Sir Walter Raleigh: In Life & Legend (21 page)

Ralegh's insistence that he was denying himself the immediate, short-term benefits of plunder and ransoms in favour of the larger enterprise of alliance with the native peoples has met controversy among historians. Was he sincere in his protestations of friendship towards the Indians? Or was he really an unreconstructed conquistador in the style of Cortes and Pizarro, or indeed of Berrío? His talk of entering the maidenhead of Guiana hardly suggests a peaceful operation. Much of his language is indeed of conquest. It is impossible to know, and it may well be that he did not know himself, whether his promises of friendship were sincerely meant. Had he returned to the Orinoco the following March and led an Indian alliance against the Epuremei and the Spanish, it is unlikely to have held together for long. Even if Ralegh had persisted in his role as 'Protector of the Indians', the self-seeking of his colonists would surely have undermined this position.

A shorter, anonymous document was prepared alongside the Discoverie entitled 'Of the Voyage for Guiana', its purpose to persuade the Queen and her Council into backing a major expedition to the Orinoco. Where the Discoverie is rambling and high-flown, this is methodical and analytical. It survives in only one anonymous manuscript copy in the British Library. While Ralegh may have written it himself, the style and approach make this unlikely. Lawrence Keymis is a possible candidate, though the style is much more direct than his; maybe Thomas Harriot was the author.
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 The text is divided into three sections: first, the justification for subduing Guiana; second, the possibility and ease of achieving this; and third, the method of doing so.

The acquisition of Guiana would first be justified, since 'by this meanes infinite nombers of soules may bee brought from theyr idolatry...incivility to the worshipping of the true god aright to civill conversation'. Their bodies would also be freed from the 'intollerable tirrany' of the Spaniards. Second, the Queen's dominions would be 'exceedingly enlarged and this realme inestimably enriched'. Third, even if the first two prospects were not realized, the Spaniards would be prevented from acquiring the overweening power, which would otherwise be theirs. To these general considerations were added the facts that the native tribes, known as the 'borderers', had already submitted themselves to the Queen; that the Spanish were so widely hated that the Indians would support her; that the voyage from England was very short; that the country of Guiana was so well endowed with food and other provisions as to require no great expense in fitting out an expedition; and that Guiana, once conquered, could easily be defended. Who, having contemplated the cruelties of the Spaniards, would not be encouraged to undertake this voyage?

Having shown, to his own contentment, that the acquisition of Guiana was both justifiable and practicable, the author asked how it could be done. There were two ways: one would be the forcible expulsion of the invading Inga tribe from the region, which would be the more profitable course. The danger of this would be a possible alliance of the Inga with the Spanish, which could be disastrous. Such a conquest would also be unjust; and the author argues, with a salvo of biblical quotations, that God gave the earth to all men whether or not they were Christians. Bellarmine, he says, was correct to assert that Pope Alexander VI had no right to donate the lands of infidels to Christians or anyone else. Christians should attempt to convert the heathen peacefully but not by force.

To win their support the Indians could be shown the truth about their conquerors by distribution of the books of Las Casas, the great defender of their rights, and by telling them of the wrongs committed by the Pope. At the same time they could be won to the cause of the English by sending presents to their chiefs, telling them of the greatness and virtues of Queen Elizabeth, by sending them maps of the English counties and of the City of London, and by explaining to them that the Queen's religion is Tarr differing' from that of the Spanish. To clinch this propaganda campaign, the English should enter into a covenant with the tribes. The first article of this should be the condition that the Indians embrace the Christian faith. To the objection that this might be hard to achieve the author provided a number of counter examples, some of them of doubtful relevance. Furthermore, the Inga emperor must surrender his empire and receive it back as the Queen's tenant in chief; he must also render her 'a great tribute', and send special hostages to England to be 'civilled and converted heere' and married to English women. Some of these points resembled certain of the proposals for pacifying Ireland in the sixteenth century.

In return the English would defend the Indians against the Spanish, help the former to recover Peru, instruct them in 'liberall arts of Civility', and provide military training. This final point is essential to the whole plan, for the Indians would then become effective allies against the Spanish. To the objection that the Indians, being armed and trained, would turn against the English, the author answered that the former are 'a people very faythfull, humble, patient, pecefull, simple without subtilty [or] niallice...as meeke as lambes, as harmeles as children'. Topiawari's negotiations with Ralegh showed that while the Indians lacked armour and gunpowder, their negotiating skills were as sharp as those of Europeans. To all objections the author stressed the absolute necessity of sending reliable, godly preachers and imposing a strict 'martial discipline' upon English soldiers and settlers. Sadly, however enthusiastic Ralegh and his allies might have been, this tract was about as distant from reality as was the Discoverie of Guiana itself. Beset by the danger of another Spanish invasion, by wars in France and the Netherlands and by the stirrings of a rising in Ireland, no monarch, let alone one as properly cautious as Elizabeth, would commit to so hazardous and expensive a proposal.

