How the Amazon River Received its Name
The first Europeans to descend the Amazon River were led by Francisco de Orellana in the year 1542. He and his group of fifty-four men became separated from an expedition led by Gonzalo Pizzaro, brother to Francisco Pizzaro, the Viceroy of Peru. Orellana and his group of men had proceeded ahead of Pizzaro in search of food to bring back to the much larger group left behind. They had built a large boat, and along with canoes, descended the Napo River from where it originates in Ecuador. The trip began on December 26, 1541. They were never able to return to Pizzaro’s group because of the long distance they traveled with the strong current down the Napo River. The Dominican friar Gaspar de Carvajal wrote an account of this trip. He was with Orellana for the entire trip and offers a first hand account of dates and events throughout the trip. Other information about the trip was recorded by Gonzalo Fernandez Oviedo in a major publication called “Historia general de las Indias”. Oviedo was in the Dominican Republic when Orellana and 9 or 10 of the soldiers from the trip stopped there on their voyage back to Spain. Oviedo personally interviewed them all and included what they had to say in his “Historia”. Oviedo later obtained a copy the first hand account of Friar Carvajal and incorporated it into his narrative.
Orellana met with no resistance from the indigenous tribes he first encountered. He was able to speak the language of the natives he encountered in present day Peru. The Spaniards were able to barter for food and the natives let them stay in one village for over a month while they build a bigger vessel of “19 ribs”. This village was located near present-day town of Caballococha, in Peru, near the current Brazilian border. By the time they had passed below the Brazilian border, the natives became increasingly numerous and hostile. Carvajal reports that the villages were nearly continuous along the banks. They also spoke different languages that Orellana could not understand. Orellana’s troops had to select smaller villages and forcibly overrun them in order to obtain food. Most nights they had to sleep in the boats. They endured and repelled countless attacks along the route. Carvajal credits crossbows, firearms (arquebuses) and tapir hide shields as well as the mercy of God for their survival.
Orellana’s group had been hearing rumors of the existence of women warriors before embarking downriver in the search for food. Friar Carvajal wrote “Concerning these women we had always heard a very great number of reports all along the course of this journey, and even before we had left Gonzalo Pizzaro’s expeditionary force it had been looked upon as a certainty that this dominion in the hands of women of this sort did exist.”
On June 24, 1542 Orellana’s group encounter the first of the Amazon warriors. The Spaniards had just beached the boats in order to overrun a village and gather food and supplies. Carvajal wrote this about his first encounter with the women warriors; “…and our companions jumped into the river, which came up to their chests: here there was fought a very serious and hazardous battle, because the Indians were there mixed in among our Spaniards, who defended themselves so courageously that it was a marvelous thing to behold. More than an hour was taken up by this fight, for the Indians did not lose spirit, rather it seemed as if it was being doubled in them, although they saw many of their own number killed, and they passed over their bodies and they merely kept retreated and coming back again. I want it to be known what the reason was why these Indians defended themselves in this manner. It must be explained that they are the subjects of, and tributaries to, the Amazons, and our coming having been made known to them, they went to ask them for help, and there came as many as ten or twelve of them, for we ourselves saw these women, who were fighting in front of all the Indian men as women captains and these latter fought so courageously that the Indian men did not dare turn there backs, and anyone who did turn his back they killed with clubs right there before us, and this is the reason the Indians kept up their defense for so long. These women are very white and tall, and have hair very long and braided and wound about the head, and they are very robust and go about naked with their privy parts covered, with their bows and arrows in their hands, doing as much fighting as ten Indian men…”
The Spaniards captured a native trumpeter in this village during the battle. Orellana, who could speak some Indian dialects, worked with this Indian until he had an understanding of his language. Orellana later interviewed the Indian. Carvajal’s account says this about the interview; “ The captain asked him what those women were who had come to help them and fight against us; the Indian said that they were certain women who resided in the interior of the country, a seven day journey from the shore, and it was because this overlord Couynco [the chief of the captured Indian] was subject to them that they had come to watch over the shore. The captain asked if these women were married: The Indian said they were not. The captain asked him about how they lived: The Indian replied first that, as he had already said, they were off in the interior of the land and that he had been there many times and had seen their customs and mode of living, for as their vassal he was in the habit of going there to carry the tribute whenever the overlord sent him. The captain asked if these women were numerous: The Indian said that they were, and that he knew by name seventy villages, and named them before those of us who were there present, and he added that he had been in several of them. The captain asked him if the houses in these villages were built of straw: The Indian said that they were not, but out of stone and with regular doors”….”The captain asked if these women bore children: The Indian answered that they did. The captain asked him how, not being married and there being no man residing among them, they became pregnant: he said these Indian women consorted with Indian men at times, and when that desire came to them, they assembled a great horde of warriors and went off to make war on a very great overlord whose residence is not far from that of these women, and by force they brought them to their own country and kept them with them for a time that suited their caprice, and after they found themselves pregnant they sent them back to their country without doing them any harm; and afterwards when the time came to have children, if they were male children they killed them or sent them to their fathers, and, if female children , they raised them with great solemnity and instructed them in the arts of war.” The interview also reveals the name of the queen of the Amazons as Coñori. The Indian said that they have great wealth and the ruling classes eat on plates of gold and silver.
These accounts and personal observations prove that the Amazon warrior women did exist. It does not seem likely that these men were mistaken about what they had seen, considering the close contact they had with them in battle. Some writers assert that Orellana’s group had seen male warriors of the Parikoto or Wai Wai tribe. The taller than average men of this tribe have long hair and put it up upon their heads. Carvajal’s observations should not be lightly dismissed considering he was there and saw these women who were fighting naked except for a small loincloth covering their genitals. The women’s breasts would have been obvious. It is not easy to confuse a naked woman with a man.
I have found no other accounts of the Amazon warriors in any other publications. The entire story seems to stem from Orellana’s expedition. The word Amazon is derived from the Greek a-mazos, which translates as “no breast”. No mention is made of what they called themselves. Apparently the Spaniards were aware of the classical legend and the river became to be called The Amazon. A subsequent expedition in 1560 by Lope de Aguirre says nothing about the women warriors. By the turn of the seventeenth century, forty years later, the Portuguese had established towns and forts on the lower Amazon. From these bases they launched long distance slave raids up the river. It was not long before the great villages along the river ceased to exist. The Amazon women had reportedly lived seven days inland from the Amazon River and their villages were located somewhere north of the Trombetas River in Brazil.
I, for one, prefer to believe the Amazons still exist. Somewhere off in the remote and mountainous jungle, where the Guiana Highlands come down into Brazil, the descendents of Queen Coñori are living in their stone houses and raiding their neighbors for male prisoners. When Carvajal was still near Quito, at the beginning of his travels he was cautioned by an Indian, “that anyone who should take it into his head to go down to the country of these women was destined to go a boy and return an old man.”
If you would like to read more about the first expedition down the Amazon River, I recommend The Discovery of the Amazon: According To The Account Of Friar Gaspar De Carvajal And Other Documents. It is a book of about 450 pages and contains many interesting documents besides the account itself. The ISBN number is 1436691214.