The South American Republics Volume II Part 10

Duchisela reigned seventy years, and upon his death was succeeded by his son Autachi, the thirteenth s.h.i.+ri. This monarch raised the Cara power to its highest pitch, extending his dominions south over the plateaux of Alausi, Canar, Cuenca, Jubones, Zaruma, and Loja, and thence far beyond the present Ecuadorian boundary over the Peruvian provinces of Huanacabamba, Piura, and Paita. This vast increase of territory was due more to treaties of confederation and alliance than to conquest. None of the new provinces were ever thoroughly incorporated into the Cara confederacy, and their allegiance to the s.h.i.+ri in far-away Quito sat lightly upon them. By the end of the fourteenth century the Cara influence was dominant along the Andean plateau from the first degree of north lat.i.tude to the sixth south, and extended to the arid coast plain of northern Peru. The humid and forested coast region north of Guayaquil remained in the hands of barbarous tribes, nor were the Caras ever able to extend their power down the wooded eastern slopes of the Andes into the Amazon plain.

Cara expansion was suddenly checked by the Incas. In the latter part of the fourteenth century these fierce and indomitable Islamites of the western continent under the lead of Tupac Yupanqui conquered the coast nations from Lima to Paita, and the ruder tribes who lived in the mountains from Cerro de Pasco north to the Ecuadorian border. Tupac did not respect the southern confederates of the Caras, and the s.h.i.+ri appears to have made little resistance when his allies were rapidly reduced. The Inca system was the far better adapted for conquest. The emperor could equip and lead to invasion armies numbering tens of thousands, well disciplined, blindly obeying their generals, marching over carefully prepared roads, and supplied by an admirable commissariat. The Caras had contented themselves with treaties of alliance; they were only the chief tribe in a confederacy, and warlike as were the members they could not combine to offer any effective resistance to the first onslaught of the great military empire.

A fairly h.o.m.ogeneous civilisation had grown up in the Ecuadorian Cordillera during the four hundred years of Cara influence. Bringing with them from their unknown original home a capacity for military and political organisation far superior to that of most American aborigines, the Caras were like a ferment introduced into the heterogeneous and inert tribes of the plateau, which gradually transformed the latter into a vigorous people so well fitted to their surroundings that they survived the Inca conquest, even turning the tables and becoming the dominant element in the empire, and then outlived the decimating tyranny of the Spaniards, so that ninety-five per cent. of the present population is composed of their descendants. That this civilisation was in the main self-developed can hardly be doubted. There is no evidence of any intimate contact with the Incas; with the peoples of Yucatan and Mexico the Caras had no connection, and the conjectures as to communication with the peoples of eastern Asia have no historical or archaeological basis. Their civilising and consolidating mission was aided by exceptionally favourable surroundings. The climate was healthy, agreeable, and conducive to bodily and intellectual vigour; the soil reasonably fertile and well adapted to the production of eminently nouris.h.i.+ng food crops, while requiring hard labour in its cultivation.

The potato, the quinoa grain, and maize played no insignificant role in the history of the Caras; they might never have risen above the level of Caribs if they had lived in a region where savoury and poorly nouris.h.i.+ng esculents grow wild. Not less important was the physical configuration of Ecuador. Dry and open valleys, some of them large enough to sustain two hundred thousand people, and easily penetrable in every part, while surrounded by high mountains and bleak "paramos," shut off from the outer world by the forest-covered declivities of the Cordilleras, were admirably adapted to favour the growth of compact little states, whose inhabitants would retain their individual initiative and local pride even after incorporation in a larger political system.

Hualcopo, the fourteenth s.h.i.+ri, ascended the throne of Quito in 1430.

Tupac Yupanqui had completed the reduction of the coast tribes of northern Peru and the mountain tribes as far north as the present Ecuador border had ceased to resist him. From the coast valleys of Piura and Paita, he marched up the easy pa.s.s which leads over the Cordillera into the fertile plateaux of southern Ecuador, and after a few victories all the tribes as far north as the nudo of Azuay submitted, and transferred their allegiance from Quito to Cuzco. Loja, Zaruma, Jubones, the great valley of Cuenca, and Canar were taken away, and Hualcopo was deprived of all but his hereditary dominions--the old kingdoms of Riobamba and Quito. The s.h.i.+ri possessed no army capable of undertaking an offensive campaign against the Incas, but, although terrified at Tupac's rapid advance, the ancient possessions of the s.h.i.+ri remained faithful. Tupac spent two years in the province of Canar, erecting fortifications and recruiting his army by new arrivals from the south and enlistment among the recently conquered tribes. Meanwhile Hualcopo was fortifying himself in the valley of Alausi, which lies north of Azuay, and in the pa.s.ses that lead over the Tiocajas nudo into Riobamba.

