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Hello, and welcome to Western Sieve
episode two hundred and fifty nine. Hernando

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de Soto. Last time I did
one of these super biographical deep dives,

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it was on Leonardo da Vinci,
And the reason I chose da Vinci,

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well, apart from the obvious the
inherent genius, is he's really kind of

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emblematic of the time period. Every
once in a while someone comes along and

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you can just say, that's Renaissance, Oh Richard, the lion Heart,

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that's High Middaly is right there,
like here is somebody who just stands for

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an era. Hernando de Soto might
not seem like the obvious choice for the

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age of the Conquistador. And the
reason I say that is because at the

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end of the day, he's unsuccessful. He never finds a mythical Golden civilization

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in the American Southeast because there isn't
one and there never was one. Of

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course, he didn't know that,
nor did anybody else in Europe know that

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at the time. As I'll mention
a couple of times during this deep dive

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episode, it is amazing to think
about how little Europeans, even thirty years

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after Columbus, how little they still
knew about this new world. Frankly,

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much of what separates Cortez and Soto
from Hernando de Soto is luck. Pisato

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and Cortez both happen to stumble upon
legitimate, advanced Mesoamerican civilizations. Both of

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those civilizations had peasants who paid taxes, and that taxes could be turned into

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luxury goods, and that's what they're
essentially looking for. I just want a

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system that they can co opt.
They don't want to build one. De

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Soto tries to find one, and
he fails. But the spirit with which

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he engages this enterprise is so telling
when you look at this period of let's

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say fifty years and the sorts of
people who are willing to cross the Atlantic,

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who are willing to murder, who
are willing to rape in a pillage

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to try to become super wealthy,
but not just that famous, because inherent

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to Soto's quest through the Americas is
a desire to be ILSI. It is

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a desire to be this mythical reconquista
like figure. That he fails in this

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enterprise, I don't think that necessarily
makes him any less of a symbol of

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what it means to be a kunquistador. We know very little about Hernan lud

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Soto's youth. We know next to
nothing about his upbringing, family life,

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for really anything about the fourteen ish
years he spent in Spain, which for

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Soto amounts to about a third of
his life. We're not even sure when

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he was born. In fifteen thirty
five, he testified that he was quote

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thirty five years old more or less
end quote, which suggests he was born

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somewhere between fourteen ninety six and fifteen
hundred. Garcilasco de Vega, a sixteenth

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century biographer of Sodo, firmly states
that he was forty two when he died

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on May the twenty first, fifteen
forty two. Thus, if we believe

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him, and I really don't have
any reason not to, Sodo was born

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in the year fifteen hundred. He
was born the son of a Spanish hidalgo,

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a sort of cross between a medieval
night and a country squire. Sodo

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was most likely born in Heires Delos
Gabayleros, a fortified market town with in

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the early sixteenth century a population of
around eight thousand Hides. Was then situated

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about seventy miles northwest of Seville,
very close to the Portuguese border. As

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to his family, we know a
little more than the names of his parents,

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siblings, and a rough genealogy.
Soto had at least three siblings,

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including an older brother. After leaving
home at the age of fourteen, Sodo

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spent no more than a few weeks
in Heades de los Caballeros for the balance

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of his life. Yet, like
many conquistadors, Soto always held a strong

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attachment to his hometown. In fifteen
thirty nine, Sodo ordered in his will

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that two thousand ducats be spent constructing
a lavish chapel in Heades. First and

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foremost, Hernando de Soto was influenced
by the region he grew up in X

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three Madura, called the cradle of
the Kunquistadors in tourist brochures, This desolate

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province in southwest Spain produced not only
to Soto, Barrenan Cortez, Vasco,

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Nunez, Marboa, Francisco Pisaro and
his brothers, and many many others.

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One in all six Spaniards who sailed
to the Indies in the sixteenth century came

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from extru Madura, including half of
Sodos six hundred to seven hundred men who

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would go to La Florida. Survival
of the fittest, and Soto's world began

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at birth. Half of all children
born and Renaissance Europe died before the age

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of five, most within minutes or
hours of leaving the womb. Millions more

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denied of disease, cholera, typhoid, dysentery, diphtheria, measles, moms,

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smallpox, and plague, aided and
sometimes caused by the filth and crammed

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conditions, Soto and nearly other child
in Europe grew uppeth during the sixteenth century.

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Indeed, it is the Kulos Caballeros
was not a pleasant town of whitewashed

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houses and scrub clean streets that you
would see today if you go there.

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It was a barely tolerable place where
eight thousand people squeezed inside a walled area

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less than a tenth of one square
mile. Here, Soto and the citizens

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of Heades lived amongst a maze of
narrow streets reeking of garbage and excrement,

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where one sometimes had to step carefully
to avoid sewage running down in the troughs

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in the lanes and alleys left open
in part so that edible refuse could be

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thrown in and eaten by dogs,
chickens, and goats. Houses were also

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tiny and cramped, with all but
the very rich, leaving in small cave

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like townhouses where bedrooms were barely big
enough for beds and dining rooms were not

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much larger, leading most of the
people to spend their time in small gardens

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or in one of the city's three
open plazas. Why the people of head

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Is tolerated such extreme discomfort was simple. It was far more dangerous to be

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outside the city walls. In Soto's
day, the countryside of Spain and most

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of Europe was virtually lawless, a
place where uninhibited thickets and forests predominated over

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pastures and cultivated fields, and where
bandits, renegade bands of soldiers, and

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wild animals made even daylight travel hazardous. During the era of Soto's birth and

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early life, King Ferdinand and Queen
Isabel were making significant inroads towards mitigating this

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anarchy, yet nearly every person in
Spain remained instinctively fearful of the countryside,

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making sure that they were safe within
the walls of any town or city.

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By the time the sun fell below
the horizon. This meant that peasants ventured

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out to work their fields only during
daylight hours, and wealthier people left towns

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and cities only when properly armed.
The rest of the time, the Sotos,

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like most Hildagos, stayed in town, sleeping in their tiny house insteade

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jurez is cocoon of stone and mortar, hiring an overseer and perhaps armed watchmen

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and guard to manage their pastures,
wineries, olive groves, or whatever else

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they owned. Making matters worse,
the late fifteenth century saw a series of

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droughts hit Spain. Spain was then
and to an extent is now, overwhelmingly

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rural, so drought led to famine. Famine led to death. In other

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words, it would have been clear
to a young Soto that there was no

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future for him in Extramadura. The
other question that gets asked about every conquies

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the door, and so it always
exception. So I'll talk about it now,

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is were they religious? Was Hernando
de Soto a religious man? For

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Sodo, I guess it's impossible for
me to say. Sure, he writes

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about God in his letters, but
that was to a large extent just a

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given in sixteenth century Europe. He
brought at least eight priests with him to

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La Florida, but they never appear
in the narrative. He did talk about

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religion with the natives of La Florida
and beyond, but always within the context

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of power and authority. If pressed, I would say that Sodo probably used

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religion more as justification for his actions
than religion was the driving force behind those

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actions. But again I'm guessing at
that the last ingredient in Sodo's formative years

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would have to have been his formal
education. He was a Hildago, so

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he would have gotten some formal edition. Unlike piece Outo, he was certainly

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a literate man. Book learning,
however, would have been only considered a

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small part of any hildago's education.
Given Soto's later reputentation as a horseman and

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fighter, he clearly received some significant
instruction on riding and fighting at an early

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age. More than anything, being
a Hidalgo was abiding by a set of

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beliefs, a set of ideals.
Soto still would have seen himself as an

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extension of El sid, the mythical
knight of the ri Conquistan. He was

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to be chivalrous, adventurous and fiercely
loyal to Castile. As to that final

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piece, he would have seen any
actions he took to further Castile's interest as

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justified. There was no separation between
what was best for her Nanode Soto and

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what was best for Castile. They
were one and the same, hence his

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never ending quest for another empire of
gold, the quest that will, as

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we will see, consume Soto's entire
life. Of course, by Soto's day,

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Lori coon Quista was over. Hidalgos
were not local fighters anymore, so

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much as they were becoming Spain's professional
military class, a class that now was

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to fight Spain's enemies in foreign wars, think less Moore's and more the French

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in northern Italy. For these men, these Hidalgos, the new world meant

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a lot more than just a chance
to get rich. It was a chance

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to capture some of this adventurous spirit, to be elsid one last time,

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to make their fortunes, and of
course to kill the unbelievers of Christ.

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These were now Indians and not Moors, and that change seemingly made very little

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difference to these men. So it
was that sometime in his early teens,

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Hernando de Soto packed up with few
belongings he had and left for home.

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Chances are that he was not traveling
alone, but likely alongside a local captain

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responding to a recruitment call. Unfortunately, we have no record of when and

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how Sodo left home. All we
know is that he went to Seville,

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Spain's only legal point of disembarkation for
what was then called the Indies. From

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the time Sodo left home until our
next mention of him in fifteen seventeen in

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Panama, we have no information directly
about the young man. Thus we have

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around three years that we cannot account
for. It is likely, though not

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certain, that Soto sailed with a
major Spanish fleet under the command of Pedro

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Addius de Villa, Balboa's partner in
the conquest of Panama. There were rumors

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of gold and Panama at the time
and an easy life, and that probably

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explains why Soto and so many others
wound up going there, But of course

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we can't be sure. This expedition
was a bit of a mess from the

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get go. King Ferdinand planned to
be the first really major colonialization effort of

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the New World. Two thousand colonists
were supposed to make their way to Panama

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and set up the first major Spanish
colony on the mainland. There were some

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colonies in Hispaniola, but nothing really
in what was today Central or South America.

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But it was a disaster. The
people who signed up to go were

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by and large well dressed Europeans,
unprepared for the challenges of the New World.

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Plus, when the captains went to
load their ships, they discovered there

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was not enough room for everyone,
something they should have already known. They

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got some extra ships, not an
easy task given the initial effort had already

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strained Ferdinand's treasury to such a point
that two years later he would die in

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debt. But they got them and
cut back on enough personnel that there was

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room for everyone. The fleet finally
set sail on April eleventh, fifteen fourteen,

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and cited today what is the Dominican
Republic. On June second of that

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same year. From the Dominican Republic, the fleet's next stop was the Gulf

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of Santa Marta on the north coast
of Columbia. For three days, they

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harassed local natives, burning huts,
plundering gold trinkets, capturing slaves, and

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twice fighting pitch battles that quickly dissolved
in a massas one Indian captured was a

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princess found hiding in a thicket by
an African slave belonging to another young Spaniard,

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a future historian actually named Gonzalo Fernandez
de Ovier, though he had actually

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come along as a minor official to
serve in the government. He says this

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girl was quote sixteen or seventeen years
old and as fair skinned as a Castilian.

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She was quite naked, but held
herself with such grave pride that she

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gave an impression of dignity end quote. Later the same man, Oviedo would

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criticize Soto and others of gross mistreatment
of the Indians, though in this case

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his behavior is hardly better. Spiriting
away his quote unquote princess from Santa Marta,

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he reports that she soon after died
in the town of Darien. He

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says, of heartbreak. I say
probably not. Nearly two weeks after departing

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Santa Marta, on June the twenty
six, most of the armada finally dropped

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Anchor in the Gulf of Uraba off
the Daarian region of Panama. If anyone

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was on hand to greet them.
There is no record the settlement itself stood

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three to four miles at a height
above the fetid coast swamps and out of

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the sight of the beach and the
mosquitoes. Nor do we know the colonist's

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reaction as they crowded onto the decks
to stare at what amounted to a nondescript

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stretch of sand, bordered by palms
and topped off by the Ceriana the darien

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A Mountain range, It's six thousand
foot peaks, undoubtedly obscured by wisps of

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fog. Sold on the notion that
this was a paradise on Earth, or

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at least a reasonable copy of the
same, most of the settlers must have

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been stunned by what they saw.
Where, they asked, was the great

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capital of gold? Where were the
docks, the houses, the ships?

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Where was the tray fold to the
brim? Even more distressing was the intense

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superheated humidity settling over the ships.
On a map, if you look at

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the Gulf of Raba, it looks
like a long finger of water which between

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the northwest coast of South America and
the narrow isthmus of Panama, trapped between

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two mountain rages, with low steamy
swamps on either side, the murky Atrato

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River disgorging mud and water to the
south. This region draws heat to it

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like a sponge. For those used
to a drier and more temperate climate i

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e. Spain, sudden immersion is
miserable. You can become nauseas without difficulty.

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Your fingers swell headaches are an easy
side effect. And if the heat

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were not enough. The settlers that
first might discovered another prominent feature of theology

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of this region of the world.
The mosquito. Swarms of them, no

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doubt, feasted happily on the sweat, filth, and blood of so many

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people crammed aboard two dozen wooden vessels
awaiting their orders to disembark. In fifteen

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fourteen, the Spanish were convinced that
Darien was overflowing with gold. This mistake

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and mistake it was actually originated with
Christopher Columbus in fifteen o two. He

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explored the coast of Central America on
his fourth and final expedition, the one

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where he ends up shipwrecked, and
he claimed that there was a quote vast

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quantity of gold and quote in the
interior of the Isthmus with absolutely no evidence

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whatsoever. Upon arrival Pedro the Vila. He's also called Pertraius in some of

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these sources, so the names are
interchangeable. But I'm going to try to

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use da Vilia and most commonly from
here on out, just to be consistent.

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But just know that he is referred
to by more than one name in

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00:20:10.599 --> 00:20:14.839
the historical sources if you look him
up. So upon arrival, he is

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00:20:14.880 --> 00:20:18.599
intent on finding Balboa, who is
the present governor at Panama, because the

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villa is supposed to take over for
him. Bartolome de las Casas, who

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was with Davila, recorded what happened
next. He asked, quote, where

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00:20:32.680 --> 00:20:37.559
is Vasco Nunez de Balboa? A
man said, quote, there he is

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00:20:37.200 --> 00:20:41.880
pointing to a man dressed in a
cotton blouse over a linen shirt, wearing

207
00:20:41.960 --> 00:20:48.359
hemp sandals and coarse breeches, who
was looking on and simultaneously helping his slaves

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00:20:48.400 --> 00:20:52.720
thatch a house. A messenger was
taken aback by such a plainly dressed man.

209
00:20:53.720 --> 00:20:59.160
You could not believe that this was
Vasco Nunez, whose exploits and riches

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00:20:59.200 --> 00:21:03.599
were so famous and castile that he
had expected to see him seated on a

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majestic throne. This scene in meeting
is often played up in a lot of

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the histories that I read to use
usual literary tropes to play Vasco the Nunez

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00:21:17.480 --> 00:21:23.839
de Balboa as sort of the foil
to Davila. Davila is the stiff shirted,

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he is the bureaucrat. He has
no experience in the new world.

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00:21:29.920 --> 00:21:33.480
He doesn't want to get his hands. It's dirty. Balboa is the salt

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00:21:33.519 --> 00:21:40.240
of the earth man who's come to
try to make this settlement function. There's

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00:21:40.279 --> 00:21:44.920
elements of truth to the way that
this is portrayed, but just understand that

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00:21:45.279 --> 00:21:49.079
in many of the historical sources it's
played up dramatically. Now, in fifteen

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00:21:49.160 --> 00:21:53.400
fourteen, Vasco Nunez de Balboa,
a man who was going to have a

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00:21:53.480 --> 00:21:59.920
huge influence on a young Soto,
was about forty years old. According to

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00:22:00.079 --> 00:22:03.880
one he was quote handsome of face
and figure, very tall and well built,

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clean limbed and strong end quote.
He was always famous for his fair

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00:22:10.359 --> 00:22:14.519
skin and his bright red hair and
beard, which was of course unusual in

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Spain. He was born and raised
in Sodo's own hometown. It is de

225
00:22:18.759 --> 00:22:26.920
los Caballeros. Apparently in Sodo's own
home parish of San Miguel. Balboa departed

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00:22:26.920 --> 00:22:30.039
Spain in fifteen hundred, the year
that Sodo was born, to explore the

227
00:22:30.079 --> 00:22:34.680
coast of Columbia. Eventually, he
ended up Bonni, Espaniola, where he

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00:22:34.720 --> 00:22:40.400
bought a plantation and tried to settle
down. His efforts to raise pigs,

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00:22:40.400 --> 00:22:44.440
however, not only led to mounting
debts, but also to a fever and

230
00:22:44.519 --> 00:22:49.279
desire to get away from pigs.
In fifteen ten, hounded by creditors and

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00:22:49.480 --> 00:22:55.160
legally unable to depart the island without
first paying off his loans, Balboa escaped

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by hiding in a barrel as a
stowaway aboard a ship headed for Panama.

