ordered Orellana to return in a few days would
later be disputed. Regardless, Orellana now
commanded perhaps the greatest exploratory
journey in South American history.
DOWN THE NAPO
By his third day downriver, the current was
too strong for Orellana to return to Pizarro’s
main force. A Dominican priest, Gaspar de
Carvajal, described what happened in his
later memoirs:
We soon realized it was impossible to go
back. We talked over our situation (seeing
we were already nearly dead from hunger)
and we chose what seemed to us the lesser
of two evils... trusting to God to get us out,
to go on and follow the river: we would
either die or get to see what lay along it.Five days into their journey, Orellana’s men
came upon a friendly Indian village and rested
there for a month, preparing for their voyage
downriver into the unknown. Unlike the often
cruel Pizarros, who would torture Indians to
get information, Orellana made an effort to
learntheir language. “Next to God,” Father
Carvajal would write, “the captain’s ability to
speak the languages of the natives was the
thing that saved our lives.”
Ten days after resuming his voyage, Orel-
lana came to where the Napo met the
Marañón River to form one great river. From
this point, which he called St. Eulalia, Orellana
would drift more than 2,000 miles down the
river later named Río Amazonas, the River of
the Amazons.
Orellana paused east of Iquitos in small vil-
lages under the leadership of an overlord
named Aparia. The Spaniards were welcomed
there. “The Indians remained quiet and
rejoiced on seeing our companions and gave
them much food, consisting of turtles and par-
rots in abundance,” wrote Father Carvajal of
one visit. The Spaniards lived with Aparia’s peo-
ple for two months. The Aparians warned that
a small, seemingly defenseless party like Orel-
lana’s venturing downriver could expect a hos-
tile reception in Indian states there, named
after their respective lords, Machiparo and
Omagua.
The Spaniards carefully prepared the San
Pedroto withstand arrow attacks and built a
second boat, the Victoria.The warnings were
confirmed soon after the Spaniards finally left
Aparia. They were attacked repeatedly as they
drifted hundreds of miles past the villages of
Machiparo and Omagua. On the occasions
when they were able to land, they discovered
fine glazed pottery, fields of fruit trees, and
broad roads leading into the interior of the
countryside.
As the attacks subsided, the Spaniards
wondered at the vastness of the landscape.
They were astonished by the powerful cur-
rents of tributaries streaming into the Ama-
zon. One great river, wrote Carvajal, “was
black as ink, and for this reason we gave it the
name Río Negro, which river flowed so abun-
dantly and with such violence that for more
than twenty leagues [more than 50 miles] it
formed a streak down through the [Amazon],
the one not mixing with the other.”
Throughout their journey, Orellana and his
men had heardstories of a tribe of warrior
women. These stories and others they heard
later from a captured Indian led them to asso-
ciate such tales with the Amazons, the mythical
tribe of Greek female warriors (which led to the
Spaniards’ name for the river). Constant Indian
attacks resumed as the Spaniards came closer
to the coast. On June 24, 1542, Carvajal wrote:Here we came suddenly upon the excellent
land and dominion of the Amazons. These
said villages had been forewarned and knew
of our coming, in consequence thereof theyPizarro, Peru, and South America B 77