The army totaled 220 soldiers (including harquebusiers, crossbowmen, and infantry); nearly 200 horses20 armored and fitted for battle; great stores of ammunition and powder; a herd of some 2,000 to 3,000 stinking, snorting swine for consumption en route; highland llamas as pack animals; a snarling horde of nearly 2,000 war hounds, trained not only for battle and intimidation of hostile Indians, but also to herd the swine; and about 4,000 Indian porters, chained and shackled until the moment of departure to preclude escape.

These unfortunates would bear the brunt of the expedition’s enormous loads, including tons of materials for buildings, bridges, or vessels, while the Spaniards “carried nothing but a sword and a shield, and a small sack of food beneath it.”

Among the 4,000 porters were a good many native women brought to cook tortillas for the Spaniards and to serve as sex slaves. On one of the last days of February 1541, Gonzalo Pizarro’s bizarre assemblage of nobleman, slave, and animal lurched out of the high, steep city of Quito, over 9,000 feet above sea level, and headed even higher, toward the cloud forests and the Andes Cordillera.


Gonzalo Pizarro rode at the front of the main force, proud and upright and confident in his bearing, his compact, war-hardened frame made for the saddle. Antonio de Ribera led the vanguard. They clomped and hoofed up thin tracks on the outskirts of Quito, following human and llama trails that thinned, then diminished almost completely as they entered the misty and sodden cloud forest.

They trekked through densely tangled bamboo clusters that slowed progress to a near halt, the sharp thorns tearing at their sleeves and skin. The long train wended through and around thick stands of tree ferns, some arching seventy feet into the vaporous air, and beneath towering Podocarpus trees—ancient relatives of pines.

After great difficulty they reached the flinty páramos, the high Andean valleys that provided somewhat less onerous passages through the mountain range. They were headed for the province of Quijos, a region encompassing the valleys to the northeast of Quito, the most likely location, Pizarro reckoned, of La Canela and El Dorado’s kingdom of gold. Though they had begun at the equator, soon they had climbed high enough to see their breath in plumes, and beyond, the forbidding domes of snow-covered, active volcanoes.

As they left the cloud forest and climbed higher, the footing grew slick and mossy, the ground was dotted with prickly puya plants, and the temperatures began to plunge further. The native porters, who had begun the forced march nearly naked, shivered in hypothermic agony in the frigid heights. The Spaniards fared better in their thick cotton armor, but the cavalry cavalry was forced to dismount and lead the horses up the steep and roadless ravines.

Gone were the Inca roads they had grown accustomed to in the lowlands, roads that, though designed for llamas and often difficult for the horses, were paved with stone and included well-planned steps and rest houses every few miles.

High up in the páramo the ground was trackless, desolate, and bare. Nor did Gonzalo Pizarro and his men have any knowledge whatsoever of the uncharted lands that lay beyond where Pineda had been.