Colorado—The Bright Romance of American History

by F. C. Grable

1519 Hernando Cortez sprang from a noble but impoverished family. Educated for the law, he chose an adventurous life instead, and at the age of nineteen left Spain for San Domingo to try his fortunes in the New World, resulting in his brilliant conquest of Mexico; a country whose early history we can only imagine. The unknowable is there; for its secrets lie buried beneath the weight of centuries. Tragedy is there; for what derelict, never heard of more, dropped in from over the seas and cast its human wreckage on those unknown shores for the beginning of a nation? Who were those who may have been lost to home and friends and wandered in from Asia over that narrow strip of land long ago submerged? Whence they came, whatever their nation or color, they were human beings, with thoughts and affections like ours, whose beginnings we can never fathom. They grew in numbers, had flocks and herds, and gold and jewels. They had tribal governments, with differing customs and languages. They had the wandering habit. The streams, the mountains, and the plains beckoned them and they came and went, happy, care-free and prosperous. Some one among them said: "Let us all come together and unite as a people; establish a uniform government; build a city, and select some one of our number to rule over us." And it was done. Mexico City was built and became the Capital. Montezuma was made the ruler. They had laws and Courts of Justice; they had well-constructed and highly-decorated buildings, with architectural features the equal of some European structures prized for their beauty and durability. Their streets were laid out symmetrically, and their parks and landscape gardening added to the city's attractiveness. They had a system of canals and well-developed agriculture; an organized army and thoroughly equipped ships. Whence came this high civilization? We can never know. We only know that it existed. Two million people lived in and adjacent to Mexico City. They were rich, intelligent and contented, until the coming of Cortez; and when he reached the shores of Mexico in the Spring of 1519 it was a memorable day for them. He came in ten ships with six hundred Spanish soldiers. He disembarked, and when the last man was ashore and all the ammunition and guns and supplies were landed, he performed a feat of courage bordering on the sublime. He set his ships on fire, and he stood with his resolute men and saw them burn to the water's edge, knowing that the flame and smoke and destruction meant for each that he must conquer or die. And they marched away, a handful against a host, and they won!

But the fall of Mexico, like the fate of most nations, came from within and not from without. What could six hundred do against a united two million. That was where Cortez shone. To create discord, distrust and jealousy; to make them fight each other; to unite the disaffected under his own banner, was the work of a diplomat and general, and he was both. To their everlasting disgrace, the dissatisfied of the native race accomplished for Cortez the downfall of their own nation. And when, two years after he began his destructive warfare, the City of Mexico had been utterly destroyed; when a race had been subjugated; had been stripped of its vast treasure of gold and jewels for the greater glorification of the luxurious Court of Spain; had lost thousands by slaughter; then, and not till then, did the insurgents know that they had encompassed their own ruin. They were enslaved by the Spaniards. The last chapter in their national life was written. The Aztecs, as a people, were no more. They were given the name of Mexicans by the Spaniards, for "Mexitl" the national War God of the native race. Mexicans they have continued to this day, and Cortez as Captain General ruled over the Mexican Territory which he called "New Spain." He set four hundred thousand of the enslaved natives to rebuilding the City of Mexico, but their hearts were in the ruins of the old city, and not in the building of the new—for Cortez saw to it that there should be nothing in the new Spanish city that would remind them of the ancient grandeur of the old. Ten years after its completion there were not a thousand people in it. The old population was melting away, dying off from over-work in the mines to which they had been driven, and where they sickened from disease and hunger and heart yearning for the families from whom they had been forcibly separated, while nearly seven million dollars a year of their earnings were being sent to Spain, taken from the richest silver mines in all the world.

You were great Empire builders, oh Spain! But your wanton cruelty to mankind will forever cloud your glory as the eclipse darkens the sun! You permitted the Inquisition! You pitted strength against helplessness, burned thousands alive, and confiscated their property! You permitted the slaughter of twelve hundred thousand human beings in the West Indies, and never heard their pitiful cry, until the lack of earnings ceased to swell the income of the Crown, and then you carried captives from the mainland to take the place of the dead! You permitted the institution of the American slave trade, which only ended at Appomattox, with the destruction of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, and millions of money!

