72 MEXICO, CENTRAL AMEEICA. WEST INDICES. 



it rescued them from a lioj)eless fatalism ; it introduced them, though doubtless 

 through a thorny path, into the new world of common human interests. 



This era of transformation began in a terrible way for the populations of 

 Anahuac. The Spanish conquerors acted in Mexico as they had acted in the 

 Antilles ; they massacred the natives that resisted, and reduced the survivors to a 

 state of merciless slavery. " A long experience," said Peter Martyr Anghiera, 

 " has shown the necessity of depriving these men of freedom and giving them 

 guides and protectors." Thanks to these "protectors," whole provinces were 

 nearly depopulated in a single generation. The siege of Mexico, " where men 

 were numerous as the stars of heaven and the sands of the seashore," is said to 

 have cost the lives of 150,000 persons ; and according to Pimentel, the native 

 population of Nueva Galicia, which has become the present state of Jalisco, was 

 rapidly reduced from 450,000 to 12,600. 



In the swift work of conquest and enslavement, the Spaniards were aided by 

 the very apathy of the wretched inhabitants themselves. The conquered multi- 

 tudes, whom their former masters had crushed beneath an intolerable burden of 

 oppressive laws and statute labour, seemed indifferent to a change of tyrants. 

 They even found it easier to bend the neck to the yoke of the demi- gods armed 

 with thunder, than to rulers of their own race. 



The change, or at least apparent change of religion which went on, so to saj^ 

 simultaneously with the conquest, was also effected without difficulty. When 

 the Franciscan Friars, soon followed by the Dominicans and Augustinians, offered 

 to the Mexican populations the baptism that cleanseth from sin, a rite which 

 in any case scarcely differed from the analogous purifications of the Aztec religion, 

 the surprising success of their propaganda is not to be exclusively attributed to 

 their prestige as conquerors, or to the support which they received from the secular 

 arm. Allowance should doubtless also be made for the happiness of being at last 

 released from the terrorism that the native religions had imposed on the people. 



Toribio de Benavente relates that nine million Indians were baptised during 

 the fifteen first years that followed the conquest. The priests found themselves 

 surrounded by hundreds of kneeling suppliants, and such was the eagerness of the 

 candidates " suifei'ing from the thirst of baptism," that the officiating clergy lacked 

 the time to perform the prescribed ceremonies, and satisfied themselves with 

 moistening the brow of the neophytes with a little saliva. The names of saints 

 supplied by the calendar no longer sufficing, the Indians were grouped in batches 

 each of which received collectively the same name. 



Apart from the sanguinary rites the two religions differed so little in their 

 outward forms that the natives felt little difficulty in conforming to both. When 

 called upon to overthrow their idols, and replace them, in the same temples and on 

 the same sites, with the statue of the Madonna and her Child, the caciques had 

 merely to set up the image of Tecleciguata, the " Great Lady," and the change 

 was effected. But no crucifix was erected, says the Dominican monk, Remesal, 

 " because the Spaniards, claiming immortality for themselves, were reluctant to 

 teach the neophytes that their God could die." 



