The Bachelor
One of the first challenges I faced when casting “The Conquest of Liberty” was finding a worthy conquistador to rescue an Inca princess from the sacrificial altar. This valiant conquistador and the beautiful Inca princess then run off through the Andes mountains and live happily ever after. That was the heart of the story. So where do I find a worthy conquistador? The fact that the Inca had no written history is an issue for a future episode.
I found plenty of rotten to the core, even evil conquistadors. Even the nobles, kings, queens, and clergy failed to live up to my expectation of a worthy protagonist, the star of the story, the hero worthy of the hero’s journey. Well, that’s where fiction comes in as I concluded.
Plunging myself into all the history books I never read in school, I found some interesting and exciting characters. But I also found countless characters who could easily serve as my antagonist. The bad guys. In the story, you will meet many of them.
But for this episode of Historical or Fictional, permit me to introduce four purely rotten explorers who played minor but important roles in The Conquest of Liberty. Each of these shows up, makes a mess, and then gladly goes away. To dwell on them too long gives them more light than they deserve. The only reason they must show up is because they played pivotal roles in shaping and supporting one of the most important characters in the overall story – Francisco Pizarro. Of course, Pizarro has his own story.
We start with Martin Fernandez de Enciso. Many of his time simply called him the bachelor for his degree in law. He was a Spanish lawyer. We don’t know much about his early life, but he had a thriving legal practice in Santo Domingo where he made a fortune litigating claims in the gold mining industry there. Typical for a lawyer.
He was a partner of Alonso de Ojeda who we will learn about next but Enciso’s main job in the partnership was to bring men and provisions to support Ojeda’s new settlement San Sebastian on the northern coast of what is now Colombia in South America. He was late. The men at San Sebastian suffered. Ojeda attempted to sail back to Hispaniola to get supplies and left a man in charge of the failing settlement by the name of Francisco Pizarro. The very conquistador who would eventually some 23 years later conquer the Inca’s. When Enciso left Hispaniola with the provisions for his partner Ojeda, another sailor who we might recognize, stowed away on the ship by climbing into a cask where he hid out until the ship was too far away to turn back. That sailor was none other than Vasco Nunez de Balboa. So you can see how the stories of these lesser explorers begin to merge into the larger story.
Enciso never hooked up with Ojeda who basically disappeared after leaving San Sebastian. Pizarro also abandoned San Sebastian. Enciso and Pizarro eventually hooked up at sea. They decided to go back to San Sebastian and destroy the natives that had driven Ojeda and then Pizarro out. A clearer mind prevailed and Balboa led the two captains to a friendlier better place to settle. Remember Balboa sailed with Captain Rodrigo de Bastida and successfully traded with the natives and became wealthy without having trouble with the natives. Balboa knew these lands. And Balboa knew people.
The problem with settling this kinder and gentler area which they called Santa Maria del Antigua al Darien, was it wasn’t on a piece of ground given to Ojeda or Enciso. King Ferdinand gave Ojeda some of the northern coast of South America but Darien was on the eastern coast of what we know as Panama. Oops. This isthmus, which of course nobody knew was an isthmus until Balboa discovered the Pacific Ocean belonged to a fellow by the name of Don Diego de Nicuesa.
In other words, Balboa led the men to settle in the wrong place. But settle they did and it was the first permanent settlement on the mainland.
Back to Enciso. He was mean, and jealous and the men hated him. He thought he was the boss and ruled the new settlement forcefully. Eventually, they reasoned by the law, since they were in an area where none of them had legal authority, remember they were not in Ojeda’s land, Enciso had no more authority than Balboa. They had elections. Balboa was elected Alcalde Mayor. Eventually, Enciso returned to Spain unloved, unappreciated, and bitter. He tattled on Balboa to the king. Accusing him falsely of all sorts of treason. And the King did what greedy leaders do, he appointed an incompetent tyrant as governor and sent him to fix problems that did not exist. In another article, we will meet Pedro Arias de Ávila. Another murderous, jealous, greedy, selfish, do you get the point? Bad guys seem to run in packs.
