Ines of My Soul (40 page)

“Never in the New World has there been anything like these warriors,” a debilitated Jerónimo de Alderete commented.

And Valdivia added, “And never in my life have I met such ferocious enemies. I served his majesty for more than thirty years, and I have fought against many nations, but I have never seen such tenacious fighters as these Indian Mapuche.”

“What do we do now?”

“We found a city right here. It has all the advantages: a safe bay, broad river, wood, fishing—”

“And thousands of savages as well,” Alderete pointed out.

“First we build a fort. Everyone except the sentinels and the wounded will be assigned to cutting down trees and putting up barracks and a wall with a moat—which we will need. We will see if these barbarians dare come after us.”

They dared, of course. The Spaniards had scarcely built the wall when Lautaro appeared with an army so enormous the terrified sentinels calculated that there were a hundred thousand men. “There are not half that many, and we can handle them,” Valdivia encouraged his people.
“Viva España!”
He was impressed more by the boldness and mindset of his enemy than by their numbers. The Mapuche marched with perfect discipline in four divisions under the command of their war
toquis
. The
chivateo
they used to terrify their enemy was now reinforced with flutes made from the bones of Spaniards who had fallen in the previous battle.

“They will not dare cross the moat and the wall. The harquebusiers will stop them,” was Alderete's proposal.

“If we take shelter in the fort, they can lay siege and starve us out,” Valdivia countered.

“Lay siege? I don't think they will think of that; it is not a tactic the savages know.”

“I'm afraid they have learned a lot from us. We must go out and meet them.”

“There are too many of them; we can't beat them that way.”

“We can, with God's blessing,” Valdivia replied.

He ordered Jerónimo de Alderete to ride out with fifty horsemen to confront the first Mapuche squadron, which was steadily marching toward the gate despite a first round of fire that had left many on the ground. The captain and his soldiers prepared to obey without comment, even though they were convinced they were riding to a sure death. Valdivia bid his friend farewell with an emotional embrace. They had known each other for many years, and together had survived uncounted dangers.

Miracles do happen. That day there was a miracle, there is no other explanation, as will be told through century after century by the descendants of the Spaniards who witnessed it, and as the Mapuche will tell through generations to come.

Jerónimo de Alderete took his place at the head of his fifty-horse formation, and at his signal the gates were opened wide. The monstrous
chivateo
of the Indians greeted the cavalry as it rode out at a gallop. Within minutes a mass of warriors surrounded the Spaniards and Alderete instantly realized that to go farther would be suicidal. He ordered his men to regroup, but some of the horses were hampered by the
boleadoras
Lautaro's warriors had wrapped about their feet. From the wall, the harquebusiers fired the second volley of shots, but that did nothing to discourage the attackers' advance. Valdivia was poised to go out and back up the cavalry, even though that meant leaving the fort undefended against the remaining three Mapuche divisions, for he could not allow fifty of his men to be killed without going to their aid. For the first time in his military career, he feared he had committed an irreparable tactical error. The hero of Peru, who had defeated the army of Gonzalo Pizarro in masterly fashion, was stymied by savages. The war cries were horrendous; no one could hear orders and in the confusion one of the Spanish cavalrymen was killed by a shot from a badly aimed harquebus. Suddenly, when the Mapuche in the first squadron had won their ground, they began to retreat helter-skelter, almost immediately followed by the other three divisions. In a matter of minutes the attackers had abandoned the field and were fleeing back to the forests like hares.

Dumbfounded, the Spaniards could not imagine what the devil was happening; they were afraid that this was some new enemy tactic, since there was no other explanation for a precipitous retreat that ended the battle before it had barely begun. Valdivia did what his experience as a soldier dictated: he ordered a pursuit. This is how he described the action to the king in one of his letters: “And barely had the men on horseback ridden out when the Indians turned away, and the other three squadrons did the same. Fifteen hundred or two thousand Indians were killed; many others were killed by lances and some we captured.”