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00:23:00.920 --> 00:23:06.880
Firm, energetic, and cunning,
Balboa shared the King Ferdinand's belief in ruing

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00:23:07.319 --> 00:23:12.680
through a shrewd mix of benevolence and
cruelty, reward and punishment. That first

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00:23:12.759 --> 00:23:15.960
night, Balboa made a room in
his own home for da Villa and his

236
00:23:17.000 --> 00:23:22.039
wife, Isabella de Bobadilla. A
few days later, the governor returned his

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00:23:22.079 --> 00:23:26.559
favor by turning out his host and
appropriating most of the former acting governor's property.

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That is to say, once Davila
was welcomed into Balboa's home, he

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00:23:32.680 --> 00:23:40.359
simply took it as his own.
Meanwhile, Davila assigned quarters to officials and

240
00:23:40.440 --> 00:23:45.799
nobles in the homes of Balboa's chief
men, while common soldiers seized Indian homes

241
00:23:45.880 --> 00:23:49.119
in the town, forcing many of
the natives out into the bush. The

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00:23:49.200 --> 00:23:53.960
remaining colonists probably slept on the ground, wrapping themselves and their expensive cloaks,

243
00:23:55.240 --> 00:23:59.319
until tens and other supplies could be
unloaded from the ships. Among them,

244
00:24:00.119 --> 00:24:06.039
De Soto undoubtedly spent his first night
in Darien sleeping under the stars, if

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00:24:06.079 --> 00:24:10.200
that is, he slept at all. Most of the men who had reached

246
00:24:10.279 --> 00:24:12.640
Darien had to sleep on the ground. As I said, Soto most certainly

247
00:24:12.640 --> 00:24:17.839
slept outside. Balboa had to make
room for Devilla in his own house.

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00:24:18.720 --> 00:24:25.200
In other words, land of Golden
Pleasure Darien was not. De Villa was

249
00:24:25.240 --> 00:24:30.839
to be the governor of this fledgling
colony, whose boundaries were extremely vaguely defined

250
00:24:30.920 --> 00:24:37.880
on the map. Armed with about
two thousand settlers, he was supposed to

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00:24:37.880 --> 00:24:44.000
transform it into New Spain. It
didn't take long for things to go sideways.

252
00:24:45.119 --> 00:24:49.680
The resources of this small colony of
a few hundred were already stretched thin,

253
00:24:51.720 --> 00:24:56.640
so the arrival of two thousand settlers
who had no idea how to support

254
00:24:56.680 --> 00:25:02.000
themselves, was not a benefit.
In fact, it was perhaps the final

255
00:25:02.119 --> 00:25:06.839
nail in the coffin. The newcomers
were able to eat the ship's provisions at

256
00:25:06.880 --> 00:25:11.839
first, but these ran out after
a month. The colony was then hit

257
00:25:11.920 --> 00:25:18.200
hard by sickness, probably typhoid,
maybe bubonic plague. By Midsummer fifteen to

258
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twenty, settlers were dying her day. And what did Davila do in the

259
00:25:25.559 --> 00:25:30.119
early days of this crisis, Well, nothing. Then, after a freak

260
00:25:30.160 --> 00:25:34.440
fire burned down the shack containing the
king's provisions, leaving even him and his

261
00:25:34.519 --> 00:25:41.920
cronies without food. The old governor
panicked, responding to the gathering disaster with

262
00:25:41.960 --> 00:25:45.880
a hastily arranged strategy of dispatching fighting
men to fan out in all directions in

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00:25:45.920 --> 00:25:51.119
search of food, which they were
ordered to steal from the Indians, along

264
00:25:51.160 --> 00:25:56.559
with whatever gold they found. This
remedy, however, merely added to the

265
00:25:56.599 --> 00:26:02.640
catastrophe, as the poorly disciplined soldiers
sent off to strip bear the countryside unleashed

266
00:26:02.720 --> 00:26:10.000
a bloodbath of looting, killing,
slave taking and destruction, attacking what would

267
00:26:10.079 --> 00:26:18.920
have been Balboa's native friends and utterly
ignoring the requirements of the Requiremiento and other

268
00:26:18.079 --> 00:26:26.319
finely crafted documents. Overnight, this
wanton destruction transformed a region that had hitherto

269
00:26:26.720 --> 00:26:34.359
been very peaceful into one dominated by
terror, kidnapping, skirmish's chaos, blood,

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00:26:36.519 --> 00:26:45.039
and incessant Indian tacks. One Spanish
chronicler described that first year in Darien

271
00:26:45.119 --> 00:26:52.279
as quote hellish hunting end quote.
Within a decade, the predominant native culture

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00:26:52.319 --> 00:26:59.400
in the region was essentially eliminated Throughout
this first year. There is nothing we

273
00:26:59.440 --> 00:27:04.599
can say about Soto. In fifteen
seventeen, we could at last place him

274
00:27:04.640 --> 00:27:10.920
on a specific expedition. Assuming he
was born in fifteen hundred, he would

275
00:27:10.920 --> 00:27:18.079
have been seventeen years old. We
have no details about Soto's role and what

276
00:27:18.240 --> 00:27:25.279
was a disaster. Most likely he
was a common soldier doing his best to

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00:27:25.319 --> 00:27:30.279
follow orders, and especially with the
difficulty that after incessant native attacks, the

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00:27:30.400 --> 00:27:37.079
floods started. The floods effectively ended
the expedition that Soto was on, which

279
00:27:37.200 --> 00:27:41.119
we assume was one of the ones
Da Villa ordered to go out and get

280
00:27:41.160 --> 00:27:47.519
food. He seemingly was trapped on
what had been a very Tranquil River.

281
00:27:48.000 --> 00:27:53.119
But when the monsoon reigns hit,
river flooded turned fast, canoes capsized,

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00:27:53.480 --> 00:27:59.680
and many Spaniards were killed. So, of course was not the debacle meant

283
00:27:59.680 --> 00:28:04.599
that this particular expedition was finished,
the imperative being for everyone who was still

284
00:28:04.599 --> 00:28:10.720
alive to just escape back to the
main town. It wasn't easy, as

285
00:28:10.720 --> 00:28:15.559
they coasted down the flooded river,
lacking food and attacked repeatedly by Indians who

286
00:28:15.759 --> 00:28:22.119
badly quote knocked them about end quote. According to Soto's friend, several more

287
00:28:22.160 --> 00:28:27.559
Spaniards died in these battles, and
to lead the men home, the men

288
00:28:27.680 --> 00:28:33.039
chose a dour, thirty nine year
old veteran of the Conquistador region who no

289
00:28:33.079 --> 00:28:40.680
one had ever heard of up till
now. His name was Francisco Pizarrow.

290
00:28:41.599 --> 00:28:47.079
We know him, and Soto is
going to very soon. He just doesn't

291
00:28:47.079 --> 00:28:52.519
know that yet. In the end, the total take and plunder in this

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00:28:52.680 --> 00:28:57.960
incredibly ridiculous and stupid fiasco was about
fifty two paces worth of gold and no

293
00:28:59.160 --> 00:29:03.200
food. Other than this one expedition, the slate for SODA's participation in the

294
00:29:03.279 --> 00:29:11.079
Darian settlement is effectively blank. Only
one chronicler even mentions Hernando de Soto in

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00:29:11.200 --> 00:29:15.880
Darien, all certainly because he was
just too young and too insignificant. But

296
00:29:15.960 --> 00:29:21.839
that doesn't mean that the time in
Darien wasn't important to Hernando de Soto.

297
00:29:22.160 --> 00:29:30.119
It was during these years in the
quote school of the Villa end Quote that

298
00:29:30.240 --> 00:29:37.440
Soto first learned the brutal mechanics of
conquest in the Indies, the basics of

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00:29:37.599 --> 00:29:42.720
how to design a camp designed not
to colonize, not to settle a place,

300
00:29:44.839 --> 00:29:51.599
but how to comb it efficiently and
ruthlessly for slaves and treasure. He

301
00:29:51.680 --> 00:29:56.319
also learned how to equip an expedition, to organize a marching column of vanguard

302
00:29:56.319 --> 00:30:02.039
outriders, native porters, servants,
and rear guard, to select the best

303
00:30:02.039 --> 00:30:06.400
men for his captains and scouts,
to keep his soldiers, horses and war

304
00:30:06.519 --> 00:30:11.640
dogs healthy by living off food plunder
from the Indians, to gather intelligence properly

305
00:30:11.680 --> 00:30:18.359
on his intended victims, and to
act pragmatically in almost any situation. But

306
00:30:18.519 --> 00:30:25.559
even more important was Soto's continuing education
in the morays of this era, a

307
00:30:25.720 --> 00:30:32.200
culture in which men like these conquistadors
never doubted their right to lay waste to

308
00:30:32.599 --> 00:30:37.200
entire nations and peoples in their native
homes, all in the name of profit,

309
00:30:37.799 --> 00:30:47.039
conquest, salvation, and glory.
Indeed, Devia's conquests by pillage and

310
00:30:47.119 --> 00:30:52.839
violence is essentially the story of El
sid and of knights Errant throughout Europe,

311
00:30:53.519 --> 00:31:00.640
the point being that the wise men
served in equal measure the King, God,

312
00:31:00.720 --> 00:31:06.319
his companeros, and his own ambitions. Often those things were meant to

313
00:31:06.359 --> 00:31:11.839
be one and the same. We'll
never know how many Indians died in Panama

314
00:31:12.200 --> 00:31:18.640
during Soto's teenage years. Ovie,
though, that historian from before with the

315
00:31:18.680 --> 00:31:25.079
Princess, he says about two million
died between fifteen fourteen and fifteen twenty six.

316
00:31:26.079 --> 00:31:30.119
This is a number that is impossibly
high and is in no way supported

317
00:31:30.119 --> 00:31:36.039
by the archaeological record. On the
other hand, eyewitness accounts all claimed that

318
00:31:36.079 --> 00:31:41.920
Panama in fifteen fourteen was mostly under
cultivation or cleared for hunting, and that

319
00:31:41.000 --> 00:31:48.839
a sizable population lived in the interior
of the Darien region during these years.

320
00:31:48.559 --> 00:31:53.119
What we can say is that that
population that cleared in that land, that

321
00:31:53.279 --> 00:32:25.119
hunted that game, vanished. Pedro
de Villa, or says he's oftentimes called

322
00:32:25.160 --> 00:32:31.359
in the records, who was a
spiteful man. He hated Balboa. Because

323
00:32:31.799 --> 00:32:38.519
Balboa had discovered the quote unquote south
Sea the Pacific, which Davia had expected

324
00:32:38.599 --> 00:32:45.359
to do, so in anger,
the Via confiscated all of Balboa's property.

325
00:32:46.920 --> 00:32:53.319
Frankly, nothing that's surprising about this
part of the story is how long Balboa

326
00:32:53.440 --> 00:33:00.160
lasted after the villa arrived. Balboa
weathered these attacks as he could, sending

327
00:33:00.240 --> 00:33:05.680
letters to the king insisting that the
Villa was a terrible governor, someone who

328
00:33:05.759 --> 00:33:10.480
lacked the skills needed to make darian
a success, accusations which were almost certainly

329
00:33:10.519 --> 00:33:16.440
true. I do understand the Villa's
feelings to an extent. He must have

330
00:33:16.440 --> 00:33:23.039
felt continuously upstaged by the more dashing, younger Balboa, and when news arrived

331
00:33:23.039 --> 00:33:29.359
in fifteen fifteen that King Ferdinand was
dying, Davia knew he could start to

332
00:33:29.400 --> 00:33:34.720
press his advantage. He realized that
once Ferdinand died, the edges of the

333
00:33:34.799 --> 00:33:39.359
Empire, which certainly Panama was,
would not be anyone's concern. Davia would

334
00:33:39.359 --> 00:33:44.680
be able to do what he wanted. So when Balboa came to the villa

335
00:33:44.720 --> 00:33:51.519
and requested permission to found essentially a
new colony, Via denied his request without

336
00:33:51.519 --> 00:33:57.359
so much as a second glance.
Balboa made preparations to leave anyway, which

337
00:33:57.400 --> 00:34:01.359
infuriated d Villa. At this point. Then di Via throw caution to the

338
00:34:01.400 --> 00:34:07.559
wind and accused Balbo of treason,
placing him in chains. This was too

339
00:34:07.639 --> 00:34:14.119
much for Balboa's followers, who threatened
to storm the prison. The Villa,

340
00:34:14.239 --> 00:34:19.360
however, moved too quickly for Balboa's
unorganized supporters to act, moving his prisoner

341
00:34:19.400 --> 00:34:22.800
to the patio of his own mansion, where under heavy guard, he incarcerated

342
00:34:22.840 --> 00:34:28.280
the governor of the South Sea in
a cage like some sort of wild animal.

343
00:34:29.880 --> 00:34:35.480
Here Balboa remained for several weeks as
da Via tried to contain what loomed

344
00:34:35.480 --> 00:34:40.400
as a full scale insurrection. As
the crisis deepened, however, even a

345
00:34:40.440 --> 00:34:45.320
man as stubborn as de Villa realized
that he had gone too far. This

346
00:34:45.480 --> 00:34:51.760
is particularly true aft or the intervention
of his wife, who insisted he not

347
00:34:51.880 --> 00:34:59.239
only backed down but offer a gesture
of reconciliation. Loss One day in late

348
00:34:59.239 --> 00:35:05.280
fifteen fift or early fifteen sixteen,
the Via stunned the colony again, not

349
00:35:05.360 --> 00:35:10.400
only releasing Vasco Nunes de Balboa from
his cage, but also announcing that he

350
00:35:10.480 --> 00:35:15.480
and his rival had made peace.
Sealing the deal with a surprise announcement that

351
00:35:15.480 --> 00:35:21.400
Balbo would be betrothed to one of
the Villa's five daughters, a teenager who

352
00:35:21.480 --> 00:35:25.280
happened to then be back in Spain. The colonists greeted this announcement first with

353
00:35:25.320 --> 00:35:30.480
astonishment and then relief, though at
least some must have realized that a quarrel

354
00:35:30.519 --> 00:35:37.000
as bitter as this could never be
fully resolved, and frankly they were right.

355
00:35:37.400 --> 00:35:39.639
It was only a matter of time
for these two men clashed again.

