South American Fights and Fighters, Cyrus Townsend Brady [historical books to read TXT] 📗

great quantity of rattlesnakes, kept as sacred objects were fed with the entrails of the victims. Other parts of the body were given to the menagerie beasts, which were probably also kept for purposes of religious symbolism. Blood was also rubbed into the mouths of the carved serpents upon the jambs and lintels of the houses. The walls and floor of the great temple were clotted with blood and shreds of human flesh, and the smell was like that of a slaughter-house. Just outside the temple, in front of the broad street which {128} led across the causeway to Tlacopan, stood the _tzompantli_, which was an oblong parallelogram of earth and masonry, one hundred and fifty-four feet (long) at the base, ascended by thirty steps, on each of which were skulls. Round the summit were upward of seventy raised poles about four feet apart, connected by numerous rows of cross-poles passed through holes in the masts, on each of which five skulls were filed, the sticks being passed through the temples. In the centre stood two towers, or columns, made of skulls and lime, the face of each skull being turned outwards, and giving a horrible appearance to the whole. This effect was heightened by leaving the heads of distinguished captives in their natural state, with hair and skin on. As the skulls decayed they fell from the towers or poles, and they were replaced by others, so that no vacant place was left."

Concerning the cruelty of the Spaniards, the contrast between the opposing religions must be considered. Ruthless as the conquerors were, there is no possible comparison between the most indifferent principles of the Christian Religion and the application of the awful principles of the Mexican religion. MacNutt, the author of the latest and best life of Cortes, makes this interesting comment on the Christianity of the Spanish adventurers of the time:

"Soldier of Spain and soldier of the Cross, for the Cross was the standard of militant Christianity, of which Spain was the truest exponent, his religion, devoutly believed in, but intermittently practised, inspired his ideals, without sufficiently guiding his conduct. Ofttimes brutal, he was never vulgar, while as a lover of sheer daring and of danger for danger's sake, he has never been eclipsed. . . . {129} Sixteenth-century Spain produced a race of Christian warriors whose piety, born of an intense realization of, and love for a militant Christ, was of a martial complexion, beholding in the symbol of salvation--the Cross--the standard of Christendom around which the faithful must rally, and for whose protection and exaltation swords must be drawn and blood spilled if need be. They were the children of the generation which had expelled the Moor from Spain, and had brought centuries of religious and patriotic warfare to a triumphant close, in which their country was finally united under the crown of Castile. From such forebears the generation of Cortes received its heritage of Christian chivalry. The discovery of a new world, peopled by barbarians, opened a fresh field to Spanish missionary zeal, in which the kingdom of God upon earth was to be extended and countless souls rescued from the obscene idolatries and debasing cannibalism which enslaved them."

In the Mexican Pantheon, however, there was one good god, named Quetzalcoatl. He was a Toltec deity, and was venerated as the god of the air. He was identified with the east wind which brought the fertilizing rains. Some historians and investigators explain him as purely a mythical personage. He was supposed to have appeared to the Toltecs long before the Aztecs came into the land. He was described in ancient traditions as a tall, white-faced, bearded man, whose dress differed from that of the aborigines and included a long white tunic, upon which were dark red crosses. His teachings enjoined chastity, charity, and penance. He had but one God and preached in the name of that God. He condemned human sacrifice and taught the nation agriculture, metal work and {130} mechanics. He fixed their calendar so that it was much more reliable than either the Greek or the Roman. There were various legends as to his departure, one of them being that he sailed away across the sea upon a raft composed of serpents, and was wafted into the unknown East whence he had come.

His color, his dress, his teachings, and his character, are all so symbolic of Christianity, they are so strange, so unique, so utterly without an explanation in anything else known of the Aztecs and Toltecs, that the conclusion that he was a Christian Bishop, wearing a pallium is almost irresistible. Why could not some Christian Bishop, voyaging along the shores of Europe, have been blown far out of his course by a long-continued easterly gale, finally have landed on the shores of Mexico and, having done what he could to teach the people, have built himself some kind of a ship and sailed eastward in the hope of once more revisiting his native land before he died. At any rate, such is the tradition. It was a tradition or legend which played no small part in the conquest about to be effected.


IV. The March to Tenochtitlan


Into this loosely compact political and social organization, hard-headed, clear-sighted, iron-hearted, steel-clad Cortes precipitated himself. His was a mind at the same time capable of vast and comprehensive designs and a most minute attention to small details. For instance, he laid out the city of Vera Cruz at the place of his landing. He caused his men to elect a full corps of municipal officers from their number. To this organization he frankly resigned his commission and the power that he had by the appointment of {131} Velasquez, which the latter had tried so hard to revoke. They immediately elected him captain-general of the expedition with vastly increased prerogatives and privileges. Thus he could now, in form at least, trace his authority to the crown, as represented by this new colonial municipality and he therefore had behind him the whole power of the expedition!

