Panuco

“ The town of Panuco may contain about seventy families; the most of their houses are of lime and stone, and some made of timber, and all of them are thatched. It is a poor country, and there is neither gold nor silver in it. The inhabitants live there in great abundance of victuals and servants. The richest have not above five hundred crowns rent a year, and that is in cotton cloths, hens, and maize, which the Indians their servants do give them for tribute. There arrived there of those that came out of Florida, three hundred and eleven Christians. ”

“ My favourite excursion was to descend the Panuco, till we made the opening of the small broken channel which winds between oyster beds and green verdant banks, and forms the communication with the southern lagoon, upon whose shore the old settlement is situated. At such times the morning breeze would generally fill your sail, and bring you without much labour under the little thatched landing place, which, once the scene of so much bustle, is now nearly deserted. ”

“ They were addicted to the vice of drunkenness to a most terrible degree, and the inhabitants of Panuco had the most filthy and unheard-of custom, of injecting the wine of their country, by means of hollow canes, into their bodies, in the same way we should take a clyster. Various other vices and abominations were practised among them; and every man took as many wives as he liked.
We, the few veteran Conquistadores who escaped alive from the battles and perils we encountered, succeeded, with the aid of God, to turn these people aside from their abominations. ”

“ We left Tampico by automobile for the Panuco oil field, and when we reached a point about 20 kilometers east of Panuco we had to abandon our auto in a bog and walk. Our luggage consisted of a gun, two kodaks, three coats and a heavy money bag which we have never dared to leave out of sight. The chauffeur when we abandoned him to 260 his car, had assured us that Panuco was four miles away, “Just over the hill.” We started trustingly and full of energy, two kilometers rough walking over the sunbeaten shadeless plain was a bad start. ”

“ They landed, but the people of Florida killed so many of them that they did not dare to settle there. They then sailed along the coast and came to the river of Panuco, five hundred [277] leagues from the peninsula of Florida, measured on a course along the coast. The natives attacked them at every place. Many of them were killed at Chila [near the mouth of the river Panuco] , where the natives flayed and eat those who fell into their hands, and hung up the skins in their temples to commemorate their valor. ”

“ From Panuco to the great city of Temistitan, Mexico, is sixty leagues; and other sixty from Panuco to the port de Vera Cruz, where they take shipping for Spain, and those that come from Spain do land to go for Nueva España. These three towns stand in a triangle: to wit, Vera Cruz to the south, Panuco to the north, and Mexico to the west sixty leagues asunder. The country is so inhabited with Indians that from town to town those which are farthest are but a league and half a league asunder. ”

“ On the 2d of July, 1543, the scanty remnant of the once powerful band embarked on the waters of the great river, and for seventeen days floated downward, while the Indians on the bank poured arrows on them incessantly as they passed. Fifty days later a few haggard, half-naked survivors of De Soto's great expedition landed at the Spanish settlement of Panuco in Mexico. They had long been given up as lost, and were received as men risen from the grave. ”

“ We notice, on the coast, the Gulf of Tampico, into which pours the river Panuco. From an antiquarian point of view, this is a most interesting locality. It was here that a feeble remnant of De Soto’s disastrous expedition found a refuge in 1543. And it was here that, at a far earlier period, according to the dim, uncertain light of tradition, the ancestors of some of the civilized nations of Mexico made their first appearance; of this, more hereafter. Certain it is that, commencing at this river, we find ourselves in a land of ruins. ”

“ The Panuco swung round to the west and had its source somewhere up in the mountains. Ken decided that the Santa Rosa was one of its headwaters. Valles lay up on the first swell of higher ground, and was distant from Tampico some six hours by train. So, reckoning with the meandering course of jungle streams, Ken calculated he would have something like one hundred and seventy-five miles to travel by water from Valles to Tampico. There were Indian huts strung along the Panuco River, and fifty miles inland a village named Panuco. ”