356
00:35:42.400 --> 00:35:46.840
Which side and all of this Soto
supported, we don't know sure he probably

357
00:35:46.840 --> 00:35:52.440
would have gravitated toward the young and
dashing Balboa, but we do know that

358
00:35:52.519 --> 00:35:59.800
later in life Soto's attachments were rarely
ironclad. He is likely to have supported

359
00:35:59.800 --> 00:36:05.280
whichever side he thought would best serve
his ambitions. What we do know is

360
00:36:05.320 --> 00:36:10.320
that Sodo was then involved in joining
Balboa's South Sea expedition. This was the

361
00:36:10.400 --> 00:36:15.039
expedition to Via originally rejected, but
upon Balboa's release, he had no choice

362
00:36:15.039 --> 00:36:21.400
but to assent. Certainly, Balboa's
project had been made possible by his rap

363
00:36:21.440 --> 00:36:27.400
approachment with his now father in law, but de Villa could not help himself

364
00:36:27.440 --> 00:36:30.480
from making life difficult for his son
in law, continuing to make it hard

365
00:36:30.480 --> 00:36:36.079
for him to acquire supplies and men, and giving him an almost impossibly short

366
00:36:36.159 --> 00:36:43.000
timeline of eighteen months to set up
a new functioning colony. Showing his usual

367
00:36:43.039 --> 00:36:49.199
pragmatism, Balboa didn't move immediately to
the other sea. For several months,

368
00:36:49.400 --> 00:36:52.880
he had been building and organizing Akala, a settlement on the Caribbean side,

369
00:36:53.159 --> 00:36:59.119
eighty miles to the west of Santa
Maria, selected for a protected harbor in

370
00:36:59.239 --> 00:37:04.280
its location below the mountain passes leading
south, Akala was ideal as a base

371
00:37:04.320 --> 00:37:08.199
of operation and would serve as a
link with the outside world as soon as

372
00:37:08.239 --> 00:37:14.760
he set up a colony on the
Pacific side. By delaying in Alcala,

373
00:37:15.280 --> 00:37:19.599
Balboa was also playing his cards wisely. He gave him a chance to see

374
00:37:19.599 --> 00:37:24.159
if the villa would actually stick to
his policy of reconciliation, something he needed

375
00:37:24.199 --> 00:37:30.559
to be reasonably sure of before moving
to the Pacific. There, he would

376
00:37:30.599 --> 00:37:35.639
be heavily dependent in the first few
months on supplies and goodwill from the colonists

377
00:37:35.639 --> 00:37:42.159
back and Darien. Furthermore, Balboa
may have lingered in Alcala, hoping to

378
00:37:42.239 --> 00:37:47.039
hear from Spain where he was convinced
that Ferdinand's eventual successor would remove the villa

379
00:37:47.159 --> 00:37:54.559
from his post and put someone there
more to their personal liking. By late

380
00:37:54.599 --> 00:38:01.199
autumn fifteen seventeen, when Sodo returned
from his original expedition, Colla was already

381
00:38:01.199 --> 00:38:07.960
a small but reasonably prosperous community quote, settled in the same manner as that

382
00:38:07.079 --> 00:38:12.360
of Darien End quote. According to
one eyewitness, who said that the town

383
00:38:12.519 --> 00:38:16.559
was about several small huts in a
church, arranged around a central square and

384
00:38:16.719 --> 00:38:23.039
flanked by terraced foothills where settlers and
indigenous servants could grow corn, beans,

385
00:38:23.159 --> 00:38:30.920
yams, pineapples, and spices.
Late November of that year fifteen seventeen is

386
00:38:30.960 --> 00:38:35.519
probably the earliest that Soto could have
reached a Colla. By then, Balboa

387
00:38:35.639 --> 00:38:38.119
was finished with the city and preparing
to launch a second stage of his colonial

388
00:38:38.159 --> 00:38:45.360
strategy. This was a policy of
harvesting timber in the local hills. The

389
00:38:45.480 --> 00:38:50.800
idea was to build four brigantines and
use those to explore a mysterious land of

390
00:38:50.840 --> 00:38:54.880
the south people were also talking about. Apparently it was called Peru, where

391
00:38:54.960 --> 00:39:00.639
people quote eat and drink out of
gold vessels and gold is as cheap as

392
00:39:00.679 --> 00:39:05.440
iron is with you end quote.
This is an early reference, of course

393
00:39:05.480 --> 00:39:09.280
to Peru, and if Balboa would
have lived, there is all likelihood that

394
00:39:09.320 --> 00:39:15.960
he would have made the discovery ahead
of Francisco Pisaro. Again, Soto's role

395
00:39:16.000 --> 00:39:21.280
in this expedition is unknown, but
there's evidence that it was during this time

396
00:39:21.360 --> 00:39:24.400
that Soto first formed a pact of
brotherhood with two men who are going to

397
00:39:24.440 --> 00:39:30.000
be really important in the story going
forward. One is Francisco Compagnon and the

398
00:39:30.079 --> 00:39:37.719
other was Hernan Ponce de Leon.
These would launch who would become one of

399
00:39:37.719 --> 00:39:45.159
the most successful partnerships during the period
of early Conquista. Compagnon was Balboa's second

400
00:39:45.159 --> 00:39:50.480
in command. He was a steady, competent cavalryman who would seldom be away

401
00:39:50.519 --> 00:39:55.400
from Soto's side throughout the next decade. Her Nan Ponce was quiet, but

402
00:39:55.679 --> 00:40:00.840
highly efficient young man who was good
at organizing supply as he was kind of

403
00:40:00.880 --> 00:40:06.679
like the Diego de Almagro to Sodo
the way that that man had been to

404
00:40:07.000 --> 00:40:14.239
Francisco Pizzato later on when we talk
about Nicaragua, Sodo would be the one

405
00:40:14.280 --> 00:40:16.719
who would earn distinction of these three
men, but it was Compagnan, who

406
00:40:16.760 --> 00:40:21.519
was actually the most important at this
point because he efficiently set to building the

407
00:40:21.559 --> 00:40:27.840
boats. The problem with building the
boats is that then you have to get

408
00:40:27.880 --> 00:40:37.760
the boats to the Pacific, and
portaging four relatively large vessels isn't easy.

409
00:40:37.639 --> 00:40:45.440
By all accounts, this was a
painstaking, horrific operation, loading their Indian

410
00:40:45.519 --> 00:40:52.079
porters down with long, unwieldy planks
weighing over one hundred pounds apiece. Balboa

411
00:40:52.119 --> 00:40:58.800
and Campaignan forced hundreds of Natives to
walk in chain gangs until they dropped dead

412
00:40:58.840 --> 00:41:02.960
from exhausted, all for a boat
building project in which the wood from the

413
00:41:02.960 --> 00:41:08.360
South coast would have worked just as
well. Frankly, according to de las

414
00:41:08.440 --> 00:41:15.760
Casas, at least five hundred Indians
died and possibly quote in excess of two

415
00:41:15.840 --> 00:41:22.719
thousand end quote, a carnage he
blames both on Balboa and Kompagnan, who

416
00:41:22.920 --> 00:41:30.199
he vilifies in his historia as a
chief executioner of the Indians. Soto didn't

417
00:41:30.199 --> 00:41:35.880
get mentioned, probably because he was
just too insignificant at this time, Yet

418
00:41:36.440 --> 00:41:43.159
he was certainly there, participating in
a project that reels a lot about Spanish

419
00:41:43.159 --> 00:41:46.559
attitudes and their assumption that it was
normal to work hundreds of human beings to

420
00:41:46.679 --> 00:41:52.199
death, purposely valuing them as worth
no more than a few days of hard

421
00:41:52.280 --> 00:41:58.000
labor before they expired and had to
be replaced. That Soto shared, this

422
00:41:58.079 --> 00:42:01.559
attitude is going to become abundant,
clear when we get to Luftloda, where

423
00:42:01.559 --> 00:42:07.159
several times he's going to overwork native
porters, caring only about their demise because

424
00:42:07.159 --> 00:42:13.440
it means he's going to have to
find more. That being said, for

425
00:42:13.559 --> 00:42:17.480
once, the Indians were not entirely
alone in their suffering here. This is

426
00:42:17.519 --> 00:42:22.639
because Balboa, probably realizing his native
porters were going to die before all the

427
00:42:22.679 --> 00:42:28.519
planks were transported over the mountains,
ordered the Spaniards themselves to join in the

428
00:42:28.559 --> 00:42:34.639
expedition transporting as well. In fact, Balboa himself picked up the first plank,

429
00:42:34.960 --> 00:42:39.039
hoisted it on his back, and
began carrying it across. Normally,

430
00:42:39.559 --> 00:42:45.039
it would have been anathema for such
a mundane task to have fallen to Spaniards.

431
00:42:45.960 --> 00:42:50.920
Remember, going to the New World
was all about figuring out how to

432
00:42:51.039 --> 00:42:55.920
avoid physical labor for the rest of
your life, not perform physical labor.

433
00:42:58.920 --> 00:43:02.760
As spring turned to summer, the
hardships of this bloody portage across the Isthmus

434
00:43:04.480 --> 00:43:10.840
merely became the first of several calamities
that bedeviled this boat building project for starters.

435
00:43:12.199 --> 00:43:15.079
Once the wood was delivered, Balboa
found himself with only enough to build

436
00:43:15.320 --> 00:43:22.920
two brigantines, not four. Next
came the stunning revelation that the timber was

437
00:43:22.000 --> 00:43:30.039
honeycombed with worms and rot from seawater, and therefore useless. Then, just

438
00:43:30.079 --> 00:43:35.079
as Balboa was rallying his men to
cut fresh planks on the south Sea coast,

439
00:43:35.119 --> 00:43:39.679
which they could have done initially,
the river nearby abruptly flooded, washing

440
00:43:39.719 --> 00:43:45.840
away all the newly cut wood and
also the entire camp and all their provisions.

441
00:43:45.880 --> 00:43:50.440
For Soto, this must have seemed
familiar, as the last expedition that

442
00:43:50.480 --> 00:43:52.760
he went on, probably the first
real expedition that he went on, ended

443
00:43:52.920 --> 00:43:58.079
with a flooding river washing away most
of the supplies and half of the men.

444
00:43:59.280 --> 00:44:02.840
Now they were in a flooded valley
with nothing to eat and no boats

445
00:44:02.840 --> 00:44:09.079
to make their escape, a situation
that drove even the perennially optimistic Balboa to

446
00:44:09.119 --> 00:44:15.719
despair and considered abandoning his project.
According to Las Casas, Balboa was forced

447
00:44:15.760 --> 00:44:21.199
to feed on roots, whence maybe
concluded how his men lived, not to

448
00:44:21.239 --> 00:44:28.119
mention the Indians. It was in
the midst of this crisis that Companion volunteered

449
00:44:28.119 --> 00:44:31.320
to take a small squadron and comb
the surrounding country for food. Ultimately,

450
00:44:31.360 --> 00:44:37.920
it was Francisco Companion who saved the
entire expedition. He was able to locate

451
00:44:37.000 --> 00:44:42.519
an Native American settlement not far away
after devising the means to cross a river

452
00:44:42.599 --> 00:44:46.480
by creating a small rudimentary bridge,
and he was able to loot all of

453
00:44:46.480 --> 00:44:52.199
the food that they had, thus
saving the expedition. It didn't take long

454
00:44:52.280 --> 00:44:57.159
then for Balbo to recover his composure, rebuild his camp, and began cutting

455
00:44:57.199 --> 00:45:00.920
new timber. By the summer of
fifteen eighteen, he had launched two brigantines

456
00:45:01.199 --> 00:45:06.800
and was sailing with a hundred men
down the coast. We know he went

457
00:45:06.880 --> 00:45:08.599
up and down the gulf. We
know that he sailed to what are called

458
00:45:08.599 --> 00:45:14.400
the Pearl Islands. Today it's referred
to as Isla del Ray, and that

459
00:45:14.719 --> 00:45:20.199
he launched several more brigantines and found
out a whole bunch of new information about

460
00:45:20.199 --> 00:45:23.079
the Panama coast. That being said, did he find any gold, No,

461
00:45:23.480 --> 00:45:27.800
did he find Peru? No?
If he would have probably would have

462
00:45:27.840 --> 00:45:34.280
conquered it almost certainly. And then, though De Soto participated in some or

463
00:45:34.360 --> 00:45:40.679
even potentially all of these expeditions,
in late fifteen eighteen, the new king,

464
00:45:40.840 --> 00:45:45.360
Charles the First soon to be Charles
the Fifth, finally named a replacement

465
00:45:45.559 --> 00:45:52.519
for Pedro de Villa. De Villa
was furious. He fired off a message

466
00:45:52.679 --> 00:45:57.880
to Balboa and insisted that he returned
to Darien. Balboa, who thought that

467
00:45:57.920 --> 00:46:02.480
he was back in de Villa's good
favor, complied he was wrong. The

468
00:46:02.599 --> 00:46:08.320
moment Balbo arrived, an officer placed
him under arrest. You may remember this

469
00:46:08.400 --> 00:46:15.639
from the Peru episodes, but that
officer was Francisco Pisato. It's interesting how

470
00:46:15.679 --> 00:46:19.119
all these connections come about. Remember, those two guys are from basically the

471
00:46:19.159 --> 00:46:25.159
same town. The charge was as
before, treason. This time Divia had

472
00:46:25.199 --> 00:46:30.559
Balbo imprisoned far from his supporters so
he could do with the man as he

473
00:46:30.599 --> 00:46:37.400
wished. The Chief Justice, firmly
in Divilla's pocket, found Balboa guilty.

474
00:46:37.599 --> 00:46:45.360
Devia did not attend Balboa's execution.
Meanwhile, along the South Sea, Soto

475
00:46:45.440 --> 00:46:51.719
and the rest of Balboa's expedition waited
anxiously for news. When it arrived,

476
00:46:51.760 --> 00:46:57.440
it was not the news they had
been expecting. Balboa's death was certainly a

477
00:46:57.519 --> 00:47:02.360
blow, but it was also an
important lesson for the young Soto. This

478
00:47:02.440 --> 00:47:08.119
was a wild world where power was
local. If you could get away with

479
00:47:08.280 --> 00:47:14.840
something, then you could do it. The king was, after all,

480
00:47:15.400 --> 00:47:22.880
an ocean away. By fifteen nineteen, Darien had become a prosperous town,

481
00:47:22.760 --> 00:47:29.519
but Soto spent little time there during
this period. Instead, he was involved

482
00:47:29.639 --> 00:47:36.400
in the founding of a new capital, Panama City. Darien was more advantageous

483
00:47:36.559 --> 00:47:42.320
than Panama City in really all ways, but one. Panama City was located

484
00:47:42.360 --> 00:47:45.599
on the narrowest part of the Isthmus, where the Pacific Ocean is only thirty

485
00:47:45.599 --> 00:47:53.639
three miles from the Caribbean Sea,
and that advantage was decisive. Even today,

486
00:47:54.000 --> 00:48:01.000
about a fifth of Panama's population lives
in this one city. On August

487
00:48:01.039 --> 00:48:07.159
the fifteenth, fifteen nineteen, the
Villa named Panama City the new capital of

488
00:48:07.239 --> 00:48:13.559
Panama, but Sodo was not there
for the ceremony. By then, restless

489
00:48:13.559 --> 00:48:17.119
as ever, he was gone,
he was about one hundred miles to the

490
00:48:17.159 --> 00:48:24.000
west, trying to organize resources around
what was the best agricultural region in Panama.

491
00:48:24.480 --> 00:48:30.800
The man who he was with would
also prove foundational for Sodo. Gosparre

492
00:48:30.880 --> 00:48:36.360
the Espinosa, the chief justice of
the colony, and the man who had

493
00:48:36.400 --> 00:48:44.280
previously ordered the execution of Balboa.
Not only did Espinosa assigned Sodo to his

494
00:48:44.360 --> 00:48:47.960
first known command as a field captain, he was also the most systematic and

495
00:48:49.239 --> 00:48:54.280
efficient expedition leader Soto had yet served
under. It was really a no nonsense

496
00:48:54.320 --> 00:49:01.000
style of conquest that closely resembled the
Sodos, especially his mature methods of finally

497
00:49:01.079 --> 00:49:07.280
balancing friendship and cruelty, patience and
sudden, unremitting violence in dealing with local

498
00:49:07.320 --> 00:49:15.159
Indian leaders. Ortolomadalas Casas describes Espinosa
in terms that sound a lot like Ovado's

499
00:49:15.360 --> 00:49:23.039
description of Sodo in Florida two decades
later, quote the lawyer Espinosa systematically killed

500
00:49:23.079 --> 00:49:29.000
Indians by setting some to the dogs, ordering others hung, and having others

501
00:49:29.239 --> 00:49:36.079
have their noses hacked off and quote. Espinosa and Sodo, though, were

502
00:49:36.320 --> 00:49:40.559
very different when it comes to temperament. Espinosa was cool, dispassionate. He

503
00:49:40.639 --> 00:49:46.599
was a conqueror lawyer. Soda was
hot headed on a reckless warrior. Yet

504
00:49:46.679 --> 00:49:53.320
both showed an uncommon mastery of the
classic conquisador strategy against the Indians. Moreover,

505
00:49:53.760 --> 00:49:59.159
Sodo's style was always more methodical and
calculated than most who grew up under

506
00:49:59.199 --> 00:50:01.719
Pedro de Villa. As we'll see, he's going to make a name for

507
00:50:01.800 --> 00:50:07.599
himself not only a virtuoso of the
quick charge, I mean cavalry charge,

508
00:50:07.119 --> 00:50:13.480
but also a master negotiator, frequently
called up in Nicaragua and Peru to parlay

509
00:50:13.719 --> 00:50:20.679
with the Native Americans. In fifteen
nineteen, Espinoza's and Tarrada returned to Panama

510
00:50:20.800 --> 00:50:24.679
City, that was in October,
after securing the fealty of several local tribes

511
00:50:25.039 --> 00:50:30.159
and organizing food shipments from the regions
of the capital. Soto, however,

512
00:50:30.280 --> 00:50:35.920
didn't stay in de Villa's new city
for long. In fifteen twenty, he

513
00:50:36.000 --> 00:50:38.320
departed again for that same region,
which was referred to as the Petit that

514
00:50:38.440 --> 00:50:46.079
region accompanying Espinosa's third and final campaign
in western Panama. This time, the

515
00:50:46.159 --> 00:50:52.239
Chief Justice headed north into the mountains
above the flat lands. He planned not

516
00:50:52.280 --> 00:50:57.000
only to extend Spanish authority in the
area, but also to chase down a

517
00:50:57.119 --> 00:51:01.800
rumor of copious amounts of gold hidden
in the region. It was on this

518
00:51:01.920 --> 00:51:08.280
expedition that Sodo suddenly becomes more than
a name in an obscure archival document and

519
00:51:08.480 --> 00:51:14.840
bursts forth from the pages of at
least one Conquista history in an incident where

520
00:51:14.840 --> 00:51:19.519
he not only proved himself a daunting
fighter, but also managed to save Espinoza

521
00:51:19.840 --> 00:51:24.159
and his entire army from almost certain
annihilation during an ambush deep in the interior.

