Part 32

The siege had now lasted forty-five days; it was time, therefore, to make a radical change in the primitive methods of attack hitherto followed by Cortez, methods that recall the Homeric accounts of the siege of Troy. Each day there was hot fighting in the streets or on the lake where the Aztec canoes gathered about the brigantines. At nightfall there was a general return to the camp. The new plan was to destroy all the houses in the portion of the streets where the daily fighting took place. As the horsemen charged, the space was cleared and the work of destruction began. On the exposed part by the lake the brigantines and the canoes of the allies were able to do much effective damage. The scale of the operations is indicated in one of Cortez’ letters, where he speaks of using in this kind of fighting 150,000 warriors. Under these conditions, where each day ground for the next stage of occupation of the town was secured, the great market-place was taken.

Finally the Aztecs were confined to an eighth part of their capital; there was no bread to be had; nothing but fetid water to drink; and a diminishing supply of defensive weapons. Cortez himself reports that the Aztecs stood on the housetops, covering themselves with their cloaks but without weapons. The streets and the houses were filled with dead bodies. On the 13th of August the signal for the final attack was given. Crowded together, without arrows or even stones and sticks to defend themselves, the Aztecs were mowed down by the Spanish gunfire. It was a disappointment to Cortez to have to use such extreme measures; largely, it appears from his own words, because there would be no spoil to be taken. Most of the houses had been destroyed, and the people threw their wealth into the lake before they perished.

The sufferings of the besieged made an impression even on the hardened feelings of the Spanish commander. The last fights in the city and on the lake took place amid scenes of horror; everywhere were dead bodies; on the lake they were heaped up around the combatants, and could be seen floating about as the canoes kept up the unequal conflict with the Spanish brigantines. Diaz reports that all the houses were filled with dead Indians; there was nothing green to be found; the inhabitants had even eaten the bark off the trees.

The end came when the cannon, at Cortez’ signal, began to fire on the mass of unarmed Mexicans, too weak to move, stretched out one upon the other, dying heroically, still even in their extremity, as Cortez says, “never asking for peace.” As the artillery seemed slow in carrying on the work of destruction, the brigantines with the European soldiers and the allies were brought up and ordered to fall upon the remnant of the Aztec warriors, who were either slain on the spot or cast into the water from their last place of refuge.

Cuauhtemoc fled from the city in a large war-canoe, and the Spaniards gave chase. When overtaken he first prepared to sell his life dearly, but seeing his wife and other women in the boat, rather than expose them to risk he gave himself up and was conducted to Cortez, who spoke in a friendly way and praised his valiant defense of his capital, promising at the same time that he should be allowed to rule his people as he had done before. The capture of the Aztec chieftain took place on the 13th of August, 1521, the day that Mexico fell into the hands of the Spaniards.

The losses of the Aztecs in the final battle are set down as 40,000; many chose to die by throwing themselves and their wives and children into the lake rather than surrender. At the close of the siege there followed scenes of pillage of the usual type, with no pretense at discipline. The actual treasure seized was small, and to increase the disappointment, no trace could be found of the lost gold and silver which had been abandoned during “the mournful night” of the previous year. The supposed explanation was that it had been carefully hidden. Accordingly, Cuauhtemoc and others of high rank with him who, like himself, were captives, were tortured by fire. But no revelations were made, and the amount of gold distributed to the soldiers was small, only five pesos to a horseman and less to a foot-soldier. The native allies were paid off even more cheaply; they departed for home taking with them promises of future land grants.

Cortez’ plans for reconstructing the city were put into operation immediately after the end of the siege. All the temples and great houses that survived during the street fights were removed. In order to make the conversion of the people to Christianity easier, the records of their past were obliterated. In a few years all traces of the complex Aztec society, with its divisions into nobles and priests and warriors, were lost. But at least the native population in Mexico did not meet the fate of those in the isles of the Antilles: the stock was a hardier one and the systematic working of the mines did not begin until twenty-five years after the conquest, when, owing to the propaganda of Las Casas, protective measures were enforced. Cortez introduced European grains and took care to repair the losses in the food supply produced by the devastation of the conquest.

