carried a portable bridge. But despite their care the savages promptly
detected the movement. Scarcely had they issued from their barracks and
got upon the dyke, when the boom of the monster war-drum, _tlapan
huehuetl_, from the summit of the pyramid of sacrifice, burst upon the
still night,--the knell of their hopes. It is an awesome sound still,
the deep bellowing of that great three-legged drum, which is used
to-day, and can be heard more than fifteen miles; and to the Spaniards
it was the voice of doom. Great bonfires shot up from the teocalli, and
they could see the savages swarming to overwhelm them.
Hurrying as fast as their wounds and burdens would permit, the Spaniards
reached the first sluice in safety. They threw their bridge over the
gulf, and began crossing. Then the Indians came swarming in their canoes
at either side of the dyke, and attacked with characteristic ferocity.
The beset soldiers fought as they struggled on. But as the artillery was
crossing the bridge it broke, and down went cannon, horses, and men
forever. Then began the indescribable horrors of "The Sad Night." There
was no retreat for the Spaniards, for they were assailed on every side.
Those behind were pushing on, and there was no staying even for that gap
of black water. Over the brink man and horse were crowded in the
darkness, and still those behind came on, until at last the channel was
choked with corpses, and the survivors floundered across the chaos of
their dead. Velasquez, the leader of the vanguard, was slain, and
Spaniard and Tlaxcaltecan were falling like wheat before the sickle. The
second sluice, as well as each side of the dyke, was blocked with
canoes full of savage warriors; and there was another sanguinary melee
until this gap too was filled with slain, and over the bridge of human
corpses the fugitives gained the other bank. Alvarado, fighting with the
rearmost to hold in check the savages who followed along the dyke, was
the last to cross; and before he could follow his comrades the current
suddenly broke through the ghastly obstruction, and swept the channel
clear. His faithful horse had been killed under him; he himself was
sorely wounded; his friends were gone, and the merciless foe hemmed him
in. We cannot but be reminded of the Roman hero,--
"Of him who held the bridge so well
In the brave days of old."
Alvarado's case was fully as desperate as that of Horatius; and he rose
as manlike to the occasion. With one swift glance about, he saw that to
plunge into the flood would be sure death. So, with a supreme effort of
his muscular frame, he thrust down his lance and sprang! It was a
distance of eighteen feet. Considerably longer jumps have been recorded.
Our own Washington once made a running jump of over twenty feet in his
athletic youth. But considering the surroundings, the darkness, his
wounds, and his load of armor, the wonderful leap of Alvarado has
perhaps never been surpassed:--
"For fast his blood was flowing,
And he was sore in pain;
And heavy was his armor,
And spent with changing blows."
But the leap was made, and the heroic leaper staggered up the farther
bank and rejoined his countrymen.
From here the remnant fought, struggling along the causeway, to the
mainland. The Indians at last drew off from the pursuit, and the
exhausted Spaniards had time to breathe and look about to see how many
had escaped. The survivors were few in number. Small wonder if, as the
legend tells, their stout-hearted general, used as he was to a stoic
control of his feelings, sat him down under the cypress, which is still
pointed out as the tree of the _Noche Triste_, and wept a strong man's
tears as he looked upon the pitiful remnant of his brave army. Of the
twelve hundred Spaniards eight hundred and sixty had perished, and of
the survivors not one but was wounded. Two thousand of his allies, the
Tlaxcaltecan Indians, had also been slain. Indeed, had it not been that
the savages tried less to kill than to capture the Spanish for a more
horrible death by the sacrificial knife, not one would have escaped. As
it was, the survivors saw later three score of their comrades butchered
upon the altar of the great teocalli.
All the artillery was lost, and so was all the treasure. Not a grain of
powder was left in condition to be used, and their armor was battered
out of recognition. Had the Indians pursued now, the exhausted men would
have fallen easy victims. But after that terrific struggle the savages
were resting too, and the Spaniards were permitted to escape. They
struck out for the friendly pueblo of Tlaxcala by a circuitous route to
avoid their enemies, but were attacked at every intervening pueblo. In
the plains of Otumba was their most desperate hour. Surrounded and
overwhelmed by the savages, they gave themselves up for lost. But
fortunately Cortez recognized one of the medicine men by his rich dress,
and in a last desperate charge, with Alvarado and a few other officers,
struck down the person upon whom the superstitious Indians hang so much
of the fate of war. The wizard dead, his awe-struck followers gave way;
and again the Spaniards came out from the very jaws of death.
