2. MODERN MEXICO-SETTLEMENT OF THE
COUNTRY-CONDITION OF THE NATIVES-CHRISTIAN MISSIONARIES-CULTIVATION OF
THE SOIL-VOYAGES AND EXPEDITIONS
IN less than four years from the destruction of Mexico, a new city
had risen on its ruins, which, if inferior to the ancient capital in
extent, surpassed it in magnificence and strength. It occupied so
exactly the same site as its predecessor that the plaza mayor, or
great square, was the same spot which had been covered by the huge
teocalli and the palace of Montezuma; while the principal streets took
their departure as before from this central point, and passing through
the whole length of the city, terminated at the principal causeways.
Great alteration, however, took place in the fashion of the
architecture. The streets were widened, many of the canals were filled
up, and the edifices were constructed on a plan better accommodated to
European taste and the wants of a European population.
On the site of the temple of the Aztec war-god rose the stately
cathedral dedicated to St. Francis; and, as if to complete the
triumphs of the Cross, the foundations were laid with the broken
images of the Aztec gods. In a corner of the square, on the ground
once covered by the House of Birds, stood a Franciscan convent, a
magnificent pile, erected a few years after the Conquest by a lay
brother, Pedro de Gante, a natural son, it is said, of Charles the
Fifth. In an opposite quarter of the same square, Cortes caused his
own palace to be constructed. It was built of hewn stone, and seven
thousand cedar beams are said to have been used for the interior.
The government afterwards appropriated it to the residence of the
viceroys; and the Conqueror's descendants, the Dukes of Monteleone,
were allowed to erect a new mansion in another part of the plaza, on
the spot which, by an ominous coincidence, had been covered by the
palace of Montezuma.
The general's next care was to provide a population for the
capital. He invited the Spaniards thither by grants of lands and
houses, while the Indians, with politic liberality, were permitted
to live under their own chiefs as before, and to enjoy various
immunities. With this encouragement, the Spanish quarter of the city
in the neighbourhood of the great square could boast in a few years
two thousand families; while the Indian district of Tlatelolco
included no less than thirty thousand. The various trades and
occupations were resumed; the canals were again covered with barges;
two vast markets in the respective quarters of the capital displayed
all the different products and manufactures of the surrounding
country; and the city swarmed with a busy, industrious population,
in which the white man and the Indian, the conqueror and the
conquered, mingled together promiscuously in peaceful and
picturesque confusion. Not twenty years had elapsed since the
Conquest, when a missionary who visited it had the confidence, or
the credulity, to assert, that "Europe could not boast a single city
so fair and opulent as Mexico."
Cortes stimulated the settlement of his several colonies by
liberal grants of land and municipal privileges. The great
difficulty was to induce women to reside in the country, and without
them he felt that the colonies, like a tree without roots, must soon
perish. By a singular provision, he required every settler, if a
married man, to bring over his wife within eighteen months, on pain of
forfeiting his estate. If he were too poor to do this himself, the
government would assist him. Another law imposed the same penalty on
all bachelors who did not provide themselves with wives within the
same period! The general seems to have considered celibacy as too
great a luxury for a young country.
His own wife, Dona Catalina Xuarez, was among those who came
over from the Islands to New Spain. According to Bernal Diaz, her
coming gave him no particular satisfaction. It is possible; since
his marriage with her seems to have been entered into with reluctance,
and her lowly condition and connections stood somewhat in the way of
his future advancement. Yet they lived happily together for several
years, according to the testimony of Las Casas; and whatever he may
have felt, he had the generosity, or the prudence not to betray his
feelings to the world. On landing, Dona Catalina was escorted by
Sandoval to the capital, where she was kindly received by her husband,
and all the respect paid to her to which she was entitled by her
elevated rank. But the climate of the tableland was not suited to
her constitution, and she died in three months after her arrival. An
event so auspicious to his worldly prospects did not fail, as we shall
see hereafter, to provoke the tongue of scandal to the most malicious,
but is scarcely necessary to say, unfounded inferences.
