THE SPANIARDS IN PERU.
Their quiver is an open sepulchre; they are all mighty
men.—_Jeremiah_ v. 16.
They are cruel and have no mercy, their voice roareth
like the sea; and they ride upon horses set in array as
men of war.—_Jeremiah_ vi. 23.
The scene widened, and with it the rapacity and rage for gold in the
Spaniards. The possession and the plunder of Mexico only served to whet
their appetite for carnage, and for one demon of avarice and cruelty
to raise up ten. They had seen enough to convince them that the
continent which they had reached was immense, and Mexico filled their
imagination with abundance of wealthy empires to seize upon and devour.
Into these very odd Christians, not the slightest atom of Christian
feeling or Christian principle ever entered. They were troubled with
no remorse for the horrible excesses of crime and ravage which they
had committed. The cry of innocent nations that they had plundered,
enslaved, and depopulated, and which rose to heaven fearfully against
them, never seemed to pierce the proud brutishness of their souls.
They had but one idea: that all these swarming nations were revealed
to them by Providence for a prey. The Pope had given them up to them;
and they had but one feeling,—a fiery, quenchless, rabid lust of gold.
That they might enlighten and benefit these nations—that they might
establish wise and beneficent relations with them; that they might
enrich themselves most innocently and legitimately in the very course
of dispensing equivalent advantages, never came across their brains.
It was the spirit of the age, coolly says Robertson—but he does not
tell us how such came to be its spirit, after a thousand years of the
profession of Christianity. We have seen how that came to pass; and we
must go on from that time to the present, tracing the dreadful effects
of the substitution of Popery for Christian truth and mercy.
Rumours of lands lying to the south came ever and anon upon the
eager ears of the Spaniards,—lands still more abundant in gold,
and vast in extent. On all hands the locust-armies of Moloch and
Mammon were swarming, “seeking whom they might devour:” and amongst
these beautiful specimens of the teaching of the infallible and holy
Mother Church, were three individuals settled in Panama, who were
busily employed in concocting a scheme of discovery and of crime, of
blood and rapine, southward; and who were destined to succeed to a
marvellous degree. These worthy personages, who were occupied with
so commendable and truly Catholic a speculation as that of finding
out some peaceful or feeble people whom they might, as a matter of
business, fall upon, plunder, and if necessary, assassinate, for their
own aggrandizement—were no other than Francis Pizarro, the bastard of
a Spanish gentleman, by a very low woman, who had been employed by his
father in keeping his hogs till he ran away and enlisted for a soldier;
Diego de Almagro, a foundling; and Hernando de Luque, schoolmaster, and
priest! a man who, by means which are not related, but may be imagined,
had scraped together sufficient money to inspire him with the desire of
getting more.
Pizarro was totally uneducated, except in hog-keeping, and the trade
of a mercenary. He could not even read; and was just one of the most
hardened, unprincipled, crafty, and base wretches which history in its
multitudinous pages of crime and villany, has put on record. Almagro
was equally daring, but had more honesty of character; and as for
Luque, he appears to have been a careful, cunning attender to the
main chance. Having clubbed together their little stock of money, and
their large one of impudent hardihood, they procured a small vessel
and a hundred and twelve men, and Pizarro taking the command, set out
in quest of whatever good land fortune and the Pope’s bull might put
in their way. For some time their fortune was no better than their
object deserved; they were tossed about by tempestuous weather, exposed
to great hardships, and discouraged by the prudential policy of the
governor of Panama; but at length, in 1526, about seven years after
Cortez had entered Mexico, they came in sight of the coast of Peru,
and landing at a place called Tumbez, where there was a palace of
the Incas, were delighted to find that they were in a beautiful and
cultivated country, where the object of their desires—gold, was in
wonderful abundance.
Having found the thing they were in quest of—a country to be harried,
and having the Pope’s authority to seize on it, they were now in haste
to get that of the emperor. The three speculators agreed amongst
themselves on the manner in which they would share the country they had
in view. Pizarro was to be governor; Almagro, lieutenant-governor; and
Luque, having the apostle’s warrant, that he who desires a bishopric,
desires a good thing, desired _that_—he was to be bishop of this new
country. These preliminaries being agreed upon, Pizarro was sent off
to Spain. Here he soon shewed his associates what degree of faith they
were to put in him. He procured the governorship for himself, and
not being ambitious of a bishopric, he got that for Luque; but poor
Almagro was dignified with the office of commandant of the fortress of
Tumbez—when such fortress should be raised. Almagro was, as might be
expected, no little enraged at this piece of cool villany, especially
when he compared it with the titles and the powers which Pizarro had
secured to himself, viz.—a country of two hundred leagues in extent,
in which he was to exercise the supreme authority, both civil and
military, with the title of Governor, Adelantado and Captain-general.
To appease this natural resentment, the greedy adventurer agreed
to surrender the office of Adelantado to Almagro; and having thus
parcelled out the poor Peruvians and their country in imagination, they
proceeded to do it in reality. But before we follow them to the scene
of their operations, let us for a moment pause, and note exactly what
was the actual affair which they were thus comfortably proposing to
themselves as a means of making their fortunes, and for which they had
thus the ready sanction of Pope and Emperor.
