Oviedo

“ Oviedo says, "God gave him a good wife, a respectable and virtuous widow of suitable age, who had means. . . enough for him to live decently in our city of San Domingo on the island of Hispaniola, with more security and fame than could come to him in all these wars, or in hunting the fabulous riches of Meta, of which no one knows anything to this day, or can find the way there without its costing yet more human lives and leading to other troubles. ”

“ The Asturian monarchs had good reason for fixing their capital at Oviedo; for it guards the main gateway of their kingdom, the chief of the passes to the south. It lies not indeed at the actual mouth of the valley, but a little on one side of it. Our road has to struggle over a couple of thousand-foot ridges ere it can lay its course straight for its goal. These two preliminary mountains we resolved to put behind us in the evening, and keep a clear day for the Pass of Pajares itself. ”

“ In 1535, in a subsequent visit to Spain, Oviedo gave to the world the first volume of his great work, which he had been many years in compiling,—the Historia de las Indias occidentales. In the same year he was appointed by Charles the Fifth alcayde of the fortress of Hispaniola. He continued in the island the ten following years, actively engaged in the prosecution of his historical researches, and then returned for the last time to his native land. The veteran scholar was well received at court, and obtained the honorable appointment of Chronicler of the Indies. ”

“ This land of racy types and vigorous humanity may be doomed to have factory chimneys belching smoke, to have lawless mobs of socialists and pitiful slums in cities where now is frugal poverty, where a beggar lives contentedly next door to a prince, because he feels the prince recognizes him as his fellow countryman and fellow Christian: progress and wealth are bought with a price. Oviedo, just entering the competition, and fast sweeping away its picturesque past, made me glad to be in time to see something of the old ways of Spain. ”

“ He was incapable of appreciating the generous philanthropy of Las Casas, or of rising to his lofty views, which he doubtless derided as those of a benevolent, it might be, but visionary fanatic. Las Casas, on the other hand, whose voice had been constantly uplifted against the abuses of the Conquerors, was filled with abhorrence at the sentiments avowed by Oviedo, and it was natural that his aversion to the principles should be extended to the person who professed them. Probably no two men could have been found less competent to form a right estimate of each other. ”

“ These mistakes Bernal Diaz, an old soldier who had been long in the New World, set himself at work to correct, and the book he thus produced, with many faults, has something of the honest nationality, and the fervor and faith of the old chronicles.
Among those who have left records of their adventures in America, one of the most considerable is Oviedo (1478-1557) , who for nearly forty years devoted himself to the affairs of the Spanish colonies in which he resided. ”

“ The Spaniards who under Pelayo had taken refuge in the mountains of Asturias, in 716 founded a small government called the kingdom of Oviedo. There the seeds of liberty, trampled by adversity, took root, and from the patriot soil arose a nation that spread its branches wide over the land. Gradually the Christian kingdoms enlarged. First Galicia, then, two hundred years later, Leon and Castile were added to the little empire. ”

“ Oviedo, while believing that the fleet belonged with more right to the governor, feels no pity for the treatment he received, in view of his own conduct to Diego Colon. Complacently he cites the proverb: ‘Matarás y matarte han: y matarán quien te matare.’ As you do unto others, so shall be done unto you. Oviedo asserts that he has seen testimony showing that Cortés and his men did not sail at their own expense, but from his own statement it appears that the instructions of Velazquez, wherein he speaks of the expedition as sent in his name, is the chief feature in this so-called testimony ”

“ Your arrival at Oviedo justifies our favorable interpretation, and those tears which are now flowing down your cheeks are so many pledges either of your innocence or your reformation.
Your constructions were too partial, replied I; there was a great deal of truth in young Muscada's report. When he came to see me, all my faculties were engrossed by vanity and mammon; ambition, the prevailing devil which possessed me, left not a thought to throw away on the desolate condition of my parents. ”