In the distribution of the soil among the Conquerors, Cortes
adopted the vicious system of repartimientos, universally practised
among his countrymen. In a letter to the emperor, he states, that
the superior capacity of the Indians in New Spain had made him
regard it as a grievous thing to condemn them to servitude, as had
been done in the Islands. But, on further trial, he had found the
Spaniards so much harassed and impoverished, that they could not
hope to maintain themselves in the land without enforcing the services
of the natives, and for this reason he had at length waived his own
scruples in compliance with their repeated remonstrances. This was the
wretched pretext used on the like occasions by his countrymen to cover
up this flagrant act of injustice. The crown, however, in its
instructions to the general, disavowed the act and annulled the
repartimientos. It was all in vain. The necessities, or rather the
cupidity, of the colonists, easily evaded the royal ordinances. The
colonial legislation of Spain shows, in the repetition of enactments
against slavery, the perpetual struggle that subsisted between the
crown and the colonists, and the impotence of the former to enforce
measures repugnant to the interests, at all events to the avarice,
of the latter.
The Tlascalans, in gratitude for their signal services, were
exempted, at the recommendation of Cortes, from the doom of slavery.
It should be added, that the general, in granting the
repartimientos, made many humane regulations for limiting the power of
the master, and for securing as many privileges to the native as
were compatible with any degree of compulsory service. These
limitations, it is true, were too often disregarded; and in the mining
districts in particular the situation of the poor Indian was often
deplorable. Yet the Indian population, clustering together in their
own villages, and living under their own magistrates, have continued
to prove by their numbers, fallen as these have below their
primitive amount, how far superior was their condition to that in most
other parts of the vast colonial empire of Spain.
Whatever disregard he may have shown to the political rights of
the natives, Cortes manifested a commendable solicitude for their
spiritual welfare. He requested the emperor to send out holy men to
the country; not bishops and pampered prelates, who too often
squandered the substance of the Church in riotous living, but godly
persons, members of religious fraternities, whose lives might be a
fitting commentary on their teaching. Thus only, he adds,-and the
remark is worthy of note,-can they exercise any influence over the
natives, who have been accustomed to see the least departure from
morals in their own priesthood punished with the utmost rigour of
the law. In obedience to these suggestions, twelve Franciscan friars
embarked for New Spain, which they reached early in 1524. They were
men of unblemished purity of life, nourished with the learning of
the cloister, and, like many others whom the Romish Church has sent
forth on such apostolic missions, counted all personal sacrifices as
little in the cause to which they were devoted.
The conquerors settled in such parts of the country as best suited
their inclinations. Many occupied the south-eastern slopes of the
Cordilleras towards the rich valley of Oaxaca. Many more spread
themselves over the broad surface of the tableland, which, from its
elevated position; reminded them of the plateau of their own Castiles.
Here, too, they were in the range of those inexhaustible mines which
have since poured their silver deluge over Europe. The mineral
resources of the land were not, indeed, fully explored, or
comprehended till at a much later period; but some few, as the mines
of Zacatecas, Guanaxuato, and Tasco,-the last of which was also known
in Montezuma's time,-had begun to be wrought within a generation
after the Conquest.
But the best wealth of the first settlers was in the vegetable
products of the soil, whether indigenous, or introduced from abroad by
the wise economy of Cortes. He had earnestly recommended the crown
to require all vessels coming to the country, to bring over a
certain quantity of seeds and plants. He made it a condition of the
grants of land on the plateau, that the proprietor of every estate
should plant a specified number of vines in it. He further stipulated,
that no one should get a clear title to his estate until he had
occupied it eight years. He knew that permanent residence could
alone create that interest in the soil which would lead to its
efficient culture; and that the opposite system had caused the
impoverishment of the best plantations in the Islands.
