Perhaps the history of the western hemisphere has never furnished a more wonderful example of the self-made man than may be found in the person of Francisco Pizarro, a gentleman who came to America about 1510, intending to grow up with the country.
Mr. Pizarro was born at Truxillo, Spain, about 1471. His father was a Spanish colonel of foot and his mother was a peasant girl who admired and respected the dashing colonel very much, but felt that she had scruples about marriage, and so, although years afterward Francisco tried his best to make a match between his father and mother, they were never married. It is said that this embittered his whole life. None but those who have experienced it can fully realize what it is to have a thankless parent.
Pizarro's mother's name was Estramadura. This was her maiden name. It was a name which seemed to harmonize well with her rich, pickled-olive complexion and so she retained it all her life. Her son did not have many early advantages, for he was neglected by his mother and allowed to grow up a swineherd, and it is even said that he was suckled by swine in his infancy while his giddy mother joined in the mad whirl at the skating-rink. We can hardly imagine anything more pitiable than the condition of a little child left to rustle for nourishment among the black-and-tan hogs of Spain while his father played old sledge on the frontier in the regular army and his mother stood on her Spanish head and wrote her cigar-box name in the atmosphere at the rink.
Poor little Pizarro had none of the modern advantages, therefore, and his education was extremely crude. The historian says that he grew up a bold, ignorant, and brutal man. He came to what was then called Spanish America at the age of 39 years and assisted Mr. Balboa in discovering the Pacific ocean. Having heard of the existence of Peru with all its wealth, Pizarro secured a band of self-made men like himself and lit out for that province for the purpose of conquering it if he liked it and bringing home some solid silver teapots and gold-lined card-receivers. He was engaged in gathering this line of goods and working them off on the pawnbroker for twenty-one years, during which time he did not get killed, but continued to enjoy a reasonable degree of health and strength.
Although Peru at that time was quite densely populated with an industrious and wealthy class of natives, Pizarro subdued her with 110 foot soldiers armed with old-fashioned muskets that had these full-blown barrels, with muzzles on them like the business end of a tuba horn, sixty-seven mounted men, and two toy cannon loaded with carpet-tacks. With no education, and, what was still harder to bear, the inner consciousness that his parents were plain, common, every-day people whose position in life would not advance him in the estimation of the Peruvians, he battled on. His efforts were crowned with success, insomuch that at the close of the year 1532 peace was declared and he could breathe the free air once more without fear of getting a bronze arrow-head mixed up with his kidneys when his back was turned. "For the first time in two years," says the historian, "Pizarro was able to take off his tin helmet and his sheet-iron corset at night when he lay down to rest, or undismayed to go forth bareheaded and wearing only his crinkled seersucker coat and a pair of sandals at the twilight hour and till midnight wander alone amid the famous guano groves of Peru."
Such is the history of a man who never even knew how to write his own name. He won fame for himself and great wealth without an education or a long, dark-blue lineage. Pizarro was like Job. You know, we sometimes sing:
Oh, Job, he was a fine young lad,
Sing glory hallelujah.
His heart was good but his blood was bad,
Sing glory hallelujah.
So Pizarro could not brag on his blood and his education was not classical. He could not write his name, though he tried faithfully for many years. Day after day during the campaign, and late into the night, when the yaller dogs of Lima came forth with their Peruvian bark, he would get his orderly sergeant to set him the copy:
"Paul may plant and Apollinaris water, but it is God that giveth the increase."
Then Pizarro would bring out his writing material and his tongue and try to write, but he never could do it. His was not a studious mind. It was more on the knock-down-and-drag-out order.
Pizarro was made a marquis in after years. He was also made a corpse. He acquired the latter position toward the close of his life. He, at one time, married the inca's daughter and founded a long line of grandees, marquises, and macaroni sculptors, whose names may be found on the covers of imported cigar boxes and in the topmost tier of the wrought-iron resorts in our best penitentiaries.
Pizarro lived a very busy life during the conquest, some days killing as many as seventy and eighty Peruvians between sun and sun. But death at last crooked his finger at the marquis and he slept. We all brag and blow our horn here for a few brief years, it is true, but when the grim reaper with his new and automatic twine-binder comes along he gathers us in; the weak and the strong, the ignorant and the educated, the plain and the beautiful, the young and the old, those who have just sniffed the sweet and dew-laden air of life's morning and those who are footsore and weary and waiting--all alike must bow low to the sickle that goes on cutting closer and closer to us even when we sleep.
Had Pizarro thought more about this matter, he would have been ahead to-day.
