The Mastering of Mexico/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
How we found the Spaniard, Aguilar slave to a cacique; and what happened at Tabasco.
Cortes was most attentive to every detail, I say, and that trait led to his sending for me and another and asking us what we thought about those words, "Castilan! Castilan!" which the Indians of Campeche had cried when, under Cordova, we landed there. He said he had often thought about the circumstance and could not help believing some Spaniards must be living among them and it now seemed to him that it would not be amiss to ask the caciques of Cozumel as to the whole matter. We therefore questioned the chiefs, through Melchior, who had now gained a little Spanish, and were overjoyed to hear that certain Spaniards did serve caciques living two days' march inland.
The caciques we questioned undertook to forward letters to these Spaniards. When Cortes gave them presents, and promised more on their return, they said that it would be necessary to send a ransom in addition, for the Spaniards served as slaves. The messengers therefore carried with them every sort of glass beads. Two of our smaller ships, with crossbowmen and musketeers, went in the quest, the larger ship to wait while the messengers carried letters to and from the captive Spaniards, and the smaller to bear news to Cortes of what was being done.
After lapse of a few days our letters reached a Spaniard named Aguilar. When he read how Cortes urged the captives to join him, and when he received his ransom, he was glad beyond all measure, and hastening with his beads to the cacique who was his master, begged leave to depart. The cacique at once consented, and Aguilar set out in quest of his companion. But when he reached this old-time comrade of his and read to him Cortes' letter calling them to liberty and to associations with their fellow countrymen, the old comrade said, "Brother Aguilar, I have married one of the women of this country and I have three children. The Indians look upon me in war time as a cacique. Do you go, and God be with you. But my face is tattooed, my ears pierced and my lips turned down. What would the Spaniards say if they saw me in such a fix? And look at these three children of mine, how lovely they are! Give me some of your beads for them, and I will say that my brothers sent them from my country." At this moment the Spaniard's Indian wife, who, warming with anger, had been watching Aguilar, cried, "Look at that slave! Why is he coming here to talk to my husband?"—and turning to Aguilar she added, "Mind your own business, and don't you trouble yourself about us."
After a considerable delay, we despairing of finding him, and he of ever reaching us, Aguilar finally came to our camp. Some soldiers, returning one day from chasing musk swine, told Cortes that a canoe was approaching. Our captain at once sent Andres de Tapia with a couple of men to find what the news might be, for never before had a canoe come fearlessly towards us. When Tapia saw the seven who landed were Indians, and called to them that they need have no fear, in broken Spanish one cried, "Dios y Santa Maria de Sevilla!" and rushed to Tapia and embraced him. A soldier in Tapia's company promptly ran to Cortes with news that a Spaniard had returned. So much did his countenance look like that of an Indian that, as the seven men passed, many of our men kept asking, "Which is the Spaniard?" Added to the fact that his complexion was naturally brown, he was shorn like an Indian slave. He carried a paddle across his shoulder and had a tattered stocking on one leg and another at his waist, while a loin cloth and ragged cloak covered his nakedness. An old and worn "Book of Hours" he carried folded in a corner of his cloak.
As the seven drew near Cortes, he like the rest of us asked, "Where is the Spaniard?" When Aguilar heard this he squatted on his haunches after the Indian fashion and said, "I am he." Cortes at once gave him a shirt, coat, drawers and shoes from our stores, and asked him to tell how he got to this country. Still in broken Spanish the man told his name—Jeronimo de Aguilar—and how, eight years before, when he and fifteen men and two women were passing from Darien to the island of Santo Domingo, their ship had struck a rock and he and his companions had got into the ship's boat, hoping to make the island of Cuba or Jamaica. But sea currents had carried them to this island. Here the Indians had sacrificed many of his companions, others had died of grief, and the two women, worn out with the labor of grinding corn, of overwork. Aguilar himself the Indians had doomed to sacrifice, but he escaped one night and fled to the cacique from whom we had ransomed him.
