About Mexico - Past and Present/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI.
A GATHERING CLOUD.
CENTURIES had passed since Feathered Serpent sailed from Mexico to his unknown home in the East. His was probably the last pale face seen in that part of the continent until Columbus, searching for a gateway to India, coasted along Honduras in 1504.
It will be remembered that on this voyage the Spanish vessels, which had stopped at an island to fill their water-casks, saw a large canoe coming landward, probably on the same errand. It brought a trading-party of Indians from some point on the mainland. The first glimpse which Europeans had of Mexico was gained from the account which these voyagers gave. For fifteen years, or more, however, no effort was made to follow up this clue. Meanwhile, the Mexican traders went home with news which must have thrilled every gossip in all that region. Not one of their party had seen a white man before. The bearded sailors, their white-winged ships, the strange goods offered in barter, together with the fact that they hailed from the East, stirred anew the hope cherished by many thoughtful Mexicans that Feathered Serpent was about to fulfill his promise to return, gather his followers about him, and once more become the leader and the benefactor of their long oppressed and divided people. For more than one hundred years had the Aztecs been preying on other tribes. There was scarcely a tribe south of the table-land, from the Gulf to the ocean and as far down the coast as Yucatan, but was feeding this proud people with its best products. Field and fishery, mine and workshop, were subject to the cruel exactions of a resident officer appointed by one or all of the confederate tribes. Most cruel tyranny of all, the flower of the youth were yearly claimed for sacrifice upon the altars of these allies. We hear of a few tribes who would not bow their necks to the yoke. Brave Tlascala—a little republic penned up in the mountains between Mexico and the sea—went for years without cotton, salt or cacao because she could not produce these articles herself and would not admit confederate traders lest they should prove to be spies. Feeble remnants of several other tribes still existing can proudly boast that no banner of Montezuma's ever floated above their land.
Old prophecies about Feathered Serpent now loomed up as never before. There were storms and floods, earthquakes and meteors, which gloomily heralded his approach. One night in 1517, when there was no earthquake, nor even a storm in the air, Lake Tezcuco rose suddenly in a great wave and flooded the city. Comets glared in the sky, and once a strange untimely light in the east seemed the forerunner of a new sun. Would not the Fair God—as Feathered Serpent was called—be angry when he came back and found his altars polluted with blood and his name made hateful to those who were groaning under the burdens imposed upon them by the Aztec religion?
Whether or not Montezuma, the Aztec "chief-of-men" in those days, had a part in thus misrepresenting Feathered Serpent we cannot tell. When chosen by his peers to fill this high office, he was a priest in the great temple, and as such he must have known that Feathered Serpent had forbidden the loathsome and cruel rites which through Aztec influence had become common. As a priest he was well read, also, in the ancient history of his people. Nothing disheartened him so much as prophecies about Feathered Serpent. He believed that he was a man of flesh and blood like himself, whose followers might be expected to come again at any time to Mexico to fulfill his promised mission. If they did, a revolution was certain. Montezuma would no longer be "chief-of-men" and Aztec power would be humbled. These thoughts filled the chief with the deepest gloom. Rumors of the visit of Columbus to America and the presence of Spanish colonists in Cuba were probably afloat, and had reached the ears of the ever-vigilant council of chiefs. A coast-guard was on duty night and day, and fleet-footed couriers were ready to bear the news of an invasion to the proud city on the lake.
None were so frequently consulted in the council as were the shaggy-haired priests. Their night-watches in the towers of the great teocallis gave them the best possible opportunity of reading the stars. In no other way could the dark-minded Mexicans come so near to Him who made them as by studying the movements of the celestial bodies. But every sign now foretold disaster. In vain the soothsayers went through long fasts and cruel penances. The gods did not hear, though prayers to them were mumbled with tongues torn and bleeding with the thorns worn to gain their favor.
Not long before the arrival of the white men a priestess, a maiden nearly related to Montezuma, professed to have had a vision of tall-masted ships approaching the shore, and of pale-faced, bearded men in strange clothing landing on the coast with instruments of warfare unknown to her people. But beyond her ken, far over the blue waves which Feathered Serpent crossed in his retreat, a great nation was unconsciously preparing for the conquest of Mexico.
The earliest Spanish colonies were planted on several of the West India Islands. Every ship brought a horde of needy adventurers. In their insatiable thirst for gold they trod down the gentle, indolent race they found there until not one was left. The most cruel slavery prevailed wherever a Spaniard set his foot.
As the islanders melted away before their taskmasters, slave-hunting expeditions were fitted out by the planters to ravage other islands in search of new victims. It was during one of these slave-hunts that the Gulf of Mexico was discovered. Francisco Hernandez de Cordova, a Spanish planter in Cuba, was on his way to the Bahamas after a cargo of slaves, when a fearful storm drove the vessel far out of her course toward the west. After tossing about for three weeks he landed on the coast of Yucatan. He found there a people very different from the islanders among whom he had lived. The adventurers landed near a large Indian town. The inhabitants came out to see them, and seemed at first very friendly. But this proved to be a stratagem to draw the visitors into a better position for the battle which the natives intended to bring on. They had heard of the Spaniards and their white-winged ships, and probably of their slave-hunts, and determined to have nothing to do with the treacherous palefaces. In the fight which they provoked with the Spaniards it was proved that the natives were no match for the invaders, though they succeeded in wounding several of them with the darts and the flint-edged wooden swords which they carried. De Cordova took to his boats again with his men, and, keeping in sight of land, went north and landed in Campeachy. The people here, though more civil than their neighbors down the coast, were no better pleased to see the strangers.
