The questions of the cacique Nicaragua
A cross-examination of Europeans by an American ruler that the Spanish side put into print. Lopez de Gomara gives the questions at length — the flood, the stars, where souls go, whether the pope dies, why so few men want so much gold — and says the Spaniards stood amazed. The same pages carry the cost: an embassy offering friendship or war, a mass baptism some said was badly made, lords refusing to give up their dances, and a second cacique who raised an army instead.
Why this wins its question: The cacique Nicaragua's questions are a set piece of Central American history that in English is almost always met third hand: a paraphrase of a paraphrase, usually trimmed to the line about why so few men want so much gold, and almost never with a volume and page attached. The chapter is in full view in Barcia's 1749 collection and it is searchable. This entry prints the whole of it — the ultimatum that opened the embassy, the conditional acceptance "si tan buena le pareciese", the twelve or so questions in the order the chronicle gives them, and the chronicler's own verdict that no Indian he knew of had ever spoken so — and then keeps reading, which is where the value is. The next columns hold the nine thousand baptisms with the note that some said they were badly made, the caciques' refusal to give up their dances and their weapons with the argument they gave for it and the Spaniard's decision not to press, the cacique Nicoyan's six gold idols surrendered because he would speak to them no more, and Diriangen asking three days to consult his wives and priests and spending them raising an army. It closes by saying plainly what a single second-hand witness writing through an interpreter can and cannot establish. That is the episode as a document rather than as an anecdote, with the admiration and the coercion on the same three pages, which is where the chronicler put them.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The setting is a coasting voyage looking for a strait, and the chronicle dates it. Chapter CXCIX, "De el Descubrimiento de Nicaragua", records that Gil Gonzalez de Avila discovered and travelled the hundred and thirty leagues of coast from Cabo Blanco to Chorotega "el Ano de mil quinientos veinte i dos", having armed four caravels at Tararequi with bread, arms and mercery, taken horses, Indians and Spaniards aboard and Andres Nino as pilot, and sailed on 26 January. He "busco Estrecho con gran diligencia" because "llevaba instruccion, i mandado para ello del Consejo de Indias" — the search for a passage to the Moluccas that would avoid the Portuguese — until his supplies ran out and shipworm ate his ships. He took possession at a river he named de la Posesion and named the Bahia de Fonseca for the bishop of Burgos who favoured him as president of the Indies.
The approach to the cacique was an ultimatum, and the chronicler prints it as one. Gil Gonzalez sent an embassy which "sumariamente contenia, fuese su Amigo, pues no iba por le mal hacer, servidor del Emperador, que Monarca del Mundo era, i Christiano, que mucho le cumplia, i si no que le haria Guerra." The cacique's calculation is given as a reading of force: "Nicaragua, entendiendo la manera de aquellos nuevos Hombres, su resoluta demanda, la fuerca de las Espadas, i braveca de los Caballos, respondio por quatro Caballeros de su Corte, que aceptaba la amistad, por el bien de la Paz, i aceptaria la Fe, si tan buena le pareciese, como se la loaban." The offer of friendship carried the alternative of war in the same sentence, and the acceptance was conditional on the doctrine turning out to be as good as advertised.
The questions themselves are the reason the chapter exists, and the chronicle gives them at length instead of summarising them. Chapter CC is headed "De ciertas preguntas bien avisadas, que hico el Cacique Nicaragua". He asked "si tenian noticia los Christianos del gran Diluvio, que anego la Tierra, Hombres, i Animales, i si havia de haver otro: si la Tierra se havia de trastornar, o caer el Cielo: quando, i como perderian su claridad, i curso el Sol, la Luna, i Estrellas: que tan grandes eran, i quien las movia, i tenia?" He asked the cause of the darkness of nights and of cold, faulting nature "que no hacia siempre claro, i calor, pues era mejor". He asked what honour and thanks were owed to the Christians' triune God who made the heavens and the sun, and "donde tenian de estar las Almas, i que havian de hacer, salidas del cuerpo, pues vivian tan poco, siendo inmortales?" He asked "si moria el Santo Padre de Roma, Vicario de Christo", how Jesus being God is man and his mother a virgin in bearing him, whether the emperor and king of Castile "de quien tantas proecas, virtudes, i poderio contaban, era mortal", and last "para que tan pocos Hombres querian tanto Oro, como buscaban?"
The Spanish chronicler's verdict on the questioner is on the record and it is not grudging. "Gil Goncalez, i todos los Suios estuvieron atentos, i maravillados, oiendo tales preguntas, i palabras a vn Hombre medio desnudo, barbaro, i sin letras: i ciertamente fue vn admirable Raconamiento el de Nicaragua, i nunca Indio (a lo que alcanco) hablo como el a nuestros Espanoles." The praise is stated in the vocabulary of the writer's own prejudice — half naked, barbarous, unlettered — which is exactly what makes it evidence: a sixteenth-century Spaniard who thought the man beneath him in every category he had, printed that the reasoning was admirable and that no Indian he knew of had ever spoken like it.
