Gomara had, no doubt, obscured the merits of the captains of Cortés in telling the story of that leader’s career. Instigated largely by this, and confirmed in his purpose, one of the partakers in the glories and hardships of the Conquest was impelled to tell the story anew, in the light of the observation which fell to a subordinate. He was not perhaps so much jealous of the fame of Cortés as he was hurt at the neglect by Gomara of those whose support had made the fame of Cortés possible.
This was Bernal Diaz del Castillo, and his book is known as the Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Neuva España, which was not printed till 1632 at Madrid, nor had it been written till half a century after the Conquest, during which interval the name of Cortés had gathered its historic prestige. Diaz had begun the writing of it in 1568 at Santiago in Guatemala, when, as he tells us, only five of the original companions of Cortés remained alive.[1158] It is rudely, or rather simply, written, as one might expect. The author has none of the practised arts of condensation; and Prescott[1159] well defines the story as long-winded and gossiping, but of great importance. It is indeed inestimable, as the record of the actor in more than a hundred of the fights which marked the progress of the Conquest. The untutored air of the recital impressed Robertson and Southey with confidence in its statements, and the reader does not fail to be conscious of a minute rendering of the life which made up those eventful days. His criticism of Cortés himself does not, by any means, prevent his giving him great praise; and, as Prescott says,[1160] he censures his leader, but he does not allow any one else to do the same. The lapse of time before Diaz set about his literary task did not seem to abate his zeal or check his memory; but it does not fail, however, to diminish our own confidence a good deal. Prescott[1161] contends that the better the acquaintance with Diaz’ narrative, the less is the trust which one is inclined to put in it.[1162] The Spanish text which we possess is taken, it is said, directly from the original manuscript, which had slumbered in private hands till Father Alonso Rémon found it, or a copy of it, in Spain, and obtained a decree to print it,[1163] about fifty years after Diaz’ death, which occurred in 1593, or thereabouts.
The nearest approach among contemporaries to a survey of the story of the Conquest from the Aztec side is that given by the Franciscan, Sahagun, in connection with his great work on the condition of the Mexican peoples prior to the coming of the Spaniards. Sahagun came to Mexico in 1529. He lived in the new land for over sixty years, and acquired a proficiency in the native tongue hardly surpassed by any other of the Spaniards. He brought to the new field something besides the iconoclastic frenzy that led so many of his countrymen to destroy what they could of the literature and arts of the Aztecs,—so necessary in illustration of their pagan life and rites. This zealous and pious monk turned aside from seeking the preferments of his class to study the motives, lives, and thoughts of the Aztec peoples. He got from them their hieroglyphics; these in turn were translated into the language of their speech, but expressed in the Roman character; and the whole subjected more than once to the revising of such of the natives as had, in his day, been educated in the Spanish schools.[1164] Thirty years were given to this kind of preparation; and when he had got his work written out in Mexican, the General of his Order seized it, and some years elapsed before a restitution of it was made. Sahagun had got to be eighty years old when, with his manuscript restored to him, he set about re-writing it, with the Mexican text in one column and the Spanish in another. The two huge volumes of his script found their way to Spain, and were lost sight of till Muñoz discovered them in the convent of Tolosa in Navarre, not wholly unimpaired by the vicissitudes to which they had been subjected. The Nahuatl text, which made part of it, is still missing.[1165]
It was not long afterward (1829-1830) printed by Cárlos María Bustamante in three volumes as Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España,[1166] to which was added, as a fourth volume, also published separately, Historia de la conquista de México, containing what is usually cited as the twelfth book of Sahagun. In this, as in the other parts, he used a copy which Muñoz had made, and which is the earlier draft of the text as Sahagun formed it. It begins with a recital of the omens which preceded the coming of Grijalva, and ends with the fall of the city; and it is written, as he says, from the evidence, in large part, of the eye-witnesses, particularly on the Aztec side, though mixed, somewhat confusedly, with recollections from old Spanish soldiers. Harrisse[1167] speaks of this edition as “castrated in such a way as to require, for a perfect understanding of this dry but important book, the reading of the parts published in vols. v. and vi. of Kingsborough.” The text, as given in Kingsborough’s Mexico, began to appear about a year later, that edition only giving, in the first instance, book vi., which relates to the customs of the Aztecs before the Conquest; but in a later volume he reproduced the whole of the work without comment. Kingsborough had also used the Muñoz text, and has made, according to Simeon, fewer errors in transcribing the Nahuatl words than Bustamante, and has also given a purer Spanish text. Bustamante again printed, in 1840, another text of this twelfth book, after a manuscript belonging to the Conde de Cortina, appending notes by Clavigero and others, with an additional chapter.