Since the arrival of Christopher Columbus (1451-1506), on his third voyage in 1498; Until the year 1557, 59 years passed for the founding of our colonial city of Trujillo, by Don Diego García de Paredes (1506-1563).
The presence of the expedition of Alonso de Ojeda (1466-1516), accompanied by Américo Vespucio (1454-1512), and Juan de La Cosa (?- 1510), in the waters and lands of the aborigines who maintained exchange relations with The Cuicas surely attracted the attention of all the residents of the area. These expeditionaries had left from Puerto de Santa María in Spain, on May 20, 1499, following the route of Columbus on his third voyage, with the purpose of expanding the information on the area discovered by Columbus on said trip; and after a long journey, they explored the island of Margarita and recognized the Venezuelan coastline to Puerto Flechado (Chichiriviche); They passed through the coasts of Coro and Curacao, in August they entered the Gulf; The observation of stilt houses led them to name that region “Venezuela” in memory of Venice.
The Sevillian historian Adela Estévez Fernández reports that Américo Vespucio stated that in those homes, the Spaniards met tall, slender and good-looking indigenous women, one of them decided to voluntarily accompany Alonso de Ojeda as his wife for the rest of his days and took the name of Isabel; Then they continued coasting to Cabo de la Vela and on September 5 of that same year they returned to Hispaniola.
At the time of the conquest, there were four routes of penetration that Europeans used in what is now Venezuelan territory, to enter to discover and found. Following one of these routes, the founding of the city of Trujillo took place; This route began in the west at the beginning of the 1520s, with the presence of Juan de Ampíes’ agents in Curacao, called the Island of the Giants, and the founding of Santa Ana de Coro by his son: Juan de Ampíes Ávila. . In 1529 with the arrival of the welser Ambrosio Alfinger (1500-1533), first Governor and Captain General of the Province of Venezuela, the exploration of the territory began and the first founding of Maracaibo and other towns on the coast of the Hacha River occurred. beyond Cabo de la Vela. In 1545, Tocuyo was founded by the Spanish Juan de Carvajal. From there a range of foundations were opened: Borburata (1548), Nueva Segovia de Barquisimeto (1552), Nirgua (1554), Valencia del Rey (1555); which continued with the founding of Trujillo (1557), Caracas (1567), Nuestra Señora de Caraballeda (1568), Ciudad Rodrigo de Maracaibo (1569).
The permanence of a group of conquerors in the western zone, in the years prior to the founding of Trujillo, must have increased the level of alert in our Cuica aborigines, who showed signs of being willing to defend their ancestral lands; circumstance that we can deduce from a passage related by the Italian Galeotto Cey (1513-1579), Florentine related to the wealthy Strozzi and Medici families; one of the founders of Tocuyo; narration referred to in his work “Voyage and Description of the Indies”, published in Spanish by the Banco Venezolano de Crédito Foundation, Caracas 1995, with a preliminary study by the historian José Rafael Lovera. Cey lived 14 years in various places in America, between 1539 and 1553, nine years shared in the Province of Venezuela, during the government of the Welsers and in the New Kingdom of Granada. The Italian merchant notes that he left Santo Domingo on December 17, 1544, accompanying the Spaniard, of Galician nation, Juan de Carvajal, who had been appointed by the Chancellery of Santo Domingo as Governor and Captain General of the Province of Venezuela; They arrived at Choir, “a city of 10 thatched houses two leagues from the sea”, on January 6, 1545. The story of this Italian, regarding the expedition in the land of the Cuicas, coincides with the data of the narration made by Juan de Castellanos (1522-1607), contemporary with Cey, who had arrived in the New World in 1539.
The expedition to the territory of the ancient settlers of Trujillo lands was ordered in 1548, by Captain Juan de Villegas (1509-1553); and according to Don Mario Briceño Iragorry (1897-1958), it was under the direction of Field Master Diego Ruiz Vallejo.
Galeotto Cey, wrote about his encounter with the Cuicas aborigines and points out that when he was in El Tocuyo:
“…This new government came to us at the beginning of September 1548; He immediately began to show that he had new intentions and seemed happy to be the master, since it is enough for the Spaniards to command, even if it is only for one occasion, and having at first promised to leave with 20 companions he later denied it, saying that he wanted to discover certain mountains located to the west, in certain valleys, more than 30 leagues distant, who had news of great wealth and did not want anyone to leave without this having first been discovered and fearing that we would leave against his will, he sent us with 70 people, to beginning of November, with orders that we would stay for 6 months, or at least 4, since then winter sets in and we cannot walk. To please him, I went with two horses and traveled through the most rugged mountains, where we always had plenty of bread, because there was plenty of that grain, and when we arrived at the place of the great news of riches that there was then, I thought I would find more treasures than in Peru. There we found a large number of Indians called CUICAS, very bestial and ugly, but great cultivators, all established on mountains, hills and valleys with little flat land. As Christians had never arrived there, they came to attack us 4 times, more than 10 thousand each time, bravely, but always with so much damage to them that it was pitiful, and without the death of any Christian, nor seriously injured, except for one horse that died. , more because of whoever wanted to eat him, than because of any injury he had. Here we find that the Indians hardly knew gold, nor did they value it, saying that it was not good for eating. It was found in the rivers, but in small quantities, which did not compensate the price of settling there; The Indians said that they did not want it, that it was enough for them to collect corn and other good roots to eat, for which gold was not good. Thus we were mocked and the wealth that we found there and that they had in great esteem, was that, on certain logs as thick as thighs, 4 arms long, certain paternostilles of white bone were rolled up, much smaller than beads, which they called QUITERO, and other reddish ones that they called BARODA. Each Indian woman, out of devotion, strung them every day or as she could get them, one turn over the other in such quantity that not even two men could lift them from the ground, and many of these were found and we call them idols, because the They had certain large houses where they would offer them, like churches. These paternostillos serve, among the Indians, as ornament and as currency, which is contracted among them as I will say later. This was the wealth that we found there and so we returned to the town at the end of March 1549…”
Galeotto Cey’s historic encounter with the Cuicas aborigines occurred between 1548 and 1549, nine years before the founding of Trujillo in 1557; It is not mentioned in Trujillo history books, since the work of the Florentine merchant was located in the British Museum in London at the end of the 20th century. The expedition, according to Cey’s written testimony, remained in the territory of the Cuicas for 5 months.
I dedicate this note to the Tulene-Bertoni family, dedicated researchers and protectors of the works of art of our Cuica ancestors.
* Chronicler of Tucutucu
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