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Updated: June 3, 2025
Oviedo says that between his seventieth year, which was his age when he came to America, and his eighty-sixth year, when he died, the infamous Pedrarias caused more than two million Indians to be put to death, besides a numerous lot of his own countrymen. If we lop off two ciphers, the record is still bad enough.
When Pedrarias heard this, grievously wounded as he was, he wiped the blood away with the sleeve of his mail, and went fiercely against him: and he took the sword in both hands, and thought to give it him upon his head; but the blow missed, and fell upon the horse, and cut off great part of his nostrils, and the reins with it; and the horse immediately ran away because of the great wound which he had received.
The Bishop, Quevado, however, intervened in favour of the single-minded ex-Governor; a reconciliation of a kind was patched up, and, in order to strengthen this, Balboa was officially betrothed to the daughter of Pedrarias a purely political move this, since Balboa was already united to the dusky daughter of Careta, an aboriginal chief.
Pedrarias, who was then in command at Panama, stimulated by the accounts of the rich country that Gonzales had discovered, sent Hernando de Cordova in 1522 to subdue and settle the country of Nicaragua.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the name of Darien was given vaguely to the whole coast extending from the Rio Damaquiel to the Punta de San Blas, on 2 1/4 degrees of longitude. The cruelties exercised by Pedrarias Davila rendered almost inaccessible to the Spaniards a country which was one of the first they had colonized.
With Balboa he marched across the Isthmus, and was the second white man to look upon the Great South Sea in 1513. Subsequently, he was an officer under that American Nero, Pedro Arias de Avila, commonly called Pedrarias, the founder and Governor of Panama, the conqueror of Nicaragua and parts adjacent.
Then went they into the field, where Don Diego Ordonez was awaiting them, and Pedrarias entered the lists, and the judges placed them each in his place, and divided the sun between them, and went out, leaving them in the lists. VI. Then they turned their horses one against the other, and ran at each other full bravely, like good knights.
They were men those conquistadores whatever else they were big, cruel, heroic fellows like Bastida, Nicuesa, Balboa, Pedrarias the Assassin, and the rest. They oppressed the natives terribly, yet they paved the way for civilization, after all. The Spaniards did try to uplift the Indians, you know. And the life in the colonies was like that in old Spain, only more romantic and picturesque.
He wrote letter after letter to the king, depicting the results of Pedrarias' actions, and some tidings of his successive communications, came trickling back to the governor, who had been especially cautioned by the King to deal mercifully with the inhabitants and set them an example of Christian kindness and gentleness that they might be won to the religion of Jesus thereby!
It has been traced by abler hands than mine, and, though brief, forms one of the most brilliant passages in the annals of the American conquerors.4 But though Pedrarias was willing to cut short the glorious career of his rival, he was not insensible to the important consequences of his discoveries.
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