Almagro’s travel over twenty-five hundred kilometers through…
March 1536 CE
Almagro’s travel over twenty-five hundred kilometers through the Andes and the Bolivian Altiplano had turned out to be a difficult and exhausting endeavor.
The hardest phase had been the crossing of the Andes cordillera: the cold, hunger and exhaustion had caused the death of various Spaniards and natives, but mainly enslaved Indians who were not accustomed to such rigorous climate.
At this point, Almagro determines everything is a failure.
He orders a small group under Rodrigo Orgonez on a reconnaissance of the country to the south.
By luck, these men find the Valley of Copiapó, where Gonzalo Calvo Barrientos, a Spaniard whom Pizarro had expelled from Peru for stealing objects the Inca had offered for his ransom, has already established a friendship with the local natives.
Here, in the valley of the river Copiapó, Almagro takes official possession of Chile and claims it in the name of King Charles V. The name for the region derives from an Araucanian word, Tchili, meaning “the deepest point of the earth.”