The Sun God was the chief deity, but there were many lesser objects of adoration. But the religion was of a high order in some respects, although the Spanish priests, after the Conquest, strove to hide the fact, and, indeed, there was wholesale destruction throughout Spanish America of native records and objects, whether it were of the beautiful picture-writings and scrolls of Mexico and Central America, whether the pillars of stone by which the early Peruvian priests skilfully determined the solstices. The jealous priestcraft of the Roman Catholic religion could not tolerate anything that showed ingenuity or knowledge by their pagan predecessors, and all these things they considered, or affected to consider, "things of the devil," and destroyed them wherever possible. The marvel is that so much has remained, for the benefit of the archæologist to-day.
The religion of the Quiches, like that of the Mexicans, contained horrible practices involving human sacrifices. This was probably absent in Peru. Repulsive as it was, we may question whether it was as cruel as the dreadful tortures of the Inquisition, such as rendered Mexico and Lima and other places in the New World centres of horror, until the time of Independence, when the infuriated populace destroyed the Inquisitional centres.
We have previously remarked that Columbus sailed along the Atlantic coast of Central America, that of Honduras and Costa Rica, and it was here that, seeing the ornaments of gold on the swarthy bodies of the natives, the voyagers' imagination was freshly aroused to the possibilities of conquest. But the natives of this region were not necessarily as docile as those of Hispaniola and the Antilles. They mustered on the shore, leaping from the dark forests as the strange sails of the Spaniards hove in sight, communicating rapidly with each tribe by those peculiar methods they employed, and made the air resound with the beatings and blasts of their war-drums and bugle-shells, brandishing their clubs and swords of palm-wood.
Columbus, however, did not generally employ harsh methods against the natives. He is regarded rather as their protector, and a beautiful monument at Colon represents him as sheltering an Indian who timorously looks up for protection—a contrast, as remarked elsewhere, with the lack of monuments in Spanish America to Cortes and Pizarro. However, under Bartholomé Columbus, the brother of Christopher, great animosity was aroused on the part of the Indians in the settlement at Veragua, resulting in the death of the Spanish colonists.
One of the most tragic episodes after the Conquest of Mexico was the expedition of Cortes to Central America, following on the expedition he had sent into Guatemala under Pedro de Alvarado. There had been a desperate fight between Alvarado's band and the redoubtable Quiches of Utatlan, and it was only due to the fortunate circumstance of dissension among the different predominant tribes that the Conquest of Guatemala was so readily carried out. Thus was history, as in Mexico and indeed in Peru, brought about also in Central America—fall under dissension, a house divided against itself.
In Honduras Cortes committed a foul deed. Suspecting, or pretending to suspect, Guahtemoc, the son of Montezuma—who after the fall of Mexico accompanied the conquerors to Central America—of some treacherous design, Cortes had the unfortunate young Aztec hanged head downwards from a tree. It will be recollected that Guahtemoc was the author of the saying, well known in Mexico, of "Am I, think you, upon some bed of roses?" when, whilst the Spaniards were roasting his feet in order to make him reveal the whereabouts of the Aztec treasure, he replied to his companions who were also being tortured and were groaning in agony, and who asked if he too suffered. This scene is depicted on a beautiful sculptured monument in the city of Mexico—the statue to Guahtemoc, in the Paseo de la Reforma.
In the early colonial government of Central America the capital was set up by Alvarado in the chief town of Guatemala. The scenery of the region is striking. Great volcanoes overhang the countryside, and these have at times wrought terrible havoc here, and still do so. In fact, the history of the city of Guatemala is a record of successive destruction and re-establishment, probably unique in the history of any land, due to the dreadful forces of Nature, seismic, tectonic and volcanic, exerted upon this unrestful point of the earth's surface.
We may glance briefly at some of these catastrophes. They show the trials which the inhabitants of this part of the world are called upon to bear.
The first city was established by Alvarado in 1527, on the banks of the Rio Pensativo, at the foot of the Agua volcano, but in 1541 this unfriendly mountain threw from its crater a deluge of water that, carrying rocks with it, rushed down the mountain side and bore upon the doomed city, whose destruction was lighted by the terrible fire which simultaneously burst from the angry peak.