“ The banks of the river are described as being very beautiful, which we can easily believe from what we have already seen; but for its beauties after passing Tampico; its wooded shores dotted with white ranches, its large cattle-farms, and its picturesque, old Indian town of Panuco, we must trust to hearsay. The country in the vicinity is described as being a wilderness of rare trees, matted together with graceful and flowering creepers, the wild haunts of birds of bright and beautiful plumage ”

“ Immediately after this city of Temixtitan and its dependencies were recovered there were reduced to the Imperial Crown of Your Cæsarian Majesty two provinces called Tututepeque [6] and Mezclitan [7] which are forty leagues towards the north and border on the province of Panuco. The country is an extremely strong one, and the people are well versed in the exercise of arms on account of the adversaries who surround them on all sides. ”

“ His absence in Pánuco gave rise to the report in some quarters that he had departed for Spain, and the troublesome mountaineers of Tututepec, [22] a district between Cempoala and Pánuco, took advantage of his supposed absence, encouraged also by false information from Huasteca. Not alone did they rebel, but they made a raid on the adjoining peaceful territory, burning more than twenty villages. Cortés was on the way back from San Estévan, when messengers from the ravaged district came with their complaints. ”

“ Men destined for so comparatively unattractive a region as Pánuco must have been pleased by the prospect of ready spoils and Mexican treasures soon to fall into their hands under so able and successful a leader as Cortés. ”

“ Finding myself on the march from the province of Panuco, I returned and subdued them, and, although at the outset they killed some of our friendlies who had straggled behind, and some ten or twelve horses foundered on account of the roughness of the mountain roads, all the province was conquered, and the lord and his brother, a youth, and another, his captain-general, who guarded one of the frontiers, were captured. The lord and his captain-general were immediately hanged, and all who were captured in the war, perhaps two hundred persons, were made slaves and were branded and sold by auction. ”

“ The troops of Garay, including those three companies which landed in San Juan de Ulua, previous to his own arrival, amounted, according to my computation, to about twelve hundred men, most of whom were captured by the Indians of Panuco, and their flesh devoured at their festive orgies. Of the fifteen men who survived the expedition of Vasquez de Aillon to Florida, and joined our army, not a single man is now remaining! ”

“ Sailing northward along the coast of Mexico, “we [236] first came,” says Diaz, “in sight of Tusta, and two days after, of the more elevated mountains of Tuspa, both of which take their names from two towns close to these mountains. Along this part of the coast we saw a number of towns lying from six to nine miles inland. It is now the province of Panuco.” On account of the approach of winter, the scarcity of provisions, and the leaky condition of one of the vessels, the explorers determined to return to Cuba; Pedro de Alvarador having previously set sail for the island. ”

“ In Panuco, a part of the ancient empire, 400 nobles, who were concerned in an insurrection, were burned to death. On the mere suspicion of a design to shake off the yoke and excite his former subjects to revolt, Cortés ordered Guatemozin to be hung, together with the cacique of Tacuba. The poor inhabitants were everywhere reduced to bondage, and forced to live under the galling yoke of their oppressors. The Spaniards revelled in the luxuries and splendors of this ancient empire, while the descendants [79] of kings and caciques were their vassals and slaves. ”

“ In the same year 1523, Cortes went with 300 Spanish foot, 150 horse, and 20,000 Mexicans, to make a complete discovery and conquest of Panuco, and to punish the inhabitants for having killed and devoured the soldiers of Francis Garay. The natives resisted him, but were overthrown; and to keep the country under subjection, he built a town on the river, near Chila, which he named Santo Stephano del Puerta, in which he left a garrison of 100 foot and 30 horse, under the command of Peter de Valleia. ”

“ The inhabitants of this province of Panuco were the most barbarous of all the tribes in New Spain, being cruel to excess, exceedingly addicted to human sacrifices, drunken, filthy, and wicked beyond belief. They frequently rebelled, and were as often punished in a most exemplary manner; but all would not reduce them under good government: But when Nunez de Guzman became governor of New Spain, he reduced the whole nation to slavery, and sold them among the different Islands of the West Indies. ”