522
00:51:25.800 --> 00:51:30.519
The expedition began in Panama City,
with Espinoza dividing his army into two

523
00:51:30.519 --> 00:51:36.920
sections. The main group traveled by
ship under his own command, while a

524
00:51:36.960 --> 00:51:42.880
smaller contingent of one hundred men trekked
overland, led by Captain Francisco Pisaro.

525
00:51:43.440 --> 00:51:47.360
This smaller unit was further divided into
a main army and a vanguard, later

526
00:51:47.400 --> 00:51:52.639
commanded by Sodo, a position he
would repeatedly hold for much of his career,

527
00:51:53.079 --> 00:51:59.880
most notably in Peru. Bartolomy de
les Classas tells us the story of

528
00:52:00.039 --> 00:52:05.280
what happened several days out from Panama
City when Soda was leading the vanguard of

529
00:52:05.360 --> 00:52:08.760
thirty men. These were composed of
a handful of horsemen, all the rest

530
00:52:08.840 --> 00:52:15.960
on foot. They were marching across
wild open foothills around the Tavasara Mountains for

531
00:52:16.119 --> 00:52:22.760
about fifteen to twenty miles north of
the Gulf of Pirata, which in and

532
00:52:22.800 --> 00:52:27.880
of itself as the crow Flies,
is probably about eighty miles from Panama City.

533
00:52:29.440 --> 00:52:34.239
Apparently, Soda was reconnoitering this rugged
country, which probably looked a lot

534
00:52:34.280 --> 00:52:38.239
like the hills around his hometown,
when suddenly he heard the quote shouts and

535
00:52:38.360 --> 00:52:45.199
noise of battle end quote up ahead. Knowing that Espinoza's main force might be

536
00:52:45.239 --> 00:52:47.840
in the area, he gave the
order for his men to rush forward.

537
00:52:49.760 --> 00:52:52.920
Las Casas says Soda, then rode
up to height overlooking the valley, where

538
00:52:52.960 --> 00:52:58.079
he saw, to his horror,
hundreds of Native American warriors, perhaps a

539
00:52:58.159 --> 00:53:04.000
thousand, and they had already down
Espinoza's forces trapped in a gully. One

540
00:53:04.079 --> 00:53:07.559
eyewitness says, quote. The Spaniards
could make no use of their horses,

541
00:53:07.800 --> 00:53:12.800
which was a great disadvantage because the
Indians lacked neither courage nor strength, and

542
00:53:12.960 --> 00:53:17.639
quote. Soto had several choices.
The safest and most prudent would have been

543
00:53:17.679 --> 00:53:23.159
to ride back to Pisoto and summon
the entire overland force as reinforcements, but

544
00:53:23.320 --> 00:53:28.400
Soto making the kind of snap decision
for which he would later become famous,

545
00:53:29.000 --> 00:53:35.239
chose instead the most dramatic, the
most reckless option available. A witness tells

546
00:53:35.280 --> 00:53:40.679
us that he led his entire tiny
force to bring unexpected help to Espinosa's forces,

547
00:53:42.320 --> 00:53:45.800
attacking directly into the rear of an
army that outnumbered him as much as

548
00:53:45.840 --> 00:53:52.559
thirty to one, a move foolhardy
enough that it should have ended Sodo's career

549
00:53:52.800 --> 00:53:59.840
right then and there, but skill
and luck prevailed. Somehow, Sodo caused

550
00:53:59.840 --> 00:54:04.280
an of confusion to force the Indians
to pull back momentarily from their assault.

551
00:54:05.079 --> 00:54:08.880
Apparently they believed themselves to be under
the attack of a much larger contingent of

552
00:54:08.920 --> 00:54:15.440
Spaniards. This gave Espinosa's men time
to erupt out of the valley and face

553
00:54:15.559 --> 00:54:20.199
down the warriors with their own horses, though the native army, once they

554
00:54:20.199 --> 00:54:24.159
realized their error, quickly re engaged
the Spaniards in a country still too rugged

555
00:54:24.280 --> 00:54:30.440
for the effective use of cavalry,
forcing them to retreat. The Indians harassed

556
00:54:30.480 --> 00:54:36.039
them quote with great vigor end quote. As Espinosa's army withdrew to their ships

557
00:54:37.199 --> 00:54:42.239
after being driven out of the mountains, Espinosa sailed a few miles down the

558
00:54:42.280 --> 00:54:46.400
coast, where he deposited Soto and
around fifty men. The idea was for

559
00:54:46.440 --> 00:54:52.119
them to establish a tiny settlement,
but no sooner had they done so that

560
00:54:52.360 --> 00:54:57.239
native warriors descended upon them. So
too, escaped and with his men,

561
00:54:57.519 --> 00:55:01.559
rode hard to Panama City. Later, the VAT would return to that same

562
00:55:01.599 --> 00:55:07.519
area with a larger force, which
once again contained Hernando de Soto. After

563
00:55:07.559 --> 00:55:13.280
clearing out the locals, once in
verall, Sodo and several other men settled

564
00:55:13.280 --> 00:55:16.199
down to live in the fertile region
at the base of the Tapasana Mountains,

565
00:55:16.599 --> 00:55:22.440
around one hundred miles southwest of Panama
City on the Pacific Ocean. Soda would

566
00:55:22.440 --> 00:55:30.440
live there for the next three years. Then, one day in early fifteen

567
00:55:30.559 --> 00:55:40.519
twenty, word reached Panama of a
startling discovery quote they call it Mexico end

568
00:55:40.599 --> 00:55:49.079
quote. Further news ruled in from
there about Cortez's arrival in fifteen nineteen,

569
00:55:50.079 --> 00:55:57.199
his capture of Montezuma, his flight
from Tinostklan, and his return. All

570
00:55:57.239 --> 00:56:04.079
of this filled everyone Soto included,
with wonder and desire. On June fifth,

571
00:56:04.159 --> 00:56:08.559
fifteen twenty three, another explorer showed
up in Panama with another tale.

572
00:56:09.320 --> 00:56:17.119
His name, confusingly was also Davia
Gonzalez Davia. He claimed to have discovered

573
00:56:17.159 --> 00:56:21.639
a new Mexico, a new land
of gold. At this time to the

574
00:56:21.679 --> 00:56:27.639
south, it was the land of
nick alt Nahawak, which he mispronounced as

575
00:56:28.639 --> 00:56:35.760
Nicaragua. Sodo seems to have decided
at once to join this expedition, being

576
00:56:35.760 --> 00:56:40.440
outfitted to return to and conquer this
Nicaragua, this new kingdom full of gold.

577
00:56:42.480 --> 00:56:45.320
Now I want to pause here because
it is important to recognize at this

578
00:56:45.400 --> 00:56:52.119
point in history. Remember we're not
yet twenty five years into the sixteenth century

579
00:56:52.199 --> 00:56:58.960
yet, so you know, we're
about thirty years removed from Columbus's first voyage

580
00:56:58.960 --> 00:57:06.599
of discovery. European understanding of the
geography of the New World is still very,

581
00:57:07.920 --> 00:57:13.039
very rudimentary. And I want to
point out that it isn't going to

582
00:57:13.079 --> 00:57:19.840
be until Lewis and Clark's expedition across
North America in what is going to be

583
00:57:19.920 --> 00:57:25.119
the early nineteenth century, so almost
four hundred or three hundred excuse me,

584
00:57:25.559 --> 00:57:31.320
years from now, that modern Americans
are going to have a full and complete

585
00:57:31.400 --> 00:57:38.920
understanding of the American West. So
the fact that Europeans think that there are

586
00:57:38.960 --> 00:57:46.119
all these civilizations of gold. Isn't
surprising No one knew about Mexico and Cortez

587
00:57:46.199 --> 00:57:52.400
stumbled upon that. Who's to say
they can't stumble upon another advanced civilization.

588
00:57:52.199 --> 00:57:59.159
In fact, it stands to reason
that there should be more. And so

589
00:57:59.280 --> 00:58:06.159
as we start to criticize Soto later
on this episode for foolishly following these dreams

590
00:58:06.320 --> 00:58:14.199
of cities of gold, remember that
on several occasions those rumors had turned out

591
00:58:14.239 --> 00:58:22.559
to be true. And if the
upshot is that you become a multi millionaire

592
00:58:22.800 --> 00:58:30.360
overnight by finding one of these civilizations, maybe it is worth looking. Regardless,

593
00:58:30.840 --> 00:58:36.039
Soto had lived in the same region
for about four years now. His

594
00:58:36.199 --> 00:58:40.199
time there had been very profitable,
but as I mentioned, he wanted the

595
00:58:40.239 --> 00:58:45.840
big payday, not just the safe
life. He wanted an empire to conquer.

596
00:58:49.079 --> 00:58:53.280
By royal decree, Gonzalez Divia held
the concession from the crown to conquer

597
00:58:53.440 --> 00:59:00.440
Nicoagua. By the fall of fifteen
twenty three. However, several rideals were

598
00:59:00.440 --> 00:59:07.719
also organizing expeditions to invade Nicaragua and
several other territories in Central America. This,

599
00:59:07.840 --> 00:59:09.679
of course, should go without saying
because I've talked about it a lot

600
00:59:09.719 --> 00:59:15.679
when we talked about the issue between
piece Auto and Almagro in Peru. But

601
00:59:15.400 --> 00:59:22.880
let's just say that nobody exactly knew
where the boundaries of Nicaragua began and ended.

602
00:59:22.440 --> 00:59:29.000
So who conquers what is again really
a question of who gets there first.

603
00:59:29.559 --> 00:59:36.760
Now, the other rivals included not
only Davia Pedro Davilla back in Panama,

604
00:59:36.920 --> 00:59:42.599
but two captains of Hernan Corteses sent
out late in fifteen twenty three and

605
00:59:42.760 --> 00:59:47.880
early fifteen twenty four by Cortes himself
on probing expeditions south of Mexico City.

606
00:59:50.119 --> 00:59:53.639
The first of these was Pedro de
Alvarado, who we probably remember from those

607
00:59:53.679 --> 01:00:00.159
episodes, marching southeast near the Pacific
coast with five hundred men headed towards what

608
01:00:00.400 --> 01:00:06.519
is Guatemala and El Salvador. Cristobald
de Olid, the second of the rivals,

609
01:00:06.880 --> 01:00:10.719
led another five hundred men as he
marched across the Yucatan toward what would

610
01:00:10.760 --> 01:00:21.519
become Honduras. Soto joined another expedition, this one led by Hernandez de Cordoba

611
01:00:21.599 --> 01:00:27.559
and his business partner Hernan Ponce,
who was probably the one who negotiated Soto's

612
01:00:27.639 --> 01:00:34.840
participation. The country Cordoba planned to
invade comprises one of the most fertile valleys

613
01:00:34.880 --> 01:00:39.199
in Latin America, a wide corridor
of rich black soil, dark blue lakes,

614
01:00:39.480 --> 01:00:45.519
and a string of smoldering volcanoes stretching
two hundred and fifty miles along a

615
01:00:45.639 --> 01:00:51.440
major fault line just inside the Pacific
coast. A few landscapes in Latin America

616
01:00:51.679 --> 01:00:58.079
impressed the Spaniards more the dramatic sweep
of abrupt, steaming cones of volcanoes some

617
01:00:58.440 --> 01:01:04.360
five or six thousand feet high,
the deep lagoons filling collapsed volcanoes, and

618
01:01:04.440 --> 01:01:08.239
an inland sea the size of Chesapeake
Bay, which some of the Indians called

619
01:01:08.480 --> 01:01:16.679
Coco Boloca and which the Spanish renamed
elmar LuSE. The freshwater sea Las Casas,

620
01:01:16.760 --> 01:01:22.360
during a visit to Nicaragua in the
late fifteen twenties, called Nicaragua quote

621
01:01:22.599 --> 01:01:28.880
a paradise of God endquote. Oviedo
our historian called it quote the most beautiful

622
01:01:28.880 --> 01:01:34.840
and satisfying country to be found in
the Indies end quote. Late in fifteen

623
01:01:34.880 --> 01:01:38.800
twenty three, Cordoba and his two
hundred and thirty man army boarded ships for

624
01:01:38.840 --> 01:01:45.840
Costa Rica just south of Nicaragua.
Sadly, what happens next is a bit

625
01:01:45.880 --> 01:01:52.440
of a mystery. There is no
record of Corboba's invasion of Nicaragua, but

626
01:01:52.599 --> 01:01:58.400
it's possible to at least construct a
broad outline of what happened. He almost

627
01:01:58.400 --> 01:02:02.000
certainly encountered arm resistance from the moment
he left his ships and marched inland.

628
01:02:04.159 --> 01:02:09.039
Sodo was a quick and talented commander, and I have little doubt that Cordoba

629
01:02:09.079 --> 01:02:15.440
placed him in command of the lead
of Italian Esodo stormed across the Great Valley,

630
01:02:15.880 --> 01:02:19.400
entering each new kingdom in turn.
He first would have found himself on

631
01:02:19.440 --> 01:02:23.360
a dirt road, sneaking through the
wild, overgrown bands of forest and scrub

632
01:02:23.719 --> 01:02:29.360
that served as a buffer between new
neighboring polities. Next, he would have

633
01:02:29.480 --> 01:02:34.239
entered partially burned and cleared land used
for hunting, which gave way to farmsteads,

634
01:02:34.400 --> 01:02:38.280
small villages, and expansive fields of
maize, beans, sweet potatoes,

635
01:02:38.480 --> 01:02:44.400
pineapple, papaya, avocado, and
of course cash crops things like cotton,

636
01:02:44.880 --> 01:02:49.880
cacao, tobacco. Finally, Sodo
would have reached the chief city of the

637
01:02:50.000 --> 01:02:53.679
kingdom, where he and the army
probably fought a decisive battle, crushing their

638
01:02:53.719 --> 01:03:00.239
native counterparts before marching down the narrow
streets lined by the city's various homes,

639
01:03:00.280 --> 01:03:07.760
all constructed of whitewashed adobe and thatch. Eventually, these streets led to the

640
01:03:07.760 --> 01:03:13.639
invaders city central Plaza, edged by
small earth and stone pyramids and palaces.

