Amerigo

“ As they saw the natives so gentle, meek, and tractable, although neither could understand a single word of what the other said, and therefore the Spaniards could not teach the Indians any doctrine, yet, says Americo, they baptized an infinite number; whence it appears how little Americo, and those who were with him, appreciated the practice of the sacraments and the reverence that is due to them, nor even the disposition and frame of mind with which they should be received. It is manifest that those Christians, in baptizing the natives, committed a great offence against God. ”

“ Verver were making the occasion easy. They were somehow conjoined in it, conjoined for a present effect as Maggie had absolutely never yet seen them; and there occurred, before long, a moment in which Amerigo's look met her own in recognitions that he couldn't suppress. The question of the amount of correction to which Charlotte had laid herself open rose and hovered for the instant only to sink conspicuously by its own weight; so high a pitch she seemed to give to the unconsciousness of questions, so resplendent a show of serenity she succeeded in making. ”

“ The Christians determined to send fifty-seven men against them, divided into four companies, each with a captain, intending, says Americo, to make friends with them if possible, but if not, to treat them as enemies, and to make slaves of as many as they could take. This is said by Americo, and it is to be noted here how he makes a pretext of truth and justice and legality, when the Spaniards had promised to go a hundred leagues on a message of war and vengeance. ”

“ They had built strong and piled high—based as it was on such appearances—their conviction that, thanks to her native complacencies of so many sorts, she would always, quite to the end and through and through, take them as nobly sparing her. Amerigo was at any rate having the sensation of a particular ugliness to avoid, a particular difficulty to count with, that practically found him as unprepared as if he had been, like his wife, an abjectly simple person. ”

“ Maggie had liked, in London and in the world at large, so many more people than she had thought it right to fear, right even to so much as judge, that it positively quickened her fever to have to recognise in this case such a lapse of all the sequences. It was only that a charming clever woman wondered about her—that is wondered about her as Amerigo's wife, and wondered moreover with the intention of kindness and the spontaneity almost of surprise. ”

“ Pray God that they did not make this war to fill up their ships with natives, with a view to selling them for slaves, as they afterwards did in Cadiz; work too often done by our people against these unfortunate tribes and lands. They set out, and after seven days they came upon numerous islands, some peopled and others uninhabited, says Americo, at last arriving at their destination. These islands cannot be others than those we reach in coming from Spain, such as Dominica and Guadalupe, and the others that lie in that line. ”

“ Six other guests only, in addition to the host and the hostess of Matcham, made up the company, and each of these persons had for Maggie the interest of an attested connexion with the Easter revels at that visionary house. Their common memory of an occasion that had clearly left behind it an ineffaceable charm—this air of beatific reference, less subdued in the others than in Amerigo and Charlotte, lent them, together, an inscrutable comradeship against which the young woman's imagination broke in a small vain wave. ”

“ At last they left the port, wherever it may have been, within those 200 leagues of mainland from Paria onwards. They were received and served by the people of that region, who were innumerable, according to Americo, as if they had been angels from heaven, and as Abraham had known the three, so they were recognised as angels. They unloaded the ships and brought them to land, always helped by the labour of the Indians. They careened and cleared them, and built a new brigantine. ”

“ Secondly, Americo went with Hojeda, either as a pilot or as one who knew something of the sea, for he is mentioned jointly with Juan de la Cosa and other pilots; or perhaps he went as an adventurer, contributing part of the expenses and having a share in the profits. Thirdly, we refer to what Americo confesses in his first Navigation, which is, that he reached a place called Paria by the Indian natives; also, that in a certain part or province of the coast of the mainland, or in an island where they made war, the Indians wounded twenty-two men and killed one. ”

“ This is certain (as will be seen further on in the course of the history, if it please the all-powerful God) , that all these people of the Indies, being by nature most simple and kind, know well how to serve and please those who come to them, when they look upon them as friends. When after having repaired their ships and built the brigantine they determined to return to Spain, Americo here says that their hosts made great complaints of another cruel and ferocious tribe, inhabiting an island at a distance of [93] 100 leagues ”

“ New Mexico, it must be remembered, is more Indian and Mexican than American by a proportion of three to one, and includes a sprinkling of negro and Chinese. The Indian lends a touch of the primitive; the Mexican brings Spain into the picture. In doorways painted sky blue or lavender, swarthy women gossip, in mantilla and fringed black shawl. Against a shady wall, in sash and sombrero, all but too lazy to light the inevitable cigarette, slouches a Mexican who should be working. ”

“ This, then, was the great thing that the Santa Fé trail did for us, although we have forgotten it. It taught the people of New Mexico that the Americans were a greater and stronger people, a more just and steadfast people, than those to the south, who had done naught in all their lives but butcher and hesitate, butcher again and vacillate. They were not sad to take on the institutions of the United States in exchange for those of Spain. The Old World had not established its ways on the soil of the New World. ”

“ In the meantime the settlement of America went on rapidly. Florida, the valley of the Mississippi, Canada, and New England became powerful colonies forming the nucleus of new countries, which had never heard of the civilizations [pg 88] of Mexico and Peru, and whose only knowledge of Indians was gathered from the savage tribes from which they had wrested the soil. In 1610 the Spanish historian Solis wrote an account of the subjugation of Mexico, in which the conquerors were portrayed in glowing colors. ”

“ Shall our German infidelity and mis-education make our land like Mexico? Or shall a holy faith and a holy life make this land like the New England of our fathers? As Mr. Lincoln said, "Our nation must be all slave or all free;" and as One infinitely greater said, "A house divided against itself can not stand;" so America, North and South, the United States and Mexico, must be all Christian in its Sabbath sanctity, or all diabolic.
I walked out in the afternoon to the cemetery, feeling that the best church and congregation were to be found there. ”