“ Oviedo was not a learned man like Peter Martyr, and it is doubtful if a further insight into the books of the day would have made him any wiser; yet a man who could dictate the natural history of a new country without his notes cannot be called illiterate. He knew Latin and the modern languages; but his familiarity with Latin was not sufficient to prevent an unpleasant parade of it. Nor did he possess the genius or practical sagacity of Las Casas ”

“ Don Thoan Cano, however, whose sympathies—from his Indian alliance, perhaps—seem to have been quite as much with the Aztecs as with his own countrymen, assured Oviedo, who was lamenting the general's loss, that he might spare his regrets, since Cortés had as many fingers on his hand, at that hour, as when he came from Castile. ”

“ Don Thoan Cano, indeed, who married this princess, assured Oviedo that the Mexicans respected the person of the monarch so long as they saw him; and were not aware, when they discharged their missiles, that he was present, being hid from sight by the shields of the Spaniards. This improbable statement is repeated by the chaplain Gomara. (Crónica, cap. 107.) It is rejected by Oviedo, however, who says that Alvarado, himself present at the scene, in a conversation with him afterwards, explicitly confirmed the narrative given in the text. (Hist, de las Ind., MS., lib. 33, cap. 47.) ”

“ The chroniclers of both the one and the other class of writers may frequently claim the merit of picturesque and animated detail, showing that the subject was one of living interest, and that the writer's heart was in his subject.
Many of the characteristic blemishes of which I have been speaking may be charged on Oviedo. His style is cast in no classic mould. His thoughts find themselves a vent in tedious, interminable sentences, that may fill the reader with despair; and the thread of the narrative is broken by impertinent episodes that lead to nothing. ”

“ In the pages of The Grandee we have a singular transcript of Spanish pride and picturesqueness, of a narrow society absolutely fortified against public opinion by its ancient prejudices, a society, nevertheless, in which the primitive passions of humanity stir and interact with as much dangerous vivacity as in freer and more democratic conditions. I may perhaps mention, on the authority of the author, that by Lancia Valdés intends us to understand Oviedo, the capital of the province of Asturias, where he spent many years of his childhood and early youth. ”

“ But the De Orbe Novo may be regarded equal in authority to the relations of the eye-witnesses Las Casas and Oviedo. Peter Martyr was the first of the chroniclers to write and to publish on the New World, his decades beginning to appear about the time Oviedo first went to the Indies. Immediately Columbus set foot on shore, on his return from the first voyage, the eloquent and philosophic scholar began to question him and those who came with him, and to write, and he never ceased writing until death stopped him. There was so much for a man of his mind to think and talk about. ”

“ Oviedo says that Huayna Capac left a hundred sons and daughters, and that most of them were alive at the time of his writing. "Tubo cien hijos y hijas, y la mayor parte de ellos son vivos." Hist. de las Indias, Ms., Parte 3, lib. 8, cap. 9.]
[Footnote 15: I have looked in vain for some confirmation of this story in Oviedo, Sarmiento, Xerez, Cieza de Leon, Zarate, Pedro Pizarro, Gomara, - all living at the time, and having access to the best sources of information; and all, it may be added, disposed to do stern justice to the evil qualities of the Indian monarch.] ”

“ Juan Perez, of whom Father Oviedo said that a man of approved spirit saw 'subir su alma de la cama al cielo, sin pasar por el purgatorio'—seeing the soul fly up is certainly a dramatic form of expression. ”

“ Oviedo seems, from his youth, to have had a passion for writing; and, besides several less considerable works, among which were imperfect chronicles of Ferdinand and Isabella and of Charles the Fifth, and a life of Cardinal Ximenes, [904] he prepared two of no small value.
The most important of these two is “The Natural and General History of the Indies,” filling fifty books, of which the first portions, embracing twenty-one, were published in 1535, while the rest are still found only in manuscript. ”

