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brother Huascar. Atahualpa was publicly
strangled on August 29, 1533.
The power vacuum left by Atahualpa’s
death allowed Pizarro to march throughout
the Inca kingdom with limited opposition. In
November 1533 the Spanish occupied the
capital of Cuzco, declared the Inca civil war to
be over, and appointed Manco Capac, a
brother of Huascar and Atahualpa, as the Inca.
The first year of Spanish control passed
peacefully. In 1535 Pizarro founded the city of
Lima a short distance from the coast, choos-
ing it as a convenient location from which to
oversee outgoing treasure shipments.
Pizarro’s governorship continued to pro-
voke conflict with his business partners. The
original agreement between Pizarro, Almagro,
and Luque stated that the three would equally
divide all their wealth. Pizarro’s royal commis-
sion, however, placed control in his hands.
The new governor favored his brothers, infuri-
ating Almagro and his supporters.
Meanwhile, the first shipments of Peruvian
treasure reached Spain, causing a horde of
fortune seekers to flock to South America.
SEARCHING FOR
NEW KINGDOMS
New arrivals faced with Pizarro’s and Almagro’s
grip on Peru took sides in the political strife
between the two factions or headed north in
search of new kingdoms to conquer. In 1533
Sebastián de Benalcázar marched into the
Andes, overcoming a defending Inca army in
the treacherous high mountain passes. Within
a year, Benalcázar controlled Quito, the tradi-
tional center of the province and the modern
capital of Ecuador. In 1537 Benalcázar tried to
expand his territory by moving into Colombia.
As Benalcázar followed the Andean
cordilleras (mountain ranges) northward, he
was unaware of another expedition moving
toward the same spot from the opposite
direction. German fortune seekers had
unsuccessfully tried to find a westerly route
to Peru from the coastal town of Coro in
Venezuela, crossing the Lago de Maracaibo,
then turning south into the mountains of
Colombia. Leaving Coro in 1536, Nikolaus
Federman succeeded by heading directly
southwest from Coro, avoiding the Andes
altogether. The strategy was not a total suc-
cess. Only 166 of Federman’s original force of
500 survived the journey through the grassy
Llanos region before mountains blocked
their way. Founding a base called San Juan de
Los Llanos, Federman headed west, climbing
into the Andes at last. Heemerged on the
same plateau where Benalcázar would arrive
within weeks. Both Federman and Benal-
cázar were astounded, however, to find
another Spanish expedition, led by Gonzalo
Jiménez de Quesada, already in firm posses-
sion of the countryside.
In 1536, a year before Benalcázar set forth,
Quesada had left Santa Marta on Colombia’s
Caribbean coast, intending to find a route to
Peru. The approach was risky. Exploration
across the entire northern coast of South
America was dangerous, due to European
slaving raids, which hardened Indian resist-
ance to intruders for centuries.
To avoid battling tribes who had stalled
attempts to march into the Colombian high-
lands, Quesada organized an enormous cam-
paign to push up the Magdalena River in
west-central Colombia, struggling though
hundreds of miles of dense equatorial forest.
Spanish historian Gonzalo Fernández de
Oviedo y Valdés, who interviewed Quesada,
wrote in his Historia general y natural de las
Indias(General history of the Indies, 1547):Besides these hardships, they were con-
stantly harassed by forest Indians; a number(^72) B Discovery of the Americas, 1492–1800
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