In the siege of Mexico,--the bloodiest and most romantic siege in all
America,--Alvarado was probably the foremost figure after Cortez. The
great general was the head of that remarkable campaign, and a head
indeed worth having. There is nothing in history quite like his
achievement in having thirteen brigantines built at Tlaxcala and
transported on the shoulders of men over fifty miles inland across the
mountains to be launched on the lake of Mexico and aid in the siege. The
nearest to it was the great feat of Balboa in taking two brigantines
across the Isthmus. The exploits of Hannibal the great Carthaginian at
the siege of Tarentum, and of the Spanish "Great Captain" Gonzalo de
Cordova at the same place, were not at all to be compared to either.
In the seventy-three days' fighting of the siege, Alvarado was the right
hand as Cortez was the head.
The dashing lieutenant had command of the force which pushed its assault
along the same causeway by which they had retreated on the _Noche
Triste_. In one of the battles Cortez's horse was killed under him, and
the conqueror was being dragged off by the Indians when one of his pages
dashed forward and saved him. In the final assault and desperate
struggle in the city Cortez led half the Spanish force, and Alvarado the
other half; and the latter it was who conducted that memorable storming
of the great teocalli.
After the conquest of Mexico, in which he had won such honors, Alvarado
was sent by Cortez to the conquest of Guatemala, with a small force. He
marched down through Oaxaca and Tehuantepec to Guatemala, meeting a
resistance characteristically Indian. There were three principal tribes
in Guatemala,--the Quiche, Zutuhil, and Cacchiquel. The Quiche opposed
him in the open field, and he defeated them. Then they formally
surrendered, made peace, and invited him to visit them as a friend in
their pueblo of Utatlan. When the Spaniards were safely in the town and
surrounded, the Indians set fire to the houses and fell fiercely upon
their stifling guests. After a hard engagement Alvarado routed them, and
put the ringleaders to death. The other two tribes submitted, and in
about a year Alvarado and his little company had achieved the conquest
of Guatemala. His services were rewarded by making him governor and
adelantado of the province; and he founded his city of Guatemala, which
in his day probably became something like what Mexico then was,--a town
containing fifteen thousand to twenty thousand Indians and one thousand
Spaniards.
From this, his capital, Governor Alvarado was frequently absent. There
were many expeditions to be made up and down the wild New World. His
greatest journey was in 1534, when, building his own vessels as usual,
he sailed to Ecuador and made the difficult march inland to Quito, only
to find himself in Pizarro's territory. So he returned to Guatemala
fruitless.
During one of his absences occurred the frightful earthquake which
destroyed the city of Guatemala, and dealt Alvarado a personal blow from
which he never recovered. Above the city towered two great
volcanoes,--the Volcan del Agua and the Volcan del Fuego. The volcano of
water was extinct, and its crater was filled with a lake. The volcano of
fire was--and is still--active. In that memorable earthquake the lava
rim of the Volcan del Agua was rent asunder by the convulsion, and its
avalanche of waters tumbled headlong upon the doomed city. Thousands of
the people perished under falling walls and in the resistless flood; and
among the lost was Alvarado's wife, Dona Beatriz de la Cueva. Her death
broke the brave soldier's spirit, for he loved her very dearly.
In the troublous times which befell Mexico after Cortez had finished his
conquest, and began to be spoiled by prosperity and to make a very
unadmirable exhibition of himself, Alvarado's support was sought and
won by the great and good viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza,--one of the
foremost executive minds of all time. This was no treachery on
Alvarado's part toward his former commander; for Cortez had turned
traitor not only to the Crown, but also to his friends. The cause of
Mendoza was the cause of good government and of loyalty.
It had become necessary to tame the hostile Nayares Indians, who had
caused the Spaniards great trouble in the province of Jalisco; and in
this campaign Alvarado joined Mendoza. The Indians retreated to the top
of the huge and apparently impregnable cliff of the Mixton, and they
must be dislodged at any cost. The storming of that rock ranks with the
storming of Acoma as one of the most desperate and brilliant ever
recorded. The viceroy commanded in person, but the real achievement was
by Alvarado and a fellow officer. In the scaling of the cliff Alvarado
was hit on the head by a rock rolled down by the savages, and died from
the wound,--but not until he saw his followers win that brilliant day.
