Montezuma: An Epic on the Origin and Fate of the Aztec Nation

by Hiram Hoyt Richmond

To the student of history, Malinche (in her position of interpreter during the entire period of the Conquest) presents at once so much that is unique and charming, and yet such a sad commentary on the criminal practices of the sixteenth as well as the nineteenth centuries, that I have often wondered that a stronger and more practiced hand has not ere this claimed the privilege of championship.

According to Prescott, she was born in the town of Painnalla, Province of Coatzacualco, in the southeastern extremity of what is now Mexico; that she was the daughter of a Cacique (a sort of provincial Governor) and prospective heiress to large estates; that after the death of her father, her mother, with indecent haste, forms another union, and in time presents the stepfather with a son; that they jointly combine to be rid of Malinche, whom they sell to itinerant traders; and, to cover their device, they pretend that she is sick and use the child of a servant for their criminal pantomime; the child dies, thus completing the deception, except the hypocritical mourning to which this unnatural mother is said to have been equal.

Malinche is sold by the traders to the Cacique of Tabasco, and reaches maturity about the time of the Conquest. She seems to have been a favorite in the house of the Cacique, which would indicate that he had become acquainted with her origin, and after the surrender of the town to Cortez, she is one of the twenty female slaves presented to the Conqueror and his allies.

Either from enlarged opportunities or her natural aptness, and probably both, she is found by Cortez to be just the person he needs for interpreter. Mutual attraction leads them into the closest relations, and it is but just to Malinche to state that there is no indication of her knowledge of the Conqueror's wife in Cuba, until she arrives at the Capitol. There is also nothing to indicate more than a momentary estrangement between Malinche and Catalina.

Catalina lived but about three months after her arrival at Mexico; and it seems that Malinche assumes the same relations as before, when Cortez journeys South, where in time they reach the precincts of the maiden's nativity, and she meets her mother, after all the years of their cruel separation. Here the beautiful sincerity of the Christianity she had espoused, shines forth as she quiets her mother's fears, and professes to doubt her mother's original intent to sell her. She loads her mother with jewels and seems to cherish no feeling not consistent with the warmest relations of daughter and mother.

The statement soon after is, that Cortez presents her to Don Xamarillo with all the sanction of marriage, and he enriches her with some of the largest estates in her native province; and there the historic account closes. Incidentally, it is mentioned that a son was born during the period of this affaire du cœur.

I stated that the historic account closes here, but M. Charny and others enlarge on the traditionary feeling of South Eastern Mexico, and if we may credit his statements (and many times tradition carries more heart and more of the essential elements of truth in it than the cold pencil of history), Malinche is so woven into the social structure as to become almost the patron saint of that part of the country.

And Prescott (rather inclined to the fruit than the blossom of history) speaks of Malinche as being reverently held by the Aztec descendants as the guardian angel of Chapultepec.

I have endeavored thus to present the salient features of this part of the historic drama, adding and enlarging only as it became necessary to connect the events and do justice to the fair subject of the endeavor; and whatever criticism may be offered, I can, without hesitancy, claim the credit of candor and a desire to eliminate from all the facts of the case the plain, unvarnished truth.

I began at first to write the idyl in nine-syllabic measure, but soon found myself cramped in expression, and in recopying I have thrown off restraint and used the double terminal with both nine and ten syllables, having no desire and finding no occasion to use the eight syllable measure which Longfellow has so immortalized in the "Song of Hiawatha."