This island of Cozumel was, it seemed, a place to which Indians from various parts of Yucatan made pilgrimages for the purpose of sacrificing before some hideous idols which stood in a temple there. The court about this temple we saw one morning crowded with Indians, men and women, burning a resin like our incense. After a while an old Indian, a papa or priest, wearing a long cloak, mounted the steps of the temple and began preaching to the congregation. Cortes asked Melchior to interpret, and when he found that the sermon led to unrighteous deeds, he sent for the papa and the cacique and by the aid of our interpreter told them that if they were to be our brothers they must cast out their idols which would lead their souls to hell. Continuing, he explained to them the good and holy things of our religion, and gave them, to set up, an image of Our Lady and a cross—which would always aid them and make their seeds grow. But still the papa and caciques answered that their forefathers had worshipped their gods because they were good gods, and they did not dare desert them.
Cortes then ordered us to break the idols and throw them down the steps. He commanded also that lime be brought from the town and Indian masons set up an altar. It proved a fair one, and on it we placed the figure of Our Lady. At the same time two of our carpenters made a cross of some timber which lay at hand, and this we placed in a small chapel we built behind the altar. After this a priest of ours, Juan Diaz, said mass in front of the new altar, the papa and all the Indians looking on with greatest attention. Our new-found Aguilar, to whom the caciques showed much friendship when they learned he could speak their language, advised them always to respect and revere the holy image and the cross we had set up, and they would find that they would prove a blessing.
With all our squadron we came, on the 12th of March, to the mouth of the Tabasco, or the Rio de Grijalva, and since we already knew from our experience with Grijalva that no vessel of large size could enter the river, we anchored the larger out at sea, and with the smaller ships and boats carried our men up the river to the point where the palm trees grew. Those of us who had not been with Grijalva were greatly astonished to see the thickets along the river bank swarming with Indians. Besides these, to attack us more than twelve thousand warriors had assembled in Tabasco—the town being a chief town with others subject to it. The reason they were making ready for war was that the people of Chanpoton and other towns of that neighborhood looked upon the Tabascans as cowards for having given their gold trinkets to Grijalva the year before, and they told them they had been too lily-livered to attack us, though they had more warriors than the people of Chanpoton, who had fought us and killed fifty-six of our men. Such taunts as these led the Tabascans to take up arms against us.
Through our interpreter, Aguilar, Cortes asked some Indians who were passing in a canoe what all this disturbance meant, and he added that we had not come to do them harm, but to treat them like brothers and share our things with them; we prayed them, therefore, not to begin a war they would regret. The more Aguilar talked, however, the more insolent the natives became, saying they had fortified their town with log barriers and stockades, that they would not permit us to take in fresh water and, if we passed beyond the palm trees, they should kill us. When Cortes found he could not have peace, he commanded the small vessels and boats made ready for battle, with three cannon and divisions of crossbowmen and musketeers in each boat.
Early next morning, after we had armed ourselves and said our prayers, Cortes ordered Alonzo de Avila with one hundred soldiers, among whom were ten crossbowmen, to go by a narrow path leading to the town, and as soon as they heard the firing of guns to attack the town on one side while we attacked on the other, Cortes himself at the same time moving up the river with the rest in boats and the small ships.
Meanwhile banks and thickets filled with warriors who were armed with their various weapons and making a horrible din by blowing their twisted shells and fifes and beating drums. Since Cortes wished to follow exact form in all he did, he now called us to halt and once more, through Aguilar, the king's notary witnessing, he asked the Indians to permit us peaceably to take in fresh water, and speak to them of God and the king; and he added that if they attacked us, and we defending ourselves killed any of them, the guilt would be on their heads, not on ours.
