and shields, two-handed swords, fire-hardened darts, and slings, and every man protected by an armor of quilted cotton." They would encircle these impudlent interlopers, and did they not fall fainting beneath their brave yells and savage music, they would crush them like flies. And by way of beginning, they sent forth a cloud of arrows, stones, and charred darts, wounding many and killing one, a soldier named Saldaña. The Spaniards answered with their cross-bows and firelocks, and mowed the packed masses with their cannon. The soft soil and ditches were less to the agile Indian than to the heavily accoutred Spaniard.
It adds nothing to the honor of Spanish arms to throw in at this juncture a miracle to terrify the already half-paralyzed Indians, who might otherwise prove too strong for their steel-clad assailants; but the records compel me. While in the dire embrace of heathen hordes, midst thrust and slash and crash of steel and stone, the enemy hewn down and driven back only to give place to thrice the number, behold, upon a gray-spotted steed, a heavenly horseman appeared, and from a slight eminence overlooking the bloody field he frowned confusion on the foe. The heathen warriors were stricken powerless, enabling the Spaniards to form anew; but when the horseman vanished, the Indians rallied. Thrice, with the same effect, the awful apparition came and went.[1] Then
- ↑ Cortés, on coming up and being told of this, shouted, Onward, companions! God is with us!' Relacion, in Icazbalceta, Col. Doc., ii. 559-60. Gomara, who fervently adopts the story, states that the rider was one of the apostles, in the person of Morla. "Todos dixeron, que vieron por tres vezes al del cauallo rucio picado . . . . y que era Santiago nuestro patron. Fernando Cortés mas queria que fuessesan Pedro, su especial auogado . . . . aun tambien los Indios lo notaron . . . . De los prisioneros que se tomaro se supo esto.' Hist. Mex., 32-3. Pizarro y Orellana, Varones Ilvstres, 72-3, gives arguments to show that it could have been none other than Santiago, as the patron of Spaniards. After a struggle with his pious fears, Bernal Diaz ventures to observe that Gomara may be right, but I, unworthy sinner, was not graced to see either of those glorious apostles.' Testimony was taken about the battle, and had this occurred it would have been spoken of. I say that our victory was by the hand of our Lord Jesus Christ, for in that battle the Indians were so numerous that they could have buried us with handfuls of earth. Hist. Verdad., 22-3. Las Casas scouts the story as a fabrication of Cortés, written down by 'his servant Gomara,' in 'his false history.' Hist. Ind., iv. 477.
