The Gilded Man (El Dorado) and other pictures of the Spanish occupancy of America

by Adolph Francis Alphonse Bandelier

Cortés considered himself secure, and wrote a letter to the Spanish Crown, the language of which is little known, in which, while he insisted in the plainest manner upon his services and personal devotion, he in the most courtly terms denied allegiance, and declined any interference of the royal officers in the administration of the new colony. This letter, which bears the same date as the famous paper called the Carta Cuarta (October 15, 1524), was written when four officers of the Spanish Crown—the treasurer, Alonso de Estrada; the accountant and paymaster, Rodrigo de Albornoz; the factor, Gonzalo de Salazar; and the inspector, Peral Mendez Chirinos—had come to Mexico to take care of the financial interests of the monarch. The insurrection of Olid called away the conqueror of Mexico and took him to Honduras, else he would have carried out his ambitious plans at that time, when, it is hardly to be doubted, they would have been more successful than was afterward the struggle for independence of Gonzalo Pizarro in Peru.

After the departure of Cortés from Mexico, October 12, 1524, the administration of the province fell into the hands of the officers of the Crown. They soon quarrelled, and disastrous complications arose. Mexico itself was the scene of great disorder, while the Indians in the country rebelled. This interregnum lasted till the year 1525, and ended with the arrest of Salazar and Chirinos by the partisans of Cortés. Cortés, after restoring order in Honduras, returned to Mexico on June 20, 1526.

A brilliant reception was prepared for him there, but it had only a transient importance. The Spanish Government had perceived the magnitude of the danger with which it was threatened from the extraordinary but reckless conqueror, and had made the best of his absence. Cortés had indeed been honored with the title of “Adelantado” of New Spain, and with many personal privileges, but the most northern part of Mexico that had been discovered, from the mouth of the Pánuco River, was withdrawn from his dominion and placed under the administration of Nuño de Guzman. By this change he lost all the fruits of his agreement with Francisco de Garay and of Garay’s premature death. A young jurist, Luis Ponce de Léon, was immediately sent to Mexico to make an impartial investigation on the spot of the complaints that were brought against Cortés. For this purpose he was privately given full power to arrest Cortés if necessary and send him to Spain, or in the other event to confirm him in his office.

Ponce de Léon arrived at the City of Mexico on July 2, 1526, and was received with pomp by Cortés, who placed himself wholly at his disposition; but the climate agreed no better with the new functionary than it had before agreed with Garay. He died in the same month after a short illness; and eight weeks afterward his successor in office, the Bachelor Márcos de Aguilar, also died. The process against Cortés dragged slowly along with many interruptions amid great disquiet in the country; for Alonso de Estrada had taken the reins of government, and had abridged the conqueror’s prerogatives to the domain of military command and Indian administration. Shorn of all power, Cortés had to submit to the inevitable, and to suffer patiently a banishment from the City of Mexico, which Estrada imposed upon him in order to secure tranquillity.

Although further explorations in the north were temporarily interrupted by the disorders that prevailed in the country, Cortés found time to organize an expedition to the Molukkes on the western coast, and at least to open communication with them. The royal officers, on the contrary, could accomplish nothing, and in order to circumscribe their power, as well as that of the governor of Panamá, Pedro Arias Dávila, independent jurisdictions were created out of Honduras, Guatemala, and Yucatan. At the same time the Church assumed the control of Indian affairs, and finally, in order to terminate the arbitrary provisional system of government, the royal court of law, Audiencia real, was set up in the year 1527 as the chief authority in Mexico.

Nuño Beltrán de Guzman entered into possession of his government in Pánuco in the year 1528. He was young, vigorous, and energetic, but imperious, and his inconsiderate ambition was not capable of the wise patience that Cortés manifested. His first step was to stir up boundary disputes with the adjacent jurisdiction of New Spain or Mexico, and when no results accrued from them, he sent Sancho de Caniego to Madrid with a series of complaints against Hernando Cortés, which could not fail to excite earnest attention. Besides the charge of treason against the Crown already raised, Guzman accused the conqueror with having murdered Francisco de Garay and Luis Ponce de Léon. Cortés presented himself in Spain almost simultaneously with the charges, to defend himself personally against them. But an accusation of another more heinous offence had been more recently filed in secret against him at the court. His wife, Doña Catalina Xuarez, with whom he had not long shared the happiness of wedded life, having been separated from her a few years after their marriage by absence on his campaigns, had joined him again after the conquest of Mexico, and suddenly died three months later. He was therefore, although not openly, accused of murdering her. The Acts of the Process against Cortés included a “secret inquiry” (pesquisa secreta) into this terrible accusation. The Process resulted in an official acquittal; but the Acts themselves presented the death of Francisco de Garay in the most suspicious light, left the manner in which the death of Ponce de Léon occurred an open question, and made it certain that Cortés had with his own hands strangled in bed his first faithful wife, who had followed him to Mexico at his request. The Process did not detain Cortés later than till the year 1530. In the meantime the Spanish Crown, as soon as it was informed of the new accusations that had been brought against Cortés, appointed Nuño Beltrán de Guzman president of the court of law in Mexico, and thus elevated him to the highest official position in New Spain. The selection was an unwise one. Guzman proceeded to Mexico, where he arrived in 1529. His demeanor was very arrogant. The complaints against him soon became as loud, even on the side of the Audiencia, as they had been against Cortés. At last the King of Spain (the Emperor Charles V.) named a new Audiencia, and appointed as its president Sebastian Ramirez de Fuenléal, bishop of Santo Domingo. The president did not go directly to the mainland, but spent some time in his episcopal see, partly in order to observe quietly the course of affairs in Mexico, and partly to perfect his plans for the reorganization of the country.