For answer they shot their arrows off so quickly, drums signaling other troops should attack us, that many of us were at once wounded. Much mud and swamp was before us and we could not easily defend ourselves from arrows and lances. Cortes himself in the contest left one shoe in the mire. But by hard work we finally got to dry land, and with the cry of "Santiago"[1] fell so furiously upon our assailants that they retreated behind their log walls. Stoutly fighting our way we forced a passage into the town, and then through the streets to fresh defences they had built. Alonzo de Avila and his troops, who had been detained by the swamps, came up at this juncture, and our united forces now drove the Indians from their stronghold. Like the brave warriors they were, however, they kept shooting arrows and darts hardened by fire, and they did not turn their backs until we had gained a large courtyard with rooms, halls and three temples adjoining.
Here Cortes ordered us to halt and take formal possession of the land in the name of the king of Spain. The way he did this was by drawing his sword and as sign of possession making three deep cuts In a huge silk-cotton[2] tree which stood In the courtyard, and crying at the same time that if any should dispute It he would defend the possession of this country with sword and shield. Thereupon all of us present cried out that he did right in taking possession In the king's name and we would aid him In defence of the right. Of our number followers of Diego Velasquez alone found fault, and that because the governor's name was not included in the act.
In this attack the Indians had wounded fourteen of our men (I being one who had got an arrow in the thigh), and in the water we found eighteen of their dead. With sentinels posted we slept in the courtyard that night. The next morning, when Cortes wished to use as Interpreter the Indian we had taken and taught and named Melchior in baptism, he was nowhere to be found. We conjectured that he had run off the night before with the people of Tabasco, because we found his Spanish clothes hanging in a tree in the palm grove. So In fact it proved, for that day, when two of our chief officers went out with companies to explore the country, vast numbers of Indians fell upon them and killed and wounded a few of our men. One of the prisoners of that day, when Aguilar asked him what madness led them to attack us, told us that Melchior had come to their camp the night before and counseled them to fall upon us and fight us night and day, for, he said, we were so few in number that they in the end would conquer.
As soon as Cortes was sure that the Indians would renew their war upon us, he ordered all our horses brought ashore, and every one of us, the wounded not excepted, to have our arms ready for use. When the horses now stepped on land they were very stiff and full of fear, they had been so long on shipboard; but by the next day they had got back their old liveliness. The gentlemen who, with Cortes at their head, were to fight on horseback were thirteen in number. Mesa had charge of the artillery and Diego de Ordas of us foot-soldiers.
We formed in order under our ensign early next day and marched towards some bean fields, where the Indians had attacked our exploring parties. On account of bogs, which our horsemen could not pass, Cortes took a roundabout course. Our other troops, under Diego de Ordas as I said, came up with the Indians near a town while they were moving forward in search of us. They had their faces painted white and black, they wore quilted cotton cuirasses about their bodies and bunches of feathers on their heads, and they carried huge bows and arrows, lances, shields and broadswords. Among them were slingers of stones and fire-hardened javelins. Their number was so vast that they covered the bean fields, and they rushed on us like infuriated dogs. So swift and impetuous was their onset, and such a cloud of arrows, stones and javelins did they send, that they wounded seventy of our men in a few seconds. However, with our muskets and crossbows we did not fail to show we could fight, and we cut right and left with our swords. We forced them to give ground a little, and Mesa with the cannon's aid made terrible havoc with their close ranks. But even then we could not put them to flight.
I shall never forget the yelling and whistling they set up at every shot we fired, the terrible noise of their drums and trumpets and their war-whoop, "Alala! alala!" and how they sought to hide their losses by throwing dust and rubbish in the air. I now said to Diego de Ordas that it seemed to me we should charge the enemy, my reason being that I saw they were retreating from fear of our swords; but Ordas answered that my advice was poor, for there were three hundred of the Indians to every one of us. My idea, however, was at length carried out, and we fell on them so heavily with our swords that they retired a short way.
Just at this time Cortes came galloping up with the horse. They had been delayed by the bogs. When we, who were in hot pursuit, espied our cavalry, we attacked with renewed energy. The Indians, busily fighting us toward their faces, did not see our horsemen dashing on them from behind, spearing them in their fine and rapid galloping and finally forcing them to face about. They had never seen a horse before, and could not think other than that our good riders and their powerful, fiery animals were one body. Astounded at so strange a sight, they took to flight.
