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Updated: May 29, 2025
In their last halting-place Cortés had been advised by the natives to take the route to the ancient city of Cholula, the inhabitants of which were a mild race, subjects of Montezuma, and given to peaceful arts, who were likely to receive him kindly.
It originated, she said, with the Aztec emperor, who had bribed the caciques of Cholula, her husband among the number, to assault the Spaniards as they marched out of the city, and to throw them into confusion all sorts of obstacles had been placed in their way.
On his way from Mexico to the coast he remained for a while at Cholula, where a mound and temple was raised to his honor.
Upon the platform at the top stand some trees and a church. The sides front the four cardinal points, and the base line is of immense length, over thirteen hundred feet, so that the ascent is very gradual. When we reached Cholula we sent the two men to enquire in the neighbourhood for antiquities, of which numbers are to be found in every ploughed field round.
The force of the native allies which joined them was estimated at from one hundred and ten thousand, to one hundred and fifty thousand; and consisted not only of the Tlascalan troops, but of those of Cholula, Tepeaca, and other neighboring towns; who, after their defeat by Cortez, had submitted themselves to the Spanish rule.
Velasquez, instead of doing so, set out at once for Mexico; but on his way was met by a messenger from Cortez, who ordered him to stop at Cholula for further orders.
Notwithstanding the anomalous form of its government, Puebla has ever been a great manufacturing town, and at this day consumes a quantity of cotton equal to some of our large manufacturing cities. The living witnesses of the result of this excavation are still at Cholula, and the fact is mentioned in several American works; my inference from the fact is the only novelty in the matter.
Presently Cortés helped the Cholulans to choose a successor to their principal cacique, who was among the slain, and confidence being thus restored the people from the country round began to flock in, the markets were again opened, and the ordinary life of the city resumed, though the black and smouldering ruins remained to tell the sad tale of the massacre of Cholula.
Then there are huge candles without number, martyrs and crucifixions, with all the disgusting and bloody features of elsewhere; every kind and degree and shape and size of fetish. Cholula needs badly another Cortez to tumble her gods down to the plain below and drive out the hordes of priests that sacrifice their flocks none the less surely, if less bloodily, than their Aztec predecessors.
The view from the fort is one of extraordinary interest, taking in three snow-capped mountains, and affording a comprehensive panorama of the city with its myriad domes and fine public buildings, the tree-decked Plaza Mayor, the alameda, the stone bridge over the Aloyac, while over the Cerro de San Juan is seen the church of Los Remedios, which crowns the great earth-pyramid of Cholula.
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