WHO ARE THE WHITE CONQUERORS?
Yes, the white strangers were at war with Tlascala; there could be
no doubt of it. The meaning of the pictured despatches was too clear
on that point to be misunderstood. Which side would win in such a
struggle? The pictures seemed to indicate that the strangers had
suffered a defeat. Certainly some of them had been killed, as had at
least three of the mysterious beings who had, until then, been believed
to be gods. With such evidences of the superiority of his countrymen to
reassure him, could the son of a Tlascalan warrior doubt which banner
would be crowned with victory? And yet, if these white strangers should
be destroyed, or driven back whence they came, what would become of his
father's cherished plan for the overthrow of Montezuma and his bloody
priesthood by their aid? Why had Tlahuicol placed such confidence in
their powers? Who, and what, were these white conquerors? Whence had
they come? and what was their object in braving the dangers that must
beset every step of their advance into the land of Anahuac?
With thoughts and queries such as these was the mind of Huetzin filled
as he sped forward on his self-appointed mission. The question of food,
that had absorbed so large a share of his attention on the preceding
days of his flight, no longer gave him any anxiety. The sight of his
green girdle and packet of despatches caused his wants of this nature
to be rapidly supplied from the several post stations, at which he
halted for a moment without entering. To be sure his appearance created
animated discussions after he had departed, but only when it was too
late to make investigation. Thus Huetzin's mind was free to dwell upon
the subject of the white conquerors and their war with his own people.
These "white conquerors," as Tlahuicol had termed them, formed the
little army with which Hernando Cortes set forth from Cuba, in the
spring of 1519, for the exploration and possible subjugation of the
great western kingdom, concerning which fabulous accounts had already
reached Spain. During the twenty-seven years that had elapsed since
Columbus first set foot on an island of the New World, exploration
had been active, and the extent of its eastern coast had been nearly
determined. Sebastian Cabot had skirted it from Labrador to the
peninsula of Florida. Columbus himself had reached the mainland,
without realizing that it was such, and had sailed from Honduras to the
mouth of the mighty Orinoco. Amerigo Vespucci and others had coasted
southward as far as the Rio de la Plata. Balboa, with dauntless
courage, had forced his way through the trackless forests of Darien,
and from the summit of its lofty cordilleras sighted the mighty
Pacific. The West Indian Islands were all known, and only the lands
bordering the Mexican Gulf still remained unexplored.
In 1517 a Spanish slave-hunter, bound from Cuba to the Bahamas, was
driven so far out of his course by a succession of easterly gales that,
at the end of three weeks, he found himself on an unknown coast far
to the westward. It was the land of the Mayas, who, having learned by
rumor of the cruelties practised by the Spaniards in the Caribbean
Islands, greeted these new-comers with an invincible hostility that
resulted in a series of bloody encounters. In most of these the
Spaniards were worsted; some of them were taken prisoners by the
Indians, and so many were killed that all notions of their godlike
nature were destroyed. When the whites questioned those natives with
whom they gained intercourse as to the name of their land, the answer
always given was, "Tec-ta-tan" (I do not understand you), and this,
corrupted into "Yucatan," is the name borne by that portion of the
country to this day.
In spite of their reverses and failure to gain a foothold in this new
country, the Spanish slave-hunters saw enough of its stone buildings,
populous towns, cultivated fields, rich fabrics, and golden ornaments
to convince them that they were on the borders of a powerful and
wealthy empire. Thus, when they returned to Cuba, leaving half their
number behind, either dead or as prisoners, they brought such glowing
accounts of their discoveries that another expedition to extend them,
as well as to procure slaves and gold, was immediately fitted out.
Under the command of Juan de Grijalva, and embarked in four small
vessels, it sailed from Santiago in May, 1518, and was gone six months,
during which time it explored the coast from Yucatan to a point some
distance beyond where the city of Vera Cruz now stands.
On the Mayan coast Grijalva met with the same fierce hostility that
had greeted his predecessor, but among the Aztecs he was received with
a more friendly spirit by a chieftain who had been ordered to make a
careful study of the strangers for the information of the king of that
land. This monarch, who was soon to become the world-famed Montezuma,
also sent costly gifts to the Spaniards, hoping that, satisfied with
them, they would depart and leave his country in peace. They did
so, but only to carry to Cuba such wonderful tales of the wealth of
the countries they had visited that a third expedition was at once
undertaken. It was placed under command of Hernando Cortes, a trained
soldier, about thirty-three years of age. His fleet consisted of eleven
vessels, the largest of which was but of one hundred tons burden.
Three others were from seventy to eighty tons, and the rest were open
caravels. In these were embarked eight hundred and fifty souls, of whom
one hundred and ten were sailors. Five hundred and fifty were soldiers,
but of these only thirteen were armed with muskets, and thirty-two with
crossbows, the rest being provided with swords and pikes. The remainder
of the force consisted of Indian servants.
If this small force of men had been his sole reliance, Cortes would
have accomplished little more than his predecessors; but it was not.
