Lieutenant Nun

Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 1997

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-10

Chapters 11-15

Chapters 16-19

Chapters 20-26

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 6-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 6 Summary: “She Arrives in Concepción in Chile and There Encounters Her Brother. She Moves on to Paicabí, Where She Takes Part in the Battle of Valdivia, Rescuing the Company Colors. She Returns to Concepción, Kills Two Men and Her Own Brother”

After sailing for 20 days, Erauso arrived in Concepción, where she was ordered to disembark by Miguel de Erauso, the governor’s secretary and Erauso’s brother. They had never met before because he left San Sebastian when she was two. She told him that she had come from San Sebastian (without revealing the rest of her identity), which overjoyed him. They then ate dinner together, and upon learning that her unit was to go to Paicabí, Miguel convinced the governor to reassign her to his command, as Paicabí had a reputation as especially dangerous.

For the next three years, she stayed under her brother’s command, often dining with him. However, this ended when Miguel and Erauso got into a fight over a mistress in town that both had been visiting. When the fight was broken up, Erauso took refuge in a church until she learned that her brother had stopped her from being punished. She was, instead, sent to Paicabí.

For “three years of misery” (20), Erauso fought in Paicabí, often battling against the Indigenous tribes. She recounts one particularly notable occasion on which an Indigenous army sacked the city of Valdivia and were confronted by the Spanish forces. While the Spanish were normally victorious in these engagements, in this case, Erauso says that the Indigenous received timely reinforcements that allowed them to push the Spanish back. The company colors (a flag with ceremonial importance) was captured, so Erauso and two others charged after it. Both of the other men died in the attempt, but Erauso was able to take the flag and reach Spanish lines again.

Erauso spent nine months recovering after this, with her brother being among those who took care of her. Once recovered, she was presented with the company colors as a gift from the governor and promoted to lieutenant, a rank she served in for the next five years. For six months of that time, she was placed in charge of her company after her captain died. She lost the command when she hanged a captive Indigenous commander that the governor had wanted alive. Later, she was sent to the Valley of Puren in a cavalry force. By her description, they “were on the rampage for six months or so” (21), destroying crops and land before she got permission to go back to Concepción.

She stayed in Concepción until she got into an argument with another lieutenant in a gambling house and stabbed him. A local judge arrived on the scene and questioned Erauso. Soon after, her brother also arrived and urged her to flee. She slashed at the judge, fled to a church, and learned that both people whom she had injured had died. The governor had the church surrounded for six months but was unable to secure her capture.

Eventually, the siege of the church began to be lightened, and friends were allowed in to see her. One visitor, a man named Don Juan de Silva, visited her and asked if she would be a second in a duel he had organized (a “second” being the person who assists and supports the duelist). While she was initially hesitant, she later agreed. They left for the duel in the evening and met up with their enemies in the dark.

Silva began to fight but was injured quickly, so Erauso stepped in, which prompted the other second to do the same. In the chaotic fight, both the original duelists died, and Erauso stabbed the other second. As he was dying, she learned that she had stabbed her brother Miguel. She fetched a priest to hear their confessions, and her brother revealed that she had stabbed him before dying.

Erauso fled to the church again, which the governor almost stormed before he was talked down. Miguel was soon buried in that church while Catalina watched from the choir box, feeling exceptionally guilty. She stayed there for eight more months before a friend gave her supplies and sent her toward Tucumán.

Chapter 7 Summary: “She Leaves Concepción for Tucumán”

Erauso set out along the coast but soon began to suffer from thirst. She fell in with two deserters along the route, but both died during a long journey over mountains. Erauso continued walking and came upon two men on the road. Not knowing if “they were cannibal or Christians” (27), she was worried until they approached and offered to carry her to their mistress’s ranch. They worked for a widow with Indigenous and Spanish heritage who took pity on Erauso. Since there were few Spanish people in the area, the lady soon began to wonder if Erauso would marry her daughter, though Erauso writes that she had no attraction to her, favoring prettier faces.

Erauso pretended to be happy and ran the farm for two months before they went into Tucumán to prepare for their wedding. Erauso tried to delay the wedding for as long as possible and, while in Tucumán, struck up a friendship with a bishop’s secretary. The secretary hoped that Erauso would marry his niece. Both the women on the farm and the secretary’s niece began to send her gifts, so one night, Erauso stole a mule and fled with all the gifts.

Chapter 8 Summary: “From Tucumán to Potosí”

It took Erauso three months to cover the distance to Potosí, during which time she traveled with a soldier. Together, they fended off bandits who tried to mug them until they split apart in the city. There, she met Juan López de Arguijo, an alderman of the city of La Plata. She worked for him, being placed in charge of enslaved persons who would care for llamas in Charcas. However, her master soon got involved in a dispute, which led to her fleeing back to Potosí.

Soon after this, there was an uprising in the city, which Erauso helped to suppress. Due to her role in this, she was given the position of attaché to the sergeant major for two years. While in this role, she was sent to attack the Indigenous population of Chuncos and El Dorada.

Chapter 9 Summary: “She Leaves Potosí for Chuncos”

On the road to Chuncos, the army units arrived at a village called Arzaga, where Indigenous peoples to whom they were allied lived. They traveled further inland, discovering plains filled with almond trees that reminded Erauso of Spain. The governor wanted them to plant crops there, but the soldiers insisted that they wanted to loot. On the third day of travel, they attacked an Indigenous village. While they were in town, their commander was shot in the eye by a young boy. He died three days later, and the soldiers “carved the boy into ten thousand pieces” (34). Indigenous soldiers then attacked the village. Erauso claims that they were 10,000 strong in this attack but were still routed. The soldiers then were ordered to go back, which they did reluctantly because of the loot they had already gained.