About the year 1455 the Inca army advanced in force. Defeated in several minor actions, the s.h.i.+ri abandoned Alausi and concentrated his forces in the pa.s.ses of Tiocajas. After three months of skirmishes and sieges in which the forts fell one by one, the Caras were compelled to accept a pitched battle. The conflict was well sustained, but with the death of the princ.i.p.al Cara general, victory declared for the Incas and the Caras fled from the field leaving sixteen thousand dead.

Hualcopo retired to Riobamba, but there it was impossible to maintain himself, and he was forced to retreat to the fortress of Mocha in the nudo which divides Riobamba from the valley of Latacunga. Here he made a determined and successful stand, and all Tupac's efforts to force his way over the last line of natural fortifications which kept him out of the northern valleys were in vain. The Inca emperor was forced to content himself with a.s.suring his possession of the provinces already conquered. In 1460 he returned to Cuzco, leaving the territory garrisoned. Three years later the heroic Hualcopo died, and was succeeded by his son, Cacha, the fifteenth and last s.h.i.+ri. The young man signalised his accession to the throne by an aggressive campaign for the recovery of the lost provinces. He pa.s.sed south into the valley of Riobamba, surprised the Inca garrisons, and put them to the sword, revindicating all the country as far south as the nudo of Azuay. Beyond that range he was unable to go, for all his efforts failed before the obstinate resistance of the inhabitants of Canar. Tupac began preparations to lead an overwhelming army against Cacha, but his own death interrupted him, and it was not until 1475 that his son, Huaina Capac, surnamed the "great," was able to take the road for the north, determined to put an end to the s.h.i.+ri dynasty. He first consolidated his power among the tribes on the coast south of Guayaquil, whom his father had left half independent, and then extended his conquests along the northern sh.o.r.e among the barbarians of Manabi. On the island of Puna he put to the sword all the male inhabitants, and one tribe in Manabi, notorious for its abominable and unnatural practices, he extirpated.

Returning south, he crossed the mountains in northern Peru, and descending their eastern slopes, waged a b.l.o.o.d.y war against the Pacamores, who inhabited the forests where the Upper Amazon debouches into the plain. Having thus secured his line of communications he devoted himself to the main object of the campaign--the conquest of Quito.

Disproportionate as appeared the resources of the contending nations, the war which ensued was well contested. The Caras had resumed their warlike habits and the imminence of the danger animated them and their allies to a desperate resistance. For months the Caras held the great Inca army at bay in the defiles of the Azuay, but finally they were defeated and retreated to the line of Tiocajas. The Incas followed and in a great battle vanquished their opponents so decisively that not only was Riobamba lost, as had happened after the former defeat, but likewise Latacunga and Quito itself. No stand could be made at Mocha, and the s.h.i.+ri fled to Ibarra, through Quito, where the Caranquis, the most warlike members of the confederacy, were determined to resist to the last. A considerable number of Cara warriors had escaped the slaughter at Tiocajas, and a formidable army a.s.sembled to defend the last fortresses in the extreme north of the kingdom. Huaina himself laid siege to Otavalo, the princ.i.p.al stronghold of the Caranquis, but was not able to reduce it. Their successes encouraged them to take the offensive, and in a sortie the Inca emperor narrowly escaped losing his life. Compelled to retire to suppress a mutiny among his southern troops, he left the northern army under the command of his brother, Auqui Toma, and the latter was killed in an a.s.sault on the redoubtable fortress of Otavalo. This, however, was the last victory which the s.h.i.+ri won. Huaina's reinforcements had come up and he advanced with an overwhelming army to avenge his brother's death. Otavalo was taken and its garrison put to the sword; the s.h.i.+ri fled to another fortress, where he was defeated and slain. The victorious emperor took a fearful vengeance on the Caranquis, whose obstinacy had cost him so dear.

Tradition tells that twenty-four thousand were ma.s.sacred, and their bodies thrown into a lake which has ever since borne the name of Yahuarcocha--the "pool of blood."

