When Pizarro Was Informed Of
This Treachery, He Attacked And Defeated The Indians, And Took The
Principal Cacique Of The
Island; and next morning made himself master of
the enemies camp, which was defended by a considerable body of warriors.
Learning that another body of the islanders had attacked the flat vessels
or rafts in which they had come over, Pizarro and his brothers went in all
haste to assist the Spanish guard which had the care of them, and drove
away the enemy with considerable slaughter. In these engagements two or
three of the Spaniards were killed, and several wounded, among whom was
Gonzalo Pizarro, who received a dangerous hurt on the knee.
Soon after this action, Hernando de Soto arrived from Nicaragua with a
considerable reinforcement of foot and horse. But finding it difficult to
subdue the islanders effectually, as they kept their canoes concealed
among the mangrove trees which grow in the water, Pizarro resolved to
return to Tumbez; more especially as the air of Puna is unwholesome from
its extreme heat, and the marshy nature of its shores. For this reason he
divided all the gold which had been collected in the island, and abandoned
the place. In this island of Puna, the Spaniards found above six hundred
prisoners, men and women, belonging to the district of Tumbez, among whom
was one of the principal nobles of that place. On the 16th May 1532,
Pizarro set all these people at liberty, and supplied them with barks or
floats to carry them home to Tumbez; sending likewise in one of these
barks along with the liberated Indians, three Spaniards to announce his
own speedy arrival. The Indians of Tumbez repaid this great favour with
the blackest ingratitude, as immediately on their arrival, they sacrificed
these three Spaniards to their abominable idols. Hernando de Soto made a
narrow escape from meeting with the same fate: He was embarked on one of
these floats, with a single servant, along with some of the Indians, and
had already entered the river of Tumbez, when he was seen by Diego de
Aguero and Roderick Lozan, who had already landed, and who made him stop
the float and land beside them; otherwise, if he had been carried up to
Tumbez, he would certainly have been put to death.
From the foregoing treachery of the inhabitants of Tumbez, it may readily
be supposed that they were by no means disposed to furnish barks for the
disembarkation of the Spanish troops and horses; so that on the first
evening, only the Governor Don Francisco Pizarro, with his brothers
Ferdinand and Juan, the bishop Don Vincente de Valverde, captain de Soto,
and the other two Spaniards already mentioned, Aguero and Lozan, were able
to land. These gentlemen had to pass the whole night on horseback entirely
wet, as the sea was very rough, and they had no Indians to guide their
bark, which the Spaniards did not know how to manage, so that it overset
while they were endeavouring to land.
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