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Updated: May 29, 2025
When Cortez made his advent here he found Cholula to be the sacred city of the Aztecs, where their main body of high priests and their most venerated temples were located. Is it possible that these mud-built cabins represent a city once so grand and so populous?
The gods were enraged at the presumption of these men, and they sent down fire from heaven upon the pyramid, which caused its building to be discontinued. It is stated that at the time of the Spanish Conquest, the inhabitants of Cholula preserved with great veneration a large aerolite, which they said was the thunderbolt that fell upon the top of the pyramid when the fire struck it.
A force of twenty thousand Mexicans was already quartered near the city to support the Cholulans, and the Spaniards would, it was confidently expected, fall an easy prey to their united enemies. A sufficient number of them were to be reserved to be sacrificed in Cholula, and the rest led in fetters to the capital of Montezuma.
Almost as soon as the city disappears from view, there looms in the distance the grand pyramid of Cholula, crowned by a lofty modern chapel, its dome of enameled and parti-colored tiles glistening in the warm sunshine. Far beyond the pyramid the volcanoes are seen in their lonely grandeur.
The mounds of our Western and Southwestern States are almost the counterpart of this grand elevation at Cholula, so far as the idea goes, except that they are mere pigmies in comparison. The fact is worth recalling that the same species of domestic implements of stone which are found from time to time deeply buried in portions of the United States are also exhumed here.
"We learned it from three people, a lady and two priests; and the Cholula nobles, themselves, when taxed by Cortez with their intention to fall upon us, admitted that the accusation was true. Besides, the whole people were under arms and ready to attack, and poured out under their leaders to the assault, the moment the first gun told that their intentions were discovered.
The exceeding transparency of the atmosphere brings these distant objects seemingly close to the observer, as though he was looking at them through a telescope. The small city of Cholula is spread out at the base of the pyramid, and beyond it are wide, fertile fields of grain and alfalfa, with gardens of semi-tropical fruits.
Again did Montezuma seek counsel from his gods, but the answers he obtained were far from reassuring, and he determined to send another embassy to Cortés to declare that he had nothing to do with the conspiracy at Cholula.
Although a distance of five hundred leagues separates the banks of the Amazon and the Orinoco from the Mexican table-land; although history records no fact that connects the savage nations of Guiana with the civilized nations of Anahuac, the monk Bernard de Sahagun, at the beginning of the conquest, found preserved as relics at Cholula, certain green stones which had belonged to Quetzalcohuatl.
On they went, up-hill still, passing the remains of the old city of Cholula with its ruined Aztec pyramid, and toiling through a mountain region till Rio Frio was reached, fifty miles from Puebla and more than ten thousand feet above the level of the sea. A few miles farther and the beautiful valley of Mexico lay suddenly revealed before them like a vision of enchantment.
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