Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1/Appendix 1 of the First Letter
APPENDIX I.
The first attack, of which Cortes makes no mention was made at Catoche, just before dawn, March 6th. The Indians fought with great fury, in spite of the fire-arms which they heard for the first time, and were repulsed only with difficulty, after they had wounded fifteen Spaniards. Bemal Diaz relates that fifteen Indians were killed, and two were captured, who were afterwards baptised Christians, under the name of Melchor, and Julian, by the chaplain Fray Alonzo Gonzalez. The Spaniards looted the temples and houses of their idols and golden ornaments. The Indians at Champoton repeated inquiringly the words "Castelan? Castelan?" and, by gestures, asked if the strangers came from the East. Orozco y Berra (vol. iv., cap. i.,) says that they connected the arrival of the unknown guests with the prophecy of Kukulcan (Quetzalcoatl), foretelling the coming of bearded white men from the land of the rising sun, and also that they had knowledge of Spaniards, from the time of the wreck of Valdivia's men, whom they had probably helped to sacrifice and eat.
The Spaniards passed an anxious night, listening to the noisy preparations of the Indians for battle, and in consulting vainly to discover some escape. At dawn, a hand-to-hand fight was fiercely waged, the Indians showing no fear of fire-arms, and driving the retreating Spaniards into the sea. Fifty Spaniards were killed, and one, Alonzo Bote, and a Portuguese, were captured alive. Bemal Diaz says that every soldier but one had from one to four wounds, for which the only dressing was fat taken from the dead Indians; he himself had three and Francisco Hernandez de Cordoba had twelve wounds. The name of Mala Pelea was given the place to commemorate this disaster.
The Spaniards found here the crosses which excited such interest and speculation that later a whole literature grew up to explain them. Francisco Hernandez de Cordoba had also seen crosses in Cozumel (Bernal Diaz, cap. iii., Oviedo, lib. xvii., cap. viii.; Gomara, Hist, de las Indias, cap. lii., Las Casas, Hist. Apolog., cap. cxxv.).
The crosses found in various parts of Mexico were of several kinds. Those discovered in the western coast provinces, show a Buddhistic type, while those in the eastern parts are like either the simple Latin or Greek shapes. The cross at Metztitlan had the Tau form, while the famous one at Palenque presents no features by which it may be accurately classified, and has been thought to be an astronomical sign, or an emblem of the four winds. That the cross was an object of cult amongst the Indians is certain, though there is much disagreement amongst authorities as to its origin, age, and significance. Bernal Diaz says that if it was of Christian origin and meaning, the natives had forgotten them, and Oviedo, who even regarded the existence of these crosses as a fable, maintained that if they did exist, and the Indians ever had known why they venerated them, they had long since lost, their knowledge. (Oviedo, lib. xvii., cap. viii.). Gomara described the cross seen at Cozumel as the rain-god, and said that quails were sacrificed before it (Gomara, Hist. de las Indias, cap. liv.).
The cross was an instrument of punishment among the Egyptians, Persians, Macedonians, Greeks, and Romans, as also among Buddhist peoples. Hardly an ancient religion is found in which some form of cross does not appear as a symbol. Among the Aryan races, two crossed sticks were the emblem of the sacred fire, produced by friction called pramatha, from which comes the name Prometheus, of Vedic origin. The Tau borne by Isis, symbolised the rainy season (hence fertility) in Abyssinia, and, in the Egyptian cult, was the emblem of fecundation, (phallus of Osiris). Among the Jews, the cross had no sacred character, but was on the contrary, the vilest instrument of capital punishment.