Part 3 (1/2)
In the early dawn of the next morning the party were a.s.sembled for prayers and for the celebration of ma.s.s. They then, with new zeal and courage, entered their boats, and ascended the gla.s.sy, forest-fringed stream, upon which the morning sun shone brightly. Bird-songs filled the air, and hardly a breath of wind moved the leaves, glittering in the brilliant sunlight, as these bronzed men of iron sinews moved sternly on to the demoniac deeds of war. The natives, in preparation for the conflict, had been all the night rallying their forces. The sh.o.r.e was lined with their war-canoes, and the banks were covered with Indian troops drawn up in martial array. Gorgeous plumes decorated their persons, and the rays of the sun were reflected from their polished weapons. As soon as the Spanish boats appeared, the vast army of the natives raised shouts of defiance, and the ear was almost deafened with the clangor of their trumpets and drums.
The battle soon commenced. The sky was almost darkened by the shower of arrows thrown by those upon the land. The warriors in the canoes fought fiercely with their javelins. The conflict was b.l.o.o.d.y, but short. Native valor could avail but little against European discipline and art. The spears, stones, and arrows of the natives fell almost harmless upon the helmets and s.h.i.+elds of the Spaniards; but the bullets from the guns of the invaders swept like hail-stones through the crowded ranks of the natives, unimpeded by their frail weapons of defense. Cortez himself headed a charge which broke resistlessly into the hostile ranks. Appalled by the terrific thunder and lightning of the musketry, the Indians soon scattered and fled, leaving the ground covered with their slain.
Cortez now reviewed his troops in triumph upon the sh.o.r.e. He found that fourteen were wounded, but none slain. To attend to the wounded and to rest his exhausted men, he again encamped. The bloodstained banner of the cross, which they had so signally dishonored, floated proudly over their intrenchments. Prayers were offered and ma.s.s celebrated in honor of the victory achieved by Christian arms against idolaters. The next morning the Spaniards marched unresisted to Tabasco, the capital of the province, a large town upon the river, but a few miles above the place where the invaders had effected a landing. The inhabitants, men, women, and children, fled from the place in dismay.
Cortez took possession of the town in the name of the King of Spain.
But the whole surrounding region was now aroused. The natives, in numbers which could not be counted, gathered in the vicinity of Tabasco, and organized their forces anew, to repel, if possible, the terrible foe. They were a.s.sembled on the great plain of Ceutla. Cortez had antic.i.p.ated this, and was also gathering his strength for a decisive battle. He sent to the s.h.i.+ps for six pieces of cannon, his whole cavalry of sixteen horses, and every available man. A few only were left to guard the vessels. This powerful re-enforcement soon arrived. Thus strengthened, his whole army was called together to celebrate the solemnities of ma.s.s, and to implore the blessing of G.o.d in extending the triumphs of the cross over the kingdom of Satan. Thus they marched forth, with powder, and ball, and neighing steeds, to the merciless slaughter of those brave men who were fighting for their country and their homes.
The Spaniards now advanced to meet their foes. It was a lovely morning, the 25th of March. The natives, in point of civilization, raised far above the condition of savages, had large fields in a high state of cultivation, waving with the rich vegetation of the tropics.
After a march of three or four miles through a country cultivated like a garden, they arrived at the ground occupied by the native army. The lines of their encampments were so extended and yet so crowded that the Spaniards estimated their numbers at over forty thousand. To meet them in the strife Cortez had but six hundred men. But his terrible engines of destruction made his force more powerful than theirs. The natives were ready for the battle. They greeted their a.s.sailants with a war-whoop, which rose in thunder tones over the plain, and showered upon them volleys of arrows, sling-stones, and javelins. At this first discharge, seventy Spaniards were wounded and one was slain. The conflict soon raged with all imaginable horrors. The natives fought with the courage of desperation. They seemed even regardless of the death-dealing muskets. And when the terrible cannon, with its awful roar, opened huge gaps in their ranks, manfully they closed up, and with new vigor pressed the onset. The odds were so fearful that for some time it seemed quite doubtful on which side victory would rest.
