Spaniards thought were of great value;1 and further, that on one or two other occasions a few pearls were received from the Indians as presents.
The
account of De Soto's wanderings, given by Garcilasso, the Peruvian
historian, contains many references to pearls, which read more like
romance than reality. With his knowledge of the jewels, temples, etc.,
in Mexico and Peru, and recognizing some similarities in the manners
of the people of those countries and the ones with whom De Soto came in
contact, Garcilasso was easily led to statements which, though
possibly true in the one case, seem fictitious in the other.
He
gives the story of the Queen of Cofaciqui, with some additional
particulars. The string of pearls which she presented to the governor
made three circuits of her neck and descended to her waist. In his
account, the graves in Cofaciqui became a temple containing, among
other riches, more than a thousand measures of pearls, of which they
took only two. Near Cofaciqui was the temple of Talomeco, over a
hundred steps long by forty broad, with the walls high in proportion.
Upon the roof of the temple were shells of different sizes, placed with
the inside out, to give more brilliancy, and with the intervals "filled
with many strings of pearls of divers sizes, in the form of festoons,
from one shell to the other, and extending from the top of the roof to
the bottom." Within the temple, festoons of pearls hung from the
ceiling and from all other parts of the building. In the middle were
three rows of chests of graded sizes, arranged in pyramids of five or
six chests each, according to their sizes. "All these chests were
filled with pearls, in such a manner that the largest contain the
largest pearls, and thus, in succession, to the smallest, which were
full of seed-pearls only. The quantity of pearls was such, that the
Spaniards avowed, that even if there had been more than nine hundred
men and three hundred horses, they all together could not have carried
off at one time all the pearls of this temple. We ought not to be too
much astonished at this, if we consider that the Indians of the
province conveyed into these chests, during many ages, all the pearls
which they found, without retaining a single one of them."2
In the armory attached to this temple were long pikes, maces, clubs,
and other weapons mounted with links and tassels of pearls.
Garcilasso
has an interesting story of an incident said to have occurred a few
days after leaving Cofaciqui, when the troops were passing through the
wilderness.