641
01:03:15.639 --> 01:03:20.920
The powerful armies in the area of
Nicaragua apparently succumbed quickly to the Spanish onslaught,

642
01:03:21.199 --> 01:03:25.159
though not without a fight. According
to Gonzales Davilla, the largest city

643
01:03:25.159 --> 01:03:30.639
states were capable of fielding armies of
several thousand men, used to fighting and

644
01:03:30.760 --> 01:03:35.239
ordered ranks and battle formations, and
armed with a formidable arsenal of clubs,

645
01:03:35.760 --> 01:03:40.039
stone topped maces, slings, javelins, small bows and arrows, and swords

646
01:03:40.079 --> 01:03:45.800
carved out of wood and stone.
The Nicaraguans also used armor, the rank

647
01:03:45.880 --> 01:03:52.119
and file dressing themselves in quilted cotton
jerkins and heavy wooden helmets, the kings

648
01:03:52.119 --> 01:03:58.400
and generals wearing breast arm and leg
plates made of gold. Given this formidable

649
01:03:58.440 --> 01:04:03.960
array of weaponry, it's surprising how
quickly the highly disciplined armies of Nicaragua collapsed,

650
01:04:04.480 --> 01:04:11.159
apparently in just the matter of weeks. The explanation for this, however,

651
01:04:11.719 --> 01:04:15.760
lies not so much with gaps in
technology, but with the Nicodaguan's style

652
01:04:15.840 --> 01:04:20.960
of warfare. Over the centuries,
it had evolved into an almost ceremonial exercise.

653
01:04:21.400 --> 01:04:26.960
Fought less to conquer or kill an
enemy than score some minor victories on

654
01:04:27.039 --> 01:04:31.559
matters of territorial disputes, and even
more importened to capture prisoners, the major

655
01:04:31.599 --> 01:04:36.559
source of victims for sacrificial blades.
This, as you'll remember, is what

656
01:04:36.800 --> 01:04:43.199
held back the Mexica when they first
encountered Cortez. A desire to capture rather

657
01:04:43.280 --> 01:04:49.039
than kill. Nicodaguan's conducted battle and
war according to a set of rules that

658
01:04:49.079 --> 01:04:55.280
began with elaborate ceremonies to prepare for
battle, offering gifts and invitation to feasts,

659
01:04:55.840 --> 01:04:59.800
and then progressed to skirmishes. Fought
more to get close enough to ones

660
01:05:00.000 --> 01:05:03.360
opponent to knock him senseless or otherwise
grab him and haul him away than to

661
01:05:03.440 --> 01:05:10.599
kill him. This mode of fighting
explains why Gonzalis the Villas one hundred poorly

662
01:05:10.719 --> 01:05:15.960
armed men escaped all these surprise attacks
without a single man killed one was captured

663
01:05:16.039 --> 01:05:20.559
that we know of, and why
Cordoba lost few if any men during his

664
01:05:20.639 --> 01:05:27.960
invasion. Yet the Indians were still
capable of fighting with great ferocity, as

665
01:05:28.000 --> 01:05:30.840
indicated by a grizzly story. Ovier, though, tells us about what happened

666
01:05:30.880 --> 01:05:36.519
when Cordoba's army approached a chief city
of the Maribillos, one of the Native

667
01:05:36.559 --> 01:05:42.320
American bands. He writes, quote, when the Indians saw the daring and

668
01:05:42.400 --> 01:05:45.159
vigor of the Spaniards, they devised
a new stratagem of war. And for

669
01:05:45.199 --> 01:05:50.119
this the Indian soldiers killed many old
Indians, male and female, their parents

670
01:05:50.119 --> 01:05:55.559
and neighbors, and they flayed them. Afterwards, they killed them and ate

671
01:05:55.599 --> 01:05:59.519
the meat and kept their skins,
and the live Indians wore them outside with

672
01:05:59.599 --> 01:06:03.000
only the eyes removed. Thinking.
It is said with this innovation that the

673
01:06:03.079 --> 01:06:09.280
site would scare away the Christians and
frighten their horses. So when the Christians

674
01:06:09.320 --> 01:06:13.239
left their camp, the Indians refused
to engage them in battle. Before they

675
01:06:13.239 --> 01:06:16.679
had formed their forward line, those
Indians cloaked in the skins of others.

676
01:06:16.719 --> 01:06:20.280
With their bows and arrows, they
started the battle in spirited fashion, with

677
01:06:20.320 --> 01:06:28.320
many terrifying shouts. The Christians marveled
at their audacity and even felt some fear

678
01:06:28.400 --> 01:06:32.599
under the circumstances, but falling into
place, they commenced to attack the enemy

679
01:06:32.840 --> 01:06:38.000
and wound and killed those who had
lined themselves with the flayed skins of the

680
01:06:38.079 --> 01:06:44.559
dead. By late spring fifteen twenty
four, the conquest of the Great Valley

681
01:06:44.760 --> 01:06:49.920
was complete. Cordoba settled layon the
main city in the region, naming Soto

682
01:06:49.960 --> 01:06:55.199
as one of its founders. Leon
would from now be the capital of this

683
01:06:55.280 --> 01:07:01.000
new colony. And here Cordoba got
some bad news. Two other Spanish expeditions

684
01:07:01.280 --> 01:07:06.239
were presently making their way through Nicaragua. One was only about one hundred miles

685
01:07:06.280 --> 01:07:13.519
off, so Cordoba dispatched Soda with
messages for both groups. Nicaragua was already

686
01:07:13.559 --> 01:07:45.760
conquered, go home, and thus
began the wars of the Captains. It

687
01:07:45.880 --> 01:07:50.760
is important here to pause and consider
the ramifications of Cortes's conquest of Mexico.

688
01:07:53.199 --> 01:07:59.400
Up to fifteen nineteen, the exploration
and conquest of New Spain was very much

689
01:07:59.679 --> 01:08:05.880
tough heavy. It was directed from
Spain, mostly King Ferdinand and his court.

690
01:08:08.280 --> 01:08:15.079
Cortez changed everything. He did not
have permission to conquer Mexico, at

691
01:08:15.159 --> 01:08:20.239
least not initially, but he took
the initiative, and that in the end

692
01:08:21.000 --> 01:08:28.279
was rewarded because he became one of
the richest man in the world, and

693
01:08:28.399 --> 01:08:34.800
so the lid came off of Pandora's
box. Now men realized they could just

694
01:08:35.640 --> 01:08:43.319
take whatever they wanted and then get
post facto authorization. In other words,

695
01:08:43.760 --> 01:08:46.880
don't ask for permission, ask for
forgiveness, and if you have enough gold,

696
01:08:47.239 --> 01:08:51.680
you're probably going to get it.
After all, the new king,

697
01:08:51.760 --> 01:08:57.520
Charles the Fifth, was far too
concerned with affairs in Europe to micro manage

698
01:08:57.560 --> 01:09:04.920
these men, and as a result
anarchy, or at least near anarchy.

699
01:09:06.119 --> 01:09:11.920
Initially, Sodo was going to take
his force and confront one of the approaching

700
01:09:11.960 --> 01:09:15.880
captains, in this case Gonzales de
Vila, the man who had first given

701
01:09:16.000 --> 01:09:24.439
Sodo the idea to go to Nicaragua. But then when Cordoba heard that Cortes's

702
01:09:24.439 --> 01:09:29.960
old lieutenant Pedro de Alvarado was headed
toward the Great Valley with five hundred men,

703
01:09:30.800 --> 01:09:35.720
he ordered Sodo to reconnoiter that army. Instead, Sodo left that summer

704
01:09:35.920 --> 01:09:40.880
fifteen twenty four at the head of
a force of eighty men, but the

705
01:09:40.960 --> 01:09:46.640
expected showdown never happened. Alvarado pulled
back to Guatemala, and so Sodo wrote

706
01:09:46.680 --> 01:09:51.159
off in the direction of Gonzales de
Villa instead. It would be this event

707
01:09:51.199 --> 01:09:57.199
that would officially launch the War of
the Captains. Sodo approached to Villa's position,

708
01:09:57.520 --> 01:10:00.439
making as much noise as he could. He wanted to Vila to think

709
01:10:00.640 --> 01:10:06.560
he had the larger force. The
Villa was more cautious. Soto knew this

710
01:10:06.680 --> 01:10:11.960
land better than he did, and
so best to make discretion the better part

711
01:10:11.960 --> 01:10:16.399
of valor. When the two forces
finally did meet, and again, sadly,

712
01:10:16.760 --> 01:10:19.560
we don't have a ton of information
for all of this, so it's

713
01:10:19.880 --> 01:10:25.760
kind of peace together from recollections after
the fact. But what we do know

714
01:10:25.920 --> 01:10:29.439
is when the two forces did meet. At first, Soto, even though

715
01:10:29.439 --> 01:10:33.760
he was badly outnumbered, had the
better of it. But that night Davila's

716
01:10:33.800 --> 01:10:40.159
secretly sent for reinforcements. They fell
upon Soto's men in the night, overwhelmed

717
01:10:40.199 --> 01:10:45.640
them, and took Soto captive.
For Hernando. To Soto, this was

718
01:10:45.640 --> 01:10:51.800
a humiliation unlike anything he had ever
experienced, but Cordoba still appreciated Soto's efforts.

719
01:10:53.640 --> 01:10:58.520
He ransom the young man back immediately, and that was because despite his

720
01:10:58.760 --> 01:11:06.479
defeat in battle, Soto's aggressiveness convinced
the Villa that Nicaragua wasn't worth it,

721
01:11:08.319 --> 01:11:15.880
and so he, like Alvarado,
turned around and retreated. But the Villa's

722
01:11:15.880 --> 01:11:21.279
retreat did not end this game of
conquistador whac a mole. Instead, new

723
01:11:21.319 --> 01:11:28.640
faces kept showing up, men like
cristobald Olid, another of Cortes's commanders.

724
01:11:29.680 --> 01:11:34.039
Making things worse, The governor of
Panama, Pedro Tha Villa, walked back

725
01:11:34.079 --> 01:11:42.079
into a fray, sending an army
to punish Cordoba. Pedroda Villa believed that

726
01:11:42.159 --> 01:11:47.920
Nicaragua fell under the auspices of his
governorship in Panama. He wasn't happy that

727
01:11:48.000 --> 01:11:55.319
Cordoba thought he could create his own
little kingdom within his territory, so true

728
01:11:55.359 --> 01:12:01.800
to his unforgiving form, he promptly
had Cortoba executed. Things were now getting

729
01:12:01.800 --> 01:12:06.239
out of hand, so Charles the
Fifth tried to step in. Taking a

730
01:12:06.279 --> 01:12:13.840
break from his interminable European wars,
he issued orders in fifteen twenty five that

731
01:12:14.000 --> 01:12:18.640
Spaniards in the New World were forbidden
to fight one another, though in hindsight

732
01:12:19.079 --> 01:12:24.640
he may as well have ordered the
wind to stop blowing. The crown as

733
01:12:24.720 --> 01:12:30.399
usual was just too far away.
Plus, Charles never did the one thing

734
01:12:31.079 --> 01:12:40.479
that would have made this all better. He didn't delineate clear lines of authority.

735
01:12:40.600 --> 01:12:46.199
He continued to just give different governors
and conquistadors vague descriptions of where they

736
01:12:46.279 --> 01:12:50.760
might go, whom they might conquer, so on and so forth, never

737
01:12:50.840 --> 01:12:57.359
mind the fact that many of these
vague descriptions overlapped because nobody really knew where

738
01:12:57.359 --> 01:13:02.439
anything was anyway. Certainly, Sodo
was disappointed at this turn of events.

739
01:13:03.319 --> 01:13:08.119
He had hoped to carve out his
own kingdom in Nicoagua. Now that wasn't

740
01:13:08.119 --> 01:13:13.640
going to happen. Sodo's best hope
at this point was that Pedro Davilla might

741
01:13:13.680 --> 01:13:19.119
be replaced, and Charles the fifth
did recall him. Many expected that the

742
01:13:19.119 --> 01:13:25.239
old man would be forced into retirement, but court intrigue saved the man,

743
01:13:25.279 --> 01:13:30.359
increasingly known as the Wrath of God. Charles the fifth believed that Tavilla was

744
01:13:30.399 --> 01:13:35.159
the only man able to bring some
form of stability to the region, so

745
01:13:35.279 --> 01:13:41.239
he chastised him for allowing all this
chaos in the first place and executing Cordoba,

746
01:13:41.319 --> 01:13:45.920
and then sent him back to Nicaragua. Still, I do want you

747
01:13:45.960 --> 01:13:50.880
to recognize that at this point,
Pedro de Villa is ninety years old,

748
01:13:51.000 --> 01:13:57.479
or maybe even older. Many you
certainly were wondering how much longer you could

749
01:13:57.479 --> 01:14:02.680
possibly last. So for now,
Sodo was content to live and enrich himself

750
01:14:02.680 --> 01:14:08.199
in Nicaragua. In the spring of
fifteen twenty eight, he was twenty eight

751
01:14:08.239 --> 01:14:13.479
years old and would spend the next
four years in Nicaragua consolidating his wealth and

752
01:14:13.520 --> 01:14:17.920
power. They weren't all good times. In fifteen twenty eight, one of

753
01:14:17.920 --> 01:14:23.239
Sodo's closest friends died during many of
the waves of plague that swept the New

754
01:14:23.279 --> 01:14:27.640
World during this period. Moreover,
for the natives of Nicaragua and the surrounding

755
01:14:27.680 --> 01:14:33.399
areas, the decade of Hernando de
Soto's ascendency was basically an apocalypse. In

756
01:14:33.479 --> 01:14:40.560
an astonishingly short period, proud Indian
city states were obliterated, their cultures were

757
01:14:40.640 --> 01:14:45.479
destroyed, and their peoples implacably pushed
towards extinction that would be all but complete

758
01:14:45.840 --> 01:14:51.640
by the end of the century.
Before the conquest of Nicaragua, Bartolome de

759
01:14:51.720 --> 01:14:57.760
las Casas suggested that over a million
Indians lived in the Great Valley, a

760
01:14:57.880 --> 01:15:01.359
number that he said dwindled to apps
two hundred thousand by fifteen thirty seven.

761
01:15:02.880 --> 01:15:11.520
Even if exaggerated, this indicates a
spectacular level of decline. Las Casas,

762
01:15:11.800 --> 01:15:15.319
who visited the Great Valley in the
mid fifteen twenties, blames this sudden depopulation

763
01:15:15.680 --> 01:15:21.319
on familiar combination of warfare, forced
labor, disease, and despair leading to

764
01:15:21.359 --> 01:15:28.439
suicide. The scope of the killing, however, staggered even he is considerable

765
01:15:28.439 --> 01:15:33.199
imagination, as he reported murders and
robberies on a skill so vast quote,

766
01:15:33.800 --> 01:15:40.880
it is not possible for the pen
to relate upon the slightest pretext. The

767
01:15:41.039 --> 01:15:45.720
soldiers massacred the inhabitants without regard to
age, sex, or condition. They

768
01:15:45.760 --> 01:15:50.880
exacted from certain measures of corn and
certain numbers of slaves, and if these

769
01:15:50.920 --> 01:15:57.920
were not rendered, they hesitated not
to kill the delinquents end quote. While

770
01:15:57.920 --> 01:16:00.600
Sodo was consolidating his power in nico
Agua, somewhere to the south, the

771
01:16:00.720 --> 01:16:06.479
chance encounter would change his life forever. In fifteen twenty seven, off the

772
01:16:06.479 --> 01:16:13.319
coast of what today is Peru,
Francisco Pizaro stumbled upon the Inca Empire.