“ Since the United States Americans have revealed to the world, by seizing one-half of Mexico, whither their ambition tends, the inhabitants of that fine country have slightly emerged from the torpor they enjoyed, and have made great efforts to colonise their provinces, and summon to their soil, which is so rich and fertile, intelligent and industrious labourers, who might change the face of affairs, and cause abundance and wealth to abound at spots, where, prior to their arrival, there was naught save ruin, desolation, carelessness, and misery. ”

“ Let that power and influence which took hold of the natives of Mexico speak and say to those who took hold of the other side: "Here is our work. Mexico as it is today is peopled mainly by descendants of the races we found here. Now show us your work."
The question is which are the greater people, Americans or Mexicans? The question should be, which are the greatest the Mexican or American Indians?
If Mexico continues to improve and the people to advance in the future as they have for a few years past, the question may yet become, which people are the most advanced? ”

“ Not that the weak, vitiated Spanish American extends his sway from the Atlantic to the Andes: on the contrary, the Indian aborigines, under one name or another, are masters of the whole interior,—not only to the north of the Rio Negro, but to the very shores of the Caribbean Sea! Yes, the broad inland of South America, from Cape Horn to the sea of the Antilles, is now, as it always has been, the domain of the Red Indian; who, so far from having ever been reduced by conquest, has not only resisted the power of the Spanish sword, and the blandishments of the Spanish cross ”

“ Being on the point of burying himself with his company in the heart of Mexico—of passing through fanatic, credulous, and ignorant tribes, with whom it was important to live in peace, and give them no pretext for quarrelling—it was of the highest interest to the count to show by an undeniable proof that the French were not gringos, but, on the contrary, as good catholics as the Sonorians. ”

“ Let us hope that the tranquillity is permanent and that a long season of peace and prosperity has come to settle upon the long tormented, much enduring valley of Mexico, and the broad plateau of Anahuac. Now, at last, may the Indians, descendants of the Aztec chief, look up and hope for the development of their race. For the first time in history they have a chance to show whether they are capable of taking a leading place among the races of the earth. ”

“ Among the Indian races, of whom only a few can be united linguistically in groups—as in respect to language the same heterogeneity prevails in America as among the negroes of Africa—still further migrations have been undertaken. These can easily be traced to their objective points. In North America such a point is the fruitful table-land of Mexico, toward which that stem, which in the north had attained among its kindred to a higher culture and greater strength, directed its victorious march. ”

“ By this single abstract from the history of Mexico at that period we may see that, while the British colonies in America were struggling for independence, the Spanish colonists of America were delving in the mines to furnish the mother country with money to carry on her wars. While our forefathers were fighting to free our country from tyranny the Mexicans were riveting yet more strongly the golden chains that bound them to their oppressor! ”

“ Both these poor fellows remain unavenged. The Anglo-American, who is admirably protected by the officials of his government in Europe, Asia, and Africa, is systematically neglected—teste Mexico—in America. ”

“ From Mexico went forth the first authenticated expeditions for the exploration of the districts now forming the south-western states of North America, and to the restless ambition of Cortes may be traced much of the hatred of the white man which still distinguishes the Apaches, Pueblos, Shoshones, and other aboriginal tribes of New Mexico, Arizona, and California. ”

“ Roundhead and Cavalier, Easterner and Westerner, Germans, Yankees, Scotch-Irish—all Americans. We marched, I say, under a form of government; yet each took his original marching orders from his own soul. We marched across an America not yet won. Below us lay the Spanish civilization—Mexico, possibly soon to be led by Britain, as some thought. North of us was Canada, now fully alarmed and surely led by Britain. West of us, all around us, lay the Indian tribes. Behind, never again to be seen by most of us who marched, lay the homes of an earlier generation. ”

“ ORIGIN OF THE MEXICAN CIVILIZATION—ANALOGIES WITH THE OLD WORLD When the Europeans first touched the shores of America, it was as if they had alighted on another planet,—every thing there was so different from what they had before seen. They were introduced to new varieties of plants, and to unknown races of animals; while man, the lord of all, was equally strange, in complexion, language, and institutions. ”

“ There was no gold there, and, moreover, the inhabitants of its coasts had always given the visiting Spaniards such warm receptions that they were always glad to leave them alone after a single trial of their prowess. Anxious as they were for the bringing of these Indians under the influence of their religion, the acquisition of wealth was a matter of vastly greater concern. So the tide of conquest flowed over all Mexico, and extended even to Guatemala and the Pacific, before it more than lapped the shores of Yucatan. ”

“ Many an Indian tribe never saw a white man before, and some, perhaps, have never seen one since. Mexico was his first hunting-ground, and thither he returned more than once; Cuba the second. Thence he was drawn to the Rocky Mountains, California, and Sierra Nevada. Then in succession he visited Panama, New Granada, Sierra Nevada again, California again, Washington Territory, Panama again, Bonaventura, the Cauca valley, Antioquia, Northern Peru, crossed the Andes, returned to Bonaventura, and thence to Europe. ”

“ Throughout the whole Continent of America, the same causes were everywhere in operation; and, with little or no difference in point of time, they every where produced the same effects: in Cărācăs, Būēnos Ayres, Bŏgŏtā, Cărthăgēnă, Chīlĕ, Upper Peru, and Mexico, by one simultaneous movement, the people deposed the European Authorities, and transferred the reins of Government to Juntas, composed almost exclusively of Native Americans. ”