While thus occupied with the internal economy of the country,
Cortes was still bent on his great schemes of discovery and
conquest. In the preceding chapter we have seen him fitting out a
little fleet at Zacatula, to explore the shores of the Pacific. It was
burnt in the dock-yard, when nearly completed. This was a serious
calamity, as most of the materials were to be transported across the
country from Villa Rica. Cortes, however, with his usual promptness,
took measures to repair the loss. He writes to the emperor, that
another squadron will soon be got ready at the same port. A
principal object of this squadron was the discovery of a strait
which should connect the Atlantic with the Pacific. Another
squadron, consisting of five vessels, was fitted out in the Gulf of
Mexico, to take the direction of Florida, with the same view of
detecting a strait. For Cortes trusted-we, at this day, may smile
at the illusion-that one might be found in that direction, which
should conduct the navigator to those waters which had been
traversed by the keels of Magellan!
The discovery of a strait was the great object to which nautical
enterprise in that day was directed, as it had been ever since the
time of Columbus. It was in the sixteenth century what the discovery
of the North-West passage has been in our own age; the great ignis
fatuus of navigators. The vast extent of the American continent had
been ascertained by the voyages of Cabot in the North, and of Magellan
very recently in the South. The proximity, in certain quarters, of the
two great oceans that washed its eastern and western shores had been
settled by the discoveries both of Balboa and of Cortes. European
scholars could not believe, that Nature had worked on a plan so
repugnant to the interests of humanity, as to interpose, through the
whole length of the great continent, such a barrier to communication
between the adjacent waters.
It was partly with the same view, that the general caused a
considerable armament to be equipped and placed under the command of
Christoval de Olid, the brave officer who, as the reader will
remember, had charge of one of the great divisions of the besieging
army. He was to steer for Honduras, and plant a colony on its
northern coast. A detachment of Olid's squadron was afterwards to
cruise along its southern shore towards Darien in search of the
mysterious strait. The country was reported to be full of gold; so
full, that "the fishermen used gold weights for their nets." The life
of the Spanish discoverers was one long day-dream. Illusion after
illusion chased one another like the bubbles which the child throws
off from his pipe, as bright, as beautiful, and as empty. They lived
in a world of enchantment.
Together with these maritime expeditions Cortes fitted out a
powerful expedition by land. It was intrusted to Alvarado, who, with a
large force of Spaniards and Indians, was to descend the southern
slant of the Cordilleras, and penetrate into the countries that lay
beyond the rich valley of Oaxaca. The campaigns of this bold and
rapacious chief terminated in the important conquest of Guatemala.
In the prosecution of his great enterprises, Cortes, within
three short years after the Conquest, had reduced under the dominion
of Castile an extent of country more than four hundred leagues in
length, as he affirms, on the Atlantic coast, and more than five
hundred on the Pacific; and, with the exception of a few interior
provinces of no great importance, had brought them to a condition of
entire tranquillity. In accomplishing this, he had freely expended the
revenues of the crown, drawn from tributes similar to those which
had been anciently paid by the natives to their own sovereigns; and he
had, moreover, incurred a large debt on his own account, for which
he demanded remuneration from government. The celebrity of his name,
and the dazzling reports of the conquered countries, drew crowds of
adventurers to New Spain, who furnished the general with recruits
for his various enterprises.
Whoever would form a just estimate of this remarkable man, must
not confine himself to the history of the Conquest. His military
career, indeed, places him on a level with the greatest captains of
his age. But the period subsequent to the Conquest affords
different, and in some respects nobler, points of view for the study
of his character. For we then see him devising a system of
government for the motley and antagonist races, so to speak, now first
brought under a common dominion; repairing the mischiefs of war; and
employing his efforts to detect the latent resources of the country,
and to stimulate it to its highest power of production. The
narration may seem tame after the recital of exploits as bold and
adventurous as those of a paladin of romance. But it is only by the
perusal of this narrative that we can form an adequate conception of
the acute and comprehensive geinus of Cortes.