Days later, the young people finally reach their destination. Lautaro’s father, a much-respected cacique, presents him to the other toquis so that they may hear what his son has to say. The enemy is on the way; they are the same huincas who conquered the brothers to the north, Lautaro explains. They are approaching the Bío-Bío, the sacred river, with their Yanaconas and horses and dogs. With them is the traitor Michimalonko, and he is bringing the rest of his army of cowards to fight against their own brothers in the south. Death to Michimalonko! Death to the huincas!
Lautaro speaks for several days; he tells them that the harquebuses are pure noise and wind, that they need fear the swords, lances, hatchets, and dogs more; the captains wear coats of mail, which no wooden arrow or lance will penetrate; with them clubs must be used to stun and lassos to drag them from their horses, and once on the ground they are lost; it is easy to drag them down and hack them to pieces, because beneath the steel they are flesh. But take care! They have no fear. The foot soldiers have protection only on the chest and head, arrows will work with them. But take care! They, too, have no fear. The arrows must be poisoned so that the wounded do not come to fight again. The horses are crucial; we will try to capture them alive, especially the mares, for breeding. Boys must be sent by night to the outskirts of the camps of the huincas to throw poisoned meat to the dogs, which are always chained. We will set traps. We will dig deep holes and cover them with branches and the horses that fall in will be impaled on pikes set in the bottom. The Mapuche advantage is numbers, fleetness, and knowing the forest, says Lautaro. The huincas are not invincible; they sleep more than the Mapuche; they eat and they drink too much; they need bearers because the weight of their supplies is too much for them to carry. We will buzz around them every minute, like wasps and horseflies; first we will tire them, then we will kill them. The huincas are people, they die as the Mapuche die, but their ways are the ways of demons. In the north they burned alive entire tribes. They want us to accept a god that is nailed upon a cross, a god of death; they want us to submit ourselves to a king we do not know, who does not live here; they want to occupy our land and have us as their slaves. Why, I ask my people? For no reason, brothers. They do not appreciate freedom. They do not understand pride; they obey, they put their knees to the ground, they bow their heads. They do not know justice or retribution. The huincas are madmen, but they are evil madmen. And I tell you, brothers, the Mapuche will never be their prisoners, we will die fighting. We will kill the men, but we will take children and women alive. The women will be our chiñuras, and, if we wish, we will trade their children for horses. It is just. We will be silent and swift, like fish; they will never know we are near until we fall upon them and take them by surprise. We will be patient hunters. The battle will be long. Let our people prepare.
While the young general Lautaro organizes strategy by day and by night hides with Guacolda in the thicket to make love, the tribes choose the war chiefs who will be in charge of the squadrons, and who in turn will be under the orders of the ñidoltoqui who is toqui of toquis: Lautaro. The afternoon air is warm in the clearing of the forests, but as soon as night falls, it will be cold. The tourneys have begun with weeks of anticipation, the candidates have competed and one by one have been eliminated. Only the strongest, with greatest endurance, only those with most courage and will, can aspire to the title of war toqui.
One of the strong braves leaps into the ring. Inche Caupolicán! he calls out. He is naked except for a short apron covering his sex, but he wears the thongs of his rank tied about his arms and his brow. Two husky youths walk to a felled oak—the pellín—they have trimmed and prepared, and with difficulty lift it, one at each end. They display it so that those gathered there can appreciate it and calculate its weight; then they carefully place it on the strong shoulders of Caupolicán. The man’s waist and knees yield as he accepts the tremendous load, and for a moment it seems that he will be crushed beneath it, but he immediately straightens. The muscles of his body tense, his skin gleams with sweat, the veins of his neck stand out, near bursting. A quiet hunh escapes the circle of spectators as Caupolicán begins to walk, taking short steps, measuring his strength so he will last the necessary number of hours. He must win over others as strong as he. His one advantage is his fierce determination to die in the test before ceding first place. He intends to lead his people to combat; he wants his name to be remembered; he wants children with Fresia, the young woman he has chosen, and they must carry his blood with pride. He settles the trunk against the nape of his neck, bearing its weight on his shoulders and arms. The rough bark digs into his skin and fine threads of blood run down his broad shoulders. He takes deep breaths of the intense scent of the forest, feels the relief of the breeze and the dew. The dark eyes of Fresia, who will be his woman if he is winner of the competition, bore into his, with no trace of compassion, but with love. In that gaze she urges him to triumph; she desires him, but she will wed only the best. Bright in her hair is a copihue, the red flower of the forests that grows in the air, a drop of the blood of Mother Earth, a gift from Caupolicán, who climbed the highest tree to bring it to her.