Incapable of reconciling himself to the humdrum life of peaceful rule after his years of adventure, the commander could not endure to see his lieutenants penetrating into the unknown regions of the south, while he stayed behind receiving their reports of immeasurable treasure. In October, 1524, he set out for Honduras with a few Europeans and a large number of Indian allies. Among his companions were Cuauhtemoc, the dethroned Aztec overlord, and many of his nobles and chieftains. The march was through difficult country filled with dense woods, mountains, and morasses. The expedition suffered from the heat, and had to endure lack of water and food as well as perils from enteric fever. Cuauhtemoc and the Aztec lord of Tlacopan were charged with plotting against their new masters and were, therefore, put to death. Nothing was accomplished in this expedition, and after twenty months Cortez returned to Mexico. Soon after he was recalled to Spain to answer various charges due to his maladministration and to his uncontrolled dictatorship. He was treated with great honor and named captain-general of New Spain, but care was taken that he should no longer be intrusted with the duty of civil administration in the new province. He returned to Mexico in 1530 and again tried his fortune as a discoverer, this time undertaking, either personally or by lieutenants, expeditions to the northwest. Two fleets equipped by him were destroyed; a third was led by him into the unpromising region about the Gulf of California. In 1540, he again left Mexico to secure an indemnity from Charles V for his unsuccessful ventures. He followed the Emperor to the siege of Algiers in 1541, but was not able to secure attention to his demands. The rest of his life was passed in preparing petitions to a monarch whose treasury was being drained by other more immediate claims. He did not return to Mexico, and died on December 2, 1547, at the age of sixty-three years.

III THE INCAS

It is the custom to associate, when the spheres of Spanish conquest are in question, the Aztecs of Mexico and the Incas of Peru. The parallel is only roughly accurate, for, although the Incas had made a great record in material advancement by the time they came into contact with the Spaniards, the level reached by them was considerably lower than that attained by their neighbors to the north. Their method of reckoning was far more primitive; they used picture painting for ornament; there was no commerce, no division of labor, no standard of value. On the other hand there was no such cannibalism as that found consecrated to the religious usages of the Nahuatlaca.

Among the Incas there was a vast peasant class who had been brought into subjection by the conquering race who entered Peru from the south. Apparently the first home of these invaders was the high land of Bolivia, in a small canton, Cuzco, situated on the natural highway that leads from the Bolivian highlands to the upper tributaries of the Amazon. The origins of Inca history can hardly go back further than three hundred years before the Spanish conquest. When the Spaniards came, consistent traditions were still preserved of the origin of the dominant tribe that told how, when Cuzco was first settled by them, it was already occupied by aboriginal inhabitants whose district was taken possession of by Manco Ccapac, the founder of the Inca rule. From the time of the first occupation eleven sovereign chiefs had borne sway over them for a period which may be justly estimated as three hundred years.

There were no chronological records, but there was curiously unique evidence in the shape of the mummified bodies of the eleven chieftains, who were given the same attention as lords and landowners that they enjoyed when alive. Their estates, herds of llamas, serfs were still treated as belonging to them; food and drink were daily placed before them; new clothing was prepared, and they were carried out for daily exercise in richly ornamented litters.

The rise of Inca domination had not been without serious opposition; there was a powerful coalition formed against them when their aggression became a menace to the neighboring tribes. The Inca chieftains were killed, and the situation was saved only by the appointment of a new leader, Huiracocha, who saw that more was to be won by conciliation than by aggression. This chieftain was one of the four to whom the consolidation of the Inca dominions was due. Under a later Inca chieftain Pachacutic (1435-1471), “the changer of the world,” the pueblo of Cuzco dominated the whole of central Peru, and a district 300 miles in length towards the northwest. To the southeast it had a sphere of influence over a district of about equal extent, which was converted into definite subjection by Pachacutic and his allies.

The next stage of conquest was towards the north, where no special obstacles were encountered. The population was sparse, and in a low condition. Here an Inca colony was founded, which, with its capital at Quito, still survives under the form of the republic of Ecuador. From this vantage ground in their northern colony the Incas seem to have been brought into direct connection with the sea coast, for, owing to the long overland journey between Cuzco and their northern possessions, the water route was easier, and owing to the penetration of the land by the gulf of Guayaquil would easily suggest itself to those who as residents of the interior were not familiar before with journeyings by water. The advance into the coast valleys met with stout resistance on the part of a powerful confederacy which had Chimu as its center. The place was of strategical value to the Incas because it commanded important roads leading from the coast plain to the sierras, and was also accessible to the newly acquired northern colony and its hereditary domains.

Because of the successive steps by which the power of the Incas was so rapidly extended, the name of Pachacutic was associated with the whole of the administration of the Inca state as a lawgiver, architect, engineer, economist, and chief priest. His successor Tupac-Yuparqui followed in his father’s steps by enlarging the state’s borders both on the south and north. Resistance was cruelly repressed, as one sees from the narrative of his war on the coast valley of Huarco, where the Inca’s warriors, brought together for three years in a permanent camp, wore out the natives by constant harryings, until they agreed to capitulate on the condition of being incorporated with the Inca nation. Tupac had no scruples in violating the compact by a general massacre of the vanquished. Even at the conquest immense heaps of bones were still pointed out, as relics of the methods by which Inca rule had been built up.