Thenceforth the provinces of the old Quito kingdom were integral parts of the Inca empire. The southern valleys had readily accepted the Inca rule, and the central ones appear to have abandoned the s.h.i.+ri's cause promptly after the second battle of Tiocajas. Though the Caranquis had been exterminated and the Caras had suffered greatly, the other tribes remained intact. The Inca emperor saw that a policy of conciliation would best insure the obedience of these formidable peoples. He spent the remainder of his long life in Ecuador, married the daughter of the dead s.h.i.+ri, and ruled rather as the legitimate successor of the ancient dynasty than as an alien conqueror. So far as possible the religious, political, and social customs of the Incas were introduced, but it does not appear that the work of amalgamation had proceeded very far in the fifty years which intervened until the advent of the Spaniards. The Quichua had not displaced the native tongues to any great extent, and while the Ecuadorean tribes became loyal subjects, they did not regard themselves as in any way inferior to the older subjects of the empire.

Rather had the balance of power pa.s.sed to them; they had acquired the skill in regular warfare once the exclusive property of the Incas; and the issue of the civil war between Huascar and Atahuallpa seems to prove that they would have played the princ.i.p.al role in the Inca system if the advent of the Spaniards had not altered everything.

Huaina Capac died in Quito in 1525, and his body was taken to Cuzco to be laid with his ancestors. In order better to secure the northern kingdom to his descendants he named Atahuallpa, a son by his marriage with the s.h.i.+ri princess, ruler of the old dominions of Quito. His eldest son, Huascar, was given the rest of the empire with the t.i.tle of emperor and a suzerainty over Atahuallpa. But Huaina's wise provisions were rendered valueless by the dispute which arose between the two brothers about the boundaries of Atahuallpa's territories. The latter insisted that they included the provinces south of the Azuay, which had been wrested from Hualcopo by Tupac Yupanqui seventy years before, but Huascar would not admit that they extended beyond the hereditary dominions of the s.h.i.+ri dynasty. The people of Canar, the most northerly of the disputed provinces, had always been bitter enemies of Quito, and their chief now refused to recognise Atahuallpa as overlord and sent a deputation to Huascar. Atahuallpa despatched his uncle Caluchima and his great general Quizquiz to occupy the province and dethrone the recalcitrant chief. Huascar hurried up some of his Inca regulars to aid the people of Canar, who won the first battles and advanced towards Atahuallpa's capital. The northerners rallied around the grandson of their old s.h.i.+ri, and two great armies met on the banks of the Naxichi, only fifty miles south of Quito. Atahuallpa gained a complete victory, and followed it up by advancing over the Azuay into Canar, where he was again overwhelmingly victorious over a second army which Huascar had sent against him. The whole of southern Ecuador fell into his hands and he took a fearful vengeance on the Canaris. Atahuallpa himself remained in Ecuador while Quizquiz went on into Peru to achieve that crus.h.i.+ng series of victories which resulted in the taking of Cuzco and the capture of Huascar himself. By the year 1532 the whole empire as far south as Cuzco lay prostrate, and it seemed certain that the Cuzco dynasty would be displaced by the illegitimate Quito branch.

CHAPTER II

THE SPANISH CONQUEST

The fratricidal war lasting seven b.l.o.o.d.y years exhausted the resources of the northern and central provinces of the Inca empire, and raised the spirit of faction to a bitter pitch. Hardly had the last battle been fought when Pizarro landed on the northern Peruvian coast. The moment could not have been more favourable. The story of Atahuallpa's capture, of Pizarro's intrigues with the different Inca factions, and of his triumphal march to Cuzco through a country distracted by civil feud, belongs rather to the history of Peru than of Ecuador. With Atahuallpa's death and the defeat of Quizquiz near Cuzco, Quito was left without a master. The country had been drained of able-bodied men by Atahuallpa's levies, and bands of troops who found their way back from Peru fought among themselves. The indefatigable Canaris rose again against the Quito authorities, and following the fatal example set by the Huascar party in Peru, applied to the Spaniards. From San Miguel, the colony which Pizarro had established at Piura, in the valley where the road from the Ecuador table-land debouches into the coast plain, Sebastian de Benalcazar led a force of two hundred Spaniards to their a.s.sistance.

