By a feat of great seamanship, Pizarro travelled much further down the South American coast and, after many false starts, made his way inland to discover the secret of the Incas in the heights of the Peruvian Andes. The enormous quantities of gold and silver sent back to Spain from his conquest led to credible stories reaching Europe of cities of gold and silver and of untold treasure to be had by those bold enough to venture to this New World.
The arrow poison
When the news of the gold and silver being brought to Spain reached the sea ports of Europe, it caused feverish excitement. Many ill-prepared adventurers soon set out on the perilous voyage to the New World. For the first time in Europe money was available to back these schemes. Sir Thomas Gresham had built his Royal Exchange near the stock market in London and risk companies were established to fund ‘merchant adventurers of good report’. Although most of the voyagers who set out for the New World were privateers and buccaneers seeking their fortunes, there were also a number of soldiers and monks among them eager to convert the heathen and to establish dominion over this new land.
Inexperienced adventurers, many of whom had never been beyond their home town or village, crowded into small, poorly constructed vessels that were unsuitable for the long ocean crossing. They knew nothing of the prevailing winds and storms in the southern ocean, the extremes of climate they would have to endure or the privations they would suffer. Many died of dehydration, scurvy, disease and starvation on the long sea journey. The vessels were seldom big enough to carry sufficient provisions.
Many never reached the New World. Of those that did a large number suffered scurvy, typhus and swamp fever. One can only imagine the fear and wonderment with which those who survived the journey viewed this foreign land. As they landed, they found themselves surrounded by hostile natives, armed with spears and blow darts, who would suddenly emerge from the seemingly impenetrable jungle lining the shores, with their faces and bodies covered with paint and feathers. (Fig 2) They found ferocious animals and brightly coloured birds that were unlike anything they had ever seen before. They had to cross muddy rivers swarming with flesh-devouring fish and with alligators that bit off the limbs of the unwary. They encountered poisonous snakes and swarms of stinging insects whose bites produced sores and fever.
They brought back colourful tales of their adventures to amaze and impress their sponsors. None of these tales was more astonishing, or caused more concern, than that of the mystical properties of the substance into which the natives dipped their darts and arrows. They described, in some detail, ‘the flying death’ caused by the magical South American arrow poison. (figure 3)
The practice of anointing arrows and darts with poisons was not new: it had been common practice in ancient times. Homer refers to their use, and in Virgil’s Aeneid, Ovid is described as smearing his arrows with ‘viper’s blood’ and Apollo’s darts were said to carry ‘pestilence’. The word toxin is itself derived from the etymological stem toxon, meaning a bow or a bow and arrow. There is evidence that the practice of dipping arrows into concoctions of poisonous herbs was common in Europe among the Celts and Gauls, but that it had died out with the advent of more effective weapons and the discovery of gunpowder. From the stories told by the explorers of the New World, the effects of the poisoned arrows were at first thought to be some form of witchcraft. It was only when the natives were observed dipping their darts into the sticky concoction of poisonous herbs that the reason for their lethal effect became obvious.
This lethal effect was consistently reported by voyagers who returned from these jungles. Especially terrifying tales were told by those who ventured along the Amazon River and into the Orinoco Basin, where the bloodthirsty warriors, native to this region, used a particularly potent form of the poison for hunting their prey and killing their enemies.
It is the tales from these explorers that contained the most graphic details of the ‘flying death’ wreaked by the blow darts used by these Indians. Many of the published reports were written to titillate a European audience hungry for excitement, who longed for extraordinary stories of exotic discoveries and flesh-creeping tales of the dangers of this New World. It is not surprising that some of the stories were purposely embellished and made absurdly fanciful to increase their appeal to an expectant and gullible audience and to boost the sales of their books. As a result it is difficult to distinguish where fact ends and mysticism begins.
Clearly, the death caused by the poison was horrendous. Stories of the victim dying with ‘staring eyes’, of his ‘bowels exploding’, of his being in ‘convulsions’ and ‘fixed to the ground unable to move’ are so common in published reports that they must, in large part, be believed. One of the most frightening aspects of the nature of the death was that there appeared to be nothing that could be done to remedy the effect of the poison. It soon became apparent that there was a pressing need for an antidote with which to treat the victims, but first more had to be known about what the poison was and how it killed its victims.
Possibly the earliest details of how it was produced came from the account of the Italian monk, Peter Martyr d’Anghiera, who joined an expedition established to convert the heathen natives to the Catholic faith. He published an account of his report to the Spanish court early in the sixteenth century. The book, De Orbe Novo (‘Of the New World’), which was translated by Dr Mac Nutt of New York, tells of a poisonous concoction being made by members of a small cabal of female elders who were kept sealed in a special hut for one or two days. He wrote that ‘they often died from inhaling the fumes.’(Fig 4)
If all the women survived the ordeal it was considered that the poison was not sufficiently strong. According to a native high priest, it was made from ‘the stings of scorpions, the heads of deadly ants and a juice distilled from special trees’. His account of the death of those making the poison is a recurring theme in reports from other sources. The stories of these deaths may well reflect the extreme precautions taken by the high priests to guard the secret source of the poison and the process by which it was made. In all probability this involved deliberately killing those who became privy to the secret, as an offering to the gods, since the practice of human sacrifice is known to have been common in this region at this time.
There is also a suggestion in De Orbe Novo that the natives had developed a cure for the effects of the poison, which, according to Peter d’Anghiera, involved avoidance of ‘intoxicating drinks and substances and of the excessive pleasures of the table’ and called for ‘sexual abstinence for two years’.
In the years following Peter d’Anghiera’s account of his voyage to the New World, other explorers ventured up the massive Amazon to try to reach its source. They brought back accounts of their exploits together with curios and samples collected from the tribes of Indians who inhabited the forests lining the riverbanks. One of the earliest of these adventurers was the Spanish physician, Nicolás Bautista Monardes, who wrote an account of his adventures in ‘purple prose’ (but in Spanish) in his book, Dos Libros, published originally in 1565. The book was translated into English by John Frampton in 1571, under the seemingly unsuitable title of Joyfull Newes from the Newe Founde Worlde.
In his book, Monardes also tells of the dangers of inhaling the fumes of the arrow poison and of the horrible death it causes. He described the mysterious ritual that surrounded the preparation of the poison and, he believed, gave it magic powers. Like d’Anghiera, he probably mistook the extreme precautions that were taken to preserve the secrets involved in the preparation of the poison for a magic rite.
More accurate and objective accounts of the mysterious arrow poison and the manner in which it killed its victims followed the return of Sir Walter Raleigh’s expedition to the Guinea lands (Guyana) in South America. In 1595, Sir Walter Raleigh wrote:
I was curious to find out the true remedies of the poisoned arrows… the person shot endureth the most insufferable torment in the world and abideth