The man who, next to Alvarado, deserves the credit of the Mixton was
Cristobal de Onate, a man of distinction for several reasons. He was a
valued officer, a good executive, and one of the first millionnaires in
North America. He was, too, the father of the colonizer of New Mexico,
Juan de Onate. June 11, 1548, several years after the battle of the
Mixton, the elder Onate discovered the richest silver mines on the
continent,--the mines of Zacatecas, in the barren and desolate plateau
where now stands the Mexican city of that name. These huge veins of
"ruby," "black," arsenate, and virgin silver made the first
millionnaires in North America, as the conquest of Peru made the first
on the southern continent. The mines of Zacatecas were not so vast as
those developed at Potosi, in Bolivia, which produced between 1541 and
1664 the inconceivable sum of $641,250,000 in silver; but the Zacatecas
mines were also enormously productive. Their silver stream was the first
realization of the dreams of vast wealth on the northern continent, and
made a startling commercial change in this part of the New World.
Locally, the discovery reduced the price of the staples of life about
ninety per cent! Mexico was never a great gold country, but for more
than three centuries has remained one of the chief silver producers. It
is so to-day, though its output is not nearly so large as that of the
United States.
Cristobal de Onate was, therefore, a very important man in the working
out of destiny. His "bonanza" made Mexico a new country, commercially,
and his millions were put to a better use than is always the case
nowadays, for they had the honor of building two of the first towns in
our own United States.
IX.
THE AMERICAN GOLDEN FLEECE.
We all know of that strange yellow ramskin which hung dragon-guarded in
the dark groves of Colchis; and how Jason and his Argonauts won the
prize after so many wanderings and besetments. But in our own New World
we have had a far more dazzling golden fleece than that mythical pupil
of old Cheiron ever chased, and one that no man ever captured,--though
braver men than Jason tried it. Indeed, there were hundreds of more than
Jasons, who fought harder and suffered tenfold deadlier fortunes and
never clutched the prize after all. For the dragon which guarded the
American Golden Fleece was no such lap-dog of a chimera as Jason's, to
swallow a pretty potion and go to sleep. It was a monster bigger than
all the land the Argonauts lived in and all the lands they roamed; a
monster which not man nor mankind has yet done away with,--the mortal
monster of the tropics.
The myth of Jason is one of the prettiest in antiquity, and it is more
than pretty. We are beginning to see what an important bearing a fairy
tale may have on sober knowledge. The myth has always somewhere some
foundation of truth; and that hidden truth may be of enduring value. To
study history, indeed, without paying any attention to the related
myths, is to shut off a precious side light. Human progress, in almost
every phase, has been influenced by this quaint but potent factor. Where
do you fancy chemistry would be if the philosopher's stone and other
myths had not lured the old alchemists to pry into mysteries where they
found never what they sought, but truths of utmost value to mankind?
Geography in particular has owed almost more of its growth into a
science to myths than to scholarly invention; and the gold myth,
throughout the world, has been the prophet and inspiration of discovery,
and a moulder of history.
We have been rather too much in the habit of classing the Spaniards as
_the_ gold-hunters, with an intimation that gold-hunting is a sort of
sin, and that they were monumentally prone to it. But it is not a
Spanish copyright,--the trait is common to all mankind. The only
difference was that the Spaniards found gold; and that is offence enough
to "historians" too narrow to consider "what would the English have done
had they found gold in America at the outset."
I believe it is not denied that when gold was discovered in the
uttermost parts of his land the Saxon found legs to get to it,--and even
adopted measures not altogether handsome in clutching it; but nobody is
so silly as to speak of "the days of '49" as a disgrace to us. Some
lamentable pages there were; but when California suddenly tipped up the
continent till the strength of the east ran down to her, she opened one
of the bravest and most important and most significant chapters in our
national story. For gold is not a sin. It is a very necessary thing, and
a very worthy one, as long as we remember that it is a means and not an
end, a tool and not an accomplishment,--which point of business
common-sense we are quite as apt to forget in Wall Street as in the
mines.