With a skill, which showed not only his adroitness, but his determination, he next caused his men to acquiesce in the scuttling of the ships which had conveyed them to Mexico! After saving the cordage, rigging and everything else that might be useful, which was carefully stored away in the little fort rapidly building, the vessels were destroyed beyond repair. Before this was done, Cortes offered to reserve one ship for certain malcontents and partisans of Velasquez in which they might return if they wished. Nobody took advantage of his offer.

By this bold and original stroke, he added to his expeditionary force some one hundred and twenty hardy mariners, who thereafter took part with the soldiery in all the hazards and undertakings. With, therefore, less than six hundred men, sixteen horses, ten small cannon, and one woman, Cortes prepared to undertake the conquest of this mighty empire. It was a small force, but its fighting quality was unsurpassed. Lew Wallace thus characterizes them:

"It is hardly worth while to eulogize the Christians who took part in Cortes's crusade. History has assumed their commemoration. I may say, however, they were men who had acquired fitness for the task by service in almost every clime. Some had tilted with the Moor under the walls of Granada; some had {132} fought the Islamite on the blue Danube; some had performed the first Atlantic voyage with Columbus; all of them had hunted the Carib in the glades of Hispaniola. It is not enough to describe them as fortune-hunters, credulous, imaginative, tireless; neither is it enough to write them soldiers, bold, skilful, confident, cruel to enemies, gentle to each other. They were characters of the age in which they lived, unseen before, unseen since; knights errant, who believed in hippogriff and dragon, but sought them only in lands of gold; missionaries, who complacently broke the body of the converted that Christ might the sooner receive his soul; palmers of pike and shield, who, in care of the Virgin, followed the morning round the world, assured that Heaven stooped lowest over the most profitable plantations."

Just what Cortes at first proposed to do is not quite clear. Indeed, he himself could not form any definite plan until the circumstances under which he would be compelled to act, should be more precisely ascertained. He was, therefore, an opportunist. For one thing, he made up his mind to lead his troops to the capital city willy-nilly, and there act as circumstances might determine. He was a statesman as well as a soldier. It did not take him long to fathom the peculiarities of the organization and composition of the Aztec Empire. He knew that discord existed and he had only to introduce himself to become a focus for the discontent and rebellion. By giving a secret impression that he was for either side, he could play one party against the other, as best suited his purposes. He came to bring freedom to the one, to promote the revolt of the other, check the oppression of the third, and destroy the presumption of the another {133} tribe, or warring nation. So he caused his purposes to be declared.

Cortes's personal character was not by any means above reproach, yet withal he was a sincere and devoted Christian, strange and inexplicable as the paradox may seem, but it was an age of devoted Christians, whose devotion and principles fortunately were not translated into daily life. Neither Cortes nor any of his followers--perhaps not even the priests were of different opinion--thought any less of themselves or regarded themselves the less worthy Christians: if their conduct toward the native races did not manifest that continence, restraint and sympathy which their religion taught. Cortes was a child of his age; the other great men of his age were much like him in these things. Here and there a Las Casas appears, but he shines forth against a dark and universally extensive background. Such as the great apostles to the Indies were lonely exceptions indeed.

All the Spanish conquerors were cruel; but Cortes was not so cruel as many others. He was not to be compared to the ruthless Pizarro for instance. Save in daring and personal courage, he vastly surpassed the Lord of Peru in every quality which goes to make a man. Cortes was treacherous in his dealings with Montezuma and others, but the man of his age regarded very lightly the obligation of his word toward a savage. Indeed, it was a well-known principle that no faith was necessarily to be kept with either heretics or heathen and no oath was binding against the interests of the state. Cortes, of course, had all the contempt for the Aztecs that Caucasians usually have for inferior races, although in his letters, he tried his very best to be fair, to be just, even to be generous to these {134} people he overcame; and no one can doubt the sincerity with which he desired to promote the spreading of the Christian religion.

They did things differently in those days. Not only did they believe that the religion of the heathen should be changed by force, but they believed that in some way they could constrain all people to accept Christianity. More blood has been shed in promoting the idea that the outsider should be compelled to come into the fold than from the misinterpretation of any other text in the sacred scriptures. If any