The first attempt to explore western South…

The first attempt to explore western South America had been undertaken in 1522 by Pascual de Andagoya, who had left his native Spanish Basque country as an explorer of the New World at the young age of nineteen, on April 11, 1514, under the command of Pedro Arias de Ávila.

The expedition had carried an army of over two thousand in twenty-two ships, with the objective of colonizing Central America.

The career of Andagoya had commenced in Panama, whose capital he had founded in 1519 with four hundred settlers.

The native South Americans he encountered had told him about a gold-rich territory called Virú, which was on a river called Pirú (later corrupted to Perú) and was from where they came.

These reports will be related by the Spanish-Inca mestizo writer Garcilaso de la Vega in his famous Comentarios Reales de los Incas (1609).

Andagoya had eventually established contact with several Native American curacas (chiefs), some of whom he later claimed were sorcerers and witches.

Having reached as far as the San Juan River (part of the present boundary between Ecuador and Colombia), Andagoya had fallen very ill and decided to return.

Back in Panama, he had spread the news and stories about "Pirú"—a great land to the south rich with gold (the legendary El Dorado).

These revelations, along with the accounts of success of Hernán Cortés in Mexico years before, had caught the immediate attention of Pizarro, prompting a new series of expeditions to the south in search of the riches of the Incan Empire.

In 1524, while still in Panama, Pizarro forms a partnership with a priest, Hernando de Luque, and a soldier, Diego de Almagro, to explore and conquer the South.

Pizarro, Almagro, and Luque later renew their compact more explicitly, agreeing to conquer and divide equally among themselves the opulent empire they hope to discover.

While historians agree their accord was strictly oral (no written document exists to prove otherwise), they are known to have dubbed their enterprise the Empresa del Levante and determined that Pizarro would command the expedition, Almagro would provide the military and food supplies, and Luque would be in charge of finances and any additional provisions they might need.