  EARLY SPANISH EXPLORERS AND CONQUERORS ON THE MAINLAND The Civilization of the Mexican Indians. Early Spanish explorers on the coast of Mexico found the Indians of the mainland more highly civilized than the natives of the West Indies. Some of these, especially the Aztecs, lived in large villages or cities and were ruled by powerful chiefs or kings. They built to their gods huge stone temples with towers several stories in height. Their houses, quite unlike those of the other Indians the Spanish had seen, were made of stone or sun-dried brick and coated with hard white plaster. Some of them were of immense size and could hold many families. Doors had not been invented, but hangings of woven grass or matting of cotton served instead. Strings of shells which a visitor could rattle answered for door-bells. The streets of the towns were narrow, but were often paved with a sort of cement. Aqueducts in solid masonry somewhat like the old Roman aqueducts, although not so large, carried water from the neighboring hills for fountains and rude public baths. The women wove cotton and prepared clothing for their families. Workmen made ornaments of gold and copper, and utensils and dishes of pottery for every-day use. The people cultivated the fields around the cities, raising a great variety of foods, and even built ditches to carry water for irrigating the fields. All this was in striking contrast with the simple habits of the West Indians.
Cruel Customs of the Aztecs. With all the good features of Mexican life, with all the superiority of the Mexicans over the other Indians, there was much that was hideous and cruel. The Aztecs, the most powerful tribes, were continually at war with their neighbors. They lived mainly upon the plunder of their enemies and the tribute which they took from those they had conquered. Like all Mexicans, they worshiped great ugly idols as gods and to these their priests offered part of the captives taken in war as human sacrifices. Spanish Ideas of Mexico. The reports of the Aztec civilization and of the treasures of gold, mostly untrue, excited the interest and greed of the Spaniards. Mexico seemed like the China which Marco Polo had described, and might offer a chance of immense wealth for those who should conquer it. In truth, Mexican civilization did resemble that of Asia more than anything that the Spaniards had seen. Montezuma, a powerful chief or king of the Aztecs, lived somewhat like a Mongol Emperor of Persia or China.
CortÉs. In 1519 the governor of Cuba sent Hernando CortÉs to explore and conquer Mexico. The expedition landed where Vera Cruz is now situated. The ships were then sunk in order to cut off all hope of retreat for the soldiers. "For whom but cowards," said CortÉs, "were means of retreat necessary!" CortÉs, with great skill, worked up the zeal of his soldiers to the fury of a religious crusade. All thought it a duty to destroy the idols they saw, to end the practice of offering human sacrifices, and to force the Christian religion upon the natives. The small army marched slowly inland towards the City of Mexico, which was the capital of Montezuma's kingdom. CortÉs and his men had learned the Indian mode of fighting from ambush, and also how successfully to match cunning and treachery with those villagers who tried to prevent his invasion of their country. How the Spaniards and the Aztecs fought. The Mexican warriors, though they fought fiercely, were no match for the Spaniards. The Mexicans were experts with the bow and arrow, using arrows pointed with a hard kind of stone. They carried for hand-to-hand fighting a narrow club set with a double edge of razor-like stones, and wore a crude kind of armor made from quilted cotton. But such things were useless against Spanish bullets shot from afar.
The roaring cannon, the glittering steel swords, the thick armor and shining helmets, the prancing horses on which the Spanish leaders were mounted, gave the whole a strange, unearthly appearance to the simple-minded Indians. The story is told that the Mexicans believed that one of their gods had once floated out to sea, saying that, in the fulness of time, he would return with fair-skinned companions to begin again his rule over his people. Many Aztecs looked upon the coming of the white men as the return of this god and thought that resistance would be useless. Such natives sent presents, made their peace with CortÉs, and so weakened the opposition to the conquerors. CortÉs in Peril. CortÉs easily entered the City of Mexico, and forced Montezuma to resign. But here the natives attacked his army in such numbers that he had to retreat to escape capture. The Spaniards fled from the city at night amid the onslaught of the inhabitants fighting for their religion and their homes.