Cortez, heading his cavalry, swept around the plain, and, by a circuitous route, came unperceived upon the rear of the tumultuous foe. The sixteen hors.e.m.e.n, clad in steel, urging their horses to their utmost speed, with loud shouts and sabres gleaming in the air, plunged into the midst of the throng. Their keen-edged swords fell on the right hand and on the left upon the almost naked bodies of the natives. At the same moment, the energies of musketry and artillery were plied with murderous carnage.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIRST CAVALRY CHARGE HEADED BY CORTEZ.]
The natives had never seen a horse before. They thought the rider and the steed one animal. As these terrific monsters, half human, half beast, came bounding into their midst, cutting down and trampling beneath iron hoofs all who stood in the way, while at the same time the appalling roar of the cannonade seemed to shake the very hills, the scene became too awful for mortal courage to endure. The whole mighty ma.s.s, in uncontrollable dismay, fled from the presence of foes of such demoniac aspect and energy. The slaughter of these poor Indians was so awful that some of the Spaniards extravagantly estimated the number left dead upon the field at thirty thousand.
Though many of the Spaniards were wounded, but two were killed.
Cortez immediately a.s.sembled his army under a grove upon the field of battle to give thanks to G.o.d for the victory. The pomp and pageantry of war gave place to the pomp and pageantry of the Church. Canonical robes and banners fluttered in the breeze, processions marched, the smoke of incense floated in the air, and ma.s.s, with all its imposing solemnities, was celebrated in the midst of prayers and thanksgivings.
”Then,” says Diaz, ”after dressing our wounds with the fat of Indians whom we found dead thereabout, and having placed good guards round our post, we ate our supper and went to our repose.”
Under the placable influence of these devotions, the conqueror sent word to the vanquished that he would now _forgive them_ if they would submit unconditionally to his authority. But he declared that if they refused this, he would ride over the land, and put every thing in it, man, woman, and child, to the sword.
The spirit of resistance was utterly crushed. The natives immediately sent a delegation to him laden with presents. To impress these emba.s.sadors still more deeply with a sense of his power, he exhibited before them the martial evolutions of his cavalry, and showed them the effects of his artillery as the b.a.l.l.s were sped cras.h.i.+ng through the trees of the forest. The natives were now effectually conquered, and looked upon the Spaniards as beings of supernatural powers, wielding the terrors of thunder and lightning, and whom no mortal energies could resist.
They had become as little children. This Cortez thought a very suitable frame of mind to secure their conversion. He recommended that they should cast down their idols, and accept instead the G.o.ds of papal Rome. The recommendation of Cortez was potent over the now pliant natives. They made no opposition while the soldiers, whose hands were hardly yet washed of the blood of their relatives, hewed down their images. With very imposing ceremonies, the religion of the conquerors was inst.i.tuted in the temples of Yucatan, and, in honor of the Virgin Mary, the name of Tabasco was changed into St. Mary of Victory.
In all this tremendous crime there was apparently no hypocrisy. Human motives will seldom bear rigid scrutiny. Man's best deeds are tainted.
Cortez was very sincere in his desire to overthrow the abominable system of idolatry prevailing among the natives. He perhaps truly thought that these violent measures were necessary to accomplish this object, and that Christianity, thus introduced, would prove an inestimable blessing. We may abhor his conduct, while we can still make generous allowances for the darkness of his mind and of the age in which he lived. It requires infinite wisdom to adjust the balance of human deeds.
Two of the Catholic ecclesiastics, Olmedo and Diaz, were probably unaffected Christians, truly desiring the spiritual renovation of the Indians. They felt deeply the worth of the soul, and did all they could rightly to instruct these unhappy and deeply-wronged natives.
They sincerely pitied their sufferings, but deemed it wise that the right eye should be plucked out, and that the right arm should be cut off, rather than that the soul should perish. It is a consoling thought, that ”like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him; for he knoweth our frame, he remembereth that we are dust.” The natives were a.s.sembled in their temples; they came together in immense mult.i.tudes. The priests, through their interpreter, Aguilar, endeavored to instruct them in the pure doctrines and the sublime mysteries of Christianity. If the natives perceived a marked difference between these precepts and the awful carnage on the field of Ceutla, it was not the first time that principles and practice have been found discordant.