He was well provided with artillery, in the shape of ten heavy guns
and four small brass pieces called falconets, besides a bountiful
supply of ammunition. Better than all, however, he had sixteen horses,
animals up to that time unknown on the American continent, and well
fitted to inspire the simple-minded natives with terror. Cortes was
also fortunate in his selection of officers. Among them were the fierce
Alvarado, who had already been on the coast with Grijalva, and who was
afterward named by the Aztecs "Tonatiah," or the Sunlit, on account of
his golden hair and beard, and Gonzalo de Sandoval, barely twenty-two
years of age and slow of speech, but of such a sturdy frame, good
judgment, and absolute fearlessness that he became the most famous and
trustworthy of all the conqueror's captains. He was also the owner of
the glorious mare Motilla, the pride and pet of the army.
With this force Cortes sailed for the Mexican coast filled with hopes
of conquest and of abolishing forever the cruel religion of the Aztecs,
with its human sacrifices and bloody rites, concerning which the
reports of his predecessors had said so much.
The policy of Cortes was to gain his ends by peaceful means, if
possible, and only to fight when forced to do so. In pursuance of
this plan of action he touched at several places on the Mayan coast,
before proceeding to Mexico, and so won the good-will of those fierce
fighters by his courtesy and a liberal bestowal of presents, that they
not only desisted from hostilities, but delivered to him a Spaniard
whom they had held as prisoner for several years. This man, whose name
was Aguilar, could converse fluently in the Mayan tongue, and was thus
invaluable as an interpreter.
At the mouth of the Tabasco River, on the borders of Aztec territory,
where Grijalva had been so courteously received two years before,
Cortes was greeted in a very different manner. As the Tabascans had
been ordered by the Aztec monarch to treat Grijalva's expedition
kindly and gain from it all possible information concerning the white
strangers, they now received instructions from the same source to
destroy this one. Accordingly a great army had been collected, and in
spite of Cortes's efforts to maintain peaceful relations, his little
force was attacked with the utmost fury as soon as it landed. The
artillery created terrible havoc in the dense ranks of the natives;
but so desperate was their onset that the Spaniards would doubtless
have been defeated had it not been for the opportune arrival of their
cavalry, which was thus used for the first time in a New-World battle.
Before these death-dealing monsters, whose weight bore down all
opposition, and beneath whose iron hoofs they were trampled like blades
of grass, the panic-stricken Indians fled in dismay.
The loss of the Tabascans in this first battle of the conquest of
Mexico was enormous, reaching well into the thousands, while of the
Spaniards a number were killed and some two hundred were wounded. Among
the prisoners taken were several caciques, whom Cortes set at liberty
and sent back to their own people with presents, and the message that
for the sake of peace he was willing to overlook the past provided
they would now acknowledge the authority of his king and abolish human
sacrifices from their religious observances. If they refused these
terms he would put every man, woman, and child to the sword.
This threat, together with the punishment already received, was
effective. On the following day a delegation of head men came in, to
tender their submission to the White Conqueror. They brought many
valuable gifts, among which were twenty female slaves, whom Cortes
caused to be baptized and given Christian names. The most beautiful
of these, and the one who quickly proved herself the most intelligent,
had already passed through a long experience of slavery, though still
but seventeen years of age. Sold, when a child, by a step-mother, in
a distant northern province, she had been carried to the land of the
Mayas, educated there in the household of a noble, and finally captured
by the fierce Tabascans. She was thus able to speak both the Aztec
and the Mayan tongues, and so could interpret the Aztec, through the
Mayan, to Aguilar, who in turn translated her words into Spanish. Thus,
through this young Indian girl, the Spaniards were, for the first time,
placed in direct communication with the dominant race of the country.
The Christian name given her was "Marina," a name destined to become
almost as well known as that of the White Conqueror himself.
From Tabasco Cortes followed the coast to the island of San Juan de
Ulloa, inside which he anchored his fleet. Here, for the first time, he
received an embassy direct from Montezuma, and saw the Aztec artists
busily making sketches of his men and their belongings for the king's
information. Here, too, he landed, and founded the city of Vera Cruz,
to be used as a base of operations while in that country.
The Spaniards spent some months on the coast, and in the _Tierra
Caliente_, or hot lands, immediately adjoining it. They formed an
alliance with the Totonacs, a disaffected people recently conquered by
the Aztecs, regained for them their principal city of Cempoalla, where
they destroyed the Aztec idols, and devoted themselves to a study of
the resources of the country they proposed to conquer and the character
of its people.
In the meantime they received many messages from Montezuma forbidding
their proposed visit to his capital, and commanding them to depart
whence they came. As these messages were always accompanied by
magnificent presents of gold, jewels, and rich fabrics, the Spaniards
were even more tempted to stay and search for the source of this
unbounded wealth, than to leave it undiscovered. So, in spite of
Montezuma's prohibition, Cortes, after first destroying his ships that
they might offer no excuse for a retreat, took up his line of march for
Tenochtitlan, two hundred miles in the interior.