Page:A Study of Mexico.djvu/71

was accused "of a pompous and presumptuous way of dealing with historic facts," and a "curious boldness" in rejecting "the Spanish chronicles and the writings of Prescott, without offering any better authority to upset them." The question at issue, however, is not one of sentiment, but of fact; and if the evidence concerning the tools and implements, the manufactures and architecture, the absence of domestic animals, the lack of facilities for transportation, the ignorance of money and of a written language, the existence of a ferocious religious faith, and the practice of cannibalism, which the author has adduced in respect to the race which the Spaniards found dominant in the country at the time of their invasion, is fully in accordance with the facts and unimpeachable, then the latitude of deduction is so very narrow that the charge of presumption against those who may differ from the conclusions of the Spanish chroniclers certainly can not be well founded. Again, Cortes landed in Mexico with a force of five hundred and fifty Spaniards, two to three hundred Indians, a few negroes, and twelve or thirteen horses; and, with the small force, considerably reduced in numbers, but with some six thousand Indian allies, he completely overthrew and subjugated an empire whose chief city, according to Mr. Prescott, contained a population of three hundred thousand. As no such results in warring against foreign or savage nations had ever before been achieved by Europeans—the comparatively small tribe-of the West India Caribs, for example, having even then (as well as subsequently) successfully resisted subjugation by the Spaniards—Cortes and his associates undoubtedly foresaw that the inferences of the European public would be, that the races they subdued were in the highest degree effeminate and incapable of much resistance; and with such an anticipation what could be more natural than that they should magnify the numbers and the civilization of their opponents, as a guarantee of their own valor and apparently superhuman achievements? The author has also the satisfaction of learning, since his views were first presented to the public, that they are in full accord with the Independent conclusions of some of the leading American archaeologists and historians.