Note 497 — Chapter CIV

We first meet with Hernando Bachicao as a captain of pikemen in the army of Vaca de Castro. When Gonzalo Pizarro rose against the viceroy Blasco Nuñez de Vela, he entrusted Bachicao with the formation of a navy. That officer took command of a brigantine at Callao, which had just arrived from Quilca, and sailed up the coast. At Tumbez he found the viceroy, who fled inland on his approach; and Bachicao seized two vessels. Sailing northward he captured several others, and with the fleet thus formed, he got possession of the city of Panama in March 1545. Soon afterwards Gonzalo Pizarro appointed Hinojosa to command the fleet, and superseded Bachicao; who then joined his chief with reinforcements from Panama, and took part in the final defeat of the viceroy at Añaquito, where he commanded the pikemen. At the battle of Huarina, where he also commanded the pikemen, believing that the forces of Centeno were about to gain the victory, he turned traitor and deserted his colours; but he was mistaken, for his old commander Gonzalo Pizarro won that bloody fight. Bachicao, therefore, returned to his own side, and would have been glad if his conduct had escaped observation. But the eagle eye of the fiery old master of the camp, Carbajal, was not to be deceived, and the captain Hernando Bachicao was hung by his order, a few days afterwards, in the little village of Juli, on the western shore of lake Titicaca.