Over the Edge of the World: Magellen's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe (23 page)

“We remained two whole months without ever seeing anyone,” wrote Pigafetta of their stay in Port Saint Julian. “But one day (without anyone expecting it) we saw a giant who was on the shore, quite naked, and who danced, leaped, and sang, while he threw sand and dust on his head. . . . Our captain sent one of his men toward him, charging him to leap and sing like the other to reassure him and show him friendship. Which he did.”

The strange rite recommended by Magellan worked; after watching the European seaman imitate his gestures, the giant appeared peaceful and eager to socialize, as the dancing continued. On seeing the giant, every sailor in Port Saint Julian thought immediately of the ghastly fate that had befallen the landing party of Juan de Solis five years before. “In time past these tall men called Canibali, in this river, ate a Spanish captain named Juan de Solis and sixty men who had gone, as we did, to discover land, trusting too much in them,” Pigafetta wrote, inflating the number of victims in Solis’s party, but otherwise invoking that horrible event with clarity.

Eager to make contact but wary of falling into a trap, Magellan took the precaution of inviting the giant to meet him in an isolated, protected setting, rather than allowing himself or his men to be lured to an unfamiliar spot where they might be ambushed. “Immediately the man of the ship, dancing, led this giant to a small island where the captain awaited him. And when he was before us, he began to marvel and to be afraid, and he raised one finger upward, believing that we came from heaven.”

The Europeans marveled at the giant’s stature. Some crew members reached only the waist of the giant, who was said to be twelve or thirteen
palmos
tall—a
palmo
being the equivalent of a hand span. By this measurement, he and giants like him stood over eight feet tall. Pigafetta, who had been silent during the mutiny, recovered his powers of description the moment the giant appeared. “He was so tall that the tallest of us only came up to his waist,” the official chronicler observed. “He had a very large face, painted round with red, and his eyes also were painted round with yellow, and in the middle of his cheeks he had two hearts painted. He had hardly any hairs on his head, and was painted white.”

The giant was a member of the tribe known as the Tehuelche Indians, who were numerous throughout the region. In reality, the Tehuelche measured about six feet tall; the impression of the Indian’s great stature derived in part from his costume and especially the elaborate boots he wore, which added to his height. “When he was brought to the captain, he was clad in the skin of a certain animal”—the guanaco, similar to the llama—“which skin was very skillfully sewn together. And this animal has the head and ears as large as a mule’s, and a neck and body like those of a camel, a stag’s legs, and a tail like that of a horse. . . .T his giant had his feet covered with the skin of the said animal in the manner of shoes, and he carried in his hand a thick bow, with a thick bowstring, made from the intestines of the said animal, with a bundle of cane arrows which were not very long and were feathered like ours, but no iron point, but, at the tip, small black and white stones.”

E
mboldened after the first encounter, Magellan invited the giant on board the flagship, where he offered his guest plentiful “food and drink.” In the midst of their feasting, the Captain General summoned his men to produce a large “steel mirror.”

The reaction was swift and stunning. “The giant, seeing himself, was greatly terrified, leaping back so that he threw four of our men to the ground.” When the mirror was removed, the giant regained his composure. Magellan then tried to win back his guest’s confidence with a gift of trinkets: “two bells, a mirror”—presumably smaller and less alarming—“a comb, and a chaplet of paternosters.” This last item was by far the most significant of all the gifts and no doubt included what is now known as the Lord’s Prayer—in Latin, of course. Magellan probably knew that Jesus taught this prayer to the disciples, and perhaps he expected that the giant would take this prayer back to the Indians. When the feast ended, a guard of four armed men escorted him to shore.