The warrior walks in circles, bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders, and saying: We are the dream of the Earth; she dreams us. Also in the stars are beings that are dreamed, and that have their own marvels. We are dreams within dreams. We are married to nature. We greet the Holy Earth, our mother, to whom we sing in the tongue of the Araucaria and the cinnamon, of the cherry and the condor. Let the flowering winds bring the voice of the ancestors so that our gaze may be hard. Let the courage of the ancient toquis flow through our blood. The ancients tell us that it is the hour of the hatchet. The grandfathers of the grandfathers watch over us and sustain our arms. It is the hour of combat. We must die. Life and death are but one . . .
The warrior recites this endless rogative for hours, all the while balancing the tree trunk on his shoulders. He invokes the spirits of nature to defend his land, its plentiful waters, its dawns. He invokes the ancestors to turn the arms of his men into lances. He invokes the mountain pumas to lend their strength and courage to the women. The spectators grow weary, the night mist falls upon them; some burn small campfires for light; they chew grains of toasted corn; others sleep or leave, but later return, amazed. An aged machi spatters Caupolicán with a branch of the cinnamon tree dipped in sacrificial blood to give him fortitude. She is afraid, this woman, because the night before in her dreams the snake-fox, ñeru-filú, and the serpent-rooster, piwichén, appeared to tell her that much blood will flow in the war, that the Bío-Bío will run red to the end of time. Fresia pours a gourd of water over Caupolicán’s dry lips. He sees the hard hands of his beloved on his chest, touching his stone muscles, but he does not feel them, just as he no longer feels pain or exhaustion. He keeps speaking, in a trance; he is sleepwalking. And so the hours pass, the entire night, and the dawn comes, as light sifts through the leaves of the tall trees. The warrior floats in the cold mist rising from the ground; the first golden rays of sun bathe his body, and he continues with a dancer’s tiny steps, his back red with blood, his words flowing. We are in hualán, the sacred time of the fruit, when the Holy Mother gives us food, the time of the piñon and the young of animals and women, sons and daughters of Ngenechén. Before the time of rest, the time of cold and of the dream of the Mother Earth, the huincas will come.
Word has traveled across the mountains, and warriors of other tribes are appearing and the clearing in the forest fills with people. The circle Caupolicán is tracing is growing smaller. Now they urge him on; again the machi sprinkles him with fresh blood. Fresia and other women wash his body with wet rabbit skins; they give him water; they put a portion of chewed food in his mouth so he can swallow without interrupting the poetic flow of words. The elder toquis bow before the warrior with respect; they have never seen anything like this. The sun warms the earth and burns off the mist; the air fills with transparent butterflies. Above the treetops, large against
the sky, is the imposing figure of the volcano, with its eternal column of smoke. More water for the warrior, the machi orders. Caupolicán, who long before has won the competition but does not put down the trunk, continues walking and talking. The sun reaches its zenith and begins to descend, disappearing among the trees, and still he does not stop. Thousands of Mapuche have gathered and the multitude occupies the clearing, the entire forest; others arrive from the hills; trutrucas and kultrunes resound, announcing the feat to the four winds. Fresia never takes her eyes from those of Caupolicán; they sustain him, they guide him.
At last, when it is again night, the warrior stoops, lifts the tree above his head, holds it there for a few instants, and tosses it far away. Lautaro has his lieutenant. Oooooooohm! Ooooooooohm! The deafening cry races through the forest, echoes among the mountains, travels across all Araucanía, and reaches the ears of the huincas many leagues away. Ooooooooooohm!
It took Valdivia nearly a month to reach Mapuche territory, and during that time he was able to mend enough that occasionally he could ride, though with great difficulty. As soon as they made camp, the daily attacks began. The Mapuche swam the same rivers that blocked the Spaniards, who could not cross without boats because of the weight of their armor and supplies. While some of the Indians confronted the dogs, bare chested, knowing they would be eaten alive but willing to perform the mission of slowing the dogs, others threw themselves against the Spaniards. They left dozens of dead, led away the wounded who could still stand, and disappeared into the forest before the soldiers could organize to follow them. Valdivia gave the order for half of his reduced army to stand guard while the other half rested, in shifts of six hours. Despite the harassment, the gobernador pressed forward, winning each skirmish. He plunged deeper and deeper into Araucan territory without encountering large parties of Indians, only scattered groups whose explosive surprise attacks tired his soldiers but did not stop them; they were used to facing an enemy a hundred times their size. The only uneasy person was Michimalonko; he knew all too well whom they would soon be dealing with.
