Bartolome

NEW-SPAIN

Among other massacres was one which took place in Cholula,

a great city of some thirty thousand inhabitants. When all the

dignitaries of the city and the region came out to welcome the

Spaniards with all due pomp and ceremony, the priests to the

fore and the high/priest at the head of the procession, and then

proceeded to escort them into the city and lodge them in the

houses of the lord and the leading citizens, the Spaniards decided

that the moment had come to organize a massacre (or 'punishment'

as they themselves express such things) in order to inspire

fear and teiror in all the people of the territory. This was, indeed,

the pattern they followed in all the lands they invaded:

to stage a bloody massacre of the most public possible kind in

order to terrorize those meek and gentle peoples. What they did

was the following. They' requested the local lord to send for all

the nobles and leading citizens of the city and of all the surround-

ing communities subject to it and, as soon as they arrived and

entered the building to begin talks with the Spanish commander,

Ithey were seized without anyone outside getting wind of what

was afoot. Part of the original request was that they should

bring with them five or six thousand native bearers and these

were mustered in the courtyards when and as they arrived. One

could not watch these poor wretches getting ready to carry the

Spaniards' packs without taking pity on them, stark naked as

they were with only their modesty hidden from view, each with

a kind of little net on his shoulders in which he carried his own

modest store of provisions. They all got down on their haunches

and waited patiently like sheep. Once they were all safely inside

the courtyard, together with a number of others who were also

there at the time, armed guards took up positions covering the

exits and Spanish soldiers unsheathed their swords and grasped

their lances and proceeded to slaughter these poor innocents.

Not a single soul escaped. After a day or two had gone by,

several victims surfaced, soaked from head to foot in the blood

of their fellows beneath whose bodies they had sheltered (so

thick was the carpet of corpses in the courtyard) and, with tears

in their eyes, pleaded for their lives; but the Spaniards showed

them no mercy nor any compassion, and no sooner did they

crawl out from under the pile of corpses than they were butchered.

The Spanish commander gave orders that the leading citizens,

who numbered over a hundred and were roped together,

were to be tied to stakes set in the ground and burned alive. One

of these dignitaries, however, who may' well have been the first

among them and the king of that whole region, managed to get

free and took refuge, along with twenty or thirty or forty others,

in the great temple of the city, which was fortified and was

known in the local language as quu. There they put up a stout

defence against the Spaniards which lasted for the best part of

the day. But the Spaniards, against whom no resistance is really

possible, especially when it is mounted by unarmed civilians, set

fire to the temple, burning those inside alive, the victims shouting

all the time: 'Oh, wicked men! What harm had we done to you?

Why do you kill us? Wait till you get to Mexico City, for there

our great king, Montezuma, will avenge our deaths.' It is said

that, while the Spaniards were slaughtering the five. or six

thousand men gathered in the courtyard, their commander

regaled his men with snatches of:

Nero watched from Tarpey's height

the flames engulf Rome's awesome might;

children and ancients shout in pain

he all regards with cold disdain.

They were responsible also for another huge massacre in

Tepeaca, a city bigger than Cholula and one with a larger

population. Here the Spaniards put countless thousands to the

sword in the cruellest possible manner.

From Cholula they made their way to Mexico City. On their

journey, they were showered with thousands of gifts from the

great king Montezuma who also sent some of his men to stage

entertainments and banquets for them on the way. When they

reached the Great Causeway which runs for some two leagues

right up to the city itself, they were greeted by Montezuma's

own brother and many local dignitaries bearing valuable gifts of

gold, silver and apparel from the great lord. At the city gates,

Montezuma himself came out to meet them, carried on a litter of

gold and surrounded by the entire court. He escorted them into

the city to the great houses where he had directed they should be

lodged. Yet that same day, or so I am reliably informed: by a

number of eye-witnesses, the Spaniards seized the great king

unawares by means of a trick and held him under armed guard

of eighty soldiers, eventually putting him in irons. But, leaving

aside all of this, although much passed of consequence and one

"could dwell upon it at length, I should like to relate just one

incident contrived by these tyrants. It happened that the Spanish

commander had occasion to go to the sea--port to deal with one

of his captains who was planning an attack on him, and he left

another of his henchmen, ;with a hundred or so men at his

command, to guard King Montezuma while he was away. The

garrison decided to stage a show of strength and thereby boost

the fear they inspired in the people of this kingdom, a classic

Spanish tactic in these campaigns, as we have had occasion to

remark before. All the local citizens, great and small, as well as

all the members of the' court, were wholly taken up with

entertaining their imprisoned lord. To this end, they organized

fiestas, some ,of which involved staging traditional dances every

afternoon and evening in squares and residential quarters through

out the city. These dances are called in the local language mitotes.