Ascending the Cordillera he was joined by great numbers of Indians in Loja, Cuenca, and Canar, and crossed the Azuay before he encountered the meagre forces of the Quito generals. Horses and firearms gave the Spaniards an easy victory, and their enemies retreated to the defences of Tiocajas. This locality was once more fated to be the scene of a battle decisive of Ecuadorean history. Benalcazar and his allies were victorious, but at such a cost that he thought seriously of giving up the enterprise. Tradition recites that the giant volcano Cotopaxi burst forth into a terrific eruption after the battle, and that the midnight explosions were heard scores of miles along the plateau. To the Indians this was an infallible signal of the displeasure of the sun G.o.d.

Trembling with superst.i.tious fear they retreated in disorder; Benalcazar crossed Tiocajas without resistance, and overran the country as far north as Quito, taking possession of the city in December, 1533.

Meanwhile Almagro had been hurrying up from Peru with reinforcements and on his way along the plateau fell in with a third expedition under Alvarado, governor of Guatemala. Coming from Panama on his own account and landing on the coast a long distance north of Guayaquil, Alvarado had succeeded in forcing his way through the dense forests and rain-soaked defiles and debouched on the plateau near Riobamba. Almagro paid him one hundred thousand dollars to withdraw, and Benalcazar was entrusted with the completion of the conquest he had so well begun.

Disappointed in the search for gold, Benalcazar divided the country into feudal lords.h.i.+ps, enslaving the Indians and compelling them to pay tribute. His restless energy was not satisfied with the conquest of the old Cara kingdom, and he soon led an expedition of one hundred and fifty Spaniards and four thousand Indians against the coast provinces and founded the city of Guayaquil, whose magnificent and sheltered port, the best on the Pacific coast, gave independent access to the sea. Though the pa.s.ses leading from Guayaquil to Riobamba were far more tedious than the southern ones from Piura to Loja, they brought Quito two hundred miles nearer the ocean, and their use made Ecuador independent of northern Peru. Hardly had Benalcazar returned to the table-land and gone north to conquer southern Colombia, when the tribes near Guayaquil attacked and destroyed the settlement. His lieutenant at Quito despatched another expedition; Pizarro sent reinforcements by sea; and the place was re-founded. Again was it destroyed, and only in 1537, when Pizarro sent up Orellana with an adequate force, was a permanent settlement made on the site where to-day is the largest and richest city of Ecuador.

Benalcazar had conquered Quito in the name and under the authority of Pizarro, and the latter now named his brother Gonzalo governor.

Confident of finding another Peru in the unknown regions to the east of his new domain, the young Pizarro enlisted hundreds of adventurers, and in the beginning of 1541 led the largest and best-equipped expedition yet a.s.sembled in South America down the declivities of the Andes.

Difficulties began as soon as he reached the sweltering, steaming forest region. Rain fell unceasingly; the soft clay of the defiles afforded no footing; instead of finding stone highways like those over which they had marched in their conquest of the table-land, the Spaniards had to cut tracks along the mountainsides through the matted vegetation.

Provisions ran short, clothes rotted, arms rusted, no villages or tribes possessing food were encountered. Finally Gonzalo was obliged to halt the main body, sending a detachment under Orellana, the second in command, on ahead to find provisions. Orellana followed down a stream which soon grew large enough to be navigable. He built boats and proceeded, but still found no signs of civilised inhabitants. Fearing that he could never ascend the river to the main body, he determined to keep on, confident that ultimately he must reach the ocean. The river he was descending is now called the Napo. After a course of nearly a thousand miles, it flowed into the Amazon, and down the latter's broad current Orellana and his little band floated to the Atlantic, there built a little s.h.i.+p, and finally made their way to Spain.

Hearing nothing of Orellana, Gonzalo gave up and climbed back to Quito with a starving and naked remnant of his men. There he learned of the a.s.sa.s.sination of his great brother at Lima, and that Vaca de Castro, the royal commissioner appointed to settle the disputes between the partisans of Almagro and Pizarro, had pa.s.sed through Ecuador on his way south to Peru, appointing another governor for Quito. Gonzalo retired to Charcas in southern Bolivia, whence he emerged a year later to head the great rebellion. The viceroy was compelled to fly from Lima, and landing at Tumbez made his way to Quito. The Spaniards in Ecuador and southern Colombia were against Pizarro, but the latter chased the viceroy out of Quito and north into Popayan, where Benalcazar took sides with him. Four hundred Spaniards accompanied the viceroy in a counter-invasion, but near the city he was completely defeated and decapitated as he lay wounded on the field. Gonzalo, now undisputed lord of the whole Inca empire, returned at his leisure to Lima. The tale of how Gasca, shrewd old priest, by intrigue and conciliation, re-established royal authority and brought Pizarro to the scaffold, does not especially affect the history of Ecuador.

