General Remarks, Expedition of Grijalva

General Remarks Expedition Of Grijalva. Hernando Cortez

"The Race of Yore;
How are they blotted from the things that be!" Scott.

The kingdoms of New Spain, as Central America and the adjoining country were first called, presented a far different aspect, when first discovered by Europeans, from that of the vast and inhospitable wilderness at the North and East. Instead of an unbroken forest, thinly inhabited by roving savages, here were seen large and well-built cities, a people of gentler mood and more refined manners, and an advancement in the useful arts which removed the inhabitants as far from their rude neighbors, in the scale of civilization, as they themselves were excelled by the nations of Europe.

When first discovered and explored by Europeans, Mexico was a kingdom of great extent and power. Montezuma, chronicled as the eleventh, in regular succession, of the Aztec monarchs, held supreme authority. His dominions extended from near the isthmus of Darien, to the undefined country of the Ottomies and Chichimecas, rude nations living in a barbarous state among the mountains of the North. His name signified " the surly (or grave) Prince," a title justified by the solemn and ceremonious homage, which he constantly exacted.

"When the Spaniards first appeared on the coast, the natural terror excited by such unheard-of conquerors was infinitely heightened by divers portents and omens, which the magicians and necromancers of the king construed as warnings of great and disastrous revolutions. This occasioned that strange, weak, and vacillating policy, which, as we shall hereafter see, he adopted towards Cortez. Comets, conflagrations, overflows, monsters, dreams, and visions, were constantly brought to the notice of the royal council, and inferences were drawn there from as to the wisest course to be pursued.

The national character, religion and customs of the Mexicans presented stranger anomalies than have ever been witnessed in any nation on the earth. They entertained abstract ideas of right and wrong, with systems of ethics and social proprieties, which, for truth and purity, com pare favorably with the most enlightened doctrines of civilized nations, while, at the same time, the custom of human sacrifice was carried to a scarcely credible extent, and ac companied by circumstances of cruelty, filthiness, and cannibalism, more loathsome than ever elsewhere disgraced the most barbarous of nations.

A vast amount of labor and research has been expended in efforts to arrive at some satisfactory conclusion as to the causes, which led to the Mexican superiority in the arts of civilization over the other inhabitants of the New World. Analogies, so strong as to leave little doubt upon the mind that they must be more than coincidences, were found, on the first discovery of the country, between the traditions, religious exercises, sculpture, and language of the inhabitants of Central America, and those of various nations in the Old World. Notwithstanding this, the great distinctive difference in the bodily conformation of all natives of the Western Continent, from the people of the East, proves sufficiently that, previous to the Spanish discoveries, the time elapsed since any direct communication could have existed between the two, must have been very great. The obvious antiquity of the architectural remains carries us back to a most remote era: some maintain that portions of these must have been standing for as many centuries as the great pyramids of Egypt, while others refer them to a much later origin. The pernicious habit of first adopting a theory, and then searching for such facts only as tend to support it, was never more forcibly exemplified than in the variant hypotheses as to the origin of Mexican civilization.

The valley and country of Anahuac, or Mexico, was successively peopled, according to tradition and the evidence of ancient hieroglyphics, by the Toltecs, the Chichimecas, and the Nahuatlacas, of which last-mentioned people, the Aztecs, who finally obtained the ascendancy, formed the principal tribe. These immigrations were from some indeterminate region at the north, and appear to have been the result of a gradual progression southward, as traces of the peculiar architectural structures of the Mexican nations are to be found stretching throughout the country between the Rocky Mountains and the sea, as far north as the Gila and Colorado.

The periods of these several arrivals in Anahuac are set down as follows. That of the Toltecs, about the middle of the seventh century, and of the rude Chichimecas, the year 1070. The Nahuatlacas commenced their migrations about 1170, and the Aztecs, separating themselves from the rest of the nation, founded the ancient city of Mexico in the year 1325.

The tale of cruelties, oppressions, and wholesale destruction attendant upon the Spanish invasion and conquest, is a long one, and can be here but briefly epitomized; but enough will be given to leave, as far as practicable, a just impression of the real condition of these primitive nations, and the more marked outlines of their history.

In the early part of the sixteenth century, the eastern shore of Mexico and Central America had been explored by Spanish navigators; and Vasco Nugnez de Balboa, led by the ordinary attraction tales of a country rich in gold and silver had, in September, 1513, crossed the isthmus to the great and unknown ocean of the West. The condition and character of the natives was but little noticed by these early explorers, and no motives of policy or humanity restrained them from treating those they met as caprice or fanaticism might dictate. Balboa is indeed spoken of as inclined to more humane courses in his intercourse with the natives than many of his contemporaries, but even he showed himself by no means scrupulous in the means by which he forced his way through the country, and levied contributions upon the native chiefs.