In 1493, Tupac died at Cuzco and was succeeded by his son Huaina Capac under whom the era of expansion came to an end; he occupied himself with temple building, with road construction, and with making punitive expeditions on the savage tribes who dwelt on the outskirts of his empire. Afterwards, in 1525, he fell a victim to an epidemic. There was a civil war due to a rebellion in the northern colony under Tupac-atahuallpa who assumed the government because of the incapacity of Huascar, the new chieftain at Cuzco. The revolt was successful; the warriors from the northern colony steadily advanced until they forced Huascar to leave Cuzco and finally to surrender himself and his family into the hands of the rival chieftain, after which he was taken to Lazamara, the fortified station midway between the northern colony and the original dominion.

The extent of the territory conquered by the Incas, as well as the rapidity with which the conquest was made, gives their annals a unique position in the history of tribal life at a comparatively low state of culture. As soon as they passed beyond the confines of middle Peru, their expansion as a conquering power met with no setback. The peoples who were threatened by their advance did not form a coalition against them, and when new areas were once conquered, new peoples were at once added, who supplied them with additional warriors. The structure of the empire was so simple, so loosely knit that it collapsed as soon as it was confronted by the serious internal difficulties that grew out of the disputed succession. The Spaniards came at an opportune moment and received without trouble the large landed inheritance of the Inca overlord, whose domains covered the territory now occupied by Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Chili.

In estimating the standard of civilization attained by the Incas their theology, which is certainly of an advanced type, is naturally taken into account. The worship of the sun was one of the strongest bonds that kept together their widely separated lands. In each pueblo there was an estate of the sun god that was worked exactly as if it belonged to a chieftain. This economic network of temple estates was primarily intended to provide the sun with such constant supplies of food that the god’s beneficent activity on the earth and to man could be sustained. The processes of tillage and the craft of weaving were all brought in this way in close relation to the religion of the dominant people. Portions of the finest woven stuffs, along with the offerings of the ground, were burned in sacrifice at each pueblo; the rest was carried on the backs of llamas belonging to the estates of the sun for the great festivals celebrated annually at Cuzco, where these beasts of burden and all they carried were sacrificed in honor of the god. An essential part of the ritual of sacrifice was the offering of human victims. These were not war captives as in Mexico; they were taken from the women serfs, attached to the estates of the sun, the weavers of the llama wool, who were called “the selected ones.” This name was given to them because from each family in the pueblo there was collected a regular tribute of girls, distinguished by their beauty and vigor, who were trained to become members of the communities dedicated to the sun’s service. After an education of eight years most of them were distributed among the various temples of the gods, the sun receiving the larger share, while some were given to the Ccapac Inca himself or to his officials.

These offerings of human victims took place at the prescribed sacrifices during the religious year, and also at extraordinary crises--for example, when the Inca chieftain was attacked by disease, when the country was endangered by wars, or when earthquakes and eclipses occurred. To symbolize the sun, images in the figure of a man were carved with an attire resembling that of the Inca chieftain, decorated with a headdress of darts, to resemble the solar rays.

As in Mexico the warrior class in Peru had a special ritual of sun worship not shared by outsiders. In this case the idol represented an infant molded of solid gold, with golden embroidery, shod with golden sandals, and with a headdress copied from that worn by the chiefs. For the purpose of popular worship, as these esoteric rites were not accessible to the common people, great sun dials covered with leaf of gold were set up, where they were exposed to the rays of the sun, and on them simple liquid offerings were made, that were visibly appropriated by the god through the processes of evaporation.

A great center of pilgrimage was the throne of the sun at Titicaca where, in the innermost shrine, there was a sacred rock the summit of which glittered with gold leaf. In the neighborhood of Cuzco and on the road to the rock of pilgrimage there were stations of sacrifice, where burnt-offerings of llamas, cocoa, and maize were made in order to inaugurate the new sun’s progress from his ancient birthplace in the south. Sunrise was the time selected for these offerings; a white llama, bearing fuel, maize, and cocoa leaves, was previously led up to the mountain top, fire was kindled, and the victim was slain and consumed in the flames. By the time the sun was about to rise above the horizon, the burning pile was in full blaze. As the sun rose, the Incas chanted the prayer for the protection of their god: “O Creator, Sun, and Thunder, be forever young! Multiply the people, let them ever be in peace.”