By 1550 the civil wars were over, the unruly original conquistadores had been executed, banished, or reduced to obedience. Shortly afterward the system of Indian tribute and slavery was modified so that although the proprietors got rich the aborigines were saved from rapid extermination, royal officials and functionaries were installed, an elaborate system of taxation established, and Ecuador, with the rest of Spanish America, entered upon a long period of exploitation under form of law, instead of being the haphazard prey of irresponsible private adventurers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ECUADOR INDIANS.]

For the next two hundred and fifty years Ecuador has no history. The occasional eruption of a volcano or an Indian insurrection is all one finds in the annals, except the interminable lists of the Spanish officials sent out to enrich themselves and the Crown at the expense of the hapless Indians. The Spanish occupation brought about no colonisation of Ecuador in the true sense of that word, although it worked a considerable revolution in the life and customs of the Indians who continued to const.i.tute the bulk of the population. Indeed, the habitable area of the Andean plateau was so limited and the aboriginal population so numerous, that there was no room for immigration without a war of extermination. The cultivable area of Andean Ecuador barely exceeds eight thousand square miles, and it is probable that more than a million natives lived there in the time of the Caras and Incas. Even at the present day these eight thousand miles contain more than two-thirds of the total population, and not more than four hundred thousand people inhabit the two hundred and eighty thousand square miles of high, barren mountains, steep declivities of the Cordillera, and wooded plains on the coast and in the Amazon valley, which const.i.tute the remainder of Ecuador.

One of the important results of the Spanish occupation was the introduction of new food plants and domestic animals. Wheat and barley were early planted by the Castilian proprietors who had divided the country among themselves, and these grains quickly replaced the quinoa, which, with the potato, had been the chief reliance of the Caras. The cultivation of the potato and also of maize was, however, continued. The Spanish invaders introduced the plantain and banana, which immediately became the staples of the forested and tropical districts, making possible a great increase of population. The plateau was found suited to European fruits, and orchards were soon flouris.h.i.+ng in its more favoured parts. Rice, indigo, and sugar-cane were also introduced, and an export trade in these articles grew up, as well as in the native cacao and sarsaparilla.

The Spanish rulers effected radical changes in the political, social, and religious life of the civilised Indians. A certain apathy and fatalism seems characteristic of the American aborigine, and in Ecuador, trained through countless centuries to the patriarchal rule of his own chiefs, he submitted to the exactions and innovations of his new masters. According to Spanish const.i.tutional law and practice, America was not a component part of the mother-kingdom, but the new continent was regarded as the personal property of the king of Castile, its lands, mines, and inhabitants being his to dispose of at pleasure. The viceroy at Lima was the monarch's lieutenant, only responsible to the king himself or to the advisory board known as the Council of the Indies. For great territorial divisions like Ecuador this power was delegated to governors, and the corregidors were likewise unrestrained within the smaller subdivisions. The Indians were regarded as mere chattels, and the tribute exacted from every adult was a logical consequence of their legal status. In theory even the Spanish residents had no rights to self-government, nor did any const.i.tutional guaranties of life and property exist.

But such a despotism largely existed only on paper. The Spaniards who came to South America brought with them their characteristic const.i.tutional traditions and personal independence. Instinctively they flocked into cities and organised munic.i.p.al governments after the time-honoured Spanish form. So a system came into existence which had the sanction of the people's co-operation and was therefore workable.

The country districts were left to the Indians and as long as they paid their tribute to the Crown or to the Spaniard who claimed the lands they tilled, little heed was paid to the form of civil government among them. The influence of their hereditary chiefs survived for centuries, and their old laws and customs died out only by degrees. In the cities contact between Spaniards and Indians was closer. In process of time the increasing number of half-breeds aided in the process of amalgamation, and even the pure-blood Indians of the fields and villages learned much of what their masters had to teach them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHURCH OF SANTO DOMINGO AT GUAYAQUIL.]