“ Upon the hypothesis that the San Pedro y San Pablo and the Tuxpan were two streams, the latter may have been the Rio de Canoas of Grijalva and the Pánuco discovered by Montejo and Alaminos the year following, as Kohl surmises, but not otherwise. Herrera says the expedition did not pass Cabo Rojo; Bernal Diaz speaks of a wide projecting cape, which does not exist beyond the Pánuco River. ”

“ Bernal Diaz says, Hist. Verdad., 10, ‘Y esto es ya en la Provincia de Panuco: é yendo por nuestra nauegaciõ llegamos á vn rio grande, que le pusimos por nõbre Rio de Canoas.’ The nomenclature of this stream is quite regular in the several times and places. Cortés gives Rio Panuco loaton; Colon, R: panuco; Ribero and Vaz Dourado, panuco; Orontius, R. panico; Hood, Panuço; Baptista Agnese, panucho, and rio panucho; no. vi. Munich Atlas the same; Ptolemy, 1530, in Munster, Panuco; Mercator, river and town Panuco, and next town south Chila. And so on with Hondius, Ogilby, Dampier, and the rest. ”

“ The bank of the river is very bold, and the water of sufficient depth to allow vessels to anchor close to the shore; and the navigation inland is uninterrupted for more than a hundred miles. The town is laid out in regular squares. The site is a sort of low flat shelf of land, forming the terminus of a rocky peninsula, above and back of which there is a cluster of lakes or ponds, having an outlet into the Panuco. These ponds, like those in the vicinity of Vera Cruz, are fruitful of yellow fever, which annually ravages this devoted coast. ”

“ But afterward the Spaniards having recruited and got together in a Body, they resolved to take the City and carried it at last, wherein most detestable Butcheries were acted, a vast number of the people slain, and their Rulers perished in the Flames.
All these horrid Muders being commited in Mexico and other Cities ten, fifteen and twenty miles distant. This same Tyranny and Plague in the abstract proceeded to infest and lay desolate Panuco; a Region abounding with Inhabitants even to admiration, nor were the slaughters therein perpetrated less stupendous and wonderful. ”

“ Diaz further observes: “While we were lying at Villa Segura, Cortes was informed by letters that one of the vessels which Garay had fitted out for the purpose of forming settlements on the river Panuco had arrived at Vera Cruz. This vessel was commanded by a certain Comargo, and had on board more than sixty soldiers, who were all in bad health, with their bodies greatly swelled. ”

“ Some of them that came from Florida stayed a month in Panuco to rest themselves, others fifteen days, and every one as long as he listed: for there was none that showed a sour countenance to his guests, but rather gave them anything that they had, and seemed to be grieved when they took their leave. Which was to be believed; for the victuals which the Indians do pay them for tribute, are more than they can spend: and in that town is no commerce; and there dwelt but few Spaniards there, and they were glad of their company. ”

“ Ancient Remains in the State of Vera Cruz.
During the sojourn of Mr. Norman in Mexico, in 1844, as described in his "Rambles by Land and Water," he made an excursion to visit the ancient town of Panuco, where he was received with the greatest kindness and hospitality by the white and half-breed inhabitants. His route lay along the banks of the river, and across the prairies: the common road being only a bridle path through the forest which is never travelled but with the greatest caution and watchfulness. Here, as in the State of Tamaulipas, he visited the Indian huts that lay in his way ”

“ When the adelantado, Francisco de Garay, arrived in that province, as I shall relate to Your Cæsarian Majesty later, neither he, nor any of those with him, would have escaped alive; for the wind drove them thirty leagues from Panuco where they lost some ships, and the others were driven disabled ashore, where, had they not found the people at peace, and ready to carry them on their backs, and serve them, in a Spanish town, they would have all perished, even had there been no other hostilities. ”