 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Related Links
|
Return to First Page ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY, Volume LI (Spring 1992)
6
reputation was to an extent bound up with that of his employer,(13) might have been disgruntled and disappointed, but would hardly have been so disapproving. Passage through three years of a hell unfolding might generate the line," This Governor was much given to the sport of slaying Indians,"(14) but surely we are hearing pure Oviedo in the more extreme reproaches-such as the description of de Soto that begins with, "this Governor, ill-governed, taught in the school of Pedrarias de Avila [de Soto's father-in-law, and a special enemy of Oviedo] in the scattering and wasting of the Indians of Castilla de Oro; a graduate in the killing of the natives of Nicaragua and canonized in Peru as a member of the order of the Pizarros."(15) Still, evidence from elsewhere in the History, where the texts from which he drew are extent(such as the Cortez letters), show a regard for accuracy considerably in advance of the standards of his time.(16) So there is some assurance of reliability, and from that one might safely conclude that much of the Oviedo/Ranjel narrative is directly from Ranjel, and that he emerged from his experience without the rancor of Oviedo, but also without much enthusiasm for the expedition or its management. The problem of sources becomes even more complicated with the appearance of the next contribution, one that has had more influence upon later accounts of the expedition than any of the preceding three, even though its credentials as a primary source are the most suspect. That is the long narrative, La Florida del Ynca(17), by yet another of the literary masters of the sixteenth
____________________
13 As Concepcion Bravo has recently emphasized, Ranjel had played a very large role in organizing the expedition. See his Hernando de Soto (Madrid, 1987), 93-98.
14 Ranjel,59. When Oviedo speaks in the first person, it is clear that he intends the reader to understand that that is his own voice, and not Ranjel's but the judgmental passages are not always so indicated.
15 Ibid., 119. This sentiment, so near to that of Las Casas, implies an affinity between the two men that did not exist. The enemy of my enemy was, in this case, still my enemy.
16 Salas, 110-111.
17 First published in Lisbon in 1605 as La Florida del Ynca. Historia del Adelantado Hernando de Soto, Governor y capitan general del Relno de la Florida, y de otros heroicos cavalleros Espanoles e Indios, and reprinted in 1723 and many times there-after. An English translation of the full work, by John Grier Varner and Jeannette