[1168] The Mexican editor claimed that this was the earlier text; but Prescott denies it. Torquemada is thought to have used, but without due acknowledgment, still another text, which is less modified than the others in expressions regarding the Conquerors. The peculiar value of Sahagun’s narrative hardly lies in its completeness, proportions, or even trustworthiness as an historical record. “His accuracy as regards any historical fact is not to be relied on,” says Helps.[1169] Brevoort calls the work of interest mainly for its records of persons and places not found elsewhere.[1170] Prescott thinks that this twelfth book is the most honest record which the natives have left us, as Sahagun embodies the stories and views prevalent among the descendants of the victims of the Conquest. “This portion of the work,” he says, “was rewritten by Sahagun at a later period of his life, and considerable changes were made in it; yet it may be doubted if the reformed version reflects the traditions of the country as faithfully as the original draft.”[1171] This new draft was made by Sahagun in 1585, thirty years after the original writing, for the purpose, as he says, of adding some things which had been omitted, and leaving out others. Prescott could not find, in comparing this later draft with the earlier, that its author had mitigated any of the statements which, as he first wrote them, bore so hard on his countrymen. The same historian thinks there is but little difference in the intrinsic value of the two drafts.[1172]
The best annotated edition of Sahagun is a French translation, published in Paris in 1880 as Histoire générale des choses de la Nouvelle Espagne, seemingly from the Kingsborough text, which is more friendly to the Spaniards than the first of Bustamante. The joint editors are Denis Jourdanet and Remi Siméon, the latter, as a Nahuatl scholar, taking charge of those portions of the text which fell within his linguistic range, and each affording a valuable introduction in their respective studies.[1173]
C. Other Early Accounts.—The Voyages, Relations, et Mémoires of Ternaux-Compans (Paris, 1837-1840) offer the readiest source of some of the most significant of the documents and monographs pertaining to early Mexican history. Two of the volumes[1174] gather some of the minor documents. Another volume[1175] is given to Zurita’s “Rapport sur les différentes classes des chefs de la Nouvelle Espagne.” Three others[1176] contain an account of the cruelties practised by the Spaniards at the Conquest, and the history of the ancient kings of Tezcuco,—both the work of Ferdinando d’Alva Ixtlilxochitl.[1177] The former work, not correctly printed, and called, somewhat arbitrarily, Horribles crueldades de los Conquistadores de México, was first published by Bustamante, in 1829, as a supplement to Sahagun. The manuscript (which was no. 13 of a number of Noticias, or Relaciones históricas, by this native writer) had been for a while after the writer’s death (about 1648) preserved in the library of the Jesuit College in Mexico, and had thence passed to the archive general of the State. It bears the certificate of a notary, in 1608, that it had been compared with the Aztec records and found to be correct. The original work contained several Relaciones, but only the one (no. 13) relating to the Conquest was published by Bustamante and Ternaux.[1178]
The other work of Ixtlilxochitl was first printed (after Veytia’s copy) in Spanish by Kingsborough, in his ninth volume, before Ternaux, who used another copy, included it in his collection under the title of Histoire des Chichimeque ou des anciens Rois de Tezcuco. This is the only work of Ixtlilxochitl which has been printed entire. According to Clavigero, these treatises were written at the instance of the Spanish viceroy; and as a descendant of the royal line of Tezcuco (the great great-grandson, it is said, of the king of like name) their author had great advantages, with perhaps great predispositions to laudation, though he is credited with extreme carefulness in his statements;[1179] and Prescott affirms that he has been followed with confidence by such as have had access to his writings. Ixtlilxochitl informs us that he has derived his material from such remains of his ancestral documents as were left to him. He seems also to have used Gomara and other accessible authorities. He lived in the early part of the seventeenth century, and as interpreter of the viceroy maintained a respectable social position when many of his royal line were in the humblest service. His Relaciones are hardly regular historical compositions, since they lack independent and compact form; but his Historia Chichimeca is the best of them, and is more depended upon by Prescott than the others are. There is a certain charm in his simplicity, his picturesqueness, and honesty; and readers accept these qualities often in full recompense for his credulity and want of discrimination,—and perhaps for a certain servility to the Spanish masters, for whose bounty he could press the claims of a line of vassals of his own blood.[1180]
D. Native Writers.—The pious vandalism of the bishops of Mexico and Yucatan, which doomed to destruction so much of the native records of days antecedent to the Conquest,[1181] fortunately was not so ruthlessly exercised later, when native writers gathered up what they could, and told the story of their people’s downfall, either in the language of the country or in an acquired Spanish.[1182] Brasseur de Bourbourg, in the introduction to his Nations civilisées du Mexique (Paris, 1857-1859), enumerates the manuscript sources to which he had access,[1183] largely pertaining to the period anterior to the Spaniards, but also in part covering the history of the Conquest, which in his fourth volume[1184] he narrates mainly from the native point of view, while he illustrates the Indian life under its contact with the Spanish rule.