(those typical of. the islands being known as areitos); and since

these dances are the principal form of public entertainment and

enjoyment among the people, they deck themselves out in all

their best finery. And the entertainments were organized with

close attention to rank and station, the noblest to of the citizens

dancing nearest the building where their lord was being held

Close by this building, then, danced over two thousand youths

of quality, the flower of the nobility of Montezuma's whole

empire. Thither the Spanish captain made his way, accompanied

.by a platoon of his men, under pretence of wanting to watch the

spectacle but in fact carrying order to attack the revellers at a

prearranged time, further platoons with identical orders having

been despatched to the other squares where entertainments were

being staged. The nobles were totally absorbed in what they

were doing and had no thought for their own safety when the

soldiers drew their swords and shouting: 'For Saint James, and

at 'em, men!' proceeded to slice open the lithe and naked

bodies of the dancers and to spill their noble blood. Not one

dancer was left alive,' and 'the same story was repeated in the

other squares throughout the city. This series of events caused

horror, anguish and bitterness throughout the land; the whole

nation was plunged into mourning and, until the end of time,

or at least as long as a few of these people survive, they will not

cease to tell and re-tell, in their areitos and dances, just as we do

at home in Spain with our ballads, this sad story of a massacre

which wiped out their entire nobility, beloved and respected by

them for generations and generations.

Once the native population learned of this barbaric and unprecedented

outrage, perpetrated against innocent individuals who

had done nothing whatever to deserve such cruelty, the whole

city, which had up to then tolerated the equally unmerited

imprisonment of its lord and master simply because he himself

had issued orders that no one was to fight the Christians nor to

offer any resistance to them, took up arms and attacked them.

Many Spaniards were wounded and only narrowly managed to

make good their escape. They ordered Montezuma out on to the

terrace at dagger point and forced him to order his men not to

'attack the house and to cease their insurrection. But the people

ceased altogether at that juncture to obey such orders and there

was a feeling that they should elect another lord in Montezuma's

place who would be able and willing to lead, them in-battle. At

this point, it became known that the Spanish commander was on

his way back from the coast after his victory over the rebel

forces and that he was not far off and was bringing reinforcements.

There followed a lull in the fighting which lasted until he

arrived some three or four days later; meanwhile, the number of

protesters had swollen with the influx of people from allover

the territory. Once the commander arrived, the natives attacked

with such unrelenting ferocity that it seemed to the garrison that

not one of them would be left alive, and they decided to

abandon the city in secret and at night. The locals got wind of

this, catching up with many as they fled across the causeways that

span the lake and killing them in great numbers, as, indeed,

they had every right to, given the attacks we have described that

had been made on them: a reasonable and fair-minded man will

see that theirs was a defensive action and a just one. The

Spaniards then regrouped and there followed a battle for the city

in which terrible and bizarre outrages were committed against

the indigenous population, vast numbers of whom were killed

and many others, several leaders among them, burned alive.

After the vile outrages and abominations perpetrated by the

Spaniards, both in Mexico City itself and throughout the whole

region (an area of ten or fifteen or twenty leagues all round the

city saw countless natives perish at their hands), they transferred

their pestilential attentions to the densely populated. Pánuco

province, where once again they swept through the territory,

pillaging and murdering on the grand scale as they went. They

then moved on to the provinces of Tuxtepec, Impilcingo, and

finally Colima, each one of them greater in extent than the

kingdoms of Castile and Leon, and in each they wrought the

same destruction as they had in Mexico City and its province. It

would be impracticable to compile a complete dossier of all the

atrocities, foul murders and other barbarities they committed,

and any such account would be so lengthy it would prove

impossible for the reader to take in.