During the feast, another giant had watched the proceedings from land, and as soon as his tribesman returned safely, he tore off in the direction of their concealed huts to convey the news. Slowly, the other giants emerged from the trees to reveal themselves to the crew members, who were astounded by the sight and transfixed by the unexpected appearance of giant women:

“They placed themselves one after the other quite naked and began to leap and sing, raising one finger to the sky, and showing our people a certain white powder made from roots of herbs, which they kept in earthenware pots, and made signs that they lived on that, and that they had nothing to eat but this powder,” Pigafetta wrote. “Whereupon our men made signs to them that they should come to the ships, and that they would help them carry their provisions. Then these men came, bearing only their bows in their hands. But their wives came after them loaded like asses and carrying their goods. And the women are not so tall as the men, but somewhat fatter. When we saw them, we were all amazed and astonished. For they had teats half a cubit long, and they were painted on the face and clad like the men. But they wore a small skin in front to cover their private parts. They brought with them four of those little animals of which they make their clothing”—guanacos—“and led them on a leash with a cord.”

The guanacos intrigued the sailors almost as much as the giants did. The guanacos had adapted to life in this harsh region over thousands of years. Their stomachs contain three compartments to extract protein efficiently from the food they chew, and they have long legs for scrambling up and down steep mountainsides. Magellan’s crew, eager for guanacos of their own, learned from the giants how to capture the animals. The procedure proved surprisingly simple. “They tie one of the young ones to a bush, and thereupon the large ones come to play with the little ones, and the giants hidden behind some ledge kill with their arrows the large ones. Our men took eighteen of these giants, both men and women, whom they divided into parties, half on one side of the port, and the other half on the other, to catch the said animals.”

Within days, the sailors were delighted to have their own guanacos. Their tough, stringy meat provided a welcome alternative to the diet of salted sea elephant, and the guanaco wool, similar in color and texture to a sheep’s, helped the men to endure the rigors of Port Saint Julian.

I
n addition, the giant Indians provided a welcome source of companionship and distraction for the crew members from the bleakness of the empty landscape. Everything about their customs and appearance fascinated Pigafetta. “Verily those giants stand straighter than a horse, and are very jealous of their wives,” he observed. “They wear a cotton cord around their head, to which they fasten their arrows when they go hunting, and bind their member close to their body by reason of the very great cold.”

There was more: “When these giants have a pain in the stomach, instead of taking medicine, they put down their throat an arrow two feet or thereabout in length, then they vomit [matter] of a green color mingled with blood. And the reason they bring up this green matter is that they eat thistles.”

And still more: “When they have a headache, they make a cut across their forehead, and the same on the arms and legs, to draw blood from several parts of their body.”

Most of all, their belief system fascinated Pigafetta, who recorded a vivid glimpse into the inner lives of the Tehuelche Indians. “When one of them dies, ten or twelve devils appear,” he came to understand, “and dance around the dead man. And it seems they are painted. And one of these devils is taller than the others. And from this the giants took the fashion of painting themselves on the face and body.” Pigafetta learned a few words of their language to better understand these concepts. The big devil, they told him, was called Setebos, a name to be reckoned with, and the little ones Cheleule.

Eventually, Magellan gave the Indians a name—
Pathagoni,
a neologism suggesting the Spanish word
patacones,
or dogs with great paws, by which he meant to call attention to their big feet, made even larger by the rough-hewn boots they wore. So these were the Bigfeet Indians, according to Magellan, who later gave the name to the whole region, known ever since as Patagonia.

N
ow that they had a name, the giants came to seem even more human to Magellan and his crew, who, as Pigafetta describes, made friends with one in particular. “This giant,” he wrote, “was of better disposition than the others, and was very graceful and amiable, loving to dance and leap. And when dancing he depressed the earth to a palm’s depth in the spot where his feet touched. He was with us for a long time, and in the end, we baptized him, naming him John.” In this instance, the solemn rite was undertaken as a sign of kinship rather than of conquest. “The said giant pronounced the name Jesus, the paternoster, Ave Maria, and his own name as clearly as we,” Pigafetta related. “He had a terribly loud and strong voice.”

What these incantations meant to John the Giant can only be imagined, but he no doubt associated them with the lavish gifts he received from Magellan. “The captain gave him a shirt and a cloth jerkin, and seamen’s breeches, a cap, a mirror, a comb, bells, and other things, and sent him away whence he had come; and he went off very joyous and happy.” The new convert returned the next day, bearing precious guanacos, and received still more gifts in trade, but then he was not seen or heard from again. “It is to be supposed that the other giants killed him because he had come to us.”