Peru,—a splendid country, stretching along the coast of the Pacific
from Chili to Quito, a space of fifteen hundred miles. Inland,
the mighty Andes lifted their snowy ridges, and at once cooled
and diversified this fine country with every variety of scene and
temperature. Like Mexico, it had once consisted of a number of
petty and savage states, but had been reduced into one compact and
well-ordered empire by the Incas, a race of mysterious origin, who had
ruled it about four hundred years. The first appearance of this race in
Peru is one of the most curious and inexplicable mysteries of American
history. Manco Capac and Mama Ocollo, a man and woman of commanding
aspects, and clad in garments suitable to the climate, appeared on
the banks of the lake Titiaca, declaring that they were the children
of the Sun, sent by him, who was the parent of the human race, to
comfort and instruct them. They were received by the Peruvians with
all the reverence which their claims demanded. They taught the men
agriculture, and the women spinning and weaving, and other domestic
arts. Who these people might be, it is in vain to imagine; but if we
are to judge from the nature of their institutions, they must have been
of Asiatic origin, and might by some circumstances of which we now
can know nothing, be driven across the Pacific to these shores. The
worship of the sun, which they introduced; the perfect despotism of the
government; the inviolable sanctity of the reigning family, all point
to Asia for their origin. They soon, however, raised the Peruvians
above all the barbarous nations by whom they were surrounded; and one
by one they added these nations to their own kingdom, till Peru had
grown into the wide and populous realm that the Spaniards found it.
That they had made great progress in the arts of smelting, refining,
and working in the precious metals, the immense quantity of gold and
silver vessels found by the Spaniards testify. Their agriculture was
admirable: they had introduced canals and reservoirs for irrigating
the dry and sandy parts of the country; and employed manures with the
greatest judgment and effect. They had separated the royal family
from the public, it is true, by the very singular constitution of
marrying only in the family, but they had given to all the people a
common proportion of labour in the lands, and a common benefit in their
produce. They had established public couriers, like the Mexicans, and
constructed bridges of ropes, formed of the cord-like running plants
of the country, and thrown them across the wildest torrents. They had
at the time the Spaniards entered the country, two roads running the
whole length of the kingdom; one along the mountains, which must have
cost incalculable labour, in hewing through rocks and filling up the
deepest chasms, the other along the lower country. These roads had at
that time no equals in Europe, and are said by the Inca, Garcillasso
de la Vega, to have been constructed in the reign of Huana Capac, the
father of Atahualpa, the Inca whom they found on the throne. In some of
the finest situations, he says that the Indians had cut steps up to the
summits of the Andes, and constructed platforms, so that when the Inca
was travelling, the bearers of his litter could carry him up with ease,
and allow him to enjoy a survey of the splendid views around and below.
These were evidences of great advances in civilization, but there were
particulars in which they were far more civilized than their invaders,
and far more Christian too. Their Incas conquered only to civilize and
improve the adjoining states. They were advocates for peace, and the
enjoyment of its blessings. They even forbad the fishing for pearls,
because, says Garcillasso, they preferred the preservation of their
people, rather than the accumulation of wealth, and would not consent
to the sufferings which the divers must necessarily undergo. When did
the Christians ever shew so much true philanthropy and human feeling?
And these are the people whom Robertson, falling miserably in with the
views, or rather, the pretensions of the Spaniards, says, appeared so
feeble in intellect as to be incapable of receiving Christianity. The
idea is a gross absurdity. What! a people who, like the Mexicans and
Peruvians, had cities, temples, palaces, a regular form of government;
who cultivated the ground, and refined metals, and wrought them into
trinkets and vessels, not capable of receiving the simple truths of
Christianity which “the wayfaring man though a fool cannot err in?”
The Mexicans had introduced their hieroglyphic writing, the Peruvians
their quipos, or knotted and coloured cords, by which they made
calculations, and transmitted intelligence, and handed down history of
facts, yet they could not understand so plain a thing as Christianity!
It is the base policy of those who violate the rights of men, always
to add to their other injuries that of calumniating their victims as
mere brutes in capacity and in the scale of being. By turns, Negroes,
Hottentots, and the whole race of the Americans, have been declared
incapable of freedom, and of embracing that simple religion which was
sent for the good of the whole human family. If such an absurdity
needed any refutation, it has had it amply in the reception of this
religion by great numbers of all these races: but the fact is, that
it would have been a disgrace to the understanding of the American
Indians to have embraced the wretched stuff which was presented to them
by the Spaniards as Christianity. A wooden cross was presented to the
wondering natives, and they were expected instantly to bow down to it,
and to acknowledge the pope, a person they had never heard of till that
moment, or they were to be instantly cut to pieces, or burnt alive.
