they saw therein "many trinkets of gold and silver, all of which they took away."
These facts demand particular attention when it is known that this account of the expedition was composed upon the evidence of surviving natives, and the recollections of disinterested soldiers.
We desire to refer in this connection to the fact that Sahagun's vague and only mention of silver, namely, that it was seen with gold, feathers, and stones in Montezuma's private chamber, called Totocalco, or the House of the Birds, is also the only one of which the eye-witness Tapia speaks. The latter frankly says that "trinkets of gold, silver, and greenstones of not very fine quality, were shown to himself and another Spaniard in the House of the Birds" (Casa de las Aves).
These two sober accounts can not be impeached. They are the testimony of eye-witnesses who had no thoughts of how their stories could secure the censor's license. The one innocently confirms the other, and we are forced to accept them as giving us an honest, truthful picture of just what metals the Spaniards actually saw.
Thus we have presented everything upon which the historic view of our subject can properly and authoritatively rest. We can not, however, conscientiously believe the best part of the somewhat idealized stories of Cortes and Bernal Diaz, for we have seen how Cortes's letters were influenced by his ambition, and why the printed edition of Diaz can not be accepted as a verbatim copy of his original manuscript. Besides this, not only do the natural conditions of the country refute many of their statements, but, strange to say, nowhere in all our archæologic archives is there to be found a single relic of the wealth and elaborate conveniences that they describe. We accordingly feel warranted in discrediting this much of what they say, namely, that Diaz once saw for sale "axes of bronze," and Cortes "trinkets of lead, bronze, and tin," in Mexico, and tin coins among the natives of Tasco.
A careful examination, both of the ancient pictures and the early chronicles, does not develop the fact that copper, much less bronze, was ever employed by the natives in implements of war. Scarcely anything either is said concerning metal tools. Diaz is the only man who is said to have seen some, and these were axes only, but neither he nor any one else saw one in actual use. These facts can not be reconciled with the idea that they worked so extensively as to have, as Baron Humboldt says, galleries and shafts, and that they smelted the ore, and alloyed the refined metal to make bronze.
We are not surprised when the records tell us of so much gold, nor even of silver in Mexico, but we would be if they contained anything that spoke of an extensive use of copper, for we know that native copper in Mexico is found only in a very limited degree. This native copper, with perhaps some that came from Lake Superior, through an extensive traffic, was doubtless all that they possessed.