What the answers were, the chronicle does not say, and it says why not. "Respondiole Gil Goncalez como Christiano, i lo mas filosoficamente que supo, i satisficole a quanto pregunto harto bien. No pongo las racones, que seria fastidioso, pues cada vno que fuere Christiano, las sabe, i las puede considerar, i con la respuesta lo convirtio." The one exchange the chapter does preserve after the disputation is the cacique's aside: "pregunto al oido al Faraute, si aquella tan sutil, i avisada Gente de Espana venia del Cielo, i si bajo en Nubes, o volando: i pidio luego el Bautismo, consintiendo derribar los Idolos." So the record of the most celebrated theological exchange in the early Spanish Main preserves the American side of it in full and drops the European side as too tedious to print, on the author's explicit judgment that his readers already know it.
The conversion was mass, immediate, and doubted in print by the chronicler's own contemporaries. The cacique "se bautico con toda su Casa, i Corte, i con otras nueve mil Personas de su Reino, que fue vna gran conversion: aunque algunos dijeron no ser bien hecha, pero bastabales creer de coracon." The preaching had been done by Gil Gonzalez together with a friar of the Merced, "reprobando la Idolatria, Borrachez, Bailes, Sodomia, Sacrificio, i comer de Hombres". Nine thousand baptisms in one place, an objection to their validity recorded on the same line, and a defence of them that rests on interior assent rather than on instruction.
Two of the terms were refused, and the refusal is quoted as an argument rather than reported as resistance. Of everything Gil Gonzalez said, the cacique and his knights were content with all "sino de dos, que fue vna, no hiciesen Guerra, i otra, que no bailasen con borrachera: ca mucho sentian dejar las Armas, i el placer. Dijeron, que no perjudicaban a nadie en bailar, ni tomar placer: i que no querian poner al rincon sus Vanderas, sus Arcos, sus Cascos, i Penachos, ni dejar tratar la Guerra, i Armas a sus Mugeres, para hilar ellos, texer, i cabar como Mugeres, i Esclavos." The chronicler then records that the Spaniard dropped the point — "No les replico a esto Gil Goncalez; ca los vio alterados" — but had all the idols taken out of the great temple and a cross put in, and built a shrine of brick with steps outside the town. Not everything demanded was conceded, and the chronicle prints the concession the Spaniard made.
The next cacique used the same interval of consultation to prepare an attack, and that belongs in the record beside the disputation. Chapter CCI has Diriangen, "Cacique guerrero, i valiente", arrive with five hundred men and twenty women "todos en ordenanca de Guerra, aunque sin Armas, i con diez Vanderas, i cinco Bocinas", the women giving twenty gold axes each of some eighteen pesos. Asked to become Christian, "El dijo, que le placia, pidiendo tres Dias de termino para comunicarlo con sus Mugeres, i Sacerdotes: i era para juntar Gente, i robar los Christianos, despreciando su pequeno Esquadron, i diciendo, que no eran mas Hombres que el." He came back armed, fought most of a day, withdrew at night with heavy losses "teniendo los barbudos por mas que Hombres", and began calling on his neighbours, "injuriado que no vencio". The three days for consulting wives and priests are the same procedure the first cacique used to accept; here they are used to refuse.
The chronicler's own arithmetic of the expedition puts the baptisms and the gold in one clause, and marks the gold as partly taken. Gil Gonzalez, having turned away from Diriangen "de miedo, o por guardar el Oro, que ia tenia", walked more than two hundred leagues from town to town: "Bautico treinta i dos mil Personas, huvo docientas mil Pesos de Oro bajo, dado, i tomado: otros dicen mas, i algunos menos: empero fue mucha riqueca, qual nunca el pensara, i que lo ensobervecio." Given and taken; and the wealth is said to have made him arrogant. Earlier the cacique Nicoyan had given him fourteen thousand pesos of gold "i seis Idolos de lo mismo, no maiores que palmo, diciendo, que se los llevase, pues nunca mas les tenia de hablar, ni rogar, como solia" — the melting value of a cult handed over by its own lord.
What one witness cannot settle should be said before the passage is used. Lopez de Gomara never crossed the Atlantic; he was chaplain and secretary to Hernan Cortes and wrote from relaciones he does not name on these pages, so for the words of the cacique he is at least at second hand and probably further, and the questions as printed have passed through an interpreter — the faraute the chapter itself names — before reaching him. The text was read here in Barcia's Madrid printing of 1749, whose editor advertises on his own title page that he collected these historians and "traduxo en parte" and annotated them; nothing opened here collates it against the 1552 edition. No indigenous account of this meeting exists, and none was consulted. What can be claimed is what the Spanish side chose to print about it, which is the subject of this entry; what the cacique actually said is not recoverable from it.