The heroic woman in the style of early North American history is not really a central figure of the Spanish conquests. Mainly Indian servant women accompanied the conquerors. Most expeditions set out with no Spanish women at all; at most one or two camp followers or mistresses of leaders, like the well-known Ines Suarez in Chile. But in the relay system of conquest, at the more established base from which the expedition left there would always be wives and female relatives of the conquerors, who would begin to appear in the new country almost before the fighting was over. And legends formed around them. In the rich central regions the first women became known as grain goddesses and bearers of European civilization, each reputed to have introduced wheat and. other European foods and amenities. On the periphery, tales were told of the hardships and battle prowess of the once humble women who came with the conquerors, Ines Suarez again being a good example.

The present letter pertains more to the second phenomenon, though with some differences. The Plata region was indeed the periphery of the periphery, one of the most difficult and, in sixteenth-century terms, economically hopeless regions into which Spaniards ventured. However, this was not known in Spain when don Pedro de Mendoza, expecting another Peru, bypassed the step-by-step series of conquests and brought a great expedition directly from Seville, including no small number of women who were not camp followers; some were ladies with the title of dona and noble surnames like Guevara. As to the rest, dona Isabel tells it, not untruly, but in legendary and heightened form, twenty years after the fact and with the urgency of a disappointed claimant.

Very high and powerful lady:

Several women came to this province of the Rio de la plata along with its first governor don Pedro de Mendoza, and it was my fortune to be one of them.