…towards Tumbes, arriving here on May 16,…
May 1532 CE
…towards Tumbes, arriving here on May 16, 1532, only to find the place deserted and destroyed.
Their two fellow conquistadors they expected to find have disappeared or died under murky circumstances.
The local chiefs explain that the fierce tribes of Punians had earlier attacked them and ransacked the place.
Unknown to Pizarro, as he was lobbying for permission to mount an expedition, his proposed enemy was being devastated by the diseases brought to the American continents during earlier Spanish contacts.
When Pizarro lands on the coast of the Gulf of Guayaquil in 1532, he finds Peru vastly different from when he had been there just five years before.
Amid the ruins of the city of Tumbes, he tries to piece together the situation before him.
From Felipillo and Yacané, the two young local boys whom he has taught to speak Spanish in order to translate for him, Pizarro learns of the civil war and of the disease that is destroying the Inca Empire.