The Church, however, operated more powerfully than any other influence in making Ecuador Spanish. Within a few years after the conquest a regular bishopric was established in Quito, and hundreds of priests and friars flocked over to take part in the wholesale evangelisation of the heathen natives. The gospel was preached everywhere, churches and chapels built in even the smallest villages, the obdurate Indians were treated with scant ceremony, and it soon became well understood among the natives that a hearty acceptance of the Christian cult tended to keep them out of trouble. Ecuador quickly became one of the most devotedly Catholic countries in the world, and has ever since remained so. The Crown and the landed proprietors made lavish gifts to the cause of religion, and a great proportion of the property of the country ultimately fell into the hands of the religious orders. Quito has appropriately been called the city of convents, and if we are to believe the accounts of travellers in colonial times half the population must have been priests, monks, and nuns. The introduction of Christianity among the Indians aided powerfully in spreading a knowledge of the Spanish language, but was more effective in subst.i.tuting the Quichua for the ancient local tongues. The evangelists found it easier to preach to all the tribes in one language, and Quichua was naturally chosen, since it was already in the most general use as the official medium of the Inca empire. The Spanish priests reduced it to written form and it became a _lingua franca_ which was understood among all the nations of the Andean plateau very much as Guarany was among the Indians of the Atlantic slope.

The details of Spanish civil, military, and financial administration in Ecuador did not differ greatly from those in the other provinces, and there is no need to repeat them here. The peaceable character of the Ecuador Indians made the maintenance of a standing army or even of a militia unnecessary. A few companies of troops in each of the princ.i.p.al towns and the natural military apt.i.tude of the Spanish residents were sufficient to suppress any symptoms of rebellion, and to keep the Indians at work for their masters. Happily for the natives no great finds of silver or gold were made except in the southern province of Loja, and forced labour in the mines did not decimate the population, as happened in Bolivia and parts of Peru. Spaniards did not immigrate to any considerable extent, and negro slavery flourished on the seacoast.

The only schools were priests' seminaries in which little except theology was taught and the level of intellectual culture among the Creoles sank very low. Taxes were heavy, public employments and t.i.tles of n.o.bility were openly sold by the government, commerce amounted to little, because little gold and silver was mined and other articles would not bear the heavy transportation charges and the exactions and restrictions of the Spanish colonial system. The magnificent stone highways which the Cara and Inca monarchs had built were allowed to fall into ruins, but their remains are to be seen even to this day on the table-land near Cuenca, still solid in spite of the storms and earthquakes of four centuries. Population on the plateau slowly decreased. Quito had been a great city while it was the Cara capital--the residence of Huaina Capac and Atahuallpa--and in 1735 Ulloa estimated that it contained over seventy thousand people, but at the end of the eighteenth century it had fallen to less than forty thousand.

However, the introduction of the plantain undoubtedly brought about an increase of population in the coast provinces, and Guayaquil flourished with the cultivation of cacao and sugar-cane.

No great figure of a soldier, reformer, or administrator stands out among all the hundreds of officials who were sent over from Spain to rule the country. Even records of the growth of jealousies between Spaniards and Creoles, such as we encounter in other countries of South America are wanting. The Creoles appear never to have been able to interrupt the monotonous course of Spanish administration. In 1564 the old kingdom of Quito, with the addition of some outlying Colombian and Peruvian provinces, was erected into a presidency, and a royal audiencia, or court of appeals, with important administrative functions, was established. The viceroy of Lima continued to exercise nominal jurisdiction over all Spanish South America until the year 1719, when the viceroyalty of New Granada was first created. The Quito presidency was attached to the new jurisdiction, and this emphasised the separation from Peru. Twelve hundred miles of crooked, wretched road intervened between Quito and Lima, while the distance to Bogota was less than half as great. However, the natural outlet for the plateau from Cuenca north to Popayan was the road to Guayaquil, and the Quito presidency was therefore co-extensive with a natural commercial subdivision of the continent.

In 1736 a party of scientists commissioned by the king of France came to Quito for the purpose of measuring an arc of the earth's meridian at the equator. These savants erected two pyramids to serve as a permanent record of the line they had measured, and placed upon them an inscription stating that the work had been done under the patronage of the king of France. Years afterwards a Spanish official, offended in his national pride by the wording of the inscription, obtained an order from Madrid for the destruction of these monuments, so invaluable to the science of exact geography.