This was pure conjecture. The crew found no evidence that John had been killed or ostracized for fraternizing, but their fear that he had been harmed for this reason betrayed how wary they were of the Indians, friendly or not. Relations with the Patagonian giants deteriorated when a European scouting party unearthed a cache of Indian weapons. The discovery suggested that an ambush might be in the making. All thought of further baptisms were forgotten as the crew members feared for their lives and sought the safety of the ships. For two weeks, no giants were seen, and Magellan decided it was time to change his tactics.

O
n July 28, four Patagonian giants, two men and two boys, appeared at the water’s edge, signaling to the fleet that they wished to come aboard. This was just the opportunity Magellan had been awaiting. A longboat was dispatched to bring the four unsuspecting Indians aboard
Trinidad.
Magellan bestowed presents on his guests—“knives, scissors, mirrors, bells, and glass”—and while the four held them and marveled at them, “the captain sent for large iron fetters, such as are put on the feet of malefactors.” Two of the giants were shackled. Even Pigafetta recoiled at the sight, disdainfully remarking that Magellan had resorted to a “cunning trick.” For once, the expedition’s official chronicler found it painful to watch Magellan’s scheme unfold.

Instead of resisting, “The giants took great pleasure in seeing these fetters, and did not know where they had to be put, and they were grieved that they could not take them in their hands.” The two giants who were still free tried to undo the fetters, but Magellan refused to allow them to interfere. Still naïvely trusting the cunning stranger in their midst, the giants “made a sign with their heads that they were content with this.” Magellan saw to it that their bellies were full, offering them “a large boxful of biscuit, and unskinned rats, and . . . half a pailful of water at a time.” At this point in the journey, the rats were nothing more than a nuisance to the sailors. Whenever they caught one of the little beasts, they tossed it into the sea. Seeing this waste of perfectly good food, the giants begged to have them, and devoured them whole.

Magellan then proceeded with his plan. “Forthwith the captain had the fetters put on the feet of both of them. And when they saw the bolt across the fetters being struck with a hammer to rivet it and prevent them from being opened, these giants were afraid. But the captain made signs to them that they should suspect nothing. Nevertheless, perceiving the trick that had been played on them, they began to blow and foam at the mouth like bulls, loudly calling on Setebos (that is, the great devil) to help them.”

Confusion engulfed both parties. Magellan underwent a sudden change of heart and decided against imprisoning the giants. He ordered a detachment of nine guards under the command of Carvalho,
Concepción’s
pilot, to escort two of the giants ashore, and to reunite one of them with the woman assumed to be his wife “because he was greatly lamenting her.” As soon as his feet touched dry land, this giant managed to escape, “running with so much nimbleness that our men lost sight of him.” Carvalho’s detachment feared he would tell others about the trick that had been played on them, and the tribe would return, seeking revenge.

The downward spiral of brutality continued. “The other giant who had his hands bound made the utmost effort to free himself, so that to prevent him one of our men struck him and wounded his head, at which he was violently angry.” In an effort to calm him, the crew members led him to the huts where the women had taken refuge, but this gesture failed to bring about peace between the Indians and the sailors.

That night, Carvalho, still in charge of the detachment, decided they would sleep ashore. In the morning, the giants’ huts were deserted; all the Indian men and women had fled into the interior, perhaps for good, perhaps to regroup for a surprise attack.

Their intentions became clear when arrows began whizzing from the dark forest. Suddenly nine Indian warriors appeared. Each carried three quivers of arrows held in leather girdles. With fluid movements, they fired off one deadly arrow after another. “Fighting thus, one of these giants pierced one of our men in the thigh, who died immediately. Whereupon seeing him dead they all fled.” The fallen crew member was
Trinidad’s
Diego Barrasa. The suddenness of his death suggests that the arrow carried a poisoned tip.