“ Even Oviedo, who was not friendly to Balboa, says: "No chieftain who ever went to the Indies equalled him in these respects." And yet, beneath the accumulating honors the recipient sits not wholly at ease. "No one need hope to rule this land," writes Vasco Nuñez to the king, "and sit or sleep; for if he sleep, he will never wake. Day and night I think only of your Majesty's interests. In every battle I lead my men, and with truthful example, and kind treatment of the natives, seek to bring into favor your Majesty's government in these parts." ”

“ In his description of the Nahuas of Nicaragua, Oviedo gives the word huehue, and tells us that it was applied to certain old men of influential position, who were elected by the natives as rulers of the villages, and that they in turn selected the war-chief, whose duty it was to look to the defence of the community. The name was, therefore, one familiar to the Nicaraguans, though the character would seem to be drawn as a burlesque or satire.
He is, in fact, anything but a respectable person. ”

“ It was a spectacle to appal the stoutest.—But the dark storm to which it was the prelude, and which gathered deeper and deeper round the Spaniards during the remainder of their residence in the capital, must form the subject of a separate book.
Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés was born in 1478. He belonged to an ancient, family of the Asturias. Every family, indeed, claims to be ancient in this last retreat of the intrepid Goths. ”

“ All through the middle ages, when really Oviedo had usurped its civil, and Santiago its religious significance, Lugo was still considered as being the capital of Galicia, a stronghold against Arab incursions, and a hotbed of unruly noblemen who lost no opportunity in striking a blow for liberty against the encroaching power of the neighbouring kingdom of Asturias, and later on of Leon. ”

“ Oviedo is about three leagues from Giyon. Antonio rode the horse, whilst I proceeded thither in a kind of diligence which runs daily between the two towns. The road is good, but mountainous. I arrived safely at the capital of the Asturias, although at a rather unpropitious season, for the din of war was at the gate, and there was the cry of the captains and the shouting. Castile, at the time of which I am writing, was in the hands of the Carlists, who had captured and plundered Valladolid in much the same manner as they had Segovia some time before. ”

“ I may as well introduce here as elsewhere a few passages from that part of the history of Oviedo recently published at Madrid, for the first time, by the Academy of History. Oviedo is very severe on Cabot for his want of knowledge and skill in his operations on the La Plata. But my citations are for another purpose. “Another great pilot (piloto mayor) , Sebastian Cabot, Venetian by origin, educated in England, who at present is Piloto Mayor and Cosmographer of their Royal Majesties, etc.... I will not defend from passions ... ”

“ Gomara, Hist. Mex., 167. Most of the points in the above speech are to be found in the lengthy harangue prepared by this author. Oviedo's is weaker, and loses itself in repetitions and crude elaborations, adorned with learned references ill suiting a soldier addressing rude men, although not altogether inconsistent with Cortés' love of display. Toward the conclusion is said: 'If any one there is who still insists on leaving, let him go; for rather will I remain with a small and brave number than with many, if composed in part of cowards and of those who respect not their honor. ”

“ OVIEDO Y VALDÉS, GONZALO FERNÁNDEZ DE (1478–1557) , Spanish historian, was born at Madrid in August 1478. Educated at the court of Ferdinand and Isabella, in his thirteenth year he became page to their son, the Infante Don John, was present at the siege of Granada, and there saw Columbus previous to his voyage to America. On the death of Prince John (4th of October 1497) , Oviedo went to Italy, and there acted as secretary to Gonzalo Fernandez de Cordoba. ”

“ Bessières, after he had been a few months in authority, was inclined to withdraw Bonnet to the south side of the sierras, and to abandon Oviedo, but was warned against such a move by his master, who said that this would be ‘a detestable opera [p. 212] tion,’ as it would relieve Galicia from the threat of invasion, allow of the re-formation of a Junta and an army in Asturias, and necessitate a heavy concentration at Santander [268] . Nevertheless the Marshal did at one crisis withdraw the division from Oviedo. ”