In the Peruvian religious system much attention was given to the service of dead chieftains by a class of special attendants organized like those who served the gods. There was, therefore, throughout the whole Inca domains, a large class of ecclesiastics well endowed with lands and serfs; at Cuzco at the time of the conquest most of the inhabitants of the pueblo were assigned to the service of some mummy. There was no hope for the living unless they could keep the good will of the dead; in all the affairs of life they had a part, food was set before the dead body at feasts and liquid refreshment was forced between the mummy’s lips.

Huascar, the rival of Atahuallpa for the chieftainship of the Incas, lost the support of the warrior class because he was reported to have said that all the dead ought to be buried and their property taken from them. He did not wish to rule over mummies, from less sentimental reasons than those once expressed on a celebrated occasion by the spirit of Achilles. There had undoubtedly originated in Peru a movement against the economic monopoly connected with the temple worship. An effort had been made to meet this difficulty on the part of the Inca chieftains, who apparently, in view of the multiplication of festivals and sacrifices, had adopted the policy of diminishing the worship of the minor divinities and of concentrating the sacrificial offerings as far as they could on the Creator, Sun, Thunder, Earth, and Moon.

Under Inca rule the simple tribal administration was retained throughout the group of districts which were added in rapid succession to the seat of the race at Cuzco. Each Inca pueblo had its local chief or curaca, to whom were assigned a certain number of llamas and those portions of the land that were worked for him by the peasantry, who did all the agricultural labor. Distributions of the same character were made in each pueblo for the use of the head chieftain who dwelt at Cuzco, the so-called Ccapac Inca, and for the service of the tribal chieftains. The products of these reservations were taken to Cuzco and deposited there in store-houses from whence the llama hair was given to the women of the chief pueblo and woven by them into cloth. The food and the cloth so prepared were either kept as stores for military expeditions or used for sacrificial purposes.

As the territory of the empire was enlarged, this original system was applied to it. In each central district there was the same arrangement of buildings secular and religious, the Inca-tampu and the Ccoricancha, to which the produce of the lands belonging to the overlord and the sun was brought at regular intervals. These stations are found generally throughout the Inca domains, except in the coast-valleys. Between them were minor stations where two messengers were kept to carry orders from one stage to the other. Where there were natural difficulties to be overcome, in the long line of communication between the capitals Quito and Cuzco, a distance of 1500 miles in extent, causeways were built, and over streams and torrents enduring bridges were stretched, made of timber laid in strong ropes of twisted grass. There was a second road along the coast of the same length, but here, where the country was sandy, nothing was to be found save direction marks to indicate the correct track to be followed. In Cuzco there are still standing massive, finely-executed foundation walls which attest the skill of Inca builders. The temple of the sun can still be traced in the edifices of the European occupation. On an elevation commanding the road which led to middle Peru, the coast-valleys, and the northern colony there stands an impressive mass of cyclopean masonry, the fortress of Sacsahuaman, which represents the great terraced fortress begun by the founder of the Inca dominion and apparently not yet finished at the time of the conquest.

Though the Incas preserved a systematic administration that worked with mechanical accuracy over the area of their empire, it was at best a despotism, and their chieftains were nothing better than crude and brutal tyrants. The mental capacity of the race seems to have been below that of the people of Mexico, and their culture was certainly lower, as is seen in the absence of artistic advance on their part along with their inability to invent picture-writing, to work out the divisions of time, or to elaborate a system of numbers, although they were acquainted with denary arithmetic, and regularly observed the solstices. As warriors, they seem to have been drilled efficiently but mechanically; they were unable to foresee changes or adapt themselves to them when they came. They were vanquished by the Europeans more easily than the Aztecs had been, and their downfall was brought about by the assistance rendered the Spaniards by hosts of native allies.

IV PIZARRO

The discovery of the Pacific Ocean and the foundation of the city of Panama on the narrow peninsula, led to the undertaking of voyages of exploration farther south, and this in turn to the entrance into Inca territory. In one of these enterprises progress was made as far as the Gulf of Guayaquil. The unanimous report was that the country for hundreds of miles was in a state of nature, unoccupied, unhealthful, covered with swamps, forests, and lofty mountains; but the voyagers had also heard that farther on to the south there was an empire, Bisu by name, civilized and notorious for its great wealth.

Francis Pizarro had been associated with Balboa up to the time of that leader’s assassination; afterwards he planned to act on his own account, and his planning ended in the organization of an expedition to acquire this empire of the south. The natural son of a Spanish noble, Pizarro, who was born about 1471 at Truxillo, had had no such advantages of education as those enjoyed by Cortez; he lacked also that conqueror’s impetuosity and chivalrous traits. Of the bad sides of the earlier conquistador he had more than a double portion; he was cold, calculating, and inflexible, shrinking from no cruelty and without a trace of the emotionalism which made Cortez so popular among his men.