And it happened. The first serious confrontation with the Mapuche took place in January 1550, when the huincas had reached the banks of the Bío-Bío, the line that marked inviolable Mapuche territory. The Spaniards had camped beside a lake of crystalline water, in a well-situated place where their backs were protected by the clear icy waters of the lake. They had not considered that the enemy would come by water, quick and silent, like sea lions. The sentinels saw nothing, the night seemed calm, until suddenly they heard the clamor of the dread chivateo: yells, flutes, and drums, and the earth shaking with the beat of the naked feet of thousands and thousands of warriors: Lautaro’s men. The Spanish cavalry, which was always prepared to strike, rode out to meet them, but the Indians did not flee as they always had before the charge; instead they stood their ground with a wall of upraised lances. The horses reared and their riders had to fall back, as the harquebusiers loosed their first volley. Lautaro had advised his men that it took a few minutes to reload the fire-breathing weapons, during which the soldier was defenseless; that gave them time to attack. Undone by the total fearlessness of the Mapuche, who were fighting hand to hand against soldiers in armor, Valdivia organized his troops as he had in Italy: compact squadrons protected by breast armor, raised lances and swords, while Michimalonko and his forces took up the rear. The ferocious combat lasted until night, when Lautaro’s army retired, not in precipitous flight but in an orderly withdrawal at a signal from the kultrunes.
“Never in the New World has there been anything like these warriors,” a debilitated Jerónimo de Alderete commented.
And Valdivia added, “And never in my life have I met such ferocious enemies. I served his majesty for more than thirty years, and I have fought against many nations, but I have never seen such tenacious fighters as these Indian Mapuche.”
“What do we do now?”
“We found a city right here. It has all the advantages: a safe bay, broad river, wood, fishing—”
“And thousands of savages as well,” Alderete pointed out.
“First we build a fort. Everyone except the sentinels and the wounded will be assigned to cutting down trees and putting up barracks and a wall with a moat—which we will need. We will see if these barbarians dare come after us.”
They dared, of course. The Spaniards had scarcely built the wall when Lautaro appeared with an army so enormous the terrified sentinels calculated that there were a hundred thousand men. “There are not half that many, and we can handle them,” Valdivia encouraged his people. “Viva España!” He was impressed more by the boldness and mindset of his enemy than by their numbers. The Mapuche marched with perfect discipline in four divisions under the command of their war toquis. The chivateo they used to terrify their enemy was now reinforced with flutes made from the bones of Spaniards who had fallen in the previous battle.
“They will not dare cross the moat and the wall. The harquebusiers will stop them,” was Alderete’s proposal.
“If we take shelter in the fort, they can lay siege and starve us out,” Valdivia countered.
“Lay siege? I don’t think they will think of that; it is not a tactic the savages know.”
“I’m afraid they have learned a lot from us. We must go out and meet them.”
“There are too many of them; we can’t beat them that way.”
“We can, with God’s blessing,” Valdivia replied.
He ordered Jerónimo de Alderete to ride out with fifty horsemen to confront the first Mapuche squadron, which was steadily marching toward the gate despite a first round of fire that had left many on the ground. The captain and his soldiers prepared to obey without comment, even though they were convinced they were riding to a sure death. Valdivia bid his friend farewell with an emotional embrace. They had known each other for many years, and together had survived uncounted dangers.
Miracles do happen. That day there was a miracle, there is no other explanation, as will be told through century after century by the descendants of the Spaniards who witnessed it, and as the Mapuche will tell through generations to come.
Jerónimo de Alderete took his place at the head of his fifty-horse formation, and at his signal the gates were opened wide. The monstrous chivateo of the Indians greeted the cavalry as it rode out at a gallop. Within minutes a mass of warriors surrounded the Spaniards and Alderete instantly realized that to go farther would be suicidal. He ordered his men to regroup, but some of the horses were hampered by the boleadoras Lautaro’s warriors had wrapped about their feet. From the wall, the harquebusiers fired the second volley of shots, but that did nothing to discourage the attackers’ advance. Valdivia was poised to go out and back up the cavalry, even though that meant leaving the fort undefended against the remaining three Mapuche divisions, for he could not allow fifty of his men to be killed without going to their aid. For the first time in his military career, he feared he had committed an irreparable tactical error. The hero of Peru, who had defeated the army of Gonzalo Pizarro in masterly fashion, was stymied by savages. The war cries were horrendous; no one could hear orders and in the confusion one of the Spanish cavalrymen was killed by a shot from a badly aimed harquebus. Suddenly, when the Mapuche in the first squadron had won their ground, they began to retreat helter-skelter, almost immediately followed by the other three divisions. In a matter of minutes the attackers had abandoned the field and were fleeing back to the forests like hares.
Dumbfounded, the Spaniards could not imagine what the devil was happening; they were afraid that this was some new enemy tactic, since there was no other explanation for a precipitous retreat that ended the battle before it had barely begun. Valdivia did what his experience as a soldier dictated: he ordered a pursuit. This is how he described the action to the king in one of his letters: “And barely had the men on horseback ridden out when the Indians turned away, and the other three squadrons did the same. Fifteen hundred or two thousand Indians were killed; many ot
hers were killed by lances and some we captured.”