Francisco Orellana
Francisco de Orellana (Trujillo, Extremadura; 1511-near the Amazon River, November 1546) was a Spanish explorer, conquistador and advance at the time of the discovery of America. He participated in the conquest of the Inca Empire and, later, he was appointed lieutenant governor in various towns. He was considered one of the richest conquerors of the time.
In 1535 he participated in the pacification and foundation of Puerto Viejo where he held the positions of alderman, ordinary mayor as well as lieutenant governor and one of the first residents. In 1537 he refounded the city of Guayaquil, which had been destroyed by the native Indians on several occasions and relocated by different Spanish colonizers. The following year he received the title of lieutenant governor of Guayaquil. After completing the reconstruction of the city, he left for Quito and, together with Gonzalo Pizarro, organized an expedition that would end with the discovery of the Amazon River on February 12, 1542.
After surviving the voyage through the Amazon, he set out back to Spain where he was charged with treason on charges brought by Pizarro. After being acquitted, he organized another expedition, but he did not have the necessary capital or approval. For this reason, he turned to piracy and headed back to the Amazon, where he and most of his crew perished with no specific location along the river.
Biography
Francisco de Orellana was born in Trujillo in 1511. He was a relative of the family of Francisco Pizarro, through his maternal grandmother. He traveled to the New World at a very young age (1527), serving in Nicaragua. He reinforced Pizarro's army in Peru (1535) and served him in multiple campaigns, in one of which he lost an eye.
During the civil war between the conquistadores in Peru, he sided with the Pizarros and was sent by Francisco Pizarro to command a column from Lima to help Hernando Pizarro. In 1538 he was appointed governor of the province of La Culata, on the coast of present-day Ecuador, where he rebuilt and repopulated Santiago de Guayaquil, which had recently been destroyed by the Indians, previously founded by Pizarro and repopulated by Sebastián de Belalcázar.
Ecuador
In December 1540, Gonzalo Pizarro, as lieutenant governor of the American city of Quito, set out with an expedition from Cusco with the order of Francisco Pizarro to explore the east of Quito and go in search of the Country of Cinnamon and the cradle of the kingdom of El Dorado beyond in the jungle east. Orellana learned of the expedition organized by Pizarro and joined it. In Quito, Pizarro assembled a force of 340 Spanish hidalgos, 200 on horseback, and 4,000 Indians, while Orellana, second in command, was sent to Guayaquil to enlist more troops and obtain horses. Pizarro set out from Quito in February 1541, just before Orellana, with 23 men and horses, joined him.
Orellana did not give up and hurried to join the main expedition, finally contacting it in the Zumaco Valley, near Quito in March 1541. He was the third Lieutenant Governor of Puerto Viejo after having assisted in its pacification and foundation where he lost an eye, in the vicinity of the current Ecuadorian coast, in addition to having been one of the first famous residents of Puerto Viejo. For this reason, there are documents that justify the stay of Francisco de Orellana in the first colonial councils of current Ecuadorian cities.
Amazon Exploration
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They crossed the Andes. After a year, in the absence of search results, Gonzalo Pizarro and Orellana built a brig, the San Pedro, to transport the wounded and supplies, and followed the courses of the rivers Coca and Napo to the confluence of the latter with the Aguarico and the Curaray, where they found themselves short of provisions. They had lost 140 of the 340 Spaniards and 3,000 of the 4,000 Indians that made up the expedition.
They then agreed (February 2, 1542) that Orellana continue on the ship in search of food downriver. About fifty men accompanied him. Unable to go up the river, Orellana waited for Pizarro. Finally, he made one last attempt to contact him by offering his men a reward for the six volunteers who agreed to go up the river and inform Pizarro of his situation. However, only three men offered to try to go back upstream and so Orellana's initiative could not be carried out. After a vote, he decided to continue down the river in the hope of reaching the end of the river and thus saving his life. In order to attempt the voyage with more guarantees of success, construction began on a new brigantine, the Victoria. Meanwhile, Pizarro had returned to Quito by a route further north, with only 80 men, those who were left alive.
Orellana continued downriver. After seven months and a journey of 4,800 kilometers, in which he sailed down the Napo River, the Trinidad (Jurua River?), the Negro River (named after Orellana) and the Amazon, he reached its mouth (26 August 1542), and from there he went along the coast of Nueva Cádiz on the island of Cubagua (present-day Venezuela). The Victoria, carrying Orellana and Carvajal, skirted the island of Trinidad to the south and was stranded in the Gulf of Paria for seven days, finally reaching Cubagua on September 11, 1542.
It was on this voyage that the Amazon got its name. It is said that the expedition was attacked by fierce female warriors, similar to the Amazons of Greek mythology, but it is possible that they were simply fighting long-haired indigenous warriors. However, the chronicles of Father Gaspar de Carvajal, Orellana's chronicler, make it very clear that the indigenous people who fought them were led by women.
The fascinating Amazonia
Since all hope of reuniting with Gonzalo Pizarro, the real leader of the expedition, was fading, Orellana was unanimously elected captain of the group. It was decided to build a new brig, which was named Victoria, and continue up the river to the open sea. During the journey, the heroic explorers faced a thousand dangers, were attacked several times by the natives and displayed extraordinary courage.
The trip prepared continuous surprises for them: immense trees, jungles of lush vegetation, and a river that looked more like a freshwater sea and whose tributaries were larger than the mightiest in Spain. When they could no longer see the banks of that great river, Orellana ordered them to navigate in a zigzag pattern to observe both banks.
