For These
Great Services, His Majesty Has Often Issued Orders That We Should Be
Amply Rewarded, But His Orders Have Not Hitherto Been Obeyed.
My narrative
will afford sufficient materials for future historians to celebrate the
fame of our general, Cortes, and the merits of those brave conquerors by
whom this great and holy enterprise was achieved.
This is not a history of
ancient nations, made up of vain reveries, and idle hearsays, but contains
a true relation of events of which I was an actor and an eye-witness.
Gomara received and wrote such accounts of these events as tended to
enhance the fame and merit of Cortes exclusively, neglecting to make
mention of our valiant captains and brave soldiers; and the whole tenor of
his work shews his partiality to that family, by which he is patronized.
By him also the doctor Illescas, and the bishop Paulus Jovius have been
misled in the works which they have published. But in the course of this
history, as a vigilant pilot proceeds cautiously among shoals and
quicksands by the help of the line, so I, in my progress to the haven of
truth, shall expose the errors and misrepresentations of Gomara: Yet if I
were to point out every error he has committed, the chaff would much
exceed the grain.
I have brought this history to a conclusion, in the loyal city of
Guatimala, the residence of the royal audience, this 26th of February 1572.
SECTION I.
Expedition of Hernandez de Cordova, in 1517.
I left Castille in the year 1514, along with Pedro Arias de Avila, then
appointed to the government of Tierra Firma, and arrived with him at
Nombre de Dios. A pestilence raged in the colony at our arrival, of which
many of the soldiers died, and most of the survivors were invalids. De
Avila gave his daughter in marriage to a gentleman named Vasco Nunez de
Balboa, who had conquered that province; but becoming afterwards
suspicious that Balboa intended to revolt, he caused him to be beheaded.
As troubles were likely to take place in this colony, several of us who
were men of good families, asked permission from Avila to go over to Cuba,
which had been lately settled under the government of Diego Velasquez. He
readily granted this request, as he had brought more soldiers from Spain
than were needed in his province, which was already subdued. We went
accordingly to Cuba, where we were kindly received by Velasquez, who
promised to give us the first lands that fell vacant; but, after waiting
three years, reckoning from the time of leaving Spain, and no settlements
offering, an hundred and ten of us chose Francisco Hernandez de Cordova
for our captain, a wealthy gentleman of Cuba, and determined to go on a
voyage of discovery under his command. For this purpose, we bought two
vessels of considerable burthen, and procured a bark on credit from
Velasquez, who proposed as a condition, that we should make a descent on
the islands called Los Guanages, between Cuba and Honduras, to seize a
number of the inhabitants as slaves, in order by their sale to repay the
expence of the bark:
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