The Conquistadors (6 page)

Once again we have Bernal Díaz on board to give us an account of all that happened. The Indians, he says, were drawn up ready for battle, armed as before with bows and arrows, lances, single and double-handed ‘swords', and slings and stones. These ‘swords' were unusual, being made of wood in the form of a blade that was wider at the tip than at the hilt and set with razor-sharp flakes of obsidian to give a double cutting edge. It was a deadly weapon when wielded by a strong young warrior. They had shields and wore cotton armour. They also had trumpets and drums and had painted their faces black and in some cases red and white. The Spaniards, benefiting from past experience, also wore padded cotton armour, and in addition to their crossbows and muskets, they had small cannon mounted in the bows of their shore-going boats.

The Indians attacked them in fields full of locusts, which flew up in the Spaniards' faces as they advanced, so that it was difficult to distinguish between arrows and locusts, both of which were equally numerous. Spanish losses were again severe: seven killed and sixty wounded, including Grijalva himself, who received three arrow wounds and got two of his teeth broken. But this time it was the Indians who fled. The Spaniards occupied the town, stayed three days and then moved on, sailing only during the hours of daylight and anchoring at night for fear of stranding themselves on the sand-banks that extended miles off-shore.

It was slow work, and pilotage was difficult, the coast a confused waste of mangrove swamps, often lost to sight in the humid milk-haze of tropical heat. The impossibility of determining the lie of the land caused the pilot, Alaminos, to mistake the great lagoon in the south-eastern corner of what is now known as the Gulf of Campeche for an open water passage. They found good shelter behind the island of Isla del Carmen that guards the entrance, and believing now that Yucatán itself was an island, they named the place Boca de Términos. Thereafter they were sailing almost due west, the shallow sea strewn with fish traps and the Indians following their movements closely from the shore, armed and prepared to fight. At the ‘Tabasco' river they were able to land again, this time on a headland covered with palm trees. It was about a mile from the large Indian settlement of Pontonchán, where the people were already erecting wooden stockades for its defence, and almost as soon as they anchored some fifty pirogues put out, full of warriors wearing cotton armour and carrying bows and arrows, lances and shields, drums and feathers. Many other canoes lay hidden in the creeks.

This time, instead of fighting, the Indians agreed to parley. But when Grijalva spoke of Spain's great emperor king, they pointed out that they already had a king of their own and also three armies of eight thousand warriors each, assembled from all the neighbouring provinces to defend their territory. They agreed finally to provide the Spaniards with provisions on a barter basis whilst their caciques and priests decided whether it should be war or peace. In the end they
decided for peace, and next day some thirty of them came to the camp under the palm trees, loaded with roasted fish and fowls, sapota fruit and maize-cakes, also braziers and incense. The burning of incense was reserved for their gods, but the Spaniards did not know this and had no means of understanding why they should be subjected to this ritual. The Indians also brought gifts of golden jewels, diadems in the shape of ducks and lizards, and other small objects. When the Spaniards asked for more gold, they said they had none, and added that further to the westward there was plenty; they kept on repeating ‘Culhúa, Culhúa' and ‘México, México'.

Grijalva, fearing for his ships if a gale came in from the north, re-embarked his men and sailed west again. Two days later they were off the town of Ayagualulco, where warriors with turtle-shell shields, glinting like gold in the sun, paraded watchfully along the foreshore. Short of water, conscious all the time that they were breaking new ground, they passed the entrance to the Tonala river, sailing slowly, for their ships' bottoms were becoming foul with weed, and the trade wind was now more often ahead than on the beam. The weather was bad when they reached the Coatzacoalcos river, and as they sailed into the bay in search of shelter, they saw for the first time the great mountain ranges of the Sierra Madre Occidental. If there had been any doubt before that this was the mainland, those snow-capped peaks dispelled it.

At the next big river mouth, the Papaloapan, Pedro de Alvarado, who was a reckless, daredevil of a man, took his ship in alone, against Grijalva's orders; after that the four ships kept close together until they made the Jamapa river. This is just short of the modern city of Vera Cruz and a little to the north of the river there is good shelter inside the banks under Punto Mocambo. Here the Indians actually welcomed them, and Grijalva went ashore, spoke with the caciques and traded for 16,000 pesos' worth of low-grade gold ornaments. It was here that he finally took possession of the country in the name of Velázquez for the Spanish crown.