773
01:16:14.439 --> 01:16:17.439
He did not know it yet,
but he had found the other great Mesoamerican

774
01:16:17.479 --> 01:16:25.520
Empire. Word of Pisaro's discovery reached
Nicaragua as Pissaro himself sailed back to Spain

775
01:16:25.880 --> 01:16:30.359
to get permission to conquer this new
kingdom. Obviously, to men like Soto,

776
01:16:30.800 --> 01:16:34.680
this news hit like a bombshell,
but for the moment, there was

777
01:16:34.720 --> 01:16:41.239
nothing Soto could do about it.
Pedro Davilla, now over ninety, had

778
01:16:41.279 --> 01:16:45.920
sold out his interest in Peru and
was determined that no one who lived in

779
01:16:45.000 --> 01:16:50.319
his colony would be allowed to take
part in any conquest. The Villa did

780
01:16:50.359 --> 01:16:57.359
not die until fifteen thirty one,
so until then there was nothing Soto could

781
01:16:57.359 --> 01:17:01.479
do but cool his heels. But
no one lives forever, and as I

782
01:17:01.520 --> 01:17:05.760
mentioned, on March the sixth,
fifteen thirty one, Pedro de Villa finally

783
01:17:05.840 --> 01:17:12.560
died. Sodo was elated. He
was now free to join up with Pisardo

784
01:17:12.920 --> 01:17:17.800
and make his fortune conquering a new
land. Later that same month, Sodo

785
01:17:18.119 --> 01:17:24.439
and his partner Hernan Pons da Leone
got a bump in the direction of Peru

786
01:17:24.479 --> 01:17:30.239
from Pisardo himself. Pizaro sent three
thousand pacos worth of gold to encourage potential

787
01:17:30.239 --> 01:17:36.319
conquistadors in Nicaragua to travel to Peru. Coupled with rumors of vast quantities of

788
01:17:36.439 --> 01:17:41.880
riches, which this case turned out
to be true. Sodo had no issue

789
01:17:42.199 --> 01:17:48.000
recruiting men to join him on this
new expedition. Francisco Pizaro now became the

790
01:17:48.000 --> 01:17:54.479
man who would dominate Sodo's life for
the next half a decade. Pisardo lacked

791
01:17:54.520 --> 01:17:59.960
the reckless ambition of Hernan Cortes or
even Sodo himself, but he started.

792
01:18:00.000 --> 01:18:01.800
He wanted a kingdom of his own, and he was willing to do what

793
01:18:01.840 --> 01:18:08.079
it took to secure one. Sodo's
time with Pisaro would continue training the young

794
01:18:08.119 --> 01:18:14.520
man for his own expedition to Florida. Now, look, we've already covered

795
01:18:14.720 --> 01:18:18.680
the conquest of the Inca Empire in
great detail. I'm not going to repeat

796
01:18:18.720 --> 01:18:25.560
that at all here from Soto's perspective, because to a large extent it isn't

797
01:18:25.680 --> 01:18:30.439
much different. So I'm going to
go through Soto's time in Peru pretty quickly,

798
01:18:31.159 --> 01:18:35.680
even though to a large extent,
this is where Sodo would accumulate the

799
01:18:35.680 --> 01:18:41.800
only riches he would ever find.
It took a while, but Soto and

800
01:18:41.880 --> 01:18:45.439
his men finally were able to link
up with Pisodo's force. They were expected

801
01:18:45.600 --> 01:18:49.439
to see piles of gold simply sitting
by the shore, waiting to be loaded

802
01:18:49.439 --> 01:18:53.920
onto the ships, and so on
and so forth. What they found instead

803
01:18:54.479 --> 01:18:59.520
was Pisaro's one hundred and eighty miserable
Spaniards, ill and pinned down by hostile

804
01:18:59.600 --> 01:19:06.680
natives. The newcomers were stunned.
Pedro Pissaro would write quote Francisco Pisaro and

805
01:19:06.680 --> 01:19:12.800
those who were with him received much
pleasuring contentment, although those would come did

806
01:19:12.800 --> 01:19:16.079
not feel the same way, because
as they had left the paradise which Nicaragua

807
01:19:16.239 --> 01:19:20.079
was, and had found an island
in revolt, lacking in food, and

808
01:19:20.159 --> 01:19:25.680
the greater part of the troops sick, and neither gold nor silver. So

809
01:19:25.880 --> 01:19:30.479
him and all wish to return whence
they had come. And the Captain Soto

810
01:19:30.000 --> 01:19:34.039
shamefully did not prevent the talk,
nor did the principal soldiers, not being

811
01:19:34.079 --> 01:19:41.159
able to do so. End quote. Far more distressing for Soto was the

812
01:19:41.199 --> 01:19:45.680
discovery that Francisco Pisaro had already named
his brother Hernando to the post of lieutenant

813
01:19:45.760 --> 01:19:50.279
general or second in command. A
sixteenth century historian reported that Soto was quote

814
01:19:50.760 --> 01:19:56.199
not pleased end quote. But Soto, at the end of the day decided

815
01:19:56.199 --> 01:19:59.439
to stick it out with the Pizarro
expedition. He knew he could out hustle

816
01:19:59.560 --> 01:20:06.000
most of Francisco's brothers, as their
leadership skills were not good, and very

817
01:20:06.039 --> 01:20:13.039
shortly, as we'll see from his
perspective, things one turned around. That

818
01:20:13.159 --> 01:20:15.880
being said, as the army prepared
to leave Puna, which was the local

819
01:20:15.920 --> 01:20:20.159
town that they were hold up in
late in fifteen thirty one, Sodo remained

820
01:20:20.159 --> 01:20:27.079
furious over Henan Pisato's elevation to lieutenant
general, but this didn't stop him from

821
01:20:27.119 --> 01:20:32.319
quickly distinguishing himself as Pisato's most reliable
captain in the field. Sodo departed Muna

822
01:20:32.520 --> 01:20:38.439
for the mainland with fifteen men,
traveling forty miles across the choppy streets on

823
01:20:38.479 --> 01:20:44.840
a raft until he reached Toombez.
Sodo expected a routine crossing to a friendly

824
01:20:44.960 --> 01:20:47.880
territory, and he didn't get it. In fact, he walked directly into

825
01:20:47.920 --> 01:20:51.439
a surprise attack. Luckily for Sodo, for once, he actually wasn't the

826
01:20:51.439 --> 01:20:55.720
first one off the boats. If
he had been, his life story probably

827
01:20:55.960 --> 01:21:00.199
ended right there with a sudden assault
by native soldiers and along excruciating death by

828
01:21:00.239 --> 01:21:05.000
torture. Instead, this fate befell
three young soldiers who beat their captain to

829
01:21:05.039 --> 01:21:11.159
the mainland. According to Pedro c
As de Lyon, the men were attacked

830
01:21:11.159 --> 01:21:15.279
by fighters, likely Inca, as
they came ashore. Hiding in the nearby

831
01:21:15.319 --> 01:21:17.760
bush. The natives burst out onto
the beach, overwhelmed the men, and

832
01:21:17.840 --> 01:21:23.159
dragged them into a nearby forest.
According to the same source quote, these

833
01:21:23.159 --> 01:21:27.520
wretches went to shore without suspecting anything, and they cried out as the Indians

834
01:21:27.520 --> 01:21:31.119
with great cruelty removed their eyes,
and the barbarians hacked off their penises,

835
01:21:31.439 --> 01:21:35.039
and having kettles put over great fires, they put them inside and finished them

836
01:21:35.039 --> 01:21:41.640
off, killing them in great torment
end quote. Accounts differ slightly about what

837
01:21:41.720 --> 01:21:45.079
happened next, as other rafts and
SODA's party came ashore. According to the

838
01:21:45.279 --> 01:21:49.560
same man, Soda was near enough
the three captured men to attempt a rescue,

839
01:21:49.720 --> 01:21:56.039
but was turned back by a ferocious
native assault. From there, Soda

840
01:21:56.119 --> 01:22:01.039
journeyed onward until he linked up his
forces with Pissaro in kashemar well I already

841
01:22:01.039 --> 01:22:08.640
covered events there several episodes ago.
It's worth remembering that Soto, not Pizarro,

842
01:22:09.159 --> 01:22:15.760
was the first European to exchange words
with Atahualpa. Atahualpa was roughly Soto's

843
01:22:15.800 --> 01:22:20.000
same age. He was, also, according to his reputation, intelligent and

844
01:22:20.159 --> 01:22:27.399
ruthless. Again, we talked about
this part in terms of the Inca Atahualpa

845
01:22:27.479 --> 01:22:31.960
saga before, but just to summarize
from the Soto's standpoint, I think it's

846
01:22:32.000 --> 01:22:36.680
interesting to remember that Soto was the
one who went to see Atahualpa at his

847
01:22:36.760 --> 01:22:43.640
camp in order to lure him within
Kaja Marca. When Soto arrived at the

848
01:22:43.680 --> 01:22:47.479
gate to the Inca palace, he
found outa Walpa seated in a courtyard outside

849
01:22:47.479 --> 01:22:53.920
a small palace, surrounded by brilliantly
clad nobles, servants, and aids.

850
01:22:55.399 --> 01:23:00.840
The Inca's throne was not one of
the massive, imposing types that you've seen

851
01:23:00.880 --> 01:23:03.399
all the images in medieval Europe and
so on and so forth. It was

852
01:23:03.439 --> 01:23:08.880
a quote small stool, very low
to the ground end quote, as if

853
01:23:08.920 --> 01:23:14.439
to say that Otto Wallpa's very person
was awe inspiring enough he didn't need the

854
01:23:14.439 --> 01:23:20.119
throne. Likewise, his crown was
a simple circlet of colorful beads and chords

855
01:23:20.159 --> 01:23:27.600
hung in a tassel. I tend
to imagine this meeting of worlds, because

856
01:23:28.239 --> 01:23:31.039
here you have, on the one
hand, really this sort of paragon,

857
01:23:31.159 --> 01:23:40.239
this example of the heights of Mesoamerican
civilization seated and they're on horseback, is

858
01:23:40.800 --> 01:23:45.880
the height of I would say,
Renaissance Europe conquistadore culture. Staring down at

859
01:23:45.880 --> 01:23:51.239
them. He's there in polished armor, plumes, weapons, so on and

860
01:23:51.239 --> 01:23:57.279
so forth, things that Ottawappa would
have no idea what they are. And

861
01:23:57.720 --> 01:24:00.279
to an extent, Soto doesn't know
the way this is going to go either,

862
01:24:01.520 --> 01:24:06.039
and at first the effort to impress
Atahua but just falls totally flat.

863
01:24:08.039 --> 01:24:15.279
The Inca simply continues to just stare
straightforward, as if Soto isn't even there.

864
01:24:15.840 --> 01:24:21.279
An awkward silence ensued, broken only
when Soto brodded his mount forward so

865
01:24:21.399 --> 01:24:28.560
close to the Inca quote that the
horses nostrils stirred the fringe that the Inca

866
01:24:28.640 --> 01:24:34.720
had placed on his forehead end quote. But Attahuallpa never moved, he never

867
01:24:34.800 --> 01:24:41.680
even reacted to the horse in any
sort of way. At some point,

868
01:24:41.760 --> 01:24:45.119
maybe tired of this, Atahualpa tells
a servant to go ahead and accept a

869
01:24:45.279 --> 01:24:49.840
large gold ring that Soto took quote
from his finger as a token of piece

870
01:24:49.880 --> 01:24:55.399
and friendship on behalf of the Christians
end quote. So interestingly enough, this

871
01:24:55.439 --> 01:25:00.479
relationship actually begins with Soto the European
giving gold to the Inca. It's going

872
01:25:00.560 --> 01:25:06.720
to reverse itself very soon here,
as you already know. Sodo then delivers

873
01:25:06.760 --> 01:25:11.279
a speech, and then Hernando Pizzaro, who's also there, gets his part

874
01:25:11.359 --> 01:25:14.159
in, and he gets to explain
who they are, what they're doing there,

875
01:25:14.199 --> 01:25:16.600
so on and so forth. Not
that Atahuapa would have had any idea

876
01:25:16.680 --> 01:25:21.319
what's going on, but Soto,
in so many ways remains sort of the

877
01:25:21.359 --> 01:25:26.720
front man in all of this,
and he to a large extent may not

878
01:25:26.760 --> 01:25:32.920
have understood Pisaro's full intentions as he
was doing this. Still Atahuapa quote gave

879
01:25:33.039 --> 01:25:36.760
no answer, nor did he even
raise his eyes to look at the captain

880
01:25:36.840 --> 01:25:43.760
that means Soto quote. Instead,
a nearby chief answered for him. He

881
01:25:43.880 --> 01:25:47.199
told Soto that Atahuapa was in the
midst of religious ceremony, he was fasting,

882
01:25:47.760 --> 01:25:51.880
that he would tell the governor and
he means Pizzaro, that he would

883
01:25:51.960 --> 01:25:56.720
visit him the next day in Kasha
Marca, which is all that Soto really

884
01:25:56.760 --> 01:26:00.880
had come out for in the first
place. Now in mind that the Spaniard

885
01:26:00.960 --> 01:26:06.520
situation, still by anyone's standard,
was hopeless. There were only one hundred

886
01:26:06.560 --> 01:26:13.479
and sixty eight of them surrounded by
tens of thousands of Inca warriors. No

887
01:26:13.520 --> 01:26:18.279
matter how brash and confident Soto might
have been, even he must have felt

888
01:26:18.279 --> 01:26:24.680
that they were all quite likely to
die. And of course we know what

889
01:26:24.760 --> 01:26:28.439
happens next, and I'm not going
to rehash it. Against all odds,

890
01:26:28.479 --> 01:26:32.119
Pisaro managed to capture the Inca Emperor. Now, later in life, one

891
01:26:32.159 --> 01:26:38.800
of Soto's loyal lieutenants would dictate a
brief memorandum claiming that it was Soto who

892
01:26:38.880 --> 01:26:43.760
had been instrumental in the capture of
Atahualpa. That may well be true,

893
01:26:43.800 --> 01:26:48.279
but if it is, those claims
are not substantiated elsewhere. One thing that

894
01:26:48.319 --> 01:26:55.479
we do know is that Soto was
intimately involved in the pillaging of the Inca

895
01:26:55.560 --> 01:27:02.399
camp. The day after Atahualpa's I'm
sure Hernando de Soto woke up early to

896
01:27:02.520 --> 01:27:09.840
begin another round of marauding. He
thundered out of the city gates, probably

897
01:27:09.880 --> 01:27:15.600
still not realizing his life had been
transformed forever by what had happened the day

898
01:27:15.600 --> 01:27:21.399
prior. He'd gone from a successful
but obscure frontiersman, soon to be a

899
01:27:21.439 --> 01:27:28.079
sensation throughout the Hispanic world and Europe
in general. In the coming weeks,

900
01:27:28.359 --> 01:27:32.159
as words spread to the colonies and
thence to Europe about the kidnapping of Atahualpa,

901
01:27:32.399 --> 01:27:38.039
the exploits of the flamboyant and Anano
de Soto would be told over and

902
01:27:38.239 --> 01:27:44.520
over again throughout Spain and all its
extremities. Sodo became the first European to

903
01:27:44.640 --> 01:27:48.640
journey into the Andes. He was
the first to meet Atahualpa, and he

904
01:27:49.159 --> 01:27:54.079
was the first to entertain Antahualpa,
in fact, with a display of Castilian

905
01:27:54.119 --> 01:27:58.800
horsemanship, before leading one of the
units of cavalry in a key attack at

906
01:27:58.840 --> 01:28:03.319
Cajamarca. Upon arriving back in the
Inca camp, Soto quickly got down to

907
01:28:03.319 --> 01:28:10.079
the very serious business of looting Atahualpa's
tent. Given the capture of the Emperor,

908
01:28:10.600 --> 01:28:15.800
the Inca military structure was now totally
paralyzed. The army would do nothing

909
01:28:15.840 --> 01:28:20.279
to stop them. Just how much
time Soto spent with Atahualpa from that point

910
01:28:20.359 --> 01:28:28.560
until his death remains disputed. Soto
claims they spent hours together in gosh I

911
01:28:28.560 --> 01:28:32.279
wish we had a record of that, just talking or playing chess, a

912
01:28:32.359 --> 01:28:38.039
game that Atahualpa enjoyed and he was
apparently quite good at. During the following

913
01:28:38.079 --> 01:28:44.199
months, the Spaniards increasingly found themselves
on the defensive as rumors of an impending

914
01:28:44.279 --> 01:28:49.199
INCA attack mounted. Soto spent the
time administering the military affairs of the city,

915
01:28:49.880 --> 01:28:56.319
organizing supplies, supervising the legal system, paying officials, etc. Etc.