The retreat cost the Spaniards terrible losses. CortÉs started in the evening on the retreat with 1,250 soldiers, 6,000 Indian allies, and 80 horses. There were left in the morning 500 soldiers, 2,000 allies, and 20 horses. CortÉs is said to have buried his face in his hands and wept for his lost followers, but he never wavered in his purpose of taking Mexico. He was able to defeat the Indians in the open country, and to return to the attack on the capital city. Capture of the City of Mexico. The siege which followed, lasting nearly three months, has rarely been matched in history for the bravery and suffering of the natives. The fighting was constant and terrible. The fresh water supply was cut off from the inhabitants in the city, and famine aided the invaders. At length the defenders were exhausted and CortÉs entered. It had taken him two years to conquer the Aztecs. A greater task remained for him to do. He was to cleanse and rebuild the City of Mexico, make it a center of Spanish civilization, and Mexico a New Spain. By such work CortÉs showed that he could be not only a great conqueror, but also an able ruler in time of peace.
Pizarro. A few years after CortÉs conquered Mexico a second army conquered another famous Indian kingdom. Francisco Pizarro commanded this expedition, which set out from Panama in 1531. Pizarro had been with Balboa at the discovery of the South Sea or Pacific Ocean, and, like his master, had become interested in the stories the Indians told of a rich kingdom far to the south. The golden kingdom which the Indians described was that of the Incas, who lived much as the Aztecs. The Spaniards called the region of the Incas the Biru country or, by softening the first letter, the Peru country, from Biru, who was a native Indian chieftain.
Conquest of Peru. Pizarro found the Incas divided as usual by civil wars and incapable of much resistance. One of their rival chiefs was outwitted when he tried to capture Pizarro by a trick, and was himself made a prisoner instead. He offered to give Pizarro in return for his freedom as much gold as would fill his prison room as high as he could reach. The offer was accepted, and gold, mainly in the shape of vases, plates, images, and other ornaments from the temples for the Indian idols, was gathered together. The Spaniards soon found themselves in possession of almost $7,000,000 worth of gold, besides a vast quantity of silver. As much more was taken from the Indians by force. The whole was divided among the conquerors. Pizarro's share was worth nearly a million dollars. But the poor chief who had made them suddenly rich was suspected of plotting to have his warriors ambush them as they left the country, was tried by his conquerors, and put to death. The bloody work of conquest was soon over. Peru, like Mexico, rapidly became a center of Spanish settlement. Emigrants, instead of stopping in the West Indies, had the choice of going on into the newer regions which CortÉs and Pizarro had won. Emigrants to Spanish America. It was much harder in the sixteenth century to leave Spain and settle in America than it is today. The first and sometimes the greatest difficulty was in getting permission to leave Spain. No one could go who had not secured the king's consent. The emigrant must show that neither he nor his father nor his grandfather had ever been guilty of heresy, that is, that he and his forefathers had been steadfast Catholic Christians. His wife, if he had one, must give her consent. His debts must all be paid. The Moors and the Jews of Spain could not secure permits to move to the New World. Foreigners of whatever nation were not wanted in the colonies and were usually kept out. Spain tried to keep its colonies wholly for Spaniards. Hardships of the Sea Voyage. Those who did go to the colonies found the voyage dangerous and costly. One traveler has related that it cost him about one hundred and eighty dollars for the passage, and that he provided his own chickens and bread. The danger to sailing ships from storms was much greater than it is today for steamships. The voyage required three or four weeks and not uncommonly as many months. The Need of Laborers. The hardships and dangers of the voyage and the reports of suffering from famine and disease kept most people from going to the New World. Emigration was slow, amounting to about a thousand a year. There were always fewer capable white laborers than the landowners in the colonies needed for their work, for there was much to do in clearing the land and preparing it for use. The landowners were usually well-to-do Spaniards who did not like to work in the fields themselves. A great many of the laborers who migrated to America served in the army or went to the gold and silver mines of Mexico and Peru. The craze for gold constantly robbed the older colonies of their farm laborers. The landowners in the islands of the West Indies, during the early history of the colonies, made slaves of the Indians and compelled them to take the place of the laborers they needed and could not obtain. Indian Slavery. The people of Europe thought that the whole world belonged to the followers of Christ. Non-Christians, whether Indian or negro, had the choice of accepting Christianity or of being made slaves. The choice of Christianity did not always save them from the fate of slavery. In this the Spaniards were no more cruel than their neighbors the English or the French. The Spanish planters from the beginning forced the Indians to work their farms. The gold seekers made them work in their mines. The labor in every case was hard, and specially hard for the Indian unused to work. The overseers were brutal when the slaves did not do the tasks set for them. Hard usage and the unhealthful quarters rapidly broke down the natives. The white men also brought into the island diseases which they, with their greater experience, could resist, but from which, one writer says, the Indians died like sheep with a distemper.
