Basque Núñez de Balboa (1475–1519), also known as Balboa, was a famous early Spanish explorer during the Age of Discovery.
In the process of exploring Central America, he had heard a lot of news about the treasure of gold, and he was not a cannonball party, he was a real doer, stimulated by gold, he explored the so-called treasure land many times and recorded his expedition journey, so that we, the latecomers, could see it.
Basque Núñez de Barboa
In that barbaric era, the process of exploring treasures in the New World was by no means smooth, not to mention the natural difficulties and obstacles along the way, and even the seemingly weak Indians could always cause great trouble for the explorers, such as in the process of exploring the temple of the Indian goddess and the gold rush treasure - Dobayba, Balboa and his party encountered the indians' non-cooperation, and finally had to give up action.
Dobayba is located near Panama in Central America, the specific place is now unknown, "Doba iba" is an Indian name, taken from the name of an ancient female giant deity. In the explorers' records, the giant woman named Dobayba was the mother of god of the local Indians, creating the sun, moon, and everything else that benefited humanity. There are also Indians who say that this goddess spirit was once a princess of a country, once in charge of the Doba iba area, with strange magic, wisdom, the local people are very admired by her, and later after her death, people worshipped her as a god to defeat, built a magnificent temple for her, worshipped her.
The princess was so famous that even the Indians around Dobaíba revered her, and natives from near and far would always come on pilgrimage.
Since it is a pilgrimage, it must not come empty-handed, so basically every Indian who comes to the pilgrimage will bring his own precious treasures to the goddess, and even distant tribal leaders will come to worship regularly every year, pay tribute to the temples, and bring slaves to make living sacrifices.
explore
But then with the passage of time, people gradually no longer respected this goddess, no longer worshipped and paid tribute to her, as for the annual offerings and sacrifices also quickly disappeared, and at this time, the goddess became angry, he sent down a great drought, let the springs and streams dry up, let the rivers dry up, let the grain grains have no harvest, the most tragic is those who live on the mountain, they lack water the most, even life can not go on, and finally can only drag the family to the bottom of the mountain, but even if they migrate, there is still a lack of water.
People dug deep wells under the plains at the foot of the mountain in an attempt to find water, but dug and dug, always unable to find, a large number of Indians died of thirst and starvation because of the lack of water, and the remaining people remembered the gods and hurriedly resumed their offerings to them in order to ask for forgiveness.
Coincidentally, after the restoration of offerings here, it did not take long for the drought to end, and since then, all the local Indians have not dared to slack off on the goddess any longer, and will offer a large number of treasures every year.
For generations, the temple of Dobayibah has gathered many treasures, and it is said that even its walls are inlaid with various gold ornaments that believers worship, and other treasures are innumerable. The explorers such as Balboa could not help but be overwhelmed by the excitement of listening to his description, and not only that, but not only that, the Indians, in addition to telling Balboa and the others about the golden temple of Dobaíba, also told the explorers that the area was a treasure of wealth, claiming that there were gold mines everywhere, and its veins stretched very long.
gold
For Balboa and other explorers, this news is tantamount to pouring a bucket of cold water into a hot oil pot, and the entire expedition team has to fry the pan, for these gold-loving Spaniards, what could be more appealing than going to the legendary kingdom of Dobayba and then taking the Dobaiba Temple and the thousands of treasures around it?
After the local Balboa packed their bags and asked for directions, they selected one hundred and seventy enthusiastic explorers from the colonial base and led them on a journey to find Dobaíba in two brigs and a few stolen canoes.
Along the way, Balboa and the others slept in the Panamanian region, but because they did not understand the local situation, they explored along several rivers for a long time without finding a target, and finally Balboa had to divide his men into two teams and search for the legendary El Dorado along different tributaries.
Spanish explorer
At this time, Zemako, who had suffered a big loss from the Spaniards before and had been expelled from his own Indian tribe, also happened to be active nearby, and when he learned that Balboa planned to go to the Temple of Dobayba, the more familiar zemako chief felt there before Balboa found Dobayba, and appeared to say that he successfully persuaded the local Indian chief to take revenge on Therboa and his party, who had not yet arrived.
Originally, the local Indians wanted to fight a war with the explorers in order to eliminate these outsiders, but they were dissuaded by Zemako, because he had fought with Balboa, and he knew that these white-skinned people were very powerful, and the local Indians were not opponents at all, so he persuaded the local Indian chief to lead his people to retreat, leave the villages and towns where they had lived for generations, and run to hide in the remote mountains and old forests, and play an empty city plan.
Golden raft
As a result, when Balboa finally found the way to Dobayba, the whole person was Spartan, and when they painstakingly found an Indian village next to a swamp on the bank of the river, they were full of joy thinking that they were getting closer and closer to Dobayba, and immediately decided to ask the locals for directions, and they thought that when they entered the village, they found that there was no one in the whole village, and the huge village was empty, not even a ghost shadow.
There was no way to inquire about Dobayba, let alone go to the temple to rob, and had not yet found food, which was very bad for the expedition, they were tantamount to being tricked by Zemako, not to mention that they had suffered a lot along the way, and lost a few lives for various reasons, just to say that the wasted time was enough for Balboa to regret for a long time.
Native American
However, under the search of the explorers, they still found many things, such as finding several empty houses full of various weapons, and collecting jewelry worth seven thousand castellano from the village.
The Spaniards were not polite, and directly took all these belongings for themselves, and did not regard themselves as outsiders at all.
Although a wave of small fortunes were made, when Balboa and the others came here, they could not go any further, and they looked around and found that it was all desolate barren land, and there were swamps everywhere that connected to the abyss, and worse, they could not find any guide to lead them to find it.
In order to return as soon as possible, and in order to reduce the risk, Balboa divided all the supplies equally among the four boats, he thought that this would be foolproof, but who knew that when they sailed on the sea, they encountered a terrible storm, and the opportunity of the sailing ship they were riding was destroyed, and finally most of the supplies on the ship could only be thrown out of the ship, reducing the weight of the ship, and only then did they retrieve a life, while the two canoes in the team were engulfed by the waves, and all the people and supplies on board were buried in Haiti, and none of them survived. It made the hearts of the people who had escaped the disaster tremble.
You see, adventure is so dangerous, the head must be pinned to the waistband of the pants.