We have largely to thank this universal and perfectly proper fondness
for gold for giving us America,--as, in fact, for civilizing most other
countries.
The scientific history of to-day has fully shown how foolishly false is
the idea that the Spaniards sought merely gold; how manfully they
provided for the mind and the soul as well as the pocket. But gold was
with them, as it would be even now with other men, the strong motive.
The great difference was only that gold did not make them forget their
religion. It was the golden finger that beckoned Columbus to America,
Cortez to Mexico, Pizarro to Peru,--just as it led us to California,
which otherwise would not have been one of our States to-day. The gold
actually found at first in the New World was disappointingly little; up
to the conquest of Mexico it aggregated only $500,000. Cortez swelled
the amount, and Pizarro jumped it up to a fabulous and dazzling figure.
But, curiously enough, the gold that was found did not cut a more
important figure in the exploration and civilization of the New World
than that which was pursued in vain. The wonderful myth which stands for
the American Golden Fleece had a more startling effect on geography and
history than the real and incalculable riches of Peru.
Of this fascinating myth we have very little popular knowledge, except
that a corruption of its name is in everybody's mouth. We speak of a
rich region as "an Eldorado," or "the Eldorado" oftener than by any
other metaphor; but it is a blunder quite unworthy of scholars. It is
simply saying "an the," "the the." The word is Dorado; and it does not
mean "the golden," as we seem to fancy, but "the gilded man," being a
contraction of the Spanish _el hombre dorado_. And the Dorado, or gilded
man, has made a history of achievement beside which Jason and all his
fellow demi-gods sink into insignificance.
Like all such myths, this had a foundation in fact. The Colchian ramskin
was a poetic fancy of the gold mines of the Caucasus; but there really
_was_ a gilded man. The story of him and what he led to is a fairy tale
that has the advantage of being true. It is an enormously complicated
theme; but, thanks to Bandelier's final unravelling of it, the story can
now be told intelligibly,--as it has not been popularly told heretofore.
A number of years ago there was found in the lagoon of Siecha, in New
Granada, a quaint little group of statuary; it was of the rude and
ancient Indian workmanship, and even more precious for its ethnologic
interest than for its material, which was pure gold. This rare
specimen--which is still to be seen in a museum in Berlin--is a golden
raft, upon which are grouped ten golden figures of men. It represents a
strange custom which was in prehistoric times peculiar to the Indians of
the village of Guatavita, on the highlands of New Granada. That custom
was this: On a certain great day one of the chiefs of the village used
to smear his naked body with a gum, and then powder himself from head to
foot with pure gold-dust. He was the Gilded Man. Then he was taken out
by his companions on a raft to the middle of the lake, which was near
the village, and leaping from the raft the Gilded Man used to wash off
his precious and wonderful covering and let it sink to the bottom of the
lake. It was a sacrifice for the benefit of the village. This custom is
historically established, but it had been broken up more than thirty
years before the story was first heard of by Europeans,--namely, the
Spaniards in Venezuela in 1527. It had not been voluntarily abandoned by
the people of Guatavita. The warlike Muysca Indians of Bogota had ended
it by swooping down upon the village of Guatavita and nearly
exterminating its inhabitants. Still, the sacrifice had been a fact; and
at that enormous distance and in those uncertain days the Spaniards
heard of it as still a fact. The story of the Gilded Man, _El Hombre
Dorado_, shortened to _El Dorado_, was too startling not to make an
impression. It became a household word, and thenceforward was a lure to
all who approached the northern coast of South America. We may wonder
how such a tale (which had already become a myth in 1527, since the fact
upon which it was founded had ceased) could hold its own for two hundred
and fifty years without being fully exploded; but our surprise will
cease when we remember what a difficult and enormous wilderness South
America was, and how much of it has unexplored mysteries even to-day.
The first attempts to reach the Gilded Man were from the coast of
Venezuela. Charles I. of Spain, afterward Charles V., had pawned the
coast of that Spanish possession to the wealthy Bavarian family of the
Welsers, giving them the right to colonize and "discover" the interior.