916
01:28:57.840 --> 01:29:00.560
Certainly, I don't think it's a
stretch at all to say that Hernando

917
01:29:00.600 --> 01:29:05.319
de Soto was the man friend Cisco
Pizaro trusted the most outside his own family.

918
01:29:06.479 --> 01:29:11.640
There is also some evidence during this
time that Soto took part in the

919
01:29:11.680 --> 01:29:17.279
torture of several high ranking INCA commanders. Now this is important because for centuries

920
01:29:17.319 --> 01:29:25.600
historians argued that Soto was the most
humanitarian of any conquistador. These incidents suggest

921
01:29:25.840 --> 01:29:30.159
that wasn't the case. That's not
to say that Sodo was any worse than

922
01:29:30.199 --> 01:29:36.159
Pisardo or Cortez. The reality is
he was probably about the same. And

923
01:29:36.239 --> 01:29:41.439
as I mentioned before, no matter
how important Sodo might have been to Pissaro,

924
01:29:42.000 --> 01:29:45.880
he always came in second to his
brothers. When Francisco Pisaro divided up

925
01:29:45.920 --> 01:29:53.399
the initial spoils. Second place went
to Hernando Pisaro, not Soto. This

926
01:29:53.520 --> 01:29:57.560
wouldn't be the last time that Sodo
would be slighted in favor of a Pisoto

927
01:29:57.600 --> 01:30:03.439
brother. That being said, Sodo
received truly a staggering amount of loot at

928
01:30:03.479 --> 01:30:12.159
Kajamarca, even after Almago arrived with
fresh reinforcements. Soto was Pisardo's most capable

929
01:30:12.199 --> 01:30:19.680
subordinate, and Pissaro rewarded him as
such. One of the more confusing incidents

930
01:30:20.199 --> 01:30:29.520
surrounding Soto's time in Peru concerns Atahualpa's
death. In the early summer fifteen thirty

931
01:30:29.640 --> 01:30:35.640
three, rumors flew around Kajamarca that
a massive Inca army was gathering around the

932
01:30:35.720 --> 01:30:44.000
nearby valley of Rumi Navi. There
are two accounts of what happened next.

933
01:30:45.439 --> 01:30:51.079
In one, Pisardo dispatches Soto to
investigate the rumors. While Soto was gone,

934
01:30:51.880 --> 01:30:58.840
more information came in, seemingly confirming
the rumors, and Pisodo relented to

935
01:30:58.840 --> 01:31:03.880
Attahwalpa's death. But that's not the
only account. In the other account,

936
01:31:04.520 --> 01:31:12.439
Pisarto wanted to kill Atahualpa from the
beginning, but he knew that Soto was

937
01:31:12.520 --> 01:31:19.039
staunchly against the idea, so Pisaro
lied to Hernando de Soto and sent him

938
01:31:19.039 --> 01:31:27.319
on this errand, knowing the second
Soto was gone, Antahualpa was a dead

939
01:31:27.359 --> 01:31:34.600
man. I'm not sure which account
is true, though it is bizarre that

940
01:31:34.680 --> 01:31:42.600
Pisaro did not wait for Soto to
return before killing Atahualpa. Soto got back

941
01:31:43.079 --> 01:31:48.159
a few days after Atahualpa's death and
dispelled immediately the rumors of a rebel army.

942
01:31:50.119 --> 01:31:58.039
Why didn't Pizaro wait? Hence there
might be something to version two.

943
01:32:00.079 --> 01:32:03.039
But the point that I want to
make here is that while Soto wanted to

944
01:32:03.119 --> 01:32:10.399
keep Atahualpa alive, that wasn't out
of compassion for the man. He might

945
01:32:10.439 --> 01:32:15.439
have liked him. True, but
Soto wanted to keep Altahualpa alive because he

946
01:32:15.600 --> 01:32:25.199
thought a politically puppet emperor was good
for business. This is important because it

947
01:32:25.239 --> 01:32:30.399
offers us a glimpse into how Soto
is going to operate in La Florida.

948
01:32:30.640 --> 01:32:35.880
By and large, he is going
to try to follow the Cortes playbook.

949
01:32:38.840 --> 01:32:45.079
Unfortunately, as he is going to
find out, there just is no northern

950
01:32:45.119 --> 01:32:53.159
inca empire to conquer. Soon after
Atahualpa's death, Pisoto dispatched the first treasure

951
01:32:53.199 --> 01:32:57.520
fleet back to Spain, along with
an accounting of what had transpired so far.

952
01:32:58.920 --> 01:33:02.119
This is important in our or because
for the first time Europeans would have

953
01:33:02.119 --> 01:33:08.039
heard the name head An de Soto. While he never became the household name

954
01:33:08.239 --> 01:33:14.199
Cortez did, the notoriety of being
connected to a successful conquest is not something

955
01:33:14.199 --> 01:33:19.079
that we should ignore. Soto would
later parlay this connection into a royal license

956
01:33:19.239 --> 01:33:26.800
to conquer La Florida without the personal
capital the association brought him. I'm not

957
01:33:26.880 --> 01:33:31.479
sure he dies in the wilderness of
Arkansas. Back in Peru, Atahualpa's death

958
01:33:31.520 --> 01:33:35.680
did more harm than good. As
Soto said it would. When news reached

959
01:33:35.760 --> 01:33:41.279
Pizarro, than one of Atahualpa's generals
intended to burn Cuzco to the ground.

960
01:33:41.800 --> 01:33:45.479
He immediately dispatched Soto and seventy horsemen
to secure the city before it could be

961
01:33:45.520 --> 01:33:54.119
destroyed. Soto raised an astonishing two
hundred and fifty miles in just five days

962
01:33:54.520 --> 01:33:59.520
and reached the city before it could
be raised. On October the twenty ninth,

963
01:33:59.560 --> 01:34:03.159
fifteen thirty three, He divided his
men into three squadrons and launched them

964
01:34:03.239 --> 01:34:06.680
at what he hoped would be a
surprise attack on one of the outskirts.

965
01:34:08.520 --> 01:34:14.840
Unfortunately, at vas outside Cusco,
Soto found himself ambushed and was lucky to

966
01:34:14.880 --> 01:34:18.960
survive. Sure, the resulting battle
ended with six hundred Inca dead and only

967
01:34:19.000 --> 01:34:25.159
two Spanish horses fallen, but Soto's
men suffered many wounded, several gravely.

968
01:34:26.079 --> 01:34:29.680
They couldn't continue playing with those kind
of odds, not with only one hundred

969
01:34:29.720 --> 01:34:33.279
and sixty eight men. Pissaro ordered
Soto to wait for the rest of the

970
01:34:33.399 --> 01:34:40.199
army before he continued his advance.
But now we get another tantalizing glimpse into

971
01:34:40.239 --> 01:34:45.399
Soto's personality. He wanted to be
the first one into Cusco. This was

972
01:34:45.439 --> 01:34:50.479
about money, sure, but it
was also about honor. Soto ignored the

973
01:34:50.640 --> 01:34:56.800
order, now aware that Almagro and
half of the Spanish army was effectively chasing

974
01:34:56.880 --> 01:35:01.039
him, and pressed on to Cusco. November eighth, he reached the last

975
01:35:01.119 --> 01:35:06.720
barrier before the city. As they
approached the summit outside the town, Soto

976
01:35:06.800 --> 01:35:11.600
was the first to see a line
of dark shapes suddenly rise up above them,

977
01:35:12.039 --> 01:35:15.640
followed by an instant shout that boomed
and echoed across the canyon, as

978
01:35:15.680 --> 01:35:19.279
shapes abruptly poured out from the top
of the summit, three oh four thousand

979
01:35:19.319 --> 01:35:25.880
warriors quote, coming down with great
propidity. Caught by utter surprise, Soto

980
01:35:26.159 --> 01:35:30.680
shouted to his terrified men quote to
form a line of battle, but it

981
01:35:30.720 --> 01:35:33.479
was too late. The Indians were
hurling a barrage of stone at them end

982
01:35:33.520 --> 01:35:39.880
quote. Most of the Spaniards scattered
and ran for cover, while Soto and

983
01:35:39.960 --> 01:35:44.479
those immediately around him tried to rush
upward to take the summit. But according

984
01:35:44.520 --> 01:35:48.039
to one the horses quote were so
tired that they could not get their breath

985
01:35:48.079 --> 01:35:54.000
in order to attack with impetuosity such
a multitude of enemies. Nor did the

986
01:35:54.079 --> 01:36:00.680
latter cease to inconvenience and harass them, attacking them continually with lances, stones,

987
01:36:00.800 --> 01:36:03.359
and arrows, which they hurled at
them. So they were fatigued,

988
01:36:03.600 --> 01:36:08.600
all to such an extent that the
riders could hardly keep their horses at the

989
01:36:08.640 --> 01:36:14.159
trot or even at a walking pace. As the Indians perceived the horse's exhaustion,

990
01:36:14.439 --> 01:36:19.520
they began to attack with greater fury
end quote. Five Spaniards died in

991
01:36:19.560 --> 01:36:24.399
the initial crush and confusion, two
on horseback, the others on foot.

992
01:36:24.399 --> 01:36:28.359
Before they could climb into their saddles, one man was killed, and the

993
01:36:28.479 --> 01:36:31.199
natives grabbed the tail of his horse
and stopped him from reaching his companions.

994
01:36:32.199 --> 01:36:36.479
Unable to draw his sword in the
hail of missiles and swarm of maces and

995
01:36:36.520 --> 01:36:41.800
clubs, he was overwhelmed, dragged
off his saddle, and beaten to a

996
01:36:41.840 --> 01:36:45.880
pulp. Another man reportedly had his
head cleaved in half by the force of

997
01:36:45.880 --> 01:36:50.560
a single blow from a stone mace. As this bloody afternoon wore on,

998
01:36:51.159 --> 01:36:55.560
Soto, showing his usual presence of
mind, in the midst of battle,

999
01:36:56.159 --> 01:37:00.920
managed to muster his surviving horsemen on
a flat spot near the mountain. Somehow

1000
01:37:01.159 --> 01:37:05.840
he held off the incas long enough
to water his horses in a small stream.

1001
01:37:05.920 --> 01:37:11.520
This brief lull gave him the chance
to rally his troops and propose a

1002
01:37:11.600 --> 01:37:15.880
strategy. According to one he said, quote, let us withdraw here,

1003
01:37:15.960 --> 01:37:18.880
step by step down this hillside in
such a way that the enemy may think

1004
01:37:18.880 --> 01:37:23.439
that we are fleeing from them,
in order that they may come in search

1005
01:37:23.479 --> 01:37:27.359
of us below. For if we
can attract them to this plane, we

1006
01:37:27.399 --> 01:37:30.399
will attack them all in such a
sudden matter that I hope not none of

1007
01:37:30.399 --> 01:37:36.279
them will escape from our hands.
Our horses are already somewhat tired, and

1008
01:37:36.359 --> 01:37:40.800
if we put the enemy to the
flight, we shall end by gaining the

1009
01:37:40.880 --> 01:37:45.159
summit of the mountain end quote.
At first, the strategy worked, as

1010
01:37:45.159 --> 01:37:50.920
Soto's men backtrack and lured several hundred
Incas onto a flat spot where the horses

1011
01:37:50.920 --> 01:37:56.760
could be used effectively, but the
Incas quickly caught on and retreated after losing

1012
01:37:56.760 --> 01:38:00.880
twenty men. The battle then continued
as before until twilight, with the Spaniards

1013
01:38:00.880 --> 01:38:06.159
being pummeled from above. If night
had not fallen, the Inca might have

1014
01:38:06.239 --> 01:38:11.479
killed them all. When night fell, the two sides broke off, fighting.

1015
01:38:12.079 --> 01:38:15.840
The Inca position troops to seal off
the trails and passes to the north,

1016
01:38:15.840 --> 01:38:18.399
south and east. On the west
was the canyon and a large river.

1017
01:38:19.399 --> 01:38:23.560
Under the cover of darkness, however, Soto was able to lead his

1018
01:38:23.600 --> 01:38:28.199
weary men up to a nearby hill
two crossbow shots away from the main position.

1019
01:38:28.920 --> 01:38:32.279
Here he quote cared for his wounded
and posted patrols and sentinels for the

1020
01:38:32.399 --> 01:38:36.520
night, and ordered that all the
horses remained saddled and bridled. Quote.

1021
01:38:38.680 --> 01:38:43.039
He then attempted to rally his soldiers, telling them quote, he thought the

1022
01:38:43.119 --> 01:38:45.960
day to come would not be so
perilous as that it had just finished,

1023
01:38:46.399 --> 01:38:49.840
and that God, our Lord,
who had delivered them from danger in the

1024
01:38:49.880 --> 01:38:56.000
past, would grant them victory in
the future. And he reminded them that

1025
01:38:56.079 --> 01:38:59.960
even when their horses were weary on
that day, they had attacked their enemy

1026
01:39:00.399 --> 01:39:04.039
from a great disadvantage, even though
their own number did not exceed fifty and

1027
01:39:04.159 --> 01:39:10.520
the enemy numbered at least eight thousand. Given this, should they not hope

1028
01:39:10.560 --> 01:39:15.760
for victory? But Sodo and every
other Spaniard knew the situation was desperate.

1029
01:39:16.479 --> 01:39:21.359
They were trapped on a frigid hillside
at twelve thousand feet, battered and bleeding,

1030
01:39:21.760 --> 01:39:27.399
and hemmed in by thousands of enemy
troops. As if this weren't enough,

1031
01:39:27.960 --> 01:39:32.960
Sodo received intelligence that an enormous army
under another Inca general was advancing rapidly.

1032
01:39:33.960 --> 01:39:40.239
No one slept that night as the
Spaniards prayed and watched nervously for movements

1033
01:39:40.239 --> 01:39:45.159
in the Inca camp. Then suddenly, about one in the morning, Sodo's

1034
01:39:45.159 --> 01:39:47.640
men heard the sound off in the
distance, drifting up from the canyon below.

1035
01:39:48.640 --> 01:39:53.119
At first they must have thought that
they were dreaming. Then the noise

1036
01:39:53.159 --> 01:39:57.199
became more distinct, and they all
knew exactly what it was, a Spanish

1037
01:39:57.199 --> 01:40:02.560
trumpet. It was the force under
Diego de Almagro. They were saved.

1038
01:40:03.439 --> 01:40:08.800
When the next day dawned, the
Inca were expecting a great victory and quickly

1039
01:40:08.880 --> 01:40:13.279
massed for an attack, only to
find to their astonishment that Soto's troop had

1040
01:40:13.359 --> 01:40:18.239
somehow doubled overnight and was dashing up
the slope to attack them. Recognizing how

1041
01:40:18.279 --> 01:40:24.239
the tables had turned, the Inca
quickly disappeared into the hills, continuing their

1042
01:40:24.279 --> 01:40:30.000
march to rendezvous with the approaching army. Almagro and Soto let them go under

1043
01:40:30.119 --> 01:40:35.920
orders for Pissaro. If Soto felt
any remorse or embarrassment over the near debacle,

1044
01:40:36.520 --> 01:40:42.159
no one ever mentions it, nor
is there any record a Pisarto's reaction

1045
01:40:42.520 --> 01:40:46.399
when he caught up with his renegade
captain two or three days later. One

1046
01:40:46.520 --> 01:40:53.960
imagines that Pizzaro must have at least
censured Hernando de Soto, whose insubordination in

1047
01:40:54.000 --> 01:40:58.479
this matter was serious enough that a
less pragmatic general might have lopped off his

1048
01:40:58.560 --> 01:41:03.760
head, but once again Soto's indispensability
as a fighter and leaders saved him.

1049
01:41:04.520 --> 01:41:10.840
For Francisco, Pisoto knew he could
not advance against the combined armies before him

1050
01:41:10.880 --> 01:41:15.760
without one of his best captains.
One senses from this moment, however,

1051
01:41:15.199 --> 01:41:21.319
Soto's days under Pisaro were definitely numbered. Even as he and others raced for

1052
01:41:21.359 --> 01:41:27.960
the final push to Cusco. On
November the fourteenth, two combined INCA armies

1053
01:41:28.000 --> 01:41:32.079
made one last desperate effort to throw
back the Spaniards in the hills surrounding Cusco.