Those who were present swore that the miracle was visible to everyone, that an angelic figure, brilliant as lightning, descended over the field, flooding the day with a supernatural light. Some believed they recognized the person of the apostle Santiago, Saint James, riding upon a white steed, and that he faced the savages, delivered an eloquent sermon, and ordered them to surrender to the Christians. Others saw the figure of Nuestra Señora del Socorro, a resplendent lady robed in gold and silver, floating high in the air. The Indian prisoners confessed they had seen a flame that traced a large arc in the sky and exploded with a great noise, leaving a trail of stars in the air. In later years scholars have offered different versions; they suggest that the “miracle” was a celestial meteor, something like an enormous rock that had broken away from the sun and fallen to earth. I have never seen one of those meteors, but I marvel that they take the form of Santiago or the Virgin, and also that one should fall precisely at a time and a place that so greatly favored the Spaniards. Miracle or meteor, I do not know, but the fact remains that the Indians fled in fear and the Christians were left masters of the field, celebrating an undeserved victory.

According to the news that reached Santiago, Valdivia took around three hundred prisoners—although he admitted only two hundred to the king—and ordered the following punishment: he had their right hands hacked off with hatchets, and their noses with knives. While several soldiers forced a prisoner to place his arm upon a block of wood and black executioners wielded their sharp hatchets, others cauterized the stumps by submerging them in boiling oil. That prevented the victim from bleeding to death, so he would be able to carry the lesson to his tribe. Then a third group mutilated the faces of the hapless Mapuche warriors. The Spaniards threw hands and noses into baskets as blood soaked the earth. In his letter to the king, Valdivia said that after dispensing justice, he called the captives together and spoke to them, for among them were caciques and other important Indians. He declared that he had done that “because he had sent messages many times with conditions for peace, and they had not been answered.” On top of their torture, then, the Indians had to endure a harangue in Spanish. Those who still could stand went stumbling off toward the forest, to show their stumps to their fellows. Many of the amputees fainted, but then came to their senses and followed, filled with loathing, and not giving their victimizers the pleasure of seeing them beg or moan in pain. When the executioners were so weary and nauseated they could no longer lift the hatchets and knives, soldiers had to take their place. They threw basketloads of hands and noses into the river, where they floated down to the sea, carried by the bloody current.

When I heard what had happened, I asked Rodrigo what the purpose of that carnage had been; in my eyes it seemed that it would bring horrible consequences because after such an event we could not expect mercy from the Mapuche, only the worst vengeance. Rodrigo explained that sometimes these things were needed to frighten the enemy.

“And would you have done the same?” I wanted to know.

“I think not, Inés, but I wasn't there, and I cannot judge the captain general's decisions.”

“I was with Pedro for ten years, Rodrigo, through good and bad times, and this does not sound like the person I knew. Pedro has changed greatly, and I must tell you that I am happy we are no longer together.”

“War is war. I pray to God that it will soon end, and that we can found this nation in peace.”

“If war is war, we can also justify Francisco de Aguirre's massacres in the north,” I told him.

Following the brutal object lesson, Valdivia collected what food and animals were left to confiscate from the Indians and took them back to the fort. He sent messengers to all the towns, announcing that in fewer than four months, with the aid of the apostle Santiago and Nuestra Señora, he had made progress in imposing peace in the land. I thought he was a little quick to sing victory.

In the three years he had left to live, I saw Pedro de Valdivia very seldom, and had news of him only through other people. While Rodrigo and I were prospering almost without realizing it, and wherever we looked our herds were flourishing, our crops were multiplying, and gold was leaping from the rock, the gobernador was devoting himself to building forts and founding cities in the south. First he would plant the cross and the flag, and if there was a priest, they would hold mass. Then he would erect the “tree of justice,” or gallows, and begin to cut trees for building a defensive wall and dwellings. The most difficult part of the venture was to find people to populate the settlement, but little by little soldiers and their families would arrive. That was how, among others, Concepción, La Imperial, and Villarrica came about, the latter near the gold found on a tributary of the Bío-Bío. Those mines produced so generously that gold dust was used to buy bread, meat, fruit, vegetables—anything for sale, since gold was the only currency. Merchants, tavern keepers, and vendors went about carrying scales for buying and selling. The conquistadors' dream had come true, and now no one dared call Chile the “country of
rotos
,” or the “graveyard of Spaniards.” The city of Valdivia was founded at that time, so named at the insistence of the captains, not because of the gobernador's vanity. Its coat of arms describes it: “a river and a city of silver.” Soldiers told that hidden in the depths of the cordillera was the famed City of the Caesars, all gold and precious stones, defended by beautiful Amazons—in other words, the persistent El Dorado myth—but Pedro de Valdivia, a practical man, did not waste time or manpower looking for it.