Under trees which stood on the field of battle we then thanked God with uplifted hands for giving us so complete a victory. After this we rested and bandaged the wounds of our men and buried the two who had been killed, one shot in the neck and the other in the ear. Our fighting had lasted about an hour and over eight hundred of the Indians lay dead on the battle field, and others wounded.
In an account of this battle a historian, Gomara, says that before the coming of Cortes the holy apostles Santiago and San Pedro galloped up to our aid on a grey horse. I say that for the work of our arms and our victory we stand indebted to our Lord, and that in this battle every man of us was set upon by so many of the enemy that if each had merely thrown a handful of dust upon us, we should, but for the mercy of God, have been buried. It may be that the two glorious apostles, Santiago and San Pedro, did come to our assistance. Perhaps on account of my sins I was not worthy to behold them. What I, Bernal Diaz, saw was Francisco de Morla on a chestnut horse coming up with Cortes, and even now, at this very moment, while I am writing this, I can see again all the battle passing before my eyes, just as I relate it; and although I am a sinner not worthy of beholding one of the glorious apostles face to face, yet I never heard any of the other four hundred soldiers, nor Cortes himself, talk of this wonder. To confirm its truth we would have built a church when the town was founded, and named it Santiago de la Victoria, or San Pedro de la Victoria. If what the historian relates were true, then we must have been bad Christians when the Lord sent us aid in the person of his sainted apostles not to show respectful recognition of his great favor, and thank him daily in a church. I should have great joy if It were as the historian relates, but I must confess I never heard of this wonder until I read of It in his book, nor have I ever heard any of the conquistadores who were present at the battle speak of it.
We took five prisoners, among them two caciques. After Aguilar had spoken with them he thought they might serve as messengers to their countrymen, and having advised Cortes to free them and give them glass beads, he told them the battle had been of their own seeking, that we wished to treat them as brothers, and that they had better gather all the caciques of different towns for a conference of good will. They went off with great good feeling, and when they had told the chiefs of our wish to be friends, they at once sent us fifteen Indian slaves with fowls, baked fish and maize bread. Cortes received the slaves graciously, but Aguilar, on the contrary, asked angrily why they had come with blackened faces and ragged cloaks; if they wished peace, he told them, chieftains, not slaves, must come and treat. We, however, presented the black faces with beads in token of our good will and to soothe their feelings.
And sure enough, the very next day, above thirty of the chief Indians, well clad, brought offerings of food, and begged leave to burn and bury their brethren who had fallen in the battle, so that their bodies might not befoul the air or be eaten by lions and tigers. When Cortes granted their wish, they hastened to bring many Indians to care for the bodies according to their custom. They said, moreover, they durst not begin treaty with us, for the next day caciques of all the towns would gather to consider our offer of peace.
In due time forty chiefs arrived, each bearing himself well and wearing a cloak richly wrought after their fashion. They saluted Cortes and all of us, incensed us with a resin they brought, and begging us to pardon their errors promised their friendship for the future. In return Cortes gravely reminded them, through Aguilar, our interpreter, how often he had wished to make peace; how we were vassals of a great king, Don Carlos, who had sent us to help and favor those who would enter his service, and if they were peacefully disposed, as they said, we would help them; but if they were not, we were on the point of destroying them and all their people, and some of the tepustles (they called Iron tepustle) would fly out and kill them, for the tepustles were still angry because of the attack they made on us. At this moment Cortes gave signal for firing our largest cannon. The report came like a thunder clap, and we could hear the ball whizzing over the hills, for it was midday and not a breath of air stirring. The caciques were terrified, and believed all Cortes had said—who then told Aguilar to assure them that he had ordered that no harm should befall them. Cortes and the chiefs now fell into a long and lively talk, and In the end they left, telling us they would come next day and bring a present.