No pains were taken to explain the beautiful truths of the Christian
revelation—those truths, in fact, were lost in the rubbish of papal
mummeries, and violent dogmas; and what could the astonished people see
in all this but a species of Moloch worship in perfect keeping with
the desperate and rapacious character of the invaders? Garcillasso
de la Vega, the Inca, tells us that Huana Capac, a prince whose life
had more of the elements of true Christianity in it than those of the
Spaniards altogether, being full of love and humanity, was accustomed
to say, that he was convinced that the sun was not God, because he
always went on one track through the heavens,—that he had no liberty
to stop, or to turn out of his ordinary way, into the wide fields of
space around him; and that it was clear that he was therefore only a
servant, obeying a higher power. The Peruvians had, like the Athenians,
an unknown god, to whom they had a temple, and whom they called
Pachacamac, but as he was invisible and was everywhere, they could not
conceive any shape for him, and therefore worshipped him in the secret
of their hearts. How ridiculous to say that people who had arrived
at such a pitch of reasoning, and at such practice of the beneficent
principles of love and humanity which Christianity inculcates, were
incapable of embracing doctrines so consonant to their own views and
habits.
How lamentable, that a British historian should suffer himself to
follow the wretched calumnies of Buffon and De Paw against the
Americans, with the examples of Mexico and Peru, and the effects of the
Jesuit missions staring him in the face. The Spaniards and Portuguese,
as we shall presently see, and as Robertson must have known, soon found
that the Indians were delighted to embrace Christianity, even in the
imperfect form in which it was presented to them, and by thousands upon
thousands exhibited the beauty of Christian habits as strikingly as
these Europeans did the most opposite qualities.
But the strangest remark of Robertson is, “that the fatal defect of
the Peruvians was their unwarlike character.” Fatal, indeed, their
inability to contend with the Europeans proved to them; but what
a burlesque on the religion of the Europeans—that the _peaceful_
character of an innocent people should prove fatal to them only
from—_the followers of the Prince of Peace_!
But the fact is, that the Peruvians as well as the Mexicans were
not unwarlike. On the contrary, by their army they had extended and
consolidated their empire to a surprising extent. They had vanquished
all the nations around them; and it was only the bursting upon them of
a new people, with arts so novel and destructive as to confound and
paralyse their minds, that they were so readily overcome. A variety
of circumstances combined to prostrate the Americans before the
Europeans. Those prophecies to which we have alluded, the fire-arms,
the horses, the military movements, and the very art of writing, all
united their influence to render them totally powerless. The Inca,
Garcillasso, says that at the period of Pizarro’s appearance in Peru,
many prodigies and omens troubled the public mind, and prepared them
to expect some terrible calamity. There was a comet—the tides rose
and fell with unusual violence—the moon appeared surrounded by three
bands of different colours, which the priests interpreted to portend
civil war, and total change of dynasty. He says that the fire-arms,
which vomited thunder and lightning, and mysteriously killed at a
distance—the neighing and prancing of the war-horses, to people who
had never seen creatures larger than a llama, and the art of conveying
their thoughts in a bit of paper above all, gave them notions of the
spiritual intercourse of these invaders, that it was totally hopeless
to contend against. The very cocks, birds which were unknown there
before their introduction by the Spaniards, were imagined to pronounce
the name of Atahualpa, as they crew in triumph over him, and became
called Atahualpas, or Qualpas, after him. He assures us that even after
the Spaniards had become entire masters of the country, the Indians on
meeting a horseman on the highway, betrayed the utmost perturbation,
running backward and forward several times, and often falling on their
faces till he was gone past. And he relates an anecdote, which amusing
as it is, shews at once what was the effect of the art of writing, and
that the humblest natives did not want natural ingenuity even in their
deepest simplicity. The steward of Antonio Solar, a gentleman living
at a distance from his estate, sent one day by two Indians ten melons
to him. With the melons he gave them a letter, and said at the same
time—“now mind you don’t eat any of these, for if you do this letter
will tell.” The Indians went on their way; but as it was very hot, and
the distance four leagues, they sate down to rest, and becoming very
thirsty, longed to eat one of the melons. “How unhappy are we that we
cannot eat a melon that grows in our master’s ground.”—“Let us do it,”
says one—“Ah,” said the other, “but then the letter.”—“Oh,” replied
the first speaker, “we can manage that—we will put the letter under a
stone, and what it does not see it cannot tell.” The thing was done;
the melon eaten, and afterwards another, that they might take in an
equal number. Antonio Solar read the letter, looked at the melons, and
instantly exclaimed—“But where are the other two?” The confounded
Indians declared, that those were all they had received. “Liars,”
replied Antonio Solar, “I tell you, the letter says you had ten, and
you have eaten two!” It was no use persisting in the falsehood—the
frightened Indians ran out of the house, and concluded that the
Spaniards were more than mortal, while even their letter watched the
Indians, and told all that they did.
Such were the Peruvians; children in simplicity, but possessing
abundant ingenuity, and principles of human action far superior to
their invaders, and capable of being ripened into something peculiarly
excellent and beautiful. Twelve monarchs had reigned over them, and
all of them of the same beneficent character. Let us now see how the
planters of the Cross conducted themselves amongst them.