ARGUMENT OF THE POEM.

From the moment of my earliest acquaintance with Colonial History, I have felt all the pressure of a task laid upon me, tightening its grasp as I reached maturer years; that of an attempt to rescue the Aztecs from their letterless and mythical position in history, to the position which their possibilities at least argue for them; and this feeling has been far less the outgrowth of the enthusiasm awakened for the Aztecs, as the indignation felt at the whole conduct of the Spanish Conquest.

Realizing the gravity of the task, I have been led to carefully weigh and investigate the different theories advanced as to the origin of the Aztecs, and to adopt the argument of the poem as the best ground on which to unite the Sun Worship of the East with the Mythology of of the West.

Reverently, and with a full realization of how great must ever be the distance between the actual work and the ideal of my early inspiration, I lay the gathered chaplet at the shrine of old Chapultepec, and only regret that the fruiting should have fallen so far short of the promise of its blooming.

To Hubert Howe Bancroft the living, and W. H. Prescott[vi] the dead, differing as they do in some very material respects, yet essentially the same in spirit, I wish to record my indebtedness for their admirable and exhaustive works that have induced to a final effort the poem of which this is prefatory.

Some years since, I found in an abridged history of the United States, a brief outline that led me back to the Dispersal at Shinar (certainly a safe location for a speculative beginning) for the origin of the Aztec race.

It occurs to me now, with a shade of the ludicrous, that if safety were the all-important thing in the premises, I might have gone back a step farther to the figs and pomegranites of Eden, and prayed for the shade of Adam to cover the exotic which I have humbly tried to rescue from what seems to me to be an undeserved obscurity. The careful analogies drawn between Egypt and the Aztecs by both Prescott and Bancroft could be better met by locating the origin at Shinar than at any other point, as it takes us back to a date where we may consistently locate the Shepherd Kings and the overrunning of Mizraim by them, a part of Egypt's early history which is outlined (more or less briefly) by nearly all early historians.

As to the initial period of Sun Worship and its origin, I could of necessity have but little aid, and if I have seemed a little too speculative, I have only this apology: The prodigy of Egypt's prehistoric development, and the manufacture of glass, antedating historic research. It[vii] needs no great imaginative tension to crown some incipient philosopher not only with the discovery of glass, but, that in its proper shape, it could be made to concentrate the solar rays, and produce fire; and at that day and age, what possible superstitions might result from these discoveries!

After the re-establishment of the Mizraim descent, and the consequent expulsion of the "Sons of Lud," the line of their journey is the natural outgrowth of their religious fanaticism. They know that India and the far East are inhabited, and they seek the uninhabited track for their exit.

The Mound Builders seem to be historic cousins of the Aztecs, certainly the superiors of the aborigines of the North and Middle Atlantic.

The expulsion of the Mound Builders will admit of many theories, and I have simply adopted the one that occurred to me as consistent with the Christian inspiration of all great events.

The settlement of Mexico by the Aztecs, (as a branch of the Mound Builders) follows naturally in the wake of previous events, and the chain is thus made complete, with no serious hazard to its consistency as merely speculative drama, leading up to what is plainly historical.

I have striven to be historically consistent, following the letter of events closely, taking conjectural ground in but few instances.

If I have seemed to be censorious, even to rancor at[viii] times, I have only given vent to the repressed indignation of Prescott and other authors on the subject of the Spanish Conquest.

The only possible justification for the excesses of Cortez and his adherents, is the age in which the Conquest took place; and those who seek to justify it in this way, point to the opening of the present century, and to Napoleon, decoying the imbecile king and the weak Asturias into abdication and banishment to make room for his brother Joseph. This is a plague-mark upon the present century, and though a plain case of retributive justice through the visiting of the sins of the fathers upon the children, still the fact remains that the attempt to bring right of any multiple of wrongs, must always record a failure.

A sufficient answer to the latitude of the age, is the fact that a corresponding age gave us Plymouth, and not long after Penn's colony; nor can the Spaniards claim the same justification for excesses as these coincident colonists, all of whom had felt the lash of religious intolerance. The Spanish Conquest, antedating the divisions that followed the reformation, has no such covert for their lustful excrescences.

Any system of religious ethics that severs human responsibility from the domain of conscience, and furnishes a market for the indulgences that cover all the excesses of the body politic, cannot be expected to bring forth the[ix] best of fruit from a bloom so blighted by human lust, and so blackened by human selfishness.