Guzman’s conduct was in the meantime intolerable. Directly in the face of the Spanish laws he pursued the natives in order to extort gold and slaves from them, and abused the former associates of Cortés. Even the Audiencia was glad when he left Mexico, on the 20th of December, 1529, at the head of a large Spanish squadron and more than eight thousand Indians, for the purpose of continuing the discoveries begun by Sandoval for Cortes in the northwest. The drafting of Indians to engage in this campaign was a transgression of the law, but he was personally supported in it by some of the members of the court. His march was directed first toward Michoacan, but its ultimate goal was the gold-rich and pearl-bearing island of the fabulous Amazons.

The Tarasca lived and still live in Michoacan. Although they spoke a different language from the Mexicans, their traditions pointed to an original connection with them, and they were in the same stage of civilization. The Tarasca were split up into a number of groups, which, like the other linguistic stocks or their subdivisions, of which Tlaxcala, Cholula, and the three large settlements of the Mexican Valley—Mexico, Tezcuco, and Tlacopan—were conspicuous examples, had a common leadership in war. The tribes of Michoacan had two such head war-chiefs, of whom commonly only one—like Montezuma in his day in Mexico—who is called Cazonci, is named. The Tarasca had voluntarily submitted to Cortés, and stood in friendly relations toward the Spaniards as long as the famous conqueror commanded in Mexico. Guzman, having arrived at Michoacan, in his rude way imposed considerable requisitions on the chiefs. As these could not be granted quickly enough, the principal leader, “Zinzicha,” was tortured to death. Guzman then went northward, and this campaign constitutes the saddest page for the natives in the history of Mexico. The Indians there suffered generally only during two periods: first under the confusion which prevailed during the absence of Cortés, from 1524 to 1526; and, second, under the administration of Nuño de Guzman, from 1529 to 1531. The rule of Cortés was wisely just and mild; and the later policy of the Spaniards was a paternal one, marked by a correct knowledge of the Indian character, its weaknesses and its capabilities.

Guzman has been often accused, by his contemporaries as well as by later writers, of having exercised deliberate cruelties on his march through the present states of Jalisco and Sinaloa, and his campaign has been described as one of devastation. Numerous acts of violence certainly occurred. The Indian tribes, divided, scattered, and living in constant war with one another, suffered much, but a careful examination of the authorities shows that it was more from fear than anything else; while no reliance can be placed upon the numerical statements concerning the so-called Spanish blood-baths, particularly none upon those of the bishop of Chiapas, Bartholomé de las Casas. The whole literature of that period should be read with the same reserves with which we receive the political “campaign literature” of the present; and the numerous official hearings of the Spanish civil officers furnish the most contradictory statements. Guzman was ambitious and avaricious; his outbreaks of cruelty were provoked by those passions. Where his interests demanded patience he could be gentle enough, but when excited by contradiction or negligence, he raged against his own Spaniards as well as against hostile Indians. Contrary to the orders of the Spanish Crown, he made slaves of a number of Indians in order that he might at least compensate himself for the disappointments he suffered in other respects; for the chief object of his search was gold in quantities, but he could only obtain it scantily. The civilization of the natives appeared to decline as he went toward the northwest; the houses of stone and plaster gave way to lighter structures of cane and wood, and shelters made of branches and foliage.

A bitter disappointment was awaiting him in Cihuatlan in the present state of Sinaloa. Sandoval had brought the story of the Amazons from there; but instead of the island on which he had placed the soldierly women, Guzman was shown only a few insignificant villages. He found them, however, exclusively inhabited by women and children, for the men had fled to the mountains. The legend of the Amazons was thus resolved into one of those mistakes which were sure to arise at that time on the first contact of Europeans with natives whose language they did not understand. No trace was found of gold, pearls, or treasures of any kind. The story of the Amazons ceases from this time to be of any significance in the history of discovery in the northern half of America. It plainly appears from the accounts of contemporaries that it was not a native legend in America, but was an importation from Europe, a survival from classical antiquity, which emigrated along with cultivated and uncultivated Europeans into what was called the New World.