Spaniards, and at one time their defeat, from which only a superhuman rally saved them, at the Battle of Otumba. There was one specially weak point about the Aztec rule. It was a hegemony, exercised over various other Mexican races, who hated Montezuma, the Aztec Emperor, and his people. Cortes was skilful enough to take advantage of this flaw in the Mexican armour, to fan the jealousies of the subject tribes, and enlist them to march against Tenochtitlan, the capital of Mexico. These allied Indians, when the place fell, themselves committed the most unheard-of barbarities on the Aztec population, such as shocked the Spaniards, who were unable to restrain them.
The Conquest of Mexico was effected by 1521, and the success, the romance, the adventure, and the objects of gold and silver sent by Cortes to Spain, and the loot of the soldiers, fired the imagination of the Spaniards in Hispaniola and Darien to other quests. The settlers at Panama had heard of another empire where gold was to be had for the taking, perhaps richer and greater even than that of the Aztecs. This was Peru, and Francisco Pizarro and Diego Amalgro set sail from Panama to explore and conquer that unknown region along the sunset shores of America to the south.
This adventure too was an arduous one, not by reason of the opposition of savage natives, for the Incas of Peru were a gentle and philosophical people, animated by a remarkable social system, and they offered little resistance to the white men and the formidable men-animals, or horsemen, and their guns. It was famine that assailed Pizarro and his followers, and insufficient support. Also he, like Cortes, had to contend with the jealousies and double-dealing of the Spanish Governor of the Indies. As for Peru, its coast was barren, as it is to-day, and only after surmounting the dreadful fastness of the Andes, amid the inclement climate of a region twelve to fifteen thousand feet above the level of the sea, was the Inca Empire reached and subdued. Here lay Cuzco, the Mecca of Peru, and Cajamarca, a more northern capital. The stores of gold recovered seem to have filled these Spaniards' expectations, and great renown was the result of this conquest, which was completed by 1533.
These exploits were followed by a period of strife among the Spaniards, and Pizarro was murdered, after founding Lima, the capital of Peru. But in 1536 the regions lying between Peru and Panama, which to-day we know as Ecuador and Colombia, were explored and conquered, the first by Sebastian de Benalcazar, the second by Jimenez de Quesada. Here were dwelling other advanced people or tribes. Quito, the capital of Ecuador, had been the home of the Shiris, a cultured people who were overthrown by the Incas before the Spanish advent. The city was joined to Cuzco, eleven hundred miles to the south, by the famous Inca roads, one along the Cordillera, the other along the coast. Some early Spanish historian delighted to speak of these roads as equal to those of the Romans, but this was an exaggeration. Colombia was the culture-area of the Chibchas. The Spaniards had heard of a further great empire, a rich El Dorado, in this region, and encouraged by the ease with which Pizarro had conquered Peru, they made their way up the Magdalena River from the Caribbean Sea. A pleasing land and much gold was encountered, after severe hardships, the people being of some considerable degree of civilization, although not of the status of the Aztec or the Inca. The richest plums, in fact, had fallen. Quesada named this region New Granada, with its capital at Bogota.
There still remained the conquest of the huge territory south of Peru, known as Chile, and this, attempted by Almagro in 1537, was carried out by Pedro de Valdivia, who, however, was checked by the redoubtable Araucanian Indians. These form one of the chief admixtures of the Chileans to-day, a hardy and enterprising nation, in contrast with the Peruvians of a more sentimental temperament, with a basis of the Quichua Indians of the Incas. Terrible excesses were committed upon the Indians on these expeditions. A terrible end was visited upon the Spanish leader by the Indians. "You have come for gold," said the savage chief who captured him. "You shall have your fill." And he caused molten burning gold to be poured into his mouth. Then he was cut to pieces with sharpened oyster shells.
From the Southern Andes, the Spaniards, in the following years, descended to the great plains which now form the republics of the River Plate, Argentine, Uruguay and Paraguay. The exploration of Brazil had been begun in 1510, and the region was traversed by Orellana in his descent of the Amazon from Quito, and it was gradually settled by the Portuguese.
The lands lying between Panama and Mexico, which to-day form the Central American States, Guatemala, Costa Rica and others, were conquered after the fall of Mexico. Here were evidences of a splendid past, in the beautiful temples of sculptured stone found in their forests and deserts, ruins even then abandoned. These remains astounded Europe, when they were first revealed.
Thus did all this enormous region of Latin America, from tropical Mexico—indeed, from California—to the frigid extremity of Patagonia, fall into the possession of Spain and Portugal. In some respects it is a dreadful history. The Spaniards overthrew civilizations in Mexico and Peru which in many respects were superior to their own, civilizations that had developed marvellously without the resources that the Old World commanded, for there was neither ox nor horse, nor even iron nor gunpowder. The Spaniards destroyed everything that these people had done. For centuries unknown they had evolved their arts and crafts and laws; laws, in the case of the Incas of Peru, far more beneficial and democratic than anything Europe had produced at that period, and millions of these people were most ruthlessly destroyed.
To read the accounts of the happenings of those times is enough to break one's heart. To-day, throughout the length and breadth of this vast territory—of which not an acre now belongs to Spain—the spirit of the Indian has so far remained faithful that there is not a single statue raised to Cortes or Pizarro. Columbus, of course, is commemorated by his monuments in every capital.
These great New World territories, by virtue of the papal Bull, were held as the peculiar property of the Sovereign. The Spanish possessions were divided into two "kingdoms," the Kingdom of New Spain, consisting of Mexico and all lands to and including Venezuela, and New Castile, later called Peru. This last viceroyalty was found unwieldy, and New Granada and the River Plate regions were constituted apart under viceroys. The administrative powers of these functionaries were very great, but they were held in some control by the Laws of the Indies: measures passed for native protection. Even the frightful dominance of the Inquisition did not extend to the Indians, who were regarded as merely catechumens. Queen Isabella of Spain, by whose imagination and aid discovery of the New World had been rendered possible, would not permit—and her memory should be revered for it—the enslavement of the Indians, if she could prevent it, and when Columbus returned home with a cargo of natives, whom he proposed to sell as slaves, Isabella interfered. Let them be set at liberty, she said, and sent back to their homes. Columbus has in general been represented as a protector of the Indians, and must not necessarily be judged in the light of this incident.
In the general condemnation of Spain at that period, these facts should be recollected. It was declared by the home government that the Indians were to enjoy the privilege of free subjects, and that their native princes were to be upheld in their authority. Censure was frequently visited upon the conquerors and governors of Mexico and Peru, from home, for their displacement or execution of these, as any who will study Spanish colonial history may see. Some modern writers, in their democratic zeal, have overlooked this. The declaration was opposed by the colonists, as well as the colonial authorities, and indeed by the clergy. Some compulsion was necessary, of course, if civilization was to make its way among the Indians, for they were often loath to work, and stood sullenly aloof from the white race. The System of Repartimientos and Encomiendas—the assigning of bodies of Indians to the industrial charge of colonists—was well meant, but the greed of the colonists and their callous habit as regarded human life offset these influences.
Another side of the question also presents itself. Under Philip II, the colonies were governed not so much in their own interests, as for the enrichment of Spain and its predominance. He yearned to injure Protestant England, and the colonists were taxed and goaded to produce wealth, and their interests sacrificed in the furtherance of this end. Those into whose hands the unfortunate Indians had been delivered body and soul, drove the unfortunates into the mines, branded them on the face, flogged them to death, chucked their miserable carcasses aside, when they fell from exhaustion, a prey to the dogs.
We know what these things led to. England and other European nations refused to recognize the exclusive control of the American continents