It should be recalled that the pretext upon which the Spanish

invaded each of these provinces and proceeded to massacre the

people and destroy their lands - lands which teemed with people

and should surely have been a joy and a delight to any true

Christian - was purely and simply that they were making good

the claim of the Spanish Crown to the territories in question. At

no stage had any order been issued entitling them to massacre

the people or to enslave them. Yet, whenever the natives did not

drop everything and rush to recognize publicly the truth of the

irrational and illogical claims-that were made, and whenever they

did not immediately place themselves completely the mercy of

the iniquitous and cruel and bestial individuals who were making

such claims, they were dubbed, outlaws and held to be in

rebellion against His Majesty. This, indeed, was the tenor of the

letters that were sent back to the Spanish court, and everybody

involved in the administration of the New World was blind to

the simple truth enshrined in the first principles of law and

government that nobody who is not a subject of a civil power in

the first place can be deemed in law to be in rebellion against

that power. Any, reasonable person who knows anything of

God, of rights and of civil law can imagine for himself what the

likely reaction would be of any people living peaceably within

their own frontiers, -unaware that they owe allegiance to anyone

save their natural lords, were a stranger suddenly to issue a

demand along the following lines: 'You shall henceforth obey a

foreign king, whom you have never seen nor ever heard of and,

if you do not, we will cut you to pieces' - especially when they

discover that these strangers are indeed quite prepared to carry

out this threat to the letter. Even more shocking is the fact that

when the local people do obey such commands they are harshly

treated as common slaves, put to hard labour and subjected to all

manner of abuse and to agonizing torments that ensure a slower

and more painful death than would summary execution. Indeed,

for them, the end result is the same: they, their wives and their

children all perish and the whole of their nation is wiped from

the face of the earth. And so blinded by ambition and driven by

greed are the devils who advocate such treatment of these people

that they cannot see that, when their victims come to obey under

duress this foreign overlord and publicly recognize his authority

over them, simply because of their fear of what will happen to

them if they do not, such a recognition; of suzerainty has no

standing in law whatever, any such prerogative obtained by

menaces from any people anywhere in the world being invalid.

In practice, the-only rights these perfidious crusaders have

earned which can be upheld in human, divine, or natural law are

the right to eternal damnation and the right to answer for the

offences and the harm they have done the Spanish Crown by

utterly ruining every one of these kingdoms and (as far as it is

within their power) invalidating all claims the Spanish Crown

may have to the territories of the New World. These, then, are

the true services they have performed and continue to perform

for their sovereign in this part of the world.

With this same unimpeachable title to possession, this tyrant of

a commander sent two of his captains, both of them even more

ferocious and barbaric, more implacable and merciless than he was

himself, to two vast, prosperous and highly favoured kingdoms,

sharing a common frontier and some three hundred leagues from

Mexico City. The first of these two densely populated realms,

Guatemala, lies on the Pacific; the other, known as Naco and

Honduras (or Guaimura), has an Atlantic seaboard Both expeditionary

forces were well-manned, with both cavalry and infantry,

the commander sending one overland and the other by sea.

It is no exaggeration to say that one could make a whole book

- and a book that would stagger not only contemporaries but

future generations also- out of the atrocities, barbarities, murders,

clearances, ravages and other foul injustices perpetrated by

members of these two expeditions, and particularly by those that

went to Guatemala, the leader of the other expedition coming to

an abrupt and sticky end. Here were abominations that not

only outdid, in number and in kind, everything that had been

seen before in the New 'World but also went far beyond those

perpetrated by contemporaries, vast tracts of land being laid

waste and turned into desert and an incalculable number of

natives killed.

The seaborne expedition sacked the towns all along the

coast, committing all manner of violence against the people

who lived there, as, for example, when the locals of Yucatan,

a province which lay on their route to the kingdom of Naco

and Guaimura, whither the Spaniards were headed, came out

to greet them and offer them gifts and then the Spaniards,

once they had landed, sent out raiding parties throughout the

territory, robbing and killing and destroying everything and

everyone in sight. There was one Spanish captain who mutinied

and, taking three hundred men with him, set off inland towards

the kingdom of Guatemala, burning and looting the towns, and

robbing and killing those who lived there. He deliberately

followed such a scorched-earth policy for some one hundred and

twenty leagues, so that, should his erstwhile companions-in- .

arms decide on- pursuit, they would find the whole region

empty and barren, and all the local people 2.thirst to take

revenge on their pursuers in return for the harm and destruction

wrought by him and his men. A few days later the officer

in overall charge of the expedition, against whom he had mutinied,

was killed and his place taken by a whole series of barbaric

despots who inflicted unspeakable cruelty on the natives, butchering

them, enslaving them and selling them to merchant-sailors in

exchange for wine, clothing and other things. The despotism of

the invaders and the enslavement of the population led, between

1524 and 1553, to the complete destruction of all the

territories of the kingdom of Naco and Honduras, once a

veritable paradise on earth supporting a denser population than

anywhere else in the world. Nowadays, when one travels through

this area, one sees nothing but bare, ruined settlements, and the

whole melancholy spectacle is enough to melt the hardest of

could be laid at his door, as well as all those he deprived of liberty, and all the torment and calamity countless people suffered because of him! If one could calculate how many tears were shed and how many sighs and anguished groans were caused by his actions, how much grief he occasioned in this life, and how many souls he consigned to eternal damnation in the life hereafter – not only the countless hordes of natives, but also the Christians wretches whose association with him led them to commit vile atrocities, mortal sins and inhuman barbarity. May God have mercy on him and may He be satisfied with the terrible death which He visited on him.84