The latter part of the eighteenth century was marked by a greater interest in education. The seminaries widened their courses of study to include something more than the canon law and the Fathers, and public-spirited Creoles endowed new and better inst.i.tutions of learning.

No press or periodical literature appeared, but poetry and belles-lettres were cultivated with some success by native authors.

Though the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1765 was accomplished without bloodshed, it resulted in no material weakening of ecclesiastical influence. The revolutionary ideas which were transforming the political thought of the world during the eighteenth century hardly penetrated Ecuador at all, and whatever influence they had was confined to the small percentage of the population that boasted of non-Indian blood.

The news of Lexington and Yorktown and the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of British North America stimulated no similar movement among the patient Indians and devout Creoles of the Andean valleys, and even the tremendous cataclysm of the French Revolution pa.s.sed almost unnoticed.

CHAPTER III

THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE

The beginning of the nineteenth century saw Spain involved to her ruin in the tremendous struggle between Napoleon and his enemies. Her fleets were destroyed at St. Vincent and Trafalgar; her treasury was emptied; her administration demoralised. Free communication with her American colonies was impossible while British frigates commanded every sea, and both on the Peninsula and in America, Spanish subjects lost their traditional respect for the monarchy. Though the jealousy against their imported rulers which always fermented among Creoles was not so strong in quiet, isolated, and agricultural Ecuador as in the coast provinces and mining regions, the news of Spain's defeats and humiliations awakened ambitious lawyers and wealthy landowners to a realisation that the Spaniards might be ousted from the lucrative offices.

The opportunity came in 1809 with the resignation of Charles IV., the deposition and imprisonment of Ferdinand VII., the usurpation of the Spanish throne by Joseph Bonaparte, and the occupation of the Peninsula by the French. The viceroys and governors of Spanish America refused to recognise Joseph. The many patriots on the Peninsula who resisted the French usurpation organised provisional juntas which a.s.sumed to be the supreme depositaries of power pending the expulsion of Joseph and the return of Ferdinand, while the Queen claimed a regency for herself. The Spanish authorities did not know who would come out on top and were princ.i.p.ally anxious to maintain themselves in their places, while ambitious leaders among the Creoles immediately began to plot to turn the confusion to their own advantage and to secure autonomy and even independence for the colonies.

In 1809 Don Ruiz de Castilla was president of Quito. His jurisdiction included not only all present Ecuador, but also the southern part of Colombia, extending north three hundred miles along the great Andean plateau through the populous regions of Pasto and Popayan and far down the high and fertile valley of the Cauca. These portions of Colombia are continuous with the table-land on which Quito stands and directly accessible therefrom, while they are separated from the parallel series of plateaux on which Bogota, Tunja, and Socorro lie, by the deep valley of the Magdalena. Castilla's dependence upon the Bogota viceroy was therefore largely nominal, and he could expect as little help from New Granada as from Peru. He had only a few troops at Quito--probably not more than two or three hundred,--while the governors of the subordinate provinces, Popayan, Guayaquil, and Cuenca, each could muster only a few dozen armed police. A number of wealthy Creole proprietors and restless lawyers determined in the early part of 1809 to overthrow the president and create a governing junta composed of residents of Ecuador. Castilla was powerless to avert the storm. The handful of troops in barracks was easily suborned by the conspirators, who included the persons of greatest wealth, intelligence, and influence in the community. The ma.s.s of the Indian population was inert and would naturally side with their landlords, while the Spanish residents and Creole Tories had formed no plans for common action.

On the night of the 9th of August, 1809, the chiefs of the movement, with the officers of the troops, met in the house of Dona Manuela Canizaries, the Madame Roland of Ecuador, and a.s.signed to each the role which he was to play in the _coup d'etat_. The officers went to the barracks, led out the troops, and took possession of the government buildings in the name of the revolutionist committee. The president and those Spanish officials who proved recalcitrant were imprisoned, a governing junta of nine with Juan Montufar as chief was appointed, and an open cabildo summoned which confirmed these acts. The junta notified the viceroys of Bogota and Lima that it had a.s.sumed the government, and sent messengers to the provincial capitals demanding that they expel their Spanish authorities, adhere to the new order of things, and recognise the supremacy of the Quito junta. But the movement met with no favourable response from the rest of the presidency. The governors of Popayan, Cuenca, and Guayaquil immediately began to enlist troops to defend themselves against an attack from Quito. The junta prepared for war, but though plenty of ambitious young Creoles volunteered as officers there were not firearms enough to go around. At last an expedition set off to the north against Pasto and Popayan only to be easily defeated by the hasty levies the Spanish authorities had made among the st.u.r.dy Indians of those regions. Frightened by this defeat and their hopeless isolation, the junta resigned under promise of amnesty and in October Castilla returned to Quito and resumed the reins of government. But his position was insecure, and rumors of a fresh conspiracy soon drove him to repressive measures and the imprisonment of leading Creoles. The feeling grew bitter and in August, 1810, a desperate effort was made by the Creoles to get possession of the barracks. Its failure was followed by a frightful ma.s.sacre in which many of the most popular men in the place were murdered.

