THE TRUTH ABOUT TLASCALA.
Thus, according to Cortéz, the Tlascalans dwelt in cities rivaling the most polished and commercial cities of Europe; according to Diaz, they were so poor that they were unable to make a present worth twenty dollars! Cortéz gives a view of "a large wall of dry stone, about nine feet in height, which extends across the valley from one mountain to the other: it was twenty feet in thickness, surmounted throughout its whole extent by a breastwork a foot and a half thick, to enable them to fight from the top of the wall." Diaz says, "We came to an enormous intrenchment, built so strongly of stone, lime, and a kind of hard bitumen, that it would only have been possible to break it down by means of pick-axes."[21] ] Such a wall, or the vestiges of it, would last for thousands of years; for it is not in the destructive power of man wholly to obliterate it, and yet I have been utterly unable to find even a ruin, and I verily believe the whole of this Chinese wall is a fiction.
Tlascala is an Indian reservation of an oval shape, sixty-nine miles long by forty-two miles wide. Its climate is cold. Its soil is not remarkably good. It has had its independent government since the time of Cortéz. Its means of subsistence have been increased, and extensive manufactories have been established. The only enumeration ever made of its inhabitants was in 1793, when it was found to contain 51,177 souls. In the extravagant official estimate of last year, its population is set down at 80,171.[22] ] Cortéz says that Tlascala contained a population of 500,000 inhabitants, according to a report made by his orders. We have here our historians within metes and bounds, between mountains and stone walls; a perfect non-intercourse established with all the world; all foreign means of supply cut off, and the Indians dependent for subsistence upon their own rude cultivation of maize. My readers may call me extravagant if I should say that Tlascala probably contained about 10,000 inhabitants in the time of Cortéz, and could therefore, in an emergency, produce 1000 warriors. A greater number than this would be contrary to the laws of population. I might here stop and call hard names, but it is not my purpose to "bring a railing accusation" against any. My only duty is to place evidence before the reader, and then let him judge how much reliance is to be placed upon any historical statements that have been trimmed and modified to suit the purposes of the Spanish Inquisition.
The quick wit of Cortéz early discovered that Tlascala was a great natural fortress, and that he could make it the centre and base of his operations in the wars he was contemplating against the different Indian tribes of the table-land. The hatred borne against the Mexicans by the Tlascalans assured him of their co-operation against Montezuma. Hence the Tlascalans were especially favored. They shared with him in all the perils of his enterprise, and in the plunder gathered from the conquered tribes; for with them rested the question whether he should succeed, and be hailed as the hero of a holy war, or should be branded as a buccaneer, robber, and enslaver. And when, in course of time, the Indian element became the ruling power, curses loud and deep were muttered against the enslaver of the Indians, and the Tlascalans came in for their share of imprecations.
CENSORSHIP OF HISTORICAL BOOKS.
But who was Bernal Diaz? This would be a strange question to ask in a country where there was liberty of speech and liberty of the press, but in Spain the censorship was not only repressive, but it was "suggestive." It not only suppressed the writings of authors, but compelled them to father productions that were the very opposite of those they wished to publish. Take the case of poor Sahagun, who wrote a refutation of the historian of the conquest, under the pretense of giving the Indian account of that event: when his book was finally allowed to see the light, after a delay of many years, it was found that his own account of the conquest had been suppressed, and the regular Spanish account had been substituted. Of Las Casas's "Apology for the Indians,"[23] ] which had occupied thirty-two years of his life, that part only was allowed to appear which treated of Saint Domingo. But his refutation of the histories of the conquest of Mexico is wholly suppressed. To have proved the Conquistadors a gang of unprincipled buccaneers would have spoiled a Holy War, which was just what the Inquisition would not allow to go before the world. To the little work of Boturini on Mexico there are appended, 1. The declaration of his faith in the Roman Catholic Church in the most unequivocal terms. 2. The license of the Jesuit father. 3. The license of an Inquisitor. 4. The license of the Judge of the Supreme Council of the Indias. 5. The license of the Royal Council of the Indias. 6. The approbation of the "qualificator" of the Inquisition, who was a bare-footed Carmelite monk. 7. The license of the Royal Council of Castile. Beyond all this, the writer must be a person in holy orders, and be a person of sufficient influence to obtain the favorable notice of all these bodies, who were instinctively hostile to the diffusion of all information, particularly in regard to the New World. Nor was this the end of the difficulty; the license of any one of these officials could be revoked at pleasure, and, when republished, the work had to be re-"viséd." Even as late as the year 1825, a Spanish standard author could not be republished without expurgation.[24] ] With such facts before us, it is safe to declare that not a single statement of fact that affected either the interests of the king or the Church was ever published in Spain or her colonies during the three hundred years of the existence of the Inquisition; but every thing published was modified to suit the wishes of the censors, without any regard to the sentiments of the putative author.
But who was Bernal Diaz? How came he to be familiar with the writings of Las Casas that never saw the light? Had he access to the secret archives of the convent? He refers to the account of Las Casas as follows:
"These [the slaughters at Cholula] are, among others, those abominable monstrosities which the Bishop of Chiapas, Las Casas, can find no end in enumerating. But he is wrong when he asserts that we gave the Cholulans the above-mentioned chastisement without any provocation, and merely for pastime."[25] ] The history of Diaz is among the standard literary productions of that age, and is a very picture of candor and simplicity. On every page there are such evident efforts at truthfulness as to raise a suspicion that something more than, a simple narrative was the object of writing this book fifty years after the conquest. By supposing the author to be only sixteen years old when he came to America, Lockhart makes him only seventy years of age when he wrote the work. But if we suppose him to have been of a reasonable age when he began his adventures, he must have been between eighty and ninety years old when this book is alleged to have been written. Gomara had overdone the matter in the superhuman achievements which he had ascribed to Cortéz, while Las Casas had proved the conqueror and his party to have been a gang of cruel monsters. Now, something had to be done to avert the odium that was beginning to attach to this crusade against the enemies of the Church. In Spain, where a padlock was upon every man's mouth, and where each one buried his suspicions in the most secret recesses of his heart, and trembled lest, even in his dreams, a thought of impiety might reach the ear of a familiar, history could always be made to conform to the interests of the Church.
Since the records of the Spanish Inquisition have become the property of the public, and the manner in which the facts of history were trifled with is now understood, it is a question more easily asked than answered, Who wrote such and such a book?
WHO WROTE BERNAL DIAZ?