They did come—the caciques of the Tabasco region—and paying reverence to us all, presented four gold diadems, some gold lizards, earrings, ducks, figures like dogs and masks with Indian faces, two sandals with soles of gold and other things of small value; also cloaks such as Indians wear. When Cortes asked them where they got their gold and trinkets, they answered from the country towards the setting sun, and said, "Colua" and "Mexico"—at that time we still did not know what they meant. But the gold they brought was nothing to the present of twenty women, among them a most excellent lady who became a Christian under the name of Marina.
Cortes received the presents, and by means of Aguilar told them he must further ask that they return to their dwellings and within two days all the people be back again in the town. They at once issued orders to that end. He also said that our Indian Melchior should be brought to him without fail. They answered that he had taken flight when the battle turned against them. This, however, was not true, for we learned that because his counsel cost them so dear they had slain the poor creature in sacrifice.
With the same readiness they had showed in recalling their families they promised to do away with their idols and human sacrifices. When Cortes told them, as well as he could, about our holy Christian faith, how we worshipped one God, and when he explained, showing them an image of Our Lady with her blessed Son in her arms, how we paid reverence to this figure, the caciques said they liked the looks of this great teleciguata (which in their language means a woman of distinction) and that they would much like to keep her in their town. Cortes promised they should have the image and told them to build a good altar for it. This they did at once, and two of our carpenters made a high cross.
When the image of Our Lady and the cross were set up on the altar we all paid our reverence there, and Padre Fray Bartolome de Olmedo said mass, the caciques being present, and we gave the name of Santa Maria de la Victoria to the town of Tabasco. With the aid of Aguilar, the friar also spoke many excellent things about our blessed religion to the twenty women, telling them not to believe in, and no longer offer sacrifices to, their idols, but to worship and adore the Lord. At once they were baptized. I can not now call to mind their names, but one was Donna Marina, a woman of distinction in bearing, good looking, intelligent and born a ruler over towns and peoples. How she came to be in such a condition happened in this wise:
Her father and mother were caciques of a town which held other towns subject. When she was still a little girl her father died and her mother married another cacique. Later a son was born, and the father and mother had so great affection for the younger child, and so wished to have him succeed after their death to their honors, that they secretly, in night-time, gave the little girl to some natives living at a distance, and then spread the rumor that she had died; which report gained further credit from the fact that a daughter of one of their slaves did die at the time, and they published that the dead girl was their daughter and heir. The Indians to whom they gave the girl did not keep her, but passed her to the people of Tabasco, and they, as we see, to Cortes.
In our conquest of New Spain this woman was a most valuable help. Through her only, under the protection of God, did we accomplish many things. Without her we never should have understood the Mexican language. She knew the language common to Mexico and the language of Tabasco. Aguilar merely understood the language of Yucatan. Donna Marina, therefore, would first make facts understood to Aguilar, who would translate what she said into Spanish. It came to pass that she had the most extensive influence in New Spain and did with the Indians what she pleased.
The five days we stayed in this place, partly to cure our wounds, Cortes used to draw the caciques to him by kindly talks, telling them of our king and the advantage they would gain in obedience to him, and, as to the future, whatever might be their needs, if they would let him know, no matter where he might be, he would come to their aid. For this promise the caciques—the first of the peoples of New Spain to submit to his power—thanked him and solemnly declared themselves vassals of our great emperor.
Donna Marina had a most extensive influence in New Spain, and the Indians obeyed her without question. .jpg)
The next day was Palm Sunday and, as Cortes had ordered, all the chiefs with their wives and children came to the courtyard where we had set up the altar and cross and had cut palm branches to carry in our procession. Here the Indians stood looking on while Cortes with officers and all our men marched in reverence, and two of our priests, in full canonicals, said mass and we prayed before and kissed the cross. The caciques drew nearer after this ceremony and offered Cortes ten fowls, baked fish and all kinds of greens, and he commended to their care the image of Our Lady and the cross, adding that if they kept the chapel clean, and the cross decked with garlands, they would then have the blessings of health and plentiful harvests.