Part 9 (1/2)
Sir Arthur Helps has this to say of her: ”Indeed her fidelity was a.s.sured by the love which she bore her master. Bernal Diaz says that she was handsome, clever, and eager to be useful (one that will have an oar in every boat), and she looked the great lady that she was.
”There was hardly any person in history to whom the ruin of that person's native land can be so distinctly brought home, as it can be to the wicked mother of Donna Marina. Cortes, valiant and skilful as he was in the use of the sword, was not less valiant (perhaps we might say, not less audacious) nor less skilful, in the use of the tongue.
All the craft which he afterward showed in negotiations would have been profitless without a competent and trusty interpreter... . If a medal had been struck to commemorate the deeds of {125} Cortes, the head of Donna Marina should have been a.s.sociated with that of Cortes on the face of the medal; for, without her aid, his conquest of Mexico would never have been accomplished.”
III. The Religion of the Aztecs
Now the Aztec Empire was a rather loose confederation of states bound together by allegiance to a common overlord, who had his capital across the mountains in the City of Mexico. It had been founded by the influx of an army of fierce marauders from the North who had overwhelmed the Toltecs who occupied the country and had attained a degree of civilization which is presumed to have been higher than that which displaced it. This Empire of Anahuac, as it was sometimes called, had endured for two centuries. It was a military despotism and the emperor was a military despot. His rule was the rule of fear. It subsisted by force of arms and terror was its cohering power. It had been extended by ruthless conquest alone until it comprised from eighteen hundred to two thousand square leagues, about two hundred thousand square miles of territory. The capital, situated on an island in the midst of a salt lake, was known as Tenocht.i.tlan, or the City of Mexico, and what Rome was to the Italian states, or Carthage was to the north African literal, this city was to Anahuac, the empire of the Aztecs. The name Tenocht.i.tlan is thus explained by Fiske:
”When the Aztecs, hard pressed by foes, took refuge among these marshes, they came upon a sacrificial stone which they recognized as one upon which some years before one of their priests had immolated a captive {126} chief. From a crevice in this stone, where a little earth was imbedded, there grew a cactus, upon which sat an eagle holding in its beak a serpent. A priest ingeniously interpretated this symbolism as a prophecy of signal and long-continued victory, and, forthwith diving into the lake, he had an interview with Tlaloc, the G.o.d of waters, who told him that upon that very spot the people were to build their town. The place was thereafter called Tenocht.i.tlan, or ”the place of the cactus-rock,” but the name under which it afterward came to be best known was taken from Mexitl, one of the names of the war G.o.d Huitzilopochtli. The device of the rock, the cactus, with the eagle and the serpent, formed a tribal totem for the Aztecs, and has been adopted, as the coat-of-arms of the present Republic of Mexico.”
Included in the sway of its emperor were many different tribes. They were kept in submission by the strong and inexorable hand. There were a few tribes, however, which had not been subdued and which still maintained a more or less precarious independence. The subject peoples were only kept from open rebellion by the most rigorous and oppressive measures. There was jealousy, humiliation, hoped-for revenge throughout the entire empire.
Each tribe or people had its own local G.o.d, but there was a bond coherent in the general Mexican religion that had its centre of wors.h.i.+p in the great city, and which all of them followed. This religion was one of the most ferocious, degrading and disgusting of any in history.
It required human sacrifice on a larger scale than had ever before been practised. Cannibalism was universal. Captives of war were sacrificed to the G.o.ds and their bodies eaten. In Mexico, {127} itself, with all its charm, with all its beauty, with all its luxuries, with all its verdure and wealth, there were huge pyramids of skulls. The priests were ferocious creatures, whose long black locks, never combed, were matted with blood, as they sacrificed to their awful war-G.o.d human hearts, still palpitating, torn from the victims a moment since alive.
Fiske thus describes the temple pyramid and chief shrine in the great city:
”On the summit was a dreadful block of jasper, convex at the top, so that when the human victim was laid upon his back and held down, the breast was pushed upwards, ready for the priest to make one deep slas.h.i.+ng cut and s.n.a.t.c.h out the heart. Near the sacrificial block were the altars, and sanctuaries of the G.o.ds, Tezcatlipoca, Huitzilopochtli, and others, with idols as hideous as their names. On these altars smoked fresh human hearts, of which the G.o.ds were fond, while other parts of the bodies were ready for the kitchens of the communal houses below. The G.o.ds were voracious as wolves, and the victims as numerous.
In some cases the heart was thrust into the mouth of the idol with a golden spoon, in others the lips were simply daubed with blood. In the temple a great quant.i.ty 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 pa.s.sed through holes in the masts, on each of which five skulls were filed, the sticks being pa.s.sed 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. Mac.n.u.tt, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, named Quetzalcoatl. He was a Toltec deity, and was venerated as the G.o.d 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 chast.i.ty, charity, and penance. He had but one G.o.d and preached in the name of that G.o.d. 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 sh.o.r.es of Europe, have been blown far out of his course by a long-continued easterly gale, finally have landed on the sh.o.r.es of Mexico and, having done what he could to teach the people, have built himself some kind of a s.h.i.+p 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 Tenocht.i.tlan
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 munic.i.p.al 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 munic.i.p.ality 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 s.h.i.+ps 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 s.h.i.+p for certain malcontents and partisans of Velasquez in which they might return if they wished. n.o.body 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 unsurpa.s.sed. Lew Wallace thus characterizes them:
”It is hardly worth while to eulogize the Christians who took part in Cortes's crusade. History has a.s.sumed 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 s.h.i.+eld, who, in care of the Virgin, followed the morning round the world, a.s.sured 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 circ.u.mstances 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 w.i.l.l.y-nilly, and there act as circ.u.mstances 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 s.h.i.+nes forth against a dark and universally extensive background. Such as the great apostles to the Indies were lonely exceptions indeed.