If, amid all of their intolerance and deceit, they had respected the homely records and the grotesque landmarks of the nation they destroyed, the cavaliers might have shown them as a slight palliation, and at once furnished the historian the shadow of justification for their abuses; but the mental caste that could adopt any, and every device of deception and treachery to accomplish its ends, threw itself at once into the arms of a priestcraft, if possible more implacable than themselves; and obedient to their demands, tore down their landmarks, and ground their records to powder.

Surely, there is no fanaticism like religious fanaticism, and no licentiousness like that of the unbridled devotee of the Church.

Finally, as a whole, I feel confident that my effort will not fail to create food for thought, and eventually justify the effort which called it forth. To a nature partially Huguenot in its origin, and more so in sympathy and inclination, I have tried to add the temperate element that would impart freedom from undue prejudice and passion; but as the work is of necessity vindicatory on the one hand, and repressive on the other, I have been compelled to use good, plain Saxon words in the closing pages, justified only by the verity of their signification.

The body of the work is given in decimeters, varying[x] in only a few cases where the expression seemed to require a different form.

I would rather not close these already extended remarks without recording my testimony, with that of others, of the positive pleasure experienced both in the progress and completion of a work of this character; and if I shall have been as fortunate in securing and retaining an auditory, I shall be twice blessed; for our highest ambition should ever be that of contributing to the happiness of others.

The reward of earnest labor, conscientiously performed, is the prize only once exceeded in the economy of things, and that once beyond the ken of our divulgence; yet, may we not hope that there is no actual severance between the earthly type and the heavenly reality, that the crown honestly won, and the prize worthily gained on earth, may both, retaining their semblance, the more perfectly glow in the clearer atmosphere of heaven.

[1]

EGYPT.

[53]

AZTLAN.

[102]

ANAHUAC.[D]

[108]

[120]

[121]

[145]

MALINCHE.

[147]

INTRODUCTION.

I may properly place "Malinche" as supplementary to "Montezuma," as dealing with characters coincident to, and cotemporaneous with those concerned in the "Conquest," and also as covering a period subsequent to, and immediately succeeding the Conquest.

To the student of history, Malinche (in her position of interpreter during the entire period of the Conquest) presents at once so much that is unique and charming, and yet such a sad commentary on the criminal practices of the sixteenth as well as the nineteenth centuries, that I have often wondered that a stronger and more practiced hand has not ere this claimed the privilege of championship.

According to Prescott, she was born in the town of Painnalla, Province of Coatzacualco, in the southeastern extremity of what is now Mexico; that she was the daughter of a Cacique (a sort of provincial Governor) and prospective heiress to large estates; that after the death of her father, her mother, with indecent haste, forms another union, and in time presents the stepfather with a son; that they jointly combine to be rid of Malinche,[148] whom they sell to itinerant traders; and, to cover their device, they pretend that she is sick and use the child of a servant for their criminal pantomime; the child dies, thus completing the deception, except the hypocritical mourning to which this unnatural mother is said to have been equal.

Malinche is sold by the traders to the Cacique of Tabasco, and reaches maturity about the time of the Conquest. She seems to have been a favorite in the house of the Cacique, which would indicate that he had become acquainted with her origin, and after the surrender of the town to Cortez, she is one of the twenty female slaves presented to the Conqueror and his allies.

Either from enlarged opportunities or her natural aptness, and probably both, she is found by Cortez to be just the person he needs for interpreter. Mutual attraction leads them into the closest relations, and it is but just to Malinche to state that there is no indication of her knowledge of the Conqueror's wife in Cuba, until she arrives at the Capitol. There is also nothing to indicate more than a momentary estrangement between Malinche and Catalina.

Catalina lived but about three months after her arrival at Mexico; and it seems that Malinche assumes the same relations as before, when Cortez journeys South, where in time they reach the precincts of the maiden's nativity, and she meets her mother, after all the years of their cruel separation. Here the beautiful sincerity of the Christianity[149] she had espoused, shines forth as she quiets her mother's fears, and professes to doubt her mother's original intent to sell her. She loads her mother with jewels and seems to cherish no feeling not consistent with the warmest relations of daughter and mother.

The statement soon after is, that Cortez presents her to Don Xamarillo with all the sanction of marriage, and he enriches her with some of the largest estates in her native province; and there the historic account closes. Incidentally, it is mentioned that a son was born during the period of this affaire du cœur.