Meanwhile, the supreme junta at Seville, anxious to pacify the revolutionary disorders, had commissioned Carlos Montufar, a son of the chief of the fallen Quito junta who then happened to be in Spain, to go to Ecuador and reconcile the factions. Under his advice Castilla resigned to a new junta the direction of affairs, taking, however, the position of its chief member, and sent away his troops. In reality the younger Montufar sympathised with his brother Creoles; the universal indignation at the ma.s.sacre of 1810 pushed him on to vengeance; Spaniards travelling through the country were waylaid and a.s.sa.s.sinated; and by the time Molina, appointed by the Spanish government in Castilla's place, had reached Cuenca on his way north to Quito, the old governor had again been deposed and imprisoned and open war existed between Arredondo, the Spaniard commanding the troops who had retired from Quito in accordance with the compromise, and the junta in the latter city. The year 1811 pa.s.sed without any material change in the situation. The Spanish generals controlled Guayaquil and Cuenca in the south and Pasto and Popayan in the north, practically isolating the revolutionary government at Quito. As the troops of both sides became better trained the war took on a more determined and cruel character.

Royalists and revolutionists both raised recruits among the st.u.r.dy mountain Indians and half-breeds. In technical knowledge of their profession the Spanish officers were superior to the revolutionary leaders and could procure arms more readily. Their armies were usually better disciplined and more efficient, although more liable to depletion by desertion.

In this state of perpetual war, government rapidly became exclusively military. On the surface the contest seemed only a struggle between two sets of independent chiefs, in whose mouths "liberty" and "loyalty" were mere catch-words, and who continually quarrelled among themselves even when they nominally belonged to the same side. Early in 1812 Montufar was overthrown by another Creole chief in Quito who thereupon undertook an expedition against the Spanish general at Cuenca. But sedition among the patriot troops gave an easy victory to the latter, and the Spaniards took the offensive. Marching toward Quito, they dispersed the patriot army at Mocha, and entered the capital in triumph.

Montes, the Spanish general who now became ruler of the presidency, was a wise and moderate man, and spared no pains to conciliate. He soon succeeded in so completely consolidating his power that during nine years Quito and most of the presidency remained quietly submissive, and became one of the centres whence Spanish expeditions went out against the parts of the continent which still remained in revolution. An able general, Samano by name, carried the successes of the Spanish arms to the north, and although the patriots of Colombia obtained some temporary advantages in the winter of 1814-15, they never penetrated south of Pasto. In 1816 the tide again turned with the arrival of eleven thousand Spanish veterans in the north of Colombia. The patriots were soon everywhere defeated, Bogota itself taken, and a remnant of revolutionists who attempted the invasion of Popayan and Pasto were overwhelmed by Samano in 1816 at the battle of Tambo. The patriot cause was at its lowest ebb in all South America. Resistance ceased in Colombia; only a few scattered bands kept up a desultory warfare in Venezuela; Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia were quiet; Spanish authority had been re-established in Chile; Uruguay had fallen into the hands of the Portuguese king; and Spanish armies were invading the Argentine, the last refuge of the revolution.

San Martin's thunderbolt descent upon Chile and his victory at Chacabuco changed the aspect of affairs. A fleet was improvised at Valparaiso which obtained command of the Pacific coast, cutting off the Spaniards in Ecuador from receiving supplies except overland from the Caribbean ports. Bolivar took new heart for his tedious task of arousing the north and driving the Spaniards from Venezuela and New Granada. In 1819 he climbed the east side of the Andes to the neighbourhood of Bogota and by defeating the Spanish army at Boyaca, freed most of present Colombia, and even in Quito the patriots renewed their revolutionary plotting.