The power and fame of Cortez had grown beyond the limit set by the Crown of Spain. Every forceful and successful man in the Dominion of Spain was a marked man; not marked for preferment and encouragement, but marked for humiliation and disgrace. The battles that Cortez had won for the King were forgotten; the treasure he had sent home counted for naught; and for the territory he had subjugated, there was no appreciation. His authority was ended. An officer and soldiers came from Spain to take him back, not with honor, but in ignominy. He arrested the officer, and induced the soldiers to join his army. He was so powerful that he thought he could be King of the New World. Finally, threats and promises secured his peaceable return to Spain, where all promises were broken, and his life was tempest-tossed until he died.

1528 Then Nuno de Guzman was named Governor General of New Spain. He started out to duplicate the successes of Cortez, whose ability he lacked, as well as the opportunity. He hunted in vain for another Mexico City to conquer and despoil. He pushed Northward hunting for riches, slaughtering the natives, burning their villages, and laying waste their country. He conquered a great territory on the western coast of Upper Mexico, along the Gulf of California, which he called "New Gallicia." His rule was so ruthless, cruel and desolating, that even Spain, hardened as she was to suffering, was shocked with his barbarous persecution of the natives, and after seven years, a warrant was sent out from Spain for his arrest and trial, on charges of inhuman cruelty. He was deprived of his office, taken to Mexico City, held there a prisoner for several years, and was then returned to Spain.

1535 Don Antonio de Mendoza, known as the "Good Viceroy," succeeded to the rule of Mexico, and put in practice a new policy, one not before tried in the New World, that of kindness. It had come too late for many, for the dead were everywhere, and the living had settled into a degree of hopelessness that a whole decade of kind treatment could do little toward counteracting. Three hundred and seventy-six years have passed since that day, and the scars of those sixteen years of Spanish murder and plunder have not yet been removed.

With which our narrative ends as to the mis-rule of New Spain.

1536 Pamfilo de Narvaez had been made Governor of Florida in 1527 by the Spanish Government, with a grant to explore and colonize a vast territory bordering on the Gulf of Mexico. He outfitted in Spain, sailed to Cuba where he repaired his vessels, thence into the Gulf of Mexico, meeting with storms that drove him out of his course, and so confused his mariners that they lost their reckoning. Consequently, he was left by his ships with his three hundred men and horses on the coast of Florida, instead of on the coast of Texas, as he thought. They rode away into the wilderness and nearly all to their death. Their wanderings, hardships and sufferings, the mind cannot conceive nor the pen describe. They worked to the West and North, crossing rivers and swamps, plains and mountains, through heat and cold, hungry and finally starving when their last horse had been used for food, mistreated by hostile Indians, lost and in despair. Beating their spurs into nails, they made boats, and using the hides from their horses for sails, they were borne down one of the Gulf Rivers, and out into the swift ocean current where they were carried to sea and drowned—all save four. Eight years after they had disembarked on the Florida Coast, these four were found by some slave catchers, away up on the Coast of California, whither they had wandered, and taken to Mexico City. Their sufferings had been so great, that when they reached civilization, they could no longer appreciate comforts. They continued to sleep on the ground, to eat unwholesome food, and to cling to the primitive habits they had formed. Slavery had in the meantime become so common, that Mendoza bought of the three Spaniards the negro, Estevanico, to act as guide to the far North, to which country Mendoza proposed to send an expedition.

1539 Fray Marcos, a Priest from Italy, had been a participant in the conquest of Peru, was a historian and theologian, picturesque in appearance and language, and was next to Mendoza in power. He was selected to go North on a visit preliminary to the proposed expedition, with the negro as guide. Rumors were in the air, and growing all the time, of wonderful cities and untold treasure in the North. Even the three returned Spaniards, rested from their wanderings, hinted at the fabulous wealth of which they persuaded themselves they had heard. The tales grew with the telling, so that Fray Marcos felt that he must be able to verify these reports, which he did, with the result that when the Coronado expedition found they did not exist, he had the great misfortune to ever after be called the "Lying Monk."