Panamá Panama Panama
Related Events
Showing 10 events out of 43 total
Hundreds of Spaniards die of disease and starvation in their brocaded silk clothing; thousands of natives are robbed, enslaved, and massacred.
Thousands more of the natives succumb to European diseases to which they have no natural immunity.
After the atrocities of Pedrarias, most of the natives flee to remote areas to avoid the Spaniards.
Balboa is arrested, brought to the court of Pedrarias, and executed in 1517.
Pedrarias moves his capital in 1519 away from the debilitating climate and unfriendly natives of the Darien to a fishing village on the Pacific coast.
The natives call the village Panamá, meaning "plenty of fish."
Francisco Pizarro is thought to have been born around 1478 in Trujillo, in modern day Extremadura, as the illegitimate son of Gonzalo Pizarro Rodríguez de Aguilar (1446–1522) and Francisca González Mateos, a poor woman of Trujillo.
His father had served as a colonel of infantry in Navarre and in the Italian campaigns under Córdoba.
His mother had married late in life and had a son Francisco Martín de Alcántara, who will be at the conquest of Peru with his half-brother from its inception.
Through his father, Francisco Pizarro is a second cousin once removed to Hernán Cortés.
Little attention had been paid to his education and he had grown up illiterate.
Sailing from Spain to the New World with Alonso de Ojeda on an expedition to Gulf of Urabá in Tierra Firme, Pizarro became a participant in Ojeda's failed colony, commanding the remnants until he abandoned it with the survivors.
Next sailing to Cartagena in 1513, he had joined the fleet of Martín Fernández de Enciso and in the same year accompanied Vasco Núñez de Balboa in his crossing of the Isthmus of Panama to the Pacific coast.
The following year, Pedrarias Dávila had become the newly appointed governor of Castilla de Oro and succeeded Balboa.
Pizarro has during the past five years, become a close associate of Dávila, who had assigned him a repartimiento of natives and cattle.
When Dávila decides to get rid of Balboa out of distrust, he instructs Pizarro to personally arrest him and bring him to stand trial for treason.
Convicted in January 1519 on false charges, Balboa is beheaded.
Dávila rewards Pizarro's loyalty with the positions of mayor (Alcalde) and magistrate of Panama City, founded by Pedrarias on August 15, 1519, as a staging point for his intended conquest of the Pacific coastal areas of South America.
...Panama, where they arrive on December 29, 1522, laden with considerable treasure.
They give a glowing description of the country, which for its wealth they call the paradise of Mohammed.
He tells of his "discovery" of its people, cities, and wealth.
He names the territory after an Indian king "Nic-atl-nauac", which is rendered in Spanish as "Nicarao".
Pedrarias, seeing an opportunity for himself in Nicaragua, moves to gain control of the situation.
He attempts to arrest González and confiscate his treasure.
However, González manages to avoid capture and escapes to his base in Santo Domingo, where he will use the fortune he has acquired to outfit another expedition for a return to Nicaragua.
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.
Pizarro, Almagro, and Luque, two years after the first very unsuccessful expedition to South America, start the arrangements for a second expedition with permission from Pedrarias Dávila.
The governor, who himself is preparing an expedition north to Nicaragua, is reluctant to permit another expedition, having lost confidence in the outcome of Pizarro's expeditions.
The three associates, however, eventually win his trust and he acquiesces.
Also by this time, a new governor is to arrive and succeed Pedrarias Dávila.
This is Pedro de los Ríos, who had manifested his initial approval of Pizarro's expeditions and will take charge of the post in July 1526 (he will join Pizarro several years later in Peru).
Luque acts as an agent for the financial backer, Judge Gaspar de Espinosa, of the joint expedition by Pizarro and Almagro to Peru in 1526.
Hernando de Soto had quickly made his mark in Panama as a slave raider and trader, garnering high profits by his skill and daring.
He has amassed considerable wealth through his slave trading in Nicaragua and on the Isthmus of Panama, after successful partnerships with Hernán Ponce de León and Francisco Campañón.
Soto had vanquished his arch rival, Gil González de Ávila, in a contest for control of Nicaragua between 1524-27, and he subsequently expands his trade in enslaved natives.
Francisco Pizarro and his followers, after at least eighteen months away in the equatorial coastlands, anchor off Panama to prepare for the final expedition to Peru.
Pedro de Candia was born on the island of Crete, which is at this time a Venetian colony known as the Kingdom of Candia, hence his nickname.
He left the island through one of his mother's relatives at the service of the Crown of Aragon, who took him to Italy.
During his period in Italy he was training to become a condottieri and trained in the arms; he fought against the Turks and in the Italian campaigns including the Battle of Pavia before transferring to the Iberian peninsula to serve the Spanish Catholic Queen and King.
Pedro was eventually married at Villalpando.
He had gone to America with Pedro de los Ríos, the new governor or Panama, in 1526, and had accompanied Diego de Almagro and Francisco Pizarro during their first explorations along the coasts of Peru, and when the landing at Tacamez, north of Guayaquil, was effected, he already had command of the artillery.
He was one of the thirteen men that remained in the islands of Gallo and Gorgona with Pizarro, and during the subsequent explorations of the Peruvian ports he undertook to go in person to the Indian towns and investigate their condition.
When Governor Ríos had refused to allow a third expedition to the south, the associates had resolved that Pizarro should leave for Spain and appeal to the sovereign in person.
Pizarro sails from Panama for Spain in the spring of 1528, accompanied by Pedro de Candia, some natives and llamas, plus samples of fabric, gold, and silver.