Ralegh was, however, still hopeful of success, and with some support from Cecil, Howard and others fitted out a second expedition under Lawrence Keymis.
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 Keymis set off from Portland Road on 26 January 1596 with two ships, the Darling and a pinnace, the Discoverer, and he was back in England by 29 June. His account of the voyage was published in October of the same year. Unfortunately, although Keymis was a Fellow of Balliol, his literary skills were limited. His account is pretentious, verbose, repetitious and often obscure. But he was determined to defend the Guiana project against its many detractors and, in his own words, 'to remove all fig-leaves from our unbeliefe', revealing the truth of Ralegh's story.
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Keymis reached the mainland of South America well south of the Orinoco, with instructions to search for rivers that led into the interior free from Spanish interference. Shortly after landing his expedition met an Indian chief, Wareo, who had been driven from his true home by Spaniards and by another Indian tribe, the Arwacas, who lived a vagabond life moving from one to another. Wareo and other Indian chiefs Keymis encountered claimed to be hoping for the return of the English and spoke reverently of Queen Elizabeth. They recalled the disciplined behaviour of the English soldiers who respected the women and property of the Indians, in contrast with the Spaniards, who had raped and looted without restraint after Ralegh's departure.

As in the previous year, Carapana, one of the most important chiefs on the Orinoco, sent a messenger to Keymis, saying that he was 'sicke, olde and weake', and unable to make the journey, but professing loyal friendship. However, when Keymis suggested that he himself should go to meet Carapana, he was strictly warned against it, on the ground that it might provoke the Spanish to attack. Changes had taken place in the short interval between Ralegh's departure and Keymis's arrival. Topiawari had died and had been succeeded by his nephew, known as Don Juan. Topiawari's son, who had gone to England with Sir Walter, had evidently been disinherited. The Spanish were growing stronger, but increasingly quarrelsome. Valdes, Governor of Cumana, was trying to eliminate Berrío, who in turn was waiting for reinforcements from his son and the return of his camp-master, de Vera, then in Spain.

Keymis did collect a mass of information on the rivers, 'nations', towns and chiefs, all arranged in tabular form. In particular, he reported that an alternative route to Manoa was available up the Essequibo, the river forming the present-day boundary between Venezuela and Guyana. There were no Spaniards here and the Indians reported that it took them twenty days to reach the head of the river from the coast; that they then carried their provisions on their shoulders for a day's journey and 'afterwards they returne for their Canoas, and beare them likewise to the side of a lake'. This, Keymis assumed, must be the great lake on which 'Manoa' stood.
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On Keymis's return to England, Ralegh sent out one further expedition to Guiana. Captain Leonard Berry and Master William Downe left England just after Christmas 1597, in a pinnace called the Watte, to explore possible routes to 'Manoa'. They met an independent explorer, John Ley, in the John of London on the River Courantyne. Attempts to explore upriver were abandoned. Ley made two more voyages to Guiana before he died. From 1596 Ralegh was too much distracted by his part in the raid on Cadiz, the Islands Voyage and his responsibility for home defence in the south-west to attend to Guiana. His interest was not revived until about 1607, when it seems to have been focused on gold and silver mines rather than Manoa.

Ralegh's Discoverie was an immediate literary success.
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 George Chapman wrote a celebratory poem on Guiana to support the cause of empire. Three years later, translations of the Discoverie into Latin, German and Dutch were published by Levinus Hulsius in Nuremberg. Where Ralegh had written a colonial tract, aimed at convincing the Queen and her counsellors, the Hulsius publications were books of marvels, rather in the tradition of Mandeville. The texts were slight and their principal emphasis was upon visual images of mostly imaginary scenes, derived from the more fanciful parts of Ralegh's work. The title-page of the Latin version showed headless men with an armed and naked Amazon, and similar plates appear in the body of the text: of a chief being anointed with gold-dust; of men living in houses built in the trees; and, openly sexual, of men and women cavorting and coupling. Much superior, but fundamentally similar, folio volumes were produced by Theodor de Bry, who had earlier published Harriot's Briefe and True Report...of Virginia.
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 The illustrations to both works fell far short of John White's drawings and paintings of the North American Indians. The overseas editions, while widely sold, did little to gain support for the enterprise.

There is a striking contrast between the literary success of Ralegh's enterprise and the failure of his political and economic endeavours. This was not entirely Sir Walter's fault. He arrived in Guiana too late: the Spanish had already 'discovered' much of the Orinoco basin and were on their way to controlling it. The golden city of 'Manoa', the main objective of the enterprise, did not exist, and while gold was found in Guiana two hundred and fifty years later, it lay well to the south of the junction of the Orinoco and the Caroni. Nor was Ralegh likely to get from Elizabeth the backing in men, ships and money that was essential to found and sustain a colony in Guiana. Although his expedition was an astonishing endeavour, he displayed a lack of follow-through. While Berrío had spent eighteen exhausting and dangerous months on the Orinoco, Sir Walter spent just thirty days.

The defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 did not end the war with Spain. Instead, it led to a stalemate. Neither side could find the means either to defeat its enemy or to withdraw from the conflict with honour. During the tit-for-tat struggle that followed, every military operation sought to redress a perceived imbalance, or to respond appropriately to renewed aggression, without any particular prospect of outright victory. In the mid-1590s, following an audacious Spanish raid on Penzance, virtually the entire Privy Council recommended retaliation. The Queen consented, rather reluctantly, and the fall of Calais to a resurgent Spanish army in April 1596 lent fresh urgency to these preparations. For some years, England's war effort had focused on dry land: campaigns in the Low Countries and in Brittany strove to limit Spanish power and to deny Channel ports to the enemy. Now, however, the revival of serious interest in a major naval campaign targeting the coast of Spain brought opportunities for those who knew about ships and the sea. Ralegh's experience was suddenly in demand, and to his pleasure he was closely involved in the many discussions which, eventually, worked out a viable way of striking back.