I stated that the historic account closes here, but M. Charny and others enlarge on the traditionary feeling of South Eastern Mexico, and if we may credit his statements (and many times tradition carries more heart and more of the essential elements of truth in it than the cold pencil of history), Malinche is so woven into the social structure as to become almost the patron saint of that part of the country.

And Prescott (rather inclined to the fruit than the blossom of history) speaks of Malinche as being reverently held by the Aztec descendants as the guardian angel of Chapultepec.

I have endeavored thus to present the salient features of this part of the historic drama, adding and enlarging only as it became necessary to connect the events and do justice to the fair subject of the endeavor; and whatever criticism may be offered, I can, without hesitancy, claim[150] the credit of candor and a desire to eliminate from all the facts of the case the plain, unvarnished truth.

I began at first to write the idyl in nine-syllabic measure, but soon found myself cramped in expression, and in recopying I have thrown off restraint and used the double terminal with both nine and ten syllables, having no desire and finding no occasion to use the eight syllable measure which Longfellow has so immortalized in the "Song of Hiawatha."

The sacred relations of man and wife, like those of any other sacrament entered into voluntarily, are no less binding in the spirit than in the letter of the law; and it is a gratifying truth that the statutes of many of the States of the Union are being so remodeled as to recognize the fact, rather than the form of marriage; and the tendency is, certainly toward the correction of many abuses, as leading to a more enlarged knowledge of social responsibilities.

As long as the sad story of Malinche has a present application, and may be said to be the perspective of the grossly distorted foreground of our social structure, so long will its rehearsal have its use in the world; and I only regret that a stronger hand and a more perfect pen might not have been loaned to its portrayal.

[151]

MALINCHE.

[181]

THE HARP OF THE WEST.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Mexitli, Toltec for Mexico, also the god of war.

[B] Moctheuzoma, the original Aztec name for Montezuma, commonly spoken of as the Elder Montezuma, a pastoral leader still remembered in their legends.

[C] Thaloc, the Aztec god of the lightning.

[D] Anahuac, the country dominated by the Aztecs at the time of the conquest.

[E] "Mars or Mexitli." I have taken the easier of the names given to the war-god. Huitzilopotchli or Mexitli both were used, the former more in general use than the latter, at the time of the conquest.

[F] Huit-zilo-potch-li, the Aztec war-god.

[G] Quetzalcoatl, the god of the harvest, probably some ancient leader deified. See Prescott.

[H] Tlappalan, the Elysian to which Quetzalcoatl passed, probably referred to the chambers of the sun.

[I] Nez-a-hual-co-yotl, one of the famous kings of Tezcuco (a nation allied to that of the Aztecs). Prescott enlarges on his character, truly a wonderful one for the time and age.

[J] Montezuma, a corruption from the original Aztec, which was Moctheuzoma.

[K] Nez-a-hual-pil-li, successor to Neza-hual-co-yotl, and a worthy one, though not so gifted.

[L] Tecollas, Temples of worship.

[M] Caligula, a Roman Emperor whose name has become a synonym of crime.

[N] Courier, a courier came daily from the coast, and Couriers from different parts of the Empire; their only script was the picture prints; rude, it is true, and yet wonderful in conveying the different shades of meaning.

[O] Montezuma's protest against human sacrifice though not literally fact, so far as the historic record is concerned, is hazarded as not inconsistent with his historic character.

[P] Tlalocan, Prescott has not left on record the name of the High Priest, and the name given, I have thought in keeping with the Aztec language.

[Q] Teuhtlile, the Embassador sent to meet Cortez. He was high in the councils of the King.

[R] Malinche, Interpreter and Mistress of Cortez.

[S] Las Casas, a worthy Spanish Padre, who was constantly protesting against the villanous conduct of the cavaliers. Prescott pays him a glowing tribute.

[T] Te-noch-ti-tlan, the Aztec for the city of Mexico.

[U] Olmedo, a priest of that easy piety that characterized the cavalier, ready to grant absolution in case of all excesses.

Transcriber's Notes:

Many stanzas do not end with any punctuation. As author's intent could not be divined, this was retained.

At times, a continued quotation was given a new opening quotation mark at the start of a new page. As, again, author's intent was not obvious this was left as printed. Stanzas across pages were difficult to place.

The remaining corrections made are indicated by dotted lines under the corrections. Scroll the mouse over the word and the original text will appear.