THE QUEST FOR EL DORADO 73
son that Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca learned in
the course of his immense eight-year trek from the
gulf coast of Texas to Mexico. In his account of his
adventures, the Spaniards are presented as sav-
ages and the “Indians” as humane and civilized.
Another conquistador, Pedro Cieza de León, the
“prince of chroniclers,” had high praise for Inca
civilization, criticized the cruelties of the Conquest,
and clearly sympathized with the ideas of Las Ca-
sas. Yet another conquistador, Alonso de Ercilla,
author of the fi nest Spanish epic poem of the six-
teenth century, La Araucana, which dealt with the
struggle of the Araucanians of Chile against the
Spaniards, praised and even glorifi ed the Arauca-
nians, who appear throughout the poem as a he-
roic people determined to be free. The victorious
Spaniards, however, are portrayed as cowardly,
greedy, and selfi sh.
Of the trinity of motives (God, Gold, and Glory)
commonly assigned to the Spanish conquistador,
the second was certainly uppermost in the minds of
most. “Do not say that you are going to the Indies
to serve the king and to employ your time as a brave
man and an hidalgo should,” observed Oviedo in an
open letter to would-be conquerors, “for you know
the truth is just the opposite: you are going solely
because you want to have a larger fortune than
your father and your neighbors.” Pizarro put it even
more plainly in his reply to a priest who urged the
need for spreading the Faith. “I have not come for
any such reasons. I have come to take away from
them their gold.” The conquistador and chronicler
of the conquest of Mexico, Bernal Díaz del Castillo,
ingenuously declared that the conquerors died “in
the service of God and of His Majesty, and to give
light to those who sat in darkness—and also to ac-
quire that gold which most men covet.”
Most conquistadors dreamed of eventually re-
turning to Spain with enough money to found a
family and live in a style that would earn them the
respect and admiration of their neighbors. Only a
minority, chiefl y large merchants and encomende-
ros, acquired the capital needed to fulfi ll this am-
bition, and not all of them returned to Spain. The
majority, lacking encomiendas or other sources
of wealth, remained and often formed ties of de-
pendency with more powerful Spaniards, usually
encomenderos in whose service they entered as
artisans, military retainers, or overseers of their
encomiendas or other enterprises. After 1535,
more and more would-be conquistadors came to
the Americas, while the opportunities for joining
profi table conquests diminished. As a result, the
problem of a large number of unemployed and tur-
bulent Spaniards caused serious concern to royal
offi cials and to the crown itself.
Most conquistadors and other early Spanish
settlers in the Indies were single, young males, with
a sprinkling of married men who had left their wives
at home while they sought their fortunes. Aside
from an occasional mistress or camp follower, few
Spanish women accompanied the expeditions. Once
the fi ghting had stopped, however, a few Spanish
women crossed the Atlantic. Some were wives who
came to rejoin their husbands (the laws, generally
unenforced, stated that a married man must have
his wife living with him, or he would be deported
to Spain); others were mothers, sisters, or nieces
of the settlers. Marriages with indigenous women
were not uncommon; even hidalgos were happy at
the opportunity to marry a wealthy noblewoman
like Moctezuma’s daughter, Tecuixpo (Isabel Moc-
tezuma), who was wed to three Spanish husbands
in turn. After mid-century, however, most Span-
iards of all social levels tended to marry Spanish
women, either immigrants or those born in the In-
dies. By the last quarter of the century, the Span-
ish family and household, based on strong clan and
regional loyalties, had been reconstituted.
Of the thousands of bold captains and their fol-
lowers who rode or marched under the banner of
Castile to the conquest of America, few lived to en-
joy the fruits of their valor, sufferings, and cruelties.
“I do not like the title of adelantado,” wrote Oviedo,
“for actually that honor and title is an evil omen in
the Indies, and many who bore it have come to an
evil end.” Of those who survived the battles and the
marches, a few received the lion’s share of spoils,
land, and labor; the majority remained in modest or
even worse circumstances and were frequently in
debt. The confl ict between the haves and the have-
nots among the conquerors contributed signifi cantly
to the explosive, tension-ridden state of affairs in the
Indies in the decades following the Conquest.