BESULTS OF THE CONQUEST. 73 



Multitudes accepted baptism without any intention of abandoning their old 

 rites, and continued long to celebrate the pagan mysteries in the depths of the 

 forests. Thus a chapel was built and a cross set up immediately above the spot 

 where had been hidden the proscribed image of an idol. When bowing before 

 the cross it was to the god that they addressed their invocations. 



But by force of habit the two cults became gradually merged in one ; at present 

 when any of the old idols happen to be disinterred, it is in perfect good faith that 

 the natives call them santos antiguos, " old saints." The same pious souls that 

 crowd the Christian churches and devoutly kiss the relics of the martyrs, secretly 

 assemble in the woods to crown the images of the former deities with garlands. 



But the conversions, in virtue of which they could claim to be the spiritual 

 brethren of the " Christians," that is, of the Spaniards, did not raise the natives to 

 a position of equality with their conquerors. In the converts the latter at first 

 saw only inferior beings, useful especially when dead, as their fat then served to 

 staunch the wounds of men and horses. They addressed the natives whip in hand, 

 and even in the lifetime of Bernai Diaz a new saying had become current amongst 

 the whites : " Donde nace el Inclio nace el bejuco I " or, as we might say, " Where the 

 Indian is born there grows the cane." Even in recent times the poet Galvj n 

 could exclaim : "I am an Indian, that is, a woim cowering in the grass, avoided 

 b}^ all hands, crushed by all feet." Accordingly the children of the Aztecs may 

 well have more than once sighed for the old order of things. " Why were we 

 happier in the days of barbarism and debasement than since our conversion to your 

 faith ? " the elders of a native community asked Bishop Zumarraga. 



The period immediately following the conquest was the most terrible for the 

 natives. At first some districts were transformed almost to solitudes by those 

 maladies which nearly always break out when distinct races are brought suddenly 

 into contact. The first epidemic of smallpox, said to have been introduced 

 by a negro in the expedition of Narvaez, and which struck down Cuitlahuatzin, 

 Montezuma's successor, was more destructive than the Spanish arms. 



But far more terrible was the matlazahuatl, probably scarlet fever, which raged 

 in 1576, and which, according to Torqueniada, carried off nearly two millions in the 

 dioceses of Mexico, Michoacan, Puebla and Oaxaca. In a period of two hundred 

 and seventy-five years as many as seventeen great epidemics visited Mexico, from 

 all of which the Spaniards remained exempt. According to the missionaries the 

 race itself seemed to have become physically decayed, as if doomed to extinction. 



Those who escaped the plague were more than decimated by the oppressive 

 burdens imposed on them. Although protected from slavery properly so called b}^ 

 the " laws of the Indies," they still remained serfs attached to the soil, and thus 

 fell in tens of thousands with the large estates into the hands of the religious 

 orders by which they had been converted, or else into those of the great capitalists 

 the responsibility of the proprietors being in all cases merely a legal fiction. Nor 

 were the laws themselves enforced, for the province of Panuco was nearly depopu- 

 lated by its own governor, Nuiio de Guzman, who openly sold men and women to 

 the traders from the Antilles, after first branding them with the hot iron. 