In 1529, Ambrosius Dalfinger and Bartholomew Seyler landed at Coro,
Venezuela, with four hundred men. The tale of the Gilded Man was already
current among the Spaniards; and, allured by it, Dalfinger marched
inland to find it. He was a dreadful brute, and his expedition was
nothing less than absolute piracy. He penetrated as far as the Magdalena
River, in New Granada, scattering death and devastation wherever he
went. He found some gold; but his brutality toward the Indians was so
great, and in such a strong contrast to what they had been accustomed to
from the Spaniards, that the exasperated natives turned, and his march
amounted to a running fight of more than a year's duration. The trouble
was, the Welsers cared only to get treasure back for the money they had
paid out, and had none of the real Spanish spirit of colonizing and
christianizing. Dalfinger failed to find the Gilded Man, and died in
1530 from a wound received during his infamous expedition.
His successor in command of the Welser interests, Nicolas Federmann, was
not much better as a man and no more successful as a pioneer. In 1530 he
marched inland to discover the Dorado, but his course was due south from
Coro, so he never touched New Granada. After a fearful march through the
tropical forests he had to return empty-handed in 1531.
Here already begins to enter, chronologically, one of the curious
ramifications and variations of this prolific myth. At first a fact, in
thirty years a fable, now in three years more the Gilded Man began to be
a vagabond will-o'-the-wisp, flitting from one place to another, and
gradually becoming tangled up in many other myths. The first variation
came in the first attempt to discover the source of the Orinoco,--the
mighty river which it was supposed could flow only from a great lake. In
1530, Antonio Sedeno sailed from Spain with an expedition to explore the
Orinoco. He reached the Gulf of Paria and built a fort, intending thence
to push his exploration. While he was doing this, Diego de Ordaz, a
former companion of Cortez, had obtained in Spain a concession to
colonize the district then called Maranon,--a vaguely defined area
covering Venezuela, Guiana, and northern Brazil. He sailed from Spain in
1531, reached the Orinoco and sailed up that river to its falls. Then
he had to return, after two years of vainly trying to overcome the
obstacles before him. But on this expedition he heard that the Orinoco
had its source in a great lake, and that the road to that lake led
through a province called Meta, said to be fabulously rich in gold. On
the authority of Bandelier, there is no doubt that this story of Meta
was only an echo of the Dorado tale which had penetrated as far as the
tribes of the lower Orinoco.
Ordaz was followed in 1534 by Geronimo Dortal, who attempted to reach
Meta, but failed even to get up the Orinoco. In 1535 he tried to
penetrate overland from the northeast coast of Venezuela to Meta, but
made a complete failure. These attempts from Venezuela, as Bandelier
shows, finally localized the home of the Dorado by limiting it to the
northwestern part of the continent. It had been vainly sought elsewhere,
and the inference was that it must be in the only place left,--the high
plateau of New Granada.
The conquest of the plateau of New Granada, after many unsuccessful
attempts which cannot be detailed here, was finally made by Gonzalo
Ximenez de Quesada in 1536-38. That gallant soldier moved up the
Magdalena River with a force of six hundred and twenty men on foot, and
eighty-five horsemen. Of these only one hundred and eighty survived when
he reached the plateau in the beginning of 1537. He found the Muysca
Indians living in permanent villages, and in possession of gold and
emeralds. They made a characteristic resistance; but one tribe after
another was overpowered, and Quesada became the conqueror of New
Granada.
The treasure which was divided by the conquerors amounted to 246,976
_pesos de oro_,--about $1,250,000 now,--and 1,815 emeralds, some of
which were of enormous size and value. They had found the real home of
the Gilded Man,--and had even come to Guatavita, whose people made a
savage resistance,--but of course did not find him, since the custom had
been already abandoned.
Hardly had Quesada completed his great conquest when he was surprised by
the arrival of two other Spanish expeditions, which had been led to the
same spot by the myth of the Dorado. One was led by Federmann, who had
penetrated from the coast of Venezuela to Bogota on this his second
expedition,--a frightful journey. At the same time, and without the
knowledge of either, Sebastian de Belalcazar had marched up from Quito
in search of the Gilded Man. The story of that gold-covered chief had
penetrated the heart of Ecuador, and the Indian statements induced
Belalcazar to march to the spot. An arrangement was made between the
three leaders by which Quesada was left sole master of the country he
had conquered, and Federmann and Belalcazar returned to their respective
places.