Next they stopped at an island five miles from the shore, and on landing found two temples, both stone-built with steps leading up to altars presided over by devilish idols to whom five Indians had just been sacrificed. ‘Their chests had been struck open and their arms and thighs cut off, and the walls of these buildings were covered with blood.' They named the island Isla de Sacrificios, crossed to the mainland again, and camped on the beach. The land behind them was flat and sandy – low dune country. Again the Indians came down to barter, not to fight, but as at Mocambo, they brought little gold. The fact that the weather continued fine mattered little now, as their ships were sheltered by the off-lying banks and by yet another island that crooked a low, palm-clad finger half across the bay. This, too, had a pyramid-like teocalli with a large and ugly idol called Tezcatlipoca. It was served by four priests in ‘black cloaks and hoods very like those of our Dominicans'. Only that day they had cut open the chests of two boys and sacrificed
their blood and hearts to the idol. When asked why they had made this sacrifice, they answered that the people of Culhúa had ordered it. The Indian acting as interpreter slurred the word, so that it sounded like Ulúa, and they named the island San Juan de Ulúa.

Bernal Díaz excuses Grijalva's failure to found a settlement on the grounds that they had not enough soldiers, thirteen of their number having died of wounds and a further four being disabled. Also their cassava bread was mouldy and full of weevils. In fact, they had had enough. They had been sailing now for about four months, much of the time exploring new ground. Encamped in the dunes, above what was later to become a great port, driven half mad by mosquitoes, it is hardly surprising that their leader decided to send Alvarado back to Cuba in the
San Sebastián.
This was their soundest vessel, and with Alvarado went most of the gold ornaments they had gained by barter. It is possible that Grijalva hoped the sight of all this loot would encourage Velázquez to send reinforcements, but it was now the hurricane season, one of their ships was leaking, and as they coasted north-westward from San Juan de Ulúa, the snow-capped mountains came closer, a visual reminder that this was no island, but a big country. The many Indian towns they had seen from sea and coast could only be regarded as outposts of more formidable cities inland. Conquest, even settlement, must have seemed utterly impracticable for such a small force, and when about twenty large canoes tried to make off with the smallest of their three vessels while the fleet lay at anchor, they held a conference and decided to return to Cuba whilst they were still in a fit state to do so.

One of the legacies of Spain's own history was that in all these voyages of discovery there was usually a democratic basis to any major decision. This was true also of the Elizabethan adventurers of Tudor England, for even the most forceful leader could not impose his will, in circumstances of danger and isolation, unless the men themselves were willing.

The Spaniards turned about, and with the prevailing northerly wind behind them, they made a quick passage back to the Coatzacoalcos. But the weather was so bad they continued on into the shelter of the Tonalá river. Here one of their ships went aground on the bar and had to be careened for repairs. Fortunately, the Indians seemed friendly and they were able to trade, obtaining, amongst other things, six hundred axes, which gleamed so brightly they thought they were made of low grade gold. One soldier raided a temple, and Díaz says he sowed some orange pips beside the pyramid. They then sailed to Cuba, this time direct, and reached Santiago after forty-five days of battling against the north-east trades.

Grijalva had opened the door to Mexico. He had sent back 20,000 pesos' worth of gold, and had achieved more in six months than almost any other expedition, without the loss of a single vessel and with only thirty men killed. Yet Velázquez regarded the venture as a failure. The governor's attitude was dictated by the political tightrope his ambitions forced him to walk. In that year, 1518, the
political situation was changing rapidly, both in the islands and at home in Spain. Charles V had now been king for two years. He was still only eighteen and very much under the influence of his Flemish advisers. He had little understanding of his Spanish kingdom and none of the new lands beyond the sea. He had just been elected emperor of Germany. With his Habsburg empire, this made him the most powerful monarch in Europe. He was now at Barcelona, and without a thought had already given Yucatán to his Flemish admiral. The situation in the New World was still very fluid, with Velázquez in Cuba and Francisco de Garay in Jamaica, both governors deriving their authority from Don Diego Columbus and the Council of the Indies in Seville, and Diego Columbus himself having to exert constant pressure at the young king's court to maintain his rights as viceroy and governor-general of all the lands beyond the ocean, the position given to his father and his heirs in perpetuity under the capitulation of 1492.

