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Updated: May 24, 2025
I would much rather that they would be content to treat me for what I am a man like themselves, only of a different race and color." Roger had many conversations of this kind with Malinche, and as he felt his position becoming daily more precarious among the Tabascans, had come to believe that he should have at least as good a chance, among the Aztecs, as where he was.
Making friends with the Tabascans, and leaving one hundred and fifty men to guard his base of supplies at Vera Cruz and to watch the coast, Cortes began his march toward Mexico on the sixteenth day of August, 1519. He proceeded with the greatest caution.
There were many dialects among the various peoples under the sway of the Aztecs; but all could understand each other, as they had all come down, from the far north, to settle in the country. Thinking the matter over he determined, if possible, that he would someday make his way over to Malinche's country, which seemed so far in advance of the Tabascans.
To secure to this son the inheritance, she sold her little daughter, too young to realize the unfortunate transaction, to some traders of Xicalango, who in turn disposed of her to a coast tribe of Aztecs called the Tabascans. She lived in bondage with the Tabascans until she was nineteen years old. She developed into a woman of rare beauty and unusual intellect.
The artillery did much to bring this about, but was not especially terrifying to the aborigines because they crowded in such numbers around the Spaniards, and made such terrific outcries, beating on their drums the while, that they drowned out the noise of the cannonade; but when Cortes at the head of the horsemen sallied out from the woods, and fell upon them, the strange, terrifying spectacle presented by these mail-clad monsters and demons, took the heart out of the Tabascans, and they abandoned the contest, leaving, so the chroniclers say, countless numbers dead upon the field.
The Tabascans, cowed by the dreadful thunder weapons, and by the astounding armed creatures that had fallen upon them, had no wish for further fighting, and the principal caziques soon came in with offerings to propitiate the Spaniards. Among these were twenty female slaves one of whom turned out a more valuable gift to the Spaniards than all the other presents, put together.
That was the advantage we had from having always treated them well, while the cazique of Ayotlan had been a tyrant, and had greatly oppressed them. So they brought in provisions to us for sale, and we had less difficulty, in that way, than the people of the town." At last the villages of the Tabascans were left behind.
The treasure already acquired was large, the unhealthiness of the climate had alarmed them, and the proofs of the wealth and greatness of the Mexican Empire had convinced them that it needed a vastly larger force than that which Cortez had under his orders to undertake an expedition against it; for the courage showed by the Tabascans had proved conclusively that, ill armed as they were, the natives were not to be despised.
Presently, however, the female slaves informed him that one of their number, named Malinche, was a native of Mexico, and spoke that language as well as the tongue of the Tabascans. She was at once installed as interpreter she informing Aquilar what the Mexicans said, and he interpreting it to Cortez.
Their gods were very powerful, and all prisoners taken in war were sacrificed to them. They had rich mantles and clothing, and the Tabascans were but savages, in comparison. Being asked how it was that she, who was a native of such a nation, came to be a slave among the Tabascans, she replied with tears that she had been sold.
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