The mind of the Spanish nation was at last aroused and inflamed by accounts of the wealth and power of the, great country open to adventure in New Spain, and plans were laid to undertake some more notable possession in those regions than had yet resulted from the unsuccessful and petty attempts at colonization upon the coast.

Diego Valasquez, governor of Cuba, as lieutenant to Diego Colon, son and successor of the great admiral, sent an expedition, under command of Juan de Grijalva, to Yucatan and the adjoining coast, in April of the year 1518. After revenging former injuries received from the natives of Yucatan, the party sailed westward, and entered the river of Tobasco, where some intercourse and petty traffic was carried on with the Indians. The natives were filled with wonder at the " make of the ships, and difference of the men and habits," on their first appearance, and " stood without motion, as deprived of the use of their hands by the astonishment under which their eyes had brought them."

The usual propositions were made by the Spanish commander, of submission to the great and mighty Prince of the East, whose subject he professed to be; but " they heard his proposition with the marks of a disagreeable attention," and, not unnaturally, made answer that the proposal to form a peace which should entail servitude upon them was strange indeed, adding that it would be well to inquire whether their present king was a ruler whom they loved before proposing a new one.

Still pursuing a westerly course along the coast, Grijalva gained the first intelligence received by the Spaniards of the Emperor Montezuma. At a small island were found the first bloody tokens of the barbarous religious rites of the natives. In a "house of lime and stone" were "several idols of a horrible figure, and a more horrible worship paid to them; for, near the steps where they were placed, were the carcasses of six or seven men, newly sacrificed, cut to pieces, and their entrails laid open."

Reaching a low sandy isle, still farther to the westward, on the day of St. John the Baptist, the Spaniards named the place San Juan, and from their coupling with this title a word caught from an Indian seen there, resulted the name of San Juan de Ulloa, bestowed upon the site of the present great fortress. No settlement was attempted, and Grijalva returned to Cuba, carrying with him many samples of native ingenuity, and of the wealth of the country, in the shape of rude figures of lizards, birds, and other trifles, wrought in gold imperfectly refined.

The Cuban governor, Velasquez, determined to pursue discoveries and conquest at the west, and appointed Hernando Cortez, a Spanish cavalier, resident upon the island, to command the new expedition. That the reader may judge what strange contradictions may exist in the character of the same individual, how generosity and cupidity, mildness and ferocity, cruelty and kindness, may be combined, let him compare the after conduct of this celebrated hero with his character as sketched by the historian.

"Cortez was well made, and of an agreeable countenance; and, besides those common natural endowments, he was of a temper which rendered him very amiable; for he always spoke well of the absent, and was pleasant and discreet in his conversation. His generosity was such that his friends partook of all he had, without being suffered by him to publish their obligations."

In the words of the poet, he

"Was one in whom
Adventure, and endurance, and emprise
Exalted the mind s faculties, and strung
The body s sinews. Brave he was in fight,
Courteous in banquet, scornful of repose,
And bountiful, and cruel, and devout."

Hidalgos of family and wealth crowded eagerly to join the fortunes of the bold and popular leader. "Nothing was to be seen or spoken of," says Bernal Diaz, "but selling lands to purchase arms and horses, quilting coats of mail, making bread, and salting pork for sea store."

From St. Jago the fleet sailed to Trinidad on the southern coast, where the force was increased by a considerable number of men, and thence round Cape Antonio to Havana. From the latter port the flotilla got under weigh on the 10th of February 1519. It consisted of a brigantine and ten other small vessels, whose motley crews are thus enumerated: " five hundred and eight soldiers, sixteen horse; and of mechanics, pilots, and mariners, an hundred and nine more, besides two chaplains, the licentiate Juan Diaz, and Father Bartholomew De Olmedo, a regular of the order of our Lady de la Merced." The missile weapons of the party were muskets, crossbows, falconets, and ten small field pieces of brass. The color, quality, and condition of each of the horses is described with great particularity.

The first land made was the island of Cozumel, off the coast of Yucatan. One of the vessels reached the island two days before the rest; and finding the habitations of the natives abandoned, the Spaniards ranged the country, and plundered their huts and temple, carrying off divers small gold images, together with clothes and provisions.

Cortez, on his arrival, strongly reprehended these proceedings, and, liberating three Indians who had been taken prisoners, sent them to seek out their friends, and explain to them his friendly intentions. Their confidence was perfectly restored by this act, and by the restoration of the stolen property; so that the next day, the chief came with his people to the camp, and mingled with the Spaniards on the -most friendly terms.