It is only against this background of political manoeuvring that the behaviour of Velázquez towards Grijalva becomes understandable. When the hurricane season was approaching and Grijalva had not returned, Velázquez had become concerned for the expedition's safety and had dispatched Cristóbal de Olid in a caravel to look for it. Olid struck bad weather, was nearly wrecked on the Yucatán coast, and finally returned to Cuba without having caught up with Grijalva. Meantime, Alvarado had arrived in the
San Sebastián
with the wounded and enough gold to excite the cupidity of the least greedy of governors. Velázquez immediately set about organizing another, larger expedition. At the same time, to strengthen his position in Cuba and establish his right to Yucatán, he sent his chaplain, Benito Martín, to Spain with the pick of the gold jewelry Alvarado had brought in.

In order to get himself elected emperor of Germany, Charles had had to buy the twelve Electors. He was desperately short of money, and more than willing to reward the provider of such a fortuitous and unexpected source of wealth. He and his advisers, however, were extremely vague about the geography of the New World, so that the titles tended to be conflicting. Las Casas says that Velazquez was confirmed
adelantado
of Cuba only, whereas Oviedo, who was in Barcelona at the time, says that he was also made governor of all the lands he had discovered. This meant Yucatán; and, to confuse the issue, Garay seems to have been made governor of it also on the grounds that he had sent an expedition there from
Jamaica. Moreover, there was another claimant – the Flemish admiral to whom Charles had previously granted the territory. He sent over five ships with peasant settlers to found a colony, but by then Diego Columbus had at last been able to re-establish his hereditary rights. He refused to let them proceed.

This was the situation when Grijalva finally came into Santiago. There was nothing more he could add to the extraordinary and fascinating story Alvarado had already told. The welcome that should have been his had already been given to his lieutenant. Even the six hundred ‘gold' axes turned out to be made of copper. What Velázquez needed, and needed desperately, to support his claim to the governorship of the mainland, was colonization; and that was the one thing Grijalva had failed to achieve. He was, therefore, of no further use to his kinsman, whose energies were already urgently directed to preparations for the new expedition. He had the ships and the men; all he lacked was the right person to lead it, a man who, even if he had no authority to conquer and settle the country – and the wretched Grijalva had certainly not had that – would, in fact, do so.

From his central position as alcalde, or mayor, of the Cuban capital, Cortés had watched the situation develop with more than usual interest. He had bided his time now for fourteen years, and this was a political mélange which a man of his legal training and latent powers of leadership could turn to advantage. Velázquez, though still politically astute, had grown fat; he was too physically lazy to lead the expedition himself. His strength had always lain in his ability to use other people, and he had never been one to risk his own money if he could persuade others to do it for him. Cortés, too, had been careful, nursing his farms and his mines. He was now thirty-three and quite a rich man. Moreover, by mingling with the leaders and soldiers of each expedition, he had at his disposal a great fund of knowledge and experience, all gained at the expense of others. His hour of destiny had struck.

According to Bernal Díaz, he only held command of the expedition by entering into a secret profit-sharing agreement with Velázquez' secretary, Andrés de Duero, and the king's accountant, Amador de Lares. Whatever the truth of this, his ability as a leader and as a horseman, his shrewdness, above all his wealth, made him a natural choice for the ambitious and thrifty governor. On his appointment as captain-general he was able to mortgage his
encomienda
for 4,000 gold pesos plus a like sum in kind, all borrowed from the merchants of Santiago. By gambling his estate on the success of the venture he not only relieved Velázquez of almost the entire cost of fitting out the fleet, but made it clear that he would press forward with colonization regardless of whether he had legal sanction to do so from the crown. As for his loyalty, this was guaranteed by the fact that he was connected to the governor by marriage through his wife, Catalina; Velázquez was godfather to their daughter.