The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Vol 2 (of 2) / Written by Himself Containing a True and Full Account of the Discovery and Conquest of Mexico and New Spain.

by Bernal Díaz del Castillo

CHAPTER CLIX.

How Cortes and the officers of the crown forward to Spain the wardrobe of Motecusuma, and the emperor's share of the booty; and what further happened.

After this campaign in the province of Panuco, Cortes was busily occupied with the rebuilding of the city of Mexico.

Alonso de Avila, who had been despatched to the island of St. Domingo to communicate there in Cortes' name with the royal court of audience and the Hieronymite brotherhood, had by this time returned to Mexico, and had obtained for Cortes the necessary powers from the above courts to subdue the whole of New Spain, turn the inhabitants into slaves, mark them with a red-hot iron, and distribute the Indians into commendaries in the same manner as was customary at Hispaniola, Cuba, and Jamaica. This power granted to Cortes was to remain in force until the emperor's pleasure was known on this head. The Hieronymite brotherhood duly apprized his majesty of all this, and despatched a vessel for that purpose to Spain; and though the young emperor was at that time still in Flanders, their despatches arrived safely in his hands. As the Hieronymite brotherhood were well aware of the bad feeling which the bishop of Burgos always had evinced towards us, they purposely omitted to acquaint him with the nature of these despatches; and, upon the whole, they never communicated with him excepting on matters of trifling import.

Alonso de Avila, as I have before remarked, was a man who feared no one, and had formerly held some office immediately under the bishop of Burgos, so that it was fortunate he happened to be absent upon the mission just mentioned, in St. Domingo, when Christobal de Tapia arrived at Vera Cruz with the appointment of governor of New Spain, as the latter had brought letters from the bishop to him, and on such an occasion the determined character of Avila might have greatly injured our general's cause.

Cortes, who was thoroughly acquainted with this man's disposition, always strove to keep him at a distance from his person; and now again, upon the advice of father Olmedo, he presented him with the lucrative township of Quauhtitlan, which would give him constant occupation; and Cortes added to this a considerable sum of money, by which he gained him so completely over to his side, that he soon after intrusted him with a most important mission, by despatching him and Quiñones, the captain of the guards, to Spain, as his own procuradores, and those of New Spain in general; and provided them with two vessels which were to carry over to the emperor 88,000 pesos, in gold bars, and the wardrobe of Motecusuma, which had hitherto been in the possession of Quauhtemoctzin. The latter was a valuable present, and well worthy of our great emperor's acceptance, as it contained jewels of the most precious kind, pearls of the size of hazel nuts, and various other precious stones, which I should not like to enumerate singly, even if my memory would allow me. At the same time were sent the bones of the giants which we found in the temple of Cojohuacan, similar to those bones which were previously given to us by the Tlascallans, and which we had sent to Spain on a former occasion.

Three tigers, and several other curiosities, which I have now forgotten by name, were likewise shipped on board these two vessels.

The chief magistrates of Mexico, on this occasion, wrote a letter to the emperor, and we, the conquistadores, with father Olmedo and the royal treasurer, drew up an humble address to our monarch, in which we first of all mentioned with praise the many important and faithful services which Cortes and all of us had rendered to his imperial majesty; we gave him a full account of the siege of the city of Mexico and the discovery of the southern ocean, and added we were convinced these countries would prove a source of great wealth to Spain. We then requested his majesty to send to New Spain a bishop and monks of different religious orders, but all to be pious and well-informed men, that they might assist us in extending the holy catholic faith in these countries. We likewise humbly petitioned his majesty to appoint Cortes viceroy of New Spain, as he had proved himself so meritorious and faithful an officer to the Spanish crown. In the same way we begged the favour for ourselves, that all appointments made by the crown in this country might exclusively be given to us the conquistadores or to our sons. Further, we requested his majesty not to send any lawyers into the country, as those persons, with all their learning, would merely breed lawsuits, discord, and confusion throughout the whole country. We then mentioned how Christobal de Tapia had been sent as viceroy to New Spain by the appointment of the bishop of Burgos, assuring his majesty that Tapia was not fit to fill such an important situation, and that if he had been allowed to enter upon the viceroyalty of New Spain, that country would undoubtedly have been lost again to the Spanish crown. We were compelled to clear up all these circumstances to his majesty, as we feared the bishop of Burgos had not only omitted to lay before his majesty our previous despatches, but had also misrepresented things to him, in order to favour his friends Velasquez and Tapia, to the latter of whom he had promised the hand of his niece Doña Petronella de Fonseca. Tapia had certainly produced papers relative to his appointment, of the genuineness of which there could really be no doubt, and we had indeed perused them with deep veneration, and we would immediately have obeyed the instructions they contained if we had considered Tapia a proper person to fill the important office of governor; but as he was neither a soldier nor a man of sufficient mind and determination of character, nor possessed of talents requisite for a viceroy, we found ourselves necessitated to inform his majesty of the whole state of affairs, which was the real object of this present humble address of his majesty's faithful and obedient servants. We then prayed his majesty to decide in these matters, and particularly requested that he would not allow the bishop of Burgos in any way to interfere in matters which concerned Cortes and ourselves, as otherwise all further conquests we contemplated in New Spain would be interrupted; nor should we even be able to maintain peace in the provinces that were subdued. As a proof of the bishop's enmity towards us, we mentioned that he had forbidden the two harbour masters of Seville, Pedro de Isasaga and Juan Lopez de Recalte, to allow any arms or soldiers which were destined for Cortes or our army in general, to leave that place. We then gave his majesty an account of the recent campaign of Panuco, how the inhabitants had been obliged to sue for peace, and had declared themselves vassals of his majesty; what terrible battles they had fought with Cortes, and how they had killed all the officers and soldiers which Garay had sent thither from time to time. This campaign, we went on to say, cost Cortes above 60,000 pesos, which he had paid out of his own private purse, the reimbursement of which he had in vain solicited from the royal treasurers; that Garay was fitting out a new armament in Jamaica destined for the province of Panuco, but it was advisable that his majesty should issue orders for him to postpone that expedition until we should have completely subdued the country, that he might not again sacrifice the lives of his men to no purpose, and create an insurrection in the country, which would be sure to ensue if he arrived there beforehand, as the Indians, and particularly the Mexicans, would immediately conclude that there was no unanimity in the operations of the Spanish generals; conspiracies would be formed, and the whole country would rise up into open rebellion.

These and many other things we wrote to his majesty, nor was Cortes' pen idle on this occasion, for he also sent the emperor an account of every circumstance in a private despatch, which contained twenty pages, and I know their contents pretty well, as I read them all through with great attention. Among other things, he solicited his majesty's permission to proceed to Cuba in order to take the viceroy Diego Velasquez prisoner, and send him to Spain, there to stand his trial for having sent persons to murder him, Cortes, and for having upon the whole endeavoured to confuse the affairs of New Spain.

With these despatches, the money, and other valuable matters, Quiñones and Avila set sail from Vera Cruz on the 20th of December, 1522, and safely passed through the straits of Bahama. On their voyage two of the three tigers broke lose and made their escape, after wounding several of the crew; it was then determined that the third should be killed, which was in fact the most ferocious of the three. Without any further accident they arrived off the island of Tercera, where they dropped anchor. During their stay on this island, Quiñones, who had a vast idea of his courage and was of a very amorous disposition, got into a quarrel about some female, and received such a terrible blow on the head that he died a few days after of the consequences, so that Avila had to transact all our business himself.