CHAPTER XXV IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF CORTES
1. Cortes
Yucatan, the site of the ruins of the Maya civilization, was the first part of Mexico to be discovered, for it was the point of the mainland nearest to the Indies. De Cordova visited it in 1516-1517; Juan de Grijalva called there in 1518 and going further, searched the coast of the Gulf for islets. He was recalled and dishonored, though it is recorded that he was a most honorable man. Honor among pirates is no saving virtue. Cortes followed him, and he had the craft and style to play hero or villain as occasion offered. The Spanish wanted gold; they did not want glory, least of all any one else's glory. Cortes, however, had as great an eye for glory as he had for gold. That he was a great man few who read his history can doubt. He had to fight not only the Indians but the headstrong Spaniards of his own following, the malevolent Velasquez, Governor of Cuba, who had control of his supplies, and even enemies in far-off Spain who hid his glories from the Emperor.
How he resigned his office and got himself elected by his own troops, how he persuaded them to burn their boats so that there could be no return, how he reinforced his army by capturing an army sent against him, how he beguiled Montezuma and fooled him—is a great story, revealing a character which it might have delighted Shakespeare to describe.
But what Cortes was and what he and his followers achieved are two different matters. The brilliance of the exploits of Cortes has blinded many to the sordid material nature of the deeds effected. It is true he cast down a thousand altars of blood and washed away the hideous scarlet stain, putting up white crosses with flowers and Madonnas to whom could be no reproach. But there the ideal side of the adventure ended. The rest was vulgar spoliation, the furtherance of one quest only—the making of a fortune to take back to Spain.
Before Cortes' expedition no one had surmised the wealth of Mexico. The Spanish of the Indies wasted their time, kidnaping natives and selling them to the slavers, not knowing that El Dorado was just a little further out of doors. But Cortes readily grasped that there were rich kingdoms to sack. He founded Vera Cruz with the name "Rich City of the True Cross." He marched to meet the Totonacs at Cempoalla and found a people who wore golden necklaces and bracelets and rings of gold, gems in their noses and ears, headdresses of gold. Spanish eyes stared sultrily at these ornaments on the persons of a tribe who were friends. Some must have wished the Totonacs were enemies.
The fame of Mexico City determined Cortes to march toward it. Health lay in that direction. For a mountain wall had to be scaled, and even a day's march took the army out of the fever flats of Vera Cruz. He climbed up to Jalapa, the city of flowers, and thence to the heights of the plateau where at Xocotlan he found thirteen high temples and pyramids made of tens of thousands of human skulls. The Totonacs accompanied him all the way, for they told of another tribe which might ally itself with Cortes, the Tlascaltecs, who had constantly fought the Aztecs and never been beaten by them. The Tlascaltecs fought Cortes first to see what his troops were made of—and nearly worsted him. But afterwards, having tested him and liked him, they became his best and most lasting friends. Through them more than through his own Spaniards or through the help of God, he won. A month after he left the shore Cortes entered Tlaxcala and was given a marvelous flower festival.
Thence Cortes marched to the pious Cholultecs at the Pyramid of Cholula and massacred them, and then he built a causeway over the collar which holds the two volcanoes, Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl, and marched by Izcalpan and Ayotzinco to the lakes and canals of the Valley of Mexico. From Iztapalapan, now at the end of a tramway, he marched to the great meeting of welcome with Montezuma and his nobles.