A grand religious ceremony was inst.i.tuted to commemorate the conversion of the nation. The whole army took a part in the solemnities of the occasion, with all the martial and ecclesiastical pomp which their situation could furnish. The natives in countless mult.i.tudes joined the procession, and gazed with astonishment upon the scene. Advancing to the princ.i.p.al pyramidal temple of Tabasco, which was an enormous structure, with a vast area upon its summit, they wound around its sides in the ascent. Upon this lofty platform, beneath the unclouded sun, with thousands of Indians crowding the region around to witness the strange spectacle, a Christian altar was reared, the images of the Savior and of the Virgin were erected, and ma.s.s was celebrated. Clouds of incense rose into the still air, and the rich voices of the Spanish soldiers swelled the solemn chant. It must have been an impressive scene. There must have been some there into whose eye the tear of devotion gushed. If there were in that throng--all of whom have long since gone to judgment--one single broken and contrite heart, that was an offering which G.o.d could accept. Father Olmedo preached upon the occasion ”many good things touching our holy faith.” Twenty Indian girls who had been given to the Spanish captains for wives were baptized.
Cortez having thus, in the course of a week, annexed the whole of these new provinces of unknown extent to Spain, and having converted the natives to Christianity, prepared for his departure. The natives, among their propitiatory offerings, had presented to Cortez, as we have mentioned, twenty young and beautiful females whom they had captured from hostile tribes, or who in other ways had become their slaves. Cortez distributed these unenlightened maidens among his captains, having first selected one of the youngest and most beautiful of them, Marina, for his wife. Cortez had a worthy spouse upon his plantation at Cuba. No civil or religious rites sanctioned this unhallowed union; and he was sufficiently instructed to know that he was sinning against the laws of both G.o.d and man; but the conscience of this extraordinary adventurer had become involved in labyrinths utterly inexplicable. He seemed to judge that he was doing so much for the cause of Holy Mother Church that his own private sins were of little comparative moment. His many good deeds, he appeared to think, purchased ample indulgence.
But Marina was a n.o.ble woman. The relation which she sustained to Cortez did no violence to her instincts or to her conscience. She had never been instructed in the school of Christ. Polygamy was the religion of her land. She deemed herself the honored wife of Cortez, and dreamed not of wrong. Marina was in all respects an extraordinary woman. Nature had done much for her. In person she was exceedingly beautiful. She had winning manners, and a warm and loving heart.
Her mind was of a superior order. She very quickly mastered the difficulties of the Castilian tongue, and thus spoke three languages with native fluency--the Mexican, the Yucatanese, and the Spanish. ”I am more happy,” said she one day, ”in being the wife of my lord and master Cortez, and of having a son by him, than if I had been sovereign of all of New Spain.”
Her career had been eventful in the extreme. She was the daughter of a rich and powerful cacique, who was tributary to the Emperor of Mexico.
Her father died during her infancy, and her mother married again. A son by her new husband gradually estranged the affections of the unnatural mother from her daughter. These feelings increased, till she regarded the child with deep dislike, and secretly gave her away to some slave-drivers, circulating the report that the child was dead.
The slave-merchants brought her from her distant home, where the language of Mexico was her native tongue, and sold her to one of the chiefs of Tabasco. Here she acquired the language of Yucatan.
There was much in the energy, magnanimity, fearlessness, and glowing temperament of Cortez to rouse a woman's love. Marina became devotedly attached to him. She watched over his interests with a zeal which never slumbered; and when she became the mother of his son, still more tender ties bound her to the conqueror of her race. In subsequent scenes of difficulty and danger, her acquaintance with the native language, manners, and customs made her an invaluable acquisition to the expedition.
After a few days spent at Tabasco, the hour for departure came. The boats, decorated with the banner of the cross, and with palm leaves, the symbols of happiness and peace, floated down the beautiful river to the squadron riding at anchor at its mouth. Again spreading the sails, and catching a favorable breeze, the adventurers were wafted rejoicingly on toward the sh.o.r.es of Mexico. The newly-converted natives were left to meditate upon the instructions which they had received--to count the graves of the slain--to heal, as they could, the gory wounds and splintered bones of their friends, still writhing in anguish, and to wail the funeral dirge in the desolate homes of the widow and the orphan. Seldom, in the history of the world, has such a whirlwind of woe so suddenly burst upon any people. How long they continued to cherish a religion introduced by such harbingers we are not informed.