Slavery destroys the West Indians. When the number of the Indians in EspaÑola and Cuba had decreased so much that there were not enough left to meet the needs of the planters, slave-hunters searched the neighboring islands for others. Finally, when the Indians were nearly gone, and the planters began to look to the mainland for their slaves, the king of Spain forbade making slaves of the Indians. Unfortunately he did not forbid them to capture negroes in Africa for the same purpose, and the change merely meant that negroes took the place of Indians as slaves. The story of the change is in great part the story of the life of Bartholomew de Las Casas. Las Casas. The father of Las Casas was a companion of Columbus on his second voyage in 1493. He returned to Spain, taking with him a young Indian slave whom he gave to his son. This youth became greatly interested in the race to which his young slave belonged. In 1502 he went to EspaÑola to take possession of his father's estate. The planter's life did not long satisfy him and finally he became a priest. He moved from EspaÑola to Cuba, the newer colony. Las Casas became convinced that Indian slavery was wrong, and gave his own slaves their freedom. In his sermons he attacked the abuses of slavery. He visited Spain in order to help the slaves, and secured many reforms which lessened the hardships of their lot. Since the planters demanded more laborers and Las Casas thought the negro would be hardier than the Indian, he advocated negro slavery in place of Indian slavery as the less of two evils. Finally, in 1542, Las Casas persuaded his king, Charles V, to put an end to Indian slavery of every form. His success came too late to benefit the natives of the West Indies. They had decreased until almost none were left. It is said that there were two hundred thousand Indians in EspaÑola in 1492, and that in 1548 there were barely five hundred survivors. The same decrease had taken place in the other islands. But the work of Las Casas came in time to save the Indians on the mainland from the fate of the luckless islanders. Negro Slavery. Las Casas later regretted that he had advised the planters to obtain negroes to take the place of the Indians. Some negroes had been captured by the Portuguese on the coast of Africa during their explorations and taken to Europe as slaves. Columbus carried a few of these to the West Indies with him, and others had followed his example, but negro slavery had grown very slowly until after Las Casas stopped Indian slavery, when it increased rapidly in Spanish America.
The Missions of the Mainland. Las Casas became at one time a missionary to a tribe of the most desperate warriors located on the southern border of Mexico, in a region called by the Spaniards the "Land of War." Three times a Spanish army had invaded the country, and three times it had been driven back by the native defenders. Las Casas wished to show the Spaniards that more could be accomplished by treating the Indians kindly than by bloody warfare and conquest. He and the monks whom he took with him learned the language of the Indians, and went among them not as conquerors but as Christian teachers. Their gentle manners and endless patience won the friendship of the Indians in time and changed the land of constant warfare into one of peace. They led the natives to destroy their idols and to give up cannibalism. The mission established among them and kept up by the monks who were attracted to it was only one of a great number which sprang up on the mainland. The Work of the Missions. Influenced by the work of Las Casas against Indian slavery and for Indian missions, the Spaniards bent their efforts to preserve and Christianize the natives wherever they came upon them in America. Catholic priests gathered the Indians into permanent villages, which were called missions. Within about one hundred years after the death of Columbus, or by 1600, there were more then 5,000,000 Indians in such villages under Spanish rule. Priests taught them to build better houses, checked their native vices, and suppressed heathen practices. Every mission became a little industrial school for children and parents alike, where all might learn the simpler arts and trades and the customs and language of their teachers. Each Indian cultivated his own plot of land and worked two hours a day on the farm belonging to the village. The produce of the village farm supported the church. The monks or friars who had charge of the mission cared for the poor, taught in the schools, preserved the peace and order of the village, and looked after the religious welfare of all.
Gradually Spanish emigrants settled in the mission stations, and planters established farms around them, and they became Spanish villages in every respect like those in the islands or in the Old World, except that many inhabitants in the towns on the mainland were Indians. The emigrants freely intermarried with the Indians and a mixed race took the place of the old inhabitants. The customs, language, religion, and rule of Spain prevailed in this New Spain, though in some ways the new civilization was not so good as that of the Old World.
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