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Updated: June 2, 2025
Pretending, however, to make no resistance to the peaceable exercise of authority, he offered to go with his followers, and reside at any place the Adelantado might appoint. The latter immediately designated the village of the cacique Diego Colon, the same native of the Lucayos Islands who had been baptized in Spain, and had since married a daughter of Guarionex.
The two governors, Ojeda and Nicuessa, whom the king had appointed to colonize and command at the Isthmus of Darien, in Terra Firma, having failed in their undertaking, the sovereign, in 1514, wrote to Hispaniola, permitting the Adelantado, Don Bartholomew, if so inclined, to take charge of settling the coast of Veragua, and to govern that country under the admiral Don Diego, conformably to his privileges.
The Adelantado lost no time in ascending the river in a well-armed boat to the residence of Quibian, the principal cacique of the country. The chief, a tall powerful warrior, received him in a friendly manner, and presented him with various golden ornaments. The following day Quibian visited the Admiral, by whom he was hospitably entertained.
To prevent him carrying out his plan, the Adelantado offered to go up the river and capture him and his principal chiefs and family during the night, and to bring them in chains on board. Taking Diego Mendez, with seventy men and an interpreter, he set off on the 30th of March.
These unexpected acts of rigor, proceeding from a quarter which had been long so lenient, had the desired effect. The conspirators fled for the most part to Xaragua, their old and favorite retreat. They were not suffered to congregate there again, and concert new seditions. The Adelantado, seconded by Roldan, pursued them with his characteristic rapidity of movement and vigor of arm.
On Friday, the ninth of the month of April, one thousand five hundred and ninety-five, Adelantado Alvaro de Mendana set sail with his fleet for the conquest and settlement of the western islands in the South Sea, sailing from the port of Callao de Lima, which lies in twelve and one-half degrees south latitude.
The story he had to tell the Admiral was as we know not a pleasant one Tristan and his men dead, several of Bartholomew's force, including the Adelantado himself, wounded, and all in a state of panic and fear at the hostile natives. The Spaniards would do nothing to make the little fortress safer, and were bent only on escaping from the place of horror.
In this they not merely vindicated themselves from the charge of rebellion, but claimed great merit, as having dissuaded their followers from a resolution to kill the Adelantado, in revenge of his oppressions, prevailing upon them to await patiently for redress from the admiral.
The whole island, he was told, was given up to rejoicings on the happy event; and they only awaited his arrival to acknowledge allegiance to the crown of Portugal, and hail him as Adelantado of the Seven Cities.
The Adelantado gazed with enraptured eye over a vast wilderness of continued forest, where only here and there a bright column of smoke from amidst the trees gave sign of some savage hamlet, or solitary wigwam, and the wild unappropriated aspect of this golden country delighted him more than if he had beheld it covered with towns and cities, and adorned with all the graces of cultivation.
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