84 Alvarado was killed in a skirmish in Nochistlán in July 1541

� This was Cortes's most spectacular and widely reported massacre. Cholula was a

wealthy town on the major Central America trade-route; it was also the cult-

centre of Quetzalcoatl, the Mexican deity with whom Cortes is supposed to have

been confused. Cortes gave the number of dead as three thousand, but another

witness, Vazquez de Tapia, claimed the death-toll was ten times higher. The

pr~~ Ii~res are irrecoverable; see Cortes, utters fro", Mtxito, pp. 465.

� Cúe (or quu)was simply the Mexican (Náhuatl) word for a temple

� There is little substance to this account, as Mexican temples were built of stone

and thus could not be destroyed by fire. For the name and title of the Mexican

chieftain, normally known in English as Montezuma (from the common Spanish

form of his name, Moctezuma), see Cortes, Letter from Mexico, p.460

� A traditional Spanish ballad:

Mira Nero de Tarpeya, a Roma como se ardia;

Gritos dan ninos y viejos, y el de nada se dolia.

� For Cortes’s account of the attacks mounted against his men in Tepeaca 'from

strong and dangerous positions' - which, for reasons he does not explain, led to

the attackers' neither 'killing nor wounding a single Spaniard' - see Letters from

Mexico, pp.145-8

� The proper name for the city which Las Casas calls 'Mexico' was Temixtitan or

Tenochtitlan

� Montezuma's brother Cuitlahuac (Cuetravacin) was lord of Yztapalapa, a city

through which Cortes had passed on his journey .from Cholula. see Cortes's

account of this episode in Letters from Mexico, pp. 83-4-

� By Cortes's own account, Montezuma was not seized until more than a week later

(Letters from Mexico, pp. 88-90)

� The commander was Cortes, the captain Pánfilo de Narváez. On this expedition

and the reasons behind the Narváez expedition, see the essay by J.H. Elliott,

Cortes, Velazquez, and Charles V', in Letters from Mexico, pp:xi-xxxvii(xxiii-

xxvi)

� The captain left in charge was Pedro de Alvarado, a veteran of Juan de Grijalva's

expedition and effectively second-in-command to Cortes, see J.E.Kelly, Pedro de

Alvarado, conquistador- (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1932; reissue Washington, etc.: Kennikat Press, 1971). Cortes's claim that he left Mexico City

garrisoned by 'five hundred men' (Letters from Mexico, p. 119) is at odds with eye-

witness accounts which put the number at about one hundred and twenty, many

of them sick and wounded.

� For previous reference to areitos, see above p. z.8

� Santiago, the name of saint James of Compostela, was traditionally used by the

Spanish as a battle-cry, the legend being that he appeared in person, mounted or

a white charger, at the battle of Clavijo against the Moors which supposedly took

place in the year 822

� On the site of Tenochtitlan and Cortes’s retreat on what became known as the

'Black Night' (Noche Triste), see his Letters from Mexico, pp. 13I-8

� Las Casas is here conflating two events: the retreat which took place in I520 and

the siege of the city by Cortes the following year.

� Variously 'Tatutepeque', 'Tuchitebeque', 'Tututepec’, or 'Tuxtepeque'

� Or 'Ipilcingo' ."-,

� Also known as 'Colimán' or 'Alimán'

� Las Casas calls the Pacific 'the southern shore' and the Atlantic 'the northern

shore' (e.g. below, p. 6J)

� The overland expedition to Guatemala was under the command of Pedro de

Alvarado (see above, p. 49, n. 6j), the fleet headed for Honduras under that of

Cristobal de Olid. Alvarado's own account of the conquest of Guatemala is

contained in his two surviving letters to Cortes, reproduced in English translation

in Patricia de Fuentes, The Conquistadores (New York: Orion Press, 1963), pp.

181.-96, and used extensively by Las Casas in compiling the present account

� For an account of Olid's drumhead court-marshal and execution at the hands of

Francisco de Las Casas and Gil Gonzalez Davila, see Cortes, Letters from México,

p. 412 and Robert S. Chamberlain, The Conquest and Colonization of Honduras, 1502- 1550 ( Washington D.C. Carnegie Institute, 1953), pp.-11-14