Due to the potential to gain more wealth, many deserted, with Erauso among them. She then traveled toward the Las Charcas province, her small amount of cash dwindling until she was bankrupt.

Chapter 10 Summary: “She Goes to the City of La Plata”

In La Plata, she began working for a mine owner and stayed in the house of a widow called Doña Catalina de Chaves. After a few days, “unpleasantness broke out” (35). Chaves got into an argument with a woman named Doña Francisca de Marmolejo over who got the first pew in a church on Holy Thursday. Chaves stormed out, and when Marmolejo left the church, a young Indigenous man ran by and slashed her face before he went to Chaves’s house.

A few days later, Chaves admitted to being behind the attack, but when the Indigenous man was captured, he said that it was Erauso who was behind the attack. Erauso was arrested and tortured for information, but she did not give anything up. Erauso was going to be punished but managed to appeal her sentence; her innocence was confirmed. She takes away from this “that persistence and hard work can perform miracles, and it happens regularly—especially in the Indies!” (38).

Chapters 6-10 Analysis

Chapters 6-10 show Erauso’s early military career and the beginning of her life as an outlaw after the accidental murder of Miguel, her brother. The relationship between these two provides insight into how Erauso blended her personal identity, her assumed identity, and her social role during her time in South America and is thus highly relevant to the theme of Personal Identity Versus Societal Roles.

Erauso was excited when she saw Miguel and happy to serve under his command because of their familial relationship—a sign that, despite her avoidance of her family, she was still attached to her “original” identity. Presumably, she could exercise this desire for closeness with a family with Miguel because there was little chance of his uncovering her identity, unlike with her mother and father. Miguel, conversely, only interacted with Erauso’s assumed identity. They bonded, but only over her origin in San Sebastian instead of their familial connection. It was subsequently in the externally identifiable social roles of two young men that they interacted, and it was because of the expectations of these roles that their relationship deteriorated, ultimately meeting its tragic end. The brawl over the shared pursuit of a woman revealed nothing about Erauso’s status as his sibling but instead could have happened to any two men in the city whose honor would have compelled them to fight.

Similarly, as men who had friends with the same focus on honor and reputation, they were drawn into a final, fatal duel. It was only the gulf between Erauso’s personal identity and her social status that made Miguel’s death more unfortunate than any of the many other people she kills. Thus, through the one-sided familial relationship that Erauso had with Miguel, the complications of the many facets of Erauso’s identity become more apparent. She acted and behaved like a young man while hiding a secret that adds crucial nuance to this behavior, complicating the “story” that all her contemporaries could see.

Erauso’s descriptions of other characters in these chapters reveal the further complications at play while defining identities, as well as their connection to The Role of Religion in Early Modern Life. As Erauso describes being rescued in Chapter 7, she wonders if the people she saw “were cannibals or Christians” and describes feeling relief when she realized that they were Christians (27). Her reaction demonstrates how religion was a key aspect of identity definitions within the colonial world. Erauso views the inhabitants of South America through a binary colonial distinction that is used to disparage the Indigenous groups. Religion’s essential role in the colonial project, and Erauso’s own endorsement of this project, are thus apparent in this scene. Moreover, the feud of the noblewomen in La Plata was based on their respective positions during church services, something that is demonstrative of their comparative social standings. Combined, these factors show the inseparability of religion and life within this period.

However, Erauso’s conceptions of a clear link between religion, race, and morality face further complications. Erauso met a widow with Spanish and Indigenous heritage, whom she notes was “a good woman” even though the noblewomen’s feud over their church position led to one ordering the other’s face to be slashed (28), demonstrating the flaws in the colonial viewpoint. It is probable that this nuance was not the purpose of Erauso’s writings; she is unrepentantly a colonialist throughout and celebrates her own “rampage” in Indigenous territory. However, it nevertheless hints at the difference between the roles that societal expectations would place people in and their personal behavior.

The possibility for Freedom and Adventure in the Colonial World is again highlighted in these chapters. Erauso began to live the life of an outlaw, moving from town to town, able to reinvent herself each time. She murdered three people in Concepción (the gambler she argued with, the judge, and her brother), and by the time she arrived in Tucumán, she could live without any consequences for these actions. Narratively, this allows Erauso to break up the autobiography into a series of episodes, with her Concepción stay centering on her and her brother, her time in Tucumán showing her ability to outwit suitors, her Potosí stay placing her back in the role of a conqueror, and so on. This episodic structure creates a continual fast pace as she moves from location to location.

These events show the remarkable capacity for freedom that young men in colonial South America had during the 17th century. Erauso could seek her fortune repeatedly, generally avoiding consequences until her murder of The Cid led to her confession. She was demonstrably not the only person who was doing so; during her military campaign in Chuncos, she mentions twice that the soldiers were focused on looting and unhappy with the governor’s attempts to rein this in. The scene paints the picture of an area filled with soldier-adventurers, all outwardly identical to Erauso in behavior and motive, which helps explain her fame as someone who could move through such a milieu while being a woman. The most explicit statement of the possibilities in South America comes in Chapter 10, where Erauso claims that this “persistence and hard work can perform miracles, and it happens regularly—especially in the Indies!” (38), a key sentiment that many men Erauso came across appear to have shared.