Numerous military reinforcements came to Chile by land and by sea, but they were never enough to occupy that vast territory of coast, forest, and mountain. To win his soldiers' loyalty, the governor distributed lands and Indians with his usual generosity, but these were empty gifts, poetic intentions, since the lands were virgin and the natives indomitable. The Mapuche would work only when brutally forced.

Valdivia's leg had healed, and though it was always painful, he could now ride a horse. Tirelessly he traveled across the vast south with his small army, penetrating dark, humid forests where a high canopy of green was pierced by araucaria pines that traced an austere geometry against the sky. The horses' hooves sank into soft, fragrant humus as the riders slashed their way through the at times impenetrable growth of ferns. They crossed streams of frigid water where birds often could be seen trapped in ice along the banks, the same waters in which Mapuche mothers submerged their newborn infants. The lakes were pristine mirrors of the intense blue of the skies, so calm that one could count the pebbles on the bottom. Spiders wove their dew-pearled lace among the branches of oaks, myrtles, and hazel trees. Forest birds chirped their chorus: finches, crown sparrows, linnets, ringdoves, and thrushes, even the “carpenter bird,” the woodpecker marking time with his eternal drumming. As the soldiers passed, they flushed clouds of butterflies, and curious deer came near enough to greet them. Light filtered through the leaves, projecting patterns onto the ground, and mist rising from the warm earth wrapped the world in a mysterious vapor. Rain, more rain; rivers; lakes; white, foaming waterfalls: a liquid universe. And always in the background, the snow-capped mountains, smoking volcanoes, drifting clouds. The autumn landscape was gold and blood red, bejeweled, magnificent. Pedro de Valdivia's soul escaped his body, captured among slim, moss-covered tree trunks as soft as velvet. The Garden of Eden, the promised land, paradise. Mute, his face wet with tears, the conquered conqueror was coming to know the place where the land ends: Chile.

On one occasion, Valdivia was riding with his soldiers through a forest of hazel trees, when bits of gold began to rain from the treetops. Speechless before such a marvel, the soldiers jumped from their horses and rushed to collect the yellow nuggets, while Valdivia, as astounded as his men, attempted to instill order. The enthralled Spaniards, quarreling over the gold, looked up to find themselves surrounded by a hundred Mapuche archers whom Lautaro had taught to aim at the vulnerable parts of the body not covered by armor. In fewer than ten minutes, the woods were strewn with dead and wounded. Before the survivors could react, the Indians had disappeared, as stealthily as they had moments before materialized. Later the Spaniards found that the lure had been river pebbles covered with a thin layer of gold.

Some weeks later, another detachment of Spaniards, exploring the region, heard female voices. They rode forward at a trot and parted the ferns to be met by the seductive scene of a group of girls bathing in the river, their heads crowned with flowers, their long black hair their only covering. These mythic Undines continued their frolic with no signs of fear as the soldiers spurred their horses and charged toward the river with yells of anticipation. The lust-filled, bearded satyrs did not get far before their horses sank up to their flanks in the swamp bordering their side of the river. The men dismounted, intending to pull the animals toward solid ground, but imprisoned in their heavy armor they, too, began to sink, at which point Lautaro's implacable archers had appeared and riddled the Spaniards with arrows while the naked Mapuche beauties celebrated the carnage from the far shore.