On the morning of June 24, the day of San Juan, they were attacked by a group of Amerindians led by the mythical Amazons. The Spaniards, in front of those tall and vigorous women who skillfully shot their bows, thought they were dreaming. In the fray they managed to take prisoner one of the men who accompanied the brave ladies, who told them that the Amazons had a queen named Conori and they had great wealth. Amazed by the encounter, the navigators named the river in honor of such fabulous women.
On August 24, Orellana and his men arrived at the mouth of that impressive body of water. For two days they fought against the waves that were formed when the current of the river collided with the ocean and, finally, they managed to get out into the open sea. On September 11 they reached the island of Cubagua, in the Venezuelan Caribbean Sea, culminating one of the most exciting journeys in the history of discoveries.
Return to Spain
From Cubagua, Orellana embarked for Spain. However, after a difficult journey, he reached Portugal first, where the king offered him hospitality and even received offers to return to the Amazon with a lavishly supplied expedition under the Portuguese flag.
The Treaty of Tordesillas had placed the entire length of the Amazon under Castilian sovereignty, while the Portuguese considered the Brazilian coast their entire property. However, Orellana continued to Valladolid (May 1543) in the hope of securing Castilian claims to the entire Amazon basin.
Once at court, and after nine months of negotiations, Carlos I appointed him governor of the lands he had discovered, named Nueva Andalucía (February 18, 1544). The capitulations allowed him to explore and colonize Nueva Andalucía with no less than 200 infantry soldiers, 100 cavalry and the material to build two river boats.
Upon his arrival in the Amazon, he was to build two cities, one of them right at the mouth of the river. However, preparations dragged on due to lack of funds. Finally, thanks to the financing of Cosmo de Chaves, Orellana's stepfather, the expedition was able to set off. Shortly before, Orellana married Ana de Ayala, a young woman of humble origins who will accompany him on his new journey.
Second voyage to the New World
He sets sail from Cádiz, but is arrested in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, because a large part of his expedition was made up of non-Castilians. Finally (May 11, 1545), and hiding in one of his ships, he surreptitiously set sail from Sanlúcar with four ships. One is lost before reaching the Cape Verde Islands, another during the voyage, and a third is abandoned upon reaching the mouth of the Amazon.
The landing took place shortly before Christmas in 1545 and Orellana went into the Amazon delta some five hundred kilometers after building a river boat. 57 men starve and the rest camp on an island in the delta among friendly Indians. Orellana leaves in a boat to find food and the main branch of the Amazon.
On his return, he finds the camp deserted, as the men had built a second boat and set out in search of Orellana. Finally they gave up and went along the coast towards Margarita Island in the Caribbean Sea.
Death
Orellana and his group continued to try to locate the main channel, but were attacked by the native Caribs. Seventeen died from poison arrows, and Orellana himself died soon after, in November 1546.
When the survivors of the second boat arrived at Margarita Island, they found 25 companions, including Diego García de Paredes and Ana de Ayala, who had arrived on the fourth ship of the original fleet. A total of 44 survivors (out of 300 who had left) were finally rescued by a Spanish ship. Many of them settled in Central America, Peru and Chile, while Ana de Ayala married another survivor, Juan de Peñalosa, with whom she lived until her death in Panama.
Today, a province in Ecuador is called Orellana. Likewise, in the "Las Amazonas" district (on the Napo river), Maynas province of the Loreto department, in Peru, there is a town called "Francisco de Orellana".
Fonts
- The fundamental source of the first expedition was written by Fra Gaspar de Carvajal, the chaplain who accompanied Orellana in his first exploration of the Amazon. It's about the Relation of the new discovery of the famous Grande River that the captain Francisco de Orellana discovered by very great venture. La Relationship was not published until 1895 by the Chilean scholar José Toribio Medina, as part of his work Discovery of the River of Las Amazonas. Later, in 1934, it was extensively revised by H. C. Heaton.
- The chronist of Indias Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo (1473-1557), neighbor of Santo Domingo, announced the journey of Orellana and Carvajal in a letter to Cardinal Pietro Bembo, dated January 20, 1543 in a summary that was translated into Italian and published in the compilation of Giovanni Battista Ramusio, (1485-1557) Navegationi e Viaggi, Take 3.
- La Relationship whole of Carvajal was compiled and commented by Oviedo in the third part of his General and Natural History of the Indias the Third Part, book L, chapter XXIV, which was first published in 1855.
- The chronist of Indias, Antonio de Herrera (1549-1626) recounts in his General History of the Facts of Castilians in the Islands and Land of the Sea Ocean (decade VII, book IX, chaps. VIII-IX) Orellana's second expedition to the Amazon and her death.
In popular culture
Francisco de Orellana appears as part of the guiding thread of the fourth installment of the Indiana Jones saga, (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull), although many of the data stated in the film about Orellana are inaccurate, or outright, false.
To begin with, Orellana did not go looking for the mythical city of El Dorado, as stated in the film. In addition, Indiana Jones affirms, in the film, that Orellana never returned to Spain, false information, since he was accused by Francisco Pizarro of high treason and tried in Spain, being exonerated.
On the other hand, Orellana disappeared in the Amazon, not in Peru, as stated in the film.
| Predecessor: Captain Gonzalo of Olmos (Internal Lieutenant) |  1537-1544 | Successor: Captain Hernando de Bachicao (Deputy of Governor and Major Justice) |