian and not in the mouths of cannibals. The hardships Pedro de Valdivia and Jerónimo de Alderete had borne years before in the jungles of Venezuela were child's play compared with what these men suffered in Los Chunchos under the hot, torrential rains and clouds of mosquitoes: sick and hungry, they had walked through swamps and been chased by savages who ate one another when they failed to catch a Spaniard.

Before I continue, allow me to make special mention of the man who commanded this detachment. He was a tall, very handsome man, with a broad brow, aquiline nose, and brown eyes that were large and liquid, like those of a horse. He had heavy eyelids and a remote, slightly sleepy gaze that softened his face. This I was able to appreciate only on the second day, after the filth that crusted his body had been washed away and the hair and beard that gave him the look of a shipwrecked sailor had been cut. Although he was younger than the other renowned military men in the group, they had chosen him captain of captains because of his courage and intelligence. His name was Rodrigo de Quiroga. Nine years later, he would be my husband.

I took charge of restoring strength and health to the Los Chunchos soldiers, helped by Catalina and several Indian women in my service whom I had trained in the healing arts. As Don Benito said, those poor souls had left the humid, tangled hell of the jungle only to find that the dry, barren hell of the desert lay ahead. Just washing them, cleaning their sores, delousing them, and cutting their hair and fingernails took days. Some were so weak that the Indian girls had to feed them pap by the spoonful. Catalina whispered into my ear the Incas' remedy for extreme cases, and without telling them what it was—we were afraid it would nauseate them—we gave it to the worst cases. At night Catalina would slip up to a llama and bleed it through a cut in its neck. We mixed the fresh blood with milk and a little urine, and gave it to the sick men to drink. They recovered, and after two weeks were strong enough to join the others.

The Yanaconas readied themselves for the suffering that awaited; they did not know the terrain but they had heard about the terrible desert. Each of them carried a wineskin of sorts around his neck. Some had been made from the skin of an animal's leg—llama, guanaco, alpaca—skinned off in one piece and turned inside out like a stocking, hair inward, and some from animal bladders or sealskin. Prudently, they dropped in a few grains of toasted maize to disguise the smell. Don Benito organized ways to haul water on a larger scale, using the barrels they'd made, and also skin containers like those the Indians carried. We were aware that the water we were taking would not be enough for so many people, but the men and llamas had reached their limits. To top off our woes, the local Indians not only had hidden their foodstuffs, they had also poisoned the wells, as we learned through one of the Inca Manco's
chasquis
, who revealed that information under torture. Don Benito had discovered him among our auxiliary Indians and had asked Valdivia's permission to interrogate him. The blacks used a slow fire to persuade him to talk. I have no stomach for witnessing torture and I went as far away as possible, but the man's horrible screams, chorused by the Yanaconas' howls of terror, could be heard a league away. To end the torment, the messenger admitted that he had come from Peru with instructions for the natives of Chile to stop the advance of the
viracochas.
That is why the Indians had hidden in the hills with the animals they could take with them, after burning their maize. He added that he was not the only messenger, that hundreds of
chasquis
were running south with the same instructions from the Inca Manco. After he confessed, they burned him to death anyway, to serve as an example. When I berated Valdivia for permitting such cruelty, he was annoyed, and would not listen. “Don Benito knows what he is doing,” he replied. “I warned you before we left that this undertaking is not for the squeamish. It is too late to turn back now.”