Salazar
Shewed These Letters To Our Several Relations In Mexico, Who All Put On
Mourning, And So Universally Were We All Believed To Be Dead, That Out
Properties Had Been Sold By Public Auction.
The factor Salazar even
assumed to himself the office of governor and captain-general of New Spain;
a monument was erected to the honour of Cortes, and funeral service was
performed for him in the great church of Mexico.
The self-assumed governor
even issued an order, that all the women whose husbands had gone with
Cortes, and who had any regard for their souls, should consider themselves
as widows and should immediately marry again; and because a woman named
Juana de Mansilla, the wife of Alonzo Valiente, refused to obey this order,
alleging we were not people who would be so easily destroyed as Salazar
and his party, she was ordered to be publickly whipped through Mexico as a
witch. One person from whom we expected better behaviour, and whose name I
will not mention, by way of flattering Salazar, solemnly assured him
before many witnesses, that one night, as he was passing the church of St
Jago, which is built on the site of the great temple of Mexico, he saw the
souls of Cortes, Donna Marina, and Sandoval burning in flames of fire:
Another person, also, of good reputation, pretended that the quadrangles
of Tescuco were haunted by evil spirits, which the natives said were the
souls of Donna Marina and Cortes.
At this time the captains Las Casas and De Avila, who had beheaded
Christoval de Oli, arrived in Mexico, and publickly asserted the existence
of Cortes, reprobating the conduct of Salazar, and declaring if Cortes
were actually dead, that Alvarado was the only fit person to have been
raised to the government, till his majesties pleasure could be known.
Alvarado was written to on the subject, and even set out for Mexico; but
becoming apprehensive for his life, he returned to his district.
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