Here were well-built temples of stone. The priests, in long white garments, came with censers full of burning coals in their hands. On these they dropped sweet-scented gums, and swung them before their visitors to perfume the air. Others had bundles of dried reeds, which they laid in order on the ground and set on fire, motioning that if their visitors did not go back to their vessels before those reeds were burned up it would be worse for them. They stood silently about the little fire, waiting with folded hands the departure of the intruders. This gentle hint was taken, or there would have been another battle—as there was not long afterward, when De Cordova landed at a large village called Potonchan. There were farmers living in large, substantial stone houses surrounded by cornfields. The Spaniards stopped here to fill their water-casks at a spring, when the natives attacked them, killing forty-seven, wounding others and taking five prisoners. Five of De Cordova's men died on board ship, and he himself lived but a few days after his return to Cuba. This expedition brought back a good report of the country. De Cordova had kidnapped two of the young men of Yucatan, clad in their native costume. Nothing interested his Spanish neighbors, however, so much as the ornaments of wrought gold which these savages wore. 
and trinkets for presents and barter; if they were hostile, he was provided with guns and ammunition.
Grijalva's fleet was caught in a storm. After beating about for a while he was borne on its strong wings to Cozumel, a small island south of the north-eastern corner of Yucatan. He soon crossed over the mainland and went to Potonchan, where the farmers had so roughly handled De Cordova and his men. This second visit ended in a second battle, in which the Spaniards were victorious. As the voyagers sailed westward along the coast for several hundred miles they saw with admiring eyes pleasant villages surrounded with luxuriant trees and widespreading fields. The houses and temples, so lofty and white in the distance, reminded the strangers of their native land, and they called the whole region New Spain—a name it bore on European maps for many a year.
While Grijalva was on the borders of Mexico the great council of the Aztec nation sent some of their police-officers down to the coast to interview the visitors. They could communicate with each other only by signs, it is true, but in this pursuit of knowledge under difficulties both parties were deeply impressed. The Aztecs gave Grijalva to understand that they came by the orders of Montezuma, a great chief who lived some distance from Tabasco, to the north-west. This is the first mention in European history of the now-famous chief, Montezuma.
Touching at San Juan d'Ulua, the Spaniards saw a temple where bloody remains showed that human sacrifices had just been offered. This sickening sight stirred up their religious zeal and reminded them that the conversion of the savages to Christianity should be one great object in their journey to the West.
As soon as possible after his nephew's return Governor Velasquez prepared to follow up his expedition with one which should bring more glory to Spanish arms and more gold into his own pockets. Grijalva had done so much better as an explorer than he had done as a soldier that he was displaced and the command given to Hernando Cortez, who had been one of the conquerors of Cuba in 1511, and was now master of a fine plantation. He was young, handsome, enterprising and popular; recruits flocked to his standard, and six ships were soon fitted out. One hundred and fifty of Grijalva's followers enlisted under Cortez, besides other volunteers numbering six hundred men. While in Trinidad the soldiers were set to work to quilt their jackets with cotton, which grew in great abundance around the place. This was a fashion borrowed from the Indians, and served a good purpose in warding on the arrows used in battle. Hard fighting was expected, but little did the busy army of quilters dream of the bloody struggle before them, or how great and far-reaching would be its consequences.
The instructions given by the Spanish authorities to their military leaders in the New World were such as would suit an army of crusaders. Such, in fact, the invaders were, though their zeal for Christianity spent itself in forcing the pagans to bow to crosses and images and to accept the pope as lord of lords. This potentate had kindly divided all the world outside of Europe between his faithful children the king of Spain and the king of Portugal. Several popes had given to the latter the undiscovered world from Cape Bojador, in Africa, to India. On the 4th of May, 1493, Alexander VI. published a bull in which he drew an imaginary line from the north pole to the south pole one hundred leagues west of the Azores, giving to Spain all that lay west and to Portugal all that lay east of it. With a commission from his king to take possession of such an inheritance, and one from Rome to convert all the heathen, each soldier felt himself to be a Heaven-sent missionary, and, however wicked he might otherwise be, his good work for the Church would atone for all his sins and secure for him at last a seat in paradise. The flag of the expedition showed that it was going on a religious errand. On a ground of white and blue was a red cross surrounded with flames of fire. Its 
After a solemn celebration of the mass and a devout prayer to St. James, the patron saint of Cortez, the expedition sailed for Mexico, February 18, 1519, in six ships, the largest of which were only from seventy to eighty tons burden. The fleet took the route to Yucatan, intending to creep westward along the shore until the domain of the great Indian chief was reached. Two priests, Olmedo and Juan Diaz, accompanied the army; the latter had been over the ground before with Grijalva. Both were very much in earnest about their missionary work.
The first attempts seem to have been more successful than some which followed. On the island of Cozumel was a large temple to which pilgrims came from long distances. Near it stood a huge stone cross which from the earliest times had been adored as the god of rain. Cortez began his work of reform in this holy place. As but very little could be done in the way of preaching, on account of ignorance of the language, Cortez gave the natives an object-lesson by ordering his men to pull down the gods enshrined in the temple.[1] The people shuddered at his impiety, groaned and wrung their hands, expecting that fire would come down from heaven to punish this sacrilege. Then, finding that no such result followed, they yielded after a slight resistance, and even helped the soldiers to pull down the old idols, whose impotency had been made so plain, and to put up the saints and the Virgin in their places. This done, they began to burn incense before the new gods and to offer corn, fruits and quails, and asked Cortez to leave with them a teacher who could instruct them in this new religion.
Two of the natives of Yucatan had been taken to Cuba by Grijalva, and through them it appeared that several Christian captives were somewhere on the mainland. Cortez sent a ship after these men, and one of them was rescued. This was Geronimo de Aguilar, afterward interpreter to the army.
- ↑ The ruins of this temple are still to be seen on this now-deserted island.