1054
01:41:33.079 --> 01:41:38.680
Once again, Native soldiers fought fiercely, at one point, killing several

1055
01:41:38.680 --> 01:41:43.960
horses and forcing a Spanish tactical retreat, but by the time that darkness fell,

1056
01:41:44.520 --> 01:41:48.159
the Spaniards and their Indian auxiliaries had
pushed the armies of the INCA into

1057
01:41:48.199 --> 01:41:55.680
their final defensive positions outside Cusco.
That evening, the Inca erected their tents

1058
01:41:55.880 --> 01:42:00.520
and lit their fires, exhausted and
feeling the intense despair of an army that

1059
01:42:00.560 --> 01:42:04.520
on four occasions had come tantalizingly close
to victory, but each time had failed,

1060
01:42:05.840 --> 01:42:11.279
Battered, bloody, and eleven hundred
miles away from their homes in Ecuador.

1061
01:42:11.840 --> 01:42:15.760
These Inca soldiers decided to give up
the city they had fought so hard

1062
01:42:15.840 --> 01:42:20.640
to capture throughout their long preceding civil
war, and had tried furiously to defend

1063
01:42:21.000 --> 01:42:29.640
against these bizarre and unexpected iron clad
warriors. That evening, they slipped away

1064
01:42:29.960 --> 01:42:34.760
under cover of darkness, retreating into
a mountainous region southwest of Cusco. At

1065
01:42:34.800 --> 01:42:40.800
first light, the Spaniards rushed the
abandoned Inca position, expecting a renewal of

1066
01:42:40.800 --> 01:42:45.439
the previous day's fighting. Instead,
they found an empty hillside of spouldering ashes,

1067
01:42:45.880 --> 01:42:51.560
yama dung, and hastily discarded baggage. The battle for Cousco was over.

1068
01:42:55.520 --> 01:42:59.760
Soto el Magro and the rest quickly
entered the city and took up some

1069
01:42:59.800 --> 01:43:02.800
of the best lodgings that they could
find. But Sodo had little time to

1070
01:43:02.920 --> 01:43:09.680
enjoy these new luxuries, as fresh
reports came in from scouts that another army

1071
01:43:09.720 --> 01:43:14.720
had been sighted just twenty miles southwest
of the city. This prompted Pisto to

1072
01:43:14.760 --> 01:43:18.359
dispatch Sodo to investigate and, if
possible, to smash or at least drive

1073
01:43:18.399 --> 01:43:24.359
away the enemy. As usual for
his personality, Sodo could hardly wait to

1074
01:43:24.359 --> 01:43:28.840
give up his luxurious new life to
dash back to the wilds. In fact,

1075
01:43:29.119 --> 01:43:33.079
he moved so quickly out of Cusco
that he overran a small contingent of

1076
01:43:33.079 --> 01:43:39.319
a retreating Inca army in a bad
past just before a canyon. These men

1077
01:43:39.359 --> 01:43:44.640
were able to hold off Soto's advanced
long enough for the Anka commander to burn

1078
01:43:44.720 --> 01:43:48.600
the bridge behind them, a strategic
victory that forced Soto into a highly vulnerable

1079
01:43:48.600 --> 01:43:53.439
position, having to ford a river
deep in a canyon, where the Inca

1080
01:43:53.520 --> 01:43:56.960
forces, perched on a high bluff, were able to hurl down a steady

1081
01:43:56.960 --> 01:44:00.600
barrage of rocks, spears, and
arrows as the Spaniards attempted to cross the

1082
01:44:00.720 --> 01:44:05.640
river. This gave the Inca commander
enough time to pull back into a region

1083
01:44:05.680 --> 01:44:10.720
of high, rugged valleys and bridges
to the west. Once across the river,

1084
01:44:11.119 --> 01:44:15.760
Soto pursued the Inca army for ten
more days before calling off the chase,

1085
01:44:15.399 --> 01:44:20.359
telling Pisarow when he returned to Cusco
that this region was quote the wildest

1086
01:44:20.520 --> 01:44:25.840
and most inaccessible they had ever seen
end quote, But he brought the good

1087
01:44:25.880 --> 01:44:30.119
news that the Inca general was decisively
moving away from the capital and was no

1088
01:44:30.199 --> 01:44:36.319
longer close enough to threaten it.
Soto arrived back in Cusco in late July

1089
01:44:36.479 --> 01:44:41.880
or early August, this time with
manko Inca in tow, and quickly restored

1090
01:44:41.960 --> 01:44:45.720
order to the capital city. Immediately
thereafter, Soto, as was planned,

1091
01:44:46.279 --> 01:44:51.039
was sworn in as lieutenant governor of
Cusco. But we have little documents from

1092
01:44:51.079 --> 01:44:56.199
this period, so there's not many
specifics when it comes to Soto's actions,

1093
01:44:56.199 --> 01:45:00.399
etc. My guess is he probably
was dealing with the day to day business

1094
01:45:00.399 --> 01:45:05.960
of administering to a region and essentially
establishing a kingdom while Pisaro, as we

1095
01:45:06.039 --> 01:45:11.880
know, was off building what would
become Lima. The biggest issue we know

1096
01:45:12.000 --> 01:45:16.279
he dealt with was dividing up the
property amongst the different factions present by property,

1097
01:45:16.399 --> 01:45:19.840
I mean that literally, by and
large, we're talking about Ncomiendez here.

1098
01:45:21.239 --> 01:45:26.680
At first, Sodo seemed reluctant to
divide up anything. When he did,

1099
01:45:27.079 --> 01:45:30.640
Sodo did a fair job of it. He didn't favor the piece Arto

1100
01:45:30.720 --> 01:45:34.920
faction, as they no doubt expected
him to. And during this time Sodo

1101
01:45:35.000 --> 01:45:39.279
brought two men into his inner circle
who are going to be instrumental in his

1102
01:45:39.319 --> 01:45:45.800
operations in North America. One was
Juan Ruislibo, and the other was Luis

1103
01:45:45.880 --> 01:45:50.239
de mos Cosco. Both men would
accompany him back to Spain and then to

1104
01:45:50.319 --> 01:45:56.760
La Florida, and mentioned them now
because Sodo came close to them while both

1105
01:45:56.800 --> 01:46:01.000
were in Cusco. By the spring
of fifteen thirty five, the odds of

1106
01:46:01.079 --> 01:46:05.520
Sodo doing what he really wanted,
that is, conquering his own slice of

1107
01:46:05.560 --> 01:46:13.600
the inc Empire were in steep decline. There were already two unauthorized expeditions to

1108
01:46:13.640 --> 01:46:18.279
the north and to the south.
Word reached Peru that spring that Charles the

1109
01:46:18.359 --> 01:46:24.560
fifth had decided to give it to
Diego de Almangro, not that there was

1110
01:46:24.600 --> 01:46:30.680
anything worth having to the south anyway, but Almagro's arrival that spring in Cusco

1111
01:46:30.760 --> 01:46:35.159
complicated things for Soto. At the
moment, no one knew that Almagro had

1112
01:46:35.159 --> 01:46:42.720
been awarded what is today Chile Instead. Pisaro now declared Almagro the new lord

1113
01:46:42.760 --> 01:46:47.760
of Cusco, but his brother,
Hernando Pizzaro, was determined not to let

1114
01:46:47.800 --> 01:46:55.279
Almagro take up that position. Evidently, on one occasion, Hernando drew his

1115
01:46:55.319 --> 01:46:58.319
sword on Sodo, who was just
kind of in the middle on this,

1116
01:46:59.000 --> 01:47:03.680
demanding that he sighed with him.
Soto calmly told him to put the weapon

1117
01:47:03.760 --> 01:47:11.720
down and stop quote looking for scandals
end quote. This was not the end

1118
01:47:11.760 --> 01:47:15.800
of the incident, however, For
quote when Almagro heard about this, he

1119
01:47:15.880 --> 01:47:21.319
said that Juan and Gonzalo Pisaro were
fickle and sniveling brats, and he set

1120
01:47:21.359 --> 01:47:27.800
many horsemen from among his allies to
protect the messenger end quote. He also

1121
01:47:27.840 --> 01:47:31.039
demanded that Soto, as the chief
magistrate of the city, returned to the

1122
01:47:31.079 --> 01:47:36.640
Pisarto's palace and place Juan Pisaro on
their house arrest so that he could not

1123
01:47:36.720 --> 01:47:44.079
leave the city. This demand forced
Soto to decide between the two camps,

1124
01:47:44.079 --> 01:47:47.960
since to arrest Juan Pisarto would make
him an enemy of the Pizarro family and

1125
01:47:48.119 --> 01:47:55.000
not to arrest him would alienate Diego
de Almagro. In the end, Sodo's

1126
01:47:55.000 --> 01:48:01.079
decision was easy. Pizzaro was obviously
pushing him out as Almagro was becoming master

1127
01:48:01.199 --> 01:48:06.279
of the next phase of conquest in
the south, where everyone assumed, again

1128
01:48:06.359 --> 01:48:11.880
this is before the march to the
South, that there'd be more Kaja marcas,

1129
01:48:12.119 --> 01:48:17.079
more Cusco's, more rooms filled with
gold. Thus, as a contemporary

1130
01:48:17.159 --> 01:48:24.279
historian notes, Soto at this point
abandoned any semblance of impartiality and jumped quote

1131
01:48:24.479 --> 01:48:30.760
in bed with Almagro and supported his
interests. Sodo must have realized that Juan

1132
01:48:30.800 --> 01:48:36.000
Pisardo wasn't going to give himself up
to arrest easily. Still, he walked

1133
01:48:36.039 --> 01:48:41.600
across the hot, pebble strewn plaza
to the Casana Palace, dressed in his

1134
01:48:41.640 --> 01:48:45.880
magistrate's clothes and accompanied by the city's
constable and a small guard. He demanded

1135
01:48:46.000 --> 01:48:49.640
the young Pisoto and his men turn
over their arms and remain under house arrest,

1136
01:48:50.720 --> 01:48:57.199
to which Juan responded with bitterness and
pride, screaming more obscenities and insults

1137
01:48:57.199 --> 01:49:02.119
at Soto before once again grabbing a
lamp to wave in SODA's direction. By

1138
01:49:02.199 --> 01:49:08.199
now her another De Soto had had
enough of this, always preferring action to

1139
01:49:08.239 --> 01:49:12.760
talk, He grabbed a lance himself
from one of his guards and challenged Juan

1140
01:49:12.800 --> 01:49:17.880
Pisaro to fight in the plaza.
Ready to brawl, the two men strolled

1141
01:49:17.960 --> 01:49:23.920
out into the bright sunshine under the
peaks that's around Cuzco. Here, Hernando

1142
01:49:24.000 --> 01:49:29.479
de Soto and Juan Pisaro threw off
their capes as a crowd of visitors watched

1143
01:49:29.479 --> 01:49:33.359
the spectacle of two of their most
senior leaders swinging heavy weapons at each other,

1144
01:49:33.760 --> 01:49:39.239
glancing off blows and attempting to knock
each other to the ground. But

1145
01:49:39.319 --> 01:49:44.039
both men were stout and muscular and
expert fighters, which meant the duel continued

1146
01:49:44.039 --> 01:49:47.640
for some time without either man getting
the advantage. As the fight wore on,

1147
01:49:47.960 --> 01:49:51.680
words spread quickly to the followers of
Pisarto, el Magro and Soto,

1148
01:49:51.920 --> 01:49:57.079
who armed themselves and rushed to the
plaza, threatening to escalate the conflict.

1149
01:49:58.640 --> 01:50:03.960
What happens next is not clear.
Our main historian wasn't present, but he

1150
01:50:04.039 --> 01:50:10.279
claims that Juan Pisardo abruptly broke off
the duel and retired to his palace when

1151
01:50:10.319 --> 01:50:15.319
it became clear his followers were too
few to defeat his enemies. Eyewitnesses claim

1152
01:50:15.560 --> 01:50:19.359
that a recently arrived royal treasurer,
a guy by the name of Antonio de

1153
01:50:19.439 --> 01:50:24.760
Lez de Guzman, stopped the fight
dramatically by grabbing a weapon of his own

1154
01:50:24.920 --> 01:50:28.960
and leaping between Sodo and Pissaro,
holding up his lands and shout into the

1155
01:50:29.000 --> 01:50:32.840
combatants. Quote the Spaniards were too
far in number or to battle against themselves,

1156
01:50:33.239 --> 01:50:36.760
and if the two sides started fighting, the Indians would kill those who

1157
01:50:36.800 --> 01:50:42.840
survived, and the city would be
lost. End quote. Hearing these words

1158
01:50:43.239 --> 01:50:46.560
this version of the story, at
least Sodo cooled down and realized that his

1159
01:50:46.640 --> 01:50:50.119
duty was to stop the fight,
which he did, though he was unwilling

1160
01:50:50.119 --> 01:50:54.920
to excuse what had happened. Returning
to his own house in a rage,

1161
01:50:55.279 --> 01:50:59.199
he issued orders forbidding the Pisardos to
leave the city, and then he sent

1162
01:50:59.239 --> 01:51:03.520
his constable and presumably a large unit
of armed deputies to arrest je Pisato,

1163
01:51:03.960 --> 01:51:11.039
who apparently surrendered without a fight and
was taken to the city jail. Again,

1164
01:51:11.119 --> 01:51:15.960
our contemporary historian adds that neither party
acted with impartiality or wisdom during this

1165
01:51:15.000 --> 01:51:19.359
whole affair, though he mostly blames
the twenty four year old one Pisato,

1166
01:51:19.920 --> 01:51:25.720
whom he says was quote always turbulent
and filled with envy for one another end

1167
01:51:25.760 --> 01:51:30.600
quote. Even in jail, according
to this man, the young Pisaro threatened

1168
01:51:30.640 --> 01:51:35.399
to quote go out and kill everyone. End quote. Soon afterwards, Francisco

1169
01:51:35.439 --> 01:51:41.560
Pisato himself arrived in Cusco to diffuse
the situation, bringing with him the king's

1170
01:51:41.600 --> 01:51:47.279
actual concession to al Magro. Now
once things calmed down, Pisardo turned on

1171
01:51:47.319 --> 01:51:54.039
Sodo for openly siding with al Magro. But now Sodo realized he had no

1172
01:51:54.159 --> 01:51:59.800
future with the Pisatos, and so
he made one last ditch effort to remain

1173
01:52:00.000 --> 01:52:04.520
in Peru. He offered his services
to Diego de Almago, who was to

1174
01:52:04.640 --> 01:52:11.720
lead the expedition south. Certainly,
Sodo was the best military man available and

1175
01:52:11.880 --> 01:52:15.960
probably the best for the job,
but Almagro wanted loyalty, not skill,

1176
01:52:16.720 --> 01:52:24.560
and so chose Rodrigo de Orgonez instead
as his second in command. Sodo,

1177
01:52:25.000 --> 01:52:29.800
watching Almagro depart south with his army
on July fifth, fifteen thirty five,

1178
01:52:30.560 --> 01:52:36.079
realized his time in Peru was over. He would return to Spain and ask

1179
01:52:36.159 --> 01:52:42.600
the king for fresh lands to conquer. In late fifteen thirty five, he

1180
01:52:42.680 --> 01:52:46.600
left Peru for Spain, along with
enough treasure to bribe court officials, pay

1181
01:52:46.680 --> 01:52:53.840
for the expedition and entice young recruits. He probably left before the winter storms

1182
01:52:53.880 --> 01:52:59.439
began in November. At this point, Sodo would have been thirty five years

1183
01:52:59.479 --> 01:53:03.319
old. He had become vastly wealthier
than he could have ever dreamt of,

1184
01:53:04.159 --> 01:53:10.840
but it wasn't enough. Persoto was
very much like Alexander the Great. He

1185
01:53:10.960 --> 01:53:15.319
just wanted to see what was over
that next tale. He wanted greater glory,

1186
01:53:15.720 --> 01:53:20.760
fortune and success, and now his
path led him back to Europe and

1187
01:53:20.920 --> 01:53:24.000
the court of Charles the Fifth,