No further violence was offered to them or their property during the stay of the Spaniards, except that these zealous reformers seized the idols in the temple, and rolling them down the steps, built an altar, and placed an image of the Virgin upon it, erecting a wooden crucifix hard by. The Holy Father, Juan Diaz, then said Mass, to the great edification of the wondering natives.

This temple was a well-built edifice of stone, and contained a hideous idol in somewhat of the human form. "All the idols," says de Solis, "worshipped by these miserable people, were formed in the same manner; for though they differed in the make and representation, they were all alike most abominably ugly; whether it was that these barbarians had no notion of any other model, or that the devil really appeared to them in some such shape; so that he who struck out the most hideous figure, was accounted the best Workman."

Seeing that no prodigy succeeded the destruction of their gods, the savages were the more ready to pay attention to the teachings which were so earnestly impressed upon them by the strangers, and appeared to hold the symbols of their worship in some veneration, offering incense before them, as erstwhile to the idols.

Cortez heard one of the Indians make many attempts to pronounce the word Castilla, and, his attention being attracted by the circumstance, he pursued his inquiries until he ascertained that two Spaniards were living among the Indians on the main.

He immediately used great diligence to ransom and re store them to liberty, and succeeded in the case of one of them, named Jeronimo de Aguilar, who occupies an important place in the subsequent details of adventure. The other, one Alonzo Guerrero, having married a wife among the Indians, preferred to remain in his present condition. He said to his companion, " Brother Aguilar, I am married, and have three sons, and am a Cacique and captain in the wars; go you, in God s name; my face is marked, and my ears bored; what would those Spaniards think of me if I went among them?"

De Solis says of this man, that his natural affection was but a pretence "why he would not abandon those deplorable conveniences, which, with him, weighed more than honor or religion. We do not find that any other Spaniard, in the whole course of these conquests, committed the like crime; nor was the name of this wretch worthy to be remembered in this history; but, being found in the writings of others, it could not be concealed; and his ex ample serves to show us the weakness of nature, and into what an abyss of misery a man may fall when God has abandoned him."

Poor Aguilar had been eight years a captive: tattooed, nearly naked, and browned by sun, he was scarce distinguishable from his Indian companions; and the only Castilian words which he was at first able to recall were "Dios, Santa Maria," and "Sevilla." Still mindful of his old associations and religion, he bore at his shoulder the tattered fragments of a prayer book.

He belonged to a ship s crew who had been wrecked on the coast, and was the only survivor of the number, except Guerrero. The rest had died from disease and over work, or had been sacrificed to the idols of the country. Aguilar had been "reserved for a future occasion by reason of his leanness," and succeeded in escaping to another tribe and another master.

Cortez sailed with his fleet, from Cozumel, for the river Tabasco, which was reached on the 13th of March 1519. Urging their way against the current, in the boats and smaller craft, for the principal vessels were left at anchor near the mouth, the whole armament entered the stream. As they advanced, the Spaniards perceived great bodies of Indians, in canoes, and on both banks, whose outcries were interpreted by Aguilar to be expressions of hostility and defiance. Night came on before any attack was made on either side. Next morning, the armament recommenced its progress, in the form of a crescent: the men, protected as well as possible by their shields and quilted mail, were ordered to keep silence, and offer no violence until ordered. Aguilar, who understood the language of these Indians, was commissioned to explain the friendly purposes of his companions, and to warn the natives of the consequences that would result from their opposition. The Indians, with signs of great fury and violence, refused to listen to him, or to grant permission to the Spaniards to supply themselves with wood and water.

The engagement commenced by a shower of arrows from the canoes on the river, and an immense multitude opposed the landing of the troops. Numbers and bravery could not, however, avail against the European skill and implements of warfare. Those in the canoes were easily driven off, and, notwithstanding the difficulties of a wet and marshy shore, where thousands of the enemy lay concealed to spring upon them unawares, the Spanish forces made their way to the town of Tabasco, driving the Indians into the fortress, or dispersing them in the forest. Tabasco was protected in the ordinary Indian style, by strong palisades of trees, a narrow and crooked entrance being left.

Cortez immediately attacked the town, and, by firing through the palisades, his troops soon drove in the bow men who were defending them, and, after a time, got complete possession.

The town was obstinately defended; even after the Spaniards had affected an entrance. The enemy retreated be hind a second barricade, "fronting" the troops, "valiantly whistling and shouting al calachioni, or kill the captain." They were finally overpowered, and fled to the woods.

Indian Races of North and South America

This site includes some historical materials that may imply negative stereotypes reflecting the culture or language of a particular period or place. These items are presented as part of the historical record and should not be interpreted to mean that the WebMasters in any way endorse the stereotypes implied .

Indian Races of North and South America, By Charles De Wolf Brownell, 1865